Oh, yeah! Let's haul out the historical facts to support our case. Oops, not so fast! Did I say that?
Guest Voices: Sarah Palin is no Susan B. Anthony - On Faith at washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Real Stuff Referendum - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com
Yeah, “How’s that hands-offey, non-regulatory thing workin’ for ya?” Great question!
Real Stuff Referendum - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com
Real Stuff Referendum - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com
Friday, April 23, 2010
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
StumbleUpon - Featured News sites
StumbleUpon - Featured News sites
Well, why on earth would we trust someone who alleges to be celibate for information about sexuality? It doesn't seem to me that the Catholic Church's celibacy advocacy is very successful!
Well, why on earth would we trust someone who alleges to be celibate for information about sexuality? It doesn't seem to me that the Catholic Church's celibacy advocacy is very successful!
Saturday, March 14, 2009
"Between the Lines" Film Review
“Between the Lines”
“A surf film about Vietnam.”
“SYNOPSIS [From the "Between the Lines" web site]
BETWEEN THE LINES explores the Vietnam War through the prism of the surfing sub-culture. The film offers unique insight into the dramatic effect that the Vietnam War and draft had on young American men who rode waves.
“Between the Lines explores the choice that most draft age surfers faced during the Vietnam War era: either go to war or evade the draft. It was one or the other. Between the Lines delves into the lives of two surfers who choose opposite paths. Pat Farley and Brant Page.
“While following the lives of these two surfers the film chronicles the impact of the Vietnam War on the surfing lifestyle. From the peaceful shores of Hawaii to the canopy jungles of Vietnam, Between the Lines excavates the surfing cultures response to an extraordinary circumstance.”
Director and Executive producer Ty Ponder stated that this film is to honor all veterans. Unfortunately, it fails, utterly and completely. Indeed, “Between the Lines” is nothing more than a 1970s style anti-war film. He also stated publicly that “he hoped that Pat Farley would be representative of all Vietnam veterans.” Not only does this film not honor veterans, it takes us back to the early 70s when my generation was vilified and castigated for having served in the armed forces of the United States.
I joined the military because I had been raised patriotically by veterans—both of my parents served in World War II, my dad as an aircraft repairman in Europe and my mother as an Army nurse. All of their friends, all the ones I knew, had served. Dad’s younger brother was killed in the Battle of Kasserine Pass in North Africa in 1943 (I have his Purple Heart Medal framed with his photo hanging in my home office) and his older brother serves in the Eastern Theatre of Operations (ETO), that is Europe. While my parents did not pressure me, I just knew that it was my obligation to serve. I did, and so did my brother, both of us honorably.
I didn’t expect parades and honors upon my return, but neither did I expect to be treated so shabbily. I fully comprehend the shortcomings and failures of the Johnson and Nixon administrations with regard to the War in Vietnam; it was a poorly conceived effort even that was even worse in its implementation. But I do not accept responsibility for that. I was a lowly enlisted Marine doing my duty as a citizen—patriotically. I had no more influence over the conduct of the war than an eagle does over the movement of the great Alaskan glaciers. And yet, many Americans treated me as if I was personally responsible for the tragedy that occurred in Southeast Asia between 1954 and 1975. I, we, were reviled.
On 31 January 1971, anti-war protest groups convened the Winter Soldier Conference in Detroit. It lasted three days, during which hundreds of “veterans” gave “testimony” about atrocities they had allegedly committed in Vietnam. Many of those alleged veterans turned out not to have been veterans, at all, and of those who were, nearly all of their allegations resulted in the investigations into them that have been closed as, “unsubstantiated, demonstrably untrue, or for lack of evidence.” Some of them repudiated their testimony; others refuse to discuss it. But, regardless of the dubiousness of those allegations, the media broadcast them widely, without noting the questionable nature of the claims or attempting in any way to substantiate them. Indeed, they became national news, again without substantiation, when John Kerry repeated them in his congressional testimony of that year. The Winter Soldier testimony and Kerry’s self-promoting regurgitation of them before Congress reinforced what the anti-war faction had been alleging for years: that American service members were the dregs of society, bloodthirsty indiscriminate killers of innocent men, women, and children. John Kerry built his campaign for his first term in Congress, and, indeed, the rest of his political career, on that testimony which was, at the heart of it, a pack of lies.
Now, Ty Ponder and Scott Bass have produced a movie in which they address the Vietnam War through the experiences of two men: Pat Farley and Brant Page, both surfers as young men. Pat Farley enlisted in the Army, served in Vietnam, and returned home an emotional wreck. He is now 100% psychologically disabled for having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but has married and resumed his surfing lifestyle, lacking gainful employment. Brant Page evaded the draft by hiding in Hawaii and took to using drugs, including LSD. He also married, had a child, and runs a farm in Hawaii, growing organically grown coffee, apparently a successful businessman, and also continues to surf
In the film, Page seems proud to have evaded the draft and even boasts about his drug use, apparently seeing his triumph over the system and drugs as a badge of honor. In it he states that he did not think we should be killing people and that he only wanted to love them. I am convinced, though, that his motivation for draft evasion was less altruistic: he simply wanted to continue his surfing lifestyle. He did not want his life to be interrupted and inconvenienced by having to go off to war. It was as simple as that. In the film Page states, “I didn’t have time for war.” Well, there are 58,178 names on the wall and I suspect that each of them would have preferred not to have their lives interrupted, but they took time out of their lives to serve their country—in perpetuity. Page did not, as many more honorable men of his generation did, claim conscientious objector status and submit to alternative service, or being denied that and still unwilling to serve, accept incarceration. Instead, he just “dropped out” in order to maintain his lifestyle—and commenced using drugs. Despite the film’s attempt to depict Brant Page as courageous for standing up for his principles by dropping out of society and using drugs, I maintain that he was simply a self-indulgent coward. It was only later in life that he rationalized his cowardice by invoking principles that had not previously occurred to him.
Pat Farley did serve his country, apparently honorably, and suffered horribly for it. Now, though, he dishonors it by lying. In the movie he admits to being dysfunctional and says “if you don’t want people like me, don’t have wars.” At the premier showing of “Between the Lines” Farley stated to an audience of 200 that he “killed men, women, children, and a dog and the only thing I regret is killing the dog.” He went on to say that he had “left two MPs for dead by the side of the road.” I think it most unlikely that he committed those atrocities, but like those at the Winter Soldier Conference, he lies to gain attention, to elicit from his audience sympathy: “Oh, you poor, dysfunctional victim.” I suspect that Pat Farley has told those lies so many times that now he believes them. He may even have used them to gain his 100% disabled status, but I wonder how they would withstand the scrutiny of an investigation by NCIS or the FBI? Rhetorical question—I know the answer. That brutal, but misplaced prevaricating braggadocio is characteristic of the most dysfunctional veterans. They need attention, crave it, and have found that their lies garner it. Certainly there are other Vietnam veterans who are equally dysfunctional; that is a very unfortunate consequence of war (one that the Bush administration utterly failed to consider and refused to address until forced by the incident at Walter Reed Hospital) but they and Pat Farley are hardly representative of Vietnam veterans. Indeed, Pat Farley does not represent me or any of the Vietnam Veterans in my circle of friends and acquaintances.
Indeed, the overwhelming majority of Vietnam veterans went on to fully productive lives. They became faithful, dedicated employees, entrepreneurs, public and community servants, husbands, fathers, and so on. For every dysfunctional veteran there are thousands of whom were/are successful. Unfortunately for their reputation, the former are very visible due to their dysfunctionality while the latter are not for lack of it. Indeed, thanks to John Kerry and other dysfunctional veterans—a very small minority of those who served there—Pat Farley and the others of his ilk are the embodiment, the very symbol of the Vietnam War. Yes, even the successful ones suffered as they grieved the losses of their friends and nursed their physical and emotional wounds, but they did not betray those friends, did not dishonor them by misrepresenting them as cold-blooded, indiscriminate, bloodthirsty killers, the dregs of society, misfits. Most of us, in retrospect, find that we are better persons for having served and that the adversity of combat, rather than destroying our lives, made us stronger, more dedicated, more committed.
Despite Ty Ponder’s assertion that his intent was to honor all veterans, can it be accidental that “Between the Lines” contrasts a dysfunctional veteran to a drug-using draft evader, clearly noting that the former is fully psychologically disabled while the latter is a successful business man? Can he and Scott Bass really be so obtuse, so oblivious to the reality of their message? This film builds on John Kerry’s disingenuous, self-serving attacks on his fellow veterans, returning us to the anti-war fervor of the early seventies at the expense of all veterans, including contemporary ones, to our great sorrow and disappointment.
I cannot but be bewildered by the irony of this film and its portrayal of a cowardly, irresponsible, law-breaking druggie as the triumphant hero while denigrating the contribution of a man who served his country honorably. Shouldn’t we be condemning the former and celebrating the latter?
The “Between the Lines” web site states that it is a “Surf film about Vietnam.” It is neither. Yes, it includes photos and video footage of some service members surfing at beaches in Vietnam, and includes “talking head” video clips of Vietnam veterans, ostensibly surfers, themselves, but it does not address the salient issues about the war: supporting dictatorship, horrendously flawed national and military strategy, Administration micromanagement, alleged atrocities, and so on. It barely touches upon the anti-war protest movement in the United States and around the world, and that only by inference in the personal context of Brant Page; it does not address or comment upon the unfairness of the draft, the racial unrest that coincided with the protest movement or that each of those probably exacerbated the other, and that our Nation by 1970 teetered upon the brink of implosion. Nor does it address the lessons we could have learned from that conflict, but, judging from the conduct of the current conflict in Iraq, obviously did not.
In short, “Between the Lines” contains little, if anything, of consequence or intellectual value. Moreover, its premise is dated, flawed, and counterproductive in today’s world. It does appeal, of course, to those anti-war activists, leftover hippies, those who would find Brant Page a sympathetic character, and any whose politics cause them to denigrate military service members and veterans. That may explain why this Between the Lines won in the Best Documentary category at the Sundance Film Festival and why PBS has purchased the rights to it. While I am an advocate for the right to free speech, but I also believe in truth and justice, and this film is so biased that it violates both of those principles.
“A surf film about Vietnam.”
“SYNOPSIS [From the "Between the Lines" web site]
BETWEEN THE LINES explores the Vietnam War through the prism of the surfing sub-culture. The film offers unique insight into the dramatic effect that the Vietnam War and draft had on young American men who rode waves.
“Between the Lines explores the choice that most draft age surfers faced during the Vietnam War era: either go to war or evade the draft. It was one or the other. Between the Lines delves into the lives of two surfers who choose opposite paths. Pat Farley and Brant Page.
“While following the lives of these two surfers the film chronicles the impact of the Vietnam War on the surfing lifestyle. From the peaceful shores of Hawaii to the canopy jungles of Vietnam, Between the Lines excavates the surfing cultures response to an extraordinary circumstance.”
Director and Executive producer Ty Ponder stated that this film is to honor all veterans. Unfortunately, it fails, utterly and completely. Indeed, “Between the Lines” is nothing more than a 1970s style anti-war film. He also stated publicly that “he hoped that Pat Farley would be representative of all Vietnam veterans.” Not only does this film not honor veterans, it takes us back to the early 70s when my generation was vilified and castigated for having served in the armed forces of the United States.
I joined the military because I had been raised patriotically by veterans—both of my parents served in World War II, my dad as an aircraft repairman in Europe and my mother as an Army nurse. All of their friends, all the ones I knew, had served. Dad’s younger brother was killed in the Battle of Kasserine Pass in North Africa in 1943 (I have his Purple Heart Medal framed with his photo hanging in my home office) and his older brother serves in the Eastern Theatre of Operations (ETO), that is Europe. While my parents did not pressure me, I just knew that it was my obligation to serve. I did, and so did my brother, both of us honorably.
I didn’t expect parades and honors upon my return, but neither did I expect to be treated so shabbily. I fully comprehend the shortcomings and failures of the Johnson and Nixon administrations with regard to the War in Vietnam; it was a poorly conceived effort even that was even worse in its implementation. But I do not accept responsibility for that. I was a lowly enlisted Marine doing my duty as a citizen—patriotically. I had no more influence over the conduct of the war than an eagle does over the movement of the great Alaskan glaciers. And yet, many Americans treated me as if I was personally responsible for the tragedy that occurred in Southeast Asia between 1954 and 1975. I, we, were reviled.
On 31 January 1971, anti-war protest groups convened the Winter Soldier Conference in Detroit. It lasted three days, during which hundreds of “veterans” gave “testimony” about atrocities they had allegedly committed in Vietnam. Many of those alleged veterans turned out not to have been veterans, at all, and of those who were, nearly all of their allegations resulted in the investigations into them that have been closed as, “unsubstantiated, demonstrably untrue, or for lack of evidence.” Some of them repudiated their testimony; others refuse to discuss it. But, regardless of the dubiousness of those allegations, the media broadcast them widely, without noting the questionable nature of the claims or attempting in any way to substantiate them. Indeed, they became national news, again without substantiation, when John Kerry repeated them in his congressional testimony of that year. The Winter Soldier testimony and Kerry’s self-promoting regurgitation of them before Congress reinforced what the anti-war faction had been alleging for years: that American service members were the dregs of society, bloodthirsty indiscriminate killers of innocent men, women, and children. John Kerry built his campaign for his first term in Congress, and, indeed, the rest of his political career, on that testimony which was, at the heart of it, a pack of lies.
Now, Ty Ponder and Scott Bass have produced a movie in which they address the Vietnam War through the experiences of two men: Pat Farley and Brant Page, both surfers as young men. Pat Farley enlisted in the Army, served in Vietnam, and returned home an emotional wreck. He is now 100% psychologically disabled for having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but has married and resumed his surfing lifestyle, lacking gainful employment. Brant Page evaded the draft by hiding in Hawaii and took to using drugs, including LSD. He also married, had a child, and runs a farm in Hawaii, growing organically grown coffee, apparently a successful businessman, and also continues to surf
In the film, Page seems proud to have evaded the draft and even boasts about his drug use, apparently seeing his triumph over the system and drugs as a badge of honor. In it he states that he did not think we should be killing people and that he only wanted to love them. I am convinced, though, that his motivation for draft evasion was less altruistic: he simply wanted to continue his surfing lifestyle. He did not want his life to be interrupted and inconvenienced by having to go off to war. It was as simple as that. In the film Page states, “I didn’t have time for war.” Well, there are 58,178 names on the wall and I suspect that each of them would have preferred not to have their lives interrupted, but they took time out of their lives to serve their country—in perpetuity. Page did not, as many more honorable men of his generation did, claim conscientious objector status and submit to alternative service, or being denied that and still unwilling to serve, accept incarceration. Instead, he just “dropped out” in order to maintain his lifestyle—and commenced using drugs. Despite the film’s attempt to depict Brant Page as courageous for standing up for his principles by dropping out of society and using drugs, I maintain that he was simply a self-indulgent coward. It was only later in life that he rationalized his cowardice by invoking principles that had not previously occurred to him.
Pat Farley did serve his country, apparently honorably, and suffered horribly for it. Now, though, he dishonors it by lying. In the movie he admits to being dysfunctional and says “if you don’t want people like me, don’t have wars.” At the premier showing of “Between the Lines” Farley stated to an audience of 200 that he “killed men, women, children, and a dog and the only thing I regret is killing the dog.” He went on to say that he had “left two MPs for dead by the side of the road.” I think it most unlikely that he committed those atrocities, but like those at the Winter Soldier Conference, he lies to gain attention, to elicit from his audience sympathy: “Oh, you poor, dysfunctional victim.” I suspect that Pat Farley has told those lies so many times that now he believes them. He may even have used them to gain his 100% disabled status, but I wonder how they would withstand the scrutiny of an investigation by NCIS or the FBI? Rhetorical question—I know the answer. That brutal, but misplaced prevaricating braggadocio is characteristic of the most dysfunctional veterans. They need attention, crave it, and have found that their lies garner it. Certainly there are other Vietnam veterans who are equally dysfunctional; that is a very unfortunate consequence of war (one that the Bush administration utterly failed to consider and refused to address until forced by the incident at Walter Reed Hospital) but they and Pat Farley are hardly representative of Vietnam veterans. Indeed, Pat Farley does not represent me or any of the Vietnam Veterans in my circle of friends and acquaintances.
Indeed, the overwhelming majority of Vietnam veterans went on to fully productive lives. They became faithful, dedicated employees, entrepreneurs, public and community servants, husbands, fathers, and so on. For every dysfunctional veteran there are thousands of whom were/are successful. Unfortunately for their reputation, the former are very visible due to their dysfunctionality while the latter are not for lack of it. Indeed, thanks to John Kerry and other dysfunctional veterans—a very small minority of those who served there—Pat Farley and the others of his ilk are the embodiment, the very symbol of the Vietnam War. Yes, even the successful ones suffered as they grieved the losses of their friends and nursed their physical and emotional wounds, but they did not betray those friends, did not dishonor them by misrepresenting them as cold-blooded, indiscriminate, bloodthirsty killers, the dregs of society, misfits. Most of us, in retrospect, find that we are better persons for having served and that the adversity of combat, rather than destroying our lives, made us stronger, more dedicated, more committed.
Despite Ty Ponder’s assertion that his intent was to honor all veterans, can it be accidental that “Between the Lines” contrasts a dysfunctional veteran to a drug-using draft evader, clearly noting that the former is fully psychologically disabled while the latter is a successful business man? Can he and Scott Bass really be so obtuse, so oblivious to the reality of their message? This film builds on John Kerry’s disingenuous, self-serving attacks on his fellow veterans, returning us to the anti-war fervor of the early seventies at the expense of all veterans, including contemporary ones, to our great sorrow and disappointment.
I cannot but be bewildered by the irony of this film and its portrayal of a cowardly, irresponsible, law-breaking druggie as the triumphant hero while denigrating the contribution of a man who served his country honorably. Shouldn’t we be condemning the former and celebrating the latter?
The “Between the Lines” web site states that it is a “Surf film about Vietnam.” It is neither. Yes, it includes photos and video footage of some service members surfing at beaches in Vietnam, and includes “talking head” video clips of Vietnam veterans, ostensibly surfers, themselves, but it does not address the salient issues about the war: supporting dictatorship, horrendously flawed national and military strategy, Administration micromanagement, alleged atrocities, and so on. It barely touches upon the anti-war protest movement in the United States and around the world, and that only by inference in the personal context of Brant Page; it does not address or comment upon the unfairness of the draft, the racial unrest that coincided with the protest movement or that each of those probably exacerbated the other, and that our Nation by 1970 teetered upon the brink of implosion. Nor does it address the lessons we could have learned from that conflict, but, judging from the conduct of the current conflict in Iraq, obviously did not.
In short, “Between the Lines” contains little, if anything, of consequence or intellectual value. Moreover, its premise is dated, flawed, and counterproductive in today’s world. It does appeal, of course, to those anti-war activists, leftover hippies, those who would find Brant Page a sympathetic character, and any whose politics cause them to denigrate military service members and veterans. That may explain why this Between the Lines won in the Best Documentary category at the Sundance Film Festival and why PBS has purchased the rights to it. While I am an advocate for the right to free speech, but I also believe in truth and justice, and this film is so biased that it violates both of those principles.
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