Skip to main content

Better this World


By some good fortune I turned on the t.v. to see this film just starting. An amazing film. And it's available online, linked above. For some reason, I didn't pay any attention to the 2008 GOP convention or, more to the point, what was happening in the streets. I'm fairly confident, though, the news channels weren't showing what was really happening in any event.

Trailer here: http://www.pbs.org/pov/betterthisworld/trailer.php

Comments

  1. Haven't watched the film yet, but I recall that demonstrations were limited to a fenced off area.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Going to be a hot time in the old town this time around, depending on who is left at that point to fire up the faithful. I can only imagine what disgusting platform the Tea Party contingent will push for.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I remember a fenced off area, too, in Denver. But this goes way beyond that. Highly recommend the film. I was transfixed, and I normally don't watch this kind of programming on t.v.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Reading the recaps of the GOP "debate," show me how hollow these candidates are. Perry, as expected, came away with the longest nose,

    http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-perry-romney-twist-records-debate-021556685.html

    Not that anyone of them would admit but Obama has been the Republicans' best friend these past 2 years, extending the Bush tax cuts over the protests of fellow Democrats and now withdrawing the Clean Air Act in yet another appeasement to the Right. Taxes are at a historical low, and what few regulations have been reinstated since 2008 seem pretty easy to bypass.

    This is shaping up to be a very gloomy election year.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Off Topic but I hope Robert is OK and that is bboks are dry. Scranton Wilkes Barre really got flooded.

    ReplyDelete
  6. GOP Debate: cringed when I heard the crowd cheer about the number of executions in Texas.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. What an ugly "debate."

    ReplyDelete
  8. Marti, that was without a doubt the low point of the debate.

    Bo, I've been thinking about Robert too. I hope he's okay.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I exchanged e-mails with Robert and he is still in the processing of recovery. It is taking longer than he at first imagined but appears to be doing OK. Everyone needs to send him best wishes!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005