There are more notable filmmakers working now than at any time before. It’s just a matter of access. It is still harder to make a film now than to paint a picture in the 19th century, but there are a fuckton more people who are in a position to pursue a career in art. So I often wonder which films and filmmakers will be remembered during the impending dystopia, after the baby boomers finally collapse civilization under the weight of their greedy retirements. If I could take action on such things, I’d give you very short odds on Alexander Payne. While I can’t identify some special stroke of genius that separates him from any of the dozens of equally celebrated auteurs, he does have a central and universal theme that he has made his own. Payne is the poet laureate of the mediocre. That is, the vast majority of us, usually overlooked, especially by artists. I don’t know why Payne, who went to Stanford and then found some success with his first film and increasingly more with each one to follow, has taken an interest in, neither serial killers and drug addicts, nor presidents and revolutionaries, but in mid-level insurance men, high school civics teachers and novelists who are almost good enough to be published by small presses. However, he is clearly fascinated and nails every detail, from the cars his characters choose to the McAllisters’ bottled salad dressing in Election. Maybe his films are so funny because of this unusual choice in subject. In Sideways, Giamatti and Church are funnier in their pretensions, for example, because there is a seed of justification to them. Bagging a fat chick in the San Joaquin Valley who remembers you from an old soap opera role that led nowhere is funnier than, say, a total loser passing himself off as movie star to a dumb blond. Everything is perfect when Virginia Madsen lobs herself underhanded, right over the heart of the plate while out on the porch with Giamatti, only to have him freeze up and take a called third strike. Would the scene have worked if Giamatti had a National Book Award? Or even if we thought he might win one down the line? Would it have been so frustrating if he was just a joke or a junkie? Obviously, I think not, and the result is one of the most empathetic romantic scenes or record, as we connect completely with both characters simultaneously, as they disconnect. Payne realizes that the struggle between “good enough” and “not quite” is just as fruitful a source material as any. I doubt it’s a coincidence that his own film making tends to be just right, rather than revelatory or jarring. Maybe it’s because he went to Stanford and so forth and doesn’t share, with 95% of living creative types, the delusion that he is Charles Bukowski. Anyway, it’s good.

Best Gangster Saga – Election and Election 2

While the aughts will be remembered as the decade of television, the gangster epic of the decade is not “The Sopranos” by any criteria. It seems like, perhaps in the wake of “The Wire’s” greatness, more people are realizing how flawed David Chase’s opus was. You can’t blame anybody for being blown away by the absurdly high level of the acting and writing at the time. But by now you should be able to look back and see the moral, psychological and narrative impossibilities that culminated in a final season or two that was often unwatchable. The defining scene is when Tony–a minor mob boss–is sent a private luxury jet to fly to Caesars in Vegas to hang out and maybe gamble a few grand, the staff at Caesar’s supposedly having taken the same holiday from sanity and common sense that we were to take in giving a fuck if AJ would get into college or about Meadow’s feelings. With characters like this, at some point, you have to face the fact that they are murdering psychopaths controlled by greed. That is the driving force of the really great gangster films, beginning in recent history with The Godfather and The Godfather Too! , continuing through Goodfellas and the even better Casino (that’s right). Perhaps this sequence of films rounds off in Election and Election 2 (AKA Triad Election). Johnnie To’s films proudly pay homage to these predecessors, particularly in the final murder in Election, which is Fredo’s death combined with the deaths of Nicky Santoro and his brother.  Unlike most other HK flicks, including To’s own, there is a mastery of the techniques and material rather than an apprenticeship. If you agree with me that the greatest Godfather moment is Hyman Roth, Michael and some cronies cutting up a cake shaped like Cuba, while discussing how to slice up the people and resources of the country; if you wanted to see more of the decrepit, Machiavellian, Midwestern bosses hashing things out in Casino (”why take a chance?”) you’ll be absorbed by the focus on endless back room dealings and machinations in these films .

Everything is cold calculation; strategy driven only by self-interest and self-aggrandizement. Some abide by a system of honor, but it quickly becomes evident that the system is revered as a method for stability and profitability as an alternative to constant war. With sufficient corporate streamlining, even these ethics can be cast aside and buried alongside their adherents. These men have nothing in common with the Flintstones. Their families don’t humanize them. Contrast an early scene of our protagonist having dinner with his son to another of his son watching him bash in a friend’s head with a rock. If anything, these men drain away any sympathy we might be inclined to feel for their innocent family members. And it is getting to the true ruthlessness of the gangsters that makes this line of films so compelling. We have moments of understanding, of course–they are still human. But perhaps the guilty pleasure in such films is that the coldness of accurate depiction gives us the emotional distance to happily watch psychopaths position themselves and bump each other off like game pieces. And there are some magnificent bump-offs, from quick and brutal daylight hits to a very convincing argument made with sound reasoning, a sledge hammer, a meat cleaver and some German shepherds. Even when a kung fu guy chops up multiple attackers (they had to do it once, they are Asians, after all) the tone isn’t broken. To’s powerful visuals are evidently at their best when applied solemnly, though there are spots of dark humor. The Hong Kong setting–often a pleasure, even in the hands of hacks–gives the gangster epic a fresh surface. The history and the traditions of the Triad are seamlessly integrated with the traditions of Scorsese and Coppola to create something new. And finally, these HK crime epics are well written. Whereas many (or most) of the more celebrated HK films work around the script, these films realize great scripts. It’s said that you can watch them independently, which is true. But you’ll miss some interplay, including direct and subtle allusions, and lines of thought left for the viewer to take up. Watching the films a year apart, it might not occur to you that the viewpoint of Big D, the destructive hot head in Election, is largely vindicated in Election 2. As good as Casino, Goodfellas and the first two Godfathers? Nobody said anything about “films of the century.” But there’s a viable epic here, which I never would have believed.

Best Biopics – Sun

On the one hand you’ve got Sun, Soukrov’s praised but still underrated piece on the downfall of the emperor of Japan. Some found the film dull, perhaps because it is emotionally hollow, but the beauty of the filmmaking more than makes up for that. Anyway, emotions are for girls. After meeting the Hirohito to negotiate some details of his part in the surrender, MacArthur says what I had been thinking. “He’s like a child.” The Emperor agrees to disavow his divinity–an act that highlights the absurdity of the Japanese arrangement. You can’t agree to stop being the son of a god, you can only agree to stop pretending. Though the Emperor is extremely intelligent and refined, unchecked indulgence has indeed fostered a perpetual child who collects photos of movie stars (why do all dictators love Hollywood?) and practices “marine biology” by dicking around with a microscope while his country lies in ruins. He’s aware of internal tensions, but doesn’t really grasp the external realities, as evidenced by his nightmarish visions of aquatic monsters bombing Japan. Hirohito plausibly theorizes about the reasons for Japan’s defeat, but fails to see that, at the heart of each bad decision, is an antiquated social structure based on personal status and deference, rather than the competition of ideas, and that he is the center of the broken system. All of this is captured in one of the decade’s most subtly great performances by some Japanese guy. The unceremonious MacArthur offers him a box of Hershey bars as a consolation prize.

American Splendor

On the other hand, you have American Splendor, about a schlub of slight notoriety. The mixing of media might seem obvious or trendy after the fact, but it’s perfect and seamless in the movie, as when Harvey’s eventual wife looks for him at the train station, imagining different depictions from his comic books, brought to life with animation. The inclusion of Harvey and his friends works so well because the film is the conclusion of the story. Giving them major roles magnifies the effect the film has on itself. Not only have these dorks from Cleveland, who inhabit a world in which Robert Crumb is fucking Lincoln, occasionally reached the periphery of public attention; there’s a Hollywood movie about the whole thing now, and they’re in it. What makes the film great–apart from stuff like the acting and direction–is that it chooses to focus on a small success story from within a small subculture. Not that Ruthless is on par with a moderately successful series of independent comic books (someone, please cut the breaks on my car tonight), but I was only a bit less shocked to see this site mentioned in The Guardian than Harvey was to get a call from a Letterman producer. Every DIY dork who’s almost died from a boner over selling 500 CDs or getting an article into an obscure magazine that they liked will understand what such small victories mean. It’s not only finding an audience, but finding an audience among people who share your unusual tastes and therefore must be brilliant and discriminating. The film is also a suitable requiem for, and a fun look back at all of that DIY shit, from ‘zines to obscure record collecting. Nerds will compile limited editions and misprinted Wheaties boxes ’till the end of time. But now such practices are marketing ploys and symptoms of social disorders. They were back then too, but they were also part of how unheralded forms of expression forced new outlets. The days when there were veins of creative material only obtainable through “underground” social networks are pretty much gone, unless you’re into kiddie porn, and it’s fun to look back.

Best Crime Film: Bubble

Who says social realism requires the threat of starvation? In America, the joyless existence of the underclass is best represented not by a bicycle thief, but by wares of The Hamburglar. Soderbergh and writer Coleman Hough glean every idiom and detail for his portrait of the struggling middle American. So, as an added perk, this will always be a window to what it’s like in a time and place, which is the most underrated quality a movie can have. I’ve been to New Baltimore, Michigan and New Hartford Falls, Iowa plenty of times. If you want to soak it in without actually having to visit, here’s your chance. The experiment in dialogue must have been tried 20 times per semester at every film school in the country–”I know you’re not an actor, Chase, just talk like you do on the quad. I’m capturing… reality!” But pulling it off so well is fresh and memorable and hinges upon the all of the awkwardness and pointlessness being perfectly designed. There are many moments where we can tell that a character is saying what experienced judgment tells them is the right thing to say in order to fill up a that particular space. The relationships and motivations underlying the mundane and the murder are likewise, sparse but perfect. Martha, our killer, is not only a stepping stone, but one that would only be slightly missed and has already nearly sunk in the mud. Her clumsy and irrelevant gestures around the time of crime–like some random gifts, given in a final effort to inject herself meaningfully into the life of her “friend”– verify that, even as a murderer in a small town, she’ll be forgotten in a year’s time. As an irrelevancy who killed a trivial person who was kind of a bitch anyway, Martha will be denied even infamy.

Man Getting Hit By Football: Punisher: War Zone

Originally, I was going to make this into an 80’s Action Legacy award of some kind. But, if I did that, I’d feel compelled to give the spot to the impeccable Rambo, which is the better movie and also has Rambo in it.  But in this case, I’m going against the more cerebral work and with the movie that had me grinning like an idiot the whole time. Yes, Punisher: War Zone has some flaws, including the characters and the story. But then we must also consider what a mighty achievement it is to salvage the fucktastically ridiculous “Loony Bin Jim” character with a single line: “Let me axe you a question.”  Another motivation here is that I know most of you have denied yourselves this film, though I sense that it is creeping towards becoming a cult fixture. It is a fact that every single person who has ever seen this film has enjoyed it, and I want you to share in that enjoyment. I’m being serious now.  If you are going to see a movie for the action, why would you see some pile of shit like Iron Man, rather than Punisher: War Zone?   Iron Man is a story (that makes absolutely no sense) for little boys about some guy who flies around in a magic robot suit. The action is not cartoonish.  It is cartoons.  I defy anyone to make a significant, qualitative distinction between the CGI cartoons of guys in stupid, magic, robot suits slugging it out at the end of Iron Man and the CGI cartoons of, say, Shrek arguing with Donkey.  What, Shrek is cuter? And that makes it OK? Hell fucking no.  Look, if you’re going to see Shrek, by all means, see Shrek. It’s a better and far more intelligent film than Iron Man, Fantastic 4 or, for that matter, The Anal Rape of Indiana Jones. But, if you are going to see an action movie, see shit get properly fucked up. In this movie, while it does contain a bit of comic book silliness, The Punisher decapitates an old lady!  He jams the leg of a chair through someone’s eye! He runs a man through a glass recycling machine! I’m pretty sure the script is just a string of such exclamations, but director/kickboxer/woman of the century, Lexi Alexander, realizes it beautifully with tension, surprise, humor and some pretty slick filmmaking.  Perhaps Ebert’s condemnation is the best recommendation:

“The Punisher: War Zone” is one of the best-made bad movies I’ve seen. It looks great, it hurtles through its paces and is well-acted. The soundtrack is like elevator music if the elevator were in a death plunge. The special effects are state of the art. Its only flaw is that it’s disgusting.”

Best of all, it looks like real action, not a super glossy version of the Saturday morning shit I outgrew at some point during elementary school.  I get that we Americans are too pussy to see images from the actual wars we start that kill actual people. But goddammit, at least our fake violence should be real and it should include sadistic heroes, one liners and a novelty death every twelve frames. Football in the groin, not nerfball in the stomach.

Best Horror Film: The Descent

The Descent is about an international group of hot women in their late twenties to early thirties who go on annual adventures. This year, they’ve chosen to explore caves in the Appalachians of North Carolina. One of the girls, hoping to create a truly special experience rather than a run through a “tourist trap,” tricks the group into going into totally unexplored caves, rather than taking the tour they have mapped out. In these unknown caves, they find an enclave of creatures that are kind of a cross between bats and humans–having evolved to survive in total darkness and remaining undiscovered for millennia, though they sustain themselves by preying on whatever animals stumble into the caves. Now, this is a horror movie, so of course you have to suspend disbelief. I mean, a bunch of hot chicks banding together to escape male attention so they can be supportive of each other and pursue their collective interest in geology? But it’s worth letting these things slide to get to some great horror. What sets the movie apart is that it is an excellent thriller even before the ghouls show up, to the point that it doesn’t even need them.  The underground setting is beautiful and dangerous, the interactions between the characters seem real and the danger they face is already terrifying. They could plummet to their deaths, be instantly crushed, or they could be trapped and die of starvation, during days of total darkness. It’s also a good problem solving movie, as the women devise plans and utilize tightly fixed resources to maximize their limited chance of survival.  When the ghouls show up, they actually could have ruined a good movie. But instead, they make a great one.  They are scary, there is not too much CGI and the creatures’ strengths and weaknesses don’t wildly vary depending on if the story’s need for them to be fought off or not. The rest of the film follows the formula, but with some nice twists and one that I think is exceptional. Much has been made of the different endings, one for North American rubes, the other, the original. Though the original ending is immediately darker it’s kind of disjointed. The American one (as I’ve heard it described) still works.  Without getting into details, I kind of like the idea of a survivor left to tell the tale, never believed, and to carry the memories of the horror. It’s like the renegade cop who leaves one hoodlum alive and says, “Tell Mendoza. I’m coming.”  Either way, I think the real gut punch of the film comes in what the women do to each other in the cave. One mistakes a friend for a ghoul in the dark, and another finds out what happened without knowing the reason why. Some other stuff happens in between.  The way this story line unfolds is ice cold, but conflicted.  So this shit is just relentless. Woman against nature, against monster, against woman… there are multiple points of tension at all times. Oh shit. I forgot to say, “spelunking.”

Best Movie That Is Just A Bunch Of People Standing Around And Talking–On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate

To the best of my knowledge, the French invented this kind of film and Eric Rohmer perfected it. Nothing earth-shattering happens. People sit, walk, eat and talk and we have a window into pretty unremarkable lives. It’s surprising that this can work as well as it does. It’s even more surprising that, once a few filmmakers figured out how to make it work, very few others were able to successfully emulate them. And no approach to drama is more excruciating when it fails. The formula only works with good (but not necessarily great) acting, understated direction and seemingly organic story and dialog. It is best if the characters are attractive, intelligent and interesting, but none are astronauts, and you probably know 20 people who’ve been through more “drama,” especially if you are homosexual. The key seems to be the writer/director’s ability to convey what is going on in his characters’ heads, without doing anything intrusive or interrupting the natural flow of events. Ultimately there should be an illusion that the main creative force behind the film is merely trying to stay out of the way, even when he is slipping small cues into beautifully framed shots. Then, you just get sucked in by the these characters and their stories for no immediately obvious reason, as you are to Sang-soo Hong’s soap operas about nothing. An Occasion for Remembering The Turning Gate has a betrayal, remorse, and requited lust that turns into unrequited love (or at least longing), but these things happen in a few, key moments. The rest of the film is the pedestrian shit that leads up to and comes after the “big” events. It’s the unspoken jockying for position between romantic rivals, the manipulations of suitors by the desired and the winner immediately weaseling out of commitments after the game is over. There are also ancillary events that don’t really lead to anything, but might have. The characters are sympathetic, or not, depending largely on the tendencies of the viewer. The important thing is how real they seem. You can argue that Hong’s films, much like Asian people in general, are all pretty much the same, and I’ve found a couple others more entertaining. I just picked this one because it seems like an answer to a favorite Woody line: that the only love that lasts forever is unrequited love.  True, but because we idealize them at some point, all loves wind up feeling at least partially unrequited and this lingers into future relationships. This is one reason you will never be happy. I assume the final shot of the gate in a downpour is meant to evoke, not only the titular myth about a princess ditching an infatuated peasant to execution, then ditching him again after he finds her in reincarnation as a snake, but also, Rashomon. Each relationship is a potential version of the protagonist’s love story.  It’s not so much the same events perceived differently from different individual perspectives, as the individual wavering between his own perceptions of what has been, could have been and could be. For example, towards the end of the film, the protagonist runs into a girl who he saved from bullies when they were children. It sounds like the beginning of a Kate Hudson movie and he and she are suitably intrigued.  He decides that maybe there’s a reason he didn’t remember her (plus, she is married) and gives up after a brief pursuit, but only reluctantly and wondering.  All of this is sedate to the point of being relaxing and conveyed mostly through conversation and static shots. And some graphic, bareback banging.

Best intellectual exercise: Inglourious Basterds

I have only have a little to add to Matt’s review. That is where you should start. I read it before I saw Inglorious Basterds, which, based on the trailers, I had been leaning against, as the film looked like it overestimated our willingness to savor the suffering of an otherwise unknown man because he wound up fighting for an evil cause. So I luckily had my eyes open early on, when The Jew Hunter gives his little speech about how we hate certain beings without really considering why. If it didn’t dawn on you until later that QT was massively fucking with the audience, and everything else that the film touches, it’s worth rewatching. Basterds is also worth another look because it is fucking great. Anyway, rather than regurgitate or slightly tweak too many of Matt’s points, I just want to reiterate how special an achievement the film is because there are so many who would to diminish everything Tarantino does. I remember the one film class I took in college, when the professor said that Tarantino was not so much good at making movies, as at stitching together other people’s movies. This is a common criticism. The justification is that he–holy shit!–is influenced by other filmmakers and often reworks what they’ve done. I sat in intimidated silence, not wanting to be like some kid who struts into ethics 101 (or any other class), proudly touting Ayn Rand. But I really had to wonder which little Asian film, known only to QT and his critics, had so pithy, smooth and entertaining a commentary on how we are “fooled by randomness” as Pulp Fiction’s sequence in which Jules is luckily missed by gunfire at close range, becomes a man of faith, and then doesn’t flinch when his ally, Marvin, is shot dead by a freak discharge midway through his personal conversion. So, these people who want to diminish Tarantino’s work are generally the people who go to museums where you eat a piece of candy and they are like, “that’s the art!” I actually enjoy conceptual art and the idea of playing with interaction between the artist and viewer. But you can’t have it both ways and celebrate the museum piece and disparage one of our great filmmakers because the wrong people like him, especially in this case. If you saw Basterds with an audience of more than a dozen, you almost certainly saw people in a movie theater sadistically hooting and cheering at the deaths and suffering of characters on the screen. They were so delighted because they despised these characters who were… sadistically hooting and cheering at the deaths of characters on the screen of the movie theater they were in. Tarantino actually gets the audience to act out the parts of the villains on screen, the very characters they were cheering the deaths of, to the point where it felt like someone is flipping a switch back and forth between the two, making one cheer, then the other. And the attackers of the hooting, Nazi audience in the movie are the filmmakers, who reveal a message of condemnation covertly slipped into the film, before attacking from behind the screen and from within the projectionist’s booth. Tarantino is playing with his audience, but is he condemning them? The characters are actual, fictional Nazis, but the audience is just watching a movie and it’s not like Tarantino opposes violence in cinema. Maybe he’s just making fun of all parties for not being able to make the simple distinction between real suffering and actors playing with fake guns and blood. In any case, out of the millions of attempts to incorporate the audience into the art, you’d be hard pressed to find one so slyly yet directly successful and you won’t find one on such a massive, international scale. And, it wasn’t like, “that’s the art!” That was one flourish of art incorporated into an entertaining movie that was full of them, including one legendary acting performance and a few very good ones, a few laugh out loud moments and Tarantino’s, now barely noteworthy command of both dialogue and the visual. You can weave interpretations forever about the film as the end of the historical film, or a critique of propaganda, a commentary on the nature of terrorism and a Godard-inspired deconstruction and a bookend to his Les carabiniers and on and on, and you’d be right to do so. But I doubt Tarantino had some central, propaganda point of his own in mind. He just puts so many cards on the table that he must be playing more than one game at once–or at least some game I can’t totally decipher–about movies, their relation to real life, history, war and violence. Just take something small. Did Tarrantino, who can have any actor he wants, chose Eli Roth (Hostel, the “torture porn” discussion) for a big role in this film about movie violence just because they are pals? Quite possibly. But that’s just one card on the table.

Best Zucker Movie:  OSS 117: Lost in Rio

Obviously, the real David Zucker caught syphilis, went insane and made An American Carol, so the torch must be passed, but only after it is used to burn the script of the upcoming Scary Movie 5.  The OSS 117 movies are celebrated like few others in our forums, but I’ve found only one English review of OSS 117: Lost in Rio online and it was written by a gorilla. The online review claims that the OSS films rely upon “a refusal to go for the easy joke” which is the exact opposite of how they work. The films take every easy joke that comes their way, though they usually finesse it to perfection.  The “easy” jokes are mixed with more subtle humor, wit, parody and satire in equal parts.  There is no less original film on this list.  The OSS films are based on a real OSS 117 series of  “serious,” Bond-style spy capers from the 50’s and 60’s.  They owe a lot to the Zuckers and Jim Abrams. Obviously, making fun of spy movies and the “hip” film techniques of the 60’s is nothing new. It was actually being done during the 60’s.  Nor is the guileless, political incorrectness of the bungling master spy, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, particularly innovative.  It is impressive, however, that the films take so many influences and approaches to humor and blend them into a perfect cocktail. Michel Hazanavicius’s films wouldn’t be David Zucker films if they didn’t misfire here and there, but that’s part of the charm. Jean Dujardin stars and is one part the actor you wish Bruce Campbell had become, one part Leslie Neilsen. I don’t think humor translates across language and cultural barriers as well as people like to pretend it does, but Dujardin really does git r done here with a comic performance bordering on genius.   Doubtless, some of the humor is still lost in translation, but I was laughing out loud pretty much throughout the film. Americans will appreciate how La Bath’s imperial arrogance mirrors the caricature of the Ugly American. Take the film as an overture to mend the resentments between the two countries. Frenchmen and Americans are both self-important pricks and this should be a cause for unity.  There are two films in the series so far, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost in Rio.  I probably chose the latter, more recent film because I just saw it.  However, it also refines the OSS 117  blend even further. Like Austin Powers, OSS 117 borrows much of the earnest appeal of the very films it parodies, including exotic settings. There are some beautiful, and hilarious uses of the Rio setting here. And, yeah, it’s meant to be a joke that the oafish spy is swimming in scantily clad, model-caliber ass, but it’s by design that the audience gets a good look as well. So for hot chicks in leather costumes and cheap jokes about Chinese accents, you turn to little-known French films. For winding deconstructions of film, violence, war and war and violence and film that integrate the reactions of the audience into the movie itself, you turn to $100 million-grossing Brad Pitt movies. We’re in Rand McNally, people.

Though sometimes accused of misogyny, we at Ruthless will happily march arm-in-arm with our sisters when the cause is just–whether it be for more nudity in JCVD films or against reactionary, sexist propaganda, such as Gremlins. We have always opposed criticism that over-thinks or politicizes films to meet the agenda of the reviewer.  Yet, the patriarchal propaganda that is Gremlins is too transparent to ignore.  With a little analysis, we can see that the message of Gremlins is that society cannot function without a rigid patriarchy that produces obedient women. Given free reign, female behavior will land somewhere between that of animals and children and society will descend into anarchy.

The central figure in Gremlins is, of course, Gizmo, a mogwai. Mogwai represent women in a neutral state. The superficial similarities are obvious. Gizmo is cute, seemingly harmless and vulnerable and calls upon our protective instincts. We want to take Gizmo in, provide for him and snuggle up in bed with him. To grouchier feminists, this initial presentation of Gizmo/woman might seem condescending, but it is not so far from the reality of many male/female relationships. At worst, this depiction is conventional or conservative, but it is the starting point of a deeply reactionary fable.

The extreme, patriarchal expression begins with the three rules of “owning” a Mogwai/woman.

1) Don’t get them wet. Water, a classic symbol of fecundity, is taken a step further and is also a symbol for actual semen. The well-trained Gizmo avoids water. This is because Gizmo has been raised in a firmly patriarchal society (China) and both literally and figuratively kept in a box. But freed from control and supervision in the decadent West and left in the care of an immature man who lacks a firm hand, even virtuous Gizmo can’t avoid coming into contact with water. He goes into an accelerated labor, and painfully ejects his offspring. One minor slip up, and Billy suddenly finds himself with several more mouths to feed. The poorly managed woman, even if virtuous,  is portrayed as a source of ever-increasing burdens.

Gizmo’s offspring lack his strict upbringing and revert to their natural, insatiable desire for water/semen and offspring. Each poorly raised mogwai is governed by a mad desire to reproduce, but the most burning urge belongs to Stripe, who is a stand in for Reagan’s mythical “welfare queen.” Stripe reproduces indiscriminately, seeking water from any source available, including a public pool (bathhouse). He cares little for his offspring and even abuses them, but he expects the rest of society to provide for them. As Stripe’s spawn absorb the town of Kingston Fall’s resources, the remainder trickles up to Stripe who helps himself to the best of it. A rigid patriarchy is essential. A single generation without it leads to a cycle of reckless breeding as one batch of valueless baby factories passes it’s behavior to still larger broods in the next, dragging society into economic collapse, then chaos.

2) No bright lights, especially sunlight. The metaphor here is more subtle but again, sunlight is a common enough metaphor for openness and exposure. This rule is more patriarchal than misogynistic, as mogwai, and even gremlins, must be kept from exposure to light for their own protection. The analogous duty is protecting your women by not allowing them excessive exposure to the outside world. According to the worldview of Spielberg, writer Chris Columbus and director, Joe Dante, women left to their own devices will invariably dress like prostitutes, literally exposing their skin to sunlight or worse, the pulsating lights of “da club.” Of course, the immediate danger is not sunlight itself (though decadent women quickly become obsessed with “tanning,” and risk skin cancer), but the fact that men are entitled to rape women who dress in such a way. Even if such a woman is somehow not raped, a man like Spielberg or Dante will assume she has been violated and is therefore soiled and useless, effectively ending her life. Also note that one of the most common ways gremlins are killed by light exposure is with flash cameras, which is analogous to a woman appearing in pornography or (in 2009) posting shameful pictures of herself on the internet. While camera flashes and significant sunlight are lethal to the mogwai, women who are allowed excessive freedom will immediately demean themselves for sexual attention, couple with shady men or, less commonly, grow intellectually curious and absorb dangerous ideas.  Any of these things can render them useless as daughters, sisters or wives. As the keeper of a mogwai/woman, it is your responsibly to rigidly control their exposure to harmful elements so that they might maintain their virtue and purpose.

3) Do not feed after midnight. The lesson here is not to overindulge your woman and spoil her. Women who are allowed to live modestly are grateful to their breadwinners for sustaining and sometimes even treating them, as Gizmo is to Billy. We see this in Billy’s mom as well, as she remains grateful and respectful towards Billy’s dad, even though he is a poor provider and the family lives modestly. Billy’s mom is the uncritical representation of the homemaker portrayed by Friedan. She is fully occupied maintaining the home, excels at it and is a force for order. As though cleaning up after her husband’s destructive inventions was not enough, she is able to use her household appliances–most memorably a blender and microwave–to dispatch some of the first gremlins. Only Billy, however, is allowed to wield the sword against the gremlins, in his first step towards authentic manhood.

Though women’s willing contributions are essential to maintaining the patriarchal order, boundaries must be drawn. Once overindulged, women become insatiable, greedy and entitled. Because the patriarchy is ultimately victorious in the film, most human women are prevented from reaching the gremlin stage, but a human woman who is “fed after midnight” would turn out like Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian. Sustenance is not only taken for granted, but becomes a vehicle for aimless ostentation and excess. This is exacerbated by the fact that women care little for practical or intellectual gifts, favoring hallow expressions of exclusivity, wealth and idleness (We get a glimpse of this in the movie with Mrs. Deagle’s motorized chair up her stairs), in accordance with Veblen’s account of conspicuous consumption in women. When they become spoiled, their desires easily spin out of control. As their wants become impossible to satisfy, they become unhappy no matter what they are given. For example, a diamond ring has no purpose other than conspicuously displaying of the expenditure of resources. Perhaps one or two such items can be given to a woman to mark special occasions, but if there are no limits the display becomes increasingly meaningless, and therefore increasingly gross and unsatisfying until the woman is adorning her dog with expensive jewelry to show her total disdain for the labor and resources that have gone into it. So, indulged without limit, the woman has moved from a contented being, grateful for sustenance to a monster of consumption and waste–from Gizmo to a gremlin. Just as the overindulged woman will buy expensive clothes to wear once, or often not at all, gremlins destroy as much as they consume, smashing glasses after they drink from them, then demanding more. The gremlin/spoiled woman would neither dream of working for the resources they consume, nor pay the slightest respect or consideration to the effort of those who do work to provide those resources

Women with money, mistaking their luck for superiority and consumed by status, are notoriously callous and cruel to service and others they deem beneath them. This is demonstrated in the film by the relentless and shortsighted abuse dished out by the greedy heiress, Mrs. Deagle. Deagle, clad in ridiculous furs, is clearly unhappy herself and abuses her power at the bank. By hastily foreclosing local businesses and being inflexible with borrowers, she is a threat to the long term survival of the local economy and ultimately the bank itself. We see similar behavior as the gremlins torment Kate (Phoebe Cates) as she tries her best to serve them in the local bar which they destroy in a shortsighted display of power and excess. Kate has emerged as a virtuous woman in a corrupt society. This is only because Kingston Falls is an idealistic depiction of 1950s nostalgia: a representation of what is being lost. In any case, the Gremlins take special joy in harassing a modest and contented woman, just as they do her analog: Gizmo. Of course women who have been “fed after midnight” tend to express similar disdain for, say, housewives or working women.

So we can see the collision between the patriarchy and the liberation of women on a few fronts. First there is Kingston Falls itself: small, almost magically anachronistic town, not yet soiled by the general “progress” of American society and the 1960s in particular. Even the music played on the radio in Kingston Falls is pre-Woodstock. The town teeters between the traditional, patriarchal society represented by China, and the corruption of post-feminist America. It is no coincidence that Gizmo is brought in from Chinatown in New York City.

The faces of patriarchal order are Mr. Wing, the revered father figure who is ignored at first, then vindicated and acquiesced to and Gizmo, the figure of the woman who is content and happy to literally live in the box created by the patriarch. Billy represents the weakened male who no longer knows how to control the new generation of mogwai/women.  So they become gremlins: ungoverned women who erode society, almost to the breaking point, never realizing that their uncontrolled desires are ultimately self-destructive. In reigning in the anarchy created by the gremlins, Billy becomes a real man. Importantly, Billy needs the help of Gizmo and Kate, female figures who understand their place and therefore are as much a part of the patriarchy as he is. Only then, is Billy able to both restore order and begin a relationship with Kate, who intimidated him when he was in his weak state. Also important is that part of Billy’s maturation is realizing that he must take a secondary position in the patriarchal structure, in deference to Mr. Wing and hope that Wing is right in saying, “perhaps someday, you may be ready.”

Commentators, politicians, and people of every stripe have started yet another predictable cycle bemoaning the recent downturn in civility, particularly as it pertains to the national political dialogue.  They claim that shouting has replaced rational debate; sound bites have replaced intelligent discourse; partisanship has replaced compromise; and confrontation has replaced deference.  Many point to the anonymity of the internet, where flaming and trolling are valued more than contributing to and participating in the community.  Others point to the breakdown in traditional family values and the slow, steady decay of public institutions where respect, courtesy, and manners once reigned supreme and uncouthness was regarded as the province of the lower, uneducated classes and something to be shunned.  Still others point to the associated rise of popular music, television, and movies that celebrate rudeness and elevate vulgarity to an art form on equal footing with poetry and the great classics of literature.

Well, fuck them.  At long last, I say!  Random acts of incivility are the last true and honest expression of the human spirit in our politically correct age of un-enlightenment.  Of course we no longer debate issues in an open and rational manner.  Agreeing to disagree has been substituted for reasoned debate to the point that if you tell me a woman should be stoned for not covering her face in public because your faith says so, I can’t call you a backward savage because I’m expected to understand rather than condemn.  And no wonder since we’ve replaced the god of reason with the twin gods of multicultural tolerance and consensus.  Today, every child is a special snow flake, every life is precious, every point of view has merit, everyone’s a winner, and all voices deserve to be heard and have a seat at the table.  We have become, as our own Matt Cale is fond of saying, a bunch of sentimental grandmothers offering fake sincerity in place of honesty.

We’ve been raised, conditioned, and taught conformity in our reactions, not the rules because somewhere along the way the rules themselves became sexist, culturally biased, xenophobic, and oppressive.   Since when did pointing out asshole behavior become worse than the offending behavior itself?  Some selfish prick, full of entitlement and who has been taught that he’s above the rules because he’s a special individual, is in the self-checkout express line at the supermarket with a full fucking cart and suddenly I’m the asshole if I say anything?  What the fuck?  Not only have we sacrificed the normal rules of behavior on the altar of civility, we have replaced them with far more irrational rules that designate too many areas of debate and behavioral reactions out-of-bounds.   We swallow our emotions, dance around issues, and walk on egg shells for fear that someone somewhere might get their feelings hurt if we make a judgment.  “Can’t we all just get along?” has become the guiding principle that has turned us all into a bunch of sniveling little pussies.

We may very well look back at Joe Wilson shouting, “You lie!” from the floor of Congress as our generation’s “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going take it anymore!” moment.  A spontaneous instance of incivility in which two words conveyed more honesty than any speech delivered in that hallowed institution within my lifetime.  Of course Wilson is full of shit and an asshole to boot, but his behavior, like that of his fellow Right Wing town hall disrupters is not cause for alarm but cause for celebration.   The recent spate of alleged incivility has torn away what remained of the Republican Party’s respectability, exposing them and their supporters as the racist, classist, uneducated, fundamentalist, corporate cocksucking assholes that they really are.  At long last – public validation of what we only dared to whisper among close friends and like-minded associates for fear of being branded as intolerant.   Democrats, too, should prepare themselves for a maelstrom of criticism for their own collective pussification and compromise brought about by their position as a constant bottom boy in the D.C. orgy of special interests.  At least the Republicans are butch enough to actually do some pitching instead of cowering on all fours playing the submissive with a welcoming ass.   One can only hope that the long-simmering passions of the Left will at long last shrug off the shackles of civility and pacifist non-confrontation and opt for an in-your-face, sarcastic, and caustic style of mean-spirited ridicule, like Barney Frank’s response to one of the town hall downies.  If we can’t drag these people and their ideas from the shadows of tolerance, then we will taunt them kicking and screaming into the light through open confrontation.

We are on the cusp of a magical time when the stars align, the heavens open, and the people of this country might just awaken from their anesthetized slumber of apathy masquerading as consensus and shout in unison with one loud voice, “FUCK YOU COCKSUCKER!”    It doesn’t matter who that cocksucker is because your cocksucker may be different from my cocksucker, whether it’s the fundamentalists who have been allowed to use the law to deny equal rights to others based on their own narrow, twisted version of morality; the race-baiters who have used our collective guilt to avoid addressing their own community’s long-standing and culturally toxic problems; those who march in gay pride parades dressed in leather chaps carrying signs that decry gay stereotyping; every Asian who has ever sat behind the wheel of a car; third generation immigrants who demand bilingual classes for their fourth generation immigrant children; women who complain about the glass ceiling from the comfort of the home they won in their divorce, along with full custody of the children and weekly alimony; teachers, medical professionals, and parents who make excuses for their asshole kids by claiming they have learning disabilities or ADHD; white people; corporations who cry poverty and expect public bailouts for their own piss poor management decisions; or idiotic G20 protesters who smash the windows of a Subway store because they think they’re sticking it to The Man.

So, let it out.  Scream it from the rooftops.  Don’t wait your turn.  Forget about censoring yourself or moderating your ideas.  Flip someone the bird.  I’m an asshole, he’s an asshole, she’s an asshole, we’re all assholes.  Wouldn’t you like to be an asshole too?  To hell with civility!  For fuck’s sake, just be an asshole.  Trust me, you’ll feel better.

Hubert Selby Jr: It’ll be Better Tomorrow, is a solid film about a writer I’ve never read but would probably like.  He dropped out of school after the 8th grade and became a merchant marine during WWII and therefore a drunk.  We’re told that he only turned to writing after narrowly escaping death and being debilitated by TB.  Selby’s most famous book was Last Exit to Brooklyn which sold a bunch of copies, largely because of two idiotic obscenity trials.  He made a bunch of money and squandered it on drugs before rebuilding his life, continuing to write and becoming a popular teacher at USC.  The part of the film that actually sets out to tell his story does so quite well.

However,  about a third of the film irritated the fuck out of me, not because of unusual sins, but because of typical ones found in the biographical doc.  If you’ve watched any number of “Real Men of Genius” documentaries such as Sketches of Frank Gehry, or Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes; Crazy Sexy Cool you’ve seen the breathless fawning and hyperbole and, depending on the time in which the person lived, the celebrity hob-knobbing and circle-jerks.  Look, Henry Rollins has injected himself into the situation in act of self-promotion number 10,000.  Here’s Anthony Kiedis for no reason.  Selby overcame a drug addiction, so let’s get Robert Downy Jr. to narrate.  That’s how good a writer Selby was.  Huh?

The truth about greatness is that it’s a matter of increment, rather than orders of magnitude.  This is most clear in more objective endeavors like sports.  The most commonly cited example is golf, where one stroke separates Tiger from the field and the field from the club pros.  I like the example of football though–bear with me you unclean foreigners.  Football is a multi-billion dollar industry and meticulously scouted athletes conform to a narrow range of physical attributes.  You can rule out 99.99% of the population from a given position just by watching them run ten feet.   Yet the differences between the greatest of all time and the home town heroes are so subtle that you could build a team almost exclusively of first tier, all-time greats who weren’t even noticed by college scouts and wound up at barely-known programs.  Build an offense around Walter Payton, Jerry Rice, Randy Moss, Jackie Slater, Larry Allen, Gene Upshaw and a properly sedated Terrell Owens and you’re in pretty good shape.  Steve McNair is probably your quarterback and though, he’s “only” a borderline hall of famer, he wasn’t even a Dvision I player and your team would still score 80 points per game.  Yet nobody could tell that any of these guys were good enough to play for Iowa.

Within the arts and academics, where success is more subjective, greatness is just as hard to spot and narrowly achieved.  You probably know that Confederacy of Dunces was only published under improbable circumstances after the author committed suicide as a failure.  There must be hundreds of such books that were never discovered. Marconi and Tesla tied on inventing the radio.  Leibniz and Newton tied on inventing calculus.  A bunch of other people would have also tied with them, except they died at age seven because they crapped in their drinking water.  Only a handful of living filmmakers will be remembered through the centuries, but nobody really has a clue which ones.  Will future generations believe that Sokurov is ten times better than Scorsese?  Will there be hundreds of professors specializing in “The Simpsons” or “The Wire” who look down their nose at film from this era?  Will Hubert Selby Jr. be completely forgotten? It all seems possible.

Again I don’t have a huge problem with the strictly biographical elements of this film and the footage chosen of Selby.  Nor is my argument that the great people who are separated by timing, chance and marginally better ability are any less great or interesting because of it.  In fact, the things that make up those little differences are far more interesting than the scenario of the typical hagiography, wherein the genius is a comic book hero.  If some people just popped out of the womb with IQs of 300 and the ability to throw a 180 MPH fastball, their stories would quickly become boring.  Warranted hagiography is fine, but what are the nuances and idiosyncrasies that allowed the subject to shine?  Selby talks about his style, but only briefly.  There has to be more to say about the man and his work that could be included at the expense of cameos testifying to his freakish genius.

In fact, with rare exceptions, other celebrities should usually be excluded from these films.  Anyone who’s ever listened to a DVD commentary knows the mechanism at work here.  Celebrities, though usually talented and deserving, have still just scraped past other talented and deserving and people to achieve their status.  Insecure and unwilling to face this fact, they establish a tacit contract whereby all parties wildly exaggerate each others ability.   Maybe the producers casting the voice of ALF thought it was a coin toss between the guy who got it and the next guy at the time.  But now, we can see that he was unbelievably fucking brilliant!  I’m not saying that Selby is the same as the ALF guy, but I did want to throw up when an actress from the film of his Requiem For A Dream declared that the chance to give voice to his words was “one of the great gifts of my life.”

The best part of the contract is that even those giving out the blowjobs benefit.  Not only is there the understanding that they too will be blown down the line (the guy who did the voice of ALF will talk about the stunning vision of the producers of ALF),  there is the implication that they have earned the right to understand and opine on the genius by being brilliant themselves.  Why is Richard Price in a film about Selby for like fifteen minutes?  So he can say, “Hubert Selby is a Genius.  I ought to know… I’m Richard Price.”  And Michael Jordan loves Ball Park Franks.  They plump when you cook ‘em!  Obviously Rollins, who is a genius at tricking people into believing he’s not an idiot, is the more gratuitous example.  But it’s specifically because I’m fine with Price that I mention him.  I know Price deserves a spot on the totem pole that is invisible from my own.  But, apart from perhaps a few words on Selby’s influence, that has absolutely nothing to do with Selby the man. Long after it’s explained to we uninitiated why Selby was great and what he did, we still hear from Price and the like.  Give me more from his students at USC.  His mailman.  Hell, maybe the guy himself.  There’s a decent amount of footage with Selby, but seeing as he is the subject of the film, maybe he should be in it more than Darren Aronofsky.

Apart from just being fed up with this hagiography approach in general, I think it irked me so much in this particular film because Selby comes across as unbelievably modest and unconcerned with stratification of status.  He wasn’t a monk, but it seems like if he knew a film was being made about Robert Downy Jr, it would never even occur to him to involve himself.  When he called for a job at USC he wasn’t sure they’d have one for him because he never seemed to realize that, according to one testimony, there should be a wing of the Harvard library named in his honor.   So I doubt he’d believe that his legacy is best conveyed via celebrity endorsements.

First Posted: 07/07/03

There are several reasons why Roman Polanski’s Oscar win for The Pianist is so thrilling, not the least of which is the fact that finally, one of the “great directors” at last secured the top prize after other giants — Kubrick, Hitchcock, Altman, and Scorsese, to name a few — were unjustly defeated by young upstarts and downright embarrassing newcomers (must I repeat that Kevin Costner won over Scorsese’s Goodfellas, one of the confirmed masterpieces of recent years?) To hear the name of one of cinema history’s best and most innovative voices read aloud was easily the most welcome upset of the night and for once, the award was given for a genuinely worthy film rather than being a career-capping sentimental prize. Hey, Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby were better films, but I can live with The Pianist; it is a worthy choice. But, more than that, Polanski’s win signifies a new era in Hollywood and, perhaps, America as a whole. We now live in a time where a rapist — a child rapist, no less — can win the approval of an entire community, even if he is not “allowed” to pick up his trophy in person. And let me be the first to say that, well, it’s about time.

While the self-righteous and the prudishly moral couldn’t get enough of the story (I believe religious fanatic and film “critic” Michael Medved condemned the award as “sanctioning immorality,” or some such phrase that most of these ass holes pull out for such occasions), I was applauding the decision. The award, yes, but also America having finally, mercifully, forgiven a man for an alleged “sin” that should be put to bed at long last. While thousands were asking only that Polanski confess his crime and beg for our forgiveness, I did not hear one person ask for similar groveling regarding the far more serious crime of inflicting Pirates on an unsuspecting public. In my world, and on my sliding moral scale, bad, unforgivable movies will always trump sticking one’s sausage in a teenager’s cornhole. Call me mad if you wish, but I would have gladly endured a full tilt session of golden showers and cocksucking with Guy Ritchie and dozens of pre-pubescent twits if Swept Away could have been halted in pre-production.

Let us remember, dear readers, that this 13-year-old had visited with Polanski before, submitted willingly to nude photography, and even shared a hot teb session with the Polish director. And unless this young teen was selling Girl Scout cookies or subscriptions to Tiger Beat, she had to know what a visit to a famous Hollywood director’s house would entail. It would be like visiting Bob Evans and not expecting to see his cock at some point in the evening. It may not be acceptable in a post-feminist world to blame the victim as it were, but Roman was only doing what anyone with even a partial ability to achieve erection would do when faced with hot young flesh of the teenage variety. Hell, I’d condemn the man had he instead brought her milk and cookies and tucked her in for the night. This is Roman Polanski, remember, a man who lost his parents in the Holocaust and later his wife and child to the Manson family. The man is entitled to cop a feel now and again, even if our archaic laws forbid the practice. When your wife is stabbed three dozen times and you watch as your unborn child is scraped off the wall, let me know if you react “normally.” Judge not, sanctimonious pricks.

Dick:
I like Rex Ryan. I think he’d be great to have a beer with. I think after eight or nine or 15 with him I’d think I could kick Ray Lewis’s ass. I swear to fuck, I’d also fully believe that my team with a rookie quarterback that won fuck all last year would be able to embarrass the Patriots (who won 11 games with a guy who last played in high school) in my home opener. Not beat them, but fucking jack them up! I’m gonna knock their teeth in, make them remember me, and get to Brady more than six times by playing hard and clean through to the whistle because I’m not there to kiss Belichick’s ring even though they have the better coach and quarterback. Jesus, I’m fucking drunk. Pats by a lot.

Tony:
If there’s a rivalry out there about which I could care less than Pats/Jets, I certainly haven’t heard of it. When I heard last year that Favre was going to the Jets, my first thought was, “Who the fuck are the New York Jets?” My next thought was, “Why does New York have three NFL teams?” It would be easier to pick the Jets to cover and possibly win if Mark Sanchez had more than one game of NFL experience. I suppose New England will probably win when the Jets hand them a late special teams error on a silver platter, but I do think the Jets cover in a close one.

Sax:
This is why I hate picking games in week 2. What does a Jets victory over Houston mean? Is Houston actually a good team worthy of the sleeper hype they were getting this offseason, or was the Jets win completely meaningless because the Texans suck just as much ass as they always have? Is Sanchez going to pull a Matt Ryan this year, or did he just get lucky in his first week? What about Brady struggling to get the Pats into the end zone and throwing that absurd pick? Is that an aberration, or a sign of things to come? How good are the Bills? The solution to this problem is to just admit that you learned nothing from week 1 and pick the games as though they were openers, and I don’t think anyone would have taken the Jets getting 3.5 in week one. Also, this line opened at 6 and has moved due to everybody loading up on the Jets, and when the general public really gets behind one team, that’s not usually a good sign.

Pittsburgh At Chicago +3

Dick:
Fuck me in the ass, I’m Jay Cutler. My best wide receiver is Devin Hester, Brian Urlacher is out for the season with a dislocated wrist, and my line couldn’t stop the Packers’ pass rush because Orlando Pace is so old and bad the Rams released him. But we signed him. By the way, thanks for not signing Hank Baskett off the waiver wire and leaving me with this bunch of retards. Fuck this, I am going to throw the ball so hard on every pass that I break every receiver’s hands by halftime.

Tony:
Durrrrr, which defensive injury is more significant, Brian Old Spice or Troy and Shoulders? Actually, these injuries have an interesting offsetting effect on this game. The way to contain Roethlisberger is to blitz his face region for the majority of the game, which is trickier without your anchor linebacker. And Polamalu’s injury should serve to open up Cutler’s passing game. Here’s what’s going to happen: Cutler is going to throw three touchdowns to Greg Olsen and Ruthlessburger is going to be sacked at least five times. Chicago covers.

Sax:
Going by my “pretend it’s week one” logic, I’m taking the Steelers, since I took the Packers over the Bears last week and I’m pretty sure the defending champs are better than Green Bay. I guess the Polamalu thing makes me a little nervous, but… fuck it. That is the kind of expert, reasoned analysis you get here at Ruthless Reviews.

NY Giants At Dallas -3

Dick:
Ever since Tony Romo dropped Jessica Simpson and went back to men his passer rating has gone through the roof. It will go even higher this week. Over the last three years he’s taken the Giants for 12 touchdown passes in the regular season. Yes, he hasn’t won a playoff game, a must-win regular season game, or any game that matters ever, but this is September and this is when Romo plays like a champ. The only chance the Giants have is if Brandon Jacobs can stomp all over Dallas’ defense and Todd Flanders can figure out which of his receivers is as reliable as Plaxico Burress is stupid. My heart says Giants, my gut says Dallas, my head says that Dallas is overrated, and my wallet says Dallas.

Tony:
I have to think this spread is purely home screen advantage. I understand that Romo’s QB rating was like 700 last week, but the Cowboys beat an extremely questionable Tampa Bay team, and now Romo has a hyper-extended taint or some shit, so I’m not buying this spread at all. No sir. Giants.

Sax:
I’m taking Dallas. The Giants are just… not good. Dallas may very well suck, too, but I don’t KNOW they suck, and they’re at home. I still refuse to believe Eli Manning isn’t retarded. I will never get over Super Bowl 42. Fuck you, Eli Manning.

Indianapolis At Miami +3

Dick:
Last year was not an aberration. Miami really was that good, though it took a lot of luck, resourcefulness, and a play package from 1924 to get them over the hump. However, since they did not significantly improve anywhere, they will get stomped by the Colts. All the talk about Tony Dungy retiring doesn’t matter because Rod Flanders calls the plays anyway and he’s better at it than 99 percent of the coaches in the NFL. Take the Colts big.

Tony:
I swear to god, if I hear the word wildcat 30 or 40 more times, I’m going to purse my lips and be somewhat annoyed. Atlanta’s defense supposedly had some question marks against the run and they essentially shut out the grrr-scratch offense of Miami, save a garbage time TD. I think Indy is better than Atlanta, so I think Indy will cover this spread.

Sax:
Look, Miami put together an impressive run last season, but these overachieving teams with no talent can never keep it up for more than one year, and Miami is pretty fucking talentless. Also, um… they are playing the Indianapolis Colts. I know they lost Marvin Harrison and his gun collection and Tony Dungy and his dead son collection, but I’m sure they will still win 12-14 games and stomp the shit out of teams like the Dolphins pretty reliably, just like they always do. 3 points? Nucca, please.

Standings-
1. Sax (3-1)
2. Tony (2-2)
3. Dick (2-2)

Tony:
Have you ever heard of a dislocated knuckle that poked through the skin before? Seems like a pretty serious injury for the most important finger on the most important arm of the most important player on the team. I can’t tell if they’re making it a more serious injury to cover for the fact that Orton left a game as a result of a glorified paper cut, or if they’re being cool about what is actually a pretty serious injury. My point is, I think Orton’s current injury situation will turn out to be a microcosm of Denver’s entire season, which is to say, no one will really be sure what’s going on but it will be a total mess. That said, the Bengals went 4-11-1 last year, Carson Palmer is already hurt, and their best player is the NFL’s answer to Kim Jong-il. Denver covers.

Sax:
This trend of hiring young coordinators is really getting out of hand with McDaniels, who lost a promising young quarterback and alienated his star wideout trying to prove what a big man he is. The Broncos’ hire looks especially suspect since everyone else plucked from the Belichick coaching tree has been an utter failure. On the other hand, the Bengals are turning into the Clippers of the NFL. Christ, what a fucking stupid game. I put this one on the slate so we could make fun of Tony’s Broncos, but now I just feel depressed. I just can’t take the Bengals under any circumstances, and they’re giving points here. I’m backing Denver.

Vikings at Cleveland +4

Dick:
The line-maker at Caesar’s must have come off a three-day bender when he made this one. Cleveland is one of the worst teams in football and their only contribution to the game over the last five years has been sending all of their first-round defensive busts to Denver expediting the firing of Mike Shanahan and helping to usher in the comedy show that is Josh McDaniels. There is no way Jamal Lewis gets more than 50 yards against Minnesota’s defense while the Browns, who haven’t played defense since 1986, will give up 150 yards to Adrian Peterson. Even though Favre is old, gray, and incontinent, he’ll be able to light these the Browns up for 250 yards and a touchdown or two.

Tony:
Is it me, or does Favre and the Vikings’ apparent sense of “finally!” make it seem like his arrival has been in the cards for far, far longer than anyone is letting on? Three truths: 1. The Vikings are going to get a lot of amazing plays and senior leadership from Favre. 2. The Vikings are going to get a lot boneheaded mistakes and old-guy poor judgement from Favre. 3. Favre looks fucking RIDICULOUS in a Vikings uniform. It makes me physically uncomfortable. Still, Favre is better for the Vikings than Hurrdurrnilus Jackson and Sage Rosenpenis combined. The Browns … have orange helmets. Vikings cover.

Sax:
Like basically everyone else in America, I can’t wait to see this Favre experiment blow up in Minnesota’s face, but we’re gonna have to wait until he gets banged up a little and the temperatures drop a bit. 4 points is an absurdly low line for Minnesota to be giving to a team as shitty as the Browns.

Chicago at Green Bay -3.5

Dick:
Chicago’s the better team, but the spread flips to Green Bay because no one knows if the Bears receivers can catch Jay Cutlers’ passes. There is no frozen tundra, there is no shitty weather, and the running game favors the Bears anyway, but this game will come down to who has a better game: Aaron Rodgers or Cutler. Cutler’s still considered a wild card because of the way he left Denver. Don’t listen to it. He makes the Bears a 13-win team and while folks in Green Bay might have been pissed that Favre went to the Vikings, the Bears landing Cutler made everyone else in the division realize they are basically fucked unless Cutler explodes on the sidelines every six plays and punches Lovie Smith in the face on national television. Don’t bet on it.

Tony:
How is Green Bay favored in this game? Brian “A Ray Lewis White People Can Be Comfortable With” Urlacher and the rest of the Windyville defense remain formidable. And I don’t know if you heard, but Chicago traded for a new quarterback. How, after finishing 6-10 last year, is Green Bay suddenly projected to walk away with the division? Yes, I know they installed Dom Capers and Capers installed a new 3-4 scheme and CHAMPIONSHIPS ARE WON ON DEFENSE, but I’m not buying it. If I were a gambling man or knew anything about football, I would say take Chicago to cover, but I’m not and I don’t, so, look for Chicago to cover.

Sax:
Who the hell is supposed to be catching all these great passes Jay Cutler is gonna throw? They have a wide receiver named Devin Aromashodu and another named Juaquin Iglesias, and look at Desmond Clark’s fucking eyes. LOOK AT THEM! I guess Chicago could end up being really good this year, they still have that defense, but they haven’t had a good quarterback since I was potty-training, so I’m gonna need Cutler to show me something before I back him on the road against a frisky Green Bay squad. I’ll probably regret this, but I’m taking Green Bay.

Buffalo at New England -11

Dick:
Tom Brady has a new knee and probably a clearer sense of his mortality on the football field after previously suffering nothing more than a hangnail. However, even with the running back situation muddled and the Patriots defense in full transition, this should be a cakewalk because Buffalo doesn’t even have an offensive game plan let alone their dreadlocked, tooth-capped running back, Marshawn Lynch, who is suspended for the first four weeks. Considering that Brady still has maybe the best stable of receivers in the game, the 11 points seems a little light considering that Dick Jauron can’t even decide what position to fuck his wife in.

Tony:
The idea of hating Boston sports fans for their lack of humility, reason, class, logic, insight, and sensibility has been around for years and can largely be considered cliche at this point. That said, every time I hear some Beantown doofus jawing about FACKIN’ TAWM BRADY, BROTHA, I want to fly planes into their buildings. Conventional wisdom says always take the Pats so long as Belichick and Brady are at the wheel, and especially against a team like the Bills of Buffalo High School. But 11 points is an awful lot, especially for week one. And the Bills apparently have some super hero receiver who does situps and eats popcorn with impunity. I’m going with conventional wisdom. Pats.

Sax:
TAWM FACKIN BRADY, BROTHA!!! Tony can eat a bag of dicks. 11 is a lot of points, but Buffalo just fired their Offensive Coordinator, TO is old, the Pats are at home, and Brady and Moss are looking to make a statement. Brady and Moss like to make statements in meaningless regular season games against inferior opponents instead of games like the goddamn Super Bowl. I would be really excited about Joey Galloway and Fred Taylor if it was 1999. Fuck, I have a bad feeling about this season. Still, I’m taking the Pats and giving the points.

By Allan Uthman

Man. It’s been years that I’ve forced myself to observe, with muted horror, the degeneration of political discourse in America. Occasionally, I’ve even had the pleasure of taking part in it. But it seems I’m never quite cynical enough to predict the depths we’re willing to plumb as a nation.

I thought I was going to write a piece about how stupid it is that the right argues a public option is unfair because private insurance companies can’t compete against it. I mean, it really is an insane position, that we can’t have a public insurance option because it would provide better service for less money. And it’s equally insane to assert that private insurance companies need to make money more than Americans need access to health care.

But things have spiraled ever downward from there. It’s pointless to even attempt a cogent argument on this subject, when the other side of the debate are running around with their hair on fire, their leaders promoting obvious, absurd lies about “death panels” and… I don’t know, something about Hitler? Shamelessness does have its advantages, apparently. Certainly, no one has to ask Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich if they have any shame, as was asked old Joe McCarthy, because the answer is obviously no. In a saner country, this “death panel” madness would be the end of Palin’s political ambitions forever. But then, a saner country would have tossed her into the ocean a year ago.

Anyway, it’s a foregone conclusion that whatever the hell gets through the Senate will be labeled Health Care Reform, or Health Insurance Reform, or just Health Reform as they’ve been calling it lately. And it’s equally clear that it will be pretty much useless, maybe even worse than useless. At best, it might solve the problem of impossible prices the same way Bush solved high drug prices: by making the government pay private businesses top dollar for it.

That’s how we compromise with industry now. As much as the Democrats are vilifying the insurance companies (and yes, they are villains in this story), the insurance companies will support the horribly mutilated bill that emerges for Obama to sign. Why? Because they will make more money than ever. Instead of a public option, people who can’t afford health insurance will be forced to buy private insurance, the poorest of us subsidized by the government. I suppose, if you have no insurance, that’s better than nothing. But it sure as hell isn’t much good.

To be fair, there are other good points, supposedly: A ban on rejecting people for preexisting conditions, for instance. But the public option, itself a paltry shadow of what a single-payer system could do for the country, is pretty much dead. It probably won’t survive the Senate process, even in a hollowed-out, meaningless form. Why? Because it would work. It would provide better service for lower costs. And the insurance people can’t have that.

The problem isn’t that the Democrats are spineless compromise fetishists, as many seem to think. Any smart negotiator knows that you start from a position your opponent deems unacceptable—in this case, a UK-style single-payer system, which would actually reduce costs dramatically and provide decent care for everyone.

Say Obama had started there. First of all, polls have consistently shown a majority of Americans support a single-payer system, as well as a majority of doctors. When politicians argue it’s not politically viable, they’re referring to staunch corporate opposition, not voter opposition, regardless of a few hundred aged, bewildered Glenn Beck drones shouting “keep your government hands off my Medicare” (actual quote). Secondly, even if it isn’t viable, starting from a single-payer position would ensure that any eventual compromise would be closer to a decent plan than what we’re going to wind up with, now that the Obama administration has started negotiating from an initial position of compromise. Instead, they’re compromising the compromise.

Why is this? No, it’s not that Democrats are wimps. They’re dive artists. Obama promised health care reform, but do he and his DLC inner circle actually want to weaken the stranglehold medical profiteers have on the public? Or do they just want to make a good show of losing the struggle?

The case for a single-payer system is rock solid and easy to explain. A single payer bill could be short enough to read in a few minutes—in fact, there is a single-payer bill floating around (doomed by the “too-liberal” names Kucinich-Conyers), and it’s a little over 4,000 words long.  Instead, we have a bill that’s over 1,000 pages long, written in typically inscrutable legalese, so dense and obscurantist that Republicans can assert nearly anything about it, from death panels to forcible sterilization, and say “read the bill!” with full knowledge that nobody will, nor could they understand it if they did.

Perhaps this explains Obama’s complete failure to actually describe the plan, aside from painfully vague references to “reform”. It’s suspicious that a group of people with the kind of supernatural message discipline they exhibited during the presidential campaign can’t muster any kind of reasonable explanation of what the plan is. Why is opposition to the health care bill rising? Not because conservatives don’t want it; they never did. It’s because liberals are starting to smell the bullshit, and recognize that what they’re trying to foist on us is not reform, but a massive boondoggle, just another way to funnel cash to donors. And make no mistake, all of the interested parties in this disgusting extortion racket we call a health care system have thrown mountains of cash at all of the important Democrats involved. Why, after all have pharmaceutical companies committed to spend hundreds of millions promoting the bill in a disturbing backroom deal with the White House, if it isn’t a simple boondoggle? Why has the AMA, a longstanding opponent of any form of socialized medicine, come out in favor of it?  Because, unfortunately, and despite the constant refrain from the paranoid rednecks, there’s nothing socialist about it. And it might be baffling, if you don’t understand where the real power is in the Party.

Put it this way: After eight years solid of Republicans proving themselves to be dishonest, corrupt and incompetent, what if the Democrats provided universal health coverage and paid for it by taxing the rich? I’ll tell you what: They wouldn’t lose another election for decades. It is actually in the party’s self-interest to do these things. And yet, they don’t. Why? Because there’s one thing even more important to politicians than votes, and that’s money.  Hell, even if Max Baucus loses his next election, his income level will skyrocket, thanks to the profiteers he’s protecting now.

Less than a year ago, Republicans were handed their walking papers, and the national consensus was that they were worse than worthless. And yet they are controlling this debate? With transparent lies and spooky stories—about the kind of health care system that the entire first world enjoys, and nobody seems to regret? Bullshit. Even with the help of Frank Luntz, the GOP’s talking points suck, and could be effectively rebutted—even by Harry Reid, let alone Obama. Health care rationing? Bureaucrats between you and your doctor? Life-saving procedures denied or delayed? All of these are already rampant in the private system. For every isolated horror story the Right can find in Canada or England, there are hundreds in your own neighborhood. And national health care never leaves individuals destitute or with impossible debt.

The Democrats seem to be throwing this thing on purpose. The public option is DOA and was probably always meant to be. And it’s not because they’re wussy or incompetent. It’s because they’re corrupt. It’s because all they are is the sock puppet on the left hand of corporate hegemony. Bribery is legal in this country—we call it campaign finance. That’s why we can’t have a single-payer system, and that’s why this bill devolving into yet another massive theft of taxpayer money was a foregone conclusion. In the end, maybe some poor people will be able to get treatment when they couldn’t before, but only in the weakest, most costly and corrupt way conceivable. And if that’s the only way we can do it, then I guess I’m for it.

For further endorsements of mass Grandmacide, check out our friends at The Buffalo Beast.

Even with the departure of George Bush, there is no doubt that the insane assault on teaching evolutionary theory in public schools will be stepped up. One only has to look at the “great” state of Texas , which has replaced one religious nut with yet another religious nut, Gail Lowe. As Steven Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science points out, “Lowe will do what the radical religious right powers want her to do. She will not stop the continuing politicization of public education in Texas by the Fundamentalist Christians who still have positions of power and influence. It will be business as usual, as as usual, public education and the students and teachers of the state will suffer.” Fortunately, due to the efforts of people like The National Center for Science Education, these efforts have been thwarted in every case, but the Creationists keep trying, sticking their religious noses where they do not belong.

I, for one, am getting rather tired of the ignorant ramblings of Creationists who are hell-bent or replacing solid, established science with religious superstition. Why don’t Creationists just read a couple of relevant books that attempt to explain the undeniable presence of evolution in our natural world? But no, they have to insist that their ridiculous creation story deserves equal time in a thinly veiled attempt to dress up Genesis to go to school as science.

The main thrust of Creationist efforts stem from their nauseating bleat that “Evolution is only a theory”. From that point they try to take it further down the slippery slope, insinuating that if it is only a theory then it must be little more than a guess and should not be considered as a viable explanation of the wide variety of life that we observe on earth today.

Well, evolution is a theory and it is also a fact. Evolution is defined as a change in allele frequency in a population over time. Evolution has been observed in nature. Evolutionary Theory, explains the mechanisms of evolution (the fact). Scientific Theories are not merely guesses as the ignorant Creationists try to portray them. Scientific Theories describe a large set of observations with as few arbitrary elements as possible. Good theories make predictions about future events and are always falsifiable. This means that there must be some way to render the theory false, if indeed it is false. A good theory also shows a mechanism, and in the case of evolutionary theory, the mechanism of natural selection has been widely observed and demonstrated.

Evolutionary theory is the cornerstone of the biological sciences and without it nothing makes any sense at all. Evolutionary Theory has become stronger and stronger throughout the years despite many attempts to falsify it. Sure, scientists have disagreed about the specific mechanism of evolution, but to try to use this as a wedge to discredit evolutionary theory and sneak their god in the back door of the Science classroom is dishonest and laughable. Creationism is not a theory or a fact and I challenge any creationist to show me just one tenet of creationism that is scientific, just one.

In fact, Creationism is the opposite of science. In a nutshell, science observes, then explains. Creationism starts with a rigid conclusion and then looks around for natural phenomena that might support this conclusion. This is the same thing as shooting an arrow into a wall and then painting a bull’s eye around it. Science is self-correcting and ever changing. If a theory is falsified, science picks itself up and starts looking for another explanation, for science has no other agenda. Creationism cannot be falsified, it is inflexible, never changing. Creationism is religious dogma and nothing else.

I have a few questions for Creationists:

• Please use creationism to explain the development of drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Ask your doctor why you need to take all of your antibiotics when prescribed. That is evolution, observable, verifiable and demonstrated in your own body.
• Please provide a creationist explanation of sickle-cell anemia’s relationship to malaria, the Peppered Moth, Australian rabbits and myxomatosis, or the presence of gills and tails in the early embryonic stages of virtually all vertebrates (including humans). Use your precious and much vaunted but never demonstrated creation “model” to explain the presence of vestigial hind legs in numerous snakes and whales. Explain why God would have created over 250,000 different species of beetle. Why did God create over 2,000 different varieties of fruit-fly (25% of which can only be found in Hawaii)? Why did God create muscles that allow us to move our ears? What is our appendix for?
• There are some 8,600 species of birds so far described and 3,700 species of mammals. 20,000 species of fish are documented out of an estimated 40,000 believed to exist. Known insect species number over 850,000 and this is estimated as being fewer that 1/5 or even 1/10 of the total number in extant. The number of catalogued flowering plant species is over 286,000 and about 4,000 more are catalogued every year. The number of different species of fungi is in excess of 40,000. If you add it all up you get over 1.6 billion different forms of life on this planet. Since over 99% of all life forms that have ever existed are now extinct we end up with a total species number of as high as 16 billion. Please explain why your creator went to all this effort only to give one species any special favors. How did Noah manage to place at least 3.2 billion different life forms on the ark?
• Which of Noah’s children were black? Which were Korean, East Indian, Hispanic? Which had blue eyes, green eyes, hazel eyes, brown eyes? Which were albino? Which of Noah’s children had brown hair, black hair, blonde hair? Which of Noah’s children had syphilis, AIDS, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, polio, smallpox? Which of Noah’s children had congenital heart defects?

Come on, big mouths, put up or shut up. Lets see this creationism of yours start explaining things. No one needs to defend evolution any more. That hasn’t needed to be been done for over 100 years. If you can’t get with the program, get out of the game and relegate Creationism to where it belongs, in classes on Religion, not Science. Only the irrational, the intellectually impaired and the incredibly stupid can’t see that evolution theories such as theory of change by decent through modification are the only demonstrable means of explaining the wide diversity of life that we observe on this planet.

This issue makes the U.S.A. a laughingstock to the rest of the world and should have been dead and buried decades ago. It makes me sick to have to continue to fight this flood of ignorance in this day and time, but hopefully truth and science will prevail and mankind will one day throw off this yoke of myth and superstition.

Franklin Pierce, 14^th President, 1853-1857

Though dashingly handsome by the standards of the day (more than one source has called him the only real “Hunk-in-Chief”), Pierce was cursed from the moment he defeated his whale of a rival, Winfield Scott, in the 1852 election. On January 6, 1853, a few months before Inauguration day, Pierce and his family were involved in a train accident near Andover, Massachusetts, one in which the only fatality happened to be Pierce’s beloved son, 11-year-old Benjamin. From that moment on, Pierce spent the remainder of his days drinking, sighing heavily, and being routinely snubbed by his psychotic wife, Jane, who wandered the White House screaming obscenities. Between bouts of ham-fisted drunkenness and blind rage, Pierce summarily ignored the impending slavery crisis and growing clouds of war, dismissing Bleeding Kansas as a “mere trifle” that would somehow work itself out. “Just leave me the fuck out of it,” he is rumored to have grunted. His legacy is further hampered by having appointed full-tilt traitor Jefferson Davis to head the War Department. His Vice President, Jimmy Buchanan’s fabulously tippy-toed lover William Rufus King, had the good sense to drop dead fifteen minutes into the whole stinking mess; though, as was custom, no one bothered to suggest a replacement.

James Buchanan, 15^th President, 1857-1861

No wonder the gay lobby has been trying to secure
Lincoln in its rainbow camp these past few years, what with this disaster standing as the one and only homosexual ever to hold the nation’s top job. If you suspect rumor and innuendo to be behind history’s judgment, I suggest a cursory reading of the Buchanan/King letters, most of which read like Penthouse Forum, only with a great deal of “wooing” standing in for golden showers. Still, few doubt the real meaning behind the era’s “Lancaster Steamer.” Besides winking that delightfully wonkish eyeball in the direction of Washington’s most eligible bachelors, “Bucky,” as he was known to the K Street bathhouse elite, spent his torturous four years pretending the nation was continually on the cusp of a new birth of freedom, except, of course, for that pesky slavery thing. From the Dred Scott case to the Panic of 1857, Buchanan was on the wrong side of history in every way that counts, up to and including his failure to wipe the scourge of Mormonism from the fucking globe when he had the means and justification to do so. As stated, James had a wild affair with W.R. King, Pierce’s running mate, who died soon after taking office. According to legend, Buchanan was inconsolable, though he managed to sneak into the VP’s closet from time to time in later years to sniff his topcoat.

Woodrow Wilson, 28^th President, 1913-1921

Ignore his landmark first term, complete with more Progressive reforms than even the presumed standard-bearer, Theodore Roosevelt, can claim as his own. From 1915 on, Woody, at heart an old fashioned minister from the humorless, tight-lipped, self-righteous school of messianic ambition, bathed, dined, and slept with every manner of munitions manufacturer, banker, and war monger to ensure the country’s leadership in creating Nazi Germany. In addition to being solely responsible for no fewer than 75 million deaths during the middle part of the 20^th century, Wilson used the mandate of a second term to deny civil rights, empower J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI (then in its infancy), jail dissenters, and turn the country over to the merchants of death; a vice-like grip that has, to this day, never relented. Wilson’s ego, perhaps rivaled only by LBJ’s, was so colossal and warped that even after suffering a near-fatal stroke, he refused to resign, spending his final years in bed, curtains drawn, while handing over his duties to his young, sex-obsessed second wife, Edith, whom he married while attending the funeral of his first wife, Ellen. Other than ruining the world and wiping his ass daily with a copy of the Constitution secured from the National Archives, Woody confused Birth of a Nation for a documentary and ordered dozens of black men lynched as a precaution.

Warren G. Harding, 29^th President, 1921-1923

Some might think that spending a little over two years drinking, screwing, and holding round-the-clock poker tournaments constitutes a successful presidency, but Harding went and fucked it all up by dying too soon to really embarrass himself. Though surrounding himself with crooks, liars, thieves, and barbarians, Warren himself stood above the din, the first truly dimwitted chief executive who could be excused with plausible deniability. What’s more, he knew it. Whether banging cocktail waitresses and flappers in Oval Office closets, sending hush money to a slew of past and present lovers, or being present while prostitutes were being murdered at wild parties, Harding presided over a delightful mess of an abbreviated term, having the decency to die of a “heart attack” in
San Francisco just two years in. History has made its judgment, but true believers still know he was felled by his hysterical wife, Florence, the real power behind the throne, who saw trouble ahead and couldn’t bear to watch him impeached. Still, despite the scandals and incompetence, Harding damn near stayed off this list for being one of the chosen few to come within a hair of murdering a member of his own cabinet, one Charles Forbes, after choking the bastard for stealing a fortune from the Veterans Bureau. Harding was also known for his matinee idol good looks, upbeat personality, and rumored Negro ancestry, best typified by his garbled syntax.

Andrew Johnson, 17^th President, 1865-1869

Illiterate well into adulthood, the first President Johnson also has the distinction of being the only man to send the usually affable Abraham Lincoln into a shit-faced rage after showing up drunk to his own Inauguration as Vice President. Having escaped assassination by being the one guy to draw the coward of the conspiracy, Johnson used his single term to alienate everyone around him, including his own wife, servants, cabinet, and coachman. So irredeemably racist as to give Nathan Bedford Forrest pause, Andy worked tirelessly to veto each and every attempted reform by the Republicans, only to watch his work go up in the flames of the dreaded override. He escaped removal from office by a single vote, and though the charges were trumped up at best, history has proven that he alone warranted impeachment simply for being an asshole. He broke his promise of holding the treasonous South accountable and, despite appearing progressive in the early days, ending up doing more to destroy Reconstruction than the shiftless freedmen who cluttered up Congress with the cries of raped white maidens and clatter of stripped chicken bones. Dumber than a half-empty box of rusty nails, Johnson venerated the farmer beyond all reason, believing the “simple man” to be the nation’s future. As such, he favored states’ rights, white supremacy, and swift defeat of the 14^th Amendment. To his credit, he tried to restore his image with a national tour, but quickly gave up and slept away his remaining days; broken, humiliated, and still achingly stupid. He is buried with a copy of the Constitution, presumably to serve as an eternal reminder of what he opposed every waking second of his sad life.