Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 372

August 11, 2015

Why Understanding Iran’s Anti-Semitism Matters

Image

A few days ago, I spoke with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry about the politics of the Iran deal (you can find the full interview here), and at one point in our conversation I put to Kerry what I thought was—to be honest—something of a gimme question: “Do you believe that Iranian leaders sincerely seek the elimination of the Jewish state?”

Kerry responded provocatively—provocatively, that is, if you understand Iranian leaders, and in particular the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the way I understand them: as people theologically committed to the destruction of Israel. Quotes such as this one from Khamenei help lead me to this conclusion: “This barbaric, wolflike, and infanticidal regime of Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated.” The supreme leader does not specialize in nuance. (Here is a long list of statements made by Iranian leaders concerning their desire to bring about an end to Jewish sovereignty in any part of the ancestral Jewish homeland.)

Kerry’s stated understanding of the regime’s anti-Semitism is somewhat different from mine. He told me, “I think they have a fundamental ideological confrontation with Israel at this particular moment. Whether or not that translates into active steps, to quote, ‘Wipe it,’ you know …”

Related Story

Interview: John Kerry on Israel, Congress, and the Politics of the Nuclear Deal

He paused, and so I filled in the blank: “Wipe it off the map.”

Kerry continued, “I don’t know the answer to that. I haven’t seen anything that says to me—they’ve got 80,000 rockets in Hezbollah pointed at Israel, and any number of choices could have been made. They didn’t make the bomb when they had enough material for 10 to 12. They’ve signed on to an agreement where they say they’ll never try and make one and we have a mechanism in place where we can prove that. So I don’t want to get locked into that debate. I think it’s a waste of time here.”

Kerry’s understanding, in shorthand: Iran is dangerous to Israel at this moment (he repeated the term “at this moment” in his next statement, in fact); Iran has had plenty of opportunity to hurt Israel but has chosen not to; and, finally, the answer to the question concerning the true intentions of Iran’s leaders when it comes to Israel is unknowable, and also irrelevant to the current discussion.

I found many of Kerry’s answers to my other questions convincing, but I was troubled by what I took to be his unwillingness, or inability, to grapple squarely with Iran’s eliminationist desires. The way he and President Barack Obama understand the question of Iranian-state anti-Semitism is crucially important as we move closer to a congressional vote on the nuclear deal negotiated by Kerry and his team.  

Proper implementation of the deal—and I’m in the camp of people who believe that the president will probably overcome congressional opposition and see the deal through—is everything. Stringent implementation of the deal could be to Israel’s benefit because the limitations placed on Iran should keep it south of the nuclear threshold for many years. (The Arab states may eventually have a more difficult time than Israel in battling the economically strengthened and hegemonically inclined Iran that will most likely emerge from this deal.)

Proper implementation does not simply mean the maintenance of a strong inspections regime, as well as zero tolerance for Iranian cheating. Proper implementation requires an eyes-wide-open American commitment to countering Iran’s nefarious terrorist activities across the Middle East, and it means that American leaders must have a properly jaundiced view of their Iranian adversaries, including a properly jaundiced view of their intentions toward Israel. This is why questions concerning the Obama administration’s understanding of the regime’s ideology are so important, and it is why I keep raising the matter with the administration.

“[The supreme leader’s] ideology is steeped with anti-Semitism, and if he could, without catastrophic costs, inflict great harm on Israel, I’m confident that he would.”

Late last week—a few days after the Kerry interview—I attended a by-invitation press conference with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (My friend and colleague James Fallows was one of nine other journalists who attended; his report on the meeting can be found here.)

Kerry’s understanding of Iran’s intentions was still on my mind, and so I asked Obama the same question: Does the Iranian leadership seek the elimination of Israel? I had already discussed the nature of Iranian-regime anti-Semitism with Obama in a May interview—a discussion that was by turns reassuring and troubling—and Obama made reference to that conversation in his answer last week.

“Well, we’ve discussed this before, Jeffrey,” the president said. “I take what the supreme leader says seriously. I think his ideology is steeped with anti-Semitism, and if he could, without catastrophic costs, inflict great harm on Israel, I’m confident that he would. But as I said, I think, the last time we spoke, it is possible for leaders or regimes to be cruel, bigoted, twisted in their worldviews and still make rational calculations with respect to their limits and their self-preservation.”

In the May interview, I asked him to help me understand a seemingly contradictory set of ideas he has advanced relating to Iran. I noted that he himself has stated publicly that the regime is infected with an anti-Semitic worldview, and that those who are infected with such a worldview generally do not grapple well with cause-and-effect in international politics and economics, and cannot be counted on to interpret reality correctly. I then asked how he squares these two observations with a third observation he has made: that the regime in Tehran is in many ways capable of behaving according to its rational self-interest, as American politicians understand the notion of rational self-interest.

His answer: “Well, the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival. It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations. You know, if you look at the history of anti-Semitism, Jeff, there were a whole lot of European leaders—and there were deep strains of anti-Semitism in this country—”

Here I interrupted him: “And they make irrational decisions.”

He continued: “They may make irrational decisions with respect to discrimination, with respect to trying to use anti-Semitic rhetoric as an organizing tool. At the margins, where the costs are low, they may pursue policies based on hatred as opposed to self-interest. But the costs here are not low, and what we’ve been very clear [about] to the Iranian regime over the past six years is that we will continue to ratchet up the costs, not simply for their anti-Semitism, but also for whatever expansionist ambitions they may have. That’s what the sanctions represent. That’s what the military option I’ve made clear I preserve represents. And so I think it is not at all contradictory to say that there are deep strains of anti-Semitism in the core regime, but that they also are interested in maintaining power, having some semblance of legitimacy inside their own country, which requires that they get themselves out of what is a deep economic rut that we’ve put them in, and on that basis they are then willing and prepared potentially to strike an agreement on their nuclear program.”

Ending the sovereign Jewish state in the Middle East is a paramount political and theological mission of the Iranian regime.

I made a decision on the spot—later partially regretted—not to deploy the H-bomb just then because I am a) very mindful of Godwin’s Law; b) I don’t believe the Iranian regime is the modern-day equivalent of the Nazi regime, in part because the Nazi regime is without peer; and c) the invocation of Hitler’s name in these matters tends to set teeth too much on edge. In retrospect, though, I should have raised it, because Hitler is the perfect, but not singular, example of a world leader who made decisions that seemed, to his adversaries, deeply irrational except if you understood his desire to wipe out the Jews of Europe as an actual overriding policy goal, a raison d’etre of his rule. Anti-Semitism was not simply an “organizing tool” for him. And if you’re paying attention, you will see that bringing about the end of the sovereign Jewish state in the Middle East is a paramount political and theological mission of the Iranian regime.

And so I was glad that Obama acknowledged the supreme leader’s heartfelt anti-Semitism, and I’m glad that he understands that the supreme leader seeks to do great harm to Israel. I suppose I part with the president’s analysis on the question of exactly how much pain the supreme leader believes Iran should absorb on behalf of this goal. Obama believes the Iranian leadership will check its behavior in order to avoid potentially catastrophic fallout. He may be right, but I would like to see his administration place slightly less faith in the idea of regime rationality.

Obama and Kerry both say they understand Jewish anxiety on this issue. (My position on this is simple: If, in the post-Holocaust world, a group of people express a desire to hurt Jews, it is, for safety’s sake, best to believe them.) When I asked Obama, at the end of last week’s Roosevelt Room discussion, to describe what he is learning about Jewish fears from his recent encounters with Jewish leaders, he answered: “Well, first of all, Jeff, as you know, there is a wide range of views within the Jewish community, so it’s not monolithic.”

At which point I noted that that I myself share most of those opinions.

The president continued, “The polls—if they’re to be trusted—would indicate that a majority of American Jews support the deal, but a sizable minority oppose it. Among the organizations, I think that there are those who are fiercely opposed and there are those who are strongly supportive. And then there are a bunch of folks who are skeptical and anxious and still trying to figure it out.”

He went on, “As I said in the speech, the anxieties of the American Jewish community are entirely understandable. Those are amplified when there appears to be across-the-board opposition inside of Israel, not just within Likud, but among other parties. And some of that is emotional—in a legitimate way. You don’t like dealing with somebody who denies horrible things happening to your people or threatens future horrible things to your people. Some of it is based on legitimate concerns about what an economically stronger Iran could do to further enhance their support of Hezbollah.  

But I will say this: When I sit down with a group of Jewish leaders—just as when I sit down with members of Congress, just as when I sit down with policy analysts—I do not hear back credible arguments on the other side. I hear talking points that have been prepared. But if you dig deep into it, the anxieties are real, they’re legitimate, but arguments that would carry the day as to why we wouldn’t do this deal I haven’t heard presented in a way that I think persuades the room, much less persuades me.”

The risks are huge: The Obama administration is mortgaging the future to a regime labeled by the State Department as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.

The meeting was ending, and I did not have a chance to follow up with another question that has been nagging at me, which is this: Why does it seem to a growing number of people (I count Chuck Schumer in this group) that an administration professing—honestly, from what I can tell—to understand Jewish anxieties about the consequences of anti-Semitism in the Middle East does not appear to understand that the way some of its advocates outside government are framing the Iran-deal fight—as one between Jewish special interests, on the one hand, and the entire rest of the world, on the other—may empower actual anti-Semites not only in the Middle East, but at home as well?

Again, it seems to me that a plausible case could be made that this deal, as John Kerry has enthusiastically argued, is actually in Israel’s best interests—not only when compared to the alternative, but especially when compared to the alternative—and that the administration can make great hay out of the pro-Israel argument, and counter arguments that blame Israel’s well-meaning supporters in the United States for political difficulties surrounding the deal. I suspect that opponents of the deal in the American Jewish community are wrong in their views, but this does not make them warmongers, in the way Charles Lindbergh once understood Jews to be warmongers.

I know a number of things from my email traffic relating to this issue. The first is that, believe it or not, there are non-Jews who are worried about the Iran deal (more worried than I am, certainly). The second is that Jewish supporters of the Obama administration are beginning to feel scapegoated; the third is that supporters of the deal appear to be as sure of their position as those who supported the Iraq War (yours truly among them) were of theirs.

This last point is particularly interesting to me: The deal negotiated by John Kerry and his team may very well prevent Iran from gaining possession of a nuclear weapon for a very long time—and rejection of the deal now by Congress is unlikely to lead to a good outcome—but the risks here are huge: The administration, and supporters of the deal, are mortgaging the future to a regime labeled by Kerry’s State Department as the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and a regime that seeks the physical elimination of a fellow member-state of the United Nations and a close ally of the United States as well. Given that there is so much risk and uncertainty in what the United States is doing, it would be useful for the administration to make absolutely clear that it understands the nature of the regime with which it is dealing.   











 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 11, 2015 08:29

Another Night of Protests in Ferguson, and More Arrests

Image

A second night of protests in Ferguson, Missouri, to commemorate the first anniversary of Michael Brown’s death led to the arrests of more than 20 people, and saw patrols by an armed group that calls itself the Oath Keepers.

Monday night was peaceful in Ferguson, a contrast with the previous night when gunfire erupted between two rival groups, and police shot and critically wounded a man who fired at officers. In response, St. Louis County’s executive declared a state of emergency, under which the county’s police department took over the operation of police emergency management in Ferguson and surrounding areas.

Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black man, was shot dead by a white officer on August 9, 2014. Although rallies marking his death were peaceful Monday night, at least 23 people were arrested as protesters confronted police. The arrests were in addition to the 50 or so people, including prominent members of the Black Lives Matter movement, who were detained during the day Monday.

Meanwhile, NBC News reported, the presence of a handful of Oath Keepers—heavily armed former members of the military, police and first responders—added to the tension in Ferguson. The group says its goal is to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said their presence was "both unnecessary and inflammatory." Here's more from NBC:

Several protesters confronted members of the group, asking why they were allowed to openly carry weapons.

"I'm happy that we're able to defend ourselves," one Oath Keeper replied in footage from NBC station KSDK."It's been our right for a long time."

The St. Louis County Police Department said it would consult with the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorneys Office about the legalities of the issue.

Missouri law allows individuals with permits to display their firearms unless it’s done in an “angry or threatening manner.”











 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 11, 2015 07:21

With Donald Trump's Rise, Fox News Reaps What It Sows

Image

Fox News’ coverage of Donald Trump’s campaign has resembled the treatment that the real estate tycoon and reality TV star receives in “the mainstream media.” It is unlike the network’s coverage of unqualified populist favorites from past election cycles, like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain. And populists are taking notice.

Last week’s debate is a fine illustration.

Immediately after the candidates left the stage in Cleveland, Ohio, Fox News moderator and anchor Megyn Kelly threw the network’s coverage over to pollster Frank Luntz, who stood in a room with a small group of voters gathered to offer their impressions. “Megyn, we’re about to make some news tonight,” he said as he turned to the panel. His meaning quickly became apparent: Under questioning, most of the assembled voters revealed that they felt unfavorably about Trump’s performance.

“You know what happened?” one man said. “I liked him when I came in here, because he wasn’t a politician. But right now, he skirted around questions better than a lifelong politician ever had.” Said another, “I was really expecting him to do a lot better, but he just crashed and burned. He was mean, he was angry, he had no specifics, he was bombastic.” A third voter declared, “You know, he just let me down. I just expected him to rise to the occasion and look presidential. He didn’t.”

The reactions were confounding to me, even though they squared with the conventional wisdom that Trump’s demeanor had finally inflicted a fatal wound on his presidential prospects.

I’d watched the debate. For most of it, I thought that Donald Trump would emerge as popular as ever: I don’t understand his appeal, but his performance was completely in keeping with the style and substance of his campaign to that point. Why did the handpicked Republicans disagree? Had I been in the room with them, I’d have asked, “If you came here as a Donald Trump supporter, how could you possibly be disappointed by tonight’s anger, bombast, blatant question-skirting, and a lack of specifics? When have you known the man to act differently?”

As I switched off the TV, I thought of two possibilities: Either I understood Trump supporters less well than I thought, or Fox News had assembled a wildly unrepresentative panel that misrepresented the reaction to Trump’s performance.

Come Monday, I was no longer puzzled.

“There is no sign that Donald Trump's raucous first presidential debate is hurting his support among party voters,” Reuters reported, “with the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showing he still has a big lead over his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. The debate did little to change Republican voters' opinions of Trump, the poll found. One-third said they liked him more after the debate, one-third said they liked him less, and the remaining third said their opinions had not changed.”

An unrepresentative Fox News panel does not raise my suspicions. Like other cable news channels, the network offers political coverage that isn’t particularly rigorous, and pollster Frank Luntz has gotten far more consequential matters wrong before. But the hard right has always been more inclined to attribute media missteps to conspiracy rather than incompetence. Now it’s suspicious of Fox News.

“They took advantage of us,” talk radio host Mark Levin told Breitbart, “they took advantage of the audience.” Steve Deace declared in USA Today that “very few conservatives I interacted with during and after the debate thought Fox was ‘fair and balanced.’”

The most popular entertainer in the conservative movement, talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, speculated on Friday that the Republican Party establishment had conspired with Fox News, ordering the network to “take out” Trump. In another segment, he criticized the debate moderators. “If I didn't know any better,” he said, “I would have watched this thing thinking that there is a Republican War on Women based on the questions and the lack of a woman being on the stage among the 10.  I thought the War on Women was a Democrat creation by George Stephanopoulos. The last place I ever thought I would see it continued is Fox News.”

In a CNN interview, Trump either implied or accidentally seemed to imply that Kelly treated him angrily during the debate because she was menstruating at the time. Said fellow GOP candidate Carly Fiorina in a tweet: “Mr. Trump: There. Is. No. Excuse.” Fiorina would continue to attack Trump and to voice her support for Kelly.

Afterwards, a caller to Rush Limbaugh’s show responded:

Rush, it's an honor.  Thank you for taking my call, and mega dittos.  I'm calling in regard to Carly Fiorina and her support in her tweet to where she clearly stated, “I stand with Megyn.”  She tweeted that, Rush. And, you know what, in my book, you stand up with the media or for the media, you are now part of the media.  If you align yourself personally with the media, you are now part of the media. And, Rush, she has clearly played straight into the hand of the media, and there is no way I want my president to send out little tweets in support of the media.  I'm just outraged.

Note that there is no distinction made between the Fox News Channel and “the mainstream media” or “the liberal media” or what Rush Limbaugh calls “the drive-by media.” There’s just “the media.” Kelly is a part of it. She is therefore the enemy, her attackers are allies, and those who stand with her are useful idiots at best.

I rarely agree with Limbaugh. But I think he was right when he said about Trump: “There's a percentage of the population that is totally fed up with the political class, including the media.  And they have wanted things said to people and about people… for years and they haven't heard it.  I mean, the media is not loved.  The media in some cases is despised, and Trump is giving it right back to 'em in ways that many people in this country have dreamed of happening.”

“As such,” the radio star said of the former NBC host, “he comes off as refreshing. Even when he's not on message, or not on issues, he comes across as somebody that says things they would like to say … things they have hoped others would say ... I don't think a lot of these big players, including in the media, have any idea who their audiences are … I don't think they have the slightest idea the size of and the amount of real anger directed at them … It goes so far beyond the fact that they're biased.”

Consider the Fox News debate as Donald Trump fans experienced it. Wouldn’t you wager that Kelly, Chris Wallace and Bret Baier all believe that Trump’s candidacy is a joke and that his supporters are naive and misguided? Didn’t their questions seem to imply that Trump is obviously unfit to be president?

Meanwhile, hasn’t Fox News spent years conditioning viewers to believe that journalists belong to a condescending class of decadent elites which engages in barely-concealed conspiracies to destroy anyone who tells it like it is to real Americans? For years, Roger Ailes broadcast everything that Glenn Beck wrote on a chalk board! Surveying America for individuals whose insights he would broadcast to the masses, he settled on Sarah Palin as a person whose analysis he would amplify. It is no accident that a chunk of the Fox News audience is now inclined to side with Trump over Kelly. With Trump’s rise, the network is reaping what it has sown.

Of course, I agree with the Fox anchors about Trump, assuming I’m reading them right. I think he is unqualified to be president; that his supporters are naive and misguided; and that they would abandon him immediately if they knew what was good for them. But there’s one sense in which I’ll show Trump supporters more respect than many in the media. I won’t pretend to think that they should stop supporting Trump because of his remarks about Rosie O’Donnell or John McCain or Megyn Kelly. Sure, in every case, I find the man’s comments beyond distasteful, but let’s be honest: If he’d never said any of those things, I’d still be horrified by his rise to the top of the Republican field, and so would the vast majority of his media critics.

Better to be forthright.

Trump is unfit to be president because he has no experience in government; because he cynically stokes xenophobia for political gain; because he has given voters every reason to believe that he would put his own selfish interests above the country’s interests; because he has demonstrated no firm grasp of public policy in any area; and because his boastfulness, bombast, and petty insults are signs of insecurity, not confidence. It would be dangerous to put such an apparently insecure man in a position of power.

In the next debate, those are the areas that moderators ought to probe, not the far less interesting and more easily deflected subject of whatever off-color insult he last uttered, as if it is more relevant than his glaring flaws on matters of huge importance.

Perhaps engaging Trump supporters on substantive points would be fruitful; perhaps not. Either way, hoping that off-the-cuff comments about a McCain or a Kelly will discredit him—and play-acting as if that is the source of the dismay at his rise—isn’t working. Populists see through it. And they believe, sometimes correctly, that elites talk about them in ways that are equally insulting without ever having to apologize. Trump may yet implode. And I don’t see any way for him to win a general election. But if he doesn’t implode and GOP elites want to keep him from becoming their nominee or a third-party spoiler, they’ll need to offer winning arguments as to why he’s unqualified to a base that they’ve trained to be immune to media persuasion.

Karma is a Trump.











 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 11, 2015 04:09

August 10, 2015

Google Is Now Alphabet: Here's Larry Page's Rationale

Image

Google announced Monday a massive restructuring, creating what is effectively a new holding company called Alphabet with Larry Page and Sergey Brin at its helm. The move elevates company veteran Sundar Pichai to Google’s CEO.

Here’s more from the company’s announcement, in the form of a blog post from Page:

What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main Internet products contained in Alphabet instead. What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related. Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. We'll also make sure we have a great CEO for each business, and we’ll determine their compensation. In addition, with this new structure we plan to implement segment reporting for our Q4 results, where Google financials will be provided separately than those for the rest of Alphabet businesses as a whole.

Pichai, who serves as Google’s senior vice president of products, is Google CEO, the announcement said.  Bloomberg








1 like ·   •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 10, 2015 14:36

Violence in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Legacy of Michael Brown's Death

Image Updated on August 10, 2015, at 4:33 p.m. ET

Police in St. Louis arrested more than 50 protesters who were demanding the dissolution of the police department in Ferguson, Missouri. Among those detained at rallies to commemorate a year since the death of Michael Brown were prominent members of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Washington Post reported that Deray Mckesson, Johnetta Elzie,  Kayla Reed and Cornel West were arrested Monday outside the St. Louis Justice Center. Some 150 activists had staged a sit-in at the location to mark the anniversary of Brown’s death, and some of them, St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, climbed over barricades set up outside the building, “sat down, locked arms and began singing and chanting.” The newspaper adds:

When that protesters' move did not produce any arrests after about 20 minutes, the seated group rose and rushed toward the front door of the courthouse, and sat down again. Shortly after that, about 30 members of the St. Louis Police Department arrived on the scene and arrests began.

The arrests came after the St. Louis County executive issued a state of emergency following Sunday night’s unrest in which police shot and wounded a man who they say fired at them in Ferguson. The violence followed peaceful rallies to mark the first anniversary of the killing of Brown, the unarmed black 18-year-old who was shot dead by a police officer.

“In light of last night’s violence and unrest in the City of Ferguson, and the potential for harm to persons and property, I am exercising my authority as county executive to issue a state of emergency, effective immediately,” County Executive Steve Stenger said in a statement.

He said the St. Louis County Police Department will take over the operation of police emergency management in Ferguson and surrounding areas.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said in a news conference early Monday the man who was shot was not part of the rallies to mark Brown’s death. He said two opposing groups began firing at each other at the intersection of Ferguson Avenue and West Florissant Avenue at about 11:10 p.m. local time.

Belmar said plainclothes officers pursued one of the men, who then fired at them. They returned fire, hitting him. Belmar described the man’s condition as “critical [and] … unstable.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch condemned the unrest.

“Violence obscures any message of peaceful protest and places the community, as well as the officers who seek to protect it, in harm’s way,” she said in a statement.

The intersection of Ferguson and West Florissant avenues, where the gunfire erupted, was the scene of the sometimes-violent protests last summer after Brown’s shooting by Officer Darren Wilson on  August 9, 2014.

Rallies on Sunday to mark the first anniversary of Brown’s death were peaceful. The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf notes the developments since Brown’s killing:

“Officer Darren Wilson may not have acted unlawfully when he shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, during a murky physical altercation. But the same Department of Justice that cleared him of criminal wrongdoing has documented years of egregiously abusive policing in the St. Louis suburbs. Nevertheless, Missouri legislators failed last session to pass the vast majority of reform measures meant to fix the state’s glaringly oppressive criminal justice system. Nationwide, The Washington Post finds that police have killed at least 60 unarmed humans this year—and that blacks, who make up just 6 percent of the population, account for a full 40 percent of those killed despite being unarmed. In recent months, moreover, the public has seen graphic video footage of at least two cops, in separate incidents, committing what separate prosecutors characterize as the murders of black men during traffic stops, then apparently lying about their actions.”











 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 10, 2015 09:33

Is Jason Rezaian Any Closer to Being Freed?

Image

Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter jailed in Iran, faced his fourth and possibly final hearing on Monday in another closed-door session at the Revolutionary Court.

Leila Ahsan, Rezaian’s lawyer, said the fourth session was the final one. But Iranian news sources said it was up to the judge whether to hold further hearings. The New York Times in its reporting of Monday’s proceedings noted that the judge in the case, Abolqasem Salavati, is “notably hard-line.”

Rezaian, who holds dual U.S.-Iranian citizenship, has been detained in Iran for more than a year. The California native, who is accused of spying, was arrested in July 2014 along with his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, an Iranian correspondent for The National, a newspaper in Abu Dhabi. Salehi was released on bail. Rezaian’s trial began in May, and he faces 20 years in prison.

Human-rights and press-freedom groups have criticized the trial. Martin Baron, the Post’s executive editor, in a statement Monday called the proceedings a “sham,” and noted even Rezaian’s lawyer was uncertain about what might happen next. Here’s more from his statement:

The process has been anything but transparent and just, and that pattern persists. The only thing that is clear is Jason’s innocence. He is a dedicated, law-abiding journalist and a good man who has been targeted with nonsensical, unsupportable, and entirely baseless allegations of espionage and other offenses. He has been made to suffer physically and psychologically, and for that there is no excuse. His arrest, imprisonment, and now this sham trial contradict every standard required for the fair administration of justice, and they violate international law, Iran’s own laws, and fundamental human decency.

Now is the time for Iran’s senior leaders to end this ‘judicial process,’ with its sick brew of farce and tragedy. Jason and his wife, Yeganeh, who has been out on bail, deserve to be exonerated and to be given back their freedom and lives.

There are at least two other Iranian Americans who have been detained in Iran while visiting Iran. Their fate has been discussed by officials from both countries, but their release was not a condition of the deal the U.S. and other world powers struck last month with Iran over its nuclear program.











 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 10, 2015 08:25

True Detective Season Two: No More Heroes

Image

This week following True Detective, David Sims, Christopher Orr, and Sophie Gilbert discuss the murders and machinations depicted in the HBO drama. (Spencer Kornhaber is away.)

Sims: So, in the end, did we get the show we deserved? True Detective was always going to be a difficult “second album,” and the challenge to reproduce the assuredness of the show’s first season was almost insurmountable from the start. Still, the ballad of Ani, Ray, Frank, Birdman, and the missing hard drives was utterly inept from a storytelling perspective. Sunday night’s finale, “Omega Station,” had the setup of an exquisite noir tragedy. Ray, burdened with a dark past he couldn’t shake, went down in a blaze of glory. Frank set everything up for a clean getaway, but ended up tripping on the one loose end he forgot to tie up. Only Ani survived to tell the truth about Vinci, with an unexpected reminder of her intense relationship with Ray.

The dramatic climax was there, but the purpose of it was sorely missing. If anyone missed anything from last week’s festival of empty exposition, the final plot gaps were filled in: Birdman was Leonard Osterman, one of the orphans left behind from a 1992 jewelry store robbery, who along with his sister Laura mutilated and murdered Ben Caspere in the first episode and dumped his body on the road. (Laura, it seems, was a mostly unwilling accomplice, and in actuality Caspere’s illegitimate daughter.) His mission of revenge was, in the end, entirely personal, and motivated by events that happened off-screen and were recounted to the camera later. Turned out Leonard was the set photographer from way back in episode three, but who cares? The audience had no investment in this man, nor in the rotten conspiracy that ended up ensnaring the heroes simply by chance.

.true-detective h5 { background: #000; font-weight: normal; font-family: 'Proxima Nova'; text-align: center; font-size: 18px; text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0; } .true-detective h5 a { color: #fff; text-decoration: none; } .true-detective ul { text-align: center; list-style-type: none; margin: 0; padding: 10px; background-color: #ccc; } .true-detective .prev, .true-detective .next { background-color: #fff; padding: 10px; border-radius: 5px; text-transform: uppercase; font-family: Rajdhani; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; width: 106px; width: calc(50% - 5px); float: left; } .true-detective .prev { margin-right: 10px; } .true-detective .next { float: right } .true-detective .prev a, .true-detective .next a { color: #EC1B23; text-transform: uppercase; font-family: Rajdhani; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 1px; } .true-detective .complete { background-color: #EC1B23; text-transform: uppercase; font-family: Rajdhani; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 1px; padding: 10px; margin-top: 45px; border-radius: 5px; } .true-detective .complete a { color: #fff; } @media (max-width: 700px) { #article .true-detective { padding-left: 130px; } #article .true-detective h4, .true-detective img { margin-left: -130px; } } Related True Detective: Season 2 < Previous Complete Series Coverage

So what of Frank, Ray, and Ani? After the many meaningless revelations of episode seven, it was clear that the incredibly complex web of misdeeds Nic Pizzolatto had drawn up for the season was logically sound, but very little fun to uncover. Ray, Frank and Ani (and poor, basically forgotten Woodrugh, although at least he got a highway named after him!) were all inadvertent victims, patsies who were marked for death or exile simply because they stumbled on Caspere’s case (or, in Frank’s case, did business with him). The ponderously long finale tried hardest to wring human drama from its ensemble to compensate for the seeming randomness of its insanely intricate plot, but without much success.

I’d figured the finale would be action-packed: Figure out who Birdman is, close the case on the mystery, then gear up for the epic shootout that Frank went shopping for last episode. But that all got tied up before the halfway point—Leonard died taking out Police Chief Holloway, Ray and Frank smoked out the Russian gangsters in their log cabin and stole their millions of dollars (intended to purchase those land parcels, yes?), and Ani mostly bided her time at the world’s weirdest dive bar waiting to head on down the road. The show gave its best character one chance to get in on the action, saving Ray’s life at the airport shootout with Leonard, but when it came time for the real final act, Ani was entirely shut out.

Perhaps Pizzolatto thought there was a real triumph to his ending—after so many complaints about the rampant testosterone of season one, here were Ani and Jordan surviving in Venezuela as their respective love interests bit the dust. But it felt patronizing more than anything else, with Ray making sure Ani got out of California before the real bad stuff went down and, surprise, leaving a bun in her oven as a goodbye gift (the miraculous one-night stand conception being one of Hollywood’s favorite, hoariest tropes). Ani, defined by her victimhood as much as her knife skills, got redemption in the form of a cute baby, while her equally damaged lover Ray basically got to die with her name on his lips.

After the gothic delights of season one, and the early tease of the fantastic this year, it was infuriating to see Pizzolatto close with some half-assed indictment of corruption.

What to make of Ray’s blaze of glory? There were some hilariously tragic notes—his phone’s inability to upload its goodbye message to his son, and that previous scene where little Chad Velcoro played Dungeons & Dragons while carrying his father’s badge encased in Lucite as some horrendous lucky totem. (No way that kid’s gonna grow up with any issues, no sir.) In the end, it felt like he made the decision that it simply wasn’t possible for him to be happy—which is why his pat on the head for Ani, telling her to get out of town and get away from him, felt especially condescending. The final montage included a random cut to his dad (played by Fred Ward) and ex-wife (Abigail Spencer), two great actors the show hired and immediately forgot to use, as if to remind us there could have been a great arc for Ray buried somewhere.

Still, Ray’s goodbye made more sense than Frank’s. At least I knew the name of the character who shot Ray to death—Lieutenant Burris, played by James Frain. When Frank got kidnapped on his way to escape, I literally had to hit pause on my DVR to remember exactly who this collection of gangsters was. It would have been grand for Frank to holler at them, “Nobody cares who runs the damn clubs anymore!” but no, the cold-blooded Mexican gangsters were back, and they were mad that Frank had set their new drug laundering businesses alight. (The hallucinations Frank saw on his death march aren’t worth getting into, since it’d probably require another thousand words to unpack just what the show was going for by having a bunch of stereotypical black “hoods” from the ‘80s yell at Vince Vaughn in his final moments.)

But it was the final montage that bothered me most of all. After the gothic delights of season one, and the early tease of the fantastic this year (with Ray’s trip to the afterlife and back), it was infuriating to see Pizzolatto close with some half-assed indictment of corruption going all the way to the top. (Even in the absurd civic structure of Vinci, you’re telling me the Mayor’s orgy-organizing son is gonna succeed his father after his mysterious suicide?) I do think Pizzolatto was aiming to essay some grand tale of the dark heart of Californian bureaucracy, surreptitious land grabs, and misused government money, but it was told entirely in the footnotes. That’s True Detective season two: Some hackneyed personal melodrama, and to find out the rest of the plot, please consult the appendices. Mr. Pizzolatto, if you’re considering producing a third season, may I suggest a slightly slimmer volume next time? Just a couple of gumshoes, a real villain with actual motivations, and an atmospheric setting. The rest takes care of itself.

Orr: First off, a hat tip to the programmers at HBO for leading into the finale of True Detective by airing the final installment of Peter Jackson’s appallingly tumesced Hobbit trilogy. Few other selections could have calibrated my expectations so low. Well played.

There were, as has sadly been customary this season, a lot of severe missteps tonight. But given lowered expectations, I think this was ultimately one of the best episodes of the season. It wasn’t exactly good television—that bar is set awfully high these days—but it was frequently good bad television. Faint praise? Yes. But praise nonetheless. Let me start with the bad.

I agree, David, that the near-random tying-up of plot elements was tonight’s most notable feature. I’ve compared this season to both a serial novel and a game of 52 pickup, but I’m not sure either metaphor was quite up to the task. Tonight we learned that the season’s precipitating event—the murder of Ben Caspere—was not the work of any of the many many many land-grabbing, woman-trafficking villains upon whom the show has focused the vast bulk of its attention. Rather, it was a revenge killing by a brother and sister who were the victims of a crime that we never even heard about until episode six (of eight) and who jointly had perhaps ten minutes of total screen time before tonight. I get the whole deliberate-red-herring schtick. But why stop there? Why not have Caspere killed by an angry city contractor we haven’t even met? Or by transdimensional aliens with acidic saliva and a taste for human eyeballs?

Nor was this the only example of a tertiary brother-sister team who turned out to be central villains. Throughout the season we saw lot of Vinci Mayor Austin Chessani (played with wonderfully drunken verve by Ritchie Coster) and very little of his son, Tony.  But it was the latter who it turns out conspired behind his dad’s back with Every Other Bad Guy in California before ultimately offing the old man in a faked swimming-pool suicide. It’s strongly implied that he was helped by his sister, Betty, though the real evidence is limited to her trophy-mom’s druggy recollection that “She was there, I think, with the yelling.” But honestly, who cares? It’s just another weightless body, like—what was that guy’s name again?—Stan.

Finally, we have Frank’s fate. He’s gotten the best of all the men who betrayed him—Osip, Catalyst honcho McCandless—and then, on the verge of freedom, he’s kidnapped on the freeway. Is it Lieutenant Burris of Vinci PD? Or Tony Chessani? There aren’t any other bad guys still left alive, are there? Oh, right: the nasty Mexicans. No, not the nasty Mexicans from the episode four bloodbath. The other nasty Mexicans who were offhandedly introduced later, again for perhaps a total of ten minutes. Frank spoke for the entire television audience when he said: “You? What the fuck is this?” And then they stabbed him because he wouldn’t give his suit to a much-smaller guy on whom it would have hung like wet laundry. Motivation, shmotivation.

There aren’t any other bad guys still left alive, are there? Oh, right: the nasty Mexicans.

I agree too, David, regarding the notable dichotomy in outcomes for the male and female protagonists. The men all died tragic heroes, and the women all lived on to mourn them and be mommies. Pizzolatto took a lot of heat last season for his thin female characters—not entirely justified, I’d argue, because apart from Rust and Marty all the characters were thin. And I think it’s to his credit that he took the complaint to heart. (Compare him, for example, to Game of Thrones’s David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, who seem to respond to criticism by doubling down ever-more heavily on rape and sexual torture.)

But if ever there were a gentler, friendlier, non-misogynistic form of sexism, this is it. Men are sadly predestined to fail as fathers, sometimes nobly and sometimes not: Paul, Ray, Ani's dad, Frank’s dad (whom we met for the first time in a near-death fever dream), Ray’s dad (Fred Ward, who got a pay check for sitting on a sofa for ten seconds tonight). Women, meanwhile, are destined to raise the kids and mourn their absent men, crappy or otherwise: the co-parenting Ani and Jordan, Paul’s crazy mom and his pregnant girlfriend. (That is, apart from the Dead Moms Club, which includes Ani’s, Frank’s, and the Chessani kids’.) Tonight, we even had a scene in which it was established that Ray really is Chad’s dad, just so that Ray’s ex could weep over his death too. (That said, Ray is not Chad’s dad. You can accept the 99.9 percent genetic match if you want; I’m trusting the eye test here. It’s true that the rapist didn’t meaningfully resemble Chad either, so I’m ascribing paternity to one of these guys. My best guess? Danny Bonaduce.)

A few other thoughts and critiques before I wrap up on a (mostly) positive note:

1) The opening scene of Ray and Ani’s post-coital conversation was an unfortunate twin, and near-parody, of Frank’s between-the-sheets monologue from episode two. I’ll see your water stains and locked-in-the-dark-cellar story, and raise you a four-day abduction-rape and the vigilante murder of an innocent man. Last week, our erstwhile roundtabler Spencer Kornhaber—on hiatus for tonight’s finale, alas—had a line about Pizzolatto “believing trauma to be the only determinative thing about anyone’s personality or relationships.” I’m sorry he wasn’t here to witness such a vivid example of his observation. All we were missing was Jordan offering a detailed explanation of her past abortions and Paul returning from the dead to tell the story of his abundant scars (a plot element evidently left on the cutting-room floor) and the atrocities he witnessed or participated in “in the desert.”

2) We got backstories for minor characters Nails and Felicia (the lady with the scar) in the season finale! This has to win some kind of record for offering non-pertinent information so late in the game.

3) Ray and Ani determined—based on what exactly I didn’t quite catch, maybe the fact that he had a minor speaking role?—that the set photographer from episode two was their Caspere killer. And when they arrived at his house, they saw displayed neatly: the bird mask; the baby mask; the shotgun; and, hilariously, the “less lethal” shells, which were conveniently placed directly beneath a magnifying glass so no one could miss the fine print. If only being a detective were really this easy.

4) It turned out Frank had an immigrant underground railway in the attic above the bar that could double as a (decidedly cut-rate) secret lair. How did we not know this earlier? What else did they not tell us? Was there a spotlight on the roof in the shape of a water stain that Felicia could shine into the clouds to let Frank know when Vinci needed him?

5) Speaking of which, how many characters died this season? I’m going to go out on a limb and say all of them, minus maybe half a dozen. So why couldn’t that trite, mood-inducing indie bar singer have been among the casualties? The revelation of the upstairs hideout was the perfect opportunity for her to be caught in crossfire. Tonight she was even singing when the bar was empty. I propose a True Detective horror spinoff in which she pursues Ani and Jordan across Latin America like a bad dream, guitar and depressing vibes in hand.

The show abandoned the literary pretensions that have often bedeviled it this season and instead opted, mostly successfully, to be a gripping crime drama.

6) Earlier in the season, I cited moments when Pizzolatto seemed to reference the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing. Call me a broken record, but I think he nodded to both again tonight: Blood Simple with the shot of dead Dr. Pitlor’s dangling hand dripping blood (yes, this may be a stretch), and Miller’s Crossing with any number of shots in the redwood grove where Ray met his end. If Pizzolatto is not a huge Miller’s Crossing fan, I will eat Tom Reagan’s hat.

7) “I’m forty minutes out, plenty of time.” Even I know never to say this. And I don’t have most of the state of California wishing me dead.

8) Tonight’s winner of the Worst Line of Vince Vaughn Dialogue award? I nominate his early attempt to get Jordan to leave the country: “You can’t have a kid, what good is the design, see?” Who in the world has added “see?” as an interrogative-enhancer since, say, Jimmy Cagney? Oh, that’s right, Ray Velcoro, also tonight. (“They could already have been watching, see?”) You can give your characters weird, ‘40s-era vocal tics, Pizzolatto. You just can’t give them all the same one.

Okay, now—finally—let me say a few nice things, which I would’ve liked to have done far more often this season. Raymond Chandler, the patron saint of American (and more specifically, Californian) crime fiction, famously defined his hard-boiled genre in contrast to the drawing-room stories of, say, Agatha Christie. In the latter, he wrote, the elegant resolution of the mystery was paramount; the rest was mere “passagework.” For Chandler, by contrast, “the scene outranked the plot, in the sense that a good plot was one that made good scenes.”

This was clearly the plan for season two of True Detective, with its multiple episodes of misdirection and oceans’ worth of red herrings. I thought tonight offered a pretty good example of how this formula might have worked, or mostly worked. There were (as noted) bad scenes, but there were a lot of good ones as well. There was tension and surprise and excitement. With a few exceptions (Ani and Ray’s depressing pillow talk, the subsequent scene in which Vince Vaughn tried to ugly-talk Jordan into leaving), the show abandoned the literary pretensions that have often bedeviled it this season and instead opted, mostly successfully, to be a gripping crime drama.

There was a far better balance, too, in the cast. Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams have consistently outperformed their material. But Taylor Kitsch never quite found the thread of his character (if there was one) and Vince Vaughn was forced to sell some of the most ridiculous dialogue in television history. Tonight, Kitsch was gone. And while Vaughn was given some impossibly heavy lifting in that first scene trying to send Jordan away, he was quite strong—probably the best he’s been—for the remainder of the episode. It’s hard to imagine that True Detective has done much to help Vaughn’s bid for dramatic-actor credibility, but tonight convinced me that the fault was not principally his. As ridiculous as his death-visions in the desert were (he didn’t even get any Conway Twitty!), the image of him staggering along across the sand, dripping blood like bread crumbs, had a camp majesty reminiscent of Sergio Leone.

So, was this season a success? No, obviously. But I feel that tonight offered the outlines for what might be a successful formula—and one more replicable than the lightning in a bottle that season one now appears to have been. What do you think, Sophie? Success? Failure? Something in between?

Gilbert: I agree with you, Chris, that the finale did a surprisingly effective job in wrapping things up, but I still think the curse of this season has been a sheer overload of information, with so many plots and subplots and secondary (and tertiary: alas poor Stan) characters that it became impossible to care about what was supposedly the central mystery of the show—who killed Ben Caspere. I love watching complicated dramas that seemingly offer clues for eagle-eyed viewers. I hate feeling obliged to rewind every pertinent scene three times to try and figure out what’s happening. Caspere was Laura’s father, but was he also Leonard’s? Is that why Lennie erupted in such stabby rage when he overheard Holloway justify the executions as necessary, because Caspere’s jewelry-store mistress kept getting pregnant with his illegitimate kids? Because he knew that he’d murdered his own father?

This episode, even more than the rest of the season, felt unhealthily obsessed with paternal angst, and the intensely emotional, frequently toxic relationship between fathers and sons. It also, as you noted David, felt more than a little patronizing to the show’s female characters. Consider the daughters of Mayor Chessani and Ben Caspere, who were just as hard done by as their brothers, but were essentially confined to the dramatic equivalent of a Greyhound bus to nowhere. Betty, played by Breaking Bad’s Emily Rios, had one scene, in which she hinted at her father’s complex nature (he is a “very bad man”) and sucked on a hookah pipe. Laura/Erica (Courtney Halverson) at least got a beginning and an end, introduced as Caspere’s mousy assistant and dispatched as his faux-redhead daughter, but like Betty, she was very much an afterthought next to her more compelling and more powerful brother.

I think the most disappointing aspect of TDS2 was that it did seem to try, at first: Ani was a direct response to the criticism of season one, and its blowhardy, male-centric meanderings. But even she ended up getting bogged down by the tropes of a female character in a detective novel, from her traumatic past to her undercover makeover as a high-class hooker. The finale, which saw her given a bold new hairdo identical to Franka Potente’s in the first Bourne movie, underscored this when it shipped her off under Felicia’s watchful eye. Ani was given very little agency in her own destiny—Ray ordered Felicia to tie her up to get her out of the country, if necessary (ain’t love grand). At least Jordan got to tell Frank, “I always have a choice,” when he ordered her to leave with Nails. (Nails! Most underappreciated character this season, given that he’s still helping Jordan and Ani a year later even when there’s no one around to pay him.)

So the most intriguing character of the season became … a mother, albeit one who keeps a knife in her sock. And Ray got the posthumous validation that—to borrow an observation from The New York Times’s Dave Itzkoff—his penis really, really worked, making him the genetic father of both poor Chad and Ani’s baby. The only thing that made me hate this ending slightly less was that it wasn’t Jordan who got pregnant—I know you worried that would be the final scene, Chris, and there was a nice moment of bittersweet longing from Kelly Reilly when she had to hand the baby back to Ani in the hotel room. I don’t want to get into Ani’s confession that she felt “proud” her attacker chose her, because it seemed completely inappropriate and problematic in a way we don’t have time for. But the character’s arc was a waste both for the show and for Rachel McAdams, who did really exceptionally convincing work this season with horrible material.

Tony Chessani, the architect of so much malevolence, had only a single speaking scene and thus never got to explain why he was (a) so evil and (b) so orange.

Why all this angst over parenthood? Vinci isn’t Elsinore. The underlying fear of the season—that sons will grow up and murder their fathers—seemed to say more about its creator than it did about heritage. The finale saw Tony Chessani take over his father’s role after he drowned him in the family swimming pool, and Leonard Osterman killed in a shootout after realizing he’d murdered the man who’d killed his parents and turned out to be his father. It saw Chad carrying around his grandfather’s police badge like a physical manifestation of the burdens parents unwittingly pass on to their children. It saw Frank die without an heir after agonizing all season about his legacy, after being visited by the ghost of his father, apparently a cruel and loathsome individual. And it saw Ray’s father mourn his son, apparently under the impression that he was guilty.

Maybe it was all tied in to the season’s fixation with California bureaucracy, and its checkered history and strange hierarchy. Vinci got three generations of Chessani mayors, each presumably more terrible than the last. Caspere got his comeuppance for so callously murdering his mistress and leaving his children to the mercies of foster care and a group home. Ray didn’t quite get to pass on his wisdom to his son (chadvelcoro@gmail.com), but maybe that’s all for the best, given the nature of Ray’s wisdom. Paul’s baby got a highway named after his father, who died at the hands of the one person who knew the truth about him. Life, TDS2 seemed to say, is all about legacy, whether it’s the kind that gets you a family fortune, the kind that puts your name on the map, the kind that gives you scars (both physical and emotional), or the kind that sees you posthumously cleared of wrongdoing by a reporter and a former lover with a box full of … contracts.

You said a few weeks ago, Chris, that Pizzolatto seemed to have a hundred different plot threads going at a time, and I definitely agree—there could be a show about Black Mountain, and the allegations of wrongdoing that were never really clarified, and there could be a show about the Panticapaeum Institute, and a show about Dr. Pitlor’s freaky-deaky clinic for depressed socialites and Eastern European call girls. There could be a show about Felicia’s bar/illegal immigrant smuggling operation, although if Lera Lynn were in it I would categorically refuse to watch (no offense to Ms. Lynn, who is very talented, but whose recurring presence became stupid to the point of comical). There could be a show about Nails and Ani and Jordan on the run, and one about Tony Chessani, the architect of so much malevolence, who only had a single speaking scene and thus never got to explain why he was (a) so evil and (b) so orange. 

But instead, there was what we got: a behemoth of an eight-episode series with a sprawling, absurdly complex plot and lots of scenes of Vince Vaughn shaking down mobsters (maybe that was what sealed Frank’s demise—not that he ridiculously headbutted a gangster with an assault rifle when he was inches away from freedom, but that everyone was tired of him asking them for money all the time). I didn’t love it. I didn’t even like it most of the time. To me, season two is best characterized by all those aerial shots of the freeways snaking around each other—visually impressive but ultimately tedious and headache-inducing to think about. But as a detective drama, it at least tried to demonstrate the integrity of long-established genre conventions, with countless nods to people who succeeded far better than Pizzolatto did (the name on Frank’s new fake passport was, I think, Daniel Hammett). It also ended up borrowing far too many things from better dramas—the scene where Frank negotiated with the Mexican gangsters in the desert was pure Breaking Bad, and so much of the actual police work this season felt ripped from The Wire).

True Detective has shown it does action best (the gunfight, the superb siege on Osip and his men in the finale), characterization fairly well, and exposition miserably. It’s almost inevitable that there will be a third season, in which case I plead: tone down the dialogue, rein in the number of characters and storylines, and don’t forget to have (just a very little) fun. And don’t name the boat your female character is escaping on “Great Escape.” I can overlook a lot, but not that.











 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 10, 2015 06:50

A Tough Weekend for the Black Lives Matter Movement

Image

A year after an officer-involved shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement, protestors keep pressing their cause with urgency, as they did Sunday in marches, rallies, and other activities around the country.

Officer Darren Wilson may not have acted unlawfully when he shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, during a murky physical altercation. But the same Department of Justice that cleared him of criminal wrongdoing has documented years of egregiously abusive policing in the St. Louis suburbs. Nevertheless, Missouri legislators failed last session to pass the vast majority of reform measures meant to fix the state’s glaringly oppressive criminal justice system. Nationwide, The Washington Post finds that police have killed at least 60 unarmed humans this year—and that black men, who make up just 6 percent of the population, account for a full 40 percent of those killed despite being unarmed. In recent months, moreover, the public has seen graphic video footage of at least two cops, in separate incidents, committing what separate prosecutors characterize as the murders of black men during traffic stops, then apparently lying about their actions.

Little wonder that Black Lives Matter protestors gathered in force Sunday. And yet, after watching the day’s events, I am more worried than ever that their efforts will fail.

This is partly because of the gunfire that erupted on the streets of Ferguson on Sunday night, ensuring that Monday’s headlines will concern themselves less with police reforms than reports of someone brazenly shooting at police cars on the street. (Note that early reports following most officer-involved shootings rely heavily on official sources and could turn out to be inaccurate in the fullness of time—if this turns out to be an unjustified shooting by police, the effect on public opinion will be different.)

The Black Lives Matter movement is in no way to blame for the incident, and the fact that violent criminals sometimes target police officers would, in a logical world, have no effect on support for body cameras that police departments don’t control; independent prosecutors for cases in which cops are accused of excessive force; an end to the War on Drugs; curtailing the power of police and prison-guard unions; restoring the voting rights of felons who’ve paid their debts to society; and other policy reforms that would make the criminal justice system more just.

Unfortunately, many members of the public wrongheadedly react to violent crime by shying away from any efforts to reform policing, even though such cases demonstrate the vital need for quality cops. The public hears about bullets whizzing by police in Ferguson, feels sympathy and concern for them—as do I!—and irrationally concludes that stymieing long-overdue reforms will somehow keep them safer. But no widely sought reform would make police officers more vulnerable to premeditated shootings or prevent them from responding aggressively.

Some members of the public will wrongheadedly conflate Black Lives Matter activists and the criminals who used the cover of Sunday’s anniversary and the accompanying protests to fire guns, beat up and rob a St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper reporter, and smash the window of a small business that serves Ferguson. There is no evidence that those criminals were participants in the Black Lives Matter movement. The vast majority of its members have been nonviolent all year, conducting themselves with uncommon bravery and restraint in difficult circumstances.

Alongside these unfortunate setbacks that the Black Lives Matter movement could not do much about, Sunday also saw activists acting under its banner disrupting a Seattle rally held by Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont Senator who is challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination from the left.

CNN reports on what happened:

Seconds after Sanders took the stage, a dozen protesters from the city's Black Lives Matter chapter jumped barricades around the stage and grabbed the microphone from the senator. Holding a banner that said “Smash Racism,” two of the protesters—Marissa Janae Johnson and Mara Jacqeline Willaford, the co-founders of the chapter—began to address the crowd.

“My name is Marissa Janae Johnson, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Seattle,” she said to sustained boos from an audience that had waited an hour and a half to hear Sanders. “I was going to tell Bernie how racist this city is, filled with its progressives, but you already did it for me, thank you.

“You are never going to hear Bernie speak if I don't hear silence now,” said Johnson, adding later, “Now that you've covered yourself in your white supremacist liberalism, I will formally welcome Bernie Sanders to Seattle.”

To sustained boos from the audience that assembled to see Sanders, Johnson demanded that the senator take action on saving black lives and called on him to release his plans to reform policing. "Bernie Sanders, would you please come over here," she said. Johnson and Willaford demanded—and eventually won—a four-and-a-half-minute-long moment of silence in honor of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager who was killed by an officer in Ferguson, Missouri, a year ago on Sunday. Sanders stood just feet away off stage, chatting with his wife, Jane, and the three aides that came to Seattle with him. Sanders’ aides said the senator had no plans of leaving during the protests, but once Johnson did not appear willing to give up the mic after the moment of silence, organizers effectively shut down the event.

Again, in a logical world, these tactics, love them or hate them, would have no effect on public support for a broad range of reforms to America’s criminal justice system. Still, this sort of activism strikes me as a self-inflicted blow to Black Lives Matter. After activists used a similar tactic against Sanders at Netroots Nation, Slate’s Jamelle Bouie astutely observed that while many expected the fissure point for liberals in the 2016 election to be between Hillary Clinton and those to her left, the first fissure to emerge, concurrent with protest movements against police brutality and for social-democracy, is an old liberal split between focusing on race and focusing on class.

“It showed the limits of Sanders’ brand of liberal coalition-building, which hinges on the idea that we could ameliorate serious injustice if we just achieve—or move toward—economic justice,” he explained. “For Black Lives Matter activists, this is almost an insult. To them, racism is orthogonal to class: They’re two different dimensions of disadvantage, and to improve the picture on one isn’t always to improve the picture for the other. Jim Crow, for instance, coexisted with strong unions, high wages, and an active welfare state ... To combat racism, you have to fight it on its own terms. Moreover, there are times when fighting racism in policing and other areas is necessary for headway on economic justice. Ending ‘stop and frisk’ in New York City, for example, lowers the odds young men of color will lose their jobs because of unfair stops ... An effective and broad-based left has to have answers for anti-racist activists. The question is whether Sanders can see this. Is he adaptable enough to build a new platform that tackles these concerns?”

That is sharp analysis.

And yet, Black Lives Matter is not, as best as I can tell, a movement that’s willing to ally itself with anyone, right, left, or center, who supports race-conscious policing reforms.

Here are all of the explicit demands listed on its website:

We demand an end to all forms of discrimination and the full recognition of our human rights. We demand an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of Black  people and all oppressed people. We demand full, living-wage employment for our people. We demand decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings and an end to gentrification. We demand an end to the school to prison pipeline & quality education for all. We demand freedom from mass incarceration and an end to the prison industrial complex. We demand a racial justice agenda from the White House that is inclusive of our shared fate as Black men, women, trans and gender-nonconforming people. Not My Brother’s Keeper, but Our Children’s Keeper. We demand access to affordable healthy food for our neighborhoods. We demand an aggressive attack against all laws, policies, and entities that disenfranchise any community from expressing themselves at the ballot. We demand a public education system that teaches the rich history of Black people and celebrates the contributions we have made to this country and the world. We demand the release of all U.S. political prisoners. We demand an end to the military industrial complex that incentivizes private corporations to profit off of the death and destruction of Black and Brown communities across the globe.

Were the Black Lives Matter agenda all about policing reform, it could better afford to, say, strategically attack Bernie Sanders and ally with Rand Paul if the former wasn’t giving enough attention to criminal-justice reform and the latter was touting it.

Narrow focuses allow strange bedfellows.

But if Black Lives Matter intends to marry a left-wing economic agenda and noninterventionist foreign-policy demands to its concerns about race and policing, what sense does it make to attack Sanders in his long-shot primary against Clinton—darling of Wall Street, supporter of the Iraq invasion, proponent of the drone war, and First Lady during the incarceration boom—and to antagonize Sanders supporters, rare allies in some of their fringier demands, as white supremacists?

It seems likely that, with carrots rather than sticks, Sanders could’ve been persuaded to embrace the vast majority of the stated Black Lives Matter agenda; and there’s no chance that Clinton will ever support “an end to gentrification,” the release of “all U.S. political prisoners,” or “an end to the military industrial complex.” If elected, she will govern as the corporatist hawk that she has always been, and if the political climate changes––if there’s an uptick in crime, and many more voters favor investing in rather than reforming 1990s-style policing––can any Democrat argue with a straight face that Clinton would not shift right along with it?

Taken as a whole, it was a bad weekend for Black Lives Matter. And yet, the core of its case for policing reform is powerful, just, overdue, and capable of commanding much more widespread support than the least plausible of its demands. Going forward, I hope and expect that it will continue to act with urgency, but in a manner more likely to increase the odds that a coalition from across the ideological spectrum will rein in the excesses of policing and incarceration.  If its activists preemptively give up on the right and split the left, what then?











 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 10, 2015 04:43

August 9, 2015

The Tragic Legacy of Junior Seau

Image

For 20 seasons—an eternity for a professional football player—there were few better linebackers in the NFL than Junior Seau. Strong, swift, and imbued with an fanatical work ethic, Seau terrorized opposing offenses so much that they largely avoided him, preferring to take their chances against his teammates. During his career with the San Diego Chargers, Miami Dolphins, and New England Patriots, Seau was selected to 12 Pro Bowl teams and was an First-Team All Pro six times. As he walked away from the game at the end of the 2009 season, there was no question that Seau would be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame at his earliest eligibility: this year.

As expected, Seau’s name was among the eight selected for enshrinement in Canton, Ohio, in 2015. But the great linebacker was not there to celebrate the achievement. On May 2, 2012, the 43-year-old Seau died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Oceanside, California home, a death that sent shock waves throughout the NFL. An anticipated moment of joy—the great Seau’s acceptance speech—was forever denied to his family, friends, and fans.

As his career wound to a close, Seau had asked his daughter Sydney to give a Hall of Fame acceptance speech on his behalf. But in 2010, the NFL enacted a new policy allowing only the players themselves to speak. And despite Seau’s desire to have Sydney perform the honors—as well as his premature death—the league refused to make an exception.

“We cannot celebrate his life and achievement without feeling the constant piece that’s missing.”

That the NFL was stubborn wasn’t entirely a surprise. Throughout its history, the league has earned a reputation for promoting conformity and enforcing discipline—just ask players who receive fines for wearing their socks the wrong length or for excessive end zone celebrations. But the NFL’s intransigence on Hall of Fame speeches may have more to do with the circumstances surrounding Seau’s death. A charismatic, popular figure throughout his career, Seau’s personal life had complications belied by his sunny disposition. According to a 2013 investigation by ESPN’s Outside the Lines, Seau was an inveterate drinker and gambler who frittered away thousands on frequent trips to Las Vegas. In 2010, months after his career came to an end, Seau’s girlfriend accused him of assault. Soon after being released on bail, the beloved athlete drove his car off a cliff in a suspected suicide attempt. (Seau claimed that he had simply fallen asleep.) Nearly all of the $50 million he earned in salary during his career had evaporated by the time of his death.

Seau isn’t the first NFL player with a checkered personal life to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. But there’s reason to suspect that his brief, turbulent retirement resulted directly from injuries he sustained as a player. Through his two-decade career, Seau was acclaimed for his willingness to play through injury, and he claimed to never have suffered a concussion. But soon after his playing days ended, Seau became forgetful and erratic, signs that the thousands of collisions he endured during his career had severely damaged his brain. Test results revealed after his death revealed that Seau, like many other professional football players, suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain condition caused by repeated blows to the skull.

In 2013, Seau’s family filed suit against the NFL. But the league has resisted calls to change the game in order to better protect the mental health of its players, and has tried to downplay the issue—particularly at venues like the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“Were I a suspicious fellow, I might speculate that the NFL knew damn good and well its employees were going to start dying young and that they would be visited by early death due to the damage inherent in the game, so the league called the Hall and suggested the induction of dead players be downplayed,” wrote Charles P. Pierce in Grantland. “Or, as [Pro Football Hall of Fame] president David Baker put it last week, saying far more than he thought he was saying: ‘Our mission is to honor the heroes of the game and Junior is a hero of the game. We’re going to celebrate his life, not the death and other issues.’

In the end, the NFL offered Sydney Seau a compromise: She could be interviewed on stage after spectators watched a video montage honoring her father. But in a hotel room in Canton, Sydney delivered the speech she had prepared—and would have given had the NFL let her—in a recorder. The words are a loving testimony to her father.

“I think what we tend to forget about our favorite invincible, unstoppable, indestructible super-humans is the minor detail that they are also human,” she said. “That is something that we all must endure today without his physical presence. We cannot celebrate his life and achievement without feeling the constant piece that’s missing.”











 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 09, 2015 15:19

August 8, 2015

Fantastic Four: A Spoilereview

Image

How bad is the latest effort to establish a cinematic franchise out of Marvel Comics’ iconic super-group the Fantastic Four? Well, it’s the worst to date—which is a substantial achievement, given the low quality of the (unreleased) 1994 Roger Corman adaptation and the let’s-test-drive-Chris-Evans-as-a-superhero films released in 2005 and 2007. This iteration, directed by Josh Trank (Chronicle) is a dull, sour, claustrophobic mess: 80 minutes of tedious origin story followed by 20 minutes of more-tedious-still climax. Anonymous “insiders” involved in the production have actively trashed Trank’s work (which was reportedly so unprofessional that it cost him a Star Wars directing gig), while Trank himself has claimed on Twitter that he had a “fantastic” version of the movie last year that was subsequently ruined by the studio, 20th Century Fox. Pretty much everyone in the otherwise talented cast appears resolutely uncommitted to their roles.

Related Story

Will There Ever Be a Truly Great ‘Fantastic Four’ Film?

Which is to say, Fantastic Four is a perfect candidate for a spoilereview, and I will not pass up the opportunity. If you intend to see the movie and do not want plot details revealed to you in advance, stop reading now. If, by contrast, you would like to admire the awfulness of Fantastic Four without actually having to watch it—or if you’ve already seen the movie and are still reeling from the experience—feel free to read on. I apologize in advance for the length: There’s a lot of awful to cover.

1. When it was first announced that gifted young actor Miles Teller would be playing Reed Richards (a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic), I assumed he’d be “aging up” for the role. After all, since the launch of Marvel’s “first family” in 1961, Richards—whose primary physical signifiers included gray temples and pipe-smoking—had been among the most prominent patres familias in comic-dom. But in fact the reverse is the case. Teller, 28, plays Richards as an 18-year-old: a self-taught, world-class genius who cracks the secret of inter-dimensional travel for his high-school science fair. If this sounds like a peculiar knockoff of the 2007 animated comedy Meet the Robinsons, well, that’s exactly how it plays—though with considerably less charm.

2. I should note here that we in fact first meet Reed and his friend Ben Grimm (a.k.a. the Thing) as fifth-graders, growing up in working-class Oyster Bay on Long Island. Reed has already created a working prototype of an inter-dimensional teleporter from spare parts in his garage. Ben, meanwhile, is being bullied by a thuggish older brother who shouts, “it’s clobberin’ time” while beating him up. The addition of this sad backstory to the Thing’s trademark catchphrase (which, yes, we’ll hear at the end of the movie) is not an improvement.

3. But back to the science fair. Reed and Ben (Jamie Bell) show off their teleporter by sending a toy airplane into the beyond and back, but they are disqualified when their experiment also sends out an energy pulse that shatters the backboard of the school gymnasium. Luckily, who should show up at the fair but an avuncular scientist, Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his adopted daughter, Sue (Kate Mara). They, too, have been experimenting with inter-dimensional travel, but they have never been able to bring back the objects they have sent out. (Why they are trolling high-school science fairs in search of talent to help them achieve this breakthrough is a question better left unasked.) Dr. Storm immediately offers Reed a full scholarship to the “Baxter Foundation” in Manhattan, which the latter gleefully accepts. Picture Peter Parker getting a job at Oscorp and you won’t be far off.

4. Reed is put to work building a teleporter large enough to transport a capsule containing human subjects. Sue is working on the project, too. The two have a meet-cute in the company library, in which she reveals that she studies “pattern recognition” and he reveals that he’s a fan of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (a book that he is somehow unaware is a famous classic—what a nerd!). Depressingly, both of these revelations will have narrative significance later on.

5. Seeking additional talent, Dr. Storm re-establishes contact with a former pupil, Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), here presented as a surly, grungy cyber-hipster who reluctantly joins the team. He clearly has a thing for Sue, and he’s unhappy that she’s getting along so well with Reed. This theoretical love triangle is one of many instances in which the movie advertises its intentions and then makes no meaningful effort to fulfill them: You could cut the tension with a spoon.

6. Dr. Storm and the kids watch footage, sent back by a probe, of the planet in another dimension to which the teleporters connect. Said planet is a barren, red wasteland, but Storm et al. believe that it holds the key to humankind’s future. “It’s a whole new world ... ” one begins, “ ... that can save this one,” adds another. Then Victor grouses, “ ... not that it’s worth saving.” (This, too, will be significant later.) Sue laughs him off: “Dr. Doom over here.” Get it?

7. If you are wondering when Johnny Storm (a.k.a., the Human Torch) would show up, the answer is now. Dr. Storm’s other, non-adoptive kid is also brilliant, but in this case troubled. We meet Johnny (Michael P. Jordan) as he is out street racing at night, the superhero movie briefly interrupting itself to offer a scene out of American Graffiti. Alas, his engine catches fire when it hits 9,000 rpm, and he crashes spectacularly. Picking him up at the police station, Dr. Storm says Johnny can’t have the car back unless he comes to work on the inter-dimensional teleporter project at the Baxter Foundation. The rationale for his inclusion? “He can build anything,” Dr. Storm explains. (Except, of course, a car engine that doesn’t explode.)

7a. Pretty much everyone involved in the film has been quick to argue that the decision to cast a white actress (Mara) and a black actor (Jordan) as brother and (adopted) sister is a sign of cultural progress. And that may well be the case. But if you’re going to make that argument, perhaps you shouldn’t have the white kid be the do-everything-right academic superstar and the black kid be the disobedient, chip-on-his-shoulder lawbreaker. Just a thought. (Not that it matters: Johnny’s bad-boy background is forgotten almost immediately.)

Would you prefer to fly and pitch fireballs, become invisible and create force fields, be impervious to damage and super strong, or … stretch?

8. Our four wunderkinder—Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Victor (yes, I know, stick with me for now)—succeed in building their teleporter! They subject it to exactly one live-subject test: putting a chimp in the capsule, sending it to the planet in the alternate dimension, and bringing it back alive. “It’s safe!” declares Sue. There are no follow-up tests, no examinations of the chimp for long- (or even short-) term effects, no nothing. Everybody agrees that they’re immediately ready to begin human exploration. “I told you these kids could do it!” Dr. Storm tells his slightly villainous Baxter Foundation boss, Dr. Allen (Tim Blake Nelson). Dr. Allen congratulates everyone on a job well done and says he’ll contact NASA about getting trained astronauts to help them explore this brave new world—which is, of course, the entirely reasonable thing to do.

9. But who wants to be reasonable? Reed, Victor, and Johnny are furious that they don’t get to be the first to travel to the other dimension/planet. Victor whips out a flask of booze, and as the three boys get drunk, they grow ever crankier. Who remembers the names of the engineers who built the Apollo spacecraft, they ask one another. No one! But everyone remembers the names “Neil Armstrong” and “Buzz Aldrin”! Those astronautical glory hogs jerks got to live out the dreams that rightly belonged to the forgotten engineers, who the kids speculate probably died “penniless.” (Screw you, Armstrong and Aldrin! Screw you, crummy NASA retirement benefits!)

10. So the drunk boys decide, like infinite drunk boys before them, to take dad’s car out for a late-night spin—although in this case, dad’s car is a billion-dollar inter-dimensional teleporter. Reed even calls up his old friend Ben, who was there way back at the start, to come join them. (Remember Ben? He’s been stuck back in Oyster Bay all this time, a fact which the movie subtly conveys by presenting him wearing a shirt that says “Oyster Bay.”) So the four boys get into their space suits, hop in the teleporter, and zap themselves into another dimension. Amazingly, none of them thinks to invite Sue, who has of course (unlike Ben) been working with them on the project this whole time. Classy move, bros.

10a. It’s important to remember that for the remainder of the movie we’re expected to continue to take the side of these ridiculous drunk kids whenever they get into an argument with the awful corporate types who wanted to bring in trained grownup explorers from NASA.

10b. It’s also probably worth noting here that the movie has no theory whatsoever of what an alternate dimension might signify. The teleporter always sends matter to the exact same spot on the other-dimension planet, and there is never any suggestion that it could teleport anywhere else. That other planet basically just seems like an ordinary planet, except for the fact that it has some kind of green, liquefied power source coursing just beneath its crust like magma. (If anyone involved in the movie had any sense, the product tie-in for an energy drink practically writes itself.)

11. Upon arrival on this new world, the boys get out of the capsule to explore. (The chimp did not do this, but it has to be safe, right?) They’re intrigued by the green energy liquid and decide they want to know more about it. When Reed notices that it seems to be pooling down at the base of a 300-hundred-foot cliff, he encourages his pals, “C’mon, let’s go check it out!” They climb down and examine the energy pool, which they decide is “alive.” (What this means is anyone’s guess.) Moreover, to their surprise—though not that of any possible moviegoer—this green goo turns out not to be completely safe. It begins erupting from the ground, like volcanic discharge or an aggressively manipulated zit, and it swallows Victor as they climb back up the cliff. (There’s no chance we’ll see him again, is there?) The other boys run to the capsule and zap back to Earth, but all of them are spattered with some of the goo. So, too, is Sue—who’s been minding her own business back at the lab all this time—when the capsule explodes upon arrival.

12. This is where the movie takes a turn for the grim and self-serious, a tonal mode that almost no one other than Christopher Nolan has made work in a superhero movie, but one which pretty much everyone apart from Marvel Studios continues to attempt. (Again, Fantastic Four is a Fox property.) Josh Trank’s only previous film as a director, Chronicle, had many fans, but I was not among them. In it, three teenagers stumbled upon an energy source that gave them great powers, and they then spent the bulk of the film petulantly bickering among themselves over the proper use of said powers. Trask’s Fantastic Four follows a similar script, but it is much, much worse.

Trask’s Fantastic Four follows a similar script as Chronicle, but it is much, much worse.

13. The immediate aftermath of the boys’ explosive return to the lab is bloody and horrible: Reed, pinned under debris, has a moment of Cronenbergian body horror when he discovers that his leg is stretching like overcooked pasta; Ben pleads for help from beneath a pile of rubble. But what happens next is worse. Reed, Ben, Sue, and Johnny wake up as captive subjects for observation at a secret military facility (“Area 57,” which is six more secret than Area 51, for those of you keeping track). Reed is strapped down and stretched out like a medieval martyr on the rack. Sue is unconscious, slipping in and out of visibility. Johnny is periodically bursting into an agonizing hellfire. And Ben—well, as he gradually extricates himself from the pile of rubble, it becomes clear that he is a pile of rubble.

14. In his hermetically sealed, impossibly secure prison room, Reed hears Ben begging for help through a convenient air vent. Squeezing into said air vent, Reed tries to save Ben, but ultimately he is forced to instead opt for saving himself, fleeing the facility. (Cue the many upcoming recriminations about his having “abandoned” his friends.)

14a. I think a pretty strong case can be made that a principal reason for the repeated cinematic failure of the Fantastic Four is that while Reed is the group’s unquestioned leader, his superpower—the ability to stretch himself like rubber—has always been remarkably silly. It’s not without reason that DC Comics’ Plastic Man was always pitched as a humorous figure, or that toy-of-my-youth Stretch Armstrong was promoted in many TV ads. Would you prefer to fly and pitch fireballs (Johnny), become invisible and create force fields (Sue), be impervious to damage and super strong (Ben), or…stretch? The movie tries to make Reed a little cooler by allowing him to alter his face, a la the X-Men’s Mystique, but that’s really another power altogether. And in any case, it’s too little, too late.

15. With Reed gone, our remaining three heroes are offered an unpleasant bargain by the U.S. military and the increasingly villainous Dr. Allen: Serve as covert weapons abroad in exchange for the promise that the government will try to rebuild the inter-dimensional teleporter and find a way to cure them. (Dr. Allen: “We’ll have control over more than that world. We’ll have control over ours.”)

16. We fast-forward one year to discover that Ben has already become a prime military asset, chalking up 43 “confirmed kills” in a single outing. (Thank you, Fox, for bringing us the Thing, mass killer.) Johnny will be the next asset to be deployed, as soon as he has better control over his powers. By now, angry recriminations are being launched in every conceivable direction. Sue is upset that Johnny is eager to work with the military (him: “We should use our powers to do something”; her: “I’m not going to be a tool.”) Ben is perpetually angry because he looks like a caramel-flavored variation of the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man. (Plus: no one even gives him a pair of briefs to wear; happily, for reasons unclear, his rocky manhood seems not to have made the return trip from the other dimension.) And everyone, of course, is mad at Reed—the guy who got them all into this situation and then abandoned them.

Ben is perpetually angry because he looks like a caramel-flavored variation of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

17. It is determined, improbably, that it is not possible to rebuild the teleporter without Reed’s help. This, despite the fact that we saw the many iterations of plans and technical diagrams that were produced when the previous transporter was made, plus the fact that, you know, he’s an 18-year-old kid and America presumably has plenty of adult engineers who can remake things that have already been made once before.

18. But no Reed, no teleporter, and although the FBI, CIA, and NSA have picked up traces of him here and there, they’ve never been able to pin him down. And so, unable to track down an untrained teen, the U.S. government—which, again, has many highly specialized employees—finds itself in need of someone versed in “pattern recognition.” (I told you this would come up again!) So they ask Sue to find Reed, which she does by figuring out that his email server is a variant on “Captain Nemo.” (See? That early meet-cute scene was packed with important information.)

19. They find Reed in South America and bring him back to Area 57, Ben punching him unconscious in the process. (Reed: “You were my best friend.” Ben: “I’m not your friend. You turned me into something else.”) Reed feels very bad about everything that’s happened. He asks Sue, “ Do you ever wonder what life would have been like if you hadn’t come to the science fair that day?” Heartbreakingly, Sue does not give the obvious answer: “No, but I wonder what life would have been like if you assholes hadn’t drunk-driven our teleporter into another dimension.”

20. With Reed back, they build a new inter-dimensional teleporter and send a squad of soldiers back to the other-dimension planet. There, they encounter a weak, limping figure in a cloak whom they bring back to Earth. Yes, it’s Victor. Yes, he’s now Doctor Doom. No, he doesn’t have his classically cool battleship-gray riveted armor. Instead, the green goo fused his spacesuit to his body, giving him a more zombie-skeleton-lich aesthetic. But, yes, he was faking his infirmity and it was (unsurprisingly) a very bad idea to bring him back to Earth.

21. Doom, who can manipulate objects in space like Magneto though without the metallic limitation (plus his eyes glow green), kills Dr. Allen and innumerable nameless Area 57 employees. He announces “If this world must die so that mine might live”—he means that alternate dimension-planet, of which he’s evidently grown rather fond—“then so be it.” Then he kills Dr. Storm, because that’s what happens to likable black supporting characters in movies such as this one. As he dies, he offers the kids one last avuncular nugget: “Promise me: Look after each other.”

22. Doom returns to the alternate dimension-planet and creates a wormhole that will suck in and destroy the Earth. (His motivations are rather obscure here, as it’s unclear why anyone would want to spend eternity alone on a desolate planet in another dimension. But to each their own.) Our heroes follow Doom and engage in a dull, visually unimaginative, and notably repetitive fight sequence. Ben worries that it’s hopeless—“We can’t beat him, he’s stronger than any of us”—before the always-brilliant Reed points out, “Yeah, but he’s not stronger than all of us.” The good guys win, and Ben gets to work out his childhood-abuse issues by yelling, “It’s clobberin’ time!”

The good guys win, and Ben gets to work out his childhood-abuse issues by yelling, “It’s clobberin’ time!”

23. Back on Earth, the U.S. government proposes that the superheroes continue working as military assets. They decline. “We don’t need you or anyone else to keep an eye on us,” says Sue—which is pretty rich, if anyone cares to remember the whole “let’s get drunk and teleport into another dimension” level of discretion the kids displayed earlier in the movie. They demand that the government give them their own huge, remote, fully-staffed scientific facility, and the government, for incomprehensible reasons, agrees to do so. (Yes, the kids saved the world; but they were also the only reason the world needed saving.) Overlooking their gleaming new domain, Reed suggests “I think the four of us should have a name.” They all chuckle for a moment, before Ben offers, “It’s fantastic.” Reed leaps on this: “Guys! I’ve got it…”

26. The movie coyly ends before Reed can finish. But it ends, thank God.











 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 08, 2015 13:21

Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog

Atlantic Monthly Contributors
Atlantic Monthly Contributors isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.
Follow Atlantic Monthly Contributors's blog with rss.