THE TOXIC LADY HERSELF.

As we all know Sarah Palin resigned as Governor of Alaska, apparently to avoid the continuing onslaught of ethics violations, law suits brought against her by her opponents in Alaska and probably by those in Washington D.C.

If George Bush was still in office with Karl Rove as his political advisor and they saw her as a potential rival they would have bought a criminal suit through the U.S Attorney’s office. They did this to others for political reasons destroying families and careers unnecessarily using direct government power illegally.

The Democrats apparently use the civil courts to exert pressure and neutralize political threats. However in Palin’s case they should let her go on doing more damage than good to the Republican cause. Obama would be lucky to have her on the GOP ticket in 2012.

The next question is did the resignation, eighteen months before the end of her term to take effect on July 26, damage her potential to run for national political office either in 2012 or maybe 2010 if a Senate seat in Alaska or elsewhere will satisfy her ambition?

Probably, Richard Nixon kept himself alive by making political speeches after he lost the race for Governorship of California but he had not yet resigned from an office and Ronald Reagan was a speaker, news paper columnist and radio commentator before he ran for President the second time but he never resigned from office mid term.

She appears to be headed for life as a speaker and a television commentator. This along with an expected book should continue to make her the darling of the conservative media elite like Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch. On July 13, The Los Angeles Times reports,

“Consider a USA Today/Gallup poll released last week. About 7 in 10 Republicans said they would be likely to vote for Palin if she ran for president. Other surveys place Palin in a statistical dead heat with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, the former governors of Massachusetts and Arkansas, respectively, who sought the White House in 2008 and give every indication that they will try again in 2012.”

The best thing that could happen for the Democrats is to have Palin chosen as a candidate on the GOP Presidential or Vice Presidential slate. The Republican right likes her but she has to have a broader constituency to win an election. Being neck and neck with Huckabee and Romney is not significant. A Huckabee / Palin ticket or vice versus would be a ticket to nowhere for the Republicans as they are both too far right so it would be an unbalanced ticket. She might add more balance to a Palin and Romney or Romney/Palin ticket. However she has never demonstrated the political gravitas or experience to be on a Presidential ticket.

The fact she didn’t tough out her term as Governor of Alaska will be a serious strike against her. People will not elect a person perceived to have quit when the going got tough or because she had more lucrative financial opportunities in the media.

Right now she appears to be an Albatross around the neck of the Republican Party. A very charismatic but divisive one. The Republicans can eat themselves up dealing with her and it may prevent a more moderate, experienced candidate from surfacing that would make a stronger candidate. However Obama will be an incumbent running for a second term and unless he makes major mistakes in his first term he will be unbeatable. The person that could beat him has not yet emerged, but he will not want Palin hanging from his ticket like an omen of defeat. Good looks can only get you so far.

Labels: Sarah Palin; Albartoss.

Men At War And What Drives Them.

This film is about U.S. Army bomb defusers during 2004, one of the worst years for terrorist bombing in Iraq. The film opens with a bomb squad called into defuse a suspected bomb. The squad consists of a Sergeant in Charge, Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), the diffuser, Guy Pierce, and Specialist Eldridge( Brian Geraghty) a younger soldier there to help secure the area around the bomb and be on the alert for any one seeking to detonate the bomb by using a remote control. Pierce is all confidence and up to the job, one the most dangerous in the Army. The bomb is being defused with a remote controlled robot, but the operation hits a snag when a wheel falls off a piece of equipment. Although the scene is on a narrow ,congested, city street with many Iraqis held back by the the squad and other Army soldiers with

M16s at the ready. It is an uneasy scene because the men know the bomb maker is out there watching and would like to kill as many Americans as possible.

Despite this fact Pierce decides to defuse the bomb directly and dons his heavily armored bomb suit.As he and gets within the 25 meter “kill zone” Eldridge spots a man with a cell phone and raises his rifle to stop him but is too late. Pierce hears his warning shout and turns to run as the bomb goes off but he is still too close and he dies from the concussion.

Thus the premise of the movie is set. A man working as a bomb diffuser in hostile environment where any mistake could mean death. The film seeks to analyze the type of person drawn to such work.

Will James

Are they thrill seekers, suicidal show offs, men attempting to validate their existence or are they motivated by some deeper

force? Director,Kathryn Bigelow declares in a quote at the beginning of the movie that “war is a drug”. Meaning that people seek it out for the excitement and adrenalin rush.

However it doesn’t appear that Pierce’s replacement Sgt. Will James (Jeremy Renner) is motivated by being in danger and prevailing over his circumstances using his wits.

Will James on the surface displays a devil may care attitude and independence that draws him into conflict with Sergeant Sanborn for not following orders in tense situations. Sanborn is angered enough to sucker punch James after he defuses a bomb while breaking all the rules, taking unreasonable risks in Sanborn’s eyes against orders. Sanborn is black, but race is not relevant to the film except that Sanborn tells James at one point that he is just red neck trailer trash. James laughs and walks away.

So what does motivate James, validation of his own self worth, proving that he is more man than the others or is he bent on self destruction? He seems to value himself highly.

He is the type of man who seeks to do dangerous work under difficult conditions in face of the odds. In other words meeting the challenge for which he is confident he can do. He may get an adrenalin rush out this but there is more to him than that.

Thus this film is more than a war action film where tough soldiers are beating the enemy

James is a more philosophical and just man, (perhaps without any conscious introspection on the subject) who sees the evilness of the terrorist bombers and is unwilling to stand by without doing something. That something is what he knows he can excel at and also get fulfillment by knowing he is doing the just thing in life.

He has a wife a child at home but he is seen to be ill at ease when he rotates back to civilian life. While husband and wife are not in conflict, she is happy as a homemaker and a mother with her man in the home while he is restless and uneasy. He has limited rapport with his wife and child. This places him in conflict about his role in life. Should he go back to civilian life with a wife, toddler, mortgage and a life of quiet desperation or do what he loves and is driven to do.

He explains to her that his motivation for the work was to use his intellect and skills to counter men who would drive a bomb into a market hand out candy to attract children to the area and then set off the bomb killing 50 or 60 of the innocents.

The wife is non responsive to this, neither encouraging him or discouraging him. This is the only peek we get of James as a civilian in the film. At home he is doing the shopping with his wife and helping with the other chores around the house, but he is a fish out of his element. In the end of the film we see that he has forsaken the comforts of home and is returning to Iraq for another tour as a diffuser with a smile on his lips as he looks forward to the challengers ahead.

The film is an intense, action driven thriller shot close up in the faces of the men with swift cuts back and forth and a modicum of long and medium shots to give place and scene orientation to the viewer.

The immediacy of the film makes the viewer feel he is there in real time. A difficult thing for a director to accomplish. It depicts the intensity of men working under shifting dangerous conditions and their relationship with themselves and others. Sanborn is the Army professional who was in Intelligence before the present assignment. He follows Army protocol.

James is the renegade. He is going to do what he thinks the situation demands even if it is against procedural rules or even Sanborn’s orders and means taking on more risk but following his instincts and drive to complete the job at hand. It is his raison d’etre for living a just, meaningful life doing what he was meant to do.

Kathryn Bigelow has made a classic but not a classic war movie but a classic film about the human condition. In that sense one can see the influence of the great European filmmakers on her work which also is quintessentially American. Not an easy thing to do well and she has done it well. The acting is also superb as well as the cinematography.

Labels: Film Review: The Hurt Locker