One of my favorite TV military characters, Harry Morgan, Colonel Sherman Potter has died. MASH in my mind captured the good and the bad of the military. If one goes to Tom Ricks blog today, there is an article regarding chickenshit in the military. One of the main virtues of MASH was it propensity to bust the bubble of military pompesity. MASH more than twenty years after the airing of its final episode, it remains one of my favorite programs.
Justice For One = Justice For All
Preface: I am not advocating a pardon or a pass for either one of these jokers. I’m just tossing out a question, or some food for thought. OK, if I get it right, the argument for giving Roman Polanski a pass is that he’s done such good work, such incredible film-making, that the aggregate of his artistic accomplishments ought to outweigh one– how might the French put it?– indiscretion some thirty years ago. That being done, what ought we to do with this guy? Kinda changes the terms of reference, doesn’t it. Does Stebbins get Hollywood backing? Hell, does he [...]
300
Thanks to the wonderful grey market, I got a chance to view “300” the new Gladiator/Braveheart/Sin City mash-up that was recently released into theatres. Myself, and a few other junior officers plopped the ripped DVD into a laptop, and passed another night away from home by taking in the latest Hollywood had to offer half a world away (God bless globalization!) I’ve watched it 3 times now, and it’s not getting old.
Priorities, People!
So I’m in the chow hall today, eating my KBR food, and minding my own business. Then, from out of nowhere, I was bombarded with the cable TV news feeding frenzy that spun around an American beauty queen who boozed it up, and the subsequent Donald Trump/Rosie O’Donald spat. I cast a casual eye over to a nearby table, looking at some of my multi-national coalition partners, then to a table in the corner where our terps were avidly watching the anonymous lip-glossed blond chick reading us the breaking “news.” So I thought to myself: is this really the image [...]
Draft Hollywood!
I can’t say I disagree with this: We need some films celebrating the war against Islamo-fascism in Afghanistan and Iraq — and in Iran as well, if and when that becomes necessary. We need films like those that were made during World War II, films such as 1943′s “Sahara” and “Action in the North Atlantic,” or “The Fighting Seabees” and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” which were released in 1944. Not all of these were great films, or even good ones, but their patriotic tributes to our fighting forces inspired the nation. When war comes, as it always will, and when [...]
