Taking Down the Big Tent

I've been thinking for a long time — I mean, a long time — that this country needs a real third party in its political system. A Moderate Party, a Centrist Party. A group of politically involved people who believe in their heart of hearts that truth and reason can go hand in hand, that if it's necessary to frighten the public, or lie to them, to gain support for a policy, then that policy probably isn't a good policy. That there is no monopoly on wisdom in any group. A party that will take good ideas from both extremities, re-work them with principled pragmatism, and produce real governance. Which might be a nice change, after sixty years of alternating excesses from both existing parties.

I've often wondered how one goes about starting a political party. I still don't know, but today it occurred to me that it's really not necessary to start a new one. We already have such a party: the Republican Party.

Oh, I know, you people who watch Fox News and MSNBC are scoffing and snorting, but you must understand that what I mean is the real Republican Party. Not these loud, angry Tea Party types, who are so pissed off at having been ignored (with good reason) that they are become the political equivalent of suicide bombers. It's a shame that they tend to label themselves Republicans, but that has its roots in history; in the history of the real Republican Party. The party of Lincoln and Eisenhower. The party that stands for fiscal conservatism — not spending money we don't have, not borrowing more than we can afford to pay back; the party that stands for limited government — not "small government": this country is way too big and powerful for a small government. The party that stands for fairness in the marketplace and in the courts — not for "free market" policy, which is unfair to small players, including consumers, and which is too lax in dealing with those who would wrap themselves in the flag of the free market to cheat others; not for "tort reform" or "industry liability," because those mantras conceal the evil of denying justice to one side or the other. The party that stands for traditional values but still tolerates, without adopting, other values, in things that should be a matter of personal choice, not public policy.

So I wonder: what would happen if those of us who are Republicans in the traditional sense were to tell the Tea Partiers and the Neo-Cons that they are no longer welcome? The rump Republican Party would be a minority in congress, as it has so often in the last 80 years, but it would be the Centrist Party, between the slathering left-wing Demagogic ... pardon me, Democratic Party, and the angry, chanting Radical Right. It would hold the balance of power in a Congress where there is no majority party, and would cast its votes where reason and wisdom take it, and it would use that balance of power to mitigate the excesses of the Left, just as it would the excesses of the Right when they become the more powerful bloc in Washington. (It'll take a while, but it'll happen.) And I predict that many who now are members of the Democratic Party would defect to the Real Republican Party, and we'd end up with a legislative branch divided roughly in thirds. Later on, when the anger of the far right subsides, as it will, many of its loudest supporters will see the error of their ways, and return to the Moderate fold. Praise be.

A Good End

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Directed by David Yates
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman

The end of the Harry Potter series leaves the world, if not a poorer place, at least a less enriching place. A really good tale of good versus evil — or seven really good tales of good versus evil — with only a hint of the vulgar about it, as is appropriate for something that is (or at least started off as) a children's story, it has generated incredible amounts of money for everyone involved with it, from the author who imagined the world of an English boarding school for wizards, to the studio that bought the rights to produce it, to every man, woman, and child that had anything to do with the final products. 

And now it's over.

Except, of course, that it's not. Thanks to the Mickey Mouse law, and the routine spinelessness of our Congress, this series will continue to generate royalties for a few people and corporations for a hundred years, long after it should rightfully lapse into the public domain. None of the principals will ever want for anything, and maybe that's as it should be; but I for one see no reason why Rupert Grint's great-grandchildren should still be getting paid for something their ancestor did, and was well-paid to do.

But that's beside the current point, which is that this Harry Potter series has given us eight luxuriantly produced and well-acted films, enough to keep the kids quiet in front of the TV for days. 

Some are better than others, of course: the first three films (Sorcerer's (or, in England, Philosopher's) Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban) were outstanding entertainment. The next three (Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix, and Half-Blood Prince) were less so; their purposes were to advance the conflict between Potter and Voldemort, without resolving it. Had these books been filmed in the traditional Hollywood fashion, those three books would have been compressed to the fourth act, which might not have been entirely bad, but would have been worse. As they are, they are at least spectacular in concept and execution.

The seventh film (Deathly Hallows, Part 1) was a dark, slow drag. It may have been necessary to the integrity of the story, and to the overall richness of the fabric. It's a just shame we all had to sit through it in order to enjoy Part 2.

The Real Reason He's Gone

Separated at birth?

In this era of relentless commercial cross-marketing and film- and television-tie-ins, it should come as a surprise to no one that Bob Bradley has been let go as the coach of the United States' Men's National Soccer Team. After all, with the release of the final installment of the phenomenal Harry Potter film series, and the elemental demise of He Who Must Not Be Named, clearly Bradley's usefulness for product-placement services has come to an end as well.

No doubt the powers-behind-the-scenes at the United States Soccer Association are already deep in negotiations with several studios about a replacement, searching for just the right person: a man who can assemble a reasonably successful squad of soccer players and provide a marketing link to the next outrageously successful film franchise.

I wish them luck.

Like Superman in Middle Earth

Thor
directed by Kenneth Branagh
starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston and Anthony Hopkins

At the beginning of this movie, the famous warrior Thor enters Odin's great hall in Asgaard, and, I swear to God, all the elves who stood by the Rohirrim at the battle of the Hornburg in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers have gotten cast as extras for this film. They're probably computer-generated, but it sure looks like the same group, surrounded by all the same Gaelo-Norse frippery and martial décor. Well, one could do worse than honour that masterful cinematic achievement. 

But if this film hoped to be compared favourably to that, or any other, great action movie, then it would have been well to treat the characters as what they were in legend, rather than as what they became in the care of Marvel Comics. This movie attempts to tell an epic saga in half a movie, the other half being devoted to a love story involving one mortal and one immortal. (Gee, where have I seen that before?) In the end, it succeeds in telling the story in a sort of outline form that any 20th-Century college student will be familiar with from their note-taking. That's fine if all you want to do is be reminded of the ideas and themes to be studied, but it leaves the movie viewer dissatisfied.

So consider this movie as just an action flick. There are plenty of computer-generated special effects, and they run the full gamut from exciting to clever to ordinary to cheesy. The "Destroyer," a sort of cyborg come to do its master's bidding, is sometimes 30 feet tall, sometimes 12. The discrepancy rankles, as do some of the non-computer-generated special effects, with model buildings and cars succumbing to destruction in footage that would have been astounding in the 1960s, but today seem almost laughable.

Overall, Thor is something of a disappointment. The plot is well-imagined but unevenly realized, and the movie's makers' inability to develope the substance of either story line, the classic or the contrived, means that the greatest disappointment of the show comes at the end, when the names of the director and stars come on the screen. To think that the man who gave such brilliance to Shakespeare could produce such a frivolous, half-assed film, using to modest effect the great talents of such bright stars as Hopkins and Portman (who do their best, with some success, to avoid out-shining their co-stars), was the saddest part of this failure of a film.