Compassionate Curmudgeon

Repeat something often enough...

I've been reading Vincent Bugliosi's excellent Reclaiming History over the past few days and have found myself engrossed in it.

His central thesis, that Oswald, acting alone, killed JFK and there was no conspiracy, is one that I've subscribed to ever since the Warren Commission Report was released, and over the years I've grown increasingly impatient with the quacks, loonies, and frauds who have been peddling outlandish theories about the assassination.

But there is one idea that is so widely believed that even I have come to embrace it unthinkingly: that the Dallas Police Department displayed uncommon ineptitude during those four days in November, 1963. It turns out that if you repeat something often enough, people start to believe it. (Like the idea that our news media are overwhelmingly liberal, for example, but I digress.)

Following along with Bugliosi as the police investigate the killings of John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit, I can't see that they made any major mistakes. The only thing that comes close, in my opinion, is a police officer's failure to secure the Texas Book Depository building immediately after an eyewitness, who was standing directly across from the window where Oswald fired the shots that killed JFK, comes forward. But even that is understandable in the confusion and chaos of those first few moments.

But overall the Dallas police did an excellent job in those first twelve hours after the shooting.

Here is how Bugliosi puts it on page 182:

The Dallas police have done an incredible, some would even say an impossible job over the just the last eleven and a half hours. In that short span since the president's murder, they have apprehended the man they believe is responsible, and amassed evidence against him that is destined to withstand years of intense scrutiny. Despite the thousands of government man-hours yet to come, the basis of the case against Oswald is collected and assembled by the Dallas police in these first crucial hours. It is a feat the world would soon forget.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just had my traditional Thanksgiving meal, pan-fried tilapia in a garlic ginger sauce with rice and broccoli.

OK, so that's not really my traditional Thanksgiving meal, but it's close enough!

Redacted

I watched Brian De Palma's new movie Redacted this morning (HDNet featured a sneak preview of it last evening).

De Palma is one of my favorite directors, but I had found his Casualties of War, which has essentially the same story but takes place during the United States' war in Vietnam, very hard to watch, so I wasn't even sure I wanted to see Redacted.

I'm glad I did. Redacted is De Palma's crowning achievement in cinema. It's a fictionalized story based upon a real event of some American soldiers raping and killing a teenage girl and her family last year in Iraq. Given the incendiary topic, it's no wonder that it has stirred up some controversy.

De Palma shaped his film like a documentary with a cast of completely unknown actors, so it feels very real indeed. Actually there are two documentaries interwoven with each other. One is being made by an American soldier who has dreams of working in the movie business when he gets out of Iraq; he takes his camcorder with him and films his buddies in an effort to show the truth about the Iraq war. The other documentary is a French film that captures some of the same scenes but from the Iraqis' points of view. There is also some footage from security cameras, interrogation scenes, etc.

While some of the film is very heavy viewing, De Palma lets most of the worst horrors occur just out of view of the camera's lens.

The movie starts out slowly showing the boring routine that the soldiers go through day after day. The tension begins to rise when the American soldiers find it difficult to communicate with the Iraqi people. At an automobile checkpoint Iraqis sometimes mistake the American's hand sign for "stop" to be a friendly greeting. Tragic violence ensues, and an innocent Iraqi is killed. Then an American is killed by a hidden bomb. And then everything goes to hell.

De Palma and the film's producers like Mark Cuban are taking some heat from the idiots on the Right (like talk show blowhard Bill O'Reilly) for allegedly making an un-American movie, but it's nothing of the sort. It tries to depict and be fair to all sides, and it that it succeeds.

Highly recommended.

Worst Person in Philadelphia

Just got back from the voting booth. Voting was especially sweet this time as I got to vote "no" to the Worst Person in Philadelphia.