Spoilers TK

Spoiled.

It's about damn time that someone bucked the trend, one of the worst on the internet in my opinion, of being careful about spoilers: Movie Review: 'The Happening' (side note: we should have more genius headlines like this where I work).

For the longest time now, I've been wary of movie/book reviews where the author intentionally resists spoiling the work for his readers. This practice not only capitulates to the audience -- as an editor of Time once said, "Keep the dog food where the dog is" -- it also presupposes the plot summary found in the worst examples of criticism. In both outcomes the critic is failing to do his job: the point of criticism is not to convey the plot or action in a work but rather to discuss the importance of the themes and messages in the work itself. The best criticism goes a step further and connects the art with it's context. Take for example this Manohla Dargis review of Children of Men:

Based in broad outline on the 1992 dystopian novel by P. D. James about a world suffering from global infertility — and written with a nod to Orwell by Mr. Cuarón and his writing partner Timothy J. Sexton along with David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby — “Children of Men” pictures a world that looks a lot like our own, but darker, grimmer and more frighteningly, violently precarious. It imagines a world drained of hope and defined by terror in which bombs regularly explode in cafes crowded with men and women on their way to work. It imagines the unthinkable: What if instead of containing Iraq, the world has become Iraq, a universal battleground of military control, security zones, refugee camps and warring tribal identities?

Do you see what's happening there? There's no plot discussion, just themes and connections. Two of the best modern examples of these practices are Ed Rothstein's "Connections" columns and William Safire's "On Language" but both of those are hardly pure criticism. Perhaps more germane -- and older -- is Sam Johnson's Rambler series. However, my favorite example of good criticism comes from James Agee, in a review of that bender of a movie "The Lost Weekend":

I understand that liquor interish: innerish: intereshtsh are rather worried about this film. Thash tough.

I suppose this unfortunate trend against spoiling the ending of a movie arises out of the class who writes these reviews: journalists. The very nature of the journalistic pathos hinges on the practice of reporting the truth, and summaries are nothing but truthful. In addition, the hesitancy to refrain from discussing the ending and thus the movie, arises out of a kind of narcissism, and most likely stems from the increased voice readers have on the web. I didn't think I'd end on that note when I started, but the review of 'The Happening', while not among the ones I'll count great, is at least a step in the right direction. (I also have no desire to see 'The Happening'. Though I'm no fan of Mr. Night, due to masochistic urges I've seen all of his previous films, probably because I thought it was funny, but after Lady in the Water I don't have enough time left in my life to see another.)

Waterboarding Afghanis.

Bobby Gates.

Lede: Super Tuesday is a good day to drop news you want ignored. Fact: and what a good news day it was. Double Fact: Journalism is easy! Start with a lede like that and your story will practically write itself, and so here we are.

In the first bit of bad news, CIA director Michael Hayden acknowledged the US's use of waterboarding on al-Qaeda suspects since 9/11. Of course, Attorney General Mukasey quickly fired back with the time-honored argument that waterboarding is less than torture, in fact it's a bit like having a fresh shower (that's a bit unfair of me but humor is humor). According to Hayden's testimony before congress, the CIA is allowed to use waterboarding if it has the consent of the "of the President and legal approval of the Attorney-General."

What we're seeing here is a CIA director shifting blame to the Attorney General's office and using the "just following orders" defense while the Attorney General is saying yes, in extreme circumstances it can and should be legal and not be investigated. Only, perhaps that's not the only story we should be following. Any debate on the use of waterboarding hinges on the right of "enemy combatants" and whether they can and should be held by the US government, and whether the US can hold them indefinitely. Both waterboarding and holding "enemy combatants" are beyond the charter of the US Army, which congress is trying to get the CIA to follow on these two issues. I've gone and buried the lede.

The second bit comes from Afghanistan. In a completely dismissal of unilateralism, Condeleeza Rice is jetting around the world trying to gain combat support for our troops in Afghanistan. Currently in Kabul, Rice demanded that NATO partners support the US's crumbling venture in Afghanistan by sending in combat troops. Of course, the NATO response was basically "No fucking way." The pretext for all this was Robert Gates' quarterback sneak last week against NATO for not "providing troops prepared to 'fight and die' against the Taliban." Although the were asking for a relatively low number of troops, 7500 spread over many governments, it certainly seems that NATO is making the best call here; both in their own interests, and in the interest of the project in Afghanistan. What Afghanistan really needs, and by extension what Iraq really needs, is a force dedicated to building infrastructure in these war torn countries. The US can take care of rounding up the Taliban, hell, we've already done it twice. (Well once it was to give them weapons...)

And all of this in a week when an internet new money success story finally started acting like big slow old money....

Oh, The Gray Lady.

On the train to work today I read this surprisingly vapid story in The Times. On the frontpage. Above the fold. The basic assumption of this decidedly human interest story is that the credit crunch will bestow upon those Americans who "have proved staggeringly resourceful at finding new ways to spend money" a new found faith in saving money. At the outset we're treated to the popular history of American's love for easy money and fine dining:

"In the 1950s and ’60s, as credit cards grew in popularity In the 1950s and ’60s, as credit cards grew in popularity, many began dining out when the mood struck or buying new television sets on the installment plan rather than waiting for payday."

That Americans have been using credit cards, and credit as a whole, with ever increasing frequency is as strong a fact as global warming, but to attribute this phenomenon to increased consumption of television sets or fine dining is irresponsible. Any undergraduate economics major could tell the reporter that the credit crunch revolves around the increased use of credit as a sort of plastic safety net. During these "freewheeling days of credit and risk" Americans watched their real buying power and salaries stagnate as inflation went up while credit increasingly filled the void. Instead of investigating the hard evidence, The Times, editors and all, thought it apt to interview one Elena Gamble of Elk City (I'll quote it all because it's gold):

Not long ago, Elena Gamble would have looked at the Cadillac parked across the street from her modest home in Elk City, Okla., and felt a twinge of jealousy.

“We live in a small town, and everybody looks at your clothes and what you drive and where you have your hair done,” said Ms. Gamble, who earns about $2,600 a month as a grievance counselor at a local prison.

Now, she and her husband — a prison guard who brings home $2,000 a month — are grappling with $10,000 in high-interest debt. They no longer go to the movies or out to eat, except occasionally to McDonald’s. They quit their Internet service. Their car was repossessed. “What we say now is, ‘If we can’t afford it, we can’t buy it,’ ” Ms. Gamble said.

And when she looks across the street at that Cadillac, her envy has been replaced by pity for the neighbor on the hook.

I wonder if their neighbor is really "on the hook". I have no idea who they are, and the article bases this conclusion on Elena's interview. Is it too much to ask that a Times' reporter go across the street and ask the neighbor, "Excuse me are you able to make payments on your car?" Certainly not the journalistic integrity I expect from the gray lady.