Just Bizarre

I've been following Romney's attempts to blame the President for the unauthorized press release of a terrified embassy staffer, and failing to check out the supposed "movie" that provoked the riots.

Or, to be more accurate, the video clips which were the excuse for the riots. Even the most cursory glance at the supposed movie will show you that it is not a "movie" at all, but a laughably bad series of clips pasted together by someone who is unfamiliar with how editing works. The historical clips are of bad actors amateurishly lit in a studio, composited over generic Arabian footage, and badly dubbed. Any Concordia student could do a better job over the weekend with her iPhone and iMovie.

Seriously, look at the picture. Saturday Night Live actors wear more convincing makeup.

It mystifies me that anyone would consider this mishmash worth an angry tweet, let alone a riot. I would have to assume that jihadi elements spend a lot of time sifting through the Internet to find something, anything they can use to outrage their fellow citizens, because you would really have to go out of your way to find something this badly made. There are much better dubbed cat videos.

(Meanwhile, there are reports that the riots were staged as a distraction to enable a plot to murder our embassy personnel.)

I think the only proper thing to do, the patriotic and righteous thing to do, to show who we are as a civilization, is to turn this into the next Downfall meme. Okay, raise your hands: who's willing to be beaten to death by humorless fundamentalists?

UPDATE: The story just gets weirder and weirder. The apparent director of the movie is an American Egyptian of Coptic Christian persuasion, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who is on probation for bank fraud.

Sometimes You Are in the Wrong Story

[Politics]

I apologize in advance for an apparently political post, but it is really about story telling.

People use stories to understand their world -- to boil it down to things they understand. No one can truly understand the global economy, though maybe some nobel prize winners get the gist of it. So people, and politicians in particular, tend to use paradigms they can understand. I think that human beings are in fact hard-wired to understand the world through stories, just as we're hard-wired to learn language. Otherwise the world is just too big.

But if you understand the world through the wrong story, you can get into trouble.

I read a piece yesterday about the "belt-tightening" paradigm. In a recession, there's less money. If a family has less money, they need to spend less until they can make more money. Simple. Right? To spend more than you have is irresponsible.

The problem is, what if we're not a family? What if we're a village.

If a village is in a recession, what happens if everyone spends less money? The cobbler spends less money. He decides not to buy as many nails for his shoes. So now the blacksmith has less money. So he doesn't buy a pig to eat. So now the farmer has less money. So he doesn't buy new shoes. So now the cobbler has even less money...

And you get caught in a recessionary death spiral. Money doesn't circulate.

What happens if the government comes along and taxes everyone, and then spends their money for them, let's say by hiring everyone to fix the bridge over the creek? It takes money from the farmer, the cobbler and the blacksmith, and then it gives it back to them. Now they're all working full time, and spending full time.

Aha, but no one has enough money to pay their taxes, because they're in a recession? Okay, so the government borrows money from the Chinese village across the river. And pays everyone to fix the bridge. Soon, everyone is working and earning, and not in a recession any more. And now there are enough taxes to pay back the Chinese.

This is a slightly more complicated story than "when the family doesn't make enough money, everyone has to spend less." But there is a danger in boiling down the world to a story that is too simple. Because the world is not actually that simple.

For example, money. Money seems simple but it's not. The non-intuitive thing about money is that it isn't just the amount of dollar bills flowing around, it's how fast they flow. If I give you a dollar and then you give Joe a dollar and then he gives Delia a dollar, everyone gets to buy a dollar's worth of stuff. There's essentially three dollars in the economy. If I hold onto my dollar because I'm tightening my belt, I essentially take three dollars out of the economy.

At least that's what I remember from freshman economics.

Obviously, I am not someone you should consult about economics. Many smart people in the German government and the Tea Party are convinced that "belt-tightening" is just the thing.

But I do know that you have to be careful which stories you use to interpret the world. If you pick the wrong one, you'll do the wrong thing.

So maybe what this post is really about is the failure of the people in favor of spending more money to come up with a good story. It is not intuitive that you should tax and spend in the middle of a recession. It is not intuitive, to say the least, that the thing you should do when you have less money is spend more.

So let's suppose your in-depth understanding of the complexities of markets leads you to the conclusion that you must spend in a recession and cut the deficit only in a boom. Then you had better come up with a good story. It is no use saying, as Paul Krugman has been doing in The New York Times for years, that mainstream economists have agreed about this since the Great Depression, and have a great deal of data to prove it, including the current American recovery and the continuing European economic death spiral. "Experts agree" just doesn't cut it with people. People need a story they can understand.

Forward

This is a new Obama ad airing in Virginia. I think it's a remarkable ad because it ties together a whole raft of talking points (or claims, if you're on the other side), and really powerful visuals, into one narrative.

This is just about a perfect campaign ad for Obama, I think.

There's been talk about how Obama can't run on "Hope" and "Change" this time. It seems he's running on "Forward."

One thing I think is remarkable is how the Democrats have dug themselves out of the rhetorical hole they were in. Post-1964, Democrats were afraid to run on patriotism. Even Bill Clinton wasn't a big flag-waver. Obama is very willing to wave the flag.

I'm wondering what positive message Romney's going to bring. The negative message is obvious: the economy is in the toilet, and it's Obama's fault it's still there. It's not quite as strong as Reagan's "are you better off now than you were four years ago"; that formula doesn't work when four years ago, markets were panicking and banks were going bust. But if Obama's running, essentially, on "I have faith in America," it puts Romney in the position of saying, "Obama's going to blow up the country!" The American national religion is optimism; fear doesn't sell as well as hope and faith.

We'll see how Obama's messaging transforms (or doesn't) the current tight race.

[Remember, kids: on this blog we talk about political theater and the effectiveness of narratives. There are plenty of other venues for actual politics.]

Special Tech for the Tech Challenged Exec

Aaron Klein proposes special tech to help Hollywood Execs understand why SOPA was bad:

Before you can do a Google search, you have to sit through five minutes of ads for Google Chrome, Chromebooks by Samsung, Android Phones by Motorola, and that amazing straight-to-video blockbuster, Google+. And oh yeah, don’t even think about trying to skip the ads. A cute little red “X” appears in the corner of your screen if you try to do that.

If you fly off to your vacation home in the south of France, your Mac won’t boot up at all. Remember, it’s your fault for traveling – just buy another one with the right “region code.”

It has always bothered me that I can't skip the screen that tells me it's against the law to pirate movies. After all, if I'm watching that screen, it means I bought or rented the movie legally. Why are you stealing precious minutes of my life? I bet I can skip that screen on pirated movies, hey?

The General Election: A Preview

[POLITICAL THEATRE] This video has been circulating a lot on Facebook:



I think this is exactly where I'd want the President's rhetoric. The President can't run on cutting taxes; everyone knows the Republicans will do more tax cutting than anyone else. He has to make the case for taxes. So he does.

Notice how he jumps almost immediately to "strong military." In the past this has been a Republican talking point. Obama's stealing it. He makes the point that you can't cut taxes, cut the deficit, and have a strong military.

At the end he makes the Elizabeth Warren argument. You're going to be hearing it a lot more this year. No one ever got rich on their own.

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.
“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Unsuccessful Democratic candidates apologize for the social contract, I think; successful ones (Bill Clinton, Obama) embrace it.

The smart money seems to be 50-50 on Obama getting another four years. Based on this speech, and the most recent economic numbers, I'd put it a bit higher.

(But I wouldn't bet $10,000 on it.)

Not Understanding the Script

[POLITICS] It's sort of fun to watch the kind of mistakes Mitt Romney makes. He makes very few of them; he knows his script really well. It's only when he really has no idea how people will react to what he's that he makes an error. Like the $10,000 bet. Like saying "I like to be able to fire people." And now this: "I started off actually at the entry level, coming out of graduate school in business."

Yes, because, coming out of Harvard Business School, you really have to start at the bottom. I mean, a first year management consultant barely makes, what, six figures?

It's sort of like watching a consummate actor of the old, pre-Method acting days. Laurence Olivier was quite impressive. He had no emotional connection to his material; once he came offstage, announced that he'd cried real tears, apologized, and promised he'd never do it again. An "indicating" actor can turn in quite a good performance; but their performance can also be utterly inconsistent. The "indicating" actor has to use an intellectual analysis of the text to replace the consistency that a strong emotional connection gives.

Romney likewise seems to have no emotional connection. If he can prep enough, it's no problem. But in the cut-and-parry of a debate, he gets a bit lost, and says ridiculous things about how in his first office at Staples, poor thing, his chairs were only Naugahyde (and not, I suppose, artisanal leather).

What's odd to me is how long this all took to come out. The invisible primary has been going on for, what, a year now? Why is it only now, when it's almost too late, that the other Republican candidates are hitting him for his obvious vulnerabilities? Did no one have a David Axelrod or a Karl Rove working for them?

Second Guessing the Iowa Caucuses

[POLITICS] The following has nothing to do with story telling or screenwriting, and I'm hardly a political expert. But it's my blog, and this is America. (Or Canada. Or both.)

I'm struggling with how defective the Republican "invisible primary" has been so far. Iowa looks like it will split three ways. Romney, who almost no one believes has the principals he currently espouses. Ron Paul, a libertarian who really could go found his own party, so far are his views from the Republican and Democratic mainstream. And Rick Santorum, a movement conservative with no organization and no charisma that I can detect. Losers: a Texas governor who thinks that Canadian tar sands are good because they're not "foreign oil"; a far-right-wing congresswoman; and a smart, sensible, rather conservative former governor whom the Obama people suckered into being their ambassador to China and who sabotaged his own campaign by claiming to be moderate.

Really? This is the best the Republican party can field?

My feeling is Romney wins the nomination. Who can stop him? Perry, who had the deep pockets, is done for. (Weirdly, he's spent only about $3mil of the $17 mil he's raised. That's a lot of barbecue when he goes home.) Ron Paul isn't really a Republican. Santorum has no money and no organization. He could win South Carolina, but how is he going to take big states like Florida and Michigan?

Enthusiasm seems to be down. Turnout in the Iowa Caucuses is seriously down from 2008.

One big question is: will anyone run a third candidate from the right? That would kill Romney's chances, but the movement conservatives may not care. They may figure they have once again been snookered by Wall Street Republicans. Of course Trump will make noises about it, Sarah Palin-style, but I doubt he'll run, 'cause running is work.

My guess is people make noises and there's a lot of talk, but no one runs against Romney from the right.

So the other big question is: who will be more motivated to get out the vote? Democrats, who feel a bit burned that Obama did not deliver enough HOPE and CHANGE; or Republicans, who may not believe that Romney will really deliver on the Tea Party Revolution.

In an election like this, there's no advantage to going positive. It is going to be an ugly, ugly election. Look forward to a mudfest.

Who's On First?

[POLITICS] There's been the usual complaining here and there at the order of the US primaries. Why should 145,000 hard core Iowa voters get to decide who the Republican nominee should be?

Fairness is not really the point in politics. But strategically, the order of primaries doesn't make much sense either. The objective of a political primary is to find the best candidate: the candidate who embodies the vision of the party who is most likely to win the general election.

The crucial fact that the order of the various primaries ignores is that the candidate who is mostly likely to win the general is the candidate who is most likely to win the swing states. It doesn't really matter who pleases the voters of Iowa. Iowa is a fairly blue state. Iowa voted for Gore and Dukakis. By the time a Republican gets to Iowa, he's already riding a wave. A fortiori, South Carolina is completely irrelevant: it's a far-right-wing state that probably wouldn't go blue unless Anonymous hacked its voting machines. (Which, you know, they might.)

The states that either party really needs to win are Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. Win two out of three of these, and you're probably president. Win all three, and you're almost certainly president. Ohio and Florida were pretty close last time, even with Obama winning two out of three electoral votes.

So it seems to me that the parties ought to make sure the primaries for these three states come early.

I go back and forth whether the early states should be small ones. On the one hand, there's something to be said for a small number of voters really getting to see the candidates up close and personal. But up close and personal is not really how you win the general. A candidate that works in a living room may not close the sale on TV.

I do, however, believe in having a few caucuses in there. Caucuses are less democratic than primaries. Caucus voters spend all evening caucusing. They're much more hardcore. But to win the general, you need your party's hard core. They're the people who go house to house and get out the vote. GOTV may not make more than 4% or 5% of a difference, but the most elections are won or lost by that much.

God Bless The Child That's Got His Own

[Politics] Wow. Mitt Romney just offered to bet Rick Perry $10,000 that Perry was misrepresenting his book.

What this tells me is that Mitt Romney is a guy who thinks of $10,000 as pocket money.

I wonder if this will turn out to be as big a gaffe as when George H. B. Bush marvelled at the newfangled optical scanner technology at the supermarket, which gave everyone the impression that he had not been to a supermarket in decades.

Oh, I hope so.

We Vulcans Have a Saying: Only Nixon Could Go to China

[POLITICS] The New York Times objects to Gingrich railing against cronyism and lobbying after making huge gobs of money being a lobbyist for the very companies (like Fannie Mae) that he despises.

Seems to me the logical tack for the Gingrich team to take is to own his past: yes, I got paid a whack of money as a lobbyist in a lousy system. In I know more about how lousy this system is than anyone else. Therefore I'm the guy to fix it. That seems like a stronger argument than his current "I just gave them advice, I never actually lobbied anyone" claim, which seems risky (someone could remember he lobbied them) and morally doubtful (really? you took their money but you didn't try to give them good value for it?).

After all, there are lots of rich liberals. Just because they don't think there should be tax breaks to the rich doesn't mean they won't take'em.

Stand By Your Man

[POLITICAL THEATRE] Herman Cain says his wife doesn't believe he's a sexual harasser, therefore no one else should.

I know this guy is toast anyway, but even supposing he could rememberc which side Obama took in the Libyan revolution, is this an argument that can possibly carry any weight? How would a wife have insight into whether her husband makes unwanted sexual advances? She obviously liked his sexual advances.

This is very different from the Clintons' defenses against Bill's "bimbo eruptions." When Hillary got up and said, "I'm not some little Tammy Wynette standing by her man," she basically told everyone, "I know he's a hound dog, I just don't care." By being a little snotty about it, she pulled the attention off Bill and whether he'd made unwanted advances to a job-seeking woman, and onto what a piece of work she is. (It helped that Gennifer Flowers claimed that Bill had propositioned her in a hotel that didn't exist at the time she claimed he'd done it.)

(Incidentally, if you need proof that the Tea Party is not fundamentally racist, you need go no further than the complete lack of racial undertones in a story about a black businessman making alleged propositions to white women.)

If I were looking for a good R nominee, I would stay the hell away from a guy who's had two harassment settlements against him. If Cain made it to the general election, I'm pretty sure those settlements would somehow escape from their confidentiality clauses.

Herman Cain Can't Remember What the President Ordered

[POLITICS] I think I might start blogging about political theater again, as the race heats up.

Before you guys fill the comments with actual political arguments, I will stress that I am talking here about messaging, not who's actually right and who's wrong. I'm an Obama fan, but I'm going to write about how effective the two sides' campaigns are.

Herman Cain tries to remember why Obama's Libya policy was wrong and what he would do differently.

I'm not clear why the Republicans don't just give Obama the win on Libya. If I were running R messaging, that's what I'd do. It's going to be a tough sell that a policy that resulted in 0 American deaths, relatively minor expense, and the overthrow of a dictator, was the wrong policy, especially when overcommitment or undercommitment had such serious risks.

Instead, I think I'd push a message like, "It's great that Obama did such a great job on Libya. If only he'd spent that kind of attention on cutting taxes" etc. This election is going to be about the economy, so it's not giving up much.

When you attack your opponent for every last thing he does, it devalues your message.

I bet you the Dems aren't going to do that. I bet you Obama's going to be full of praise for Mitt Romney. Not just for Romneycare, which I'm sure he'll say all kinds of nice things about. But he'll probably say nice things about Romney's job running the Olympics. Because then when you follow that up with an attack, the attack sounds better.

It's been kind of shocking to see the Republican field implode. The Republicans seem doomed to settle on Mitt Romney, a candidate they don't actually seem to like very much -- a sort of Republican John Kerry. Why? Because all the loyalty oaths and pledges you have to sign seem to have chased off all the heavyweight candidates. They could still win it, of course, because the President is so unpopular. But an unpopular incumbent can win, if he can tear down the other candidate. That's why Harry Reid is still in office. (See Angle, Sharron.)

I'm kind of rooting for Newt Gingrich. For all his loose-cannon-ness, he's his own man. He's had original thoughts. He probably could name the President of Uzbekistan. And he wants three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debates. That would enrich our democracy, I think.

Closure

From the The New York Times.

House Viewers Want Health Care; Weight Loss Fans Want Tax Cuts.

4

As part of the bizarre birther saga, this Daily Mail article includes an interesting chart of different shows and how they skew on Red v. Blue. As you'd expect, football fans skew relatively Republican and 60 Minutes watchers skew Democratic. For some reason, Celebrity Apprentice fans are almost off the chart skewing Democratic.

I love that they have this information. I wonder how FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS skews?

(Personally I'm with the people who suspect the President of releasing his long-form birth certificate precisely to keep the birther meme alive, so it, and Donald Trump, can continue to suck the oxygen out of the Republican nomination race. The serious Republican candidates have to be going insane with frustration that a cartoon candidate, whose Republican bona fides are practically nonexistent, is grabbing all the headlines, just when they thought they'd hung up enough garlic to keep Sarah Palin out of the house. But that's another story.)

Walk Like An Egyptian

Enemy Narrative

[Politics] I try to keep politics out of this blog, but the manufactured controversy over the Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero is almost 100% political theater, so I feel it's relevant.

Various opportunistic politicians on both sides of the aisle (today, Majority Leader of the Senate Harry Reid) are nosing in on whether a liberal Islamic organization should build the Islamic equivalent of a YMCA a couple of blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center. (It's actually patterned on the 92nd Street Y.) These demogogues are calling the cultural center a "mosque" on the grounds that it will have a room for prayer, in addition to its swimming pool, offices and auditorium. Because mosques are, y'know, scary.

(Muslims are required to pray five times a day. Without a prayer room,  employees would have to pray in the street.)

I'll leave aside the question of why who builds what in lower Manhattan is the business of anyone outside of lower Manhattan (locals are for it). Or how holy we really consider Ground Zero if the plan is to build an office tower there for Conde Nast, so they can print more Glamour articles about how to give your guy a mind-blowing orgasm.

But from a narrative perspective, this is insane. The guys who flew the planes into the towers did it because they wanted to provoke a war between the United States and all Islam.

Most of the world's billion-plus Muslims do not want or consider the US to be at war with them. After the attack, there were spontaneous candelight vigils in Tehran.

One reason Al Qaeda has failed utterly to follow up 9/11 inside the US is because Muslims in the US refuse to buy into their nutty narrative. American Muslims generally don't think they're at war with America. They believe they're Americans. And they keep on calling the police when they find out that someone is trying to blow up their country.

If we want to stop Al Qaeda in the US, we should be cheering every time someone builds an Islamic cultural center. We should franchise Cordoba House and put one in every city. ("Cordoba," because in medieval Cordoba, Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together in peace while the rest of Europe was in the Dark Ages.) We should be insisting that in the US, we don't care if you're a Christian, a Muslim or a Pastafarian. Nothing would take more wind out of Al Qaeda's sails. Nothing would make America safer from fringe-Islam terrorism.

If, on the other hand, you want to give Al Qaeda as much support as possible, then do exactly what Harry Reid and Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are doing: shout that we don't want a mosque in Lower Manhattan, because all Muslims are our enemy. Compare Muslims to Nazis, as Newt Gingrich did.

When you promote Al Qaeda's narrative, you are helping Al Qaeda. You are helping Al Qaeda.

Don't do it.

Please?

Monologuing

There's been a lot of hot air spilled lately about whether Times Square smoke-bomber Faisal Shahzad should have been read his Miranda rights, with former anti-torture campaigner John McCain complaining that he was read his rights, and Glenn Beck, of all people, reminding us that Shahzad is a US citizen and that "we do not shred the Constitution just because it's popular."

Funny thing about Miranda rights: they generally do not stop the suspect from talking. Most Americans over the age of six can probably recite them: you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney etc. etc. etc. And there is absolutely no legal benefit to talking to the cops without an immunity agreement -- not even if you're innocent -- yet, as cops will tell you, very few suspects shut up.

This is amazing to me, like the 37 hours of TV the average American watches per week. But most suspects keep talking after they've been read their rights. And they generally incriminate themselves. Often because they want to make excuses.

That's why cops generally don't mind having to give the Miranda warnings, and only demogogues consider it an undue burden.

Everybody wants to tell their story. Especially villains.

Why? When you're a villain, who can you talk to? Unless you're in a terrorist cell, no one. You can't tell your family. They'd be worried. You can't tell your friends. They will report you.

But you think you're a hero, right? You're doing all this for Islam / freedom / Ireland / Chechnya / Dennis Kucinic. But you can't tell anyone. What's the point of being a hero if no one knows about it?

So after months or years of planning your crazy, homicidal heroic act of hate-filled wickedness resistance, the cops pick you up.

Finally, someone you can tell your story to! And the cops are all ears. Hey, talking to them will get you convicted. But honestly, like you were going to get acquitted?

Supervillains gotta monologue.

That's why, in the event, Shahzad talked to the FBI interrogators before being given his rights (like, c'mon, he didn't already know them from a million cop shows?). And then he waived his rights, and kept talking.

Stories are not a luxury good, as I keep telling the politicians. They are a basic human need. They are how we make sense of our lives.

Even -- especially -- bad guys.

Holiday Security Theatre

A Nigerian guy tries to set off a bomb on a plane. After he's arrested, it is revealed that his father warned the US that his son had become radicalized and was likely to do something rash, such as try to set off a bomb on the plane. It develops that the would-be murderer was put on a terrorism watch list, but left off the no-fly list, presumably to leave room for US Senators and Congressmen, Marines returning from Iraq, Princeton professors, members of the Federal Marshal Service, Air Force generals, and Nelson Mandela.

The TSA responds with new regulations that say that no one can get out of their seat, and no one can have anything in their lap, during the last hour of a flight.

Many people, notably security consultant Bruce Schneier, have been remarking for a while that the TSA seems primarily to be in the business not of security, but of security theater:

Separating Explosives from the Detonator
Chechen terrorists did it in 2004. I said this in an interview with then TSA head Kip Hawley in 2007:

I don't want to even think about how much C4 I can strap to my legs and walk through your magnetometers.

And what sort of magical thinking is behind the rumored TSA rule about keeping passengers seated during the last hour of flight? Do we really think the terrorist won't think of blowing up their improvised explosive devices during the first hour of flight?

For years I've been saying this:

Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.

This week, the second one worked over Detroit. Security succeeded.

EDITED TO ADD (12/26): Only one carry on? No electronics for the first hour of flight? I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first class and giving them free drinks.

So, class, today's assignment is: design a first class SECURITY RITUAL, complete with witch-doctor or technological substitute, that can provide passengers with a sensation of security, without unduly inconveniencing them. The ritual does not need to increase actual security, only make the customers feel like the TSA is doing its job to protect us from terrorism. Shouldn't be longer than 3 pages.

Send your security ritual to me, and I'll post the best.

A New Meaning for "Hot Spot"

[POLITICS] Here's something Western governments could actually do: create WiFi hotspots around their embassies so Iranians can get the news out. They presumably have satellite uplinks so are not subject to the Iranian Government web censorship.

I know, I know, that's not what embassies are for. And it's arguably spying. And it can easily be jammed or overwhelmed... I'm just saying.

Sean Penn Wants You

We finally went and saw MILK, which is a very moving movie without being in any way a well-structured story. (Yes, I'm going to criticize an Oscar-winning screenplay. Feel free to consider me an idiot.) It carries you along by sheer verve, and the feeling of being on the right side of a successful and righteous movement. (Unless, of course, you have an aversion to homosexuals, or believe that God hates them, in which case you may not dig it.)

The traditional way to tell the story might have shown us who Harvey was, and what he faced in the closet, before he went to San Francisco to come out. San Francisco might have been the end of the first act. Instead we only see him blossom. The screenplay seems to assume we all know what being closeted truly meant. The story is full of appalling incidents that show how much hatred gays faced only thirty years ago; but somehow, maybe because the only characters we really get to know are gay (until Dan White shows up late in the game), Harvey's ultimate success never seems in doubt. Harvey's flaws as a person come through, but they don't seem to be obstacles to his success.

I cried when the kid called from Jackson, Mississippi, and I cried at the candlelight march. But I felt there could have been more of a story there.

But Penn does an absolutely amazing job of disappearing into the role. And the other characters are full of life, too. And I couldn't say that the movie would have sold one more ticket if anyone had taken my advice. This is my blog, so this is my attempt to understand what I didn't feel worked. YMMV.

Funnily enough, when I got home, I had an email from Sean Penn urging me to join the Courage Campaign.

And here's where I suggest you doing well by doing good. I've mentioned before that one way to break into the biz is to involve yourself in a charity or cause dear to the hearts of showbiz people. If there ever was one, the anti-Prop-8 / pro-gay-marriage cause is that. If you live in LA, and you think that gay people ought to be able to get married, you should consider volunteering, in person, at the nearest office. There will be other show people there. You will get to know them in the context of being a mensch, not someone who needs a gig. If you happen to be straight, you might get bonus points for giving a damn about gay rights.

This might sound a bit Machiavellian, but it's not. When you volunteer, you don't just do good and you don't just feel good. You also do well. You become a member of the community, not just an inhabitant. You start to belong. When you help your neighbor, you're doing a mitzvah; there's nothing wrong with the fact that your neighbor also owes you one. That's how communities knit together.

[POLITICS:]

Up here in Canada, gay marriage became legal nationwide a few years ago. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that it was a fundamental right, and the various provinces quickly said, "Oh, sorry!" and passed the required laws. Now, you run into a guy at a party and he introduces you to his husband. And you know what? It hasn't hurt traditional marriage one bit. We continue to enjoy our traditional low divorce rates, low abortion rates, and low crime. Make of that what you will.