American Madness

Intelligent Criticism in the Service of a Better Nation




Albany reaches the end of days

Posted by Joel Friedlander on | February 27, 2010 | Click to Comment

We can’t blame the governor for what has happened to him.  He became governor quite suddenly and was unprepared for the role. In addition, he was faced with an economic crisis of monumental proportions that he was completely unprepared for.  As to this recent set of egregious moral and ethical errors, well, he just fell into the existing system.

The political culture of New York fits the profile for a 1930’s film about corruption in some unnamed southern state, more than it does for a huge ethnically diverse one.

Apparently, the State Police Department has become an arm of the governor, rather than a servant of the state.  We have seen inappropriate investigations, shakedowns, and now pure and simple corrupt attempts to intimidate ordinary people.  It is not hard to imagine the state police intimidating witnesses in court actions against the government.

It appears that the entire department is rotten to the core.  The problem is that, unlike the NYPD, it has operated without scrutiny for too many years. The response to just criticism has made the NYPD one of the finest police department in the United States–not perfect, mind you, but among the best there is. The LAPD also changed for the better due to the proper response to just criticism.

It is time to lift up the rock that the State Police are hiding under and see what there is to see.

A Correction to a Real Error, or Simply a Regret?

Posted by Jason Ihle on | February 25, 2010 | Click to Comment

Pimped OutThere’s this wonderful correction in the Times Arts Beat blog:

An earlier version of this post misquoted Mr. Remnick on his comparison between the book and a New Yorker article he had previously written. He said the book would not be a “pumped up” version of the article; he did not say that it would not be a “pimped out” version of the article.

Seeing as how this quote refers to a biography of Barack Obama, I wonder who really screwed up. Was it Dave Itzkoff, the writer of the blog post, who misheard what David Remnick said? Or did David Remnick later realize that referring to a “pimped out” version of his article about the first black President of the U.S. was perhaps a bit inappropriate?

Just a thought I had.

New from the Obama Justice Department: Any action is OK if the country is scared

Posted by Joel Friedlander on | February 25, 2010 | Click to Comment

Just a few days ago the lawyers who gave an OK to torture memo to the Bush Administration were cleared of any legal misconduct by high ups in the Justice Department.  Earlier, the ethics branch of the Justice Department found that they had indeed violated their code of ethics and had engaged in legal misconduct. The new finding was based upon the fact that everyone was very scared after 9/11 and the lawyers were pressured by the Bush Administration. In other words, since they and everyone was scared and they were pressured, it was OK to act unethically!  Duh!

These two men, one now a professor at a California law school and the other a Federal Court Judge with lifetime tenure, were allowed to be unethical by an administrator high up in the current administration. I am disgusted, especially since the current president was a professor of law before he went into politics!

As I read it, the laws of humankind don’t apply if the American people are scared.  It’s that simple.  Just be scared and 1,000 years of legal rules go down the drain.  What a message to send to our country and the rest of the world.

“Only a man who carries a gun ever needs one”

Posted by Joel Friedlander on | February 24, 2010 | 4 Comments

Many years ago, during the 1968 Presidential campaign, there was a cartoon showing a crown roaring along a street and at the bottom of the single panel cartoon was a tiny figure (Bobby Kennedy) saying, “Oh M-God, I have to catch up with that crowd, I’m their leader.”  The point is that it is often the mob that leads American Society, not its thinkers

I wish I knew why Americans are so obsessed with guns.  Almost no one in the country hunts for their own food, there are very few crazies going around attacking peoples houses and killing them, and if you want to kill people the military will be happy to teach you how to do it right, and for a good purpose.
Perhaps it is our fixation with the old West and the fantasy about what things were like.

Maybe it is our miserable cinema, with its constant depictions of rape, murder, kidnaping, etc.  There are directors who have never made a film where there wasn’t extremes of bloodshed.  They are often the most popular directors.  Even our horror films, which were once mostly cerebral, now show violent serial murders.  The genre is so popular that many of the films coming out this year are remakes of older horror films, with additional gore added.  But, I don’t think that the film makers are leading the crowd, they are merely following it, or chasing after it.

Still, that year 1968 was pivotal in destroying the American Political System with murders and assassinations.  We certainly showed the World how uncivilized we are.  I don’t think we have ever gotten over our losses from that year.  It marked the death of classical liberalism and the emergence of the right wing to power.

The United States is divided into two kinds of people, the ones who are enthralled with the bringing of unnecessary death to other creatures, and those who would never think of using a gun unless they were at war.  I personally, nonwithstanding the inanity of our Supreme Court, cannot see an unlimited right to bear arms coming from a sentence that says: Read more

The Best of the Aughts, ctd. – The Broad Comedies (part I)

Posted by Jason Ihle on | February 22, 2010 | 1 Comment

Wedding CrashersThe next installment in my favorites of the decade takes us to the comedies.

There was something about the comedies of the last decade that really got me. I used to wonder if I would eventually outgrow these kinds of films. Now I think I know the answer. The thing is, these are smart comedies. Notice the absence of Saving Silverman from this list.

You’ll notice the same actors tend to come up in the best comedies of the decade: Paul Rudd; Seth Rogen; Jonah Hill; Owen Wilson; Vince Vaughan; Ben Stiller. These guys have done brilliant work in recent years.

A couple of honorable mentions before I get to my official selections. These are worth watching: Funny People; Knocked Up; Zack and Miri Make a Porno; Zombieland; I Love You, Man; Starsky and Hutch; Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan; Brüno.

Wedding Crashers (2005) dir. David Dobkin – Oh my god! I laughed so hard the first time I saw this that I had to see it again just to catch my breath. Then a third time to hear some of the lines lost behind the roaring laughter. Vince Vaughan’s crowning performance as the fast-talking wise-cracking goofy big kid. Owen Wilson is the perfect balance with his laid-back drawl, that surfer attitude. Rachel McAdams is simply heavenly. Isla Fisher was a real find (NSFW) for this movie. She’s able to pull off behaving like a petulant child and a lunatic girlfriend at the same time convincingly and then turn on a dime to be the mature young adult she really is. Christopher Walken is perfect, displaying an ability as a loving father but also menacingly scary when it comes to protecting them. There’s a moment when a single look he gives to Vaughan says everything you need to know about his intentions. The wedding montage (NSFW) early in the film is a masterpiece of direction and editing.
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