Thoughts While Shaving

Now that Channel 5’s political reporter Dick Kay is retiring (whom I call “Mr. President” because he headed the AFTRA union I belong to), the best choice the station could make to replace him would be Jeff Berkowitz, recovering lawyer and host of the best TV political show in town on CAN-TV. I have doubts that someone with the skill, knowledge of issues and deft questioning ability of Berkowitz will be chosen. But it would thrill me if he were…

Any doubt that this nation is involved knee-deep in a culture war can be seen by the Academy Awards finalists for Sunday night. “Munich” tells us that there are no absolutes, that one who blows up school buses may well be a freedom fighter, that evil and good are in reciprocity. “Breakback Mountain” is pictorially vivid but at least presents at the end a sadness for those who follow lustful inclinations at odds with 7,000 years of heterosexual tradition. Pushed for best foreign film is ‘”Paradise Now” which gives hero status to two suicide bombers. Then there’s “Syriana,” nominated for best screenplay along with George Clooney as best supporting actor, with an hero an Arab prince who seeks to liberalize his country and is burned alive with his beautiful wife—burned alive by a missile from CIA headquarters, with the result that his evil brother a puppet of a U.S. oil company takes over with the help of fast, corrupt and venal Americans.

The bad news is that Hollywood is intellectually (if that’s the word) allied in a propaganda war against us, far different from the era when Hollywood was an ally for us in World War II. The good news is that these films are earning far less than they are expected to. But a final rush of bad news: Hollywood doesn’t care that they are not money-makers; they are determined to participate in the battle to overthrow America—the same America that allows these producers and actors to earn lavish salaries and waddle in the finery that the Academy Awards night will portray.