Trailer Park: Oliver Stone’s ‘W.’

The buzz keeps building for the Oct. 17 release of “W,” Oliver Stone’s sure-to-be-original take on the life and times of President George W. Bush. The release of the official trailer for the film is likely to ratchet up the anticipation even more, especially since it cleverly plays against expectations.



There are no upside-down American flags in flames, no rapid-fire montage of Iraq-war footage interspersed with #43’s pronouncements from the Oval Office … the kind of thing we’ve come to expect from Stone, a flame-throwing cinematic provocateur if there ever was one. Instead we get glimpses of a younger, restless, inebriate, itinerant George Bush in training to be himself, much of it done to the strains of “What a Wonderful World.”

This is likely to be Stone’s way of underpromising and overdelivering. The man is more than capable of surprises. Look at how "Alexander" turned out; people were expecting something like "Spartacus," he gave them something closer to "Caligula." No one in Hollywood or anywhere else really expects a by-the-book biopic of this president. Not three weeks before the election. Watch for more trailers — and fireworks — to come.

Wall Street Journal gets the skinny on stupid

Just when it appeared the Republican attack machine in the service of Sen. John McCain can’t get any more outlandish in its ad hominem attacks on Sen. Barack Obama, the GOP’s pit bulls and their proxies in the conservative press manage to drop through the floor of low expectations.

The latest Republican journey to cloud-cuckooland has resulted in a real piece of work in The Wall Street Journal, crown-jewel mouthpiece of owner and media Goliath Rupert Murdoch, a "story" that explores a new reason why Obama is not suited for the presidency:

In a phrase, he’s too skinny.

From a Friday piece in the Journal by “reporter” Amy Chozick:

“Speaking to donors at a San Diego fund-raiser last month, Barack Obama reassured the crowd that he wouldn't give in to Republican tactics to throw his candidacy off track,” Chozick writes.

“’Listen, I'm skinny but I'm tough,’ Sen. Obama said.

“But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.”

The takeaway from this idiotic political insinuation is that Obama’s physique makes him too elitist to be president of the United States.

You can’t make this crap up. But no — actually you can. Amy Chozick did.

Not long after her outburst appeared in the Journal, the blogosphere was abuzz with a priceless update: Chozick herself had invented the story’s premise after raising the issue in a Yahoo! message board:

Is Obama too skinny to be president?
15-Jul-08 06:04 pm

Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his “no excess body fat”? Please let me know. Thanks!

Making this act of journalistic solicitation all the more ridiculous is that the Onion News Network, the video spinoff of the wildly successful Onion satiric newsmagazine, tackled the issue of relating candidates' weight and voter appeal as a parody six months ago.



There was, mercifully, at least a shred of real reporting in the Journal story. Chozick quotes Obama's Chicago physician David Scheiner, as saying “the senator works out regularly, jogs up to three miles a day when he can, and has ‘no excess body fat.’"

“Dr. Scheiner didn't disclose his patient's exact weight, but medical observers estimate that the 6-foot-1.5-inch-tall senator appears to weigh at least 10 pounds less than the roughly 190 pounds that the average American man of his height weighs,” Chozick wrote.

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But the underlying thrust of Chozick’s piece is an attempt to put distance between Obama and the American public on the weakest pretext one could imagine. Never mind the jogging regimen of President Bush. Never mind the attention Republicans religiously paid to the vigor of Ronald Reagan in his run for the presidency.

Never mind the conversion of former Arkansas Gov. and Krispy Kreme enthusiast Mike Huckabee to a low-fat diet that resulted in his celebrated loss of 110 pounds. Never mind the beneficial impact Obama’s personal example could have on the millions of Americans who are overweight or obese, facing the real dangers of diabetes and heart attacks. And never mind McCain’s apparent predilection for a training diet including Butterfinger candy bars, jelly beans, and coffee and doughnuts from Dunkin' Donuts. Obama’s unfit because … he’s too fit.

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As you might expect, the blogs are all over this one, with shots cheap and otherwise:

Parisienne Dreams at The Daily Kos: “So, would it be fair to say that [McCain] is too handicapped to be President since he can't lift his arms over his head?! And since he can't do that, I've been asking myself, how the hell does McCain bathe? Does Cindy wash him?? Ewwwww, gross, I just got a visual …”

Joe, posting at SadlyNo: “I actually e-mailed Amy at her WSJ address and basically told her that anyone writing an article such as “Too Fit To Be President?” and isn’t SUPREMELY embarrassed by it has something quite wrong with them. Now that I see her crackerjack reporting skills in action, I’m the one who is embarrassed. In her defense — maybe she’s 12 years old? Like, you know, she was given a prime spot in the weekend WSJ because she won a junior high school contest or something. That would certainly explain a lot.”

MarcC, writing a post at the TV blog of the Kansas City Star: “Here we have a Wall Street Journal reporter plagiarizing an Onion story, trolling for comments on the Internet, and then publishing it as a serious news story with no acknowledgment that she did either. Amazing!

All in all, It shows just how desperate the McCain crew and its journalistic enablers in fabrication really are. And despite the story’s comedic underpinnings, Chozick’s story reflects a sad comedown for the Journal, once one of the nation’s two or three preeminent news organizations, with an unassailable reputation.

It’s proof (as if any more were needed now) that The Wall Street Journal could do with a little more weight of its own. “Weight” as in heft. As in gravitas. As in seriousness about covering the issues that really matter. Think that’ll happen?

Fat chance.
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Image credits: Obama: MCC Eric A. Clement, USN (public domain). Wall Street Journal page: © 2008 The Wall Street Journal. Burger plate: John Sullivan, released to public domain. Fat guy: Aspen04, released to public domain

Obama's hiphop tango: Consequences of a courtship

“You always hurt the one you love.” The song’s been in the American songbook for generations. The Mills Brothers covered it during World War II; the pop evergreen has been covered by everyone from Spike Jones to Peggy Lee. But probably as many people embrace the title’s wise irony as know the song itself. Sen. Barack Obama is one of them.



For almost two years now, the Illinois senator has been the beneficiary of the support of Christopher (Ludacris) Bridges, the Grammy-winning hip-hop artist, producer and emerging actor whose forthright street style and topical broadsides have garnered sales in the multimillions. In 2006, in the runup to his presidential campaign, and as a bid for some needed street cred, Obama met with Ludacris to talk over strategies for empowering younger voters.

Their relationship, already expedient, just got more complicated. On Wednesday, Ludacris released a video of his latest song, “Politics,” on YouTube. By all accounts, it’s straight-up Luda firing on all cylinders, with shots at Sen. Hillary Clinton, President Bush and Sen. John McCain, Obama’s presidential challenger. In a corrosive two minutes and change, Ludacris calls Clinton an “irrelevant [bitch],” posits McCain in a wheelchair, calls Bush “mentally handicapped … You’re the worst of 43 presidents,” and summons America to “paint the White House black” with the election of Obama in November.

The Obama campaign, adept at fast damage control, launched countermeasures quickly. Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton told The Politico, "As Barack Obama has said many, many times in the past, rap lyrics today too often perpetuate misogyny, materialism and degrading images that he doesn't want his daughters or any children exposed to. This song is not only outrageously offensive to Senator Clinton, Senator McCain and President Bush, it is offensive to all of us who are trying to raise our children with the values we hold dear. While Ludacris is a talented individual, he should be ashamed of these lyrics."

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Less easily resolved is the issue of generational reach; Obama needs the support of the millions of voters, black and white alike, for whom Ludacris is a simpatico social and political voice. The 45 million registered voters between 25 and 44 — a cohort that’s almost certainly right in Luda’s demographic sweet spot for sales — are vital to Obama’s chances to attain the presidency. This latest diss of Luda’s world view can’t help Obama’s relationship with younger voters for whom hip-hop matters, deeply.

The Obama-Ludacris situation reveals one of the ironies of the Obama presidential campaign and its bid for broad appeal: that his speaking truth to power would go up against that of one of his most ardent — and necessary — supporters. Luda will of course say that he and Obama are in lockstep on one truth basic to politics and business: You never forget your loyal constituents. You never turn your back on your base.

But there’s the challenge for Obama: figuring how to appeal to a younger, culturally adventurous and frighteningly intelligent segment of the American electorate without scaring off the wider range of voters — many of whom are still terrified of and confused by hip-hop culture and its drive-by velocity into the mainstream of American life. The conservatives have been only too ready to exploit that fear.



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That wider range of voters forms the base of Obama’s support; and it seems that a détente is possible between Obama and the Luda demographic. Hiphop impresario Russell Simmons endorsed Obama in March. And in the June 12 edition of The Stranger, a Seattle alternative weekly, writer Charles Mudede interviewed a group of Seattle rap artists, and found a consensus that could be true of hiphop artists in general: Even though some were late getting on the Obama train, they’re very much on board now.

Thig, half of the Seattle hiphop duo the Physics, told Mudede: “As a person of color, I think it’s just plain crazy that someone can transcend race in this country. But that’s what just happened and it surprised the hell out of me that [white] people could look beyond color …

“When I went to my caucus, there was like two black people there. And the white people were hella pumped — Obama hats, Obama buttons, Obama this, Obama that. It’s like we are on the brink of going beyond race … I know America will not change overnight, but it’s still damn impressive.”

And Jace, of Seattle’s Silent Lambs Project, observed that Obama’s campaign means “change is now on a higher level … It’s not just: I can change the way I dress, I can change my ideology. It’s: Look at this brother who’s about to be president of the United States, with a beautiful wife and children, and he hasn’t changed. And he’s the most celebrated individual in this country. So what he’s showing brothers is: There is another way to do this. You can still be cool, still have your street cred, still have a beautiful woman, still make money — all that shit that you envy, you can do it now in a way that is right.”

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How the controversy over Luda’s “Politics” changes things, or even if it does, remains to be seen. Some are already saying it’s no big damn deal. “Hip-hoppers and black folks understand the game,” Jeff Johnson, an activist and host of an upcoming BET news and public affairs show, told The Associated Press. “They're thinking, ‘An Obama who knows how to play the game is still better for me than a McCain.’”

“There are a ton of people who clearly are looking for [Obama] to denounce this in order to continue to view him as credible,” Johnson said. “He, for political purposes, has to separate himself from anything controversially black.”

And John McWhorter, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute — a conservative think tank — told The AP that "I'm not aware of hip-hop music affecting any election so far, and I don't think that this is going to be one, either," McWhorter is a supporter of Obama.

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Ironically enough, there’s thinking that hiphop, so famously ahead of the curve — if not defining what the curve is — was caught off guard by the ascendancy of Obama. The Stranger’s Mudede observed that “hiphop, at a mainstream level, did not see Obama coming, and this might be a sign of its age or its loss of relevance. From 50 Cent to RZA, support famously went to Hillary Clinton’s run at the office. Hiphop missed the future.”

Hiphop and Team Obama appear to be narrowing their differences fast, the better to thwart the possibility of yet another intraracial divide: Obama’s allegiance to Hiphop Nation is every bit as much a generational issue as Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. For Obama, both raise questions over how best to wade in the mainstream — how best not to be portrayed as “controversially black.”

No small thing when (as hiphop has made clear for a generation, and American race relations has made clear forever) to be black in the United States is to be born controversial.
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Image credits: Ludacris: PA2 Anastasia Burns, U.S. Coast Guard (public domain). The Stranger cover: © 2008 The Stranger.

One war, two equations

If you thought the wild variables and complete unpredictabilities of the 2008 presidential campaign just don’t add up … you’re wrong. Turns out that this political season, like everything else under the sun, gives way to the science of mathematics (in an equation you may not understand any more than some of the politicians who’ve been running for the presidency).

We have no idea how they got them, but John Dickerson and Chris Wilson of Slate have devised “mathematical formulas based on … public statements” of Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, formulas that seem to distill the candidates’ Iraq-war policies with a refreshing absence of spin, in the unemotional language of math.

On the matter of withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, Obama and McCain are, mathematically speaking, not so far apart.

It’s too complicated to reproduce here; see the whole formula in the Slate story.

Despite their apparent similarity on extracting our 140,000 combat troops from Iraq, there are two inescapable constants:

(1) The 16-month timetable Obama has maintained for months is both credible and achievable is a time frame McCain resisted, then more recently endorsed — a tacit agreement with his challenger. Does Obama get extra credit for being first with the idea?

(2) The war that made that timetable necessary was supported by McCain from the start, a fact that would seem to undercut the functionality of his formula at the outset. Does McCain lose points for a logical conclusion emanating from a faulty premise?

Most Americans’ math skills aren’t that good; it’s hard enough for most of us to balance a checkbook and keep up with the elusive variable of the price of a gallon of gas. But American voters will prove or disprove the two formulas in November.

Until then, note the observation of Albert Einstein on the tenuous relationship between math and what we think is real. Then add politics to the equation: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
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Image credits: All in the public domain.

Swift Boat, the sequel (in two parts)

Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water … the conservative shipsmiths and toolmakers who launched the Swift boat that helped torpedo John Kerry’s chances for the presidency are about to smash bottles of Champagne against the bows of two new Swift boats. Target: Barack Obama.

Media Matters reports today that two books will be released on Friday and on Aug. 4. One, “The Obama Nation,” was written by Jerome Corsi, co-author of “Unfit for Command,” the hit job on Kerry’s military record. The other, “The Case Against Barack Obama,” was written by David Freddoso, a writer for National Review Online. The Politico reported in June that Freddoso learned reporting “at the knee” of syndicated conservative columnist Robert Novak, and worked for Novak as a political reporter on the “Evans-Novak Political Report.”

The books lay claim to taking a hard, sober look at Obama as a candidate. Another examination of Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is expected, as well as a look at Obama as the beneficiary of a “cult of personality” (no doubt with all deliberate suggestion of Benito Mussolini). Regnery Publishing president and publisher Marjory Ross told The Politico on June 23 that Freddoso’s book will offer “a comprehensive, factual look at Obama.” But for Media Matters, this forthcoming assault from a writer and publishers with a history of archly conservative views and dubious journalistic principles means one thing: It’s gut-check time for the mainstream press.

From Media Matters:

“The overt connections between the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's scurrilous campaign against Kerry and the two forthcoming books raise the question for the media: Will they have absorbed the lessons of their highly flawed Swift Boat coverage and give more immediate and more thorough scrutiny to these forthcoming books??”

Media Matters refers, of course, to the curiously slow pivot made in the 2004 campaign by the mainstream press in response to the relentless impugning of Kerry’s military record, his personal character and his fitness for command. Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen again.

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There’s every reason to believe it shouldn’t happen again. Regnery, which will publish the Freddoso book, has a long history of publishing books with an ardently conservative line — from publishing “God and Man at Yale,” William F. Buckley’s first book, and a biography of John Birch in the 1950’s, to releasing two books on Bill Clinton, one of which linked him without proof to a series of tragedies during his presidency. Then came the Kerry character assassination.

Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will produce Corsi’s book. The company’s books are loudly promoted on the Web site of conservative analyst and former Bush deputy campaign manager Mary Matalin, and Threshold published “An Inconvenient Book” by Glenn Beck, CNN’s conservative talk-show host.

With warnings like that, the mainstream press can’t say it hasn’t been warned, can’t say it was caught off guard by what’s likely to be rhetorical mudslinging of a low order.

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What can’t be overlooked is something these books and their next-to-last-minute appearance announces: the ferocity of attacks on Obama only reveals how little there’s been to bolster the political fortunes of Sen. John McCain. With the erosion of McCain’s campaign planking of national security matters and conduct of the Iraq war, and his relative absence on matters tied to the economy, there’s little else to do except tear down McCain’s opponent.

The Swift boat strategy bears the smell of desperation, of a last chance at extracting by deception a victory it hasn’t earned in the public square, or the public mind. The mainstream press can, just maybe, slow the tidal decline of regard in that public mind by evaluating the truthfulness of these books quickly — and being as relentless in exposing their flaws and questioning their shortcomings as their authors and publishers will be in promoting the books that bear them.

The Swift boat technique is known for attacks on candidates. It’d be a shame if this time, the press’ reputation suffered the collateral damage.
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Image credit: Obama: Frogster, republished under GNU Free Documentation License. Unfit for Command cover: ©2004 Regnery Publishing.

Restart me up: Mick Jagger at 65

“What a drag it is getting old,” Michael Philip Jagger told us in 1966, more than half a lifetime ago. In the two generations that followed, Jagger and his band, the Rolling Stones have redefined not just rock music but also the idea of cultural longevity. Despite record sales that have increasingly declined over the years, Jagger and the Stones have carved out a niche in pop culture that reflects a staying power beyond the music that made them famous (they’ve just changed recording labels again).

The fact of Mick Jagger’s 65th birthday on Saturday speaks to relatively clean living, despite the occupational hazards of his profession. The fact that he’s still very much on the A-list of pop culture says as much about that culture, and our rapidly shifting ideas about age and vitality, as it says about him.

We’ve all heard the phrase “40 is the new 30,” or some variation thereof (“50's the new 40,” “30's the new 19” … whatever). The takeaway from that elastic saying is that growing knowledge of nutrition, exercise and any number of advances in medical technology have effectively rolled back the clock on the corrosive impact of age.

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For Jagger, it seems, 65 may be the new 50. As the father of seven children — five of them sired after he was 40 years old — Jagger’s never exactly respected the idea of slowing down.

In his day job as lead singer for the Stones, Jagger still has much of the onstage energy he exhibited in his earliest years with the band, which started in 1962. Part of it is his own longstanding embrace of physical fitness; part of it is genetic (his father Joe, a former phys ed teacher, died in 2006 at the age of 93); and part of it may be the various, uh, pharmaceutical enhancements common to the rock-star lifestyle.


Whatever combination of genes, inclination and plain old dumb luck may be in play, Jagger’s 65th birthday is obviously a cause for celebration for him, and also for us. With Jagger as a barometer, it seems the age of 65 isn’t necessarily the walkup to death’s door our youth-besotted culture has always insisted it is.

So raise a glass or three to Sir Mick. He said it was a drag getting old at the age of 23. He didn’t know what “old” was, back then, and he probably won’t admit to knowing what “old” is today.

Maybe “old” is as much a state of mind as anything else. Maybe time’s on our side too.
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Image credit: Jagger: AskMen.com. Jagger onstage: Gonzalo Andres, republished under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.