Recently in Orwell Category

"I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards. I only twice remember even being seriously angry with a Spaniard, and on each occasion, when I look back, I believe I was in the wrong myself. They have, there is no doubt, a generosity, a species of nobility, that do not really belong to the twentieth century. It is this that makes one hope that in Spain even Fascism may take a comparatively loose and bearable form. Few Spaniards possess the damnable efficiency and consistency that a modern totalitarian state needs."

Apparently, Chariots of Fire director Hugh Hudson is now set to make a film version of Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell's autobiographical account of the Spanish Civil War. "The film will highlight the relationship between Orwell and Georges Kopp, the charismatic commander of the brigade. Colin Firth and Kevin Spacey are attached to star as Orwell and Kopp." Hmm. That relationship isn't what I remember taking away from the (excellent) book, and that casting actually sounds pretty terrible to me. (For Orwell, I'd go with someone like Paddy Considine. For Kopp, I'd go with someone who isn't Kevin Spacey.) But let's see how it goes.

Hard to believe, but, this morning, the recent grisly revelations of Dubya-era torture practices became even more horrifying. As we've gleaned more info over the past few days, certain obvious and troubling questions kept popping up. Why, as indicated here, would higher-ups insist on additional waterboarding sessions for Zubadayah, even after the CIA agents at hand thought the suspect "had given up all the information he had"? Also: Mind you, even one session of torture is reprehensible -- and illegal -- enough. But what more did the powers-that-be think they were going to get out of these suspects after ten waterboardings? Twenty? One hundred?

Well, now we know. Not only did Dubya apparachiks conceive a torture regime well before it was approved (and before they had any prisoners on hand -- see also the new and unredacted Armed Services Committee report), but they tortured their suspects into the ground because they were trying to prove a false positive, i.e. that there was some serious operational link between Iraq and Al Qaeda that could be used to sell the second Gulf War. (See also the forged Habbush letter.)

"'There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used,' the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity. 'The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.'"

So, in short, it would seem the suspects held by the CIA were tortured over and over again because they would not concede that two plus two equals five.

Really, how much lower can these assholes sink? What could they possibly do that would cause more violence to our ideals, or that would make our cherished role as a beacon of freedom seem any more ridiculous in the eyes of the world, than what they've already done?

Once again, I'm reminded of Lincoln's famous remark to the Indiana 14th: "'Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.'" At the very least, somebody, or somebodies, better go to jail for a loooong time for this. Anything less is simply unacceptable.

"What I have wanted most to do...is to make political writing into an art." By way of Return of the Reluctant, it seems George Orwell's diary entries will be posted online in blog form beginning August 9, seventy years after he initially wrote them. Welcome to the political blogosphere, George! (And good luck breaking into the TNR-Politico-Atlantic-TPM mutual-regard society.)

"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists." As TPM noted, we seem to have finally reached the point where there are "no more sharks left to jump." For alas, Sen. Clinton's final, fraying tether to the reality-based community (and my general election vote, not that she'll be getting that far anyway) gave up its last this weekend, as she -- in defiance of her usual m.o. and very much in the manner of Dubya and the GOP -- deemed universal opposition to her gas tax pander to be merely a figment of "elite opinion". (She's also doubled down on her anti-Obama gas tax ads.) As Robert Reich noted: "In case you’ve missed it, we now have a president who doesn’t care what most economists think. George W. Bush doesn’t even care what scientists think. He rejects all experts who disagree with his politics. This has led to some extraordinarily stupid policies." (Rabid Clinton partisan Paul Krugman, also a member of the elite-economist cabal, has yet to weigh in on his being cast down as an enemy of the people.)

As it turns out, one of the salt-of-the earth proles at the event (self-identified as an Obama voter making less than $25,000 a year) called Clinton out to her face for this blatant idiocy: "'I do feel pandered to when you talk about suspending the gas tax,' the woman said, adding: 'Call me crazy but I actually listen to economists because I think they know what they've studied.'" Clearly, this woman will be requiring significant reeducation. "'How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.' 'Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.'" (Give Clinton credit: Her campaign has been a travesty, but it's been great fodder for Orwell references around here.)

In any case, regarding the big picture: Unfortunately for earlier hopes that we'd be done May 6, it's looking like tomorrow will almost assuredly bring a split, with NC for Obama and IN for Clinton. (That is, unless Zogby has finally broke out of its slump this cycle.) Meaning, of course, that Clinton will be even more mathematically eliminated. And yet, in all likelihood, we'll slog on to June 3. Yay. (With that in mind, each side picked up another super today: Kalyn Free of OK for Obama and Theresa Morelli of Dems Abroad for Clinton. But as Morelli only counts for 1/2 a vote, that's another 1/2-vote pick up for Obama.)

Update: make that two and a half: Obama picks up two more MD supers, Michael Cryor and Lauren Dugas-Glover. And it sounds like some of Clinton's CA supers are reconsidering their options.

Update 2: Apparently, economists still mattered in 1992.

First we had Senator Clinton adopting various Hail Mary Rovianisms, which have been well recorded here, including but not nearly limited to an ad featuring Osama Bin Laden just this past week. Then Bill went on the Rush Limbaugh show. Then Sen. Clinton played nice with Richard Mellon Scaife, architect of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," for his endorsement. And now we have this:

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

"In the beginning, it was about momentum. When she lost momentum, it was about pledged delegates. When she lost pledged delegates, it was about the popular vote. And now that she’s on her way to losing the popular vote, it’s about the number of electoral votes held by the states in which the candidates have won primary victories." Comrades! Pleddel and popvote now fullwise ungood and goldstein. The new metric of our glorious success is and has always been Elecvote. Be wary of thoughtcrime, brothers and sisters. Also, chocorat going up 15%.

Speaking of Newspeak, this may work against Sen. Obama, but I feel forced to admit it: His lead in pledged delegates, the popular vote, and the number of states won notwithstanding, Sen. Clinton won every state with "New" in its name --- New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York. And, since the superdelegates are looking to pick a "new" president, their choice is sadly all too clear. I'd hoped and assumed Sen. Obama would be our nominee, but you just can't argue with ironclad logic like that.

"This man has advanced Communist views, and several of his Indian friends say that they have often seen him at Communist meetings. He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours." Big Brother was watching him: Ralph Luker of Cliopatria points the way to the recently-released UK Security Service files on George Orwell (as well as those on folk music archivist Alan Lomax and others.) "[W]hile his left-wing views attracted the Service's attention, no action was taken against him. It is clear, however, that he continued to arouse suspicions, particularly with the police, that he might be a Communist. The file reveals that the Service took action to counter these views."

"April the 4th, 1984. To the past, or to the future. To an age when thought is free. From the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man... greetings." By way of Ed Rants: all of Michael Radford's excellent film version of 1984, online.

I never caught the source material while it was on Broadway, so I can't compare it to the play. But, while I found Nicholas Hytner's film of Alan Bennett's The History Boys to be a thoughtful and decently engaging piece of work, it makes for a somewhat unnatural and theatrical evening of cinema. The ideas in (the) play are obviously intriguing and worthy of contemplation, but -- with several performances better suited for the back rows than the big screen (most notably Clive Merrison as a schoolmaster out of Monty Python) and a gaggle of bon mot-spouting teenagers that, at least in my own personal and teaching experience, act in no way at all like teenagers -- The History Boys often felt forced to me. It's a worthy piece of pedagogy, I suppose, and I'm almost positive it must work better on Broadway. But, overall, I thought it trafficked in archetypes more than it does in real-world, flesh-and-blood characters -- more fiction than history, I'd say -- and this close to the action, its faults are harder to hide.

As iconic cuts by New Order and The Smiths tip off in the opening moments, The History Boys takes place in the early 1980's -- 1983 Sheffield, to be exact. But don't let "Blue Monday" and "This Charming Man" fool you: our story in fact takes place in a boys' preparatory school, one -- references to W.H. Auden and Brief Encounter notwithstanding -- seemingly hermetically sealed from the outside world at large. Here in this academic biodome, several young lads, having done exceedingly well on their A-levels, now prep for the grueling college application process, in the particular hopes of getting into Oxford and Cambridge. To aid them in this arduous process are two history professors dueling for their impressionable minds...and bodies: In the relativist corner, Professor Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), a sharp, young, and assured (if closeted) new hiree dedicated to promoting the ironies and contingencies of history. Meanwhile, over in the knowledge-for-its-own-sake department rests Professor Hector (Richard Griffiths, the soul of the film.) Orwell looming over his shoulder (the two agree on the debasement of "worrrrds"), Hector is a grotesque but endearing fellow who one might call avuncular, were it not for his rather unfortunate penchant for fondling his students' genitals. Shrugging off these occasional gropes (far more sanguinely than seems realistic, IMHO), the history boys perform poetry, film scenes, and cabaret tunes for the latter and develop streaks of contrarian skepticism for the former, all the while learning a thing or two not only about life and history, but of the Achilles' Heels of their esteemed teachers.

In a nutshell, the basic problem I had with The History Boys is this: A decade ago, a friend of mine once described a mutual acquaintance as "the ideal twenty-two-year-old...in the eyes of a fifty-five-year old." Well, this movie's got a whole pack of 'em. All of the young actors here are decent enough -- if a bit broad, cinematically speaking -- with Samuel Barnett (as Posner, a boy trapped in the very special hell that is an unrequited teenage crush) and Dominic Cooper (as Dakin, a young man increasingly hopped up on Nietzsche and the power of his own burgeoning sexuality) given the most to do. But, as they effortlessly spin forth witticisms at the most opportune moments and gather around the piano without even a trace of cynicism or irony ("the shackles of youth," as the line goes) about them, they all seemed very, very improbable to me...and that's even notwithstanding their handling of the aforementioned sexual misdeeds. (Full disclosure: I have much the same problem with Whit Stillman films.)

Yet, once you take it as inherently fanciful and somewhat missuited for the big screen, there are still elements to enjoy in Boys, including a number of thoughtful disquisitions on the uses and practices of history as a discipline: for example, on contingency, commemoration, and the rise of a more gender-balanced understanding of the past (the latter memorably delivered by Frances De La Tour, who, while excellent here as a jaded prof, still unfortunately kept reminding me of Madame Maxime.) Admittedly, these digressions do seem shoehorned in at times -- and brought back memories of fading historiography seminars -- but they still offer some keen grist for the philosophical mill. (That being said, I somehow suspect that the teaching of history is a less sexually charged discipline than as seen here, where it's rife with more suppressed longing than the Catholic priesthood. But perhaps I haven't been at it long enough.)

"The idea that Truman and Dean Acheson could be hauled out as exhibits for preventive war in Iraq against 'abject pacifists' such as myself made me feel that I was living in Oceania, and the Ministry of Peace had rewritten the textbooks to prove that the legacy of a president who rejected preventive war in fact constituted the best justification for it!" By way of my friend Mark, Peter Beinart and Michael Tomasky go toe-to-toe over the legacy of '48 at Slate's Book Club. I'm inclined to agree with the latter.

"In short, more than one of every three documents removed from the open shelves and barred to researchers should not have been tampered with." A recently-completed audit into the formerly secret Archives reclassification program finds that many more files were reclassified -- and reclassified wrongly -- than previously suggested. "In February, the Archives estimated that about 9,500 records totaling more than 55,000 pages had been withdrawn and reclassified since 1999. The new audit shows the real haul was much larger -- at least 25,515 records were removed by five different agencies, including the CIA, Air Force, Department of Energy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Archives."

"When we think about the authoritarian world that Orwell painted, the catchphrases are one thing, but when you read the book again, the specifics and relevance for now are stunning." Apparently, Tim Robbins is thinking of bringing 1984 to the screen (again). Hmmm...I dunno. I enjoy Bob Roberts and Dead Man Walking, but thought Embedded was way over the top. And it'd be really hard to make a better or more faithful adaptation than the Michael Radford version with John Hurt and Richard Burton.