Thinking about Alan Rickman

I've seen a lot of reminiscences about Alan Rickman today -- mostly about his performance as Hans Gruber or Severus Snape, with mentions of Dogma or Galaxy Quest here or there.

But there's one movie he was in that I haven't seen anyone mention. I saw Closet Land in a film class years ago, an intense film that made a big impression on me. It had just two actors -- Rickman and Madeleine Stowe -- on one set, as Rickman interrogates Stowe, a children's book author, about subversive messages he suspects she's inserting into her books. It knocked me out, this two-person performance that had the power of a much grander drama.

Now, I haven't seen it in 20 years or so. It might strike me now as too sincere, or somehow quaint. The past 20 years have seen a lot of news about interrogation and torture, and today I'd be viewing the film through more experienced (more cynical? almost certainly) eyes. Roger Ebert, a little older then than I am now, thought it pious and smug. But I suspect with actors the caliber of Rickman and Stowe, it's as good as it ever was. And it made such an impression on me, that when I heard he'd died, this was the first movie I thought of. The particulars of the film had faded, but it had one resounding lasting impression: the memory that Alan Rickman blew me the hell away.

The movie is hard to find: Amazon has only six VHS copies available, and I don't think it was ever pressed onto DVD in the US. (Apparently there's a Spanish version that you can switch the language to the original English.) But if you want to see for yourself, your best best is probably YouTube, where it's available in 9 parts.

Here's part one:

Rob

Hey Mister President

Sometime in November, when Barack Obama was elected president, some of my friends and family members asked if I'd be going after Obama when I thought he was wrong, just as I went after Bush. (The fact remains, though, that I'm no bulldog -- the last few years of Bush didn't see as much fire from me as the first years. Ya get worn down, is what I'm saying.)

Well, here's one of those times.

There have been a number of things in recent days that I'm not happy about. I'm not entirely satisfied with Obama's handling of the torture photos, nor the dismissal of the idea of prosecutions for torture. I think our moral standing is the greatest force we have as a nation, and it erodes when we don't police our own. I understand the desire to avoid further inflaming the factions in the Middle East who would point to those photos as evidence of war crimes, rather than pointing to the release of the photos as evidence that the war crimes have ceased. That's a subtle point, and one liable to be lost on a lot of people. I get that, and I'm a lot more inclined to trust Barack Obama's judgement on these matters than Bush and Cheney's. But there's a principle that makes old horror movies come alive in the way that new ones seldom do: The most terrifying thing of all is that which is unseen. By withholding the pictures, anything can be in them. Better, I think, to have concrete photos to look at than to let imaginations run wild.

But that isn't what I'd intended to write about. It's this: The majority of the country believes that gays should be able to serve openly in the military. And by majority, I mean majority. The majority (86%) of liberals (of course). The majority (77%) of moderates. The majority (58%) of conservatives. Practically every subset of American society believes gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the millitary. 69 percent of us, overall.

So get on that, willya? The Supreme Court is passing the buck, but honestly, as commander in chief, the ball should be in your court, anyhow. I'm tired of hearing about gay Arabic translators being fired for their orientation. It sucks for the people being discharged, and it makes us less secure as a nation, not more.

But regardless of the polls, equal human rights are not a popularity contest. There are some cases where the right thing to do is as clear as day, and this is one of them. An estimated 65,000 members of the military are gay. It's time they breathed a sigh of relief.

Rob

In Which We Start To Clean Up Our Rep

Leon Panetta is Obama's choice to head the CIA. Considering Panetta wrote this:

We cannot simply suspend these beliefs in the name of national security. Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground.

We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.

I couldn't be happier about the choice.

Rob

Not at all--pardon me!

Whaddya know?

Turns out that mixed in with the torture legislation that's being discussed in congress--you know, the debate that surrenders moral authority for a false sense of expediency, yeah, that's the one--there's a provision tucked away that pardons Bush and his cronies in case any of this turns out to be illegal. What's he worried about, being thrown in jail and not even being told what evidence we have against him? Silly goose. That'd never happen here!

Oh, wait. I'm sorry, I forgot who was king for a minute.

Rob

It's the Torture, Stupid

I think Fareed Zakaria is exactly right in this piece for Newsweek. Not only is torture morally amd ethically wrong, and not only is it ineffective at providing trustworthing intel, but it undermines our war effort at every step. Zakaria wrote:

This is a case of more than just bad public relations. Ask any soldier in Iraq when the general population really turned against the United States and he will say, "Abu Ghraib." A few months before the scandal broke, Coalition Provisional Authority polls showed Iraqi support for the occupation at 63 percent. A month after Abu Ghraib, the number was 9 percent. Polls showed that 71 percent of Iraqis were surprised by the revelations. Most telling, 61 percent of Iraqis polled believed that no one would be punished for the torture at Abu Ghraib. Of the 29 percent who said they believed someone would be punished, 52 percent said that such punishment would extend only to "the little people."

When you think of the victims of torture, you think of that grotesque human pyramid overseen by Lyndie England and the other "bad apples." But the fact is, as the insurgency grew, some of their recruits were people who turned against us specifically because of those practices. The very people so eager to torture to keep us safe are putting our troops in greater danger.

We can't be successful in any measure in Iraq until we hold the administrators responsible for the torture debacles of the past few years, and we come clean on the so-called "black sites" where we're holding unaccounted, unmonitored prisoners. (And, of course, the Vice President stops being the cheerleader for torture that he is today.) We have to renounce this behavior. We have to end this behavior. We have to let people know that it will never happen again.

Rob

Letter to Mom

This is a letter I wrote to my mom the other day. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. Since I think it’s my best writing I’ve done about the election, I asked her if I could post it here. (She said yes.)

Mom,

Yesterday, you asked me why I didn’t think the President had “moral strength.” I had a hard time putting it into words – I find him outrageous on so many levels that I often don’t know where to begin.

But I’ve found it. Looking back, it’s the moment when it crystallized for me that GWB was not simply a bad president, but a disastrous one, one who, despite his easygoing manner, is actually undermining everything that makes America great.

That moment was Abu Ghraib.

Mom, seeing those pictures turned my stomach. I couldn’t believe that Americans were doing these things. When I was younger, I didn’t have a very high opinion of soldiers, but that’s changed in the last few years. I’m sure there are plenty of soldiers I wouldn’t like personally (although probably just as many that, like Mark G., I would like a whole lot), but I’ve grown to respect what they do and the peace they keep a great deal. They’re often called on to dirty their hands in a way that I don’t think I could ever do. They do it to keep me safe, and you safe, and people in other countries safe. Often, it’s in high-stress environments, keeping an already bad situation from becoming incalculably worse.

These men and women deserve our respect. And in most cases, they earn it.

But then there was Abu Ghraib. There were pictures of naked prisoners, prisoners threatened with dogs. Prisoners forced to stand motionless for 12 hours at a stretch. People, men and women, were raped and sexually humiliated. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything more horrifying to me – because I knew that my own people did this. Not the Germans, not the Japanese, not Osama bin Laden. My people. People who grew up in towns like ours.

It turned my stomach for days. The photos kept coming, and all I could think about was how wrong it was. We’re Americans, I thought. We don’t torture. We’re Americans.

To my mind, there are two people ultimately responsible for this (aside from George Bush himself). One is Donald Rumsfeld, who is in charge of the military, and who let this happen. The Red Cross estimates that 70 to 90 percent of the Iraqis detained were held in error, on his watch. The other is John Ashcroft, whose Justice Department wrote a memo that blurred the line between torture and acceptable interrogation techniques.

Looking at the situation, I have to ask: What would a moral person do, if this happened on his watch? Ask yourself what Dad would have done if he were President when it happened. What would you have done? What do you think Rev. Ev would do, or me, or Tommy, or anyone else who you can think of as moral?

Here’s my answer, for every one of these people: They would get to the bottom of why it happened, and they would make sure it never happened again. In doing this, they would hold the right people accountable – not just the people who got their hands dirty, but the people who encouraged or allowed it to happen. They would replace these people and move forward. And they would take personal responsibility for their own oversight, and assure America and the world that it would never happen again.

That didn’t happen. The administration scrambled to put a lid on the photos, trying to crack down on the people who took and shared the pictures, rather than the torturers themselves. Soon after the story broke, the President stood by Rumsfeld and called him one of the best Secretaries of Defense the country’s ever had. Instead of focusing on the problem, he focused on political damage control, hoping the story would blow over.

And amazingly and sadly, it did.

But whenever the President has been asked about any mistakes he’s made, he never mentions Abu Ghraib. It’s understandable that he doesn’t want to dwell on it during an election. But neither he nor any of his staff have ever taken any sort of responsibility for the horrible treatment prisoners received there. That’s neither moral nor strong.

And that’s why I can’t vote for him.

I know you’re planning to vote for Bush, Mom. I can only ask, please consider his actions, rather than what he says about himself. Does he measure up to your standards of what a good man should be?

I can tell you he doesn’t meet mine. Not by a long shot.

I love you, whatever you decide.

Rob