Tonight and tomorrow night in Los Angeles, Cinefamily is having a mini Bruce Dern film festival, “An Evening With Bruce Dern.” Dern will be in attendance.
Specializing in villains and heavies, but bringing to them the sensitivity and complexity that makes them truly memorable, Dern has been the premier psychotic-neurotic of the past forty years.
“I’ve played more psychotics and freaks and dopers than anyone.”—Bruce Dern.
Well, we know that Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, Glenn Beck and their irresponsible, hateful rhetoric had nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with the shooting in Tucson, because… well, they (and Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Michelle Malkin and the rest of the right-wing punditacracy clown parade) told us so. Right? Right??
But what of the people who were actually shot, but survived, or who were eyewitnesses to the tragedy? What do they think? Who do they blame for the sorry state of the toxic political climate that led a complete lunatic like Jared Loughner to seek to inflict his “Second Amendment remedies,” on them, as per the innocent, blameless Sharron Angle?
Well, can’t say it’s much of a shock to report that at least one of the shooting victims, Eric Fuller, a 63-year-old disabled veteran who had campaigned for Gabrielle Giffords in her reelection campaign last Fall, DOES blame Palin, Beck and Angle. Fuller, who was shot in the knee and wounded in the back, told Democracy Now that “It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target. Their wish for second amendment activism has been fulfilled.” In remarks Fuller prepared in advance for the interview, he added “Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled—senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic-fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even nine-year-old girls.”
In my book, Mr. Fuller’s opinion holds more water than Palin’s, Beck’s, Angle’s, Limbaugh’s and the whole of the Fox News staff’s (especially Steeve Doocey, who is a blithering idiot) combined. He took a bullet, two, in fact, so he’s got a right to his opinion. He earned it with his own blood. Suck on that, Sarah Palin!
What’s pathetically ridiculous about the entire argument from the right that the specific words of these specific people had no effect on this matter because Loughner is so very obviously batshit crazy is that this ISN’T the first incident like this in recent memory. It’s (at least) the second (if not the third: the name Richard Poplawski ring a bell?).
Why are so few people in the media talking about what happened when Glenn Beck decided to make the tiny Tides Foundation into a fearsome component of his “the progressive movement wants to destroy America with their evil Socialism” conspiracy theories last year? It HAS happened already that a mentally unbalanced person has decided to fight the vast-leftwing conspiracy that Beck and others subscribe to and propagate, with violence. Just seven months ago, a bank-robber out on parole, Byron Williams, en route to murder the staff at the Tides Foundation, opened fire on Oakland police with a 9mm handgun, a shotgun and a .308-caliber rifle with armor-piercing bullets. Williams told told authorities that he wanted to foment a revolution by “killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU.” His mother told the San Francisco Chronicle that her son had been watching Fox News and was angered by “the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items.” Williams thought that the Tides Foundation was part of a conspiracy in which the BP oil spill was a deliberate act of sabotage masterminded by George Soros and progressives.
(Self-described “progressive hunter,” Williams told a reporter that Beck “blew [his] mind.” Who I am to disagree?)
Where will all of this end? Who knows, but what happens when the people who make a living riling up dumb-ass, poorly-educated white people to hate and fear people who are different than they are or who think differently than they do, face a blowback themselves? Sooner or later, a left-wing crazy probably is gonna come after one of them. It wouldn’t stretch the imagination of anyone to figure that somewhere out there in this vast nation of 300 million people, there is a foaming at the mouth far-left nutcase (or a “radical centrist” for that matter) who feels that what’s really destroying America is assholes like Beck, Palin and Sharron Angle and who thinks killing them is the answer to our nation’s problems.
I have a sickening, sinking feeling that this isn’t the end of this, for lack of a better term, “partisan violence,” but just the warm-up acts. There is something eerily Weimar Republic-esque about the sad state of present day America and it’s extremely disturbing to attempt to draw this type of behavior to its logical conclusions. Before anyone writes in to say that it’s only the right-wing who is using the violent talk, the “reload” nonsense and the brain-damaged conspiracy theories, I get that. I know that. What I’m trying to point out here is that I think the genie is all the way out of the bottle for this type of violence, for them, too.
Even if the right has always been the spiritual home to the racist and cryptofascist fringe, from the KKK to the John Birch Society to today’s Teabaggers, there are crazy people all across the political spectrum. The next time—and there is going to be a next time—it might be a former member of the American middle class who has lost his home or pension who comes gunning after a Republican. The next shooter might come from the ranks of the 99ers. The next cold blooded killer could be a radical environmentalist. The next political assassin might be someone whose child died because their insurance company didn’t pay for a new medical treatment or ...?
This toxic political climate in America today is a direct or indirect consequence of a small number of politicians and pundits on the far right calling those who they disagree with “evil.” Does anyone with half a brain, really dispute that? Then something awful happens, like what happened in Tucson. And then there is more blame. Then the momentum of the bad craziness builds in some lone-wolf lefty lunatic and this energy reemerges with someone on the right getting hurt. And then it will start again. Back and forth, back and forth.
When, not if, the next politician, government official or TV news pundit who is killed turns out to be someone on the conservative side, Palin, Beck, Angle, Limbaugh, Michael Savage and the idiots at Fox News will have no one to blame but themselves.
UPDATE: Mr. Fuller was arrested today for disorderly conduct after allegedly making a threat to Tucson Tea party spokesman Trent Humphries during a “town hall” TV show taping for ABC. According to sheriff’s deputies at the scene in Tucson, Fuller took a photo of Humphries and then said, “You’re dead.”
I didn’t think events would prove my point this quickly—and regret that they have—but there it is.
Last year, Dangerous MInd writer, Bradley Novicoff posted a link to this excellent BBC documentary on William S. Burroughs. At the time it wasn’t possible to embed Arena: Burroughs onto our site, but now it is.
Burroughs was originally made in 1983 by Howard Brookner and Alan Yentob, as part of the BBC’s art strand Arena, and repeated after Burrough’s death in 1997. It is an exceptional documentary, one that gives an intimate and revealing portrait of Burroughs, as he revisits his childhood home; discusses his up-bringing with his brother, Mortimer; his friendship with Jack Kerouac, Allen Gisnberg, and Brion Gysin; and has a reunion with artist Francis Bacon, who Burroughs knew in Tangier. Other contributors include Terry Southern, Patti Smith, and James Grauerholz.
Just before the recent trip to Australia on which she contracted swine flu, Broadcast singer Trish Keenan compiled some experimental music and psyche-pop for a friend, and called it the “Mind Bending Motorway Mix.” The mix (which has no track list), has been uploaded as a tribute to the late musician, with a view to being shared with as many people as possible. Joe Muggs at The Arts Desk writes:
“A friend in Birmingham who had become good friends with Keenan in recent years has passed me THIS LINK for a “mixtape” she gave him very recently. It’s the most wonderful collection of psychedelic rarities, film music and synthesiser experiments, and perfectly illustrates Keenan’s constant mission to turn people on to exquisite and unusual sounds - but also, as the tracks are not titled, shows the sense of mystery and incentive to investigate with which she imbued all her work.”
According to conservative Rabbi Dov Lior, not every sperm is sacred. Indeed, he believes that some sperm is racially superior to others and claims, “Gentile sperm leads to barbaric offspring.” Really? I wonder if Rabbi Dov Lior took part in a tasting test would he know the difference?
The Rabbi says, in a news article on ynetnews.com, that Jewish Law prohibits sterile couples from conceiving using non-Jew’s sperm, as it causes adverse traits. While on the subject of single mothers he states their children, “cannot be 100% normal.”
Rabbi Dov Lior, a senior authority on Jewish law in the Religious Zionism movement, asserted recently that a Jewish woman should never get pregnant using sperm donated by a non-Jewish man – even if it is the last option available.
According to Lior, a baby born through such an insemination will have the “negative genetic traits that characterize non-Jews.” Instead, he advised sterile couples to adopt.
After years of loneliness and failed dates, as yearning for child becomes intolerable, increasing number of national-religious women decide to take their fate in their hands, start family as single mothers while maintaining religious way of life. New phenomenon already dividing sector, irking rabbis.
Lior addressed the issue during a women’s health conference held recently at the Puah Institute, a fertility clinic. His conservative stance negated a ruling widely accepted by rabbis, which states that sperm donated by a non-Jew is preferable to that of an anonymous Jew, who might pose a genealogical risk.
“Sefer HaChinuch (a book of Jewish law) states that the character traits of the father pass on to the son,” he said in the lecture. “If the father in not Jewish, what character traits could he have? Traits of cruelty, of barbarism! These are not traits that characterize the people of Israel.”
Lior added identified Jews as merciful, shy and charitable – qualities that he claimed could be inherited. “A person born to Jewish parents, even if they weren’t raised on the Torah – there are things that are passed on (to him) in the blood, it’s genetic,” he explained. “If the father is a gentile, then the child is deprived of these things.
“I even read in books that sometimes the crime, the difficult traits, the bitterness – a child that comes from these traits, it’s no surprise that he won’t have the qualities that characterize the people of Israel,” he added.
Lior condemned artificial insemination and sperm donation in general, saying that they lead to waste of sperm, unclear genealogy and other Jewish law offenses. He warned against undergoing intrauterine insemination at hospitals, where the workers may mix sperm samples for one reason or another - a major halachic violation.
On the subject of women who freeze their eggs to use at a later date, the rabbi asserted that instead they should concentrate their efforts on getting married younger.
“Our public has been influenced by a part of the Western culture in which every woman, instead of becoming a mother, needs to get a Masters Degree,” he lamented. “The role of women – child rearing – is not less important than an academic degree.” Lior noted that there is nothing wrong with attaining a profession, but it should not be a priority.
Moreover, the rabbi spoke against single women getting pregnant.
“We can understand the desire of every woman to have a child, but according to our Torah it is impossible to address the demand of a certain woman when it can cause someone else suffering,” he said.
“If a child is born without a father, he cannot be 100% normal.” He stated that rabbinical literature defines these kids as “criminals and subjects of other negative phenomena.”
This rabbi’s comments are wrong and deeply offensive. His words once again confirm that all Religious belief is a form of mental illness; a destructive social ill fueled by bigotry, hatred, misogyny, homophobia and racism; and its capacity to devalue human life, to undermine the individual and to destroy the community is truly terrifying.
It isn’t every day that I get turned on to a relic of a favorite band (This Heat) that I’ve managed to be ignorant of for more years than would be dignified to count. Here’s A Good Side (indeed!) from the 1983 Lifetones (aka Charles Bullen solo) EP For A Reason. DJ Jimi Hey posted this tune on my FB wall (as one does) and with that simple gesture has made me realize just how much Mr. Bullen brought to said band. This tune, a one-man-band recording apparently, is a major gem and a must hear (as is the rest of the mini-LP from whence it came) for all This Heat and British post-punk enthusiasts
I’ve been sitting on a pretty decent but not perfect bootleg DVD of Alejandro’s nightmarish 1989 film, Santa Sangre for the last six years, but I could never bring myself to watch it because I knew (I thought) that a proper DVD release was just around the corner. Well, it took long enough, but it looks like it was worth the wait, as Severin Films is about to release the film on Blu-ray and regular DVD on January 25th with over five hours of extras, including deleted scenes, Jodorowsky’s audio commentary, multiple documentaries and interviews with key members of the cast and crew.
To commemorate the long awaited re-release of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s masterpiece SANTA SANGRE on DVD and Blu-Ray, Severin Films and The American Cinematheque will be presenting a 35mm screening of the film, preceded by a reception, at the Egyptian Theater, Hollywood Blvd. There will be a special Q & A after the film with soundtrack composer Simon Boswell, whose other credits include work for Danny Boyle, Clive Barker and Dario Argento.
More screenings will take place on 1/19 at the Alamo Downtown, Austin, TX, 1/24 at the reRun, Brooklyn, NY and 1/24 at the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA followed by a Q & A with Star Sabrina Dennison.
Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell and the filmmaker¹s sons Axel and Adan Jodorowsky star in this surreal epic about a young circus performer, the crime of passion that shatters his soul, and the macabre journey back to the world of his armless mother and deaf-mute lover. “This is a movie like none I have seen before,” wrote Roger Ebert in his original four-star review, “a wild kaleidoscope of images and outrages, a collision between Freud and Fellini. It contains blood and glory, saints and circuses, and unspeakable secrets of the night. And it is all wrapped up in a flamboyant parade of bold, odd, striking imagery, with Alejandro Jodorowsky as the ringmaster. SANTA SANGRE is a movie in which the inner chambers of the soul are laid bare.”
I have to admit that now that I know this is coming out on Blu-ray, I’m salivating to see it. I haven’t seen Santa Sangre since I first saw it in a theater when it was released. Jodorowsy’s films are just too amazing visually to watch on bootleg DVDs. On Blu-ray, however, this will be a (sur)real treat!
for the last six years, but I could never bring myself to watch it because I knew (I thought) that a proper DVD release was just around the corner. Well, it took long enough, but it looks like it was worth the wait, as