The ogre Weinstein is guilty as charged – on two charges, but got off on some others, which apparently were much more serious. Considering how weak the cases looked at trial’s conclusion, let’s be grateful that at least Mr. Weinstein, walker and all, is going to spend at least a few weeks on Rikers Island before sentencing. The image of him creeping around his dingy, smelly cell, while eating bad bologna sandwiches, is a comforting thought.
On a much bigger scale, though, to conclude that his conviction is a turning point for the ‘Me, Too’ movement is, I think, a bit overstated.
I actually believe nothing’s really changed in the dynamic of rich, powerful men taking advantage of their positions to manipulate and plunder women.
Yes, certainly there’s been a great deal of attention as to the manner in which women are exploited in Hollywood and corporate America. But, forgetting Hollywood and business for a moment, the broad culture in this country continues to not only tolerate the boorish, often criminal behavior of men, but even encourage it.
Powerful men in their relationships with women subordinate to them have had it easy, with virtually no disapprobation from anyone for decades, and will not be altering their behavior any time soon. The prospect of taking advantage of beautiful, young women without the chance of dire consequences is just too alluring to ever be eliminated.
Women, too, should know better these days, but I see signs that things in the broader society remain the same: in the Weinstein trial’s initial stages, with the press exuding confidence that the ‘Me-Too’ movement and women’s increasing empowerment were unstoppable forces, a couple of television shows demonstrated that nothing is changing out there in American culture.
I happened to come upon the Golden Globes awards ceremony on television: and, as I looked with jaw agape, women presenters came out on stage in some extremely scanty outfits: a couple of them were wearing an unbuttoned, half-open vest look, without any upper undergarments, so that half their breasts were exposed.
Talk about the ‘male gaze’: guilty as charged, I and millions of other males gazed intently. This scene, right after the opening days of Weinstein’s trial, was so hypocritical. Don’t these women have any awareness that their scandalous attire might create the absolute wrong message to adolescent girls -- and young boys, for that matter? Do these performers think about nothing else but their insipid celebrity and meaningless careers?
Or, on a much bigger scale, what about the half time show of the Super Bowl? 100 million viewers, including millions of young men and women, saw on the halftime show Jennifer Lopez and someone named Shakira dance and sing as if they were performing in a strip club. The act was replete with flashing thighs and crotches. Amazing to see. It was very nearly pornographic. And have we heard a peep of protest from Me-Too advocates such as Rose McGowan or Gloria Allred? Not a whimper. Worse, Ms. Lopez even had the gall to permit her 11-year-old daughter to participate in this prurient and sleazy exhibition!
Evidence, indeed, that nothing’s going to change any time soon. Women will continue to be exploited and mistreated. That criminal behavior is baked into American culture.
Ms Pelosi, What Were You Thinking?..... Nancy Pelosi, until a couple of months ago, seemed to be a very shrewd politician who could navigate her way around quite skillfully any minefields she might encounter. But, my God, she sure failed miserably with the impeachment initiative against President Trump. His popularity now is highest than it’s ever been, and he’s relishing every moment of his triumph. And, worse for Democrats, it’s giving Mr. Trump an opportunity to rub more salt and vinegar into the wounds of his --- once again -- outgunned and flummoxed opponents.
Here’s another factor: the extraordinarily long siege of the Mueller investigation – two years – with finally an anticlimactic verdict of ‘Not Guilty’ exhausted the American public. They were not in a mood to go through that circus again. So, the impeachment hearings and trial on the heels of Mueller didn’t catch the full attention of jaundiced TV viewers, who simply had enough of politicians fighting and acting like nine-year-olds; it just never caught on. The back-to-back juxtaposition of the Mueller and impeachment hearings really hurt the Democrats as they attempted to galvanize an uninterested public.
But, what exactly did the Democrats think they were going to accomplish? The Republican majority in the Senate, frightened by the thought of Trump true-believers who are furious that anyone would disapprove of Trump, and possibly pushing for Trump-backed candidates to run in primaries, was never a threat to vote for his removal from office. My lovely cat Seamus could have told you that six months ago. The Republicans in the Senate are scared sh_tless. [To be honest, I understand their fears.]
And yet there were the Democrats, all earnestly yakking about all the sins of the President and his destruction of American democracy, marching in lockstep to convict the President. The optics just did not work: Pelosi and Schiff lecturing us on American ideals, as if it were a decorous high school debate, while the other side, with its cast of money grubbers, blackmailers, swindlers, conspiracy junkies, holocaust deniers, charlatans, bunko artists, snake oil salesmen, and bag men, outmaneuvered and bludgeoned the Democrats at every juncture.
The Democrats knew they were beat, and beat badly, when, near the end of their dispiriting and humbling defeat, they began beating the drums for the notion that President Trump will not be able to run away from history’s verdict: his ‘legacy’ will be forever tarnished. Bull. Donald Trump does not care one whit about his legacy. To Mr. Trump, it’s all about his net worth. In that reptilian brain of his, if he can’t go to the bank and exchange that legacy for tons of dough, he couldn’t care less. Cashing in on his Presidency is and always has been Mr. Trump’s overriding concern. ‘My legacy? Write me a $1,000 check, and I’ll give you mine.’
It’s Always Deep State’s fault….It was inevitable: as soon as the Justice Department decided to close down an investigation of FBI agent Andrew McCabe, opting not to bring charges up against him, President Trump goes off on the ‘corrupt’ FBI, and decries, in paraphrase, ‘It’s the deep state again.’
Virtually on any matter that the President views as oppositional, the ‘Deep State’ stands accused. Right now, of course, it’s the media’s coverage of the corona virus: it’s the transparency of the Trump lies that is so hard to take; he simply, on cue, trots out the ultimate no-proof, go-to conspiracy, the Deep State.
Let’s examine Mr. Trump’s Deep State a bit more closely: advocates should at least have some evidence of the existence of the group, so bent as they are on world domination and control: for one thing, who exactly are the architects of the Deep State, and where is verifiable proof of their activities? Oh, the Deep Staters assert, we don’t know the answers to that: after all, ‘It’s all done in secret.’
What absolute nonsense: you’re telling me that, say, George Soros, the billionaire industrialist who’s often linked to fanciful machinations of a Deep State, is the mastermind controlling the plot to take over the world? Come on: get real. Hasn’t he got enough on his plate? He’s too busy making oodles of money.
And besides, just imagine Mr. Soros holding a convention of all the leaders of various Deep State cartels intent on running the world. How could there be any consensus among those huge egos how to divide the world up? It’d be worse than herding feral cats.
‘Deep State’ accusations fit Mr. Trump to a T: throw some cockeyed theory out there, without one scintilla of proof. Mr. Trump, who apparently didn’t understand the significance of Pearl Harbor [!] when he visited the site a couple of years ago, doesn’t burden himself with any historical facts, just pure BS. Outlandish conspiracy plots are right up his alley.
In actuality, the Deep State emanates either from really vivid imaginations of some very paranoid individuals, or, more likely, a fable concocted to appeal to extreme right wing zealots, and create momentum for Mr. Trump’s re-election.
Mr. Gripes
March 1, 2020
By Jim Israel
Dementia’s the Rage – We love movies. My readers may recall when Afghanistan was liberated from the Taliban in the aftermath of September 11, white sheets were immediately tacked up on walls in Kabul storefronts – the no-fun Taliban had banned movies – and the movie ‘theaters’ were packed soon after. [Guns, memorably, were checked and lined up along walls in ‘coat rooms.’] Watching movies is one of the most human of pleasures.
Mr. Gripes, like the vast majority of his readers, has seen all kinds of movies. I recall gritty Westerns, with the good guys and bad guys; film noir, in black and white grandeur, highlighted by clever, fedora-clad private eyes and vicious, malevolent criminals; or, how about the magnificent mobster films, like Scorcese’s ‘Casino’, and Coppola’s miraculous ‘Godfather I’ and ‘II’ – perfection both.
Of course, there have been clunkers and disasters: Mr. Gripes recalls in his incipient college years Swedish films were the flavor de jour. Having recently read – albeit not comprehending one sentence – philosophers Kierkegaard and Spinoza, et al, a bunch of us full-of-ourselves, know-it-all collegians one day decided to go down to Times Square [yep – Times Square] and see a ‘deep’ Ingmar Bergman film. He was in vogue at the time. Mr. Bergman must have been a deeply depressed figure, because his movies invariably took place in some unheated log cabin, situated in a dismally cold, remote corner of northern Europe, with about four feet of snow on the ground, a blizzard howling outside. The film’s black and white hues only enhanced the general bleak nature of the story.
And, talk, talk, talk was all the characters did. No action whatsoever, just interminable, indecipherable, lugubrious talk. Nothing could have been less appealing to maxed-out-on-testosterone nineteen-year-olds.
When we left the theatre after a couple of hours of agony, my friend Bob S. turned to me, and said, ‘What the f____ was that?’ My sentiments exactly: Mr. Gripes hasn’t seen one frame of a Bergman movie since.
I bring up that sad saga now, because there’s been a number of uni-themed movies coming out lately that leave Mr. Gripes thoroughly perplexed – we’ll call it the school of ‘dementia’ cinema: I have just one question: Why?
Why on earth would the great moguls, movers and creative geniuses in Hollywood make movies about Alzheimer’s? It makes no sense.
I’m not going to bore my readers with a recitation of the particulars of Alzheimer’s. Someone in your family has probably dealt with the disease already, and you may have been involved in the direct or indirect care of that family member. I certainly have: my father died of early onset of Alzheimer’s [probably due to brain damage initiated by an amateur boxing career of 165 fights, with no head gear, all before the age of 23] and my mother, still here at 103, has been in the final stages of the disease for 15 years. There’s nothing at all enlightening about observing progressive, inevitable brain deterioration.
And, there’s nothing remotely cinematic, dramatic, and gripping – whatever adjective you choose – about Alzheimer’s. In reality, the disease meanders along slowly, and, one by one, the brain functions that make us human disappear. For the immediate family, especially for the primary caregiver, as the disease progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to care for the afflicted person. [My father became more and more cantankerous, and he became almost impossible for my mother to handle.]
Before I go further, I confess I have not seen ‘Still Alice’, a recent movie about a middle-aged woman suddenly afflicted with Alzheimer’s; Julianne Moore won an Oscar for her portrayal. I did see one such film a while back, though: ‘Iris,’ about the poet Iris Murdoch and her struggles with the Alzheimer’s disease.
I will not see ‘Still Alice’ for one fundamental reason: whatever is put up there on the screen as the ‘story’ is not the truth. It can’t be. For one thing, these movies, as far as I can tell, always have a perfect supporting cast for the ‘patient’: perfect kids, perfect job [Ms. Moore, in fact, has a cushy job as tenured professor at Columbia University], and a wonderful, loving, sacrificial, and, let’s be honest, not-to-be-believed spouse. And, when does Alice come to grips with Alzheimer’s for the first time? Walking on the esplanade of the Columbia campus, one of the great repositories of Western knowledge, where – get it? -- human experience, memory and thought are treasured assets, precisely the attributes that the disease will slowly wrest from Alice. Oh, the irony -- about as subtle as a sledgehammer, eh? The gilded Hollywood gloss of this film to heighten the cinematic experience of the viewer is inherently false and dishonest. It’s a lie.
Movies generally are thematically built around redemption, hope, and, end, in a lot of cases, happily. Alzheimer’s disease is all about the erosion and eradication of the human spirit. Hollywood should stick with what it knows - Alzheimer’s is too sad and too tragic to be trifled with.
The Beatles, Without Genuflection – A couple of months ago, sitting placidly in Madison Square Garden, between games of a college-basketball doubleheader, listening idly to music blasting throughout the arena, not paying particular attention to any of it, I suddenly sat straight up in my seat, transfixed. I was hearing, at a decibel level exquisitely cacophonous and raucous, ‘I Saw Her Standing There,’ by the Beatles.
It was joyous…that gorgeous rock ‘n roll beat relentlessly washing over the whole arena. ‘…Standing There’ is, to Mr. Gripes, a perfect rock and roll song: no pretensions other than pure, pulsating, urgent, noisy, chaotic, juke-joint music. Hearing that song and that kind of music – this sounds ridiculous, I know – soothes the inevitably distressed soul of Mr. Gripes.
The song, written in 1963 at the beginning of the Beatles’ incredible run, was on the ‘B’ side of their biggest hit, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ another superb rock ‘n roll song. Both were inspired, according to Paul McCartney, by the real king of rock and roll, Buddy Holly. In fact, Mr. McCartney has said the first fifteen songs he and John Lennon wrote were all attempts to emulate Mr. Holly. The Beatles, when they had the mind to do it, could write peerless, undiluted rock.
Alas, Mr. Gripes – and he understands his opinion may be his alone – thinks the Beatles soon lost their way, and were ultimately a huge disappointment. They could have created a library of some of the best rock and roll ever; their instincts and talents were that superlative. It didn’t happen.
Sure, just glancing at the Beatles 1963-65 ‘book’ of music, I’m struck at the richness and power of most of the songs: ‘All My Loving’; ‘Any Time At All;’ ‘Ask Me Why’; ‘Back in the USSR’; ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’; ‘Eight Days A Week’; ‘I Call Your Name’, or ‘I’m Happy Just to Dance With You’. And there’s a lot more than these.
But, after the early years, the Beatles either got ‘cute’ or simply lost interest in rock and roll. One theory of mine is that John Lennon, certainly a complicated man to start with, got increasingly uncomfortable with the group process, and became estranged; his surely caustic displeasure led to the eventual evisceration of the group’s cohesion.
Drugs, especially psychedelics, certainly could have played a part in the dissolution of the Beatles’ collective genius, too. As well, fame and renown ‘killed’ the Beatles: everywhere they went people were telling them how cosmically ‘significant’ the group’s music had become; consequently, the Beatles may have begun to try too strenuously to create ‘important’ music. And, that’s a killer as far as creativity is concerned.
Just take a look at the Beatles songs composed after 1966-67: most of it, to this rock and roll purist, is rubbish, and, in fact, will not even be heard 25 years from now. Songs like: ‘Rocky Raccoon’; ‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Streets’; ‘Strawberry Fields’; ‘Revolution’ [awful: compare it to the Rolling Stones’ rebel yell, ‘Street Fighting Man’]; ‘Octopus’s Garden’; ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’; ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, and, yep, even ‘Norwegian Wood’. Plenty of others, too: all throwaway tunes.
From the creators of ‘I Feel Fine’, we get, five years later, ‘I Am the Walrus.’ Dear readers, Mr. Gripes rests his case.
Iran: Are You Nuts, Senators? – At the conclusion of last month’s ‘Mr. Gripes’ column, I vowed, ‘No, no more Iran. I’ve beaten that tired horse half to death.’ A promise I can’t keep, I’m afraid.
You see, readers, Iran, Israel, nuclear negotiations, Obama, centrifuges, Netanyahu, the American Congress, 2016 Presidential politics, they’re all intertwined, with developments shifting all the time. Mr. Gripes has following foreign affairs closely since he was 15 years old, and the Iran-America-[Israel] nuclear talks going on currently are particularly convoluted and fascinating.
Take this for instance: I open up the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago, and read that Israel has utilized agents to spy on the Iran-US negotiations in Zurich, amassing intelligence data successfully, and subsequently sharing that information with Republicans in the United States Senate. The Republicans then used the purloined information to formulate their opposition to the Obama Administration’s negotiations with the Iranians over a suspension of their nuclear program.
No longer am I generally astonished at anything I see in the morning papers, but when I read this, I almost fell off the living room sofa, freaking out a dozing cat. What?!? Are they nuts!?! Are Republicans so dead-set against Obama – ‘hate’ is not too strong a word -- and anything he tries to accomplish that they’d accept classified – and, yes, it’s classified, alright – intelligence from a foreign power, without permission from the executive branch, and use that information to sabotage negotiations concurrently going on between this country and a foreign enemy? From here, it sure as hell looks that way.
Accountability for one’s actions in this country no longer is a guiding tenet –that ceased to exist a long time ago. But, if in fact our elected senators and representatives were held to the intent and letter of our sedition statutes, those Republican Senators who saw those intelligence reports would be branded ‘traitors.’ With information they have no right to possess, they’re interfering with the President of the United States from carrying out his international duties. As I sit here writing this piece, I’m still cannot get over the temerity of those senators.
Someone else about this issue has piqued my curiosity: why does a Senator from, say, Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma care so fervently about the State of Israel? [Or about any other country, for that matter.] Don’t get me wrong: of course Israel has a right to exist, but you can’t tell me that an elected representative from the middle of America can be so exorcised over another country. Politicians can talk, talk, talk publicly about ‘standing firm,’ but in the real world, [see: ‘House of Cards’, of which Bill Clinton said, ‘99% of that show is true.’] they could care less. They’re all about political edge, risk/award, advantage, and brass-knuckled combat; they’re too calculating, too ‘realpolitik,’ too cynical to quibble over ‘principles.’
So , let’s forget the hallowed ‘principles’ angle: there’s a more important element in all of this: Cold Cash. …Money…. Political Donors… Re-election. That’s the nub of it. My guess is that a ton of money from somewhere is pouring into the coffers of Republican Senators who support Netanyahu and are dead-set against this treaty. And, please, I’m not talking about a ‘Jewish conspiracy.’ All I’m saying is a lot of money must be gushing in the form of political contributions from some advocacy lobbying groups. I’d start looking into the contributions of that casino owner, Sheldon Adelson, in Las Vegas, and go from there. Big money will turn the heads of all politicians. We all know that.
Republicans, however, may have miscalculated, again, and shot themselves in their collective rear ends, again: a recent poll indicates that 59% of Americans favor negotiations with Iran. It’s evident that most Americans, despite all the grandstanding and the bizarre, imbecilic behavior emanating from the United States Congress, comprehend that the consequences of failed negotiations will be, down the line, another American war in the Middle East. And, Americans most assuredly don’t want their sons and daughters dying in that godforsaken part of the world ever again.
Jim Israel
Mr. Gripes
April 6, 2015
