Sometimes it takes a non-expert to state truths those with an agenda refuse to admit.
Author Ron Franscell wrote this three years ago, yet it still applies after the Charleston, S.C., church shooting:
The bodies of dead children hadn’t even been cleared from the classrooms at Sandy Hook Elementary before various lobbies began trumpeting their end-all solutions to mass murder — just as they have since 1949, the dawn of mass murder’s modern era.
Not all of these fixes are bad ideas, but they simply won’t halt mass murder. At best, we can hope to thwart some massacres and save some lives, but determined, angry killers will still exist and occasionally wreak havoc. At worst, we could surrender a lot of freedoms — and still not stop these horrific, frustrating massacres.
Since 1900, America has suffered about 150 public mass murders. Some are now code words for national tragedy: Columbine, Texas Tower, Luby’s, Sandy Hook. The death toll has been less than 1,000 people, accounting for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all murder in America in the same period. Statistically, we have much bigger problems.
Yet mass murder grabs us by the throat every time. It’s partly because it often happens in familiar, “safe” places … a McDonald’s restaurant, a church, a shopping mall, government offices, schools, festivals. And its victims are almost always innocents who, like us on any ordinary day in any ordinary place, were not expecting to die. We can easily imagine being in their place.
Plus, we’re always flummoxed by the enigma of mass murder. Too often, nobody’s left to explain why it happened. And in those rare times when we’ve gotten answers, they are historically confusing, irrational, and disappointing. We spend a lot of energy trying to explain the unexplainable.
Mass murderers tend to be angry young men who are retaliating against personal rejections, failures, slights both real and imagined, and a perceived loss of independence. They are usually loners but not necessarily unsociable. Most are disturbed, but not necessarily psychotic. Their crime is usually triggered by a major loss or disappointment, such as a break-up or job loss.
The revenge-orientedmass killer is trying to get even with specific people, particular categories or groups of individuals, or society at large. He is trying to regain some measure of control over a life he sees spiraling out of control.
So we know plenty about mass murderers … but we have not yet developed any science that can foil a murderous rampage that leaves no trace until too late. Sadly, most mass murderers — right up until they kill — do nothing that would cause a reasonable society to identify and restrain them.
The default “fix” has always been gun control. Ignoring that seven of the 10 deadliest mass murders in American history were not committed with guns, this isn’t as much a rational debate as an uncivil war. The trenches are dug deep and the battle lines shift by inches, not miles.
Yes, we should be more pro-active about preventing lunatics and criminals from owning guns. But we already know that will be an uncomfortable process in a country where even being scanned by an airport machine is considered an intolerable intrusion by many.
And taking away guns won’t remove the root causes of mass murder, merely limit one of the killers’ tools, which have also included fertilizer bombs, knives, fire, poison, water, cars, boats, crossbows, and woodworking tools.
A determined killer might be slowed down, but not stopped by more gun laws, but even if guns were outlawed completely, determined killers have always found ways to kill.
More/better/cheaper/quicker mental health care? Certainly. But very few of America’s most prolific mass murderers — or the people around them — believed they had mental-health issues. Few would have voluntarily sought help, and the mere suggestion that they were crazy would have exacerbated their feelings of rejection, failure, and loss of control.
Fortifying schools? That might have stalled Adam Lanza, but most school massacres have been done by students who were already inside, not monsters from the outside.
A crappy economy, desensitization to violence in the media, and deteriorating civility are also contributing factors. “Fixing” those things poses more daunting challenges than mass murder.
Another unique obstacle is our collective social ADD. When the next massacre happens, we’ll be shocked. In time — maybe a week or two — we’ll be distracted. Soon enough, we’ll forget altogether. Time erodes feeling and creates indifference. Americans are condemned to be shocked, to grow complacent, then to forget … then to be shocked all over again. It keeps us from the long, arduous work of solving a complex problem.
Is it not fascinating that one of America’s deadliest public rampages — a madman’s 1927 school bombing in Bath, Michigan, that killed 45 people, mostly children — is all but forgotten in the Twenty-first century?
Yes, we owe it to the innocent dead to seek answers. We should devote ourselves to saving as many lives as possible while protecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding people. It’s a delicate balance that won’t lend itself to 144-character Tweets or glib Facebook updates.
But no matter what “fixes” we introduce, we should not fool ourselves that we have ended mass murder.
Today in 1956, perhaps the first traffic safety song, “Transfusion,” reached number eight:
The number one album today in 1962 was Ray Charles’ “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music”:
Today in 1970, Chubby Checker and three passengers were arrested in Niagara Falls, N.Y., after police discover marijuana and “unidentified capsules” in the car. None of the four were charged, however.
There were two big media news items last week, one national, one closer to home.
To some people’s surprise but not mine, NBC announced that Brian Williams will not be returning to anchor NBC Nightly News, at least not now. Lester Holt, who anchored on weekends and replaced him during his prevarication-caused leave of absence, will now get the job on weeknights.
Ousted NBC anchor Brian Williams began his apology tour on Friday, saying on the “Today” show that he “got it wrong” when he told exaggerated stories about his reporting but declining to say he lied.
In his first public comments since being suspended by NBC in February, Williams told co-host Matt Lauer that “what has happened in the past has been identified and torn apart by me and has been examined to death by me. I’m responsible for this and I’m sorry.”
But under prodding by Lauer, Williams would not admit that his serial exaggerations constituted lying. Instead, he said, it was “my ego getting the better of me” and “came from a bad place inside me” when he told stories about himself that were “wrong.”
NBC on Thursday said Williams would return to the air, but not on “NBC Nightly News,” which Williams has led as anchor and managing editor for the past 11 years. Instead, he has been reassigned to MSNBC, the network’s little-watched cable channel, and will serve in a vaguely defined role as a breaking-news anchor.
Williams, 56, was suspended by NBC for six months in February after he said on “Nightly News” that the military helicopter he was traveling in at the start of the Iraq War in 2003 was damaged by rocket fire. In fact, it had not been, and Williams was taken to task by American veterans who were eyewitnesses to the events Williams described.
The episode triggered an explosion of reporting about Williams’s characterizations of his other reporting exploits. News articles turned up multiple instances in which he exaggerated or embellished his role. The stories involved Williams’s descriptions of his experiences covering Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Israeli-Lebanese conflict in 2006 and the Arab Spring in Egypt in 2011, among others.
“Came from a bad place inside me”? What does that mean? (Was the appendix removed before it could explode in 1983 “a bad place inside me”?)
Brian Williams’ attempt to explain himself to the Today Show’s Matt Lauer didn’t explain anything. And one reason his mea culpa rang hollow is because Williams did what children and criminals do; he used passive verbs when he should have used active verbs.
Williams said:
“I would like to take this opportunity to say that what has happened in the past has been identified and torn apart by me and has been fixed. Has been dealt with. And going forward there are going to be different rules of the road.“
He does not say WHAT has been identified or WHAT has happened. He does not say HOW those mistakes have been fixed and he does not say what the new rules of the road will be. I wish he had said something like:
“I exaggerated or fabricated 10 stories that I told on late night talk shows and speeches. (Then name them.) In each case, I apologized to the people who were harmed. In the future I will stick to doing the news. ”
Williams said:
“I am sorry for what happened here.”
Something didn’t just happen. Somebody caused it to happen. He should have said:
“I hurt my news organization, I hurt my colleagues, I hurt my family and I have made a wreck of my career. I am truly and deeply sorry for what I did. I am solely responsible for what I said. I am deeply grateful to NBC that I have a job. Most of all, I apologize to the viewers of NBC Nightly news for having squandered their trust in me. I will now spend the rest of my career trying to gain that trust back.”
He said:
“It had to have been my ego that made me think I had to be sharper, funnier, quicker than anybody else. I put myself closer to the action-having been at the action in the beginning.”
He should have said,
“I tried to be sharper and funnier and quicker than anybody else so I put myself closer to the action than I really was. I was feeding my ego.”
There is no need to remind us your stories were partly true. Now is the time to own mistakes, not justify them. Everybody has exaggerated some experience to make himself/herself look more accomplished or heroic than we are. Just own it. …
Williams also spoke about his statements as if someone else was inside his body. He blamed the misstatements, exaggerations and some call them lies on “a bad place,” “a bad urge inside me.” And he said, “What happened is the fault of a whole host of other sins. What happened is clearly part of my ego getting the better of me.”
In a follow-up question Lauer tried again to pry some ownership out of Williams. Did he mean to mislead? Williams went back to that spirit inside of him:
“No it came from a bad place. It came from a sloppy choice of words. I told stories that were not true over the years. Looking back, it is very clear that I never intended to, it got mixed up, it got turned around in my mind.”
There’s that passive ownership again. IT came from a bad place. IT got mixed up. IT got turned around. Own the mistake by saying. “I exaggerated the facts to make myself look better.”
“It came from a bad place” is like saying “The devil made me do it.”
Amazingly, even in the Today interview, he still got facts wrong. About the helicopter story that touched off this whole mess, Williams said on Today:
“I told the story correctly for years before I told it incorrectly. That, to me, is a huge difference here. After that incident I tried and failed as others have tried and failed-and why is it that when we’re trying to say ‘I’m sorry,’ that we can’t come out and say ‘I’m sorry?’”
Nope. Wrong. The problem here is that the helicopter story was wrong from the first time he told it on Dateline NBC. In that report he said the formation he was flying in came under fire. It didn’t. So he told the story incorrectly from the first and kept getting it wrong. Now, in his apology interview he gets it wrong again?
And the second part of that statement is one any parent identifies as the “others do it” cop-out. He said he tried and failed as others try and fail to say I am sorry. It is a juke move to get away from his botched apology on Nightly News that led to this mess. He could have accepted responsibility in January but didn’t.
Conservative skeptics of Williams’ work are not going to be mollified by his move to MSNBC, which takes liberalism to stupid depths. (See Maddow, Rachel, and Schultz, Ed.)
This is not necessarily the end for Williams at NBC. Peter Jennings became ABC’s anchor at 26 years old, and wasn’t very good at it.
ABC took him off its evening newscast and sent him out to report, and 10 years later he was back as an anchor of ABC’s three-headed “World News Tonight,” and then became its only anchor 15 years after that.
The difference, though, is that Jennings was put in front of the big camera before he was ready, as the face of a bad news organization. (ABC-TV’s gremlin-plagued coverage of John F. Kennedy’s assassination came two years before Jennings showed up.) Jennings, who came to ABC from Canada’s CTV and was the son of a CBC-TV news anchor, apparently annoyed American viewers by such foibles as Canadian pronunciations and grammar. (Apparently no one at ABC tried to correct him, or it didn’t take.)
That wasn’t about basic credibility (other than for being a Canadian reporting on the U.S.). Williams’ viewers not only will be reminded of his self-exaggeration, but will wonder what else he’s said that wasn’t entirely true, which leads to credibility questions for the rest of his career.
Meanwhile, my former (and, hint hint, future) foil on Wisconsin Public Radio, Bill Lueders, reports:
The Wisconsin State Journal has launched a new round of staff cuts that look more like slashes, laying off four staffers and announcing that three key departures will go unfilled.
Among the layoff victims are columnist Doug Moe, a veteran Madison journalist whom the paper hired away from the jointly owned Capital Times in 2008; sports columnist Andy Baggot, who has written for the paper since 1978; and sports columnist Dennis Semrau, who has covered local prep sports and the Milwaukee Brewers for decades. Brandon Storlie, who joined the paper in 2009 and has worked as a reporter and sports copy editor, has also been laid off.
Sources says these layoffs, announced to staff late Thursday afternoon by State Journal editor John Smalley, were not voluntary. …
In addition, staff was told that the State Journal will not be refilling the positions of Dee Hall, who has left the paper to work for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism; reporter Dan Simmons, who covers higher education; and part-time books editor Jeanne Kolker. Simmons apparently agreed to be laid off.“Yesterday was my last at the State Journal,” Simmons wrote on his Facebook page this morning. “Some great colleagues who certainly weren’t planning to be jobless are out of work. And as always the community gets worse with fewer scribes to watch for shenanigans and tell great stories.”
Moe, whose resume includes freelancing for Isthmus, serving as editor of Madison Magazine and writing a series of books, is widely regarded as among the best writers in Madison, with vast contacts and community knowledge. Baggot, Semrau and Simmons also have broad followings and deep experience covering their beats. And Kolker almost single-handedly covered the local book beat, in a city where there is a great deal of interest in books.
But in fact, experience is exactly what papers seeking to trim staff seem most determined to lose, because longer-tenured staffers receive slightly higher salaries. In February, the Scripps Washington Bureau laid off journalists including four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Sydney Freedberg and two-time Polk award winner Marcia Myers. Other Pulitzer Prize winners to get the ax in recent years include Chicago Sun-Times photographer John White, San Diego Union-Tribune reporter David Hasemyer, and Newsweek/Daily Beast fashion journalist Robin Givhan.
The layoffs at the State Journal are part of a company-wide belt-tightening. Sources say The Capital Times has also asked for layoff volunteers. And it is unclear whether the paper intends to fill the gap left by the recent voluntary departure of business reporter Mike Ivey. “No comment,” wrote editor Paul Fanlund, in response to a question on this.
George Hesselberg, a longtime State Journal reporter, lamented the cuts.
“Any loss to newsrooms at the State Journal and The Capital Times is a loss to the community.” Hesselberg said. “It means fewer experienced eyes, and that’s not good for the community.”
I wonder whether Fanlund, a former business reporter who has been beating on business interests since becoming The Capital Times editor, will now criticize himself for signing off on his own job cuts.
That is, meanwhile, a lot of experience to cut loose. I have been reading Baggot since approximately middle school. Moe’s column was a must-read for anyone with interest in Madison. He was one of the best pickups of the State Journal when The Capital Times stopped daily publication.
I grew up reading the State Journal. (Starting, according to my parents, when I was 2.) I wanted to work at the State Journal for years, and the State Journal refused to hire me. And apparently it was a good thing the State Journal didn’t, since I probably would now be a former State Journal staffer.
At the risk of making a statement against my professional interests: People read print publications to read the writers, not the management.
You have to love (he wrote sarcastically) the hypocrisy of liberals who suddenly praise Pope Francis for his views on capitalism and the environment.
Good luck finding those same liberals on the subjects of abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage, all of which the Roman Catholic Church firmly opposes.
“They told me if I voted Republican, America would wind up taking scientific dictation from religious leaders,” observes Glenn Reynolds, setting up his best-known punch line: “And they were right!”
Heh. Indeed. What prompts that jape is a screenshot of the New York Times science section, which, according to the InstaPundit, “was all about the Pope.” Actually three of the four headlines were definitely about him: “Pope Francis Aligns Himself With Mainstream Science on Climate,” “Pope Francis, in Sweeping Encyclical, Calls for Swift Action on Climate Change” and “On Planet in Distress, a Papal Call to Action.” The fourth was something about ancient stars—though come to think of it, Francis is 78.
Most of the gas being emitted in reaction to the pope’s recent encyclical, “Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home,” is not nearly this entertaining. The Times has an editorial, “The Pope and Climate Change”; Salon has a histrionically partisan piece by Bob Cesca, “How Pope Francis Just Destroyed the GOP’s Religious Con Artists.” It all seems very phoned-in.
Yet predictable as it is, it’s also a bit peculiar. When did the secular left develop such respect for religious authority? And it’s not just the pope. The Times commissioned a joint op-ed by the mononymous Bartholmew and Justin Welby, the leaders, respectively, of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Anglican Communion. They echo the pope’s call for “action” on “climate change.” The Washington Post’s Janell Ross, meanwhile, touts evangelical Protestant global warm-mongers:
The National Association of Evangelicals, which describes itself as an organization representing more than 455,000 local congregations, began pushing for climate change-conscious policies during George W. Bush’s time in office. And the New York Times reported that The Christian Coalition, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson, fought unsuccessfully for a climate change bill in Congress in both 2009 and 2010.
In 2008, 45 members of the Southern Baptist Convention, a network of more than 50,000 churches and missions, signed a letter describing their previous stance on environmental matters as, “too timid.” And, that same year the entire convention approved a resolution declaring “it is prudent to address global climate change.”
Some of the pope’s purported proponents are in fact openly contemptuous of religion and are merely using him to accuse their political opposites of hypocrisy. Here’s Cesca from that Salon piece:
If it’s okay for [Jeb] Bush, [Rick] Santorum and [Marco] Rubio to simply waive the Church’s teachings on the climate crisis, why is it impossible for them to do the same when it comes to their religion-based positions on abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage?
Sure, it wouldn’t be the first time Republicans have failed the sniff test when it comes to cherry-picking the Bible and conveniently ignoring passages that don’t conform to their ideology. (Almost everything Jesus said, for example.) But given the magnitude of what the Pope has delivereed [sic] to the world this week, given the stupendous magnitude of the crisis, and given the vocal anti-climate orthodoxy of the Catholic Republican candidates, the question has to be asked.
Why is it okay for persons of faith to ignore the crap they don’t like, while outright legislating the crap they do like?
Of course one could just as easily turn that scatological, rhetorical tu quoque against Catholic Democrats like Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo and Nancy Pelosi. And actually, there is an answer to Cesca’s question, put forth by the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue:
Catholics are expected to give their assent to papal teachings, but it is not true that all pronouncements are morally equal. In 2004, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) was explicit about this: “Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.”
It goes without saying that climate change is not on the same moral plane with the intentional killing of innocent human beings.
It is fair to surmise that many of those applauding the encyclical would sit on their hands for significant portions of it. In a Wall Street Journal column, Father Robert Sirico notes that the encyclical “voices moral statements dismissing popular, ill-conceived positions”:
The repeated lie that overpopulation is harming the planet—expressed by even some of the advisers for the Vatican—is soundly rejected. It is bewildering that the people who have been most vigorous in developing the policies proposed in the encyclical are those who also vigorously support population control and abortion as solutions to the environmental problem.
National Journal quotes the encyclical: “Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?”
Writing for the American Spectator, Gene Koprowski and S.T. Karnick observe that “the pope says no to carbon credits and carbon tax credit trading,” financial schemes that have been likened to the selling of indulgences, a corruption of the medieval church. “Al Gore was probably on the phone with his portfolio manager in Dubai at 1 a.m. Eastern time … dumping some of his vast green equity holdings,” they quip.
So the left isn’t really bowing to papal authority. What they’re doing is the opposite—praising the pope for bowing to the secular “authority” of science.
But science has no holy father. Science is a method, not a set of doctrines; and scientific pronouncements are authoritative only when they are considerably better understood than “climate science” is today—and even then they are always subject to revision as new information comes to light. When a global warmist says “the science is settled,” he is making a political statement, not a scientific one.
The left’s embrace of the pope is entirely a matter of political expediency. Among other things, they seek, as another Washington Post headline puts it, to put “2016 GOP Hopefuls on the Defensive.” Karen Tumulty reports:
Catholic politicians face a balancing act, given the popularity of a pope who had an approval rating of 86 percent among U.S. Catholics and 64 percent among Americans overall in a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a Catholic convert campaigning in Iowa, was asked Wednesday about the papal document.
“I respect the pope. I think he’s an incredible leader, but I think it’s better to solve this problem in the political realm,” Bush said. “I’m going to read what he says, of course. I’m a Catholic and try to follow the teachings of the church.”
Later, Bush added: “I don’t go to Mass for economic policy or for things in politics.”
Sen. John F. Kennedy said much the same thing in 1960: “I believe in an America where … no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act. … I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source.”
The New York Times evidently disagrees. From today’s editorial:
“Laudato Si” is the first papal encyclical devoted solely to environmental issues—and also, Pope Francis clearly hopes, the beginning of the broad moral awakening necessary to persuade not just one billion Catholic faithful, but humanity at large, of our collective responsibility to pass along a clean and safe planet to future generations. In other words, to do the things that mere facts have not inspired us to do.
The paper took the opposite position in a May 2012 editorial on a different subject:
Under the Constitution, churches and other religious organizations have total freedom to preach that contraception is sinful and rail against [President] Obama for making it more readily available. But the First Amendment is not a license for religious entities to impose their dogma on society through the law. The vast majority of Americans do not agree with the Roman Catholic Church’s anti-contraception stance, including most American Catholic women.
The Times further defended the legitimacy of forcing devout employers to act against their faith by providing contraceptive and abortifacient drugs and devices via workers’ medical benefits.
An obvious question arises: If many individual Catholics feel free to reject their church’s teachings on contraception and even abortion, why should anyone expect them—never mind “humanity at large”—to fall into line with global warmism on the pope’s say-so?
I was raised Catholic, but now am not, so I have the right to agree or disagree with the pope, who has no authority over me. I am an Episcopalian, which is part of the Anglican Communion, which, if it agrees with the global warming hysterics, is wrong. I don’t answer to them either; the determinant of whether I go upward or downward at the end is not on this earth.
The encyclical more or less accurately recapitulates the findings of mainstream climate science with regard to the effects of human activity on the climate. Basically, loading up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases produced largely from burning fossil fuels has boosted the average temperature of the globe over the past half century or so. Fine, as far as that goes.
The Pontiff then moves on to use the problem of climate change as an example of the deep spiritual and ethical problems allegedly stemming from the whole enterprise of modernity. Climate change is not a technological and economic problem involving trade-offs, it is a moral issue. Whenever someone, even as nice a man Pope Francis is, declares something a moral issue, what they are saying to people who disagree with them is: Shut up! How dare you talk of trade-offs!
With due respect, the Pope apparently misunderstands how science and the free enterprise system works. Oh, he praises the miracles of medicine, electricity, agricultural productivity, automobiles, airplanes, biotechnology, computers. From the encyclical:
We are the beneficiaries of two centuries of enormous waves of change: steam engines, railways, the telegraph, electricity, automobiles, aeroplanes, chemical industries, modern medicine, information technology and, more recently, the digital revolution, robotics, biotechnologies and nanotechnologies. It is right to rejoice in these advances and to be excited by the immense possibilities which they continue to open up before us, for “science and technology are wonderful products of a God-given human creativity”. The modification of nature for useful purposes has distinguished the human family from the beginning; technology itself “expresses the inner tension that impels man gradually to overcome material limitations”. Technology has remedied countless evils which used to harm and limit human beings. How can we not feel gratitude and appreciation for this progress, especially in the fields of medicine, engineering and communications?
Indeed, who cannot feel such gratitude? But the Pontiff apparently has no clue as to how the progress he celebrates and which lifted billions from humanity’s natural state of abject poverty came about. …
The earth is not unlimited, but human ingenuity is. Climate change (and other environmental problems) are not moral issues that require sacrifice and abnegation; they will be solved by continued technological progress and economic growth. Anything that slows down that process will slow down the cleaning up and restoration of the natural world.
For those who think entertainment of previous days was better than now, here are two pieces of evidence for your argument.
The first is from film director William Friedkin, who said, says London’s Daily Mail:
Exorcist director William Friedkin has launched a withering attack on today’s flood of superhero and sci-fi movies, accusing them of lacking any substance and ruining cinema.
‘Films used to be rooted in gravity,’ the acclaimed 79-year-old said as he attended the Champs-Elysees Film Festival in Paris.
‘They were about real people doing real things.’
Today, he says ‘cinema is all about Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Avengers, Hunger Games in America: all kinds of stuff that I have no interest in seeing at all.’
That race by studios to appeal to the broadest audience possible is why his own movies fell out of favour after his peak in the 1970s, he admitted.
‘That is when my films went like that – out of the frame,’ said Friedkin, whose films The Exorcist and French Connection both won Oscars.
Friedkin says he saw the change happen in 1977 when he made what he considered his best movie – the largely ignored Sorcerer about four men transporting a cargo of nitroglycerin in South America – only to see it eclipsed by the huge hit of that year: Star Wars.
Now Friedkin reckons ‘the best work’ for directors is on television, on U.S. cable and video-on-demand services that produce quality series such as True Detective and House of Cards.
The shift to those outlets, he said, is the ‘new zeitgeist’.
‘You develop character at a greater length and the story is more complex and deeper than cinema,’ the director said.
‘Many of the fine filmmakers of today are going to long-form TV. It is the most welcoming place to work for a director today.’
Friedkin is looking to ride that wave, working on a script for the HBO cable network about Mae West, the American sex symbol and entertainer counted as one of Hollywood’s biggest ever stars.
He has spoken to Bette Midler about playing the part.
He is also looking at turning another of his big films, To Live and Die in LA, into a TV series, with different characters and plot.
If his past work serves as inspiration for what he’s doing today, it’s in no small part due to the fact that he has long been fascinated by the timeless theme of good versus evil.
‘Most of my films are about the thin line between good and evil that exists in everyone,’ he said.
‘I believe that within all of us, there is a good side and a dark side. And it’s a constant struggle to have your good side triumph over the dark side.
‘And sometimes people don’t and lose control of themselves.’
Although his NYC-cop-in-France movie The French Connection and the demon-possession drama The Exorcist made him a star director at the time, his later films never scaled such heights.
But Friedkin resisted going back and doing the sequels to his masterpieces, saying it would have been purely about the money.
‘I am not interested’ in making movies just for the pay-cheque, Friedkin said. ‘I have to love the film, the story, the characters.’
His Exorcist movie ‘was enough,’ he said. ‘There were four sequels to The Exorcist and I’ve seen none of them, nor do I want to or intend to.’
Likewise, with 1971’s The French Connection, which starred Gene Hackman and won five Oscars, there was ‘nothing more that could be said’.
That demurral didn’t stop the production of a 1975 sequel, also with Hackman and directed by John Frankenheimer, who notably made the original The Manchurian Candidate.
I had not realized (which means I didn’t bother to look) that Friedkin wasn’t involved in any of the Exorcist sequels, or of the second French Connection movie. That should have been his clue that the studios are more interested in making money than “films rooted in gravity.”
I wonder if Friedkin realizes the irony of turning his movie “To Live and Die in L.A.” …
… into a TV series, which makes him guilty of what Hollywood is accused of — lack of new ideas. And “good versus evil” as a story only goes back to the Book of Genesis.
I have seen “Sorcerer” …
… but “Gone with the Wind” would have been swamped by “Star Wars,” which is only the most watched science fiction movie of all time, because it’s got a great story accessible to non-sci-fi fans. You’d think Friedkin would appreciate the latter part.
I stopped watching the “Batman” movies around George Clooney. (Or was it Val Kilmer? I forgot.) I enjoyed the “Iron Man” movies, but have watched none of the other superhero flicks. (Particularly “The Green Hornet,” which committed the sin of not taking its source material at all sincerely or seriously.) To say that Hollywood lacks originality isn’t an original observation, which doesn’t mean it’s incorrect.
Here’s an interesting exercise: The top grossing movies from 1971 …
“Fiddler on the Roof,” $75.6 million.
“The French Connection,” $51.7 million.
“Diamonds Are Forever,” $43.8 million.
“Dirty Harry,” $36 million.
“Billy Jack,” $32.5 million.
“Summer of ’42,” $32.1 million.
“The Last Picture Show,” $29.1 million.
“Carnal Knowledge,” $28.6 million
“A Clockwork Orange,” $26.6 million.
“Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” $17.9 million.
… and 1973 …
“The Sting,” $156 million.
“The Exorcist,” $128 million.
“American Graffiti,” $96.3 million.
“Papillon,” $53.2 million.
“The Way We Were,” $45 million.
“Magnum Force,” $39.8 million.
“Last Tango in Paris,” $36.1 million.
“Live and Let Die,” $35.4 million.
“Robin Hood,” $32.1 million.
“Paper Moon,” $30.9 million.
One wonders how Friedkin felt about getting beaten out for the number-one movie in box office twice, or about competing for ticket sales with two James Bond movies, two Dirty Harry movies, two Disney movies, and three X-rated movies. As for 1977 (hint: “Sorcerer” isn’t on it):
“Star Wars,” $307.3 million.
“Smokey and the Bandit,” $126.7 million.
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” $116.4 million.
“The Goodbye Girl,” $102 million.
“Saturday Night Fever,” $94.2 million.
“Oh, God!”, $51.1 million.
“A Bridge Too Far,” $50.8 million.
“The Deep,” $47.4 million.
“The Spy Who Loved Me,” $46.8 million.
“Annie Hall,” $38.3 million.
Those three years’ top 10 lists are an eclectic mix (1977 alone features two science fiction flicks, four comedies, a World War II movie, a movie written to capitalize on the popularity of “Jaws,” the apotheosis of disco and James Bond again), certainly more so than the 2014 top 10 …
“Transformers: Age of Extinction,” $1.1 billion.
“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” $955.1 million.
“Guardians of the Galaxy,” $774.2 million
“Maleficent,” $758.4 million.
“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1,” $752.1 million.
“X-Men: Days of Future Past,” $748.1 million.
“Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” $714.8 million.
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” $709 million.
“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” $708.8 million.
“Interstellar,” $672.7 million.
… but Friedkin may have been lucky to be in Hollywood during a more creative era than before or since, though note the presence of the seventh and eighth James Bond movies on those ’70s lists. (Notice also that every film on the 2014 top gross list is either a sequel, a remake, inspired by a previous film [“Maleficient” is a takeoff on “Sleeping Beauty”] or based on comic-book characters; in some cases more than one category fits. “Interstellar” is the only original story on that list.) I doubt Hollywood was less money-obsessed then than now, though Hollywood may be more averse to risk as the result of the studios now being owned by publicly traded companies.
Friedkin’s statement about long-form TV being able to tell more complex stories is not exactly a revelation either, though it is a relatively recent development given the growth of pay-cable channels where whatever can be shown in a theater can be revealed on the small screen too — bad language, sexy bits, gory violence, etc. Still, a movie runs two hours. A 12-part hour-long series runs 12 hours, which, last time I checked, is more than two hours. Science fiction fans can look at the difference between the seven seasons of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and the three “Next Generation” movies as evidence.
Friedkin also forgets the waxing and waning of moviegoers’ wish to escape from the realities of their lives. By 1977, an increasing number of Americans were grasping that things weren’t very good, after Watergate, the losing end of Vietnam, and inflation. “Star Wars” and “Saturday Night Fever” gave people an opportunity to escape, in air conditioned comfort, for a couple of hours. Things are different in 2015, but certainly not better, and most likely worse and getting worse. Why do you suppose “The Wizard of Oz” was so popular just before World War II was ready to break out?
Friedkin also may not realize that his inability to do what he wants with films may be his own fault. (I was going to point out the big egos of Hollywood types, but that would be redundant and obvious.) IMDB.com reports that Friedkin originally wanted Steve McQueen for the title role in “Sorcerer,” but McQueen wanted his then-wife, Ali McGraw, in the movie. Friedkin refused, so McQueen refused, and as a result so did Marcello Mastroianni and Lino Ventura. IMDB adds that the film originally had a budget of $15 million, which ballooned to $21 million, and then grossed only $9 million. That’s not an “Ishtar”-scale disaster, but add to that his nickname of “Hurricane Billy” from his on-set temper, and Friedkin’s probably lucky he’s gotten to direct anything more creative than Heinz ketchup commercials. I’m not sure how Friedkin can call “Sorcerer” “one of my only films I can watch because it came out almost exactly as I intended” when that statement was false starting with casting.
No one would ever dare to compare the writing prowess of artists like Macklemore, Nicki Minaj, and Katy Perry to Chaucer and Ginsberg, but a new study from Andrew Powell-Morse reveals just how dumbed down the lyrics are for songs currently dominating the Billboard charts.
Powell-Morse analyzed the reading levels for 225 songs that spent three or more weeks atop Billboard’s Pop, Country, Rock, and Hip-Hop song charts.
Whereas chart-toppers in 2005 read between a third and fourth grade level, a decade later that average is declining, and fast. In 2014, the reading level of a Billboard No. 1 single averaged between a second and third grade reading level, with the bar trending downward in five of the last 10 years.
Of the four genres analyzed, country music came out with the highest average reading level (3.3), followed by pop (2.9), rock ‘n’ roll (2.9), and R&B/hip-hop (2.6).
At an individual level, the data is even more fascinating. The average reading level of Eminem is a grade-and-a-half higher than Beyoncé, while Nickelback (!) tops Foo Fighters by nearly a number letter grade. In the world of pop music, superstars like Mariah Carey and Adele rank a full number grade higher than the likes of Lady Gaga and Ke$ha.
Of all 225 songs analyzed in the studio, the highest-scoring rock song was Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Dani California” with a reading level of 5.5. Meanwhile, Three Days Grace’s “The Good Life” is the “dumbest” with a reading level of 0.8.
It’s amusing to me that the supposed music of rednecks and other hicks ranks higher in reading complexity than any other genre of popular music. (Country music tells stories, and generally that statement doesn’t apply to the other genres.) Of course, I am in a line of work where we are supposed to write to an eighth-grade reading level. (In my business magazine days, according to our Microsoft Word software, the stories I wrote were generally to a 12th-grade reading level.) And this assumes that people actually listen to the words, which often are a bit unintelligible. (See “Louie Louie.”)
One of the philosophies of The Presteblog is that in the world of entertainment, there is no tie between popularity, or lack thereof, and quality, or lack thereof. Unless something is hideously bad (the “Spock’s Brain” episode of the original “Star Trek”), most people remember the good stuff and forget the ordinary and mediocre movies, TV shows, songs, etc. The other thing possibly at work here is the tie between how difficult something is to do and how good it is. Computers can recreate any instrument, and even fix problems (for instance, bad pitch or thinness) in someone’s voice. (Which explains Britney Spears’ ability to have a singing career.) The state of special effects is such that an actor can stand in front of a green screen that can depict anywhere. Story? Who needs a story? Just blow some stuff up.
When it takes work, the author takes more pride in his or her work. When you have limits, resource or otherwise (the old film Production Code and Television Code, which admittedly no one misses), you have to become creative. (Robert Rodriguez’s film career started with a $7,000 movie, “El Mariachi,” which he financed by selling his blood plasma.) Creativity by computer and the risk aversion of the film studios and record labels (the logical result of their being owned by publicly traded companies) gives you the state of entertainment today, such as it is.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Daniel Bice paused from his usual attacks on Republicans and conservatives to focus on former and, he thinks, future U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold:
Former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold — long a champion of campaign finance reform — founded a political action committee that has given a mere 5% of its income to federal candidates and political parties.
Instead, nearly half of the $7.1 million that Progressives United PAChas spent since 2011 has gone to raising more money for itself, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets.org. The data also show the group has paid another sizable chunk of money on salaries or consulting fees for Feingold, his top aide and eight former staffers. …
Feingold officials countered by saying that his PAC was responsible for raising much more money for the candidates it endorsed through a fundraising portal. While that bolsters the bottom line, it means Feingold’s PAC still spent more than $3.50 for every $1 that a candidate received in direct or indirect funding over the past four years.
In 2011, shortly after losing his Senate seat, Feingold announced that he was setting up his PAC and a political nonprofit called Progressives United Inc. The two groups have raised and spent $10 million over the past four years.
The PAC was created with the aim of “directly and indirectly supporting candidates who stand up for our progressive ideals.”
But campaign records show that Feingold’s PAC did little to help candidates directly, donating a mere $352,008 to federal candidates and political parties since 2011.
Most of the rest of its budget went to overhead.
Fundraising was the top expense, with one direct mail firm, Nexus Direct of Virginia Beach, Va., being paid $2.3 million by the Feingold PAC in the past four years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Feingold and nine of his former campaign and U.S. Senate staffers drew salaries or consulting fees from the PAC, federal election records show. Five of them also spent time on the payroll of Progressives United Inc., the nonprofit.
For instance, Mary Irvine — Feingold’s longtime chief of staff — was paid a total of $317,823 by the PAC and nonprofit from February 2011 until July 2013, when she left to take a job joining Feingold at the U.S. State Department. Irvine was listed on federal tax reports as vice president of Progressives United Inc.
Feingold received $77,000 from the two groups, one of which spent $42,609 to buy hundreds of copies of the ex-senator’s latest book, “While America Sleeps.” …
Federal tax records show Progressives United Inc. raised and spent $2.8 million during its four years in operation. Of that, more than $1.2 million was spent on salaries and $1.3 million on fundraising for the nonprofit.
Those two items made up nearly 90% of the group’s overall budget.
Apparently being a Progressives United employee was a good gig, not just because of the six-figure salaries, but because of ritzy hotels and fine dining for employees too.
It would be one thing if Feingold hadn’t wrapped the maverick mantra around himself all these years, despite the reality of his voting record, which is indistingushable from any Democrat, except when Feingold went left of the donkey party. Apparently I was mistaken when I assumed the purpose of a political action committee was primarily to raise money for candidates, not create cushy jobs for your former Senate and campaign staff.
Then again, phoniness seems to run in the Democratic Party these days, with the supposed hero of the middle class, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the similar lack-of-spending-on-anybody-but-ourselves Clinton Foundation.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 