Author: jameswagner

Bloggy has some good photos of the demonstrations responding to the first day of the Iraq massacre. including a couple of Barry’s own New York scenes and others in links from around the world.

This is not a political statement. This is a hedge, this is a feelgood thing, this is a fashion statement, nothing more.
Thursday in the “Business Day” section of the NYTimes we learned that “Hollywood’s decision to roll up the red carpet at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday will cost the fashion industry incalculable publicity.”
But never fear, the actors themselves have now found a means to keep up the public’s interest in costume.

Some stars have apparently chosen to make an antiwar statement through jewelry. Global Vision for Peace, a new group, said yesterday that 10 Oscar-night guests had agreed to wear a dove-shaped gold and diamond pin it had commissioned, including Daniel Day-Lewis, Adrien Brody, Pedro Almodóvar and Meryl Streep.
A spokesman for the group said on Tuesday that the actor Ben Affleck had tentatively agreed to wear one of the pins, but the final decision rested with the actor’s stylist, who would decide which version of the pin — in white gold or 18 karat — would go best with his attire.

If we needed any more reassurance about the meaninglessness of this entire enterprise, we were told in February by one of its creators that the pins are not in protest of George W. Bush or the threat of war with Iraq.
But wait, “Business Day” has more “activist” news from the world of show business:

Yesterday there were other cancellations in keeping with Hollywood’s desire not to be seen as indulging in frivolousness when American soldiers may be dying in battle. Vanity Fair magazine, which is host to an elaborate party after the Oscars every year, will bar all news media — including television camera crews, reporters and photographers — both inside the party and outside Morton’s restaurant, the party site, a magazine spokeswoman, Beth Kseniak, said.

So, let’s see we now have a pseudo-sophisticated celebrity photo and news magazine banning photographers and news reporters from its own very visual and news-y celebrity party, in the name of, uh, the American way?

We have a new blacklist. Right now it’s only about a party, but sometimes party matters.
Certain film people known to be opposed to the massacre in Iraq have been forbidden any opportunity to air their views during the ceremonies sunday night.

The backlash against prominent stars opposing any attack on Iraq has impacted on this year’s Oscars, with organisers drawing up a blacklist of people who will not be allowed a platform to air anti-war views.
Meryl Streep, Sean Penn, Vanessa Redgrave, George Clooney, Dustin Hoffman and Spike Lee are among those who will not be speaking, amid fears they could turn the ceremony into an anti-war rally.
In a move denounced by some as a return to McCarthyism, star presenters have been ordered to stick to scripts, while winners, who the producers have no control over, could find their acceptance speeches cut if they say anything much more than a brief thank you.

Should Michael Moore win an award for his “Bowling for Columbine,” his acceptance speech will be scheduled for a commercial break, but we know he won’t be allowed to win in the first place. This ain’t Oz.

but how do we explain the success of the engineers of our own age of repression? Bloggy argues they’re even beyond satire. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has banned the broadcast media from a ceremony in Cleveland today where he is to receive an award for supporting free speech. His hosts agreed to the censorship.
Metternich on the press: “The public cannot distinguish if news is true or false. False news has the air of being true if no one can he found to contradict it. . . .” The context of this quote was an 1808 argument for governments getting their message out through the press in order to counter the liberal pamphleteers, but our own leader doesn’t have to worry. The government’s message is basically the only one out there.
Last night, before Scalia’s closed award ceremony in the same city, the Roman Catholic Supreme spoke at my own alma mater, John Carroll University, for which outrageous invitation that religious institution shall remain for me even more unmentionable than previously. There the little mind declared, with authority, that we’re all acting like we have a lot more rights than we actually have, and he means to do something about it now that the war offers such wonderful opportunities for a correction.

I don’t know why I bother. No one cares, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, but I still want to point out that the “diplomacy” of the White House has come to this: Bush has given Iraq an ultimatim, saying, “Saddam Hussein and his sons [and his sons?] must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing”
Two pages later, in the same NYTimes edition which prints the text of Bush’s rambling mess of last night there is the following report:

Allies Will Move In, Even if Saddam Hussein Moves Out
CAMP DOHA, Tuesday, March 18 — Even if Saddam Hussein leaves Iraq within 48 hours, as President Bush demanded, allied forces plan to move north into Iraqi territory, American officials said today.

Leave or we’ll blow your country to pieces, but don’t leave and we’ll blow your country to pieces. Sounds logical to me, and it certainly should attract overwhelming support all around the world. It will definitely attract the interest of war crime tribunals in the future.
Now about the sons of Hussein. Up to now I don’t remember anyone making visiting upon the sons the sins of the father a part of the argument for immediately destroying Iraq, as Bush now does.
None of this is important, as I said at the beginning, but am I the only one who notices that in last night’s statement we heard the ruling scion of one dynasty demanding that the scions of another ruler give up political power? It may take one to know one, but, historically, dynastic tyrants usually don’t risk whatever legitimacy they may claim by wiping out the legitimacy of another country’s own dynasty. But that was a rule observed at a time when it was still possible to talk about the balance of power in the world, rather than today, when we must talk about the power of the unbalanced.