Ron Paul has attracted Oliver Stone and Gore Vidal’s support exclusively for his attacks on “the military-industrial complex.” Stone used this theory of war profiteers (big business, the armament’s industry, and the Pentagon) desiring an eternal Cold War to identify
Sixty years ago, Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness,” Ronald Reagan’s favorite book, appeared and garnered the attention of Hollywood producer Walter Wanger. For whatever reason, a cinematic adaption was not made. It is odd that no major film about the Alger Hiss
Small wonder the White House has tweeted approval of Clint Eastwood’s Super Bowl Chrysler commercial. From its calls for America to “be as one,” one wouldn’t know that Eastwood doesn’t approve of the Obama administration. One also wouldn’t know that
In Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle,” an alternate history of the Nazis winning the war, a Japanese businessman barely manages to bolt from a conference room before vomiting. The cause of this is a speaker outlining
In Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle,” an alternate history of the Nazis winning the war, a Japanese businessman barely manages to bolt from a conference room before vomiting. The cause of this is a speaker outlining
For today’s Left, blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo is an admirable figure. Director Oliver Stone called Trumbo his “hero,” while a flood of celebrities (including Gore Vidal, Brian Dennehey and Liam Neeson) have lined up to star as the screenwriter in
When comic book scholars chart the moment the medium shed its one-dimensional sensibilities and veered toward adulthood, they cite Alan Moore and Frank Miller as the duo that made it possible. A recent dust up between the two shows that
Early on in the excellent biography “And So it Goes – Kurt Vonnegut: A Life,” the reader can detect the Rosebud-like origins of Vonnegut’s attitude toward history. Novelists like Joseph Heller and Norman Mailer attributed their view of an irrational
Historians locate a decisive moment in the Republican Presidential campaign of 1940: The nomination the internationalist Wendell Wilkie, and in essence forever said goodbye to its’ isolationist wing. David Petruscini designates 1948 as a similar moment for the Democrats. That
During the Cold War, P.J. O’Rourke got a lot of mileage from his persona of ’60s radical-turned partying conservative. With drink in one hand and Groucho glasses in the other, O’Rourke lampooned the joylessness of communism. But after the Wall
The Library of America’s new selection of film critic Pauline Kael’s writings showcases her liberalism; in it, we have her castigation of Clint Eastwood’s “Magnum Force” (“the liberalized ideology is just window dressing”), while praising “Julia,” a film based on
Camelot theory is predicated on what might have been. Director Oliver Stone feverishly asserts that President John F. Kennedy would have ended the Cold War, especially in Vietnam (where he would withdrawn all advisers) – as do Kennedy cabinet members
If there was one matter on which Richard Nixon and Bobby Kennedy could agree it was their initial belief that a right winger killed President John F. Kennedy. Nixon phoned FBI director J. Edgar Hoover asking if “one of the
The comic industry can lay claim to being part of the left-leaning mainstream media. Once a bastion of patriotism, personified by Marvel’s Captain America, comics now reveal a leftist agenda by having the Tea Party as villains worthy of Captain
As befits a libertarian, Clint Eastwood is admirably suited to look at both sides of a controversial question. Dirty Harry could be both a hearty conservative slap to the Warren Court and also the only thing between democracy and a
Liberal pundits are scrambling for explanations as to why Herman Cain’s poll numbers haven’t been dented by the sexual harassment allegations. With apparently more coming, they are secretly hoping that something, anything, will make drop the poll numbers of a
Just by virtue of when it was released, “Reds” (1981) has been praised as courageous filmmaking in the age of Reagan. But thirty years later, what exactly was being praised then and now? In the bonus features of the commemorative
Forty seven years ago this week, Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater in the biggest landslide since 1936. Today, both left and right see in Goldwater’s defeat the beginnings of the conservative revolution that would bring Ronald Reagan into office in
Twenty years ago, Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK’ was released and was less a film than a Molotov cocktail thrown at the “establishment.” Stone called his film about the 20th century’s most infamous Presidential assassination “a history lesson” (a characterization he quickly
Many on the Right have tried to classify the ideology of the Wall Street Protests. Glenn Beck has sounded an alarmist note, describing the ideas behind the movement as Leninist and even fascist. It’s true there is much in the
The image that sticks out most in mind from time spent at the Occupy Wall Street protests was a mask. Sitting on pavement, a protester was wearing a Guy Fawkes mask. Aware of the protesters’ supporters support of the government–the
First the smell. One doesn’t require an Orwell-like preoccupation (“the working class smells”) with the olfactory sense to be fixated on the stench issuing forth from ground zero of the Wall Street protests. The familiar dog-urine smell of the subways