'UNITED 93' vs. 'MUNICH' (Paul Greengrass--thank the stars--is no Steven Spielberg)

5.09.06 | Mia T

[Mia T]

'UNITED 93' vs. 'MUNICH'
Paul Greengrass--thank the stars--is no Steven Spielberg

by Mia T, 5.09.06

 

hereas both 'United 93' and 'Munich' derive their initial tension not from uncertainty but from what we already know, one movie remains scrupulously true to the facts--art in the service of history--while the other quickly devolves into a verisimilitudinous contrivance in the service of a director's political agenda.

Paradoxically--poetic justice in its purest form, some would say--the honest movie is the one that ultimately delivers the powerful political message.

Spoken by its heros--our heros--as they prepare to rush the cockpit, shortly before the plane meant for the White House plunges into a Pennsylvania field instead, the simple but powerful words are these:

• "No one is going to help us. We've got to do it ourselves."
  

• "We have to do it now. We know what happens if we just sit here and do nothing...."
  

CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE WORST KIND

January 9, 2006
Reviewer: miat22 (Mia T)

... to borrow a phrase, perversely, from a Spielberg flick about benign intelligence.

Munich, with its false premises, phony pieties and outright lies -- Spielberg fantasy wrapped in sober documentary -- is a verisimilitudinous contrivance that is pernicious, especially now, especially here, especially if we understand Spielberg's real motivation.

Truth matters not at all to Spielberg, and courage matters even less. To advance his fallacious argument, he has Golda Meir speak words she never said, never would have said and, obviously, cannot now disavow. Posthumous misappropriation is a preferred tactic of the abject coward.

Munich is less about Meir avenging the Munich massacre than it is about Bush waging the War on Terror. The historical Munich allusion of appeasement, self-loathing and psychologizing that is practiced so fastidiously by the American Left today is key to understanding Spielberg.

The core of his anti-war argument: By fighting back, we become our enemy. Ironically, with Munich, the same can now be said of Spielberg.

Is Spielberg humanizing the terrorist really any different from Riefenstahl humanizing Hitler? If anything, Spielberg is more contemptible. Whereas Riefenstahl symbolizes the naïve actress and director who is induced to deal with devils, Spielberg is self-actuated and aware.

Hollywood is DreamWorks, fantastical and unthinking and solipsistic by definition.

To mitigate its danger, people capable of critical thinking must take on Hollywood... and must do so in Hollywood venues.

The printed word, sad to say, no longer carries the day.



My New York Times Review of Munich
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COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006

 

UNITED 93:THE CLINTON-9/11 NEXUS
"We have to do it now. We know what happens if we just sit here and do nothing...."



CLINTON: 'Can we kill 'em tomorrow?'
(+ Albright-Fulbright-Nobel TERRORISM revelations)

by Mia T, 4.24.06

LISTEN CAREFULLY TO THE AUDIO: Fulbrighters' gasps of horror follow clinton's "I always asked the same question for eight years, 'Can we kill 'em tomorrow?'  I don't think we can bring 'em back tomorrow, but can we kill 'em tomorrow?  If we can kill them tomorrow, then we're not weak...."

I suspect the horror was provoked not by the (proven) fecklessness and recklessness and rigidity and danger of the purported clinton 'terrorism policy' or even by the absurdity of the argument; I suspect the gasps of horror were in response, rather, to the Kill-Bill kind of violence (albeit "virtual") contained in bill clinton's words.

God save us from people who do the morally right thing. It's always the rest of us who get broken in half.

--Paddy Chayefsky

 

And God save us from the morally unencumbered clintons, who get us broken in half nonetheless. --Mia T

'Can we kill 'em tomorrow?' THE ADDRESS	THE (oops!) TRUTH
"In this interdependent world, we should still have a preference for peace over war.... But sometimes we would have these debates where people would say, if I didn't take some military action this very day, people would look down their nose at America and think we were weak.  And I always thought of Senator Fulbright.... 6 So anytime somebody said in my presence, 'Hey, if you don't do this, people will think you're weak,' I always asked the same question for eight years, 'Can we kill 'em tomorrow?'  I don't think we can bring 'em back tomorrow, but can we kill 'em tomorrow?  If we can kill them tomorrow, then we're not weak.... 1 I learned that as a 20-year-old kid watching Bill Fulbright.  Listening." bill clinton Fulbright Prize address April 12, 2006	"Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in '91 and he went to the Sudan. We'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. They released him [bin Laden]. At the time, '96, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have; but they thought it was a hot potato. They didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan." bill clinton Sunday, Aug. 11, 2002 Clinton Reveals on Secret Audio: I Nixed Bin Laden Extradition Offer "I remember exactly what happened. Bruce Lindsey said to me on the phone, 'My God, a second plane has hit the tower.' And I said, 'Bin Laden did this.' that's the first thing I said. He said, 'How can you be sure?' I said 'Because only bin Laden and the Iranians could set up the network to do this and they [the Iranians] wouldn't do it because they have a country in targets. Bin Laden did it.' I thought that my virtual obsession 2 with him was well placed and I was full of regret that I didn't get him." bill clinton Sunday, Sept 3, 2002 Larry King Live "You know... the job which we should have done 1... which should have been our primary focus, to find [you know] bin Laden and eliminate al Qaeda." hillary clinton Saturday, Jan. 28, 2006 Chitchat with Jane Pauley San Francisco, CA
... I thank you for this award, even though, in general, I think former presidents and presidents should never get awards.  I was delighted when Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize because I thought he earned it, and I thought it was great because he got it as much for what he did after office as when he was in office.  In general, I think that the fact that we got to be president is quite honor enough. bill clinton Fulbright Prize address April 12, 2006	"Bill Clinton is still campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize. But for now, he'll just have to settle for "the political play of the week." Bill Schneider CNN reporting on the Fulbright Prize April 14, 2006       WASHINGTON -- Two Norwegian public-relations executives and one member of the Norwegian Parliament say they were contacted by the White House to help campaign for President Clinton to receive this year's Nobel Peace Prize for his work in trying to negotiate peace in the Middle East. Clinton Lobbies for Nobel Prize: What a Punk White House Lobbied For Clinton Nobel Peace Prize Updated Friday, October 13, 2000 By Rita Cosby       There's been speculation in the last few months that Clinton was pursuing a Mideast peace accord in an effort to win the prize and secure his legacy as president. AIDES PUSH CLINTON FOR THE NOBEL       At the time, clinton observed: "I made more progress in the Middle East than I did between Socks and Buddy." Retrospectively, it is clear that clinton's characterization was not correct. Mia T Buddy Death Report Raises More Questions Than It Answers

 

I M P E A C H M E N T
h e a r --c l i n t o n --l o s e --i t


by Mia T, 11.11.05

This legacy confab is in and of itself proof certain of clinton's deeply flawed character, and a demonstration in real time of the way in which the clinton years were about a legacy that was incidentally a presidency.

Madeleine Albright captured the essence of this dysfunctional presidency best when she explained why clinton couldn't go after bin Laden.

According to Richard Miniter, the Albright revelation occurred at the cabinet meeting that would decide the disposition of the USS Cole bombing by al Qaeda [that is to say, that would decide to do what it had always done when a "bimbo" was not spilling the beans on the clintons: Nothing]. Only Clarke wanted to retaliate militarily for this unambiguous act of war.

Albright explained that a [sham] Mideast accord would yield [if not peace for the principals, surely] a Nobel Peace Prize for clinton. Kill or capture bin Laden and clinton could kiss the 'accord' and the Peace Prize good-bye.

If clinton liberalism, smallness, cowardice, corruption, perfidy--and, to borrow a phrase from Andrew Cuomo, clinton cluelessness--played a part, it was, in the end, the Nobel Peace Prize that produced the puerile pertinacity that enabled the clintons to shrug off terrorism's global danger.

READ MORE

 

hat the loser is up to here:

1. Sheltered by a messy war, rising gas prices and a tanking president, haunted by his own failed, dysfunctional presidency and longing for the ultimate mulligan, the peacenik-posing, draft-dodging proximate cause of 9/11 intensifies the Left's Tet-Offensive gambit replay...
   
   

2. as he claims he ignored terrorism on purpose, which he actually did; but not for PEACE, as he claims. Rather, it was the NOBEL PEACE PRIZE--his obsession, his ultimate validation (in his own mind, anyway)--that in the end produced the puerile pertinacity that enabled him (and his wife) to shrug off terrorism's global danger.
   
   

3. Posthumous misappropriation is a preferred tactic of the abject coward. It is no surprise, therefore, that bill clinton blames his failure to confront terrorism on his eponymous mentor, the-dead-and-defenseless-as-a-doornail Arkansas senator, J. William Fulbright. Clinton's simplistic (and cynical--note the caveat) leap from Cold War to asymmetric netherworlds and his shameless choice of venue are the product of unbridled egoism and contempt.
   
   

Biography lends to death a new terror.--Oscar Wilde

  

Hypocrisy abounds in this Age of Clinton, a Postmodern Oz rife with constitutional deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual surreality polymarked by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case of Jefferson posthumously misappropriated...

Mia T, THE OTHER NIXON

   

Yesterday, Daniel Patrick Moynihan died. Today, the clintons are arrogating his soul. Hardly surprising. In 1999, the clintons were not at all shy about seizing his still-warm senate seat.

One has merely to recall the Jefferson double-helix hoax to understand that posthumous misappropriation is, for the obvious reason, the clintons' preferred method of legacy inflation….

Standard-Issue clintonism

If misappropriation of Jefferson's alleles hinged on a broken line of descent, misappropriation of Moynihan's endorsement depends on a broken line of dissent. Like Sally Hemmings' progeny, Moynihan's later acquiescence is of dubious lineage

Mia T, Moynihan Myths

READ MORE

ALBRIGHT INDICTS CLINTON FOR TERRORISM FAILURE
(and doesn't even know it)

ALBRIGHT¹: 'Bin Laden and his Network Declared War² on the United States and Struck First and We Have Suffered Deeply'

by Mia T, 4.28.06

 

I M P E A C H M E N T
h e a r --c l i n t o n --l o s e --i t


by Mia T, 11.11.05

This legacy confab is in and of itself proof certain of clinton's deeply flawed character, and a demonstration in real time of the way in which the clinton years were about a legacy that was incidentally a presidency.

Madeleine Albright captured the essence of this dysfunctional presidency best when she explained why clinton couldn't go after bin Laden.

According to Richard Miniter, the Albright revelation occurred at the cabinet meeting that would decide the disposition of the USS Cole bombing by al Qaeda [that is to say, that would decide to do what it had always done when a "bimbo" was not spilling the beans on the clintons: Nothing]. Only Clarke wanted to retaliate militarily for this unambiguous act of war.

Albright explained that a [sham] Mideast accord would yield [if not peace for the principals, surely] a Nobel Peace Prize for clinton. Kill or capture bin Laden and clinton could kiss the 'accord' and the Peace Prize good-bye.

If clinton liberalism, smallness, cowardice, corruption, perfidy--and, to borrow a phrase from Andrew Cuomo, clinton cluelessness--played a part, it was, in the end, the Nobel Peace Prize that produced the puerile pertinacity that enabled the clintons to shrug off terrorism's global danger.

READ MORE

COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006

COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006

[RobRoy]

I thought Spielberg was great in The Blues Brothers. ;)

[Mia T]

Oscar Wilde put it well: A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude.

[jla]

Oscar Wilde liked to wear women's clothes, so I must dismiss anything he had said.

...and besides, I was being facetious, and a bit mischievous.

But I bet you Audrey Hepburn would've laughed at my riposte.

[Mia T]

Fox hunting is big in Virginia, isn't it?
Oscar Wilde also noted that a gentleman galloping after a fox is the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable. ;)

[jla]

I doubt the fox was O. Wilde's prey of choice.
But I apologize, sincerely, if I've offended you.

[JustPiper]

ABC PULLS THE PLUG ON HILLARY’S PREZ PLANS

Commander in Chief was not a TV series in the usual sense. Rather it was a nationally-televised focus group, designed to test out issues, talking points, and applause lines for Hillary Clinton’s stealth presidential campaign.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Roberts/carey116.htm

[Mia T]

Apologize for what? Your only offensive move that I'm aware of is all that zoysia-ing. ;)

[Mia T]

Very good! Thanx. :)

I discussed it here: 'HIATUS' FOR HILLARY?

[Mia T]

[processing please hold]

Agreed.

[processing please hold]

Excellent bttt

[Mia T]

CLARIFICATION: I discussed the topic, not his article.

[Mia T]

thanx :)

[Gail Wynand]

United 93 is an ugly, terrifying, horrible truth, just as the '76 Olympics was similarly a terrifiying horrible bloodbath brought to the world by the same species of Islamic Totalitarianism that has been visiting bloodbath after senseless bloodbath on civilised people since at least Algeria in the early 1960's, when Fanatic cells sought relief from European "colonialism" by buthchering traffic policeman and by blowing up cafe patrons, as well as by murdering any Arabs who lacked enthusiasm for fundamentalist bloodlust.

Spielberg/hollywood smugly believe they are superior to Bush because "they dont take sides", and because all violent conflict is "destructive". The hollywood elite "know" they have a higher consciousness than Bush. They "know" they could reach the "humanity" in our enemies, who are like children that may need a time out, but who we must not seriously harm or incite with our reactive violence. Chancelor Hitler, Chariman Mao, and Joseph Stalin, to the extent they represent evil, are, to the hollywood elite, archaic assumptions that could not exist today, because student movements and popular culture would not tolerate them. To the hollywood elite Tienamen Square and the Prague Spring of 1968 did not happen.

11 young, hopeful, Isreali atheletes, or 40 Americans boarding a morning flight at the local airport. In the view of the hollywood elite, it is the failure of the West to anticipate, understand and "connect" with generations of murderous fanatics that is the cause of the America's terrorist afflictions.

Unlike the "cowboy" Bush, whose instinct at least is to join the terrorist enemy in limited battle, Spielberg/Streisand/Reiner et al are certain (knowing wink) that he (Bush) is only making things worse by trying to bring the force of war to quell the killers and their accomdating regimes.

Quite simply, these liberal 'elite' are the same kind of Americans who agonized for years about the US dropping the "big one" on the japs - another group of diplomacy resistent beligerents -- until their core beliefs were shaken at the molecular level with two atomic blasts and until Douglas MacArthur was given a free hand and five years to effect their re-education and re-introduction to the civilised world.

In November 1943 the young, brave, marines on Tarawa lost 1000 men, killing nearly 5000 fanatic japanese who senslessly fought to the last man woman and child. With those statistics, what moron would have foregone use of the bomb and invaded the japanese mainland with conventional allied forces (and as well allowed partitioning of Japan with Soviet forces)? The US use of the atomic bomb in 1945 unquestionably saved both American and Japanese lives, by ending the war quickly and decisively.

America has now lost 3000 citizens in 9/11, 2400 men in Iraq and more in Afghanistan. These losses are on top of the 92 trade center attack, Kobar towers and the USS Koll, among others, that preceded them. To their credit Bush and Rumsfield have actually kept American casualities low, as measured by any historic comparison. The left has paralized Bush in dealing with Iran and Syria, however. But, make no mistake about it, the 17 year old female Islamic suicide bomber is as lethal as a Japanese Kamakazi (which was far more lethal than the American public was ever told at the time). Indeed, the lessons of the "greatest generation" should not be quickly forgotten: There is no substitute for Victory. Victory requires application of superior force until an enemy unconditionally surrenders. Unfortunately, it is both ironic and meaningful that "peace in our time" through negotiated understanding, was also a message from Munich, delivered by Prime Minister Chamberlin in 1938 on behalf of the knowing progressives of the era. Just as with the Spielberg's message of moral equivalence today, if the elite left's appeasment compulsions should become national policy as they desire, 10's of millions, not mere thousands will likely ultimately die containing the festering evil of Islamic Gangsterism that is, among other obscenities, currently seeking nuclear weapons in Tehran.

[Mia T]

The left has paralized Bush in dealing with Iran and Syria, however. But, make no mistake about it, the 17 year old female Islamic suicide bomber is as lethal as a Japanese Kamakazi (which was far more lethal than the American public was ever told at the time).

Indeed, the lessons of the "greatest generation" should not be quickly forgotten: There is no substitute for Victory. Victory requires application of superior force until an enemy unconditionally surrenders.

Unfortunately, it is both ironic and meaningful that "peace in our time" through negotiated understanding, was also a message from Munich, delivered by Prime Minister Chamberlin in 1938 on behalf of the knowing progressives of the era.

Just as with the Spielberg's message of moral equivalence today, if the elite left's appeasment compulsions should become national policy as they desire, 10's of millions, not mere thousands will likely ultimately die containing the festering evil of Islamic Gangsterism that is, among other obscenities, currently seeking nuclear weapons in Tehran.

--Gail Wynand

 
FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU! FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME! 

[Mia T]

fyi

[Mia T]

for your neighbors ;)

[Mia T]

excellent! thanx.

[Borges]

I was just watching Patton the other day and the Nazis in that film actually come off much more human and sympathetic then any of the Terrorists murderers in Munich.

[Jeff Blogworthy]

Right on.

"Posthumous misappropriation is a preferred tactic of the abject coward."

Can I use that?