I was going to write out a very long essay explaining why I think these TSA searches are demeaning, illegal and unconstitutional. Many of the TSA's processes need to be stopped for good. But honestly I (a) don't have the time, (b) am far too angry having watched that smirking saurian Napolitano defend the practice on MSNBC's Morning Joe and (c) think that this video and the parent's statements tell the truth of what all this is about far more than I ever could hope to do.
“Nobody likes to see those kinds of things, in we doing that even though it was done professionally according to the protocols,” Napolitano said. “But, what TSA is doing is reexamining those protocols all the time. It’s all in relation to threat – what is the threat? And one of the things we do see is if you categorically remove a group from any type of screening, well those who seek to do us harm will then exploit that group. So you have to be very careful on how you do it.”
BS!!!! This is a big heaping pile of BS. And it stinks.
The whole issue with the 9-11 attacks and attempted attacks since then is that they have fundamentally and perhaps permanently altered our ideas about guilt and innocence and which is more important to find. Additionally they have tragically reduced people's interest in freedom and increased their interest in so-called security. This goes far beyond left and right. It's about who has interest in freedom and who does not. To live anywhere is to accept risk. This week, somewhere in this country a mother is abusing her children. Some young man is going to shoot some other young man. A woman will be raped. Someone will drive drunk. Someone will get into a fist fight at a bar. Someone is abusing their spouse or planning to have them bumped off for the insurance money. As I am writing this some nut could come shoot up the place. Someone is turning a blind eye to worker safety in favor of profit. Someone is planning what she thinks will be the perfect embezzlement. Someone is robbing a liquor store and shooting the owners. And so on.
Generally speaking, we don't allow the police to fan out and break into people's homes they THINK will commit those crimes and search for evidence. With a few exceptions, we don't allow police to search people walking down the street just because. And we certainly don't base our justice system or everyday rules in society on the theory that it is better that 10,000 innocent people have their rights violated than let one guilty man go free. The government can not provide 100% security. But it can strip you of your rights.
Eventually, some determined terrorist will hide a bomb in his or her body cavities. What then? Does this mean every other citizen, regardless of age, gender, or personal beliefs about privacy must then submit to public cavity searches? Free prostate exam/pap smear with every 5000 miles flown?? This is ridiculous. The TSA should be severely limited in these sorts of searches. I would much rather see a honest debate about current immigration policies- i.e. is it really a good idea to allow immigration from countries we are currently bombing? The example of Faisal Shahzad would seem to indicate that maybe, just maybe it might not be. You can not invade the world and then invite the people you've invaded to come to your country. Some might hold grudges. Some hail from places where grudge holding is damn near a statutory requirement of citizenship. If that girl in the video had been my kin I don't think I could have tolerated that. The TSA needs to be forced to stop these searches. I don't care about the possibility of attack. There are some rights which are simply fundamental. If we are putting our hands down the pants of six year olds, it is WAY PAST time to reject this entire paradigm.
What do you think? Is the TSA doing the best it can, or is this a power grab by the exact sort of people who shouldn't have this sort of power?Should children be exempt from these searches? Are you okay with strangers feeling on you in public? How do we tell children don't let anyone touch you in certain places...except for the TSA agents, their police backups, etc.
Haven't you ever wondered, once a representative who differs politically from you, has said or done something that you find spectacularly stupid or offensive, what a nice thing it would be if the person just wasn't in office any more OR had his authority limited to something more appropriate to his intelligence, say for example asking you "Paper or plastic today?"
You probably have.
Unfortunately the flaw in this here republic is that people get to vote on their elected representatives, no matter how stupid you may think they are or how immoral you may find their political positions. So this means, absent term limits, internal legislative rules or criminal convictions, someone you don't like may hold her elected position with all the authority of that position for as long as she likes, no matter how much damage she may do to her constituency. Bottom line is that the people get to decide on their elected representatives. Period.
Well not so fast. Although much of the conversation about the new Republican governorships and state legislative majorities in the US has focused on Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida, the new Republican governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, and the Republican state House and Senate majorities have been busy as bees proposing or imposing a host of new changes to how state government works. One of these changes has been the ability for the State of Michigan to grant executive powers to emergency managers for municipalities, not just school boards, which allows the emergency financial managers to eliminate collective bargaining contracts. It also allows earlier appointments of such managers, before a municipality asks for one or declares bankruptcy.
Benton Harbor— In a move believed to be the first under sweeping new state legislation, Emergency Manager Joseph Harris suspended decision-making powers of city officials Friday. Officials only can call meetings to order, adjourn them and approve minutes of meetings as part of the order issued Friday.
The action is likely the first since Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law in March a new statute that grants more powers to emergency managers appointed by the Treasury Department to take over distressed schools and communities. At least one elected Benton Harbor official was sanguine about the order. "It doesn't bother me," said City Commissioner Bryan Joseph. "I'm in favor of it." Joseph said he has watched financial mismanagement for decades, which was one of the reasons he ran for election in 2008. But the move drew a strong rebuke from the AFL-CIO. The union represents administrative workers, among others. "This is sad news for democracy in Michigan," said Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO. "With the stripping of all power of duly elected officials in Benton Harbor … we can now see the true nature of the emergency manager system."
This being Michigan the race element is never far from the surface and one must note that Benton Harbor is over 90% Black. But the other two cities that have emergency financial managers, Pontiac and Ecorse, are not majority Black, although they are getting close. The mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing, is using the threat of an emergency financial manager, to attempt to leverage concessions from city unions.
No one can doubt that these cities are indeed in pretty crappy condition. People can argue over how they got there and what needs to be done to solve their issues. Some people say that this is the obvious end result of a bloated welfare state and union "gimme" mindset that must ruthlessly be eradicated. Others respond that this is late stage capitalism as more workers become superfluous to profit and are shed at ever increasing rates. Other people have even simpler and much uglier theories which are related to the demographics of those cities.
Whatever one's opinion might be, should we agree that the people in a given city should have the ABSOLUTE right to elect whoever they want and run their city how they want? Or is this a quaint notion at a time where Detroit councilwoman (and lovable quack) JoAnn Watson is calling for a city bailout on the scale of what the federal government gave to GM.
What's your take? Do you think emergency managers are critical to fixing the problems of certain cities? Is this just a new tool to bash unions? Are union contracts the problem these cities face or does it have more to do with the collapse of housing and flight of capital overseas? Are these problems related? Would you be willing to give your city's decision making capacity over to an emergency financial manager if your governor thought it necessary?
A long time commenter, Molly, asked what is it with men and The Godfather? I discuss some of that in the following review but another classic film that defines and debates masculinity is Glengarry GlenRoss. Even more than The Godfather, this film explores rigid ideas about manhood. And if you don't fit within those conceptions, hit the bricks pal, cause you are going out! This film was directed by James Foley but it was written by David Mamet and based on Mamet's play. It's Mamet's film. It had an all star cast (Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce, Ed Harris, Alec Baldwin, and Al Pacino).
A group of real estate salesmen, having failed to meet their bosses' expectations are given one last chance to redeem themselves. I'll stop here and let Alec Baldwin explain it. He was truly at the top of his game here and could not be touched. He almost won an Oscar for this and should have. This scene was also "lifted" and used in Boiler Room. I used to work for someone like this character. I didn't always enjoy it but I did get better at what I do.
Obviously with that sort of incentive the salesmen take a variety of steps in order to keep their jobs. But don't be fooled by the sales setting. This film is really about competition among men and how men (and society) define men based on $ucce$$ or lack thereof. Good film.
"I'm here pop. I'll take care of you now. I'm with you now. I'm with you."
The Godfather The Godfather's appeal is not limited to men but it does have sternly traditionalist views. There are parallels between tactics shown on screen and real life business. This is among cinema's greatest movies. In 1945, a quiet college educated Italian-American Marine Captain, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) returns to his New York home for his sister's wedding. Michael's family includes his domineering but fiercely protective oldest brother Sonny (James Caan), his adopted intelligent levelheaded brother Tom (Robert Duvall), his hapless brother Fredo (John Cazale) and his boisterous and imperious younger sister Connie (Talia Shire).
Michael is a prodigal son who has rejected his father's business. Michael brings his WASP fiancee, Kay, (Diane Keaton) to the wedding. Kay is fascinated by the stereotypically loud and demonstrative Italians celebrating the wedding, right up until the time that Michael explains to her that the large scary man sitting alone is Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana) a Family retainer who murdered six people in two weeks to end a business dispute in the Corleones' favor. And even the dreaded Brasi is afraid of Michael's father.
Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is a grandfatherly Italian man who is earlier shown with his top advisor and adopted son Tom Hagen, dispensing gifts, advice and assistance to visitors. There's no man too humble to get Vito's help and no man so important Vito can't make him an offer he can't refuse. A wise man with great wealth and a warped moral system, Vito is a modern day King Lear. He leads America's largest and most powerful organized crime "Family". It's unclear who will inherit this kingdom.
Vito's underboss, oldest son and presumptive heir, Sonny, is a brash, extroverted Don Juan who is prone to sudden violence and acting before thinking. The middle son, Fredo, lacks the force, intelligence and charisma to lead men. His adopted son, Tom, is not Italian and though smarter than Sonny or Fredo combined, also lacks the strength required to lead. Michael is the best suited to inherit but Michael has refused to join the Family Business. The four brothers correspond almost perfectly to the Four Temperaments. Vito would prefer to see his youngest and favorite son free of corruption and violence.
But like any father Vito is not omniscient. Times change. Events spin out of Vito's control. An upstart drug dealer demands Vito's protection. When Vito declines this despite Sonny's and Tom's urgings, this rival gangster initiates a war that will leave several Corleones and their followers dead or in exile, the family divided internally and the Corleone power almost eliminated.
This movie redefined the genre. No other Mafia movie would challenge this film's artistry until Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas in 1990. Goodfellas was a corrective to The Godfather. Where The Godfather examined the tragically flawed top gang leaders and featured virtually operatic violence, Goodfellas showed street hoodlums. These characters were to a man (or woman) self-serving, greedy and treacherous. Their violence was brutal, disgusting and often mindless. Goodfellas was based on a real story.
The Godfather, today considered to be an unquestioned masterpiece, barely made it to the screen. The studio didn't want Brando or Pacino and constantly threatened to fire the director, Francis Ford Coppolla (FFC). Studio execs referred to Pacino as "the dwarf". And Coppolla didn't even want his sister, Talia Shire, for the Connie role. He thought she was too pretty for the job and didn't want her to get fired . He relented and hired her, thinking if nothing else someone in his family could make some money. The real life Mafia forced the writers to not use the word "Mafia" in the film. Robert DeNiro read for both Michael and Sonny but would have to wait until the sequel to make his mark. He and Marlon Brando remain the only two actors to have won Oscars for playing the same character.
The Godfather is a great film because it only uses the Corleone POV. From a father chastising one son for a dumb mistake to comforting another son overcome with grief, from a deceptively jolly "uncle" teaching a younger man how to fix pasta sauce to brothers arguing over how to save the family business, the film humanizes characters who are after all, generally quite bad people. You actually identify with the Corleones. We only see the Corleones acting in self-defense against people who are much worse than they are. FFC was actually dismayed by the audiences' positive reaction (somewhat similar to how James Gandolfini was irritated by people's endorsement of the Tony Soprano character) and changed the viewpoint rather drastically in the sequel, making it evident that the Corleones were not heroic.
This should have been obvious from the infamous meeting scene of the Dons, who, struggling to define the rules of the post-war heroin trade, agree that it will not be sold to (white) children or in (white) schools but rather to "...the dark people. They're animals anyway so let them lose their souls..."
Your Friends and Neighbors Neil LaBute wrote and directed this film. After his previous film In The Company of Men it made his reputation as an auteur who looked at humanity's ugly side. Some called this film "misogynistic". It wasn't. Both genders come off as equally vile or pathetic.
This film was LaBute's artistic high point. But it's not a date movie-unless you want to dump your date. LaBute set unnamed characters in a unnamed American city. You don't know the names of the characters until the end credits, although they have long conversations and other interactions with one another. That was a neat trick that never felt like a gimmick. LaBute's style is minimalist here.
This movie is like a Seinfeld episode, were Seinfeld much more cynical and tons more malefic. It's about nothing in particular. This film is dialogue heavy. There are comedic moments and you might call this "dark comedy" but it's definitely not a slapstick laugh out loud movie despite what the trailer shows.
Aaron Eckhart is a sad sack flabby middle management type (Eckhart gained significant weight for this role) who is nauseatingly nice to his wife, Amy Brenneman. Brenneman is patient with her husband but it's evident to each spouse that they have less and less intimate interest or common ground. Both walk on eggshells to avoid hurting the other's feelings.
One person who DOES have a physical interest in Brenneman is Eckhart's best friend, a priapic drama professor, Ben Stiller. But the talkative, demonstrative Stiller has met his match in his girlfriend, a no nonsense Catherine Keener, who seems perpetually upset at the world in general and in particular at Stiller's need to talk constantly-even during intimate moments. While Stiller may pretend he's BMOC when Keener is not around, when she's there it's clear who's running things.
Both Stiller and Eckhart are friendly with the Alpha male of their pack, Jason Patric, a handsome doctor who NEVER has any problems with women for the simple fact that he is so incredibly self-contained he has no need for them emotionally. For him women only serve a physical need. Though he makes this clear to women, he lands better looking and more numerous women than either of his friends. Nice guys finish last. Patric is not a nice guy.
Patric meets his buddies for dinner and exercise 2-3 times a month at which time he regales them with tales of male dominance, elaborate revenges and wild monkey coitus with beautiful women. When someone asks him isn't he concerned about the moral implications of his actions, his response is:
"Yeah, God right? Do I believe in all that, heaven and hell? I don't know. Maybe God does exist. Maybe. But right now, we're on MY time".
Patric has his own ugly secret which he fondly recounts to his friends but which both they and the viewer can only see as utterly horrific. Patric should have won an Oscar for this film. His character may be "evil" but the movie shows, sociopathic or not, he still has some loyalty to his friends. Patric has to show emotional coldness, threatened physical violence, barely contained seething anger, extreme self-righteousness, and zest for life all without raising his voice. Natassja Kinski also appears as an artist's assistant who is pursued by different characters in the film and changes their relationships.
This will be a very short post (by my standards) because I have tons more to say on this issue and want to organize my thoughts better for later discussions. But in case you missed it, there is another immigration enforcement law controversy brewing in a US state. This time it's Georgia, not Arizona. However the law is very close to what Arizona tried to do. Basically the state intends to, via its police powers, make life rather unpleasant for illegal immigrants. If someone is suspected of committing a crime the police may verify immigration status. Georgia also intends to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to get hired.
I can't speak authoritatively on the constitutional issues although some of my blog partners certainly could and likely will. I am more interested in the political and social implications. The new Census data shows that the Hispanic population in Georgia grew 96% in the last decade while nationwide a full 22% of all children were Hispanic . Hispanics now outnumber Blacks in most metro areas.
Overall the Hispanic population grew four times faster than the US population.
In short this country's demographics are changing rather dramatically and there is a growing number of people across the board who are more than a little peeved at this. They are also convinced that it's been done via illegitimate means (i.e. illegal immigration) Of course it's not just Hispanics who are illegal immigrants but it's safe to say that's the group most partisans on this issue have in mind.
(Reuters) - An Arizona-style immigration bill cleared the Georgia legislature late Thursday and needs only the governor's signature to become law. The legislation would give police authority to question suspects about their immigration status. It would also require many private employers to check the immigration status of newly hired workers on a federal database called E-Verify. After extended debate, both the state Senate and House of Representatives passed the legislation in the final hours of their 40-day session. Georgia Governor Nathan Deal has not said whether he would sign it. Deal supported E-Verify as a member of the U.S. Congress, said Phil Kent, spokesman for the Virginia-based nonprofit Americans for Immigration Control.
The interesting thing to me is that even though presumably the Georgia Legislators saw the mixed results and negative blowback that Arizona received from its mostly aborted law, they went ahead and passed the bill anyway. And if you are in the US and don't live in California or New York, check around, there's a chance your legislature might be preparing some law on illegal immigrants even as we speak. People are getting very heated around this topic. Also the more states that pass laws like this, the less vulnerable any individual state will be to boycotts.
My take is that I don't think people should be racially demonized as anyone can theoretically become an American. That's different from Europe, which is also something I will write on later this month. However I also don't think it's too much to ask that people wait in line and do it the right way. I also believe that the level and amount of immigration should be up to the US, not to the would be immigrants. The US takes in more than 1 million legal immigrants each year and I think that's more than enough.
What's your take? Why do you think anti-immigration laws and feelings are spreading? Do you think the US should have open borders? Will Georgia's law face the same fate as Arizona's? Will immigration reform become a hot issue for the 2012 election? Would you boycott any state that passed legislation like this? Is this the last gasp of a dying white electorate?
What thoughts first come to mind when you hear the words "Chuck Berry"?
The TRUE King of Rock-n-Roll? A countrified Black man and the MC Hammer of 1950's popular music? A Black man that was too friendly with white women? An Oldie McOldster that hasn't done anything new since the early seventies? Someone who Keith Richards stole every lick from? The coolest guitarist ever who popularized such stunts as the duckwalk, riding the guitar, or playing behind his head? A Brown Eyed Handsome Man? A true poet? A lazy one-trick musician? An extremely mercenary and bitter old man that demands cash up front and EXACT adherence to his contract?
Well all of these descriptions and more make up Mr. Berry's persona. The book Brown Eyed Handsome Man (the title is taken from a Chuck Berry Song) by Bruce Pegg is both a biography of Chuck Berry, a rehab of his image and an history of just how bad it was for Black people-in this context Black musicians- in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies. I have said it before and I'll say it again and again. I have nothing but wonder and respect at any Black person that came of age before 1970 or so and still managed to keep his or her internal dignity intact. Because it wasn't always easy to do that.
This book discusses Chuck Berry's middle-class origins, his early brushes with the law, his mix of cautious integrationism and prickly if oft hidden pride in his musical skills, business acumen and blackness. "Maybelline", the song that could be said to jump start rock-n-roll was an adaptation and rewrite of an older traditional country tune, Ida Red. With Berry's deliberately "whitened" diction and a mixture of straight-eighth and shuffle rhythms, the tune was a big hit with white audiences but also led to such humiliations for Berry as being turned away from live performances when the promoters didn't know he was black.
Many such Black entertainers, athletes, and musicians have such stories to tell, of course-especially back in the fifties. Nat King Cole was brutally assaulted by the Klan. Bo Diddley's maracas player almost caused a riot/lynching when temporarily overcome by the music, he forgot where he was, jumped into the audience and started dancing with a shapely young Caucasian maiden. Although men like Berry and Diddley were idolized by millions, they STILL had to know their place. Failing to do so could be professionally, legally and personally costly. Ironically some of the same hoodlums who turned out en masse to protest integration or assault civil rights demonstrators were likely Chuck Berry fans. It's a hypocrisy that persists in America to this day.
A musician's life back in the fifties or sixties (or even now really) was not an easy road and it was much more difficult if you were black. Whether it was racial confrontations with Jerry Lee Lewis, royalty ripoffs from his label's owners, the Chess Brothers, shows in which supposedly Berry wound up owing the white promoters money, constant police harassment and intimidation, and spurious "that Negro touched me" charges from white female fans or their jealous boyfriends, Berry has been through the ringer. This culminated of course with his 1962 conviction for Mann Act violations for hiring a 14 yr old hat-check girl of Mexican-Indian heritage. After that sentence Berry became exponentially more caustic, private and distrusting. And he was already moody. The book does not end with the Mann Act conviction but goes up through 2002.
Pegg also does a great job in tracing Berry's musical influences, people like T-Bone Walker, Carl Hogan (Louis Jordan's guitarist), Muddy Waters, Nat King Cole, Charles Brown and Pee-Wee Crayton. This is a great book for music fans and history buffs. Don't be mistaken; it's not a wide eyed fan book. The author also touches on many of Berry's faults: his capriciousness, his refusal to share credit on certain things and his occasional decisions to sacrifice talent for cold hard cash. Chuck Berry probably isn't someone you would have wanted your daughter around back in the day. Heh-heh. I liked this book. It is a source of confusion and dismay to me that the younger black audience often turns its back on older performers. It's strange. If young whites can appreciate people like Wanda Jackson, Tony Bennett, Keeley Smith, Earl Scruggs and so on, you would think young Blacks might give some of these older Black stars some credit and attention before they're all gone. And there are not many of them still left.
Nothing But Money: How the Mob Infiltrated Wall Street. by Greg B. Smith
This book is by the author of Made Men and Mob Cops. The title is actually somewhat misleading as in many of the stories detailed the Mob is no more corrupt than any of the Wall Street workers. What the Mob brought to the table was more capital, better connections (a NY mob associate arranges to have would be investors comped at Las Vegas hotels and casinos-the details of which would have been VERY interesting to learn about), and of course the realistic threat of violence. In this story the Mob didn't so much 'infiltrate' Wall Street as it was enthusiastically sought out by rip-off artists looking for well-off partners and the ability to enforce illegal contracts.
The book's focus is on the late eighties through the nineties. Two of the three primary Wall Street crooks in this story made deals with the authorities and either got probation or disappeared into the Witness Protection Program. The fact that one of them was a scion of an old WASP family and the nephew of a U.S. senator likely helped his case. The only one who didn't was Italian-American and he got the longest sentence.
The book does go into the brutish way that the Bonanno Family (the primary family initially involved with the stock scams) enforced discipline. Word to the wise-if the boss has said do not take any sell orders on a stock, do not take any sell orders on a stock and do not let anyone THINK you have taken any sell orders on a stock, otherwise you might get an extended beating with an office chair in front of the entire workforce. The book shows how the Bonnanos react and respond when other Families get wind of how lucrative and almost risk-free the stock swindles, pump-and-dump and other crimes can be. Again, though the ideas, brain power and business models for these things were primarily provided by people not in the mob or at best mob associates. Cary Cimino, Jeffrey Pokross and Warrington Gillette were shady (and wealthy) people long before they hooked up with Mafia members Robert Lino, Jimmy Labate or Sal Piazza. None of this criminality would have been possible without the active assistance of non-mob actors like banks (who set up and paid phony id accounts), institutional investors, realtors, and other upperworld people.
Interesting fun fact: Stock swindlers prefer seniors, men and people from the Midwest to target for nefarious deals. "The operating assumption was that if you lived in the Midwest you were a drooling rube who might be a genius about cow breeding methods but was surely dumb as a fence post about securities.
The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad by Tariq Ali
I have mentioned before that sometimes a book's title and cover tell you exactly what it's all about. I just finished this book. I can't wait to see what Mr. Ali makes of this latest deal between the Republicans and Obama. Look, I'll be very frank. If you are a Obama diehard partisan, please don't read this book. You won't like it. It will raise your blood pressure. You will have agita. You may start by yelling out loud and end up throwing it across the room. You will be interested in finding all sorts of reasons why Mr. Ali is wrong in his argument but you will also find that he has anticipated most of your objections and ripped them apart in the next chapter, if not the next page.
But if you are a progressive, liberal or radical who is not irredeemably wed to either the Democratic Party or to the notion that Obama is just the best President that ever was or ever will be, I strongly endorse this book. It was written shortly before the 2010 midterms and details all the ways in which the author feels that the President is just a continuation of Bush policies. He says Obama is just putting a friendly face on imperialism. This includes a health care reform package that is a bonanza for insurance companies, indefinite wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, total appeasement of the uglier politic in Israel, more drone attacks in Pakistan, etc. The author is a proud hard left man and has no patience for not telling the truth as he sees it. He sticks to facts. He goes down the list and says on issue after issue after issue, "If Bush did A and Obama did A, why is Obama any better".
Ali predicted the Democratic loss in the midterms though I think even he would be shocked at the magnitude of the loss. Ali may come across as pessimistic and even petulant but that would be a misreading of his objections. Ali firmly believes that a better world is possible and he's been working for that before Obama was born. This is not a book based in personal issues. It's about the movement.
The census report states that Detroit is currently home to about 713,000 people. This means that Detroit stands to lose revenue sharing funds from the State of Michigan as well as from the Federal government. Detroit will also (unless the state legislature rewrites the laws) lose the ability to levy an income tax on non-Detroit workers or add fees to utilities bills or several other Detroit-specific actions. The reasons for the increasing population decline are myriad but are mostly centered on such issues as 1) crime 2) poor public schools 3) high taxes and high insurance costs 4) lack of job opportunity 5) older housing stock.
Of course the local political establishment demanded a recount but it’s rather unlikely to get one or reach the magic ceiling of 750,000 residents, which allow it access to all the items mentioned in the above paragraph. That’s all neither here nor there. Anyone paying attention locally would have seen this coming a long time ago. What IS interesting though is that unlike the initial wave of departures in the fifties or the accelerated exodus in the sixties or seventies, those leaving Detroit in waves now are mostly Black people. In fact proportionately so many Black people left the city that Detroit’s proportion of citizens who are white may have increased. Again, there are still more reports to be released.
We’re number 4. Whoopie. Believe it or not, 3 of the 10 most segregated census tracts are found in Michigan.
Not Mississippi. Not Alabama.
Michigan.
That’s the positive side (the slight decline in segregation) -if you consider integration to automatically be a good thing. This also might mean that in the suburbs at least both major political parties might have to start competing for black swing voters, which could mean a slight decline in race-baiting or in being taken for granted.
The negative side though is that the arrival of large numbers of Black students in suburban public schools has led to increased white parental removal of their students from those schools. Some white parents are sending their children to public schools further away; some are choosing private schools, charter schools or home schooling. Although most people are too polite to say why openly, bottom line is that when they have any sort of choice, many whites simply do not want their children attending primary schools with large or even noticeable numbers of blacks. There is a tipping point and it seems to be somewhere between 5-10% Black enrollment.
Because the housing market is so depressed it gave many Black Detroiters who were so inclined the ability to move to the inner ring of suburbs around Detroit. Many whites can not afford to move out yet but if past events are any predictor of future ones, in roughly a decade or two some of these formerly majority white suburbs will be majority black. With a few notable and laudable exceptions the public schools in Detroit are to the point where one local columnist mused that one way to fix the public schools would be to outlaw private schools, on the assumption that if the better off were forced to attend, then something more would be done.
The trend is particularly notable in Macomb County, which led the state in increase in black population, and where one in 10 students takes advantage of schools of choice, often to study in classrooms that are whiter than their neighborhoods. The result for many of the more than 13,000 Macomb County students now taking advantage of schools of choice programs is daytime segregation and nighttime integration, said Jason Booza, a demographer at Wayne State University who has studied the racial and spatial dynamics of Metro Detroit for a decade. "It's the continuing self-segregation of groups," said Booza, an assistant professor of family medicine at Wayne State University. "It's a pattern we've seen in Detroit for 100 years." The connection between race and schools of choice is a hot potato among educators, who maintain that parents make choices based on quality of education, not the color of their children's classmates. Kurt Metzger isn't so sure. "This is totally about race," said Metzger, a demographer and director of Data Driven Detroit. "There is a tipping point. When schools reach a certain percentage of African-American (students), whites start looking elsewhere."
Metzger, who has studied the racial makeup of schools, believes schools are not comfortable talking about the racial component of schools of choice.
"I believe the white population is much more willing to stay in schools with an increasing Asian population or a Latino population (than an African-American population)," Metzger said. "You hear code words: It's getting rougher, or the quality has gone down."
In the past, white residents uncomfortable with black neighbors sold their homes, Metzger said. Because of declining home prices, many can't move now — but they can move their children.
The impact is an increasing disparity between rich white districts and poor black districts. As students pull out of increasingly minority districts and take their state aid with them, the schools are forced to cut more programs, making more students decide to leave.
"It's institutional racism, and we need to talk about it," Metzger said. "We can't keep closing our eyes."
Again, with the exception of comment boards or when they are among an entirely same-race group, many whites are not willing to speak candidly about WHY they don't want their children going to school with Black children. This is something that needs to be addressed honestly. The other thing that needs to be discussed is how long can this game of musical chairs continue. One can not force someone else to like you but de facto segregation also has larger costs for everyone.
QUESTIONS
So what do you think? What does integration mean to you? Is integration automatically a good thing? Is it important to you? Do you respect someone who tells you upfront that they don't like you or would you rather people hid their feelings behind politeness or passive aggressive behavior? How do you manage the inherent conflict between freedom and equality? What is the solution to the achievement gap in schools?
It was testament to Affleck's directing skills that the movie was this good as not every director can make an entertaining film from a story that includes such obvious tropes as "Hot tempered second-in-command", " Unfaithful girlfriend", "Racist Irish", "One Last Job", "An offer you can't refuse", " No cop can outdrive the Kid", "Just like his father", "Four man band", "The good girl", "It's quiet out there-Yeah too quiet", "You were like a brother to me", "I'm not going back to prison" and so on. Unlike the film Takers, this film puts a love story at the center. Affleck is MOTIVATED. It has a few similarities to the underrated Bluehill Avenue.
The movie looks great (especially on HD/Blu-Ray) and really brings out the beauty of Boston and surrounding areas. Still if you've seen "Heat" or "Takers" you've already seen most of "The Town". The only question is do you like heist movies?
Frozen
I didn't recognize any of the actors in this nifty little horror film and it was just as well because I had no expectations. It's a simple premise. Three college students (boyfriend/girlfriend and a second guy -best friend of the first guy) decide to go skiing together, despite the second fellow's open resentment at the fact that the girlfriend is taking up more of his friend's time.
Through a combination of stupidity and honest mistakes the trio is stranded in a ski lift between 50-100 feet off the ground when the ski resort closes down at night. The ski resort will not open again for four days as there is a holiday. The trio can't call for help as their cell phones are back in their lockers.
The temperature is dropping dangerously. Storms are approaching. They must decide whether they want to wait it out and risk frostbite/gangrene, jump down or try to climb down icy steel cables. A local pack of wolves is attracted to their cries for help. That last item was pretty ridiculous of course but I let it slide.
Even though this movie had a low budget and limited area of action it worked for me. It certainly didn't LOOK low budget. It felt like something that really could happen to careless people. Have you ever locked yourself out of your car/house or waited too long to get a car repair? Decisions have consequences and in this film they're grim. Maybe that's you up there in the lift. The acting was good but the move worked primarily because of the tension and suspense. In some respects this was a throwback to 70's movies in which directors assumed the audience actually had an attention span. The film manages to be scary without over the top gore.
The eXperiment
Behavior modification stories have always fascinated me. People will often do wicked things if they think that they have permission. This movie examines that phenomenon.
A group of financially needy men sign up for a study. About 1/4 of them are to play prison guards while the other 3/4 will be inmates. They will be locked away from the outside world for 2 weeks. At the end of that time they will each get $14,000. No violence or rule breaking is allowed. Supposedly they are being watched at all times and any violence will cause a red light to come on. If the red light comes on the experiment ends and they don't get paid.
The leader of the guards is played by Forest Whittaker, a Bible reading man who is gentle and firm (on the outside) while the inmate leader is played by Adrien Brody-a liberal antiwar pacifist (on the outside). Whittaker's character wants to get money to help his mother get an operation while Brody wants to have enough money to join his girlfriend on her trip to India.
Of course the situation causes both men to behave in shameful ways. Whittaker's role is particularly meaty and his lazy eye comes in pretty handy in helping his character to look extremely disturbed as his sadistic and authoritarian personality elements come to the forefront. It is a little too predictable and things go downhill too quickly, but otherwise not bad.
Cyrus
You know you're getting old when you remember when Marisa Tomei was playing a fresh faced kid on It's a Different World or the young hottie girlfriend in My Cousin Vinny and now she's playing middle aged women of fading beauty (The Wrestler, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead). She still looks nice but the years are catching up. So it goes. It will happen to all of us. Nobody gets younger.
Anyway this is an odd film that also stars John C. Reilly, Catherine Keener and Jonah Hill. John (Reilly) is a lovable loser who flips out when his ex-wife (Keener), with whom he still has a friendly relationship, tells him that she's getting remarried. She will no longer be available to be a platonic girlfriend/sister/buddy for him. She invites him to a party where he meets (and is intimate with) Molly (Marisa Tomei). Things are looking up. However John discovers Molly has a twenty something son, Cyrus, (Jonah Hill) with whom she has a WAYYYYYYYYYY too close relationship. Cyrus obviously wants emotional and physical intimacy with his mother, although he won't admit it to himself. He launches a quiet war against John. John has fallen in love with Molly and at first tries to turn the other cheek to Cyrus' subtle attacks. Of course this doesn't work and John is forced to go to Plan B.
This could have been played for gross laughs but actually the movie mostly remains adult about the challenges that parents and children face in growing up/letting go as well as how middle aged desperate people meet each other. It's quiet and except for a few threats of physical violence by the male characters, slapstick is mostly avoided. Jonah Hill is 27 but could easily pass for 34-35 or maybe even older. This adds to the creepiness. Some might think this film is a broad comedy (similar to Stepbrothers in which Reilly was playing a similar character to Hill's but without the Oedipal overtones) but it really isn't. Don't be fooled by the trailer. If you like offbeat subtle stuff, this may be for you.
Skyline
I don't know what to say about this movie other than it stunk. This was a bad sci-fi film. I wish I hadn't seen it. I wish to warn others against it. So there will be nothing but SPOILERS here-including the endingso if you intend to see this film, (which you really shouldn't) stop reading here…
100% SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!!!!!
100% SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!!!!!
100% SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!!!!!
A woman and her nerdy boyfriend travel to LA to visit the boyfriend's old school buddy, the Black Guy.
The Black Guy is played by Donald Faison (Turk from "Scrubs") and he is evidently a successful music or movie producer;it's unclear. He has a white wife (Brittany Daniel) on whom he cheats with his jailbait appearing assistant. After a party at Black Guy's suite, sometime around 4 AM the next morning everyone is awakened by noises outside. They go look. There are blue lights moving through the sky. If you look at them too long you get cataracts, really bad skin rashes and then disappear.
Most people would leave but these Mensa members decide they should remain where they are and wait for help. When the Sun rises they notice that there are these ½ mile wide spaceships all over the place along with several smaller alien beings/machines. All these machines are literally vacuuming up people or snatching them off balconies after hypnotizing them with aforementioned lights. After more arguments and gnashing of teeth everyone decides that yeah maybe they ought to leave the building. Black Guy has produced a semiautomatic pistol which he holds sideways. It's because he's cool like that. Black Guy wants to lead the way and drive away with his wife but his Saxon Queen has discovered video of Black Guy and assistant doing the do and isn't having it.
So Black Guy and assistant get into car and drive off at which point the primary directive of films like this is executed.
A big alien monster steps on the car, and kills assistant. Nerd Guy gets out of his car to try to help his friend but of course monster snatches Black Guy away. Perhaps this is a not so subtle warning about the dangers of interracial marriage? Or maybe it's just the writers' and director's subconscious feelings taking charge? If I wrote stories in which the white man was virtually ALWAYS the first to die, don't you think people might notice that? Why do Black actors put up with this?
Anyway the team is panicked as the monsters are inside the parking garage. Everyone runs around screaming until Hispanic Guy (the building manager) smashes his SUV into the nearest alien machine/monster and joins the team, giving them access to a brand new list of stereotypes. Hispanic Guy is even more macho than Black Guy, curses in Spanish, and is constantly kissing his crucifix. He's also not above throwing Nerd Guy a beating or two. That's just how he rolls, man.
More arguments ensue about the safety of leaving. The Air Force shows up and detonates a nuclear missile on the primary alien ship. Not only is NOTHING in the immediate vicinity harmed by this-no mushroom cloud or immediate incineration or black rain, the alien ship is barely harmed. Again a NUCLEAR BOMB goes off about 1 mile from the apartment building and no glass even breaks.
Finally Nerd Guy discovers his yarbles (by this time he had learned his girlfriend was pregnant). Standing up to violent Hispanic guy (who later commits suicide while swearing in Spanish and kissing his crucifix-cause that's just how he rolls, man), he and his lady run to the roof where despite a pathetic last stand they are both captured by aliens. There, they find out the hard way that the aliens need human brains!! That's right; a species that developed light years away from Earth apparently can't survive without human brainzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!
Nerd Guy is decapitated. His brain is inserted in an alien construct. But wait, his brain overrides the construct, because obviously out of ALL the millions of people similarly treated, ONLY this man had TRUE LOVE. The construct (Nerdstruct?) takes a fighting stance over the woman.
