Have any of you been reading the absolutely horrifying stories in the New York Times series on radiation treatment mutilations and medical murders?

(That’s what they are by the way, the hundreds of thousands who die from malpractice complications, usually after unbearable agony.)

Put yourself in the place of one of these patients who have been literally “cooked’ to death, had irreparable holes burned into their vital organs by incompetent, un-qualified, greedy, uncaring doctors, hospitals, technicians, and medical device profiteers. This isn’t medical malpractice; it’s savage, deadly butchery carried out to make a quick buck off the suffering and fears of (mainly) cancer patients, leaving them and their families physically devastated forever.

Reading the series (I’ve linked to today’s second part, but it’s easy to go back to the beginning) makes one’s disgust with human nature even more intense.

It is only sheer ignorance of the facts — of the millions of medical ” mistakes” with horrifically painful, debilitating, crippling and deadly results — that would cause anyone to take the blundering doctors’ side in this controversy. Sure there are great doctors, some of whom make inadvertent mistakes, but the vast majority of medical malpractice is committed by arrogant, incompetent greed-head MDs who treat patients like factory-farm chickens bound to be butchered sooner or later, so why listen to them squawk and spoil the noble image of godlike authority and benevolence so many doctors still arrogate to themselves?

It’s bad but the evidence is this: doctors don’t learn from their mistakes. They are multiple malefactors. Stopping one with a lawsuit is a blessing to the as-yet uninjured. They keep making damaging mistakes, ruining or ending the lives of patients through carelessness or ignorance or sheer lust to pack in as many paying customers as they can. Lawsuits at least allow citizens’ redress. Anyone who could say “tort reform” is a solution to the health care crisis is ignorant. And yes there are greedy and creepy medical malpractice lawyers, but there are also some who care about the ravages of the ruthless butchery they get to see in their office every day. And the steely unconcern of insurance companies in the face of emergencies or extensive life-saving procedures.

But that’s the way capitalism works. Shark eat shark, and I’d rather have the medical sharks looking over their shoulder at the malpractice sharks than not. Maybe they’ll pay attention when their super high-tech radiation machines are “cooking” and burning holes in people.

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…Hurt Locker. The latter turns the Iraq conflict into Hollywood thriller cliche. Brothers returns a kind of agonized humanity to what was becoming a propaganda genre.

I just don’t understand why Brothers has been over-shadowed. Was it because people were tired of over-politicized war films and thought this was one?

Brothers is a brilliantly written and acted story of the cost of war that neither denigrates nor mythicizes the soldiers fighting it. It’s directed by Jim Sheridan, who won an Oscar for My Left Foot and has now made the film of a lifetime. It was written by David Benioff, who also wrote another amazing underrated film 25th Hour, based on his novel of that name, and directed by Spike Lee — his best — back in 2002. The guy can write.

Without getting into specifics — this is one movie whose plot you can’t summarize without ruining it — let’s just say it’s about two brothers: one who goes to Afghanistan (Tobey Maguire) and his other brother (Jake Gyllenhaal), the bad boy who stays behind and tries to take care of his brother’s wife. Based on a 2004 Danish film, there’s something primal, almost Biblical about it.

It’s a film that captures the unimaginable pain of separation that soldiers and their spouses go through, the horror they’re subjected to, and the PTSD that haunts them when they come home.

Yes, there are spectacular plot twists and you can’t forget that Natalie Portman (as the wife) is Natalie Portman (in a good way). But more than anything, it’s so intensely human and true it’s almost unbearable (in a good way).

Don’t miss it; it’s utterly riveting. Although I’ve already suggested Christian McKay of Me and Orson Welles for an Oscar, I can’t imagine Tobey Maguire not getting a nomination and wouldn’t feel bad at all if he wins, as the film itself should.

You can spend a billion dollars on special 3-D effects and never glimpse the dimensions of the human heart one can find in this film.

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I’m the one who called him “Lower than a Yard Dog” in my last post about him. But I think he might have sunk even lower in my estimation.

Somehow part of me had, evidently, continued to be conned by his “sincerity” about civil rights. It was his best schtick — the Southern white boy who resisted the culture of segregation and racism. I mean there’s some truth there, isn’t there?

But the reports from Game Change, the new book about the 2008 presidential election, are — and as yet Clinton has not denied them — that he tried to make a joke to Teddy about Obama when ostensibly seeking Teddy’s endorsement for Hillary. He joked that Obama was so unready that a few years ago he would have been serving them coffee.

It’s that “serving them” thing that is so obtuse and offensive, and we must assume that the story came from Teddy Kennedy or someone he told it to before he died.

What more could he have done than to alienate the ailing senator whose family identification with the civil rights cause was one of the chief glories of its decidedly mixed record?

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I know: the question has been asked many times before. But I’ve been thinking about the Beatles lately because I had a call recently from one of America’s great writers on contemporary music, Tim Riley, who wrote an a near-perfect book called Tell Me Why, which is really a series of brilliant short essays about Beatles songs.

Gracefully written essays that treat the songs with a trained musician’s ear, not just as poetic texts to decode but as songs that achieve that evanescent alchemical fusion of word and music in which the lead and leadenness of type on a page is transmuted into gold on the stage. Or in the groove.

Riley amazingly both knows how this works and can articulate it better (on the Beatles anyway) than anyone I’ve read. While so many other writers (surprise!) reduce musicians to their words.

Anyway, he was telling me he’d completed a draft of his much anticipated John Lennon book, seven years in the making, and if there’s anyone I want to read on the subject it’s Riley because he knows the music inside and out.

In the course of our discussion he spoke almost ecstatically about the remastered reissues of the classic Beatles albums and how much there was to discover in them, so as soon as we hung up I hied myself to my next door Borders (no product placement fee), found the remasters, and decided to buy one at a time. But which one? It came down to Revolver, Rubber Soul, or Let It Be.

I have an indelible memory of seeing the film Let it Be when it was first released. An experience that’s imprinted itself on my soul, it was that movie, more than the album, but on the other hand, “Two of Us” may be one of the greatest Beatles songs ever. One of the most beautiful love songs, one of the greatest road songs. And I love Rubber Soul. “Nowhere Man.” “”In My Life.” “If I Needed Someone.” But there’s the obstacle of the impossibly syrupy “Michelle,” which I just can’t stand.

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I think I’ve already done a post on how Gardener is Gone is the best new Dylan blog.. Now the blogger “eruke” and some Brooklyn based Dylanophiles have produced the best new Dylan hard copy magazine, Montague Street (A “Tangled Up in Blue” –and Brooklyn–reference.).

Check it out and read the blog which has some consistently inspired writing on it.
Some of it–did I mention?–about me.

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David Schwartz invited me to contribute to a year end round-up of the greatest film, tv, YouTube –any kind of moving image — moments of the year.

I picked Christian McKay’s performance as Orson Welles, in Rick Linklater’s Orson Welles and Me. Don’t miss it.

This is an explanation of my choice; feel free to suggest yours in comments.

Seeing Christian McKay’s performance as Orson Welles in Richard Linklater’s film was almost shocking to me. Prior to that time the supreme Welles moment for me was his unforgettable performance as Falstaff — in his inexpressibly beautiful Chimes at Midnight. His conflation of Shakespeare’s two plays, which he directed as well. It was a high point of my Shakespearean experience.

But McCay gives us not the aging Welles of (released in ’65), but the young Welles, at 22, putting his on Broadway. The whole thing is ahectic, thrilling portrait of New York City in the late 30s, as well as a persuasive portrait of Welles manic, chaotic but glorious creative process — and a meditation on the nature of genius.

I’m a big fan of Richard Linklater (see my essay on in the Criterion DVD box set), but this surprises. It’s like nothing he’s done before from After Sunset or is it Before Sunrise (I get them both confused) to the amazing Waking Life.

While I’m not too fond of the Zac Efron ingenue subplot, Orson Welles and Me gives you so much Orson it’s worth the price of too much “Me.”

In case anyone cares it inspired me to write this essay on the ambiguities of genius:.

In which I say: “Linklater has found a British actor, Christian McKay, who
conveys the brusque impatience and urgency of genius convincingly, the blithe and utter self-confidence of it. His performance convinces you that one aspect of genius is never really doubting one’s own genius.”

In Welles case, it had its costs but it was forgivable because he created something immortal and Linklater’s film and Mckay’s performance are fitting tributes.

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The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether it was just a coincidence that the august New York Times, for whom I’m proud to have written (including eight cover stories for the New York Times Magazine), published an an almost full-page Valentine to the gossip site TMZ this morning.

On the very morning TMZ published what they seemed to think was the scandal scoop of the century (“The JFK Photos That Could Have Changed History”).

This was an allegedly long hidden or lost photo supposedly taken on a yacht in 1956, supposedly showing JFK sunbathing while nude young women cavorted in the sea and on the deck. If real, if released at the time, it could well have derailed his bid for the presidency and, yes, changed history. Of course JFK probably did engage in such behavior many times before and during his presidency, so you could say “fake but true.”

But it was definitely a fake, as TMZ had to admit later in the day when the photo was revealed to be from a 1967 Playboy photoshoot with JFK’s head apparently cleverly photoshopped onto one of the sunbathing men’s bodies. I’m sure TMZ didn’t try to pull a fast one; I’m sure they believed it. They had all sorts of “experts” to vouch for it.

So TMZ was taken in and admitted it. But why did the Times run their big TMZ story today? Before the original JFK story and the hoax revelation? Sadly the Times quotes TMZ chief Harvey Levin telling the Times reporter that TMZ “has the same rigid standards as any operation in America.” Right.

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I have to admit that Dave Barry’s “year end review” hasn’t lost a step.

I laughed out loud throughout it–almost as much as I did at the sputtering rage of some historically ignorant commenters here.

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It’s so tempting to give a group award to some of those on a recent post here. But I have to admit that when gossip site, TMZ, admitted this afternoon it had been hoaxed in publishing “The JFK Photo That Could Have Changed History” this morning, one of the commenters (anonymity shielding brainlessness as usual) earned a place in the ignorant commenter Hall of Shame.

TMZ admitted the photo, of nude women cavorting on a yacht while “JFK” sunbathed, supposedly taken in 1956 (and thus might have “changed history” by denying him the presidency if the scandalous pic was published back then) was actually a Playboy photo-shoot from 1967. But at least two commenters felt theyneeded to share the wisdom that it couldn’t have been JFK in the 1967 Playboy nude photoshoot because he’d been assassinated in 1963!

I’m not making this up. Here’s one:

“6. Photo can’t be of a 1967 playboy shoot with JFK….. He was already dead!!!! If it is a playboy shoot, that’s not JFK.”

Good catch! It was an anonymous commenter (of course) though I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the historically ignorant commenters here came up with this brilliant deduction. C’mon fess up. That’s the downside of your cowardly anonymity. It makes you a suspect for any random stupidity.

Of course, as with all ignorant commenters there was a dark side: one of the first reactions–before it was revealed to be a hoax–was (I swear) an anonymous (natch) commenter who wrote in “I’m glad he was assassinated”. Nice. But not, alas, untypical of anonymous commenter mentality. In fact all too typical.

Why am I not surprised–at both the stupidity and the ugliness?

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Don’t get me wrong, I love America. I honor those who sacrificed and still sacrifice to protect and defend our freedoms.

And unlike most liberals, I actually listen to conservative talk radio. I think El Rush has a good b.s. detector (as well as a good b.s. projector) and I’ll take Imus’ word that Sean Hannity is a nice guy, although his prideful sense of his own righteousness rivals that of the Spanish Inquisition.

In fact, the sin of pride (aka self-righteousness) is what I’m here to talk about today. I’ve noticed a new meme developing particularly on Hannity’s show. Not the old meme in which everyone who calls in gets praised as “a great American” even though Hannity has no idea if he’s talking to a serial killer or an al-Qaeda mole. So long as the serial killer calls Sean “a great American” he must have the superb discernment to be a great American. No pride there. I just feel a guy who needs to be called “a great American” every five minutes might have … some kind of problem. Don’t church-going listeners find this embarrassing and deplorable, by the way? Isn’t pride one of the seven deadly sins? One of the deadliest?

No, the meme I’m talking about is the one where everyone is called upon to pledge allegiance to the doctrine of “American exceptionalism.” Frankly I don’t think many of the callers (and I’m not sure of Hannity himself) know what they’re talking about when they use the word “exceptionalism.” It’s actually a subject I’ve given considerable thought — and study — to in both my book on Hitler and the one on Shakespeare. Was Hitler on the continuum of evil-doers, just at the far outer edge? Or was he off the grid, off the charts, in a realm of “radical evil,” as the exceptionalists argue? It’s not an easy question. Nor is the one about Shakespeare: was he just a very, very great writer or was he off in some realm of sublimity all his own beyond all other great writers, as some exceptionalists argue? Again, not an easy question.

But American exceptionalism? These days, on Hannity’s show at least, it’s mainly used in a simple-minded, dumbed-down, loutish “we’re number one!,” Freddie Mercury “we are the champions of the world,” boastful, sin of pride way. (Remind me all you “values” types: isn’t humility supposed to be one of the cardinal virtues?)

But recently “American exceptionalism” has been used to club Obama, who, when asked (I’m paraphrasing) whether he believed in American exceptionalism, replied something like, “sure, just as the Brits believe in British exceptionalism … etc.” Something like that. In a low key way, but a remarkable instance of intellectual integrity not submitting to the demand for jingoist blather.

In a quietly courageous way, knowing it would be misinterpreted by ignoramuses. He was agreeing he felt pride in his nation. But he could understand others feeling pride in theirs. Does he really expect other nations to bow down and worship the Golden Calf of our pridefulness? And oh, how the historically oblivious tried to turn it against him!

Because let’s look at the definition of American exceptionalism and see if it’s a doctrine anyone who has studied history can take seriously as anything but jingoistic boasting. (Outta my way, lesser nations, I’m cutting to the head of the line ’cause I’m an American and we’re exceptional.)

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