Born to Politics: Our American Road Trip to Tomorrow
All politics is personal. There is no magic line between "us" and some "them." We're all in this together and politics is how we get things done. Ever since the Greeks invented the concept of politics as what occurs in our public space, ambitious leaders have claimed that their opponents were "playing politics" and for that reason, we should ... you got it: "Trust me." Right. If someone tells you that politics is the problem and they are a some magic "non-political" solution, hold onto your wallet, hold onto your vote, hold onto your children. I'll leave it to academics to argue over when ...
Happy 100th Birthday to the 1911 .45 Pistol, Our Gun of Choice
This year marks the 100th "birthday" of one of America's most successful and culturally impactive political tools: the 1911 .45 semi-automatic pistol. Yet this is not just a story about a gun. Though, of course, this story stars and starts with that gun. Or rather, our need for it that emerged when U.S. armed forces fought Muslim insurgents on Asian turf that most Americans have trouble finding on a map. As most of us remember -- especially fans of Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling -- from 1899-1913, the United States fought the Philippine-American War for control of those Pacific islands. In ...
Why We Care About the Academy Awards
The Academy Awards shone bright lights in my family's night sky well before 2007, when I stood in a Santa Monica street hugging my black-gowned and borrowed-diamonds daughter Rachel and not crying, I did not cry, I did not! as she climbed into the black limo that whisked her and her co-director/producer Heidi to the Oscars where they would lose Best Documentary to Al Gore. And why yes: it is way cool just to be nominated. The Academy Awards had me long before that night. Way back in America's black & white Cold War daze, my father managed movie theaters on our home turf of Montana prairie ...
Our Year of Zombie Politics
Wait: Even in politics, 2010 was the year of zombies? Sure, the hot new wonky tome "Zombie Economics" tells how "dead" economic theories walk among us to shape our paychecks, and sure, zombies lumber out of our TVs almost no matter what channel we click to, and sure, my fellow fantasy prose-slingers are flinging new novels about the undead at the dust of Stephen King and George Romero, but zombies as a metaphor for 2010's politics? Come on! What happened to vampires? Vampires are a great political metaphor! Bloodsuckers. Say no more. But zombies? Who are they in America's 2010 ...
'War on Drugs' Gives Way to the Dangerous New Face of Narco-Politics
A shotgun blast of news this year shredded what most Americans believe about what used to be called the "war on drugs" -- that it was being fought to curb what were seen as simply criminal enterprises. Instead, it left us all facing the new dangers of narco-politics, whether it is cartels challenging governments and attacking social institutions, capitalizing on corruption, or involvement in the drug trade by terrorist groups. As a veteran California law enforcement officer told Politics Daily: "What we're seeing in Mexico is cartels as new 'state making' agencies." That's politics, even if, ...
The Thanksgiving of Our Dreams: Open Your Eyes, It's Right Here
Hey, 2010: We've made it this far, and that deserves a lot of thanksgiving. Politics is part of how we got here. Part of the good. Part of the bad. Part of our American dream. Part of politics we can be thankful for now is the SHUT UP factor. Listen to your lives. Do you hear it? Maybe not the sounds of silence, because the shouting never stops in modern America. But now the volume of political shouting is dialed-down because our latest electoral brawl is over -- except for random re-counts, court challenges, simple twists of fate and Congress's "lame duck" soup. Now, driving home ...
Politics in Our Movies: From 'Mr. Smith' to 'Casino Jack'
All across America this lame-duck congressional season, we're driving past malls or walking down Main Streets where theater marquees offer two major motion pictures "about" politics: "Casino Jack" starring Kevin Spacey and "Fair Game" starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. But the truth is, every movie is "about" politics. Every work of art creates a vision of reality and rules for that realm. Even when a movie is not a fact-driven documentary, what's on film are "people" making choices of conscience and circumstance. On some level, choice always involves politics -- and that includes the ...
RIP Dino De Laurentiis, Master of the Movies
Arrivederci, movie impresario and producer Dino De Laurentiis. And grazie. With full disclosure to Politics Daily readers, grazie Dino from me personally for my dream career. In 1973, sitting in his New York office reading the opening four typed manuscript pages of a slim first novel by me, a nobody living in a Montana shack, Dino saw the outlines of an even better movie. So, he brought together Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow and director Sydney Pollack to create what Pulitzer Prize winning film critic and novelist Stephen Hunter calls the film most resonant ...
From Paris, With Love: The French Are Concerned For Us
A revelation about French perspectives of the United States and our politics emerged last month in a Paris suburb as I sat on a movie theater stage with three other American authors. We four born in the U.S.A. panelists came to that upper-middle-class suburb of Vincennes – think Bethesda, Md., or Wash(ington) Park in Denver – for a three-day "Festival America" celebration of North American culture. While the festival featured authors and artists from Canada, Cuba, Haiti, and Mexico, its heartbeat came from this land of ours. Events glittered with stars including Pulitzer Prize ...
The Lesson of 9/11 on the Ninth Anniversary
The lesson of 9/11 is to remember where we are, not where we were. But where were you? At work on New York and Pentagon and Pennsylvania-field Eastern time? Driving some Central time zone commute near Oklahoma City where the then deadliest terrorist attack in America's history exploded six years before 9/11's beautiful autumn day? Having kitchen coffee out West where amber waves of grain surround the nuclear missile arsenals that deterred our Cold War enemies for decades? Asleep in California time, where Hollywood had, with some exceptions, sold us terrorists as only cartoon-like ...
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