A Blog of My Own

Still playing in Chicago, and maybe at your local indieplex, The Band’s Visit is a sad but funny but sad but funny (I’m not sure which word to end on) film about the distance between people. The pretext for all this funnysadness is a story about an eight-piece Egyptian police band sent to play in Israel in some sort of cultural exchange program, who then spend the night in a tiny Israeli desert town when they board the wrong bus. (They want the town of Petah Tikva; instead they end up in Bet Hatikva.) Would you be surprised to learn that mutual suspicion between two nationalities gives way to tacit acceptance and the beginnings of genuine friendship?—no, you wouldn’t—but the charm of the film is to make this actually believable. It’s also to make us understand not just the chasm that exists between two countries, but the chasm that exists between any two human beings on the face of the earth, even when they sleep in the same bed. Especially when they sleep in the same bed. We are all wandering in the desert.

This isn’t a feel-good, “why can’t we all just get along” film, although that might be what you expect. It’s occasionally a feel-bad, “you can’t get along with anybody when you can’t live with yourself, and no one can” film. But it’s not depressing. Along with delivering moments that make you, yes, LOL, it touches deeply, gets the emotions flowing. Flow is life. And life, no matter how sad, is the antidote to depression.

Directed and written by Eran Kolirin, this Israeli film features good performances from its cast, notably Sasson Gabai as the bandleader Tawfiq; and, as Dina, the restaurant owner who opens the town’s hospitality to the band for the night, Ronit Elkabetz.

The film might have been a contender this year for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar—it was Israel’s submission—but it was rejected because most of it is in English. The Egyptians in the band don’t know Hebrew and the Israelis in the town don’t know Arabic, but they both know some English. The trick, as always, is not in finding a common language; it’s in discovering what you have to say.

Added 3/29: Ironically, in view of the film’s look at communication and its difficulties, The Band’s Visit has been shut out of Middle East film festivals in Cairo and Abu Dhabi. Indiewire has the details.

Persuasive column by David Brooks in the NY Times that all Hillary can accomplish by staying in the race is to tarnish Obama. She can’t win. She can only make it so that in the general election, he can’t either.

Even as someone who sees merit in Hillary, and feels she could be a good, maybe even great President, and hopes she will serve our country in important ways in the future, I am convinced by Brooks. If she had a chance of winning the nomination, I can see why she’d stay in. But she doesn’t, and every day she stays on the warpath, shooting arrows at Obama (some of which land), she weakens her party’s chances in November. I used to think the competition was good for Obama, that it forged him into an even stronger candidate, and I think I was right about that. It was. But it’s gone on long enough. The point of diminishing returns has been reached. Let’s hope the point of diminishing election returns hasn’t.

As you watch this Mama Cass clip, imagine the audio being played before and after every Barack Obama campaign speech. Now imagine it at his inauguration. Because that’s what’ll be next.

Even better…using the magic of computer graphics, someone should insert Obama into the video, singing with Cass. Take that, Amber Lee Ettinger.

This fun–and somehow disturbing–little French silent film was made in 1907 and screened on its hundredth anniversary at the 12th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

I’m trying to find a positive in the press lately ripping Obama for every remark he makes (“my grandmother was a typical white person,” etc.), and I think there is one.

This is a test of what kind of President he will be. If Obama can find a way to rise above the yowling, to take charge of the argument and set its tone where he wants it to be, that will be pretty good evidence of an ability to lead in the same way once he’s President. If, instead, he succumbs to the jackals, lets them feast upon his flesh, lets them take him off-course or off-message, then that will predict the nature of an Obama Presidency.

Because any notion that he’s going to enjoy a “honeymoon” is pure fantasy. If the last week makes anything clear, it’s that. Within three days of his taking office, the press will be looking for every opportunity to destroy him. Either he’s stronger than to allow them to succeed at this — or he’s not.

Best we find out now.

Okay, I’ve got dibs on that name. Anyone who wants to use it now has to pay me 8¢.

God help me, I’m liking Hillary again.

Maybe I can’t resist an underdog with pluck. But I find that when I read the reports that she’s now on top of Obama in the national opinion polls, and that she’s widening her lead in the Pennsylvania polls, and when I read the tacticians who say that Obama blew it by giving a speech on race that was too nuanced and balanced (instead of unequivocally distancing himself from the Reverend Wright), and when I begin to consider for a moment that maybe she could pull this off after all, I get a little frisson of excitement inside.

Obama may be the best politician to come along since FDR—and I think he just might be—but he is that, a politician. So is she—and not in the same league. When I think about them as Presidents, though, I see a closer equivalency between them. Whichever of them doesn’t get the job, there’s going to be something tragic about it. If he comes this far and doesn’t make it all the way, it will be devastating for him, for his advocates, and for the country. We’ll never know what we missed. But I feel the same about her. One of them is headed for a terrible end. I find, the longer this goes, that I don’t feel good casting either of them in that part.

After reading a transcript of Barack Obama’s speech on race, delivered this morning, I believe that the true audacity we must find in ourselves is not the Audacity of Hope, as his book title would have it, but the Audacity to Believe We Are Worthy.

I don’t know whether we deserve this man–I have my doubts–but I want to believe we do. How did someone of his quality come along at this debased time in our history? It’s like a miracle.

Hope isn’t the issue. Obama will not win by convincing enough Americans to hope. He will win if enough Americans dare to conclude that despite all the evidence to the contrary, and despite our national self-esteem issues, we are worthy of him.

Back on February 20, a couple of weeks before the Ohio and Texas primaries, I wrote (excerpted):

Obama used to knock me out because, unlike every other politician, he didn’t give the same speech every time. His victory and concession speeches seemed freshly conceived for the occasion; they had ideas.

But I caught his act last night, after he won in Wisconsin. He’s now giving the same speech every time.

…The act needs new material.

Today’s Chicago Tribune contains extensive portions of a sit-down Obama had with the editorial board of the paper on March 14. Here’s what Obama has to say, regarding the outcome in Ohio and Texas:

So I actually think that after the 11 victories that we had right before Ohio and Texas, part of what happened was that what I was saying started getting stale because we didn’t have time to step out of it and [ask], “Is what I’m saying true? Am I connecting, getting at the heart of things or is it just becoming performance?” And I think it cost us a little bit…You’re passionate about it, going after it, you’re connecting with people and you’re just right there and then you win, and then there’s just this tendency to sort of just keep on doing the same things.

But the truth is this process is dynamic and you just can’t keep on doing the same thing.

If you go here, you can listen to an audio recording of the full interview.

Whether in print or in audio, Obama in this interview impresses me enormously. His answers are well thought-out and reflect an exceptional intelligence. In fact, the audio probably does him more justice. When you read him on the page, you can find things you might take exception to. When you hear him, you know exactly what he means, and what he means makes sense. (I’ve listened to substantial portions of the 92 minute audio; everything I’ve listened to made this consistent impression. And yes, I now believe him about Tony Rezko.)

Note to The Chicago Tribune: When a story is important enough to be on page one of your print edition, it ought to be somewhere on your web page. Incredibly, this interview isn’t. And trying all the logical submenus doesn’t get you to it either. Only when I typed “Obama interview” into the search box did I get a result that led me to it. Which is fine; I doggedly figured it out. But why demand that people become dogs?

Just because Geraldine Ferraro is for Hillary, she has been hounded into disgrace for saying something that most Barack Obama supporters (if they were honest with themselves) would admit was true.

Obama could not represent the chance for racial reconciliation that he represents if he were white, and this chance for racial reconciliation is a part, a very valid part, of his appeal to both black and white voters.

I’ll admit this prior Ferraro comment (back in 1988, re Jesse Jackson), forwarded to me by Jim Dyer, is a little troubling in the current context. But I still believe David Axelrod (Obama’s campaign manager) knows better than to make Ferraro’s Obama remarks out to be outrageous. It’s clever of him to exploit Ferraro–maybe–but not right.

Added 3/21: Mickey Kaus this morning makes the same point, equating–persuasively–an interview given by Obama endorser John Kerry with the speech made by Ferraro. Both leaders assert that Obama’s race is part of his appeal. The Obama campaign can’t have it both ways, claiming that it’s true when Kerry says it but wrong when Ferraro says it.