Censorship 101

A few years ago, the Houston Astros won the American League pennant and the World Series. Baseball writers lavished praise on the effectiveness of the Houston system in producing winning teams. A couple of years later the baseball world was shocked to discover that the Astros had been cheating.

Now, fast forward to the 2020 Presidential election. The claims that President Trump has made about cheating or fraud in the election have been routinely dismissed as dubious and without evidence. Typically, news outlets do not investigate the claims but just say that they have been dismissed by judges and state officials and settle for that.

The conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal agrees, even though to my knowledge, its news pages have never conducted an investigation into the voting irregularities and anomalies in the key battleground states.

However, things have gone a step further since protestors stormed the Capitol on January 6. Just talking about fraud in the past election has been elevated to speech that must be suppressed as seditious and tending to insurrection. In a recent op-ed in my local newspaper, a teacher at Connecticut’s Pace University argued that it was right and proper for social media sites to censor and suppress claims of fraud. 

Of course, he lauded the ban on President Trump’s social media accounts. He compared President Trump to Hitler claiming that he used his social media platform to advance a “Big Lie” strategy. He did believe that censorship should only be a short-term solution and argued that in the future social media and other news sources should insist that posts or tweets by politicians be accompanied by equal length contrary posts.

One wonders where the Pace prof. has been the past four years. During his term in office President Trump spawned a whole industry of fact checkers who closely scrutinized his every word. I suspect that these “fact checkers” will soon be filing unemployment claims since the new administration will likely be above reproach or criticism.

Moreover, I wonder if the professor even reads the newspaper in which his op-ed appeared. Like many other news organizations, the CT Post has a diverse group of political columnists but despite differences in color and gender they are all of the same opinion, especially when it came to the Trump administration. Even the political cartoons were invariably anti-Trump. 

Op-ed pages in newspapers were originally designed to provide opposing points of view, but no more. Over the past four years the great majority of guest opinion pieces have generally supported the paper’s editorial positions. For a while, the paper had a “You Said it” column where readers could provide short responses to editorials or generally voice their opinion. But that has largely disappeared.

The Pace prof. was just mirroring the thoughts of many Trump haters throughout the nation. He calls for reasoned discourse and the sharing of opinions but where has it been in the past four years?

Finally, have the people who believe that there is no evidence for fraud in the past election, and dismiss such claims as dubious, forgotten the claims of fraud and Russian collusion in the 2016 election? The fact that these claims were spawned by a dubious document put forward by Democratic political operatives did not stop them from calling for incessant investigation. The $40 Million Mueller investigation that ensued found no evidence to support these dubious claims. Nevertheless, many still believe that Trump stole the election of 2016. Did any professor ever speak out against this hoax or call for censorship then?

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Quote of the day: 

"Badges! We don’t need no stinkin badges!" Mexican bandit in Treasure of Sierra Madre.

Martin Luther King Day

  

                                           

 

Today is Martin Luther King Day, a National Holiday. All government offices will be closed in honor of Dr. King and his pioneering role in the civil rights movement back in the 1960s. This is a unique holiday since he is the only man or woman to be honored with his own day anymore. Great Presidents like Washington and Lincoln have lost their individual holiday status and are now lumped together next month on President’s day. Poor Christopher Columbus has also slipped into virtual oblivion in deference to political correctness.

If Dr. King were alive today, I believe that he would be shocked to see how his famous dream has been turned into a nightmare. Statistics show that over 70% of black births now occur out of wedlock. This alarming figure has been rising every year since the time of Dr. King. The disintegration of the black family in America is perhaps the major reason for the fact that about 40% of the prison population today is black despite the fact that blacks make up only 13% of the population. Of that number the great majority would appear to be young black males. Most of these will have grown up without a father.

Critics can cry racism, but I believe that the failure of the dream lies elsewhere. The integration of America’s public schools was one of the key elements in the civil rights movement, but integration has turned out to be a disaster for most of the blacks in this country. Studies have shown, for example, that practically every attempt to integrate Connecticut’s schools has not only failed but has actually made things worse.

Magnet schools have only drawn the best students with the most involved parents away from the other schools. Attempts to bus inner-city students into nearby suburban schools have also failed to meet expectations. Even though they admit failure, politicians and commentators can only suggest more of the same. 

A favorite catch phrase of the civil rights movement was “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”  Today, it would appear that after years of failed experiments like the ones above, and the outlay of billions of dollars, that it would be better to say that the solution was the problem. Integration was the supposed solution offered by well-intentioned civil rights advocates, but it has actually turned out to be the problem. How did this happen?

I am old enough to have been educated before the civil rights movement and I will use the nearby city of Bridgeport, Connecticut as an example. Integration in Bridgeport abolished neighborhood schools, and as a result it destroyed existing neighborhoods and communities.  Integration accelerated the already begun exodus of the white middle classes from Bridgeport into the nearby suburbs. At the same time, these people did not leave their jobs. They moved outside the city but continued to hold their jobs as teachers, policemen, firemen, sanitation men, and other civil servants. Their unions even lobbied successfully to abolish laws that prohibited them from living outside the city.

As a result, the jobs that other groups had used to advance into the middle class were not available to blacks in Bridgeport. More than two generations would pass before they began to be teachers, policemen, fireman, and civil servants in any significant number. Even if a student managed to finish high school what could they do to earn a living? Many still turn to a life of crime, especially the drug trade. This is one of the factors in the high percentage of blacks in American prisons.

 Others try athletics but we know that despite heavy college recruitment, most will not graduate. Only a small minority manage to hit the pro jackpot. A few years ago, a friend sent me an article from USA Today about a scandal at the prestigious University of North Carolina. At UNC football players were able to take classes in the African American studies program that required no class attendance, only the submission of a paper at the end of class. These were pretty obviously phony courses created especially for black football players. Heads have rolled and the head of the program came under investigation. Other studies have shown that black athletes are reading at below eighth grade levels at many colleges across the country. 

So, it turns out that the integration of American schools did not usher in an educational utopia. After sixty years advocates admit that despite all their efforts and reforms, segregation has not been eliminated. Moreover, it is clear that integration has done little to improve education itself. In fact, it appears as if integration had more to do with social engineering than with education. Can it be that integration was the “problem” and not the “solution”?

The last sixty years have seen the disintegration of the black family; an incredibly high out of wedlock birth rate, jails filed with young black criminals, and an educational system whose reforms have gone sour despite good intentions. Martin Luther King could never have imagined that his dream would have turned out this way.*

*This post first appeared on The Weekly Bystander six years ago, Sadly, not much has changed.

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Quote of the Day. There is only one race, the Human race.

Capitol Riot

  

After the violent storming of the halls of Congress this week, I decided to go to You Tube and watch President Trump’s speech to the huge crowd of protestors before the violence erupted. I may be politically naïve, but I saw no incitement to riot in the President’s remarks. He even made it a point to insist that the huge protest be peaceful. My opinion was supported by an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a former assistant attorney general of the District of Columbia, who had been involved in the prosecution of a number of riot cases in the Capitol.

 

It is true that the President repeated the charges that he had made at previous rallies that fraudulent activity in key battleground states had stolen the election. He read from a teleprompter a whole litany of charges that detailed this activity. 

 

At the top of his list was the charge that a judge in Pennsylvania had unconstitutionally violated the state’s own law in allowing late ballots to be counted. His list included thousands of ballots mailed to dead voters, and thousands of ballots cast by people living out of state. There were so many more items on his list that the President feared that he would bore the crowd with the recitation. He even referred to a poll that appeared in Wisconsin on the day before the election showing him losing by 17 points, an obvious attempt at voter suppression.

 

At the end of his speech the President calmly asked the crowd to walk down Pennsylvania Ave. to the Capitol where Congress was about to count the votes of the Electoral College. It was his hope that at this late date Congress would send the votes back to the states for re-certification. He even called on Vice-President Pence to show courage and stand up for what is right. * 

 

As we all know a small minority of the protestors got out of hand, stormed the Capitol, got through police lines, and even entered the inner chambers of Congress. Inevitably, the President was blamed for inciting the riot and now members of Congress are preparing articles of Impeachment even though there are less than two weeks to go in his term. 

 

For years we have repeatedly been told that rather than blame protestors, we should try to understand the reasons for their anger and actions even when they turn violent.

 

As recently as the riots last summer in major American cities, we have been told that most of the rioters were just peaceful protestors and that the causes of their discontent were in social and economic inequality. Democratic politicians in these cities even praised and encouraged the protestors when they attacked federal and state buildings. One author even published a book entitled, “In Defense of Looting.”

 Anyway, what is the underlying reason behind the huge demonstration in Washington that unfortunately turned into violence? Thousands of people marched on Washington from all over the country. Even though the TV cameras refused to show the crowd, the President claimed it was the largest he had ever seen. Why did they come? I believe that most felt that not only had President Trump been robbed in the November election, but also that they had been robbed.

 

They had turned out in record numbers to vote for the President only to discover that their votes did not count and that they probably would never count in the future. The President had gotten 63 Million votes in 2016 and his advisors had told him that if he could get 66 Million in 2020, he would win in a landslide. He got 74 Million votes but lost because of narrow defeats in key battleground states. 

 

How could this have happened without fraud in those states? Pre-election polls showed that states like Ohio, Texas, and Florida were in 

play, but the President won easily. Ohio had been close in 2016 but the President gained an easy victory in 2020. Are suburban housewives different in Ohio than in other states? Are Blacks and Hispanics different in Cleveland than in Detroit or Milwaukee?

 

Election data analysts have noted significant irregularities and anomalies in the tabulation of votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. There were, for example, vote spikes “where a numerical amount of votes are processed in a time period that is not feasible or mechanically possible under normal circumstances.” There were massive dumps of votes in the wee hours of the morning all overwhelmingly for Joe Biden. Here is a link to a brief video on irregularities in Pennsylvania.

 

Another vote anomaly occurred in Georgia where 100000 votes could not be read by the computer and so had to be interpreted by an adjudicator to determine the intent of the voter. The process of adjudication took only one day, a physical impossibility. In other states, mail in ballots were counted as received even before they were mailed out. Democrats admit clerical errors in reporting votes, but all the clerical errors seemed to work out for Biden.

 

It is true that courts have thrown out the President’s charges of voter fraud and that media sources, even the esteemed Wall Street Journal, routinely claim there is no evidence for these charges. But do they ever investigate these charges themselves? A few years ago the Houston Astros won the World Series and sports writers were lavish in praise of the Houston system. Only later did we discover that they had cheated.

 

Efforts to suppress or ignore these stories will only lead to greater suspicion and anger. Just the other day, President Trump’s Twitter account, practically the only way, given a hostile media, that the President could communicate with the American people, was banned. Is that any way to make people less suspicious or angry?

 

It is true that the web is full of conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, suppression or censorship of unfavorable ideas has become so prevalent that it is no wonder that people are suspicions, and even angry. 

 

Democratic politicians and their allies in the media have incessantly attacked the President even before his inauguration in 2016. They have even refused to call him President and still claim that his victory was fraudulent and that his presidency was illegitimate. Many of them still believe the conspiracy theories about Russian collusion for which the Mueller and other investigations could find no evidence.

 

The opposition to President Trump, often bordering on hysteria and hatred, bears much of the responsibility for last week’s riot.

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 *Note: I do fault the President for calling our Vice-President Pence in his remarks. It is inconceivable that he had not discussed the matter with the VP privately, and so he must have known what he intended to do. The Vice-President’s opinion of his role in the counting of Electoral College vote count was also featured in the op-ed section of the WSJ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m shocked! Shocked. Claude Rains in Casablanca.

Top Film Picks: 2020

 

At this time of year it is traditional to present top film lists. My list for 2020 is drawn from the past. Few contemporary films will stand the test of time.

In the past few years, I have become a big fan of a certain kind of American film from the 1940s and 50s. They are primarily black and white dark crime dramas that French film makers and critics called film-noir when they rediscovered American films after the liberation of France in 1945.The term film-noir refers not only to the dark themes of these movies but also to the nighttime settings and the often-startling contrasts between light and dark, black and white. 

Originally, these films were low budget productions often designed to be presented as the second feature on traditional Hollywood double bills. Nevertheless, today many are regarded as ground-breaking classics. They featured great directors, actors, writers, and film craftsmen and craftswomen. To fill the insatiable demand for movies in America, Hollywood even imported talent from abroad. In my opinion, film-noir represents a short-lived American film renaissance that came to an end with the advent of television and technicolor. 

Below find brief descriptions of eight of these films that I have viewed this year.* Not only are they gripping, extremely well-told stories with masterful directing and acting, but also, they bring me back to the days of my childhood. In the background I can see a world that is no more: the dark dingy streets, the small apartments, the old telephones, and the incessant cigarette smoking. 

 

Double Indemnity: Famed director Billy Wilder directed this classic 1944 film noir about an insurance salesman who falls for a client’s wife, and then joins with her in a plot to kill him and collect on his life insurance. Barbara Stanwyck, blond wig and all, stars as the devious wife, and Fred MacMurray plays the salesman. Edward G. Robinson is excellent as the suspicious claims' investigator. 

Phantom Lady: In 1944 Robert Siodmak directed a number of films that would later make critics regard him as one of the great masters of film-noir. Phantom Lady, a little-known thriller, is no exception. After a fight with his wife on their anniversary, a man goes to a bar to drown his sorrows. When he returns home, he finds that police are waiting to arrest him for the murder of his wife. His only alibi depends on a woman he met in the bar, but he doesn’t even know her name. The film stars Alan Curtis, Ella Raines, and Franchot Tone.

I’ll Be Seeing You: This 1944 film is a holiday drama with noir trappings. Two strangers meet on a train, but she is a woman with a past and he is a soldier suffering from war wounds, both physical and mental. The film stars Ginger Rogers, who turned to dramatic roles after the break-up of her famed dancing partnership with Fred Astaire; and Joseph Cotton, who was at the height of his career after appearances in Citizen Kane and the Magnificent Ambersons.  Director William Dieterle not only brings out the chemistry between the two stars, but also gets the most out of a fine supporting cast, including a teen-age Shirley Temple.

Detour: A down on his luck musician hitchhiking to Hollywood finds himself with a dead body on his hands. Things go from bad to worse when he gets entangled with the most vicious femme-fatale in cinema history.  Tom Neal played the musician, and Ann Savage, whose career as a Hollywood starlet was on the wane, became a film icon with her portrayal of the woman he picks up on the road. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, the master of low budget films, this 1945 film took just a couple of weeks to shoot. 

Ann Savage

The Big Heat. Glenn Ford stars as a rogue police detective conducting a vendetta against a crime syndicate in this 1953 film by famed noir director Fritz Lang. Lee Marvin portrays a sadistic gangster and Gloria Grahame is excellent as his unfortunate girlfriend.

I Want To Live: Susan Hayward won an Academy Award for her portrayal of a party girl who gets mixed up with a gang of thieves. When a botched robbery leads to murder, her associates implicate her, and she is convicted and sentenced to death in the gas chamber. Based on a true story, Robert Wise directed this 1958 film in documentary fashion. The film was a big hit and featured background music by legendary Jazz saxophonist Gerry Mulligan.

Touch of Evil: Orson Welles directed this 1958 film about crime and depravity in a Mexican border town.  It is a mangled masterpiece since the studio made drastic cuts and revisions without the director’s permission. The DVD release restores many of the cuts. The opening itself is a film icon. Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh star, and a heavily disguised Welles plays a corrupt police chief. Some critics believe this film to be the last American film-noir.

Orson Welles

Le Samourai: Renowned French director, Jean-Pierre Melville, directed this 1967 mixture of 1940s American gangster movies, 1960s French pop culture, and Japanese lone-warrior mythology. Alain Delon, who looks and acts like the young Clint Eastwood, plays a contract killer with samurai instincts. Shot is subdued color; Melville’s masterpiece defines cool. 

 

Bonus pick. 

Remember the Night: Barbara Stanwyck and Fred Mac Murray co-star in this 1940 holiday romance with touches of film-noir. It is interesting to compare them in this film with their roles in Double Indemnity four years later. They were a great pair. Directed by Preston Sturges this film is full of warmth and charm with fine performances by the supporting cast. 

 

Many of these films can be streamed today but I prefer to use DVDs because they often include excellent commentaries, background information, and subtitles for people like myself who are hearing impaired.

Happy viewing and a Happy New Year.

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*Eight other noir films were featured earlier this year in a post on The Weekly Bystander.