Sambal

Finally, a good reason to read to the end of Slashdot comment pages: you can find useful things like the text of a letter from Tolkien to the would-be producer of a Lord of the Rings movie, back in 1958. It could have been written to Peter Jackson.

We see that Tolkien was not averse to cutting characters (”Personally I think [Goldberry] had far better disappear than make a meaningless appearance.”). He understood that film was a different medium and that changes were necessary to accomodate his story — but he resisted changes which gratuitously changed the story:

I can see that there are certain difficulties in representing a dark scene; but they are not insuperable. A scene of gloom lit by a small red fire, with the Wraiths slowly approaching as darker shadows - until the moment when Frodo puts on the Ring, and the King steps forward revealed - would seem to me far more impressive than yet one more scene of screams and rather meaningless slashings…..

and later, too: “It is well within the powers of pictures to suggest, relatively briefly, a long and arduous journey, *in secrecy*, on foot, with the three ominous mountains getting nearer.”

Here are the parts that could be addressed to Jackson:

31. I deeply regret this handling of the ‘Treebeard’ chapter, whether necessary or not. I have already suspected Z of not being interested in trees: unfortunate, since the story is so largely concerned with them. But surely what we have here is in any case a quite unintelligible glimpse? What are Ents?

If both the Ents and the Hornburg cannot be treated at sufficient length to make sense, then one should go. It should be the Hornburg….

Z has cut out the end of the book, including Saruman’s proper death. In that case I can see no good reason for making him die.

If it is meant to represent only a kind of short finale, then all I can say is this: *The Lord of the Rings* cannot be garbled like that.

But this is all wasted, anyway. I can’t count how many times I’ve had the following conversation — with friends, yet:

Friend: So, how did you like The Two Towers?
Me: Didn’t like it. Actually, we walked out.
Friend: Why?
Me: Too many variations from the book.
Friend: Like what?
Me: Well, we didn’t like what Jackson did to Faramir, and the Ents were badly treated too, and Jackson left out my favorite line, near the beginning of II, and ….
Friend: (angry) Why can’t you just enjoy the movie?!

Perhaps I misunderstand the “Like what?” — I kinda assume that when people ask why I hold these opinions, they actually want to hear my answer. Maybe not — maybe it’s the same sort of question as “How are you?”.

It’s OK by me for other people to like the movies, or even like the movie version more than the books. That’s fine. But please don’t require that I do the same. Look, I have a strong appreciation for Tolkien’s exact text and my vision of it. That doesn’t mean that I think I’m a better person or a better Tolkien fan than you are. (Actually I wouldn’t even describe myself as a Tolkien fan, but whatever.) But apparently it makes some people feel uncomfortable or even threatened.

Perhaps these people feel that they should care deeply about the text version, and then feel badly because they don’t.

One of the other Slashdot posters writes:

Lots of us, even fans of the books, watched the movies and found that the changes did not significantly detract from our enjoyment of the story. So naturally when people claim that Jackson ruined everything and all the changes were unnecessary or worse we defend him.

This is exactly the kind of overreaction I’m talking about. I don’t think Jackson ruined “everything”. He certainly made three movies that I don’t want to see, though. Perhaps you want to see them — so go ahead. I’ll stay home and read the books.

I’ve recently been reading about Gulf War I. I read Rick Atkinson’s excellent but unfortunately-titled Crusade. I also picked up the Tom Clancy book with Gen. Fred Franks, and some others: I cleaned out the local branch of our library.

One of the books I got was The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf, by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Apparently he was Johnson’s AG for two years, ‘67-69. I mainly know of him as a perennial novelty candidate for LGF’s “Idiotarian of the Year” award.

I thought it would be an interesting read — at the very least, I would get to hear the “other side” on depleted uranium. Sadly, I didn’t get that far into the book, but that’s OK: I found a website about depleted uranium. Favorite quote: “There is no safe dose of any radiation” (emphasis added). Better stay out of the sunlight, then. And don’t eat any bananas.

Anyway, Clark’s book starts out blaming the U.S. and its policies for the continuing deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians — deaths he claims are caused by the imposition of sanctions. The responsibility is all ours, according to Clark, and none Saddam’s: he neatly skates around the fact that sanctions were conditional on Saddam’s continued flouting of UN Security Council resolutions. Clark is actually refreshingly non-partsian about his criticism of the US government: he dumps on both Bush 41 and Clinton. In other words, he’s gone so far over to the left that’s he’s met the right.

I didn’t finish the book, as I implied above. I got to a part where he was complaining that the International Atomic Energy Agency kept insisting on inspecting Iraq’s nuclear facilities to determine if Iraq was in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT), and how unfair that was because IAEA never did the same to Israel. That redlined my bullshit meter and I just couldn’t go on with the book. See, Israel is not a signer of the NNPT, and therefore is not bound by it. Kinda like a contract: don’t sign it, not bound by it. Simple, eh? Now maybe it’s asking too much of a former Attorney General, but you’d think he’d at least know that much about international law, wouldn’t you?

Whaddayaknow, my alma mater is a red light zone for free speech. Strangely, of the 5 Claremont colleges, only four are listed (no Pitzer), and only Mudd gets a red light. Here are their reports on all the colleges in California.

This merely goes to show that reading the letter of the law and ignoring the practice of its enforcement is stupid.

Read the “MORE…” for an example which rebuts this silly characterization.

(more…)

Famed Liberal Author Assaults Heckler
“I’m for freedom of speech”

I’ve never heckled anyone; I think it’s low. But by God, I want to heckle someone around Al Franken now in the hope that the bastard would assault me. I would a) not merely let him off with broken glasses and b) press assault charges. What a despicable man.

UPDATE: Yes, this is out of my usual line, but this really pisses me off. Violence has no place in American politics, and it saddens and angers me to see people being assaulted by private citizens. (Obviously, having uniformed security remove a heckler from a closed private location is something entirely other.) This is not in the least uncharacteristic of Franken; he’s been spoiling for a fight for years now.

The worst thing about this incident, though, is that it could be read to support the idea that the US is becoming unstable and trending towards dictatorship. Political violence was a tactic employed by the Nazis, Bolsheviks and probably every other totalitarian movement.

UPDATE at 7:56PM: CNN has a much more charitable description of the incident. I’m skeptical: I believe that the LaRouche people were trying to disrupt the candidates’ speeches, but why did Franken get involved? I don’t see why it was necessary for a media figure to help out the security people at the Dean event but not the Lieberman or Kerry ones. In any case, Franken may not be as crazy as I thought earlier.

Who really cares?

Oh, OK, I guess I do. Otherwise I wouldn’t have loaded CNN’s primary results page already.

I hope that Dean doesn’t get demolished. Not because I think Dean is more likely to lose against Bush eventually, and not because I want Dean to stay in the race as long as possible spending down his massive war chest in attack ads targeted at Kerry and Edwards. Though that would be nice.

The main reason I want Dean to stay in is because I have some friends who are pro-Dean. One of them actually went to Iowa. Here’s a picture of Adam with Peter Jennings.

Right now it looks like Kerry, Dean, somebody. Polling data is collated here if you want to take a look, but even if all the undecided swung for Dean, he’d still be #2, and if they all went for Edwards, he’d only be tied with Dean.

How did the Democrats wind up with all these rich guys as presidential nominees? I mean, you have Dean, who comes from money; Kerry, an original Brahmin, married to the Heinz heiress. Then there’s Clark, Edwards and Kucinich, who make much of their humble origins (Edwards: I worked in textile mills with my dad; Kucinich: we lived in a car; Clark, weakly: we lived in a rented house). But all three seem to be doing well enough for themselves now. I have no data on Lieberman, but he went to Yale in ‘60 so I assume his parents weren’t too badly off.

You’d think the party that claims to represent the downtrodden or whatever it is they do would be able to find some poor people to run for president, no?

Look how well Clinton turned out, for example.

On the back of my utility bill this month:

I liked the State of the Union. My wife didn’t — she complained that it was “all over the place”, which I think of as just a part of the art form. She also pointed out that Bush is a lousy speaker. No disagreement there.

I was surprised and pleased that it was so bold. Calling for the renewal of the PATRIOT act — as one of the first policy initiatives proposed in the speech, no less — is a beautiful political move. Democrats have criticized the PATRIOT act since its passage in 2001. Given the amount of invective poured into this, I would have expected the President to ignore it in an election year. By raising it again, Bush gets to use the Democrats’ criticism of PATRIOT against the Democratic frontrunners. Kerry and Edwards both voted for PATRIOT in the Senate, as did every other Senator except for Russ Feingold (yes, including Ted Kennedy). This gives Dean and Clark something to use against Kerry and Edwards in the primaries, while putting Kerry and Edwards into a double-bind with the renewal of the act. If they vote for, they hurt themselves with true-believer Democrats; if they vote against, they give the Republicans something to use against them in the general election.

The same logic applies to the possibility of Democratic filibuster against the renewal of the PATRIOT provisions — either they don’t and the act passes, and Bush gets what he wants; or they do and Bush can point to the Democrats, obstructing a necessary tool in the war on terror. And what are they objecting to, anyway? The law passed 99-1 in 2001, but now that it’s an election year, 39 Democrats flip-flop to enable a filibuster. The administration can say, “Look, the Democrats are playing politics with your security!”

Speaking of the Democratic members of Congress, I really felt they shot themselves in the foot during the “applause” portions of the speech. During one pause when the Democrats pointedly remained seated and didn’t applaud, my sister-in-law (a Canadian) turned to me and asked, “What’s wrong — don’t the Democrats want prescription-drug benefits for seniors?”

I understand that a TV producer’s job is to pick interesting camera angles. And I can see how just having the one camera pointed at the President’s head the whole speech is kind of boring. But did CNN have to keep cutting away to Ted Kennedy rolling his eyes and flapping his jowls? Even if he is Colby Cosh’s choice for frontrunner-behind-the-curtain?

Oh yes, the best part? The part that really made the speech for me, and is most likely to induce me to vote for Bush in ‘04? The inclusion of Jerusalem in the list of terrorist targets.

Colby Cosh is working on explaining Canadian politics to Americans (part 1 part 2). So far so good: there was a lot of good background in the Martin piece, and the political parties piece neatly distilled what I’ve learned in the last two and a half years here.

But there are a few things that strike me about Canadian politics which he doesn’t mention. One is the total nonpresence of religion in politics. I get the feeling that half of the MP’s would die on the spot if the prime minister ever ended a speech the way Bush ended the 2003 State of the Union:

We [Canadians] have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know — we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history.

May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless [Canada].

(substitutions for effect)

This religiophobia contributed to Ontarians’ fears of Reform/Canadian Alliance — the fear (perhaps a legitimate one) that Reform people are all religious nuts.

There’s also the strange case of Joe Clark — “the Dan Quayle of Canada”. Head of the Progressive Conservatives in 1979 when freak electoral conditions allowed a PC-NDP coalition, he was PM for maybe six months before the left-right coalition went down in flames, returning Trudeau to power.

After that he retired from politics, but returned to be a figurehead for the reborn RINO PC’s. During that time, he served as Grand Marshall of the Calgary Gay Pride Parade. He retired again before the PC/CA merger.

You Americans, think about that for a second. Imagine Newt Gingrich leading a Gay Pride parade in in Indianapolis or in Lincoln, Nebraska.

See? Weird.

The Anal Philosopher thinks that Young People Should Not Be Allowed to Vote:

I’m glad that only one of every three college-age people votes. People this age don’t have enough knowledge or experience to participate in the electoral process. In fact, I’ll go further and say that the voting age should be thirty. By this time, a person has finished his or her formal education (including graduate or professional school) and has entered the workforce. By thirty, most people have begun families and become homeowners (or at least renters). This gives them a stake in the community. That should be a prerequisite for taking part in the political process.

This seems reasonable on the face of it. Certainly I value my right to vote quite a bit more now at 28 than I did at 18. I might be willing to tentatively agree with this proposition, and even to vote against my own right to vote (until my 30th birthday). But I wonder about a few things.

Slippery Slope Why 30? If we agree to 30, nine years later will there be an initiative to raise the voting age to 40? If I vote to disfranchise myself now, what protection do I have that I’m not being disfranchised forever?

Military Service The original justification for lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, I seem to recall, was that the draft age was 18. It seemed unfair for 18-year-olds to be drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam but to have no say in politics: in short, to be sent to fight a war they could not choose to end. The draft is not active now, but it can be reinstated at need. Is there not a risk that raising the voting age to 30 would create more Vietnam-type situations, where the young people are sent off to fight the old peoples’ wars? (1)

Immigration Jackson’s summary of his argument is “This gives them a stake in the community. That should be a prerequisite for taking part in the political process.” But as proposed, a voting age of 30 would not discriminate against recent-immigrant citizens. Are you telling me that some 30-year-old who just got naturalized and has maybe been in the country five years (2) has a bigger stake in the community than I do at age 28, having lived here since birth? Please bite me.

My parents are citizens-by-choice — they immigrated from then-Czechoslovakia in 1968 — so I am aware that immigrants often value what native-born citizens take for granted, but it seems reasonable to me that if I am required to wait 12 years of my adult life before I am allowed to vote, so should every citizen. We could do that by lengthening the permanent resident period or merely denying the franchise to new citizens until they’ve lived here for 12 years. I don’t particularly care which. (3)

Endnotes:

(1) One possible remedy would be to immediately extend the franchise to soldiers on active duty, or to give soldiers “accelerated aging” — e.g., two years towards voting for every one year served. But this starts to sound like a Heinlein novel.

(2) I am not sure of the actual current minimum, as I am having difficulty with the PDF’s from the INS (now weirdly called “US Citizenship and Immigration Services“)

(3) Perhaps we could have a sliding scale which takes into account the level of democracy and consensual government of the source country: 12 years delay for a totalitarian dictatorship, seven years for a European PR system (Italy, say), five years for a British-style parliamentary democracy (UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). Thirty would remain the minimum age, of course.