In writing my blog, over the years I've generally tried to maintain a policy similar to that of my favorite radio station, KUSC. No matter what is going on in the world, they never mention it, except for the most allusive of comments, and then only when the incident or situation is extreme. For instance, they only refer to the pandemic by telling their listeners to "stay safe, stay well". Even 9/11 would only have elicited a reference to "this tragic day", and the music would have kept playing. And if I'm not mistaken, one of their hosts on that day quoted Leonard Bernstein, who said (regarding some other incident) : "This will be our reply to violence; to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before". KUSC has always set itself up as a refuge from worldly events (meaning chaos), and for that it's faithful listeners are grateful. The news media already saturates us with coverage, and the chaos never stops, so why add to it with one more opinion? That's my take, although if I'd been blogging in my twenties you'd have gotten nothing but opinions. However, though I plan to stick with my "no news" pledge, I will offer one comment on today's riot. It's not anything I haven't said before, but I reiterate it now because it's of primary importance.
Donald Trump must be arrested, convicted of not just inciting today's riot, but of his many, many crimes, before and during his presidency, and he must be put in prison for the rest of his life.
In addition to this, incoming President Biden must sign on to a total rebuilding of the Justice Department, so that the FBI once more commands the respect it used to command among criminal groups. We need a massive recruitment of agents, vetted to the max to make certain they are not cretins like the shaven headed guy Trump appointed as acting director a while back. We need an apolitical FBI, we need each and every agent to be ultrapatriotic - not to party but to country - and we need to use them to infiltrate the kinds of groups from which today's rioters emerged - militias, gun nuts, racists and idiots of all stripes - and then to use maximum law enforcement to break up these groups and destabilise the Trumper movement. This, of course, is after Trump is in prison, which is our first priority.
In short, we need to shut these folks down, because if we don't, what happened today will seem mild to what they will do in the future.
Just to be clear, I include rioters of all political persuasions in that statement, including ANTIFA, and the looters and property destroyers from last Summer, who came from the Left. They too should be prosecuted to the max.
But it's Trump who stirred all of this up, and if someone had stopped Hitler before he built his cult of personality, who knows.........World War Two might have been averted.
Mary Trump said it best : "Stop treating him as if he's normal". He isn't. He's a fucking sociopath, a criminal and an inciter of violence who today had his mob pull an early Hitler tactic, i.e. "the putsch".
We need leaders who will work to restore the power structures of America where law and order are concerned, so that the everyday citizens don't have to live on a knife edge of constant chaos. I hope to God Joe Biden will be that leader, especially now that we have the Senate and House on our side as well.
What Trump has done cannot go unpunished and he must be put away for good. That is all. ////
Tonight's movie was so close to real life that I may as well have watched the news. It was called "The Killer That Stalked New York"(1950), and while I hadn't heard of it beforehand, and didn't seek out the subject matter, when it did appear in a list of black and white noirs, I knew I had to watch. Evelyn Keyes stars as a diamond smuggler who's just returned to NYC from Cuba (pronounced Koo-ba for period accuracy, or Kyoo-ber if you wanna go for the JFK effect). Straight off her flight she doesn't feel good. She's got a headache and is feverish, but tries to shrug it off until she nearly collapses on the way back to her boyfriend's apartment. A beat cop carries her to a nearby clinic, which she walks out of after the policeman leaves. But not before she encounters another patient in the waiting room, a little girl who inquires about her condition.
They talk, and then Keyes leaves the clinic, not wanting to be examined because of her need for anonymity. Soon the girl is transferred to the hospital, where her condition worsens. Then she dies.
The cause of death eludes doctors, until one of them recalls similar symptoms in patients he saw in the Third World. "But it can't be"! , he says to his colleagues. "It would be a throwback to the Middle Ages". The diagnosis is smallpox.
This is a red flag alert to the doctor in charge, and suddenly the Mayor of New York is on the radio, urging the public to stay inside, to avoid contact with anyone, and for anyone with symptoms to go directly to the quarantine ward at the county hospital. Then the search is on for Patient Zero - Evelyn Keyes - who's getting sicker by the hour but has the complication of needing to avoid authority because of her profession.
On top of that, her boyfriend - the mastermind of the smuggling ring - is ready to leave her high and dry, now that he knows she's sick. But he's got a dose of the 'Pox too, from contact with Keyes, and by now so does half of New York City.
The noir aspect is minimal, provided only by the subplot involving the diamond smuggling, but the photography by Joseph Biroc is shadowy and excellent as always. He should be considered with the greats in my opinion. Mainly the story is about the breakout of a pandemic, and the attempt by NYC officials to stop it in it's tracks before it kills millions.
Evelyn Keyes avoids detection until the end of the film, where the smuggling plot kicks in again and reaches a conclusion.
"The Killer That Stalked New York" is thin on story, it's mostly about the attempt to locate Evelyn Keyes, but there isn't much mystery in that chase because we the audience always know where she is. Instead, the film turns on her performance as her condition deteriorates. In the surrounding context there are parallels galore to today's news, no different than discovering that there was a mask/anti-mask controversy during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
Human behavior stays the same, no matter the era. Which makes it all the more important to learn from history. ////
See you in the morning. Sorry about the politics but it had to be said. The print of tonight's film was once again razor sharp, so give it a look.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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