Experience #2: A Movie Memory

As a boy, I saw the Disney film, Pinocchio and was genuinely moved by the story, a classic fairy tale shared in many cultures and told in many languages with minor variations. This uniquely American version tells of the old Italian cobbler, Geppetto, the eponymous puppet who dreamed of being a boy, a magic blue fairy godmother and a mentor insect, Jiminy Cricket. The character of the old man was rich and textured and well drawn, the Pinocchio character was, no pun intended, a little wooden, the fairy was glowing and intriguingly sexy, and the Jiminy Cricket performance was brilliant. Interestingly, Jiminy Cricket played the cricket that shared his name. He received rave reviews; won acclaim at a number of foreign film festivals and critics in a dozen US cities chose this performance, in their year end "Best Of" lists, as Best Supporting - to the extent some even argued that Mr. Cricket stole the movie and was a "lock" for an Academy Award. In an upset, Walter Brennan won for The Westerner.

Cricket went on to appear in a number of lesser films that emanated from the Disney studio, but never was given a role with the weight of his silver screen debut. He did some television in the early days of the medium, but was misused mainly in hosting chores.
Apparently the scripts just never came his way plus it was a time in Hollywood history, best be forgotten, when movie studios black listed insect performers. He moved to Europe and though he acted in a number of French "new wave" films as well as Italian neo-realism roles, he was little used for anything except cricket parts. He returned to America and in the late fifties and appeared on screen again in the sci-fi film, The Swarm, this time as a wasp, but one reviewer predictably commented, "Cricket is no wasp". Disney attempted to re-energize his career and placed him in a number of little-seen nature films. He found a niche for a while doing voice-over work, most famously, it is Cricket chirping in the background of the late evening outdoor love scenes between Kim Novak and William Holden in the fifties classic, Picnic.
He gradually faded from the limelight, was last seen publicly on the 1977 PBS tribute, "Live from Lincoln Center" when former President Jimmy Carter bestowed the Medal of Freedom on comedian and entomologist, Pinky Lee.Jiminy retired to a quiet life in Palm Springs with his long time companion, the successful pool boy Ramon Aqua, where he has comfortably lived for thirty years off the royalties accumulated by lucrative merchandising contracts, negotiated early in his career, that licensed his likeness for products ranging from insect repelents to Caterpillar
tractors.
This brings me to the present and the chance to applaud the brave, genius and inspired casting by famed Broadway producer, David Florence who announced Monday that Cricket has won the lead role in the upcoming musical version of William Shakespeare's, King Lear, "The King and Me" scheduled to hit the great white way in the Fall of 2009. Rumor has it that Florence is attempting to reunite the Supremes for the roles of Lear's daughters, though well placed sources have indicated the Dixie Chicks have agreed to a five month commitment. HBO has secured the television and cable rights while MGM has optioned the film along with DVD and digital
rights. The stage production will be directed by newcomer Saul Kraft who up to now has directed a couple of Cops segments for the successful Fox TV series and the pilot for the Home Shopping Network jewelry segments.

Experience #1: BEAT BUSH REDUX!

Four years ago, during the run-up to the 2004 presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, I posted a daily blog called Beat Bush. There were nearly two hundred messages delivered for more than six months that contained a simple, single sentence or short paragraph that pointed out the corruption and ineptitude of the Bush administration. Occasionally I made the greater argument against government abuses and the danger of apathetic citizens in a democracy. I exposed the politics of class warfare. Many times I addressed the complicity of mass media as promoters of government ideas rather than as reporters of wrong-doing with an obligation to truthfully inform the public of misdeeds done in our name.
Following are five excerpts taken from the first month's collection and sadly nothing has changed in America.

#1 - Goebbels quote "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

#9 - Democratic Dissent "To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them." Michael Parenti

#14 - Patriotic Goodness "The U.S. record of war crimes has been, from the nineteenth century to the present, a largely invisible one, with no government, no political leaders, no military officials, no lower-level operatives held accountable for criminal actions. A culture of militarism has saturated the public sphere, including academia, endowing all U.S. interventions abroad with a patina of patriotic goodness and democratic sensibilities beyond genuine interrogation. Anyone challenging this mythology is quickly marginalized, branded a traitor or Communist or terrorist or simply a lunatic beyond the pale of reasonable discussion."

Carl Boggs

#18 - Support Our Troops (?) "The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about." Noam Chomsky

#30 - One Liberty at a Time In the name of fighting terrorism, President Bush and his administration have abruptly overridden rights protected by the Constitution and international law. Ideas foreign to American principles—detention without trial, denial of access to lawyers, years of interrogation in isolation—are now American practices. The danger of what is happening is more profound than the denial of justice to some individuals. The Bush administration is really attacking a basic premise of the American system: that we have a government under law. It was a novel idea when James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the rest laid it down at the end of the 18th century, and ever since it has been a distinctive feature of our polity: Political leaders are subject to the law, responsible to legal constraints on their power as well as to the vote of the people. "A government of laws, and not of men," John Adams first said. From the cages at Gunatanamo to a jail cell in Brooklyn, the administration isn't just threatening the rights of a few detainees—it's undermining the very foundation of democracy.

Anthony Lewis