Briony's Journal

With thanks to Tori for posting this. 

If you've been reading my LJ long enough, you'll know I'm not one to easily dismiss the memory of 9/11/01.  If you haven't, go look at my entries on 9/11 for the last couple of years.  The day was sheer horror for all of us.  Especially those of us who spent the day not just reeling in the shock of it all, but worried on a personal level for loved ones.  To say nothing of those who actually lost loved ones.

But the subversion of the tragedy of thousands to pay lip service to what amounts to blatant nationalism became too much for me long ago.  Calling it "Patriot Day" was the first bitter pill for me.  People were going about their everyday business and were viciously terrorized and killed.  They weren't patriots.  They were victims.  And those who killed them were serving their own warped patriotic ideal.  Not to mention it does nothing to grant any kind of gravitas to the remembrance.  I can't get out of my head that eventually it will be a cause for used car and furniture sales.  

And then there is the "Freedom Tower".  Yes, we should rebuild, while keeping the dead firmly in our minds.  But I don't think it's a cause to "celebrate freedom".  So I'm glad this new building will be 1WTC.  Keep the "world" in "World Trade Center"!!!  Get rid of the gung-ho nationalism.

I can no longer separate the memory of 9/11 from the rhetoric of the past presidential election either.  Images of 9/11 were used to stir emotions by the same people who then proceeded to write off NYC and other swaths of the country as "not real America".  Why thank you!   I'm hoping that this revision of the name veers us away from using that tragic day as a reference point for our "freedom" and brings it back into focus as a day of tragedy and sorrow.  When we were all reeling we were one nation.  Let's remember our mutual sorrow and shock and try to draw together again.

EDIT:  oops, apparently my only 9/11 entry was actually on 9/10/07.  Well, you'll have to take my word for it. 

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is no longer publishing print editions of the newspaper.  And yet I am unable to find a story in CNN.com to link to this post.  I am, however, able to find a "front page" story about whether or not Natasha Richardson (daughter and wife of Other Famous People Listed Prominently in the Story, though not given a single acting credit of her own in there) was in fact brought back to the US after being injured in a skiing accident in Montreal and whether or not she is in fact at Lennox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.

Edit...9:56 PM...It's a shame she died, I'm sure you all realize I was criticizing CNN, not her.  And the story in question said nothing about her condition being that grave.  I wonder if they should not have moved her to NYC.

My attempt to discuss my feelings about Jim Cramer's appearance on The Daily Show last Thursday.   Because they were not what I expected...then again, neither was the interview.   Sadly, one of my questions is whether this was just all puppet theater, but I'll go on the assumption it wasn't, because they probably would have made that funnier.

Mr. Cramer...if you think anyone bought your act about being all repentant and mea culpa-ish, then you've seriously understimated, well, just about everyone.  And with the state of the American public, that is saying something.  What's with the rolled up sleeves?  Trying to look like the earnest hard-working guy called before the evil boss?  A student called to the principal's office in a John Hughes film?  And with that level of backpeddling...geeze, you should have been able to go back in time and fix every bad prediction you ever made.  Dude, if I had a dog who went belly up that fast I'd feel sorry for it.  Way to show a total lack of spine.  If, of course, you were being genuine, which you weren't.  I doubt you believed 5% of what you said. 

BTW, 17 hours of programming to fill a day...well that would be your problem right there.  Face facts, your network is useless.  But so are the wider ranging "news" networks. 

But oh, Mr. Stewart, yes, you are wickedly intelligent and informed in addition to being funny.  Hell, if you weren't, you wouldn't be so funny.  Yes, you have a keen grasp of the journalistic ideal, that says CNBC should be informing the public.  Yes, I love you and I'm a fan.  I stood in line for hours to be in your audience and I would again.  But that doesn't cover for me the faint whiff of hypocrisy I detected as you verbally pantsed Mr. C.  Because you too, dear Jon, are part of the same media machine that he is.  You too rely on ratings and ads to make your living, and this whole invented-by-still-other-media-types hype did benefit you greatly.  If these guys did their job as well as you wish, you wouldn't have such good material to lampoon.  And yes, you sell your show as snake oil, but the print on the bottle is not as large as you seem to think.  And it does not provide a 100% exemption from the fact that many of your viewers do not make the distinction between you and the vitamin tonic.

All in all, an anticlimax. 

The gravitas of the story did not escape me, but I couldn't help but be tickled by the journalist's ability to say "Pakistan's most populous and powerful province" without stumbling.

Okay, here's the thing, my taste in cinema is not nearly as "refined" as my taste in books, or even TV. So I was curious as to how I'd rate here.  Well, I certainly see the un-surprising trend of historically-set movies and action/adventure vs high-brow modern drama.  And I don't watch war movies, so...

 

I recall that I refused to ever see Driving Miss Daisy, because it beat Dead Poets' Society for the Oscar.

And can anyone tell me WHY Unforgiven won an Oscar?  I thought it was lame.

And I did see Juno...don't know why LJ won't let me bold it.

How many of these best-picture Oscar nominated movies have you seen? Bold the ones you've seen, regardless of whether you saw them in the cinema, on TV/video, or on a plane years after they came out.  I've italicized the ones I plan to see.
 

 

1980. Ordinary People, Coal Miner's Daughter, The Elephant Man, Raging Bull, Tess

1981. Chariots of Fire, Reds, Atlantic City, On Golden Pond, Raiders of the Lost Ark

1982. Gandhi, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Missing, Tootsie, The Verdict

1983. Terms of Endearment, The Big Chill, The Dresser, The Right Stuff, Tender Mercies

1984. Amadeus, The Killing Fields, A Passage to India, Places in the Heart, A Soldier's Story

1985. Out of Africa, The Color Purple, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Prizzi's Honor, Witness

1986. Platoon, Children of a Lesser God, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Mission, A Room with a View

1987. The Last Emperor, Broadcast News, Fatal Attraction, Hope and Glory, Moonstruck

1988. Rain Man, The Accidental Tourist, Dangerous Liaisons, Mississippi Burning, Working Girl

1989. Driving Miss Daisy, Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Poets Society, Field of Dreams, My Left Foot

1990. Dances with Wolves, Awakenings, Ghost, The Godfather Part III, Goodfellas

1991. The Silence of the Lambs, Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, JFK, The Prince of Tides

1992. Unforgiven, The Crying Game, A Few Good Men, Howards End, Scent of a Woman

1993. Schindler's List, The Fugitive, In the Name of the Father, The Piano, The Remains of the Day

1994. Forrest Gump, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, The Shawshank Redemption

1995. Braveheart, Apollo 13, Babe, Il Postino (The Postman), Sense and Sensibility

1996. The English Patient, Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets & Lies, Shine

1997. Titanic, As Good as It Gets, The Full Monty, Good Will Hunting, L.A. Confidential

1998. Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth, Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella), Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line

1999. American Beauty, The Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, The Insider, The Sixth Sense

2000. Gladiator, Chocolat, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Traffic

2001. A Beautiful Mind, Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Moulin Rouge

2002. Chicago, Gangs of New York, The Hours, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Pianist

2003. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Lost in Translation, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Mystic River, Seabiscuit

2004. Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Ray, Sideways

2005. Crash, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich

2006. The Departed, Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen

2007. No Country for Old Men, Atonement, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, Juno

2008. Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader

 

 

And here you all thought you'd gotten away without hearing it.

The usual disclaimer...the plane crash outside Buffalo last week was a tragedy, and my heart goes out to the families of the victims...that said:

WTF CNN???  Trying to dig a crawl space beneath your all time low?  The next morning's coverage, which hubby and I watched for about 20 minutes before having to turn it off for fear of our brains exploding, was so chock full of histrionics, melodrama, and bad reporting that it makes the coverage of the recent presidential election look like Edward R. Murrow's best work.

I've never thought showing distraught family members on the air during these times to be either good journalism or good taste.  Showing the same taped interview twice in 20 minutes is pathetic.  Need to fill the airtime?  You can go to another story.  We still have a crumbling economy and other problems.  Or even weather, for frak's sake.  Leaving the plane crash to cover other news for a few minutes will not make anyone more dead.

Pointing to the recent landing in the Hudson and a plane skidding off a runway late last year in combination with this incident and labeling it a "string of airplane incidents" is pandering to superstition and fear.  To then bring up the fact that the last commercial airline fatalities in the US took place two and a half years ago, yet fail to mention that, considering how many people fly every year, this is a superior safety record, is even worse.  People don't like to fly...you don't need to make it worse to boost your ratings.

Clarence Center may be a tiny municipality, but it's part of a large metropolitan area.  (Hint, that's why it's six miles from an airport.)  You don't have to be making it sound like freakin' Mayberry. 

And in six months, when the final NTSB report comes out, I expect it maybe an obscure link on your web site.  Probably won't even make the ticker.

All in all, major fail, CNN. 

Then there was this morning...hey, check out that weird fireball over Texas!  You bothered to report that the government said it was not a piece of space junk or a satellite.  Ever think of finding out if it was a GD meteor before going off on the UFO tangent?  You're so cute when you're utterly poor journalists. 

Or, more accurately, whining about the whining of the relgious pro-"life" right...

This morning on NPR as I wended my way to work (how alliterative am I?) I heard some bits about the Roe v Wade anniversary, specifically how because it is two days after Inauguration Day, most presidents have enacted some sort of policy change on it at the beginning of their term.

My brain snagged onto a point I'd oddly never really contemplated before (probably because there are so many other emotional and philosophical considerations with this issue).  Whether people should be "forced" (the word used on NPR) to have their tax dollars used for federally funded abortion programs.

Well damn, I didn't know I had a choice.  For example, I didn't want my tax dollars used to fund an obscenely expensive war in Iraq for the past six years.  Nor for abstinence-only sex ed programs.   Nor for illegal wiretaps and Gitmo and...

I'm thrilled that we have a president who isn't afraid to use big words, long sentences, and unabashedly high-flying rhetoric.  Not one folksy story about "Little Bobby So-and-So" or "Ol' Grandma Whosiwhatsis" or "Private Thus-and-Such".   Awesome speech.  Made me a little teary.  Way better than the spectacularly mediocre modern poetry. 

Last night hubby made "inaugural chili"...in honor of Bush it was made with turkey!  Tee hee.  Then I settled in to watch the PBS coverage I'd DVR'd.  Observations thereon:

I think Cheney was in a wheel chair because yesterday his deal with the devil ended and now he starts to decompose at an accelerated rate. 

Rosalind Carter looks good...she must be in her 80s? 

Oh, yeah, that sounds like a John Williams piece.  Hubby made me giggle by humming the "Close Encounters" music along with it.  But I did love that he used "Simple Gifts". 

Aretha, I don't care what they say...THAT is a hat.  I loved it.  But I agree with ariannawyn , do not breathe in the middle of the word "country". 

Michelle...It was an interesting look, but you did better emulating Jackie O. 

Pastor one must go.  Pastor two was great. 

Camera on W while Obama was talking about how we will not sacrifice the ideals of our constitution in order to defeat our enemies...priceless. 

Because nothing less than REM for me on this day, of course.

Sadly, I am at work it took me four tries just to be able to log on to a live feed (MSNBC) which kept locking up anyway.  So I watched the oath and clicked off.  Luckily we are DVRing the PBS coverage (having decided it would have the least annoying commentary) and will watch later. 

And in spite of the jumpy coverage, I'm thrilled and moved and joyful!  Like on election day, I feel vindicated.  All the fear-mongering and attempts to paint those of us who are not Christian Conservatives as "unAmerican" have been overthrown.  I've been touching base on the political discussion board, and the desparation of the conservatives...it would be amusing if it weren't so petty and full of hate.  Let's hope that this really does represent the end of the self-righteous, "family-values", "morality is ours alone" Reagan-conservative era. 

Can't think of much more to say, as I've yet to actually hear the speech...so I'll leave you all with a little more REM...

All the people gather, fly to carry each his burden,
We are young despite the years, we are concern,
We are hope despite the times....
All of a sudden, these days,
Happy throngs take this joy, wherever you go.