It is a testament to the filmmaking and propaganda skills of Frank Capra that even a grown male atheist like me will weep like a schoolgirl whose puppy just died when, at the very end of It’s a Wonderful Life, George’s brother raises a glass and says: “To my brother George, the richest man in the world.” The New York Times article I reference in the video, well worth the read, is right below the video.
Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life
WENDELL JAMIESON • NYTIMES
The classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” stars James Stewart as a man who can see the world as it would be if he had never been born.
MR. ELLMAN didn’t tell us why he wanted us to stay after school that December afternoon in 1981. When we got to the classroom — cinderblock walls, like all the others, with a dreary view of the parking lot — we smelled popcorn.
He had set up a 16-millimeter projector and a movie screen, and rearranged the chairs. Book bags, jackets and overcoats were tossed on seat backs, teenagers sat, suspicious, slumping, and Mr. Ellman started the projector whirring. “It’s a Wonderful Life” filled the screen.
I was not a mushy kid. My ears were fed a steady stream of the Clash and the Jam, and I was doing my best to conjure a dyed-haired, wry, angry-young-man teenage persona. But I was enthralled that afternoon in Brooklyn. In the years that followed, my affection for “It’s a Wonderful Life” has never waned, despite the film’s overexposure and sugar-sweet marketing, and the rolling eyes of friends and family. Read the rest of this entry ?
America for Kids • Operation Itch Video For the kids, so they know what kind of hell we’ve been through over the past nine years. “He who does not know the past…etc., etc..”
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day who maintained that Caroline Kennedy was far and away the best choice to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate.
“I mean, who else is there?” he demanded. “Who would be better, and why?”
I rattled off a few names that came immediately to mind — Gregory Meeks, maybe, or Malcolm Smith or Steve Israel. He rolled his eyes and responded, “I’ve never even heard of any of them.”
Now, the fact that he hadn’t heard of a couple of New York congressmen and New York’s state Senate Minority Leader is perfectly understandable. Hell, I imagine most New Yorkers aren’t familiar with all those names, much less a sometime-political junkie out of Florida. But his reason for backing Kennedy (i.e. that he had heard of her) made me realize that, for many people, Kennedy’s potential as a candidate is based solely on name recognition. Read the rest of this entry ?
This is the question now raised in Iraq: If they throw shoes at your face are you a combat troop or a noncombat troop? The answer may be important in helping to guide President Elect Obama’s strategy of reducing but continuing the genocidal occupation that has made a shoeless journalist one of the most beloved, if little known, people in the world overnight.
A related dilemma is this: If shoes become weapons, were the metal detectors, searches, and bribes to phony journalists successful? This strikes me as a similar question to the following: if box cutters become weapons, were the nuclear arsenal, the missile offense shield, and the empire of bases successful? Read the rest of this entry ?
Yes, in his final visit to Baghdad before America returns the idiot to a village in Texas, the leader of the free world had not one, but two projectiles launched at him.
The Hermit with Davis Fleetwood • Operation Itch Video 
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day who maintained that Caroline Kennedy was far and away the best choice to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate.
This is the question now raised in Iraq: If they throw shoes at your face are you a combat troop or a noncombat troop? The answer may be important in helping to guide President Elect Obama’s strategy of reducing but continuing the genocidal occupation that has made a shoeless journalist one of the most beloved, if little known, people in the world overnight.
