Or they packed in charter school friends and students as PR insurance before they honored other "reservations"

East Nashville blogger, Sarah Martin, had a reservation to attend the "exclusive" Nashville screening of the controversial parent trigger flick, Won't Back Down, but co-sponsoring organization StudentsFirst did not honor it:

It was my intention on Monday to attend a private screening of “Won’t Back Down,” sponsored by StudentsFirst, with opening remarks by Mayor Karl Dean and a wrap up discussion panel. Unfortunately, StudentsFirst either miscounted seats or misunderstood what the word “reservation” means because I was one of many people with reservations who were told they didn’t have seats for the show. Oops. Fail.

Postscript to Metro Parents Advisory Council dust-up over the promotion of parent trigger film

Parents & teachers protest NYC opening of
"Won't Back Down" (credit: Occupy Education)

I did not attend yesterday's screening of "Won't Back Down" but I did hear that Parent Advisory Council Chairperson, Erica Lanier (who sent an invitation addressed to "families of Metro Schools" to the event with an advertisement attached that PAC was a co-sponsor) was one of people on the panel during the discussion time. That explains a lot to me about this. Other PAC leaders responded to my blog post on Ms. Lanier's invitation by insisting that PAC never even discussed the film event, let alone sponsoring it.

In the meantime, this affair has taken a different twist; one that I never would have expected.

A few of days ago I spoke with a senior leader in the school district who told me that Erica Lanier has been claiming I misquoted her in the my blog post on the event. Specifically, she reportedly alleged that the email that I cut-and-pasted directly to the post as her quote was misquoted. I categorically denied the charge and pointed out that the email went to a number of parents and other people from the Jones Paideia PTO gmail account, so I'm not the only one who can verify Ms. Lanier's original wording (assuming that it was not changed by the two parties who forwarded it from Ms. Lanier to my mail box). In fact a few people have approached me and said they received the exact wording that appears on the blog, too.

Nonetheless, there is one thing I don't understand, assuming that reports are correct and the sitting PAC Chair believes that I changed the message of her invitation. She did not mention such charges a week ago when she sent me her first reply to my criticism of the reported endorsement. If I were her and I honestly believed that someone had been messing around with my emails, I would not mince words. The first thing I would write in my reply would be, "These quotes you forwarded to me under my name are not my words. I never wrote this as it is. Either you or someone else has tampered with and altered my words to say something I never wrote. Here is exactly what I wrote .... [etc]."

That is exactly how I would have replied if I were her and believed tampering was afoot. But the chairwoman chose to defend the invitation against my concerns last Tuesday as well as make some supportive points about the California-based group behind the parent trigger.

So, I do not get these belated allegations of tampering with her email, and not just because other people at Jones received it, too. The allegations also make no sense given their timing after, rather than before, this interaction went even more public on here on the blog.

Below is the entire email thread of our exchange. The only changes I have made to it were to format to fit this column neatly and to remove personal and contact information to protect the privacy of others (edits are italicized). I have done absolutely nothing to alter the substance or points in any of the emails, hers or mine. The first email in sequence is Ms. Lanier's last response to me, which is where I would expect to see the charge that I altered her original invitation to appear:

Erica W. Lanier [email address snipped]     Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 10:39 PM
To: Michael Byrd [email address snipped]
Cc: [email addresses of the PTO, several public officials and a reporter snipped]

The PLT which is the training, development and support team of PAC is not endorsing anything. We are offering an opportunity for equal voice and dialogue. The movie is actually losely [sic] based on Parent Revolution a very real and active parent group based out of California.

As the attached email forwarded by one of our parents states we will have a panel discussion after the movie. This would be a great opportunity for you to share your views. I hope you will register and attend. What PAC does endorse is......"Your voice matters. Make it heard." Our concerns are not being for or against charter schools, but rather advocacy for quality schools and equity of resources to all students.

As of last year MNPS had 144 schools. Neighborhood schools, magnet schools, charter schools and other speciality schools. All have both successes and failures. All educate our children.

And at the end of the day that is the real concern, our children. To be the best possible advocates for our children do we need to isolate ourselves from any discussion or sharing of ideas. Knowledge is power. I welcome powerful advocates for quality education.

Again I hope you can attend and participate in the discussion that will follow the movie.

Erica


Michael Byrd  [email address snipped] wrote:

Ms. Lanier:

Some parents do not support the privatization of our public education through charter schools and the shifting of resources away from public schools to education corporations, which are free to select a few Metro students and reject many others. Some of us are concerned about the private wealth and political influence being pumped into the "parent trigger" movement by pro-charter groups and politicians.

Why is our advisory council, which is supposed to represent all voices of public school parents, seeming to take sides in this debate by co-sponsoring a pro-charter film (which is not a factual story, by the way) with a charter lobbyist/advocacy group? Shouldn't the Parents Advisory Council be striving to bring more balance to this event by suggesting alternative viewpoints or contrasting films more critical of what appears to be a headlong rush to charters?

If the Parents Advisory Council is interested in balance and fairness, I would recommend that they consider this film from the Grassroots Education Movement for screening, too: http://vimeo.com/41994760. By all means, advance the debate on education, but please make sure that the debate remains diverse and inclusive of all voices.

Regards,
Mike Byrd
[offline contact information snipped]
(4th year Jones Paideia parent)



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: M K [email address snipped]
Date: Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 8:08 PM
Subject: FW: "Won't Back Down" Exclusive Screening
To: [email addresses snipped]

__________________________________________
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 22:46:00 +0000
From: [email address snipped]
To: [email address snipped]
Subject: Fwd: "Won't Back Down" Exclusive Screening

Good evening families of Metro Schools. The Parents Advisory Council has been asked to partner with the Tennessee Charter Schools Association and Students First for the following movie premiere at Opry Mills Movie Theatre on Monday, September 24, 2012 at 6 pm. We will begin promptly at 6 pm with remarks by the Honorable Mayor Karl Dean, followed by the movie and a panel discussion to follow.

I look forward to seeing you there. Please register in advance to reserve your seats.

Erica W. Lanier
Parents Advisory Council Chair 2010-2013
Parents Advisory Council’s Leadership Taskforce (PLT)
“Your voice matters. Make it heard.”

These events seem to have taken a nasty turn that I did not anticipate in trying to express my dissatisfaction with messages conveyed by one of my PAC representatives about support for Nashville's parent trigger celebration. I find it troubling that my honor is being questioned, but more importantly I find it distressing that a MNPS spokesperson is reporting what I interpret to be defamatory actions on the part of the PAC Chair toward a concerned parent. It is particularly vexing given that I spend so much time when I blog hunting down quotes and linking the contexts for them copiously.

I sense now--despite the tagline in her signature--that my voice does not matter and it will not be heard.

Belle Meade council member appears to have itchy trigger finger

(Full disclosure: I have been openly one of the strongest supporters of Emily Evans many times on this blog, which makes this post a difficult one for me to write.)

During an online discussion tonight on the possibility of a parent trigger Metro Council member Emily Evans tweeted:

Note that she did not include teachers in the trigger equation of being "driven bw district and parents". That exclusion seems par for the ambivalent course that trigger fans seem to tee off on. Triggers channel parent anger not in democratic or progressive ways, but in ways that promote privatization of public education and increase public subsidies for private enterprise. The trigger is a deliberate wedge between organized parents and organized teachers, both of whom can usually be brought together to act for the greater good of public school kids. It is divide and conquer, and the conquerors are partisan politicians angling for influence and wealthy corporations drooling at tax revenues. So, Ms. Evans' omission of teachers is not inconsequential in my opinion.

And then there is that unabashedly curious and deliciously contradictory claim she makes that "this acrimony" (by which I assume she means the controversy engendered at every stop around the country by the parent trigger tour) is not of Nashville itself. The parent trigger is an unrealized project that started in California by charter school leadership shortly after former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger passed education reform legislation. The group founded by a charter school leadership to promote it, Parent Revolution, is not even located east of the Rockies, let alone east of Little Rock.

The parent trigger "movement" itself is astroturf alien to Nashville, and yet, the kumbaya that Emily Evans predicts can happen with a trigger inspired from the outside is somehow indigenous and home-grown? Maybe she is doubling down that certain voices in Karl Dean's Nashville will be ignored or yelled down and that the debate will not turn against her bid to bring charter schools to wealthy Belle Meade. Otherwise, her minimizing of local opposition to the parent trigger (which is as honestly found as her chosen hard sell) seems to me at my most charitable moment utterly passive-aggressive.

I'm originally from Texas, so I guess I am ultimately an out-of-towner. I have lived in Nashville half of my life (since 1989), but maybe I still don't qualify as local. However, I do have two daughters both of whom were born in Nashville. My daughters attended or are attending Metro public schools. So, perhaps being the parent of these two MNPS daughters should qualify me to take issue with Ms. Evans' latest pet project without the insinuation that my dissent, that our dissent is not authentically Nashville.

I have skin in this game and I am a Nashvillian. No degree of gainsaying by charter promoters will change the fact that I am here and I will speak out prompted by nobody from the outside.

CM Evans has gone from being one the bolder mavericks on Metro Council to one of the most risk-averse members in my book. She struck me as an uncritical advocate of charter schools back when the Great Hearts project started taking flight. I've not been this disappointed in her since she voted for Eric Crafton's English Only. It seems her tenure on council, which for a couple of years roared like a lion on funding the new convention center, is ending about as gritty as a lamb.

Pushing through a parent trigger in Nashville is not going to give parents more power simply by flipping a bona fide school (in Evans' district the average school would not be facing challenges of serving working class or impoverished families) to a privately-run charter school. This needs to be heard going away: the parents may end up left out of the equation after the trigger is squeezed. And there are devils they do not know lying in wait. If this is to be a fair debate on parent trigger it cannot be stacked in favor of the promoters to the exclusion of the critics or of the risks involved. Emily Evans at least owes the public debate more than trying to sway it from her position of influence with prejudiced outsider/insider spin.


UPDATE:  In a tweet earlier tonight from the Nashville screening of the parent trigger promotional flick, "Won't Back Down," Nashville City Paper reporter Joey Garrison tweeted:

This film paints teachers' unions as out-of-touch with the wrong priorities, and characterizes school districts as bureaucratic wrecks.

His observation is consistent with what I wrote earlier about the ill will trigger proponents tend to bear toward unions.

Trigger-happy Parents Advisory Council (UPDATED)

"Engagement Marketing" ad Parents Advisory Council
sent to our PTO [see "UPDATE" below]

Monday night the chair of Metro Schools' Parents Advisory Council, which tends to be the only parents group the school district listens to (at least that was the message I got early on from PTO meetings at my daughter's school), sent out the following email promoting the pro-charter, "parent trigger" film, "Won't Back Down":

Good evening families of Metro Schools.  The Parents Advisory Council has been asked to partner with the Tennessee Charter Schools Association and Students First for the following movie premiere at Opry Mills Movie Theatre on Monday, September 24, 2012 at 6 pm.  We will begin promptly at 6 pm with remarks by the Honorable Mayor Karl Dean, followed by the movie and a panel discussion to follow.

I look forward to seeing you there. Please register in advance to reserve your seats.

Erica W. Lanier
Parents Advisory Council Chair 2010-2013
Parents Advisory Council’s Leadership Taskforce (PLT)
“Your voice matters. Make it heard.”

Ms. Lanier was also one of three losing candidates for the District 5 school board seat election just passed.

What primarily raised my hackles about this email, which was received by our PTO membership, was the partnering of the parents' advocacy and advisement group with Students First led by controversial and conservative Education Reformer Michelle Rhee and with the primary lobbying group for charter schools to red-state Tennessee, TCSA. There were no other groups that PAC partnered with, no other films representing alternative points of view. This event is being staged and marketed by charter school advocates and our advisory council seems to be jettisoning its independence and evenhandedness to enable what amounts to some of us as propaganda*, especially when branded as truth.

So, yesterday I penned a letter to Ms. Lanier and copied it to my PTO leader, my daughter's principal, my school board member, my council member, and a local reporter covering the charter debate. PAC may be going into this event merrily, if not naively, but I at least want to offer a dissenting view in case they assume everyone is on board with them:


Ms. Lanier:

Some parents do not support the privatization of our public education through charter schools and the shifting of resources away from public schools to education corporations, which are free to select a few Metro students and reject many others. Some of us are concerned about the private wealth and political influence being pumped into the "parent trigger" movement by pro-charter groups and politicians.

Why is our advisory council, which is supposed to represent all voices of public school parents, seeming to take sides in this debate by co-sponsoring a pro-charter film (which is not a factual story, by the way) with a charter lobbyist/advocacy group? Shouldn't the Parents Advisory Council be striving to bring more balance to this event by suggesting alternative viewpoints or contrasting films more critical of what appears to be a headlong rush to charters?

If the Parents Advisory Council is interested in balance and fairness, I would recommend that they consider this film from the Grassroots Education Movement for screening, too: http://vimeo.com/41994760. By all means, advance the debate on education, but please make sure that the debate remains diverse and inclusive of all voices.

The PAC Chair replied last night with a tersely written email. What she did not say in it is just as important as what she did say. She replied with no examples of how our advisory committee had attempted to provide perspectives on transforming education at odds with the business models of the charter industry. In my opinion, the strongest response to my criticism is to list the ways that PAC remains a balanced group that shines a spotlight on all perspectives in a debate. She also failed to acknowledge the legitimacy of parents like me who have another view of charter schools. PAC's willingness to partner with the other sides of this debate would earn my appreciation.

Ms. Lanier did insist that PAC was not siding with anyone in the debate, even though her group forwarded the sales campaign materials to the PTO (even the ad website has the word "campaign" in the URL). She also argued that the movie is "loosely based" on "Parent Revolution" which she called a "real and active parent group". What she did not acknowledge in her letter to me is that Parent Revolution was started by a charter school operator, operates with a million dollar budget, and takes donations from pro-charter venture philanthropists with the Bill Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. It is not a bunch of PTO moms who got together and organized out of their own frustrations.

She also did not give many any details on how PR work (seems a strikingly appropriate abbreviation) in California led to successful triggers that inspired the movie. Fact is, there have been no successful triggers that could have inspired "Won't Back Down". The movie is a fiction. In fact, it was intended to be a fiction, according to one of its writers.

The idea of a trigger sounds good to frustrated and angry parents, who desperately seek solutions but who often are not aware of the ulterior political agendas they end up supporting by embracing the trigger. The reality tends to prove to be emptier and more regressive than anticipated.

Finally, Ms. Lanier maintained that dissenting views like mine would be accommodated during the panel discussion time. It is not clear to me that dissenting views would even be sitting on the panel. So, why should I hope to have my views acknowledged during that discussion? I could not even have them acknowledged after contacting my PAC leader.

_______

     *One of the pioneers of "parent trigger" lobbying is the American Legislative Exchange Council, which holds closed-door pow-wows with conservative legislators to craft extreme bills with the least resistance.



UPDATE: The Vice Chair of the Parents Advisory Council comments below that the invitation to the "Won't Back Down" event was never planned or authorized by PAC or the Leadership Taskforce. I attended tonight's PAC meeting. While the subject did not come up in the district meeting, an MNPS administrator told me that they would not authorize such an invitation either.

Looks like a rogue invitation to the parent trigger event, which gives the event even less credibility in my book.


UPDATE: I took a screenshot of the advertisement for the Nashville showing of Won't Back Down, which was somewhat different than the ad for both Memphis and Nashville showings (inset screenshot above). The Nashville ad was attached to the email originally sent from Ms. Lanier and forwarded to our PTO group. There is no mistaking that the ad states that the Parents Advisory Council's Leadership Taskforce "is partnering" with the Tennessee Charter Schools Association and with Students First "to host an exclusive preview" of Won't Back Down:

PAC leaders have separated themselves from claims of the partnership. I'm updating this because it seems pretty clear to me that Ms. Lanier's email included some professional advertising work by people who intended to suggest to us that the Parents Advisory Council endorsed their campaign without the permission of PAC. I'm wondering whether anyone at PAC will investigate how this happened.

Populist when convenient

What's rich about the Nashville Scene blog playing the populist card today against West End residents who don't want to see East Nashvillians riding rapid transit in their part of town: the journos' populism has been stone cold silent in response to their parent company's moving the summer event "Movies in the Park" from Centennial Park to pastoral Belle Meade after some urban anomie (apologies to Emile Durkheim) bit them last year.

Do they really expect to have any street cred in criticizing Nashville's westward patricians given what looks like their company's own garden-variety white flight from urban grit?


(Full disclosure: I have lived in the West End area and in the Five Points area of East Nashville in the past. While I have no firm allegiances, given my current status as a North Nashvillian, I agree that the more pretentious part of Nashville lies to the west).

Those Who Get Things Wrong in a Socially Acceptable Way are Not Held Accountable

I agree with Paul Krugman's criticism of Barack Obama's Surgeon General nominee and media talking head.

I am sure it is because Bedford Falls had no house flippers or after hours clubs

Keep in mind that it did take supernatural beings from the outside of George Bailey's life to stop him from completely unraveling:

"It’s a Wonderful Life" is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

Steven Spielberg Honors Soldiers and Veterans in DNC Movie

From last night's Democratic Convention:

Happy Anniversary to the Best Sports Movie Ever

It has been 20 years this month since Bull Durham "crashed" on the scene:

Battlestar Galactica: On "Faith"

The spiritual dimensions of BG zoomed past cliche to profoundly theological last weekend in the episode called "Faith," which has Starbuck's rendezvous with the Cylons and President Laura Roslin's gripping confrontation with mortality via the speeches of Gaius Baltar.

The religious imagery was much more rich than typically portrayed on TV. The mix of machine and living tissue on the ships of the Cylon battle fleet conveys incarnation in its most ambiguous sense. The scene where one of the dying Cylon "Sixes" "Eights"--shot by a centurion while trying to disconnect a "hybrid" from the basestar--bleeds into the hybrid's immersion tank seemingly making the latter give a profound revelation to Starbuck ("the missing Three will give you the Five who come from the home of the Thirteenth") reminds me of baptism and blood atonement. It also reminds me of the end of Pan's Labyrinth where a dying Ofelia bleeds onto the cave altar, which opens up either a portal to the underworld and her reunion with her family or her fantasy that she has done so.

That BG writers called this episode "Faith" fits. Faith isn't an unadulterated certainty, but incarnated, which means that it is both the windshield and the bug: it is often crushed but unbowed, and it beyond on the petty, arbitrary fickleness of the everyday to matters of life and death. Faith, both the episode and the existence, is finally about life and death. And according to the hybrid, Starbuck is the "harbinger of death." When we find out what that means I doubt it will be either absolutely bad or absolutely good, because faith inevitably comes mingled in both.

My Favorite Progressive Films

I am accepting Progressive Nashville's challenge to answer the Center for American Progress's top 25 progressive films. I came up with 25, some of which are listed in CAP's list, some of which are not. My list bears toward the populist end of progressive films.

• To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
• Norma Rae (1979)
• Grapes of Wrath (1940)
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
• Gandhi (1982)
• Dr. Strangelove (1964)
• American Madness (1932)
• Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
• Cry Freedom (1987)
• All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
• High Noon (1952)
• Intolerance (1916)
• Schindler's List (1993)
• Brazil (1985)
• Sounder (1972)
• The Milagro Beanfield War (1988)
• The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
• All the President's Men (1976)
• Chinatown (1974)
• Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
• Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
• Easy Rider (1969)
• All the King's Men (1949)
• Network (1976)
• Reds (1981)

Two of these movies score high on my list--High Noon and All the King's Men--for the primary reason that John Wayne declared them "un-American" and "un-patriotic." Wayne turned down the the lead role in King's Men and then lost the Best Actor Academy Award for his role in the Sands of Iwo Jima to the actor who took his place, Broderick Crawford. I imagine that was sweet for the makers of King's Men.


UPDATE: While my list fans out chronologically, there are some more recent honorable mentions that could have easily made the list.

• Dances with Wolves (1991)
• A League of Their Own (1992)
• Glory (1989)
• Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
• Thelma & Louise (1991)

Appropos Lebowski: "This Isn't a Guy Who Built the Railroads, Here"

With the blogpile forming on top of Governor Bredesen's choice of the word "coolie," I couldn't restrain myself any longer.

"The Chinaman is not the issue here":

You're All I Want For Christmas

One of the more underrated and important motion pictures of the late twentieth century is coming in a new director's final cut DVD in December. Ridley Scott is one of my favorite directors and this is Harrison Ford's best movie.

The Director's Cut (released in 1991) plays better in 2007 than the studio version did in 1982, and we have the benefit of retrospect in seeing the movie's influence--despite the pat 1982 happy ending (bolstered by outtake countryside scenes from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining)--on urban and cinematic culture in 25 years.

Oh, and now we see that Deckard is a replicant. Deal with the spoilage. If that had flown in 1982, it would have been at least the plot-twist-equivalent of Dr. Malcolm Crowe's realization in 1999.

Which Gave Me the Chance to Practice a Non-Rhotic Dialect and to Speak a Few Intrusive "R's"

Some kind of nasty sinus bug I've had over the weekend has rendered my writing skills useless for the past few days, but I have had the opportunity to watch The Departed (which I did not see on the big screen) on cable several times during the hiatus. As good as Goodfellas, in my opinion; although, how believable is an Irish mob boss in Boston wearing a Yankee's cap?

"My First Michael Moore Post" or "CNN Needs Double the Proctologists Now that He Tore Them Another One"

Michael Moore appeared on CNN to answer Wolf Blitzer and Sanjay Gupta's Reality Check on his new movie SiCKO and corporate criticism of it. He turned it around in the live interview (and later on-line) to give them a whopping dose of reality himself.

HT to R. Neal, who in an earlier post shared his family's harrowing treatment at the hands of a health insurance corporation who publicly claims to be trying to reduce the number of uninsured.

If you read this and feel thankful that you are insured, just keep in mind that you are probably just an interoffice memo or a balance sheet away from being among the throng of uninsured in America. Hence, advocating for the uninsured and the underinsured is essentially protecting yourself, too:

The [health insurance] system is broken, and they know it. Now they're just scrambling to keep their jobs.

That second point about "working together to reduce the number of uninsured" is a cruel joke. This same company refused to write me an individual policy at any price at any deductible. They would, however, write my company a policy that covers me. That's because there's no state law in Tennessee that requires them to write individual policies, but they are required to offer employer group plans. I'm not sure what I would have done if I wasn't self employed with the means to pay the company premiums.

Prior to that, we had an individual policy that got canceled when the company decided to get out of the health insurance business and sold the policy group to another company. The new company said everyone would have to reapply but gave assurances of continued coverage. They canceled our policy and denied our new application without any explanation.

At the time that policy was canceled, we had paid approx. $100,000 in premiums over eighteen years or so, with a net present value of approx. $250,000 based on the S&P 500 rate of return during that period. The policy had a $10,000 deductible (I thought it was $5,000, but the Mrs. corrected me). They never paid out a single penny because we never filed a claim, and still haven't to this day.

We would have been better off opting out of the system and stashing the money in a mutual fund for a rainy medical day. But that's what you get for trying to be responsible and for playing a game with the deck stacked in favor of big corporations.

Spike Lee and Al Gore

I cannot think of a more important documentary I've seen in the last ten years than either Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke or Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, both of which I have seen this week. I refuse to choose which one is more important. If you ask me to recommend just one, I would still say you have to see both. It would be a proverbial Sophie's Choice: you cannot make me choose. You need to see both if you have not already.

Lee's documentary is long, but it packed with wrenching personal narratives and contextual knowledge that explains so much about New Orleans and the government's injustices to her citizens. You'll find out that the rumors that levees had been blown up are based on factual events that occurred in past hurricanes and that those events were carried forward in oral histories after explosions were heard during Katrina. You'll learn that President Lyndon Johnson not only immediately responded to New Orleans' last catastrophic hurricane in 1965, but he stood in flooded neighborhoods with nothing else but a flashlight shouting to let people know he was right there with them. You'll cry, if you have a heart, as jazz musician Terence Blanchard walks through his old neighborhood dolefully playing "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" on his horn and as he helps his mother tearfully cope with the tragedy of facing her destroyed home for the first time. Lee does a masterful job of conveying the complex dynamics of the levee breach, its aftermath, and the peoples' lives that flood waters--with some help from FEMA--destroyed.

Gore's documentary sets the record straight on global warming and is just as personal as When the Levee's Broke, but its focus is more on how Gore's own life has been intertwined with the growing environmental crisis we all face. We are troubled enough to learn that the CO2 levels, polar ice melts, and heat waves surpass anything we've seen since records were kept; and, in fact, the data from those who study glacier core samples indicate that life on earth has not faced such a dire CO2 and temperature situation in 600,000 years. But to learn that there are practically no objections in scientific journals on global warming while the agreement in the mainstream media hovers around 50% is unnerving. The scenes of progressive melt of glaciers around the world are just as problematic to me as the pictures of devastation in New Orleans (and Gore makes the connection between the events himself). Where I wept during Lee's film for the innocent children of others who needlessly died in New Orleans, I wept for my own children after watching Gore's film; and I left resolved to do my part to make this a better world for them.

So, if you asked me which film I would recommend if you could only see one of them, I would tell you not to present me with a false choice and you should make every effort to see both. For those who've seen them, what do you think?

If you had to recommend 1 of these 2 documentaries to someone else, which would you choose?

• Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke" (HBO)
• Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" (Paramount Film)

view results

Consigned to Whistleblower Oblivion

In a scene reminiscent of Daniel Lang's 1969 New Yorker piece, "Casualties of War" (popularized in the 1989 Brian De Palma-directed motion picture of the same name), the Army has apparently black-listed one of the whistleblowers of prisoner abuse at Abu Graib. This will no doubt have a chilling effect on reporting torture during war-time. It's things like this that contribute to shrouding the truth, otherwise known as the "fog of war."

This Aggression Will Not Stand, Man.

At times like this, we need "the Dude."

Tardy Movie Reviews By A Toddler's Daddy: Batman Begins

NOTE: If you plan to see this movie but have not, you probably should wait to read this review.

This past weekend I finally saw Batman Begins. I agree with many who say that it was the best of the Batman motion pictures so far. I am perhaps not as enthralled with it as some, but not because of the character development and plot. It is admirably and infinitely more character driven than any in the series and Christian Bale portrays a superhero whose struggle with his flaws and doubts is wrenching, but whose will is as steely as his challenges are enormous.

Unfortunately, the culture in which this movie appears, rather than the film itself, represents its primary pitfall. We live in such a reality-based entertainment culture now; it's a culture in which a superhero who struggles with very human flaws seems more mundane than extraordinary; and the more mundane the better for the audience, because American culture is desensitized to the chasm between super powers and human flaws that ruptures the life of a superhero. So, when a superhero shows shortcomings, rather than being awed by the heroic struggle, our culture finds satisfaction in self-identification with or separation from flaws we either have or see in those around us. Accordingly, Batman Begins begins our therapy, rather than instigating our transformation.

The failure to transform is not the movie's fault. The film is neither an ode to capitalism nor a liberal imprecatory psalm as some of the various online prisms try to filter it. On the contrary, it actually concerns the perennial problem of the perseverance of the heroic human will. More exactly it came across to me as a morality play about striking a balance between the collective will of the herd (characterized as the suffering masses of Gotham), the blatant will-to-power of criminal masterminds who prey on the herd mentality (and who are a personal obsession of Bruce Wayne, given his family tragedy) and the subtle and stealthy will-to-power of the League of Shadows, which apparently disposes of the criminal predators along with the herds upon which they prey.

Bruce/Batman finds that balance in the compassionate teachings of his father kept alive after the latter's death through the mentoring of the family butler, Alfred (played remarkably well by Michael Caine), who is the only one who never gives up on Bruce. My impression was that Bruce/Batman would have self-destructed in the pinch between Gotham, crime, and the League had it not been for Alfred. The triumph of the heroic human will is not simply a matter of the rugged individual; it happens through trust in, reliance upon, and care received from others. If Alfred is not Bruce's conscience, at the very least he is the very condition of Bruce's will-to-justice; that is, the will to instill the same fear in those wills-driven-to-power that they drive into the heart of the herd, but without falling into the Shadow.

The reviews I've read and heard seem to miss the priority Batman Begins gives to the will in favor of playing up either Batman's humanity in terms of his flaws or certain tones to make a political point (and I'm not saying Batman Begins is apolitical; social responsibility for instance is a political point). Both of these lines of logic are more cathartic than transformative for the audience. As a cathartic tool, Batman Begins is not particularly outstanding. Relative to popular culture, I would not consider it nearly as significant as Batman (1989), which seemed to me to introduce long-lost gothic, perhaps even film noir, qualities into a mainstream superhero film. After so many white-washed Superman episodes before the original Batman, Michael Keaton's "Caped Crusader" was a breath of dark air.

However, when I get beyond cathartic expectations, I believe that Christian Bale's Batman is vastly better than the original. As a statement about the heroic will, it is transformative for those who have eyes to see the potential transformation, for those who have eyes to see in the dark.

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day, to all! This is one of my favorite holidays, thanks to my wife and my children; they truly know how to make this holiday very special and quite memorable each year.

In honor of Father's Day, I give you my personal top ten of best movies about fathers:

1. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
2. Big Fish (2003)
3. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
4. Boyz N the Hood (1991)
5. Field of Dreams (1989)
6. Parenthood (1989)
7. Mr. Mom (1983)
8. Finding Nemo (2003)
9. Paper Moon (1973)
10. i am sam (2001)