Rebuilding
Paul Goldberger has an article in the New Yorker this week (sorry, it’s not on-line; you’ll have to get a subscription. Maybe if you wheedle your parents, they’ll be as nice as mine were and pay the freight) suggesting that the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site in Manhattan shouldn’t be limited to putting up excess office space, as Larry Silverstein wants, or a disappointing spire, as the present designs call for, but should instead be made up of new housing stock. He also says the proposal for using the retaining wall as part of the memorial that must be included is an excellent idea, and I agree with him on both counts. And that Donald Trump’s suggestion is just more self-aggrandisement and a bad idea all around.

Downtown was already a much livelier neighborhood by the time M. and I left for Sydney, and the trend of turning office buildings into condos and coops was only increasing. And why not? The views alone would put a commanding price on the real estate. Now with prices averaging in excess of a million dollars U.S., more housing could only help. Well, all right, it could only help the prices in Manhattan to go up even further, but even so, the idea of having people actually living there, in the heart of the heart the terrorists tried to destroy, has tremendous appeal. I wouldn’t suggest any limits to the height, either; I’d love to live a hundred stories up. Fifty, anyway. O.k., 2nd, just so I can get M. into the elevator with me.

Cinema Suckers
Now that M.’s released from obligations to Project Greenlight, we can devote our leisure time to pure entertainment, except whenever I watch a movie now, I’m thinking about how many takes to get the different shots and what the director and cinematographer were thinking in setting up and executing the shots the way they did, and even noticing editing, something that was always too mysterious to even bother about, and all of that can be a bit intrusive, especially when I’m trying to follow the subtitles in a movie like 2046, which is a shame, in one sense, because the film is beautiful and a little difficult. The story’s simple enough, really, I suppose – a man who’s treated women rather shabbily and now feels trapped by his choices, trying to find a way to express and perhaps change what might have been in a way that would allow him to regain progress and purpose – but it’s complex in its delivery, a real movie-goer’s movie. This isn’t Star Wars, but a movie that leaves you thinking about its content and structure as a movie as much as just the usual narrative. There’s a Chinese scholar in the family whose impressions I’d like to hear, because I did leave the theatre wondering if the subtitles hadn’t left out important nuances, a sense I don’t always end up with from non-English experiences. Unlike Hero or Crouching Tiger (and I may yet get around to seeing House of Flying Daggers), there are such subtleties in the visuals, the colors more muted, the shots framed just off from expectations, such implications in the story that I have to wonder if language fails in translation. I’ll need to go back to the DVD’s now, to see other Wong Kar Wai movies, particularly In the Mood for Love, which has been frequently cited in reference to 2046, referring to the latter as a kind of sequel to the former.

The Labours of Howardcles
John Howard is pushing ahead on his long-standing wish to gut organized labor and leave the unions for dead. From his strike-breaking days on the Patricks wharves – and earlier – he’s been looking for ways to reform Australia’s industrial relations conditions in favour of management vs. workers, and with his pending control of the Senate, his agenda looks likely to begin in earnest. Read the Australian’s editorial carefully to see Howard’s intentions: reducing workers’ recourse to unfair dismissal protection - a way of allowing businesses to hire more workers, or does it make it easier to make unreasonable demands in exchange for lower wages? Oh, yes, the AIRC won’t be setting minimum wages now; that’ll be handled by a new, separate agency, one that will work within the scope of “economic conditions” – whose? Does that mean in a robust economy with low interest rates, wages can go down? Does that mean in a weak economy, when businesses are struggling, wages can go down? “By reducing the number of issues covered by industry-wide awards, people in individual enterprises are given more power over their own affairs,” says the editorial, but doesn’t that really mean that workers have fewer protections? Isn’t “people in individual enterprises” really “business owners who dislike the awards system”? “Why employers with 100 staff will be exempted from the unfair dismissal laws, but those with 101 are not, is hard to fathom,” but only to The Australian, who would prefer the elimination of such law entirely. Howard presents his reforms as cleaning out the industrial relations Augean stable, but he’s just shovelling manure.

Bye, Voyager
Wrong movie. Really, the circumstances call for this one to be referenced. Voyager I has officially passed beyond the solar system, sending a farewell transmission of its transition across the heliospheric boundary. (Additional pop-culture references: Starman, in which Jeff Bridges comes to earth because of Voyager's greeting card contents, and By Any Other Name, that episode of Star Trek in which Kirk et al. are hijacked beyond the galactic boundary.)

One Door Closes
The three finalists have been selected for Project Greenlight Australia, and M. is not among them - the bastards.

The screening was an entertaining event. Slated for 6:30 sharp, the invited families and friends (and a selection of the top fifty and top hundred from the previous rounds) were lined up outside the velvet ropes along the green carpet, where we waited and waited for the arrival of the contestants, vox pop'd by the documentary crew, who also took the opportunity to shoot some POV footage while we clapped, cheered, and set off our camera flashes for some reality filler. M. was ushered through first, looking terrific, followed by each of the others one at a time. While they posed for stills, the rest of us headed into the theatre and our assigned seats. Our seats were right up the front, which was unfortunate in that the clips were a bit hard to see. Fifteen minutes or so of exposition, including a diatribe on the perilous state of Australian cinema by the head of Movie Network (fair enough, when the top arthouse movie can't make enough to cover its costs and the top commercial release is such dreck that it can't either), and much thanking of the last minute participation of Microsoft (who added a $5K one-off prize for the best clip; pretty sweet, but we didn't win that either). We got a montage of the 3-minute bio clips, some of which were very inventive, and then the screen assignments, 3-minute scenes from each contestant's script.

M.'s scene was top-notch. It didn't have special effects, as a couple of them did, and it didn't have "sound design," which is what some of them had in place of the music you weren't allowed to use, but it played well, looked good - better in fact than some - and got a really good reception from the audience. The inventive title sequence drew appreciative noises around the theatre, making the hard work by Ingrid and Thomas and M.'s Director of Photography, Dom Egan, worthwhile. That shot near killed us all to get, but worked beautifully.

The Microsoft prize went to the clip with the most flash, and the final three - Solo, a crime drama; Heidi, which isn't about a little Swiss orphan; and Case - all exhibited talent and ambition.

Drinks and snacks in the lounge afterward, at 9 p.m. after all the speeches and so forth, and by God we were all starving. Not that even one thing that came through the door was vegetarian, of course, so by 11:00, when they chased us all from the theatre, everyone was pretty well done in.

Thi isn't the end of M.'s script, of course. Movie Network retains the option on it through the end of the year, and having made it this far, there's the potential for grant money for development and the possibility for production just on the credibility achieved. We may yet see this project come to fruition. And if she can manage another script, there's next year's contest, too.

Ready to Rumble
Tonight we find out if M. advances to the next round in the filmmaking competition. She's been in lock-down for 24 hours already along with her fellow contestants in the final 10, sequestered in a hotel in Rushcutters Bay where the documentary part of Project Greenlight is underway. She and the producers and everyone's guests head over to Fox Studios for a screening of the 3-minute scenes of all the contestants, followed by the announcement of who goes on to the next round. If M. advances into the final 3, she stays in the hotel two more nights, interviewing with the producers (and apparently Pia Miranda and Sam Worthington, two fine Australian actors, who have joined the panel at this stage, presumably to provide their own perspective, although I tease M. that they're there because they've already been selected as the leads in her script). As much as I'm looking forward to tonight's "green carpet" event, the prospect of the announcement is a little nerve-wracking. M., of course, is suffering most from this, and as the only one of the two of us to have seen the other contestants' video bio's, perhaps more understanbly so. She tells me the quality and content of some of these far outshine her own, not that I believe it. Besides, it's more about the script, in the end, and hers is right up there on all the measures.

I'm saving my Donna Karan suit for the premiere in December.

Calling Mr. Smith
The Senate is going to the floor over Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown. Harry Reid is calling for support. There's been a lot of debate over Frist's going "nuclear" over judicial nominations, but this isn't about whether or not filibustering is just a rule, and it's not about judges being entitled to a straight yes or no vote, and it's not even really about the role of the Senate to advise and consent to Presidential nominations. This is about power: who's got it and who's entitled to use it. Bill Frist believes the Republicans have all the power and that the Democrats should just shut up while he and Bush revise the governance of the country. That's not what an opposition is for, and the GOP only have a majority, much different from being in total control. Frist's extremist cohorts may muster the vote to push through on these candidates, but what they really want is to control the vote when the next Supreme Court vacancies occur, and there's going to be one sooner rather than later. Rehnquist may just be waiting for the opportunity at this point to ensure his successor - we already know how political he is. Fight the power.

Art and About
Friday, my employers sponsored a "renewal day" for the office staff. This is an annual event, a kind of retreat, and a variety of options are presented to allow the employees to refresh their spirits, in contemplation or in more active endeavours. I was too late for the bushwalk this year (and missed out entirely last year, due to one thing and another at home), but this year had a trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where we visited two exhibitions in the presence of a Uniting Church minister doing his PhD in Art History. This was followed by lunch at the Buena Vista Cafe, located at the top of the law courts building just above Hyde Park, and a trip to the New South Wales Art Gallery, where we were treated to the Archibalds.

Our first stop at the MCA was to see a retrospective of Mona Hatoum, a Palestinian artist, largely working in video, but also sculpture and performance. Very confronting in its content throughout, especially in its focus on identity issues, Ms. Hatoum's work is dark and violent, transforming everyday objects and experiences into objects requiring a thoughtful response to modern life and the marginalization of various persons of our world society, whether exiles, refugees, women, or the lower classes.

Rosemary Laing's photographs also work in a transformative mode, but are more, perhaps, subtly manipulative. Famous for her "floating brides" series, she's done much more interesting work, to my mind, although the brides do have a resonance of the iconography of the Christian martyrs. The carpets in the forest aren't even the best of her work, but are certainly the most playful. It's her other landscape juxtapositions, however, that stand out for me, showing off not only her painter's eye for composition and color, but also displaying her acknowledgement of the drive to domesticate the natural world lest it overwhelm us with its enormity and strangeness, which itself tells of our dislocation from our essential being.

Completing our tour of current art, along with a few dozens of others, we took a quick trip through the '05 Archibald prize entries, exhibited along with the Wynne, Sulman, and Photographic Portrait prizes. The winner of the Archibald, the annual competition for portraiture paintings, John Olsen's "Self Portrait Janus Faced" has been controversial (as usual with this prize - last year's pencil drawing of the actor David Gulpilil caused a stir for not having been painted, for example), but I think it was perhaps indeed the most worthy entry, although I also considered Ben Quilty's "Beryl" a remarkable work of great distinction. The other prizes had their stand-outs, too, not least being the photograph "Ali and Rahma" by Cassandra Mathie, and not just because it's a photo of two refugees from Darfur, Sudan, but because it captures in their eyes, their stances and bearing, their experience, both there and here, what it is to pick up and leave and adapt and perhaps never return, perhaps never be able to relinquish the past because never be able to pick up a future for longer than day-by-day. This, like the others did, is what art does best, despite our guides' suggestion that art has changed somehow in its role, rather than in how it accomplishes its task, the content and techniques used.

So my renewal day option was a success overall. I actually feel enhanced in my spirit from an outing with the arts.

Budgets
Peter Costello presented this year’s budget in Parliament last night, and it looks like lobster and champagne for everyone with a corner office. Again. Tax cuts at the upper reaches of income exceed those granted to the middle class and the poor by a significant factor, with the idea that this will help the economy to stay as robust as it has been. Unfortunately, just because the already wealthy get to keep more of their income there isn’t a correlative effect in terms of job-creation. Granted, if I can afford a new car or to renovate my kitchen, that helps (momentarily) keep automobile manufacturers in profitability or to give a tradesman a couple of days’ work, but the trickle-down theory of economics has been thoroughly discredited, even by its creators, so if anyone expects a top-end tax cut to create a new auto plant or to help gyprockers make ends meet, well, that must be why you voted for Howard (or Bush for that matter; except in his case it’s also because you want to be sure your children learn creationism over evolution at school). M. & I, for example, are living pretty close to the bone these days, and we stand to increase our take-home pay over the next two years from 1st July by less than AU$1,000, even after my next award increase, next year. It’ll pay for a few coffees, but it’s sure not going to help with the bills.

To be fair, I congratulate the Liberals with running a surplus; that’s no mean feat. I think, however, that there’s more to the budget than what you don’t spend. There’s also how you spend. I’m not going to kick over paying taxes, but if the government’s going to give it back, I’d like to see some substantial relief, for the poor and the middle class. We are, after all, the ones who carry the rest of the population, not the other way around. And while the government guts Medicare, reneging on its promises to ease that burden, they’re also making it harder to sustain private care coverage. In the end, these tax cuts amount to a brief caress administered in the middle of a beating.

They Said They’d Email Me
Arianna Huffington’s Post is up and running, in case anyone’s interested. They said they’d keep me up-to-date, but I found out via Metafilter. I should be put out, but it's a small thing, and I remain interested, at least for now. It has, after all, a pretty good California cast of contributors: Larry David, Mike Nichols, David Mamet, and various others of more or lesser stature among the punditry and the entertainment classes. Nothing particularly stand-out, except maybe Walter Cronkite grousing about the Democrats (he thinks they need two conventions: one to pick their nominee every four years, and one to decide what they generally want to talk about).

The Autumn Leaves
This morning, by the time I got to Lidcombe (maybe earlier; I was reading, so I didn’t notice until then), there was heavy fog across western Sydney, and I knew autumn had arrived. Sure, our apartment was a little chilly over the weekend, but it’s always cool in there, for the most part, because of it’s largely southeastern exposure, and standing on Glebe Point Road Saturday night waiting for a bus in just a tee shirt was cooler than I’d anticipated it would be, but something about the fog was the confirmation my brain needed to acknowledge the change of seasons. Probably it’s a result of no other visual cues ingrained. No leaves changing color, and I can’t trust leaf detritus on the ground, as the continuing drought makes that pretty much a given throughout the year. The presence or absence of pelicans and swans in the upper reaches of the Parramatta River don’t trigger any migrating fowl indicators for me, as a V of honking Canada geese would. Now that the temperatures appear to have settled well below 30 degrees, perhaps going running on Fridays won’t leave me gasping quite so badly. I want my 40 minute 8K back, too, but that may wait for winter.

What’s Wrong with Feminism
Everywhere I turn there are men and women slagging the feminists. Women don’t want men who are too feminine, the way they were in the 1970’s and ‘80’s, I hear. And I hear that women can’t have it all and are angry that feminism fooled them into trying. And I hear that feminism isn’t to be credited for increasing female representatives in government. Thank God for politicians like Julia Gillard, then, who knows perfectly well that the battles of women for equality aren’t over and have always been more complex than the chattering nabobs of the right wing punditry would acknowledge. This isn’t about “having it all,” a phrase that the media and politicians seized upon to implausibly describe the implausibility of feminism; it’s about a society that won’t support half its population to participate beyond the track worn in the carpet between crib and kitchen. Some women want to be mums and some want to be lawyers (or even Prime Minister) and some want to do both without being penalized for either, but instead get paid equally for equal work and credited appropriately for their efforts at home, regardless of how they choose to distribute their ambitions. Fair enough, I say, but then I was raised by a mother and father who valued each other’s contributions to the family and the world at large, who could understand feminism as more than bra-burning or whinging. The anti-feminist backlash now underway reminds me of the kind racial politics that wants no notice taken of race differences, the anti-multiculturalism that’s more often a disguise for bigotry than it is for the inclusiveness it claims. Virginia Haussegger has a point, but I’d be cautious of the critique of feminism itself. I’m sorry she feels cheated of having children, but the struggle for equality didn’t force that choice on her, and the problems of equality are not so simply reduced to child vs. childlessness. The argument may need to evolve, but feminism’s goals remain worthy and not yet fulfilled.

Revenue Sharing
I signed up for the Google ads, but nobody’s clicking on them but me (and why would they? Look at them. Pope memorabilia led the list for weeks, and now it’s lots of WWII trash.) I’ve been trying to use Email Cash and Pure Profile and A. C. Nielsen to get at least rewards – Pure Profile paid out $35 a few weeks ago (and I think they’re mad at me for taking such a paltry amount of cash at my earliest opportunity, but I really needed it. O.k., for drinking a beer with my Democrats Abroad fellow travellers), but overall this just isn’t getting me anywhere. Apparently what I need is a t-shirt. I’ll figure out a logo and a clever saying and get in touch with Café Press right away. Tomorrow, maybe.

A Judge and Jury of Your Peers
I’m disappointed that Lynndie England has had her guilty plea thrown out and a mistrial declared. Her plea sounds like the only bit of honesty to come out of the Abu Ghraib abuses. “You can’t have a one-person conspiracy,” the judge declared, but you can if the other parties involved aren’t admitting their guilt, and despite his testimony, England’s erstwhile boyfriend, Charles Graner was convicted. His excuses, that the photos were for “legitimate training purposes” and that the leash in the photos “slipped” from the prisoner’s shoulder to around his neck, are obvious and stupid lies and weren’t believed in his own trial. England’s admission to wrongdoing isn’t contingent on anyone else admitting to their own. To declare a mistrial is a miscarriage of justice. Colonel Pohl is not worthy of his post. We can only hope that Lieutenant General Metz will do the right thing.

Dr. Strangelove
(Or, How George Bush Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb)
It’s natural to steal from Kubrick under the circumstances. Nobody knows what North Korea wants – because they have no reason other pure madness to want nuclear weapons – but it’s worrying that the present U.S. administration appears so intent on actually using the bomb, let alone developing new ones. So when that death’s head Condoleezza Rice starts emphasizing America’s “significant . . . deterrent capability” against North Korea, my trained duck-and-cover response starts to kick in. Never, throughout the Cold War, was I convinced that Russia would fling its ICBM’s at the U.S., or that we would initiate a nuclear war ourselves. The North Koreans, however, present a much different problem. They’re not capable of the levels achieved by the USSR and the US – mutually assured destruction – so while they now may have a nuclear warhead missile with some frightening reach, I’d be more worried for the South Koreans and the Japanese than for California. It’s clear, however, that deterrence isn’t a factor (or it should be clear to someone with Rice’s touted qualifications). If Kim Jong Il drops one, with such a significant number of our troops tied up in Iraq, I have little doubt that Bush wouldn’t hesitate to respond in kind and in greater quantity. North Korea needs to be de-escalated as a nuclear threat, but there must be better options than we’re hearing from Rice and Bush and Co. beyond how many people get to sit at the negotiating table or how many bombs we can drop.

Chairman Dean
Doctor Howard Dean came to a special meet-up of Democrats Abroad Australia last night for an impromptu address to the faithful. It was a terrific turn-out, easily surpassing the election night (morning, here) watch in November.

Dr. Dean was, as expected, an excellent speaker, and we’re all grateful to him for taking time on his vacation to speak with us and to the organizers for their hard work in setting it all up and making it work so well (and to Bar Broadway for hosting the event).

The passion and commitment Dr. Dean brings to his role as Chairman of the DNC is evident, and if he is as effective a leader as I hope, the Democrats will find themselves better able to contend with the Republicans – especially the far-right element that has come to dominate that party – than we have previously. Dean’s grass roots mobilization skills and plans will give us something to rely on other than the powerful charisma of a Bill Clinton. Clinton’s sincerity was perhaps his greatest strength, which is fine for a one-off, but more broadly unsustainable, leaving Congress and the state and local offices vulnerable. Dean’s plans to take on every election at every level offer to spread that strength around and give the American people the opportunity to see a better choice for themselves and their children than they’re being offered at present, and before long they’ll make that choice.

Too many Americans now live without the aspirations of previous generations, forced out by the greed, the selfishness of others from even the most basic economic circumstances that would otherwise allow them to own their own home, help their children through university, retire securely. Republicans are cutting away health care just when it’s becoming more and more difficult to afford, instead of making it possible for everyone to see a doctor when they need one. Too many Americans now have to work harder longer than ever before and still can’t make ends meet, can’t be home to raise their children, and this has to change. The Republicans aren’t doing the job, because they’re too focussed on cronyism, cutting taxes for their friends at the expense of the middle class and the poor. The party of fiscal responsibility is the party of fear now, but we know about that, especially as Democrats we know: it’s the only thing we really have to fear at all.

Watching Dr. Dean last night was like witnessing Jesus in the temple whipping the money-changers. I came out more energized than I’ve been in weeks.

Harrison Bergeron
Dragging everyone down to your level doesn’t make you an intellectual, and hiring a White House staff member to provide recommendations on altering the editorial content of PBS doesn’t eliminate bias, especially when the review is based on one program’s invited guests. Why are so many Republicans afraid of intellectuals? I see this move as not dissimilar, in fact just an offshoot from, the drive to demonize university professors and, more recently, all teachers (although it appears English teachers especially, perhaps because they teach children to read and to think critically).

It wasn’t so long ago that various people who might otherwise have been relied upon for a liberal viewpoint were themselves targeting the so-called elitists in media and education, driving the “politically correct” usages into public consciousness, causing a general backlash that continues today, albeit pretty nearly exclusively from the far right. The main difference now, however, is that the purpose isn’t to elevate discourse, to be inclusive (howsoever far the arguments may have been exclusive originally), but to deny equality even while pretending to argue for it. You’ll hear claims that gays and lesbians don’t want special attention drawn to them at the same time as you’ll see a referendum on a ballot to enact legislation against gay marriage, or arguments that the 70-cents-on-the-dollar wage discrepancies between what women earn versus what men earn has become mythic, that women are doing better than ever, so they don’t need any special protections. You’ll hear someone say: why can’t they just be Americans instead of African-Americans or Native Americans or Chinese Americans (and you’ll hear the same argument in countries in Europe and in Australia), but you won’t hear an acknowledgement of centuries of oppression or discrimination, and certainly not an apology for any specific acts carried out in the past. No welfare, no pension, no “hand-outs.” The argument will often turn on “levelling the playing field,” making opportunity possible for everyone. But too often in practice what this amounts to is dragging down more of us, fencing off opportunities already arrogated to an elite much different from those being disparaged, those who argue most pointedly from an opposing perspective, that raising up the disadvantaged is a better method of benefiting all of society.

There is no “liberal bias” in the media any more than there is a conservative bias. There is the New York Times and there is the Wall Street Journal. If you look more broadly around the country, you’ll find a more conservative editorial content generally. In Australia, there’s the Fairfax papers and the Murdoch papers, and both publish content – editorial and news – from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, while otherwise attempting an open minded approach to the stories and opinions they print. PBS’s content similarly addresses society broadly, and there are some who see things more narrowly, so they perceive the programming there as too left wing. The same fight is happening here over the ABC, and in England over the BBC. We needn’t be surprised: look who we’ve elected to the highest positions in our nations.

Leadership Blues
John Howard wants to be king. Anyway, that’s what I might think if I was Peter Costello. Poor guy’s been waiting for a chance to take the top spot in the Liberal party for years, but Howard’s a tenacious politician, internally as well as between the parties in an election. His line about staying leader for as long as the party wants him was running a bit thin last October, and now that he wants a go at a fifth term, I suppose it feels that way to Costello, too. Well, if the Liberals want him, barring age and health problems, they can keep him. I don’t see Costello mounting a successful leadership challenge unless something goes very seriously wrong nationally, and nobody wants that.

T.V. News
First of all, who names an award for hawking up phlem? Oh, it’s not pronounced that way? Low-ghee. O.k., never mind.

It says a lot about the current state of Australian television, however, that Rove McManus has won the top award three years running. The show has its moments, sure, but it’s very little more than an hour-and-a-half of sophomoric jokes interspersed with celebrities shilling for their latest output. I did like that they were able to get Kirribilli House to flick their lights the other week. The way Rove rides the PM, it had to be the live-in staff, though.

Current Cinema
I haven’t read the book, although I understand it was hugely popular, but M. and I went to see Three Dollars over the weekend, preferencing Australian drama over even what was probably the last chance we had of seeing Million Dollar Baby in the cinemas. I like supporting the Australian film industry, so long as I’m not having to go see any of the usual crass culture-clash comedies featuring Paul Hogan, and David Wenham, for all that he’s a funny-looking bloke who sometimes reminds me more of a stunned mullet than anything else, is a very good actor. Frances O’Connor, with whom I’m less familiar, was also terrific, better than Wenham, in this outing anyway, but for all the performances being good, and the movie being directed (except the pacing is slow as a wet week) and shot well, it doesn’t leave me with an overall positive impression on the way out. I think the problem lies in the script, which is just too writerly, to literary. For all the suspension-of-disbelief problems (and they’re minor, except they add up), there are only a few times when you aren’t hearing the book, translated straight to the screen, without the interpretation that make that transition usually work. Maybe that’s because the author, Elliot Perlman, co-wrote the screenplay, or maybe it’s just a novel that wouldn’t have translated well in the first place. I’d have to read it to be sure, and I’m not inclined to do that now. Next time we splurge, however, it’s my call, and I say: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (and I’m not even a fan of the books).

Why “Social Security”?
Now that the GOP plans for Social Security are being clarified beyond privatization, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that this fight is more important than whether the public’s money starts getting pumped into Wall Street brokerage accounts. I caught a bit of the News Hour on SBS over the weekend, and the point was made that this program is named for its value: it’s “social” in that everyone is covered, rich and poor alike; and provides “security” for all without favoritism or discrimination. So what does Bush want to do? He wants to make it welfare. It sounds good to say that benefits would remain intact for the less well-off, but what’s really taking place is that Social Security would then be positioned as no different than any other welfare program, making it vulnerable to dissolution altogether down the line.

Right now, taxable earnings are capped at $90,000. Raising that limit makes immediate and long-term sense, but would hit Bush’s true constituency right in their most sensitive spot: the dollars that separate them from being middle class, which happens to be where the bulk of Social Security money will be spent over the next forty to fifty years. The top 1%, the ones benefiting most from Bush’s taxation policies, don’t want their money spent on anyone else but themselves, and while they can feel virtuous when it’s spent on the poor, they see no value in helping out the middle. Social Security isn’t just a feel-good program, however. It’s meant for everyone, because everyone, if only in theory, is vulnerable, and may someday need help. Let’s keep the emphasis where it belongs. Let’s keep society secure.

Movie News
For those of you keeping track at home, Friday I took the day off to be gaffer, grip, and general dogsbody to M.'s film shoot. For a 3-minute scene, there was a surprising amount of work as well as a considerable amount of time just standing around, not just for me, but for the lovely and talented actors; less so for the other members of the crew, let alone the director (M., of course) and her Director of Photography. Who would have thought there was so much work in setting up lights and making them shine in the right colors in the right directions (and indirections)? I spent my time mostly standing holding one thing or another, generally being quiet, or shooting a bit of ancillary video for M.'s PGLA "diary," which she is contractually obiligated to provide to the producers for their documentary show. M.'s offered me a credit on the 3-minute scene, but I've declined. Having picked up lunch, helped her read through the contracts, held gels over the lights, and so forth, there'd be too many jobs to list in the time available. Let the ones who do this for a living get the credit for their work. I don't even have a union card.