1) People loved John Dillinger (and the other depression era bandits) because he robbed the very banks that were seen as driving people to poverty. From Slate:
Americans understood Dillinger, applauded him, and cheered for him because they saw him less as a gangster than as an outlaw—a social bandit of the Great Depression who turned his guns against the banks. Newspapermen in 1934 compared him to Jesse James, not Al Capone, and certainly not to mobster Frank Nitti, who makes strange, gratuitous appearances in Public Enemies. At one especially telling point in the movie, Purvis tells Dillinger that he is about to extradite him to Indiana. Dillinger thinks about it and says coolly, “Why? I have absolutely nothing I want to do in Indiana.” It’s a great scene, but the spirit of it is dead wrong. Not only is it wholly made up—the two never met—but Dillinger, a scrappy heartland renegade, would never have dismissed his home state.
2) John Dillinger could not have existed without the Great Depression. From the Variety review:
The specific sociopolitical conditions of the time are crucial to the story, but one big thing almost entirely missing from “Public Enemies” is the Depression itself.
3) Melvin Purvis’ most interesting battle was with J. Edgar Hoover himself. Hoover, the paranoid narcissist that he was, saw in Purvis a threat that needed to be knocked down. To that end he threw up roadblock after roadblock in attempts to cut the man down, eventually forcing Purvis out of the FBI. It’s a wonderfully vicious tragic story that I don’t see being captured by the uber-dedicated Christian Bale.
I’ve been debating whether to post a link to the big Sarah Palin Vanity Fair article that has started making the rounds today. On one hand, she is looked upon as a possible leader of one of our two political parties and therefore her narrative (and future narrative) are an important part of our country’s story. On the other hand, the news media has the power to keep anyone they want as part of the national conversation. It’s an unspoken truth that the press decides what is news and should outlets stop covering Palin’s speeches, press releases, travel, etc she would lose much of the value she brings to the table: which is media driven (in that way she’s sort of like the Megan Fox of the Political scene - her influence is built up by the establishment). In the end though, the Palin narrative is just too mesmerizing, too interesting to ignore. Take this paragraph from the Vanity Fair article:
The consensus is that Palin’s rollout, and even her first television interview, with ABC’s Charles Gibson, conducted after an awkward two-week press blackout to allow for intensive cramming at her home in Wasilla, went more or less fine, though it had its embarrassing moments (“You can’t blink,” Palin said, when Gibson asked if she’d hesitated to accept McCain’s offer) and was much parodied. At least one savvy politician—Barack Obama—believed Palin would never have time to get up to speed. He told his aides that it had taken him four months to learn how to be a national candidate, and added, “I don’t care how talented she is, this is really a leap.” The paramount strategic goal in picking Palin was that the choice of a running mate had to ensure a successful convention and a competitive race right after; in that limited sense, the choice worked. But no serious vetting had been done before the selection (by either the McCain or the Obama team), and there was trouble in nailing down basic facts about Palin’s life. After she was picked, the campaign belatedly sent a dozen lawyers and researchers, led by a veteran Bush aide, Taylor Griffin, to Alaska, in a desperate race against the national reporters descending on the state. At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska. Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn’t really count and need not be revealed. This sort of slipperiness—about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered—persisted on questions great and small. By late September, when the time came to coach Palin for her second major interview, this time with Katie Couric, there were severe tensions between Palin and the campaign.
We have deceit, mistakes, lying (to herself probably as much as the outside world), dissension, immaturity, well the list goes on and on. The strange effect of all these negative qualities is that they make Palin strangely human… and almost identifiable. Like a car crash, we are entranced by the destruction, secretly happy to not be part of it, yet also know deep down that the mistakes we are witnessing could be our own.
2) Two health care pieces worth reading. First Nate Silver makes one of the best cases for the public option here. Second, Darshak Sanghavi takes an in depth look at the problems of the Massachusetts health reform efforts, and points out that a fundamental shift in the understanding and managing of our health insurance resources needs to be undertaken for true health care reform from happening. Personally I think it eventually comes down to shifting the American mentality on health care from curative to preventative.
Iran and Health Care are front and center in the political world right now, and whereas the the former is mentioned, tweeted, and discussed among many film folk everywhere, the latter seems to be strangely missing. I admit the plight of Iran is much more compelling then a procedural debate about health insurance, a topic that feels to many old and worn over. But we’re Americans dammit! We’re supposed to be self interested! And reforming the health care system is something that is very much in the self interest of producers, directors, writers, crew, publicists, even assistants and interns… so much of the indie film community is made up of small companies, sole proprietors, and freelancers that the rising cost of health care becomes a real drain on the bottom line, on our livelihoods. Especially given the current state of the industry - another topic that is foremost on folks’ minds.
Right now Health Care is in trouble.
See yesterday’s op-ed by Paul Krugman where he calls the centrist Democrats in the Senate, who whenever there is a big piece of legislation seek to change it purely to hold onto their power, to task:
“The real risk is that health care reform will be undermined by “centrist” Democratic senators who either prevent the passage of a bill or insist on watering down key elements of reform. I use scare quotes around “centrist,” by the way, because if the center means the position held by most Americans, the self-proclaimed centrists are in fact way out in right field.
What the balking Democrats seem most determined to do is to kill the public option, either by eliminating it or by carrying out a bait-and-switch, replacing a true public option with something meaningless. For the record, neither regional health cooperatives nor state-level public plans, both of which have been proposed as alternatives, would have the financial stability and bargaining power needed to bring down health care costs.
Whatever may be motivating these Democrats, they don’t seem able to explain their reasons in public.”
Check out Robert Reich’s Memo to Obama where he among other things calls on President Obama to stand forcefully in the face of opposition:
“Be LBJ. So far, Lyndon Johnson has been the only president to defeat American Medical Association and the rest of the medical-industrial complex. He got Medicare and Medicaid enacted despite their cries of “socialized medicine” because he knocked heads on the Hill. He told Congress exactly what he wanted, cajoled and threatened those who resisted, and counted noses every hour until he had the votes he needed. When you’re not on the road, you need to be twisting congressional arms and drawing a line in the sand. Be tough.”
Recent polls shows that 72% of Americans want a public health insurance option. The 2008 election showed that together we can be more than we can ever be apart. And that unity must extend beyond just getting a Obama into the White House - because we voted for him to get legislation passed, and that legislation doesn’t come to pass, all our efforts were for naught.
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