The Dark Side

Your humble reporter is almost finished reading the Dark Side and had it in mind with former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared Sunday on Face the Nation. Comments to follow

on the latest torture headlines and how one of the morning hosts I admire, "Morning Joe" really missed it, when he turned his powers of political analysis on this issue.

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BULLETIN 204 / Quote of the Day: “It’s tough, it can be dangerous, it requires courage and it can take a long, long time—but it can be done.”

Ridenhour Awards 2009: NY Times Herbert says Americans Must Quit the Powerlessness Game, Jane Mayer calls Rumsfeld “wrong” on rotten apples defense, and your humble reporter rubs elbows with former Louisiana Congresswoman Lindy Boggs and one of MSNBC’s biggest talking heads.

Ridenhour Courage Prize Winner Bob Herbert pictured with Randy Fertel of the Fertel Foundation

National Press Club, Washington DC:

NY Times columnist Bob Herbert worried aloud about two trends in the national thinking. He said they are both….wrong and dangerous.

He was talking about Americans feeling “powerless” as they sit each night before their flat screened TV. Just as bad he said, is the notion that they are “not responsible” for the decisions being made and the resulting state of the nation.

Herbert knows Americans can agitate for and produce change.

He witnessed it firsthand as a reporter covering the civil rights movement, the women’s movement and as a columnist chronicling environmental action and the election of the nation’s first black president.

According to Herbert, just electing Obama was not enough, citizens must do more. He said they must fight for change, and his passionate description ended up being the above mentioned “Quote of the Day.”

Herbert then posed a question that could be applied rather equally to both the public at large and the progressive members of the news media who were in attendance.

Where were you… when these decisions were being made?

He then harkened back to the national debate over welfare reform.

“When millionaire’s on the senate floor stood up and cheered the withdrawal of benefits from small children.”

Hebert said, “If you didn’t understand then, that when they finished up tearing up the safety net for the poor, that they would soon be coming after the middle class—then you bear some responsibility.”

“It wasn’t long before they started going after social security,” he added, “We are all responsible for the state of our society.”

Your humble reporter has always admired Herbert for his willingness to be way out in front and report on perspectives that can be deeply unpopular. His early opposition to America’s warrior response to 9/11 is a good example.

But there is a second equally important quality that I know to be Herbert’s trademark.

Despite the fact he is often one of the first reporters to tackle an issue, he seldom has to issue a correction. And, in time views that he offered that may have initially seemed to be way out there in left field—years later have take on the quality of mainstream reliability.

It takes a very farsighted, careful and talented reporter to accomplish all that.I started reading Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side on the metro back to Union Station and it was hard putting it down, so I could write this bulletin on the train back to New York. (BTW-one sign of our economic times is that I am aboard the cheapie regional, which is packed with many other bargain seekers, rather than our usual high speed ACELA train).

Accepting the Ridenhour Book Prize, Mayer recalled the words she saw on a poster which depicted the massacre at My Lai, in Vietnam.

At the bottom of the poster was a short quote. It was pulled from the questioning of Lt. William L Calley Jr. as he was asked about the youngest murder victims at My Lai…

“And Babies?” … “Yes sir, and babies.”

Mayer never met Ron Ridenhour, the soldier and journalist who blew the whistle on the massacre. She was only in high school when the story broke, but she witnessed the stir Ridenhour created and took from it a lifelong lesson.

“Just by getting the truth out…society could somehow heal itself.” Mayer remembered, “And that’s part of the power of our society that we can get to the truth and change.”

Ridenhour was angry that William Calley was the only soldier forced to take responsibility for My Lai. Ridenhour’s sources had told him that orders had come from higher-ups and he believed until his untimely death, that they should have been court marshaled along with Calley.

Mayers warned that history was in danger of repeating itself when the first reports of torture seeped out of Abu Ghraib.

Then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld maintained the inhumane treatment of prisoners at the notorious prison was simply the result of “a few rotten apples.” And, in a stark reminder of Vietnam, only low ranking members of the military have been jailed in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Mayer maintains the abuse doled out by US forces in Iraq was “not an aberration.” Instead she said, “Abuse and torture were the systematic delivery of official policy of the Bush Administration.”

The Ridenhour Awards are unique (Mayer noted) in that they are the only major awards that go beyond the hard work of journalists, to include the courage and determination of their sources.Thomas Tamm the winner of this year’s Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling certainly exhibited courage when he picked up the phone and decided to become a source for the New York Times.

It is because of Thomas Tamm’s 2004 phone call that we now know that the Bush Administration was engaged in illegal wiretapping of US citizens.

Sadly, five years later the FBI seems more interested in building a case against Tamm for disclosing state secrets, than going after administration officials who ordered the illegal wiretaps.

“A My Lai a Month” was The Nation's article by Nick Turse which won him a Special Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction.

The article relied on declassified documents which indicate that Ridenhour was right when he called My Lai a military “operation, rather than an aberration.” The documents uncover body counts that are so high, in relation to the number of enemy captured that they point to the likelihood that civilians were targeted by the US Military in Vietnam.

Celebrity Sightings: In my day to day freelance duties, in West Harlem, your humble reporter does not find himself regularly rubbing elbows with the Washington or media elite. But, each year at the Ridenhour Awards, rub elbows…we do.

At this year’s luncheon, I found myself seated at the same table with one of my favorite cable news talking heads: Christopher L Hayes, The Washington DC Editor of the Nation.

Hayes, a regular on MSNBC with Olbermann and Maddow. proved himself to be a consummate DC multi-tasker, grinning, texting, and munching on salad as he took in the afternoon’s acceptance speeches.

At the next table was former US Ambassador Joe Wilson of “PlameGate” fame and Daniel Ellsberg who published the Pentagon Papers. Both men were recipients of the first Ridenhour Awards, when the ceremony attracted a much smaller crowd.

Fellow New Orleans exile Remi Braden joined me for the luncheon along with her pal Tracy Vincent who represents Louisiana’s sugar cane lobby. New Orleans pals Pinkely and Pope gave us a warm welcome as we entered the Press Club and they suggested we say hello to former Louisiana Congresswoman Lindy Boggs.

Remi had met Boggs years ago in connection with Remi’s royal days at Mardi Gras.

But, I had Remi beat in the Lindy department by a decade at least.

I casually leaned over to the woman who was the most powerful woman in congress for decades, and reminded Boggs that she and I had shared a car ride together some 30 years ago.

In fact it was two car rides. One to WTUL radio’s studio and then another ride back, the day she threw the switch on the stations new high powered FM transmitter.

Lindy seemed to get a kick out of recalling our little car ride together. I know that I did.

CULTURE WATCH: One more chance to catch Rigoletto at the Met

A healthy portion of the audience stayed to applaud at the final curtain—a sign that last night’s performance of Rigoletto was special. In this season’s offering of the Verdi classic at the Metropolitan Opera, which tenor you get depends upon which night you see the performance. Tuesday night, Joseph Calleja the young tenor from Malta gave a bravado performance. He almost had you believing his version of the Duke might be able to stick to just one woman—his voice oozed with sincerety.

The biggest cheers at the final curtain were for Sorprano Diana Damrau whose Gilda was especially brilliant when she sang counterpoint to Robert Frontali’s Rigoletto.

While even the occasional opera fan will know much of this score from the opening opera—the strength of Rigoletto is in the way it builds toward the quartet in the final act.

Even the staging in this production seems to get stronger as the show moves to it’s tragic end.

Friday is the final night this season for Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera House. (Link to Met Opera: 8:00 pm, Rigoletto )

The Class: Part documentary, part drama…examines potential and comes close.

I am a fan of both French movies and school yarns featuring unyielding, but inspiring teachers and professors. The Class (Entre les murs in French) offers both and is to be admired for taking on a tricky subject—multicultural education. It also gets a nod for sticking to that subject no matter which way the on-camera students, or the audience for that matter, might wish it to go.

For me the problem is the film offers a tad too much drama for a documentary, but then so rigid in its documentary approach that you feel like a lesson should have been learned in the process. I, for one, came away feeling I was not really sure what the lesson was.

In the Paper Chase, a film about law school that offers no apologies about its dramatic approach, we get the lesson. Professor Kingsfield is a merciless, and at times a one dimensional taskmaster, but the ends eventually justify the means as students emerge from his classroom with little question that they know the law.

The Class features François Begaudeau as a somewhat laid back, French version of the taskmaster. Begaudeau is the former teacher who wrote “Between the Walls.” the autobiographical novel upon which the film is based.

One cannot imagine this film without Begaudeau in front of the class. He is convincing in his desire to reach his students, and unlike Kingsfield he desires to reach them on their own terms.

The students, fellow teachers and administration are equally convincing, and the documentary approach works as it plays all of these forces against one another and they combine to form an ever growing wall that that teacher must climb as the film moves on.

The students evaluate themselves at the end of the Class and the film leaves the most important lesson up to you. You have been given a kind of cliff notes view of multicultural education: all the basic challenges are there, and in the end you are left to draw your own conclusions: Are most of these kids better prepared for the future by the end of the class, and for those who are not, was it their teacher, the administration, or something bigger that leaves them wanting?

Watch trailer here.

Encounters... Penguins Gone Wild and Life in Antartica

“Is their such a thing as insanity among penguins?” Herzog asks a scientist who has been studying the colony for decades. Encounters at the End of the World, a film by Werner Herzog, set in frigid Antartica may seem just another Discovery Channel documentary on global warming, but it goes deeper by examining the odd assortment of people who inhabit this remote continent.

One thing that struck me is that Antartica attracts a particular breed of settlers the same way Ernest Shackleton hand-picked his crew a century ago. From scientists, philosophers, phycisists, zoologist, volcanologist, glaciologist to a former banker, linguist, a woman who “traveled from Ecuador to Lima, Peru, in a sewer pipe”, a plumber whose ring fingers marks his “royal Inca/Aztec heritage” and music producer Henry Kaiser whose under-ice-covered-water footage inspired the film, you meet them all.

Herzog aims to find out if penguins are crazy, but your close encounters with the subjects of this documentary lead you to wonder if the crew that went along with Shackleton went there because he picked them, or because they were just drawn to place the same way this unusual collection of folks ended up there today.

Watch trailer here.

MIKE’S FLICKS: Eye Gouging, Gritty Crime Drama…Eastern Promises

If you are craving a crime flick with plenty of credible, well crafted twists and turns, and you can take above average doses of violence, Steven Knight’s screenplay delivers.

This crime drama opens with a curious execution and a dying mother who leaves behind a mystery child. Naomi Watts plays Anna Khitrova the midwife who uses the dying mother’s diary to find a home for the baby, but instead the tiny book leads her and her family into a messy encounter with a London based Russian mob.

Viggo Mortensen is mysterious, convincing and sexy as Nikolai Luzhin the Russian crime family driver. Few will soon forget his fight scene in a Russian bath. You find yourself drawn into the fight and ready to throw your own punch, the same way director Sam Peckinpah pulled you into a fight to the death in Straw Dogs (1971).

Armin Mueller-Stahl is equal parts charm and fatherly dictator as Semyon the crime family kingpin who runs his operation from a lavish Russian restaurant.

The plot is dark and the actors clearly enjoy each time that take you down another notch inside the slang, habits and brutal methods of the Vory V Zakone criminal brotherhood. Like the best of this genre…you spend a good time wondering which side some of the main characters are really on.

Available on DVD –THREE Bowls of Borscht --- Russian Realism and moderate caution as to violence.

Watch trailer here.

Clunkers are Lemons Right? So What Do We Call The New Cars Returned By the Jobless?

We need a new name. Clunkers…Lemons….most of us know those terms for reject cars that rolled off the assembly line with some sort of defect, but now we need a new name for today’s cars. What are we going to call those cars that the dealers are selling right now with the new “payment protection plan.”? Ford, GM and Hyundai are all offering a big brother guarantee that, if you happen to (whoops)…lose your darn job….then the car company will pay your car note for a few months, and then heaven forbid if you are still out of work—you can simply bring the car back.

Everything these days gets a name…so what are the dealers, driving public, bloggers and taxpayers going to call these contraptions ?

If a lemon was a clunker then what will we label cars that are soon to be returned? What are these cars “only driven to work by out of work workers?

I think it is only right that we come up with a proper name…in time for the 2009 International Auto Show here in New York.

BTW…while we are at it, can you think of any OTHER consumer items that manufacturers should be willing to buy back if we loose our jobs?

Do we draw the line at microwaves? Slightly used golf clubs? A half a jar of Skippy? Choose from the recession menu below.

UPDATE: Irma Thomas at the BB King

Irma Thomas packed the house and got several fired-up standing O’s at BB King’s in Times Square last night. She brought her fat songbook and, as always, invited fans to suggest away-which they did, offering everything from obvious classics like “It’s Raining” to songs so obscure that Irma had a hard time finding them in her fake book. Her band, The Professionals actually kicked off one tune, that Irma started singing as her fingers searched the song book and search she did, through the entire tune—never locating the sheet music, but smiling as she found enough of the words in her 68-year-old memory to please that fan and the crowd.

Like some of New Orleans best chef’s…Irma does not scrimp when it comes to portions. Despite having to fight off a cough, and brief but classy brush off with some geek making an “unauthorized live performance video”—Irma still gave her all for a two hour plus performance capped by an encore which included a tribute to Etta James, who will follow her next month at the same venue.

Last night, was my first experience at BB King’s. Seating is first come first served, and we got there early and ended up in the first three rows. The sound system is excellent, the sightlines great, and it looked to me that even folks standing which lines the back wall, still had a good view. The waiter suggested Steaks, the smallest of which topped 30 bucks- we opted for the Warm Roquefort Wedge Lettuce Salad with a Side of Gulf Shrimp which gets the tab into the 20 dollar range and was quite good for club food. (Click here for menu.)

The emotional high point of the night came when she sang Backwater Blues which she says she avoids singing too often…and as you heard her bend the lyrics of this Bessie Smith tune you knew exactly why. It’s because this song from the 20’s cuts too close to the wounds New Orleans still carries from Hurricane Katrina.

She got the crowd to do a reasonable version of a second line (no mean feat in NYC) with a medley of Mardi Gras tunes and wowed your humble reporter, as she always does with her rendition of Simply the Best.

Headed to BB King’s to see the Soul Queen of New Orleans...

Unlike blackened redfish, Irma Thomas is one of the few New Orleans originals that travels and keeps it real. No matter how muddy the infield at the Fairgrounds at Jazz Fest, or how much we over ate at Galatoire’s we always made sure we had enough left in the tank to take in Irma’show in the heart of bail bond country. Tonight it is...
At BB King’s in Times Square…full review to follow.

Mike Blogs Book Suggestions: Lush Life, The Good Rat and Rumpole Misbehaves

I have been taken by some recent high and lowbrow crime drama—actually it’s all great writing and just that subjects that inhabit various rings of Dante’s hell.

Lush Life is novel number eight from Richard Price and it was my first encounter with his pen. I used to cover cops for a living and Price obviously spent a good deal of time hanging with them, because he gets both the mindset and the gallows humor just right.

He is also a master of capturing his surroundings: he wraps the Lower East Side around you in all of jumbled glory, and puts you inside the head of some very interesting and troubled characters on all sides of the law.

On the non-fiction side, I tore threw The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin and loved every second of it. Breslin’s just the brass tacks facts approach is refreshing...especially after eight years of hyper-focus on evildoers, as if they were some special breed. Breslin knows what makes dumb crooks tick. He has seen greed, and killing in untold variations, and he knows the interesting underside of New York. You would be foolish not to tag along for this wickedly well-written primer.

Finally, fans of Rumpole will be glad to see the creator of the Old Bailey hack somehow keeps finding his way back to the typewriter—one assumes he would not waste much time on new fangled contrivances such as the computer. The title Rumpole Misbehaves is itself a joke to anyone who has read even one of the 20 or so Rumpole titles, as Horace Rumpole is rarely doing anything if not misbehaving. He still drinks the house brand at Pomroy’s Wine Bar, and his troubles with She Who Must Be Obeyed as always are in fierce competition with those who want to bring him down in court and at work. John Mortimer seldom has Horace misbehave just to keep in practice; usually his small social transgressions are aimed at getting us all to pay attention to stupid developments in the law and the world at large. In this case it is to agitate around Anti-Social behavior Orders, known as the ASBO in the UK.

BOY A – Crime Drama: Boy seeking redemption finds girl and faces critical choice

BOY A: 2007 BAFTA award-winning film adaptation of Jonathan Trigell's novel of the same name.

Did you ever have a secret that you thought it might be best to reveal, but people you trusted told you not to? This is the story of a young man who has a chance for redemption after making the rather typical choice of choosing the wrong friends as a boy.

His options in life seem to be flourishing as he meets a girl and finds a decent job, but that only heightens the odds as to the picture's central question…should he confess his criminal past or keep his mouth shut?

Andrew Garfield captured Best Actor BAFTA TV Award showing equal parts of a vulnerable youth and a young man facing adult decisions that can make or break a life.

Watch the trailer here.

BULLETIN 203

In this Edition: WTUL Progressive Radio…34 years on, Chess Rematch with Jude Acers, Steve Ross at the Algonquin, Gitmo Book Review and Street Hockey Redux.

Quote of the Week (Quarter if you are paying attention): “I was station manager too…in 1998”

Blogosphere Brings Bulletin Back: Vincent and I have been experimenting in the Blog- World and figured that was ample excuse to bang out a bulletin. Here are some of the highlights to date in “09.

WTUL/New Orleans: I had passed on my 30th Tulane reunion, because I only knew a few classmates who would be likely to return. When my college radio station announced a reunion, I could not resist. TUL was staffed by students from many different class years, and most of us lived a good part of our college career, spinning records, producing newscasts and just hanging out in the basement studios of WTUL.

I alerted Monaghan that we would be descending on Molly’s at the Market and that’s were the reunion got its unofficial start.

Pictured are Maurice Roe (longtime pal and Station Manager ’77, Charles Driebe & Bob Dabney (World of Jazz Hosts ‘75-‘78) and your humble reporter (aka Station Manager ’75-’76).

The current staff was kind enough to turn over the airwaves to a bunch of us from “back in the day,” and I got to host the weekday morning show that I used to alternate with Kathy Fishman. DJ Cupcake helped me keep the show on the air and right-side up as we did the 8am-10am show on Friday morning. It was around 9:45 on one of those Friday morning shows back in 1975, that I picked up the request line and got a job offer from WQUE-FM, a commercial rock station. I asked only one question, “Are you going to pay me?”

About three months after I was hired at WQUE- I finally got the guts to ask them, “Why did you pick me?” Easy they said, “We liked the music you played.” You will understand a lot about the radio business when you know that they had hired me to host the morning show on an automated radio station…where of course I had no say in any of the music that was played.

It was during the get together at Molly’s that a classmate was talking how it had been ten long years since she was in charge at WTUL…and then she uttered the above mentioned Quote of the Week. Upon hearing those words, Dabney and I did our calculations…let’s see she was in charge in 98 and that was ten years ago. Then, we were in charge in ‘75 …damn! That was 34 years ago.

Jude Acers Rematch: No return to New Orleans is now complete with out a brief duel with Jude at the chess table. Broome is always kind enough to give me a couple warm up games, and then it is just me versus the Decatur street chess master. I played well enough on day one that I almost managed to take a game. As my reward, Jude suggested I return for another round before my departure. He then dispatched me with added gusto, just so the first day’s effort did not go too far to my head.

New Orleans Pal Updates: Thanks to Brobson and Ken for use of their slave quarter and a great dinner at a sibling of the old G&E Courtyard Grill which just opened in Metairie. To Brian Fitzgerald who hosted a wonderful welcome home party, complete with wait staff where New Orleans jetsetters like Ron Swoboda and “Country Kate” Caraway were in attendance. To Carlton who treated me to a fine dinner at the new Besh restaurant called August. Carlton is working at another local restaurant and doing well. To Keith who brought me up to Magazine Street for oysters. Kit and Billy welcomed me for a surprise breakfast at their place; the surprise was on them, that I was coming. Kit rewarded Dabney and me with signed copies of her latest book, New Orleans Classics Gumbos and Soups. Also can report good times were had with Jeff McNeilly, Broome and Ashley, the unstoppable Peggy, Jim Jr & Alana and the entire staff at Molly’s and of course Viezer who passed along his usually unbeatable horse picks (rumor has it a local former newsman may have bested him this time around).

Street Hockey Survivors: The Longman clan once again returned to Long Island for the annual street hockey clash. Nephew Nick donned a jersey and took to the rink for the first time, along with Vincent’s brother-in-law Jonathan. Both provided much needed fresh legs and kept the Longman’s ahead of the competition for another year. As always wounds and goals were celebrated at Christiano’s…home of Billy Joel and LI’s best pizza.

Steve Ross and NY Culterwatch: Swoboda was once again in attendance as dad hosted us to night of Steve Ross at the Algonquin—which is about the best place to enjoy New York’s finest cabaret performer. Steve was great and we have also been catching his appearances at the fine performing arts theater at the Metropolitan Museum. Other recent cultural highlights have included Guys and Dolls on Broadway and the “Great” and I caught the Modest Mouse concert at Terminal Five which is one of Manhattan’s best venues for catching bigger name acts in a smaller setting.

Current Reading: I heartily recommend Clive Stafford Smith’s Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side which tells the story of our nation’s unfortunate torture policy from one of the few lawyers who was regularly inside Gitmo. I know Clive from his days defending death penalty cases in Louisiana and he is both a terrific lawyer and compelling writing. Better late than never, I also suggest Rise of the Vulcans which explains Bush policy through major forces in the lives of key policymakers, and how those experiences motivated their decision. Both are now cheap reads in paperback.

Frozen River: Draws You In…then Warms the Heart

Indie Crime Drama meets Humanistic Thriller. Small movie draws splintered family into unexpected union with unemployable Native American from Mowhawk Tribe. Grit and well earned cynic humor drive the story.

Frozen River is the story of a dysfunctional family that is barely making ends meet in a broken down mobile home in a hardscrabble town on New York’s border with Canada.

At first you wonder if you really want to tag along with this hard luck story. But in short order Melissa Leo goes off searching for her gambling addicted husband and ends up in an unlikely partnership with a Native American. In the process you are drawn into a life of car thieving & immigrant smuggling

Melissa Leo is unforgettable as the mom whose drive for a double wide mobile home is second only to Captain Ahab.

Misty Upham gets under your skin as a totally unemployable Native American who is forbidden to see her own child, because of her criminal lifestyle.

Charlie McDermott is impressive as he dons the skin of the older brother who copes with his daily existence through liberal doses of adolescent sarcasm.