Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 289
April 27, 2013
Sunday Morning in the Church of Beethoven
In my weekly feature: not Ludwig's greatest, but one of his most wonderful, the Choral Fantasy, which is part piano sonata, part concerto, and with choral finish--with tune that was precursor to the "Ode to Joy," no less. Here done by Helen Grimaud who I will see do it in June when she returns to tiny North Salem, NY where she long ago founded a famous wolf sanctuary.
April 26, 2013
George Sings Hank
Greatest country writer meets greatest country singer ever, as George Jones sings Hank.
Glenn and Bill on Drones, Secrecy and More
This weekend's Bill Moyers show kicking off with Glenn Greenwald, then more. Whole show:
'Kill Team' Best Doc
The Kill Team seems like a worthy winner of a Best Doc award at Tribeca Film Fest last night. Trailer:
Obama Wakes Up
After an illuminating tour through the oh-so-objective new Bush Library (perhaps with guide Judy Miller), President Obama today ordered the re-invasion of Iraq. Actually, his logic is at least as valid as Bush's in 2003. And maybe he just wants to land on an aircraft carried in a flight suit. Well, according to The Onion:The president told reporters that the museum’s numerous displays provided illuminating information concerning the ongoing threat posed by Iraq and the necessity of re-deploying combat troops in order to bring stability and lasting democracy to the troubled country.
“I have no doubt in my mind, after spending some time in Mr. Bush’s library and museum, that the United States simply must intervene in Iraq in order to temper volatility in the Middle Eastern region as a whole,” Obama said, noting that bombers and approximately 250,000 ground troops were currently en route to the Middle Eastern nation. “The way I now see it, we have a responsibility as Americans to create that kind of change and to lead the world by example.”
“Though it will not be easy, our work in Iraq will ensure a better life for the Iraqis,” Obama continued. “And they will, I am confident, greet us as liberators.”
Today's Shooting in Gun Nutty USA
No one died, but this still almost take the cake this week: after an argument at a Little League--at the Tee-ball level no less (kids about 5 or 6)--a suspect has just been arrested in California and charged with attempted murder.
Authorities say the shooting occurred April 17 during a North Vallejo T-ball game after Chi and the father of a player argued with each other at the baseball field. The dispute continued in the parking lot and police say when the father tried to drive away, Chi opened fire and hit the vehicle. The father was not injured.
Police didn't say what started the argument.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/26...
George Jones, R.I.P.
One of the great country singers--and characters--ever, George Jones, has died at 81. There was a hoax going around about this but presume now this is true. Favorite detail from NYT obit: "His drinking had gotten worse. At one point his wife hid the keys to all his cars, so he drove his lawn mower into Beaumont to a liquor store — an incident he would later commemorate in a song and in music videos. They were divorced not long afterward."
"The Possum" at his best:
"The Possum" at his best:
April 25, 2013
Carjack Victim in Boston Bomb Case Speaks
Just posted by Boston Globe. Chinese-American. Still won't let them print his real name, even now. He told the brothers "Chinese very friendly to Muslims!"
The story of that night unfolds like a Tarantino movie, bursts of harrowing action laced with dark humor and dialogue absurd for its ordinariness, reminders of just how young the men in the car were. Girls, credit limits for students, the marvels of the Mercedes ML 350 and the iPhone 5, whether anyone still listens to CDs -- all were discussed by the two 26-year-olds and the 19-year-old driving around on a Thursday night.
Danny described 90 harrowing minutes, first with the younger brother following in a second car, then with both brothers in the Mercedes, where they openly discussed driving to New York, though Danny could not make out if they were planning another attack. Throughout the ordeal, he did as they asked while silently analyzing every threatened command, every overheard snatch of dialogue for clues about where and when they might kill him...
He overheard them speak in a foreign language -- “Manhattan” the only intelligible word to him -- and then ask in English if Danny’s car could be driven out of state. “What do you mean?” Danny said, confused. “Like New York,” one of the brothers said.
When the younger brother, Dzhokhar, was forced to go inside the Shell Food Mart to pay, older brother Tamerlan put his gun in the door pocket to fiddle with a navigation device -- letting his guard down briefly after a night on the run. Danny then did what he had been rehearsing in his head. In a flash, he unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door, stepped through, slammed it behind, and sprinted off at an angle that would be a hard shot for any marksman....
Ayn Rand in Hollywood
It may surprise many to learn that, like many famous novelists, Ayn Rand had a period when she “went Hollywood.” In 1943, Rand sold the rights for The Fountainhead to Warner Bros., and wrote the screenplay. She was then hired by top producer Hall Wallis as a writer, idea generator and script doctor. Her screenplays included the Oscar-nominated Love Letters and You Came Along. Right after the war she became involved in the anti-Communist movement in Hollywood and appeared as a friendly witness before Congress in testifying about the Red influence there.
At the same time, I’ve learned, she also had a kind of love affair—with the atomic bomb.
I learned in my research at the Truman Library concerning an MGM movie titled The Beginning or The End. As I write in my new book, Hollywood Bomb, published today, this was the first big budget epic about the Bomb. The idea for the film came from atomic scientists and the first scripts raised questions about the use of the new weapon against Japan and all uses of nuclear energy in the future. By the time the Pentagon and the White House got through with it, the movie took a 180-degree turn. President Truman even edited the script and got the actor playing him in the movie fired.
But there’s also this fascinating sidebar: while the MGM film was being developed in late 1945 and early 1946, a second film was being developed by Hal Wallis—and Ayn Rand wrote the script.
The film was to be titled Top Secret. At the Truman Library, I discovered a sixteen-page outline by Rand from January 19, 1946. We folllow the lead character, named John, during the rise of Hitler, early work on the physics of the Bomb abroad, his service in the Army and then his assignment—to guard J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called Father of the Bomb, at Los Alamos. Much like the key scene in The Beginning or the End (which the White House rewrote), it shows Truman deciding to use the bomb against Japan as a last resort and strictly “to save American lives.”
Oppenheimer, after Hiroshima, tells John at Los Alamos that “the achievement was not an accident—only free men in voluntary co-operation could have done it—so long as they’re free, men do not have to fear those who preach slavery and violence.” It ends with a classic Randism, “Man can harness the universe—but nobody can harness man!” It does raise dark warnings about future threat, showing a clock ticking and the claim, “It’s later than you think!”
But a month later, a sixty-five-page section of a script (obviously sent to the White House for approval) has merged The Beginning or the End and Top Secret and included some of Rand’s writings. MGM had made a deal with Wallis to make sure there was no rival project.
How did this all start? From Rand’s own papers and journals, we learn that when she accepted the assignment from Wallis she said she’d only do it if she could express her own political and philosophical views, which might clash with the studio’s. She then interviewed many of the leading figures in the Bomb’s development, including Oppenheimer. Many years later she revealed that the character Robert Stadler in Atlas Shrugged was based on Oppenheimer. The papers also show that after MGM bought out Wallis, Rand was then free to work full-time on Atlas Shrugged.
She also wrote for Wallis an amazing and quite lengthy memo, An Analysis of the Proper Approach to a Picture on the Atomic Bomb.
Rand’s memo opens with the astounding claim that it was not the bomb itself, a mere “inanimate” object, but a bad movie about it that could turn out to be the “greatest moral crime in the history of civiilization.” After all, whether the Bomb is used again depends on the “thinking of men,” and movies were now the most influential elements in all of society. So she aimed for an “immortal achievement” that would prevent the result of “millions of charred bodies—those of our children.”
The real danger was posed by the world’s decline into “Statism” at the expense of “free enterprise.” And “Statism leads to war.” Now, with the atomic bomb in the world and Statisim on the march our days were literally numbered—unless the “trend” to Statism was “reversed.” Because: “An atomic bomb is safe only in a free society.”
But does that mean Rand hated the Bomb? Hardly. In fact, she extols its creation as “an eloquent example of, argument for and tribute to free enterprise.” As evidence she cites the fact that despite its massive state power, Germany could not create the weapon but the United States did.
But doesn’t the United States have its own form of Statism? “Our government seems to have acted properly in regard to the atomic bomb,” but don’t give the White House and Washington too much credit—it was the individual scientists who pulled it off, as if with the help of God. In fact, she argued, the film “must show clearly” that it was the scientists and the military who ran the bomb project, “not the government.” And it was the industrialists who supplied the materials. If the film showed President Roosevelt in a “favorable” light, it must do the same for DuPont.
If the studio followed her script, “the general tone of our picture will be that of a tribute to America—an epic of the American spirit.” For more see my Hollywood Bomb, right here.
At the same time, I’ve learned, she also had a kind of love affair—with the atomic bomb.
I learned in my research at the Truman Library concerning an MGM movie titled The Beginning or The End. As I write in my new book, Hollywood Bomb, published today, this was the first big budget epic about the Bomb. The idea for the film came from atomic scientists and the first scripts raised questions about the use of the new weapon against Japan and all uses of nuclear energy in the future. By the time the Pentagon and the White House got through with it, the movie took a 180-degree turn. President Truman even edited the script and got the actor playing him in the movie fired.But there’s also this fascinating sidebar: while the MGM film was being developed in late 1945 and early 1946, a second film was being developed by Hal Wallis—and Ayn Rand wrote the script.
The film was to be titled Top Secret. At the Truman Library, I discovered a sixteen-page outline by Rand from January 19, 1946. We folllow the lead character, named John, during the rise of Hitler, early work on the physics of the Bomb abroad, his service in the Army and then his assignment—to guard J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called Father of the Bomb, at Los Alamos. Much like the key scene in The Beginning or the End (which the White House rewrote), it shows Truman deciding to use the bomb against Japan as a last resort and strictly “to save American lives.”
Oppenheimer, after Hiroshima, tells John at Los Alamos that “the achievement was not an accident—only free men in voluntary co-operation could have done it—so long as they’re free, men do not have to fear those who preach slavery and violence.” It ends with a classic Randism, “Man can harness the universe—but nobody can harness man!” It does raise dark warnings about future threat, showing a clock ticking and the claim, “It’s later than you think!”
But a month later, a sixty-five-page section of a script (obviously sent to the White House for approval) has merged The Beginning or the End and Top Secret and included some of Rand’s writings. MGM had made a deal with Wallis to make sure there was no rival project.
How did this all start? From Rand’s own papers and journals, we learn that when she accepted the assignment from Wallis she said she’d only do it if she could express her own political and philosophical views, which might clash with the studio’s. She then interviewed many of the leading figures in the Bomb’s development, including Oppenheimer. Many years later she revealed that the character Robert Stadler in Atlas Shrugged was based on Oppenheimer. The papers also show that after MGM bought out Wallis, Rand was then free to work full-time on Atlas Shrugged.
She also wrote for Wallis an amazing and quite lengthy memo, An Analysis of the Proper Approach to a Picture on the Atomic Bomb.
Rand’s memo opens with the astounding claim that it was not the bomb itself, a mere “inanimate” object, but a bad movie about it that could turn out to be the “greatest moral crime in the history of civiilization.” After all, whether the Bomb is used again depends on the “thinking of men,” and movies were now the most influential elements in all of society. So she aimed for an “immortal achievement” that would prevent the result of “millions of charred bodies—those of our children.”
The real danger was posed by the world’s decline into “Statism” at the expense of “free enterprise.” And “Statism leads to war.” Now, with the atomic bomb in the world and Statisim on the march our days were literally numbered—unless the “trend” to Statism was “reversed.” Because: “An atomic bomb is safe only in a free society.”
But does that mean Rand hated the Bomb? Hardly. In fact, she extols its creation as “an eloquent example of, argument for and tribute to free enterprise.” As evidence she cites the fact that despite its massive state power, Germany could not create the weapon but the United States did.
But doesn’t the United States have its own form of Statism? “Our government seems to have acted properly in regard to the atomic bomb,” but don’t give the White House and Washington too much credit—it was the individual scientists who pulled it off, as if with the help of God. In fact, she argued, the film “must show clearly” that it was the scientists and the military who ran the bomb project, “not the government.” And it was the industrialists who supplied the materials. If the film showed President Roosevelt in a “favorable” light, it must do the same for DuPont.
If the studio followed her script, “the general tone of our picture will be that of a tribute to America—an epic of the American spirit.” For more see my Hollywood Bomb, right here.
