All the Way on HBO and its Relevance to Hillary

I saw All the Way on HBO last night.  I thought this movie about the Texas politician and Vice President who became President on the day of what I still see as the worst public event in my lifetime - the assassination of JFK in November, 1963 - was outstanding for at least part of the way, in its portrayal of LBJ's mastery of domestic policy.  But it was frustrating for what it barely addressed - how Lyndon Baines Johnson messed up so badly in foreign policy, in Vietnam.

I came of age in the 1960s.  Not only was I devastated by the murder of JFK and his zest and idealism, but I appreciated and cheered the way Johnson came back with extraordinary Civil Rights legislation and all kinds of pathbreaking law for life in America, such as Medicare.  For a very short time, it looked as if the future could survive what happened to JFK. And then the Vietnam War, not started by LBJ but prosecuted and expanded by him, shattered all of that forever, or certainly at least until this very day.

All the Way does a great in job in showing how Johnson brought into being those domestic miracles, how he played the necessary Senators and recalcitrant parts of the country like a chess master moving pieces on a board.  Bryan Crantson gives an astonishingly  good performance, capturing every bit of Johnson's swagger, political cunning, vulgarity, wisdom, and insecurity.  Anthony Mackie and Bradley Whitford are spot-on and memorable in their portrayals of MLK, Jr. and the hapless Hubert Humphrey.   The deliveries and demeanors of the Senators and other players in this movie don't miss a beat.

Did LBJ really believe in civil rights and other domestic revolutions he championed and succeeded in putting into Federal law?  At the time, I was pretty sure he did, and All the Way - assuming that LBJ's words and expressions in the movie are based on truth - reinforces and satisfies that sense.

But what went wrong with LBJ in Vietnam?  All the Way provides little more than a shadow of that calamitous development, and thus not much help in understanding how and why it happened that the U.S. got drawn into this unconstitutional, disastrous war.   When it has happening, my best explanation was that Johnson was just over his head when it came to foreign policy, unable to navigate and parse what his generals and advisors were telling him, and above all not wanting to appear weak or indecisive. He just lacked the requisite experience.

Which brings this movie back to 2016 and its relevance to a decision facing all Americans today.   Though Hillary Clinton is not without her failings, including in foreign policy, she has far and away the most foreign policy experience of the three candidates still standing - easily more than Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump's experience in foreign policy is zero.  Hillary Clinton, as a former Secretary of State, has more experience in seeing to America's best interests in the world than anyone other than a former President or Secretary of State.

LBJ's error in Vietnam, just hinted at like a hurricane on the horizine in All the Way, changed the United States for the worse in a way that has endured to this very day.  Given the challenges that our country now faces in the world, we need someone in the White House with enough experience to avoid making an equivalent mistake in the next few years, which could have far worse consequences than what happened in the 1960s.   Thank you HBO for bringing home this point so effectively, though it was likely not your intention.   In the short and long run, All the Way may be more important for what it didn't actually show on the screen.

Mad Men 6.5: MLK

One of the best things about Mad Men is how it shows our characters reacting to publicly catastrophic events, such as the assassination of JFK.   Tonight  in Mad Men 6.5 we get the same for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.

We get some surprises.  Pete turns out to be more ethical than Harry, shouting at Harry when he complains about the continuing preemption of regular television programming in the aftermath of the assassination, and the impact that's having on advertising.  Of course, part of Pete's moral outrage might be fueled by the pain and guilt he feels from fracturing his own family, but even so it was powerful and satisfying to see.

Dawn, chastised by Joan a few weeks ago for the stupid petty business of checking out Harry's secretary's time card - that is, it was stupid and petty for Joan to chastise Dawn for this - rebuffs Joan's offer of sympathy tonight about MLK.  I like Joan, but she got just what she deserved.

Most significant, as always, is the response of Don and his family.

First, we get an outstanding scene of Don and son Bobby in the movie theater seeing Planet of the Apes.   This is Don's way of honoring Betty's punishment of no television for Bobby because he was peeling a bit of the wallpaper off in his room.  Good for Don - Betty continues to be the worst mother in the world.   And it's good to see Don looking at theater as a good place to take his son on a day like this, even if, maybe especially if, the movie is the indictment of humanity in Planet of the Apes.

Later, at home with Megan, Don confesses that he didn't love his children at first, a reflection of the lack of love he felt from and for his own poor excuse of a father.  But he clearly loves them now, as the scene in the movie theater with Bobby shows.   Megan is moved by this, and is about as loving to Don as we've seen in a while.

But my favorite scene and line comes in the scene after, as Don goes into Bobby's room to see why he's still awake.   Bobby is worried that Henry, who has had a career in politics, could be shot.   That's exactly what a boy his age might think.  But Don reassures him, explaining that Henry is not important enough for anyone to take a shot at.

It's at once a funny and sobering truth.  Years ago, I recall a piece in the Village Voice or another New York newspaper or magazine by Ron Rosenbaum, lamenting the fact that he had been assigned New York Mayor Abe Beame as a beat.  (Beame succeeded John Lindsay - Henry's current boss - as mayor.)  Beame was the most boring candidate and mayor ever in office, Rosenbaum wrote.  He doesn't make news.  Nothing he says is exciting or even interesting.  You can't even rely on anyone wanting to take a shot at him.

Like what Don said about Henry - a truth, at once sobering and horrifying, because of what it says about our living in such a world, but also very funny.  In its own way, a microcosm of Mad Men.

See also Mad Men 6.1-2: The Lighter and the Twist ... Mad Men 6.3: Good Company ... Mad Men 6.4: McLuhan, Heinz, and Don's Imagination

See also Why "You Only Live Twice" for Mad Men Season 5 Finale ... Mad Men Season Five Finale

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party  ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl ...Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity  ... Mad Men 5.10: "The Negron Complex" ... Mad Men 5.11: Prostitution and Power ... Mad Men 5.12: Exit Lane

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback  ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ...4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking!  ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ...Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ...Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

            

download Mad Men season 6 on

Mad Men 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy

Another fascinating, tough and tender mix of social commentary and piercing personal psychology circa early 1960s on Mad Men 3.5 tonight.

The social: Pete is given the flat Admiral television account - not flat TV sets (those would be decades in the future) but flat sales of Admiral television sets. Pete looks carefully at the sales figures across the U.S., and discovers that Admiral sets are selling well - in fact increasing - in "Negro" areas.

He proposes to Admiral that they focus their ads in Negro media (Ebony, Jet, the Amsterdam News) and markets. Harry seems to agree - though, ever careful, he tells the client that his specialty is television "air not sets".

Admiral balks at the cost of producing a double set of ads - one for white and another for black markets. Pete comes back with the idea of a single campaign of integrated commercials - featuring black and white consumers.

"Isn't that illegal?" one of the Admiral people says. Pete assures them it's legal. But Admiral isn't buying it, and, predictably, Bert and Roger chew Pete out, with Roger asking Pete if he's Martin Luther King.

All of this against the backdrop of Medgar Evers being murdered - about as trenchant a piece of period social commentary as you're likely to see on television...

The personal: Medgar Evers' murder also figures in tonight's personal story, as Betty gives birth to a baby boy in what seem barbaric hospital conditions - barbaric psychological conditions, with the father kept completely out of the picture, and the mother treated as if she were in psych ward.

Betty sees and feels connected to her father, who died last week. In one softly nightmarish scene, she sees Gene mopping up blood on the floor, and her mother at a table with a black man ... who is likely Medgar Evers. Sally's teacher (whom Don is attracted to, and vice versa, but that's another story for another time) mentions Evers' murder when Betty and Don come see her at school.

But everything works out ok with Betty and the baby. Though her naming the baby Gene was not something Don especially wanted.

All in all, a big, good step forward for this complex family.

And, once again, some very fine capturing of life in the 1950s and early 60s. I remember standing outside the hospital and waving to my mother when my sister was born, just as Don and the two kids did with Betty and the baby. And we had an Admiral television set in the Levinson household in the Bronx...

See also: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons ... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through


8-min podcast review of Mad Men

---

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Barack Obama Gets High Marks for Speeches in Japan

Obama's Speeches Get High Grades in Japan
by PaulLev

Well, last week was a good week for Barack Obama around the world - and I've been happy to do what I can to help.

Yesterday, I posted a clip from the CBC's "Cell Phone: The Ring Heard Around the World," aired on April 3, in which I and the documentary praise the Obama campaign's savvy use of cell phones.

Turns out I was also on the air in Japan last Friday - April 4 - giving Obama and his speech writer Ron Favreau very high marks (I also grade Hillary Clinton). The above clip with me, from NNN-TV News in Japan, was recorded in January (same week as the CBC clip). You can see the entire report in Japanese - with a comparison of Obama and Martin Luther King - on the NNN-TV News 24 website.

Further Thoughts on Obama's Speech on Racism: Its Lasting Significance, and the Need to Keep Politics and Religion Separate

I offered my first impressions on Tuesday of Obama's speech on racism - I said it struck me as an extraordinarily frank and important step forward in America's struggle to understand and overcome racism, and may in the long run make the damage done to Obama's campaign by his relationship with Rev. Wright insignificant.

I've tried to let this settle in. Here's what I think about all of this now:

1. I'm more convinced that ever that Obama's speech was a major, unprecedented, and ultimately enormously helpful breakthrough on racism in America. I think we'll be seeing the good consequences of Obama's probe of racism - of whites to blacks, and blacks to whites - for years to come. It's nothing but helpful to get these issues - the resentments, the ways of talking and thinking - out into the open, on the table. Obama's speech has been compared to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," but, in some ways, Obama's may be even more important in our current day and age. King's was a magnificent plea for justice and hope and courage. Obama's was the beginning of an astute analysis, a dialog, for just why that's so difficult to accomplish. Both are surely needed. But what Obama has contributed was pretty much missing until now.

2. What of Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright? It occurs to me that our wise Founding Fathers were at their wisest when they insisted on separation of Church and State. Politics and religion do not mix well, because the first is completely public, and the second, in its deepest and more important elements, is private. All I need to understand is Obama's - or any candidate's - political positions. Not their religious beliefs and actions. This is because I don't think I really can understand anyone's deepest religious beliefs, or lack of, except my own and those of close members of my family. In my case, for example, I'm culturally Jewish - my family and I enjoy celebrating the holidays. I don't put much faith into the religious teachings. I wouldn't put any rabbi's advice above any other person I deemed to be intelligent. My deepest religious beliefs are transcendentalist - similar to Ralph Waldo Emerson's - that is, I think that if there is a divine force in the cosmos, it expresses itself through every human being. I recognize that there is much that I and no human is likely to ever understand - such as what existed before the beginning of the universe - but I don't know if that recognition is something I should pray to.

So - what does this have to with my political views and actions? Not much, as far as I can tell. And I think Obama's similarly have little to do with kind of President he would be. True, Obama's pastor Wright did make outrageous political statements - such as America getting what it deserved on September 11 - but there is nothing in Obama's record that suggests that he agrees with such a view even in the slightest.

So I am comfortable with leaving Obama's religious beliefs and actions to Obama, and judging what he does, and says he will do, politically.

And, on that score, Obama's speech about racism leads me to believe he will be a great President. I hope the people who are voting in the remaining primaries, and then the super delegates, see that. And I expect America as a whole will see that in November.