Planned Parenthood gets the ACORN treatment
In the wake of James O’Keefe’s takedown of ACORN with a hidden camera sting which showed ACORN employees giving a “pimp” advice on how to run a brothel with underage girls, and Live Action’s previous stings of Planned Parenthood clinics, it is surprising that Live Action was able to catch a Planned Parenthood employee advising a man posing as a pimp on how to get STD testing and abortions for his prostitutes, including underage girls and immigrants (i.e. victims of international sex trafficking). She smiles and chuckles while she advises him how to flout the law:
GET TO THE CHOPPAH!
Above-the-fold photograph from the front page of last Thursday’s Washington Post:
The story behind the story. Hey, when a young, go-getting attorney needs ice cream, he goes and gets, even if it’s snowing out, right?
Never again
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 66 years ago, Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. (image: the crematoria at Auschwitz)
Bobby’s Boxes
Tangentially related to my Ice Road Kennedys piece, James Fallows of The Atlantic writes about how the John F. Kennedy Library and Robert Kennedy’s heirs are blocking access to RFK’s records from when he served as attorney general in his brother’s cabinet. Blocking access prevents the possible dissemination of information damaging to RFK’s good guy reputation—such as his involvement in trying to destabilize Cuba. Transparency is important to good government. The historical record can sometimes act as a final check on government—so vain politicians worried about their “legacy” are often trying to hide their actions in perpetuity. Access to records is also, obviously, critical to the writing of good history. Here’s hoping the Kennedy family relents and the records eventually are released.
The Static of the Union
I’m glad I didn’t watch the SOTU Show last night, and not just because it is worthless and boring political theatre. No, it’s because the big moment I would have been waiting for didn’t come until the very end, and the suspense would have just killed me. Never fear, citizens, the state of our Union has not changed.
The state of our Union is . . .
- 2011: Strong
- 2010: Strong
- 2008: Strong
- 2007: Strong
- 2006: Strong
- 2005: Confident and Strong
- 2004: Confident and Strong
- 2003: Strong
- 2002: Never been stronger
- 2000: Strongest it has ever been
- 1999: Strong
- 1998: Strong
- 1997: Strong
- 1996: Strong
- 1995: Stronger than it was two year ago
- 1994: Growing stronger
Kunstler on Interstate 69
In his latest podcast, author James Howard Kunstler and co-host Duncan Crary talk with author Matt Dellinger about building Interstate 69. Indiana readers will want to check it out. Dellinger recently completed a book detailing the history of I-69, called Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway. Also known as the “NAFTA Superhighway,” I-69 currently runs from Indianapolis north through Michigan into Canada, but there are efforts afoot to extend it through southern Indiana to Memphis, Houston, and eventually into Mexico. In their wide-ranging conversation, Indiana native Dellinger and Kunstler talk about the history of I-69 (how the NAFTA connection was really an afterthought by advocates), the Washington (Ind.) businessman whose brain child it is, Mitch Daniels’ privatization of the Indiana Toll Road, the impact of highways on economic development in the south, cultural paranoia about Mexico and the highway, and the “casino economy” of the Mississippi Delta. Kunstler, as you might expect from the author of The Long Emergency, is a critic of additional spending on our highway infrastructure, while Dellinger comes across as neutral on whether I-69 should be built, though he’s a skeptic about whether it actually will be built in its entirety.
The podcast runs about 55 minutes and includes some profane language, but might be worth your time. Here’s a Wall Street Journal review of the Dellinger book as well.
A [Unpardonable?] Crime Against History
While much of the nation’s attention (though not the attention of the ITA writer Zach Wendling) turns to the vague Constitutional directive for our Chief Executive to, from time to time, give to Congress information of the State of the Union (be it in the form of a letter, as Presidents in the 19th century did, or in the form of a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, as suggested by fictional White House staffer Toby Ziegler in the TV series The West Wing) the much more important Constitutional clause concerning Presidential “reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States” is the subject of a sensational announcement from the National Archives today (and let’s face it: the National Archives rarely gets to make sensational announcements.)
Have you heard the story about how Abraham Lincoln’s last official act as President before his assassination was to pardon a Union soldier? Not true! Turns out the date on document in the National Archives supporting this claim was changed by a scholar to give the pardon the historically significant date of April 14, 1865. More from the New York Times here.
Billy Graham’s politics
In an email Q&A with Christianity Today (a short article that is well worth your time), Billy Graham points to his involvement with politics as something he’d have done differently if he were to live his life over again:
I also would have steered clear of politics. I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to. But looking back I know I sometimes crossed the line, and I wouldn’t do that now.
I wonder what he is referring to here. Despite his notable visits with Presidents and other leaders, in my recollection Graham did an admirable job at staying out of politics. (Not that there’s no place for Christian leaders to speak out publicly on political issues. What would the civil rights movement have been without their involvement? But as an evangelist, Graham’s calling was different than that of a pastor.)
Can ITA’s readers identify any occasions when Graham became involved in politics?
“The Kennedys” Not Historical Enough for the Network that Brings You “Ice Road Truckers”
The History Channel—that network that brings you such historical fare as Ice Road Truckers and Pawn Stars—has pulled the plug on an eight-episode miniseries on the Kennedy family, saying “we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand.” The Kennedys was announced in December 2009 and has long been a target of ire due to the involvement of conservative Joel Surnow, co-creator of 24. Liberal activists and aging keepers of the Kennedy mystique like Ted Sorensen alleged the final product would be too politically biased and not historically accurate. Apparently they’ve won. The Kennedys suffered the same fate as CBS’s The Reagans, which in 2003 was pulled from sweeps week due to controversy over its portrayal of Ronald Reagan (the series eventually aired on pay cable). This show will go on—in Canada—starting March 6th, but apparently will not make it to U.S. television for now. The Kennedys starred Greg Kinnear as John F. Kennedy, Katie Holmes as Jacqueline Kennedy, and Tom Wilkinson as Joe Kennedy. The trailer:
Unnecessary nudity?
Jennie Yabroff wrote an article last fall on Newsweek which suggests that nudity in films is often gratuitous. Specifically, she argues that the nudity in Love and Other Drugs is unnecessary. Focus on the Family, via their “Plugged In” media review site, agrees.
I would argue that nudity is virtually never absolutely necessary from a story-telling point of view, although it is sometimes justifiable from an artistic point of view. Take, for example, the nudity in the concentration camp scenes in Schindler’s List. The prisoners didn’t need to be shown completely nude to convey the humiliation taking place. The scene could have employed camera angles to avoid displaying anything not typically seen at an American beach. But Steven Spielberg decided that the artistic impact of the film was better served with explicit nudity (and I for one agree).
By contrast, Yabroff opines that a scene in Love and Other Drugs where a doctor examines what turns out to be a bug bite on Hathaway’s character’s breast did not require nudity for any reason, and neither did much of the rest of the nudity in the film:
When actresses like Hathaway (and, to a lesser degree, actors like Gyllenhaal) decide to bare all, they inevitably justify the choice by saying it was integral to the character. Of course nudity is integral to the character; so is buying groceries and paying the bills, yet directors don’t feel compelled to show that stuff. … The perfectly inoffensive Love and Other Drugs might have profited by removing some of the swelling music and you-complete-me-style declarations of love. Removing Maggie’s and Jamie’s pajamas, however, does little more than make us wonder what, if anything, Hathaway eats, and how often Gyllenhaal goes to the gym.
It seems pretty obvious to me that most sex scenes and other displays of nudity in movies are there for the same reason as the big explosions…to appeal to moviegoers’ least sophisticated interests. As a friend of mine once said of the formula for a summer blockbuster movie trailer: “Explosion, explosion, hot chick, explosion, hot chick running from an explosion…”
