TECHNO BREAKDOWN
THE DEPOLITICIZED OSCARS
MORE ON THE LIVES OF OTHERS

From time to time, I realize how dependent I am on working software and technology, even in writing a daily blog as simple and unadorned as this one.

It should be easy to do but suddenly, my WORD program is unhappy with me and is ‘not responding.’ So I hit force Quit, and it still won’t respond, so I have to do a truncated job in hopes of getting something out.

I wrote a whole blog that refuses to be copied or posted. So I am starting again, and I can’t redo it at this hour. Sorry, no can do.

THE BIG NEWS: The Iraqi Oil Ministry has made a deal to please the international oil companies which when all is said and done, we will learn was a powerful motive for this war that was totally unexamined in the depth it deserved. Check out JuanCole.com for one perspective: for how Al Gore, and the Oscars connects back to Iraq.

No one at the Oscars made this connection, and in fact as I noted yesterday, the ceremony was depoliticized.

BUT WASN’T IT “FUN?”

I wasn’t surprised to see this morning’s ultraconservative New York Sun carrying page on story praising the Academy for downplaying politics and Upplaying—is that a word? —“fun. The Toronto based journalist Geoff Pevere reminds us:

Despite the fact that in the past – especially during the late 1960s and ’70s – the ceremony was frequently intruded upon by reminders of war, racism, economic inequity and other unpleasant facts of American life, the event’s preferred tone is one of sparkly, bubble-brained celebration.

To be reminded that Peter Davis, after winning the Best Documentary for the excoriating anti-Vietnam war documentary Hearts and Minds in 1975, actually conveyed a greeting to “all our friends in America” from the North Vietnamese government is to imagine a universe far, far away indeed….

Within the past decade or so, the annual Academy Awards broadcast has been sadly noteworthy for the resolute manner in which it has implied that there’s a separation between politics and entertainment – just think of the jeers that met Michael Moore’s anti-Bush diatribe when he won Best Documentary for Fahrenheit 9/11, or the conspicuously non-controversial performance of TV political satirist Jon Stewart as last year’s host. Or, as mentioned earlier, those who have disappeared after speaking up.

And on this theme, here’s Oprah talking to Ellen:

Oprah: No, you know I have never been interested in politics and you shouldn’t either. First of all, this pays better and also you just have a voice to the world sitting right here..”

There you go: “This pays better.” A voice to the world–but without much to say!

POLITICS IN MUSIC

There was some political expression allowed, in music, not movies: Reuters reported:

Music from politically themed films scored top Oscars on Sunday, while the winners used their moment of glory to push issues ranging from global warming to gay marriage.

Melissa Etheridge’s global warming anthem, “I Need to Wake Up,” took home the gold at the 79th annual Academy Awards for best original song, beating out three separate nominations in that category from “Dreamgirls,” as well as Randy Newman’s “Our Town” from the animated film, “Cars.”

After thanking various people involved in making the film, and, “my incredible wife, Tammy,” and her four children, Etheridge — one of the country’s best known lesbians — thanked Gore.

“Mostly I have to thank Al Gore for inspiring us, inspiring me and showing that caring about the Earth is not Republican or Democrat. It’s not red or blue. We are all green. This is our job now, we can become the greatest generation, the generation that changed, the generation that woke up and did something and changed,” she said.

Backstage, Etheridge, who exchanged vows with girlfriend Tammy Lynn Michaels in a secret ceremony in September 2003, told reporters the “Oscars is like a gay holiday.” While Etheridge and Michaels consider themselves married, theirs is not a legal marriage because gay weddings are not legally binding in their home state California.

“There is no token gay. There is a real mix, a lot of diversity here,” Etheridge said.

ON THE LIVES OF OTHERS—SOME OF THE ANALYSIS MISSING HERE:

Yesterday I commented on the German Oscar Winner “The Lives of Others.” I saw the film as a warning of our future—not just insight about Germany’s past. I wasn’t thrilled when the producer thanked Arnold Schwartzenegger for teaching him never to say no. That was a way of pandering to Californians. But there is a deeper problem with the film, writes Victor Grossman from Berlin:

A film from Germany, “The Life of the Others”, just won the Oscar for best foreign film. The film was cleverly written, well directed and well acted. The ballyhoo level for the film is rising. Why do I regret this choice?

It is the story about a dogmatic officer of the East German “Stasi”, the State Security, who in the end, after a change of heart, proves that even a Stasi officer can be a human being. Interesting, perhaps, but misleading, one-sided and with evil intent.

Few deny that the Stasi in the German Democratic Republic was intrusive, nasty and sometimes rough. But the film reduces the entire country to this cliched image. It shows only a nasty Minister of Culture, criminal methods of bugging apartments and tapping phones, and then the innocent victims- like the writer who wants only to smuggle out the awful truth about the GDR to the West German magazine “Der Spiegel” - and a single heroic exception, a Stasi man who sees the errors of his ways. How clear and simple!

This film panders to the fact that any book, film, or TV program telling people in eastern Germany how terrible their lives were under “Stalinism” and making West Germans shudder to think of what they escaped, is sure to be promoted and, if made at all well, to receive awards, prizes, publicity and innumerable screenings. And so it has been. The good humoured attitude of a film like “Goodby Lenin”, though basically in the same mold, has been abandoned here for a tougher stance. And there are good reasons for this.

What does the film leave out? That in the GDR, which went under nearly 17 years ago, despite many problems and some unpleasant aspects, most people led relatively normal daily lives, which included certain benefits which are only gradually and grudgingly being recognized, usually with no mention of their success in the GDR. Among these benefits was free child care, which is today seen as an important but distant goal.
Then ther was the GDR school system, where kids learnt together until the 10th grade, and were not split up as early as the 4th or 6th grade into “high achievers”, the college material, and the “low achievers”, mostly kids from working class and immigrant homes, who were sent to dead-end schools. Some people may still recall the single-payer health system, often less technically modern, but available to everyone without charge after a small monthly tax was paid. Above all, the economy in the GDR provided jobs to everyone, men and women, young and old, which today is only a faint dream - or chimera…

One other aspect relates to the film. It does not reflect on the undoubted acting ability of the film hero, Ulrich Muehe, but perhaps instead on his character. Just at a time when the film was getting early publicity he came out with a blistering denunciation of his former wife, the very popular GDR actress Jenny Groelmann, whom he accused of spying for the Stasi. I have no idea what truth there was to these charges, but a very disturbed audience of East Germans did find out that they were made while the actress was in the terminal stages of cancer. She died soon afterward. Many wondered if his angry words were necessary just at this time - or whether they were related to publicity for the film. The Film Academy in making its awards is expected to judge acting ability and not character, but many East German movie-goers could not completely separate the two and had mixed opinions about this clearly axe-grinding film with its message, aimed against a long defeated enemy, but evidently aimed, quite successfully, to please the powers-that-be.

One more point: For all its horrors, the GDR supported Southern African liberation movement when most of the West turned their back and aligned with apartheid South Africa.

ROSS RITTER SENDS THIS ALONG:

“The Iraq war marks the first major war in the last century fought in the interests of America’s ruling elite without even the pretense of “shared sacrifice.” During the First World War, the tax rate for top income earners stood at 77 percent; during the Second W rld War, at 94 percent. Even during Vietnam, the wealthiest taxpayers faced a rate of 70 percent on personal income. Yet, as the bloodletting in Iraq has been proven a war for nothing more than U.S. control over Middle Eastern oil, the corporate class continues to enjoy an income tax rate that has been capped at only 35 percent since 2003–the year the U.S. invaded Iraq.”

http://www.counterpunch.com/sharon02212007.html

OOPS—I called Doug Latimer Ken yesterday. Sorry. Here is his blog:
http://unlikelysource.greatestjournal.com

STUDENT AID BOMBSHELLS

Canada http://www.educationalpolicy.org/pdf/timebomb.pdf

NZ: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0207/S00058.htm

Sorry guys and gals and children of all ages, but my techno-frustration level is blinking red. I have gone about as far as I can go for now. Hopefully I will be back with a fuller dose of dissections tomorrow.

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