Commentary Update for September 9, 2003
1. This Week's Show: This week our interview with Circuit Court Judge Robert Haase continues its run on channel 66. I actually had a chance to sit down and watch that one the other night and I must say I think it is one of our better efforts. What's extraordinary to me is how virtually every guest we have on who deals in any way with law enforcement agrees that (a) Wisconsin's criminal justice system is a travesty, and (b) the focus on incarceration needs to be replaced with a new ethic centered on treatment and alternatives to lockup. The fact that so many people IN the system say this and yet we see no reform in sight is proof of the utter corruption of the state legislature.
2. Commentary to be aired on OCAT: I was finally able to get some tapes
over to the Oshkosh Cable Access studios. Effective 9/15/03 Commentary's regular
replay times on cable channel 2 will be as follows:
*Tuesdays at 10 p.m.
*Wednesdays at 3 p.m.
*Sundays at 10 p.m.
Having the show air on channel 2 in addition to channel 66 will allow us to reach several thousand more viewers.
3. Campus Greens Film: The UW Oshkosh Campus Greens will be showing the film "Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11" this Thursday, 9-11-03 in the Reeve Union room 214 at 7 p.m. Admission is free and open to all members of the community.
4. National Conference on Media Reform: Some well known politicians, academics, journalists, artists, and activists will be speaking at the National Conference on Media Reform, to be held in Madison, WI from November 7 - 9. Bill Moyers will be the keynote speaker. Other speakers can be found here: http://www.mediareform.net/conf/panelists.php
5. Proof of Improved Airline Security: Today it was reported that a man was able to fly from New York to Dallas, stowed away in a cargo crate. He somehow got past security. Do you get the feeling that the airlines are no safer today than they were on 9/11/01?
6. Simile of the Week: Curt Andersen in the Green Bay News Chronicle says, "The Bush Administration is treating the environment like fraternity brothers treat their house; pretty much like a toilet." Runner-up is Maureen Dowd in the NY Times: "The Bush foreign policy team always had contempt for Bill Clinton's herky-jerky, improvised interventions around the world. When it took control, it promised a global stewardship purring with gravity, finesse and farsightedness. But now the Bush "dream team" is making the impetuous Clinton look like Rommel."
7. Sontag on Riefenstahl: Hitler's documentarian Leni Riefenstahl died yesterday at the age of 101. Her films "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia" are thought to epitomize fascist aesthetics. On that point, one of my all time favorite paragraphs is from Susan Sontag's famous 1975 essay on Riefenstahl called "Fascinating Fascism." In it Sontag uses Riefenstahl's films to reveal the fascist leanings of post-WWII western culture:
"More important, it is generally thought that National Socialism stands only for brutishness and terror. But this is not true. National Socialism—more broadly, fascism—also stands for an ideal or rather ideals that are persistent today under the other banners: the ideal of life as art, the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community; the repudiation of the intellect; the family of man (under the parenthood of leaders). These ideals are vivid and moving to many people, and it is dishonest as well as tautological to say that one is affected by Triumph of the Will and Olympia only because they were made by a filmmaker of genius. Riefenstahl's films are still effective because, among other reasons, their longings are still felt, because their content is a romantic ideal to which many continue to be attached and which is expressed in such diverse modes of cultural dissidence and propaganda for new forms of community as the youth/rock culture, primal therapy, anti-psychiatry, Third World camp-following, and belief in the occult. The exaltation of community does not preclude the search for absolute leadership; on the contrary, it may inevitably lead to it. (Not surprisingly, a fair number of the young people now prostrating themselves before gurus and submitting to the most grotesquely autocratic discipline are former anti-authoritarians and anti-elitists of the 1960s.)"
8. The mother of all bait-and-switch operations: Paul Krugman sure seems to be on Sontag's path his most recent criticism of the Iraq war.
9. Electric utilities jolt congressional war chests: In the category of "you couldn't make up shit like this," it turns out that congressmen charged with investigating last month's blackouts have received electrifying contributions over the years from some of the key culprits in this mess. If I were a poet I'd call this a Voltaic Farce. Since I'm not a poet, I'll just call it business as usual in DC.
10. Pumping Irony: I think if Arnold S. manages to become the new California guv, the first thing he should do is ask the legislature to change the name of the capitol from Sacramento to MonROVEia, in honor of Karl Rove, the White House spinmeister who may very well be behind the Terminator's campaign (though he has denied this repeatedly). There is some evidence to suggest Rove involvement in the Arnold campaign, most of it presented by Buzzflash in early August (scroll down). Meanwhile Mark Fiore give us Pumping Irony.
Best,
-Tony