The Master: You be the Captain, I’ll be Nothing

(SPOILERS for, obviously, The Master, but also Hard Eight / Sydney. However: it’s assumed that any reader has seen both The Master and Hard Eight, knows their plots, with plot points cited without any attempt to give synopsis. This post’s subtitle comes from the chorus of the great song by Kasey Chambers, “The Captain”. The movie differs substantially from the script submitted to the guild, available here; therefore, all dialogue excerpts from the movie are from the subtitles, unless something is explicitly cited as a screenplay excerpt.)

A movie about intimacy and authority. The qualities most noticed of the film, the astonishing cinematography and its slow, unyielding pace, are intertwined with its subject, Freddie Quell, and not chosen for the purpose of self-aggrandizing grandeur. “Well,” begins David Thomson’s disappointed review, “at least it’s pretentious, and that’s a start in an age when too many films are hardly trying.”¹ Rich Juzwiak makes what I think is an equally wrongful indictment, while at the same time acknowledging its creator’s talents: “The Master is so emptily ponderous, so happy to take its time to say not very much at all and, on top of all that, so bursting with craft that I got the sense that it, too, is aware of its own importance.” He contrasts the movie with his enjoyment of Anderson’s earlier work: “Its sideways recounting of (some of) history reminded me of Boogie Nights, an abstract of the porno chic era where all the names and several of the dates were changed. But at least that movie was fun, at least its script had momentum, at least some of its characters’ motivations were clear.”

The movie’s rhythms are slow and difficult, not out of the director’s selfish purpose that the audience bears witness to the diamond finery of his images, but because this is Freddie Quell’s movie, a movie where he is entirely the focus and in almost every scene, and the rhythms are his own. This is a man for whom life has become a cryptic, unlivable place, without handhold or foothold. The movie doesn’t have the kinetic rhythms of Boogie Nights because those embodied the sexual excitement of its own hero, and his eagerness to jump into life. This movie properly feels like a glacial, unanswered mystery, because that is what life is for Quell. The Master has the setting and scale of an epic, without the substance of one, and this is Quell’s life as well. He has had his epic, his Illiad, and now he returns to a place which will never have the intensity of what he just faced, and he stumbles upon a ridiculous man who styles himself as the hero of his own great quest, though his life is comparably mundane: his one great adventure involves digging up from the mountains an unreadable book that he himself has buried. Where other movies of the past are often shot with a slightly blurry scrim, to convey the sense of distance, of half-remembered memory, the images of this film are crystalline clear, more vivid and detailed than the movies set in the present. This reflects Quell’s perspective again, a man for whom reality is piercingly, frighteningly ever present, an invasion which never lets up, unless it’s finally shut down by his own toxic brews. It perhaps also reflects something else: this movie is not just about the distant past, but about the United States, now.

Though the film is willfully, necessarily, mysterious, there are perhaps some who see mysteries where there are none. Perhaps the best way of exploring the movie and unraveling some of it is by following Quell, in proper chronology, and his overwhelming drive. Quell has been described as man who is sex obsessed, and this, I think is wrong: he refuses sex at least twice. This is a man who hungers for, who wants and does not want, intimacy.

Quell has had sex, wants sex, but he looks at sex as tainted, and sex as something which taints an ideal woman. He might view sex as corrupt because of what took place with his aunt², or because of something else. The genesis for this idea is unimportant; what is critical to the story is that this attitude was the conventional thinking of the time. That Freddie looks at sex as something that corrupts a woman, something only bad girls do, is mainstream thought³. His problem, from society’s perspective, is not this attitude, but his lust itself. More important is that he wishes to continue to believe this, that there is a convenience to believing this: because emotional intimacy often accompanies physical intimacy. Sleeping with a woman he felt some kinship for, not simply a prostitute he could walk away from, would mean that he would end up being more open with her, and this is something he both desperately wants, and avoids with cold fear.

A key, often overlooked, point of Freddie is his relationship with Doris – it is strange that it is so often passed over, because Quell stresses during his process session with Dodd that this woman is the most important person in his world. Doris is often written about with confusion, and her own details often wrongly stated. The often insightful Dana Stevens writes of her as Quell’s “war-time sweetheart” – she isn’t⁴. Quell is a man familiar with sex – one of his first lines is a joke about getting rid of crabs – but he did not have anything like a romantic relationship with Doris before the war, and she would have anyway been too young. During the war, she serves as a beacon of untainted innocence, a young girl in her mid-teens who writes to him because she is the sister of one of his friends.

This information on Doris is all there, explicit, in Quell’s interview sessions at the veterans hospital. Much of what takes place in the hospital section is a re-working of material from the John Huston documentary Let There Be Light (which is in the public domain and available in the usual place). This is not a kleptic revelation – it is not the same material, and Anderson has been open about the influence of the film on The Master, doing a Q&A after a screening of Light and Huston’s San Pietro⁵.

A good first example of how material is taken from Light, and re-worked, is the Rorscharch session, where one of the same blots is used, but where the patient’s answer in Light might discretely imply a sexual quality, Quell’s answer is explicitly, crudely sexual.

Light, from 17:35 to 18:02:

NARRATOR
The things that the patient sees in these cards, gives significant clues to his personality make-up.

PATIENT
This looks…sort-of like a drawing of two women…standing on a rock. And waving their hands.

The Master:

DOCTOR
Tell me what you see, Freddie.

FREDDIE
That looks like…

FREDDIE CONT’D
That’s just like a cock, actually, upside down.

DOCTOR
Thank you.

Quell’s interview material is taken from two interviews in Light. Given the stigma surrounding PTSD, then and now, the interviewees were left unnamed. These interviews run from 8:15-11:05 in the documentary. The first contains the seeds of Quell’s own answers about Doris:

DOCTOR
It says here in your record from overseas that you had headaches and had crying spells.

PATIENT
I believe in your profession it’s called nostalgia.

DOCTOR
In other words, home-sickness.

PATIENT
Yes sir.

DOCTOR hmmms.

PATIENT
It was induced, shortly before the war, I received a picture of my sweetheart.

PATIENT breaks down crying, and leaves the session.

DOCTOR
That’s alright.

After a short while.

DOCTOR
Come on and sit down. Now…this display of emotion is alright. Display of emotion is sometimes very helpful. You wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be returned, as a patient, if there wasn’t something upsetting you. Now you say you received a letter from-

PATIENT
Not a letter, a photograph.

DOCTOR
Well, what about that now?

PATIENT
To be perfectly honest with you, I’m very much in love with my sweetheart. She has been the one person, who gave me a sense of importance. Through her co-operation with me, we were able to surmount so many obstacles.

The second carries some of what later shows up in Quell’s answers about the dream of his family:

PATIENT
During the time…I got word, that my brother…was killed…in Guadalcanal.

DOCTOR
What was he, a marine?

PATIENT gives a quiet yeah.

DOCTOR
Now I notice in this history here, that you saw a vision of your brother…tell me something about that, what happened?

PATIENT
I guess it was a dream, or something.

DOCTOR
Describe the dream, what did you see?

PATIENT
I dreamt that I was home. My brother was home. Me other brother was home. We all was home.

DOCTOR
All of you were home.

PATIENT
Sitting around the table, everybody was happy. We were laughing. Talking. Just admiring each other…

DOCTOR
And you could see these images clearly.

PATIENT
Yeah, it was like in a dream, see.

The change to Quell’s interview is instructive – he receives a letter, not a photo, which might have a more tangible erotic quality, and not from his sweetheart, but a girl he has not been intimate with, or might have the possibility of being intimate with – their relationship must begin through words, rather than a shared look or carress.

The Master:

DOCTOR
And what’s this about a crying episode?

FREDDIE
What crying episode?

DOCTOR
It says here you had a severe headache, and a crying spell.

FREDDIE
I didn’t have a crying spell.

FREDDIE CONT’D
It was brought on by a letter I received from a girl I knew once. I think I…I believe I suffered what, in your profession, you call nostalgia. It was nostalgia that was brought on by a letter I received.

DOCTOR
From your sweetheart?

FREDDIE
No, sir, not my sweetheart. The kid sister of a girl…The kid sister of a friend of mine I knew from back home. I received this letter, and…I received a letter and I read it.

DOCTOR
According to the history here, I notice that you say you saw a vision of your mother.

FREDDIE
Now, it wasn’t a vision. It was a dream.

DOCTOR
Well, tell me about the dream.

FREDDIE
Why?

DOCTOR
I need to know.

FREDDIE
Why do you need to know?

DOCTOR
This will help in your treatment.

FREDDIE
You can’t help in my treatment, you don’t even know…Well, it was my mother and my father and me…back home. We were sitting around a table…having drinks. Laughing – And it just sort of ended there.

FREDDIE CONT’D
Thanks for the help.

Though I resolved to do this in chronological order, I deliberately skipped over one of the first, and most important images, because it ties in with Freddie’s perspective on women, and societal perspective on Freddie. This image is, of course, of a woman made of sand, who Quell vigorously fucks. A woman made entirely out of sand can always be re-shaped into something else, and a woman who remains only an image, only a beacon, like Doris, without actually being known, known in the manner that is physical and transcends the physical, can be re-formed into whatever image one wants.

This is also something of how society sees Freddie and other soldiers: a man that can be tossed into war, then brought back, and re-shaped into a civilian without difficulty or great work. Yet something has gone very wrong with this man – he hunches over, like his center has been broken: his center has been broken. Quell himself knows this, knows that something has gone wrong, and the efforts to help are too half-hearted and small – his answers in his interview are far more hostile and sarcastic than those of the original Light material. One of the closing bits of narration of Light, about the return to civilian life, is re-done here, but not over soldiers returned to form, but the blank, unhealed faces of damaged men.

Light, from 43:55 to 44:40:

NARRATOR
The weeks pass, the therapy begins to show its effect. The shock and stress of war are starting to wear off. For these men are blessed with the natural regenerative powers of youth. Now they are living less in the past, and more in the present. Sometimes, they think of the future. The war years must be put aside, and the responsibilities of peace must be considered. A man might open a filling station, or a hardware store. Or he can buy a few acres of land, and raise some chickens. He might even go back to school.

From 46:50-47:40, a doctor’s speech to patients:

DOCTOR
Undoubtedly, there will be people outside who won’t have any understanding of the condition…who may think of it as being a rather shameful condition. That’s why we’re having an educational program, trying to educate the public into understanding. Unfortunately, most of you fellas have gone through some very severe stresses in the army. Stresses that civilians are rarely subjected to. In civilian life, you can avoid serious stresses. If a civilian, the average civilian, were subjected to similar stresses, he would undoubtedly have developed the same kind of nervous condition that most of you fellows developed. All of us, have our so-called breaking point.

Master:

DOCTOR V.O.
You men are blessed with the rejuvenating powers of youth. The responsibilities of peacetime must now be considered. You can start a business: filling station, grocery or hardware store. Get a few acres of land and raise some chickens…go back to school. Undoubtedly, there will be people on the outside who will not understand the condition you men have, or will think it a rather shameful condition. If the average civilian had been through the same stresses that you have been through, undoubtedly they too would have developed the same nervous conditions.

After Freddie has returned state-side, he meets up with Doris. That he is so much older than her in these scenes serves a proper intent: these memories are of extraordinary importance to him, they are a lodestone to which he is drawn and longs to return, so he casts himself in these memories as he is now, as if he is the same man, when they are years ago. These very memories which are so important to him may well have little or no importance to Doris, who has since moved on, gotten married, and had kids.

I quote one writer, Forrest Wickman, to convey some of the viewer confusion over these scenes⁶:

WICKMAN
I was very confused about when they take place. It’s all about this girlfriend Doris, and we see her at sixteen, and then we see her again at twenty-three, and I’m not sure when the sixteen moment takes place, and I’m not sure exactly when the twenty three moment takes place. It seems like the second time is sometime in the 1950s.

We see Doris only in the past, at sixteen, though Freddie returns to try and find her seven years later – he speaks to her mother. The first meeting between him and Doris is after the war, after he received the letter – his emotional reaction is not over a past affair with this girl, but this girl as conveyed in the letter itself.

Here is their first scene together, recalled from the processing session:

DORIS
What made you come and see me?

FREDDIE
I thought about you. I thought about you when I was away.

FREDDIE CONT’D
I got your letter. They have you write to soldiers at school?

DORIS
I wrote to you. How come you didn’t write me back?

FREDDIE
I don’t know. I did. I just… never sent it.

FREDDIE CONT’D
Are you going to Briar Cliff?

DORIS
I’m not in college.

FREDDIE
What are you, a senior? Junior?

DORIS
No.

FREDDIE
You’re not a freshman.

DORIS
I’m a sophomore.

FREDDIE
So how old does that make you?

DORIS
Sixteen.

DORIS CONT’D
Did you think I was older?

FREDDIE
I don’t really remember.

The scene then ends, in a way that is, I think, critical to understanding Freddie. Because this man who is supposedly driven by lust, does not initiate anything with this girl, instead, Doris initiates something physical with him. Even more important, he does not reply to her kiss, but turns away: he badly wants this, but does not want this. He does not want to taint this girl with sex.

DORIS
Can I kiss you?

They then have another scene together, where she tells him she is going to Norway. This time, the scene ends as she, once again, moves towards Freddie to kiss him – and while such a kiss should be a savored memory for this man, instead it cuts away just as her lips touch his, as if her kissing him is something he doesn’t want to remember.

It is after this that he abruptly signs up for the merchant marine, so abruptly that he has to wake up Doris the same day he leaves, to let her know he is going abroad. No reason is given for why Freddie suddenly chooses to leave again, so we’re left with our own guesses; that Doris is leaving for Norway, that she has no problem with taking the initiative when she kisses him, and this will mean she’ll want to have sex before she leaves. It is not Doris who keeps this affair from going any further, but Freddie – he leaves before this can take place, because he looks at sex as something corrupting, and he does not want to corrupt this woman. Before he leaves, he kisses her, and for the first time, we see them fully kiss, and for the first time, he is the one who moves to kiss her. He does so with such hunger that it is clear that he feels a lust for this girl as strong as anything she feels for him, but which he keeps himself from acting on.

When he returns from the merchant marine, he gets work as a photographer, creating the images of unironic normalcy that we think of as encompassing the america of the fifties, when they don’t: Freddie Quell is a man who desperately wants to be part of the very normal world of these images, but feels forever excluded. We see a series of these photos taken, then the focus moves to a salesgirl, Martha, who sells a coat by walking around the store sporting it. She is supposed to demonstrate how wearing this coat gives you confidence and glamour, yet every dismissal by a customer takes something out of her, causes her to lower her eyes as if the dismissal of the coat is a dismissal of her; she ends up moving towards Freddie, who, off-screen, has kept his eyes on her the whole time – he doesn’t dismiss her at all. These are two people who we might assume to be contained and comfortable in the homogenity of the fifties, but who don’t feel anything like this security. I also see something like a metaphor for the entertainment industry: the very people who create the images of convention, of normality, the people who strike the poses which are so coveted, are not people who belong to the world they portray, but are instead often marginal, lonely, deeply dysfunctional types. This woman has a drink with Freddie, Freddie has no problem caressing this woman as he had with Doris, but the closeness that accompanies this physical intimacy frightens him deeply: at their dinner date, he is passed out.

When Freddie gets into a fight with a man at the store, it is not out of envy that this man has a happy wedded life, or that this man has wealth that he lacks, but this man’s easy, assured belonging. It is the same pose all his photo subjects share, and which Freddie cannot assume. Some critics have found fault with Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as one that is too ostentatious, when I think it is nothing of the kind. The nervous, attention-getting gestures are not those of the actor, but of this man, visible tics to make others know that he exists, that something in him is unresolved and very wrong. This outbreak of violence, one of several by Quell, is one such expression of an anger, an anger that he can’t articulate, an anger at many things, but right now an anger at having to wish to be part of society again, in the way this man belongs with such unthinking, effortless ease. There is nothing alien in Freddie Quell’s actions, nothing of behaviour seen on-stage and only on-stage – a man like this can be easily found in every city and town of the United States, now.

This man’s inability to re-integrate into society is a problem that should fall to some responsible party, either a group of family and friends, or some long-term psychiatric institution which might allow him to slowly re-enter life. There is nothing of the kind to help Quell, so he falls through the cracks, and becomes prey for the kind of group which thrives on people who fall through the cracks, the Master and his Cause. They have a proper and noble purpose, of helping and repairing broken people, yet they do so for reasons that are ultimately self-aggrandizing, so that a guru with a sham medical degree might have his incompetent theories and his self-inflated stature validated. It is not the proper socialization that might have taken place in a family – but Quell’s home is a broken one – or through the proper medical care maintained by society – but the state has tossed Quell away – and it is now the only help there is.

Before going in-depth on the relationship between the Master and Quell, I make a brief, inevitable detour. A good focus of much of the coverage of this movie has been to the extent to which it is a Scientology exposé. Any casual look-through of the first unauthorized L. Ron Hubbard biography, Bare Faced Messiah by Russell Miller, would reveal that The Master is chock full of telling details, small and large, which would confirm its subject. Many of the questions asked during the process session – have you ever had intercourse with a member of your family?, have you ever killed anyone?, have you ever had unkind thoughts about Master Peggy? – are all taken from Scientology security questions⁷. Racing on a motorcycle to a pointed location was an old game of Hubbard’s⁸. Hubbard had pretend expertise in nuclear physics, and the Master has such pretend expertise as well⁹. After a fraud scandal, Hubbard left for Phoenix, where he founded a school and published a strange, lengthy book, and the Master does the same¹⁰. The Split Saber is both this published work, The History of Man, and Excalibur, Hubbard’s legendary unpublished religious text; the hyped details surrounding this latter book, such as it being so unsettling that those who read it went insane, are left out of the movie, but they are in The Master‘s screenplay¹¹. Fake degrees litter the front page of Saber, including the entirely made up M.O.C., Master of Ceremonies, while Hubbard relied on a degree mill for a PhD, a made-up “Doctorate in Divinity”, and a made-up “Doctorate in Science”¹². Peggy Dodd has all the fierceness, cruelty, and drive of L. Ron Hubbard’s last wife, Mary Sue¹³, and in the original screenplay, Peggy is not named Peggy, but the slightly less veiled name of…Mary Sue. These details, and others, are obvious to long-time observers of the group, and are brought up in “The Master Screenplay: Scientology History from Several Different Eras Skillfully Woven Together” and “Scientology and The Master”, both by Tony Ortega, and “Is ‘The Master’ Based on Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard?” by former Scientologist Marc Headley.

Though these markers are sufficient to make clear that it is taken from the life material of the notorious movement and its infamous founder, the movie has frustrated some by not being more direct and more scathing. It is not, in my opinion, anywhere near as biting as, say, Wild Palms, which was utterly merciless in its depiction of key movement figures, blows so direct yet so veiled, that outsiders had no idea how crushing the blows were, like hits that leave no bruises but turn a person’s insides into smoosh (I write about this now forgotten mini-series and its satire of Scientology at my usual tiresome length in “Bruce Wagner’s Wild Palms”). By not making the movement its focus, but rather, staying with Quell, with his interactions with the cult leader a small part of Quell’s larger story, the movie’s subject becomes something more than just Scientology, but instead the need of so many outsiders for such a group. For Scientology is only one of the latest, and most prominent, of semi-religious and religious movements answering the needs of such men and women. The value of a guru, real or fake, who might help the forgotten is well pinpointed in Alan Watts’ “The Trickster Guru”:

It must be understood from the start that the trickster guru fills a real need and performs a genuine public service. Millions of people are searching desperately for a true father-Magician, especially at a time when the clergy and the psychiatrists are making rather a poor show, and do not seem to have the courage of their convictions or of their fantasies. Perhaps they have lost nerve through too high a valuation of the virtue of honesty – as if a painter felt bound to give his landscapes the fidelity of photographs. To fulfil his compassionate vocation, the trickster guru must above all have nerve.

Though I think Philip Jenkins’ Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History is a book fatally flawed by a too sympathetic treatment of non-traditional religious movements of the United States (rather than demonize such groups, Jenkins commits the polar mistake of treating every criticism and action against every such group, even Scientology and the Unification Church, as a persecutorial tactic), it does provide a thorough, and often too little known, historical context of groups such as Scientology. Hubbard supposedly started his religion as a way of making money¹⁴, and it is not difficult to see many of its elements borrowed from other, earlier groups, many of whom had borrowed these same elements from others.

I give lengthy excerpt to Jenkins’ description of the Psychiana movement, which should feel like an uncanny precedent of Hubbard’s later organization:

Psychiana, the New Scientific Religion, taught readers to follow the inner God-Law, in order to find “health, wealth, and happiness,” a phrase repeated so often in the lessons as to become a mantra. Prayer consisted of visualizing those things the believer sought, in such a way that they would actually come true. Psychiana obviously drew on New Thought, and it foreshadowed The Power of Positive Thinking. In later years, Robinson drew more heavily on Theosophy and described himself as an adept.

Psychiana was a gold mine. The basic twenty-lesson course cost $28 ($8 off for cash), and three advanced courses went for $10, $40, and
$100, respectively, with a money-back-if-not-entirely-satisfied guarantee, of the sort not offered by competing religions. The adherent
could also buy extra books, emblems, and records. Robinson pursued a clever marketing strategy from his base in Idaho, advertising in magazines whose audiences might be interested in his readily accessible form of popular mysticism: at the height of his business, he was advertising in two hundred publications. As he boasted, the orthodox might dismiss their rivals as lunatics, crackpots, and racketeers, but “we lunatics have more than we can do. I don’t print application blanks by the tens of thousands, I print them by the 500,000. I buy envelopes by the five million lot.” In the first nine months of 1933, Psychiana took in revenues of over $130,000, with expenses at $80,000, and Robinson lived in luxury. At its height in the Depression, Psychiana reached hundreds of thousands of Americans, perhaps millions. Robinson also boasted highly placed followers, including Idaho’s U.S. Senator William Borah, who was able to save him from deportation (Mussolini was also said to admire the movement). However, Psychiana was in decline by the Second World War, with large debts from unpaid bills for correspondence courses, and the movement staggered on for only a few years after Robinson’s death in 1948. Predictably, Psychiana’s critics presented the “Moscow Jesus” as peddling “lunatic,” “crackpot” ideas to the gullible masses.

Robinson could have drawn his commercial approach from any one of a number of contemporary models. He had surely noted how the Ku Klux Klan had persuaded millions of Americans to join a pseudomystical order, and in these same years Aimee Semple McPherson was triumphantly developing her Foursquare Gospel mission. Other striking parallels are found in Unity, the first religion to apply modern mass-advertising techniques, and Alice Bailey’s booming Arcane School, which at its height employed 130 secretaries to serve the scattered faithful. Psychiana was an attempt to cash in on a separate but equally large potential public. In turn, Psychiana inspired other mailorder esoteric schools, including the Mayan Temple, which flourished from the mid-1950s into the early 1960s. Despite its name, this San Antonio-based group offered a hodgepodge of Qabalism, Buddhism, reincarnation, and esoteric Christianity, and it allowed the home-based student to rise through successive grades of adeptship by means of correspondence courses and examinations. Initiates received the most arcane secrets of “Mayanry” by means of a simple cipher, which was intended to guard against profane inquiry.

The I AM cult had other similarities, and had similar roots in eastern religions and cultures imported into the U.S.¹⁵, whose features were often altered and strip mined for movements built around a guru offering self-improvement through mental discipline and training¹⁶. The well-known and oft ridiculed aspect of Scientology which posits a world where humans are pawns in a larger alien struggle is not sui generis either, but part of a long tradition in american cults, where such figures as Atlanteans or Lemurians toy with humans for their own ends¹⁷.

The Master’s very name, Lancaster Dodd, I read as a very obvious hat tip to the great actor Burt Lancaster, whose charlatan priest Elmer Gantry provided comfort to the same group of disaffected that Dodd caters to. The interrogation which is an “audit” under Scientology, and a “process” in the Cause, by which adepts ascend through the ranks of the movement, was so common as to be mocked in Watts’ “Trickster Guru”:

To carry this through, you must work out a whole series of unusual exercises, both psychological and physical. Some must be rather difficult tricks which can actually be accomplished, to give your student the sense of real progress.

Others must be virtually impossible – such as to think of the words yes and no at the same instant, repeatedly for five minutes, or with a pencil in each hand, to try to hit the opposite hand – which is equally trying to defend itself and hit the other. Don’t give all your students the same exercises but, because people love to be types, sort them into groups according to their astrological sun signs or according to your own private classifications, which must be given such odd names as grubers, jongers, milers, and trovers.

A judidous use of hypnosis – avoiding all the common tricks of hand-raising, staring at lights, or saying “Relax. Relax, while I count up to ten” will produce pleasant changes of feeling and the impression of attaining higher states of consciousness.

That such a movement provides a focus, a direction, a belonging without which the adept is lost, the very thing that is so central to a movement’s appeal that The Master ends with Dodd warning Quell that he cannot survive without it, is what sustained so many of such groups. This existential crisis, and its possible relief, are the basis for the very question on which Watts ends his essay. How will you deal with the barren loneliness of human existence without embracing some form of God’s grace?

I am proposing this problem as a kind of Zen koan, like “Beyond positive and negative, what is reality?” How will you avoid being either a fool or a fooler? How will you get rid of the ego-illusion without either trying or not trying? If you need God’s grace to be saved, how will you get the grace to get grace? Who will answer these questions if yourself is itself an illusion? Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.

It is helpful to see the thought cure which Quell undertakes in this larger context of the longer history of movements and their thought cures, and it also helpful to see this attempt to integrate a lost man into larger society in the context of Anderson’s first movie, Hard Eight. Others have placed Master as part of a broader theme in the director’s work, of surrogate fathers and surrogate sons, mentors and pupils – though Anderson himself rejects this, arguing that the relationship between Dodd and Quell is closer to something homo-erotic¹⁸. I do not think this is a case of either-or, and I don’t attempt to place this movie as part of any larger directorial theme, but instead make a specific comparison to Eight, which helpfully demonstrates what is absent in Dodd’s therapy and Dodd as teacher.

A small connection, first, between Sydney of Eight and Dodd of Master. Dodd is the commander of a ship, a kind of captain:

FREDDIE
Is this your ship?

THE MASTER
I am its commander, yes.

This is Sydney in conversation with Clementine:

SYDNEY
Do you remember my name?

CLEMENTINE
Sydney.

SYDNEY
Then why do you call me “Captain”?

CLEMENTINE
Because you seem like the captain of a ship to me. I see the way John follows you and worships you…like you’re his captain.

Sydney takes it upon himself to act as a mentor first for John, then Clementine, trying to implement in them a proper social code and perspective. The movie opens with him offering help and guidance to John, and we are then given a similar setting as he offers similar support to the waitress:

There is something half-finished about these two, not simply because of their youth, but because there is something that feels halted in their development. Dodd tries to change Quell for his own purposes of self-aggrandizement, and Sydney’s work here is not entirely selfless either. If John is an unfinished man, it is in part because his father died when he was young, and Sydney is the one who killed him. He instructs this man in the proper attitude and perspective in life, that you cannot demand that the world appear as you wish it, but must surrender to how it is. Sydney is arrogant, but it is a different arrogance from that of Dodd: he thinks he can make up in a few short years for this man’s lacking a father most of his life.

This experiment ends, of course, in failure. Nothing has been built up in Clementine, she constantly feels herself on the verge of falling apart, so when a man refuses to pay her money after he sleeps with her, she must have the money, not for the money itself, but for her own sense of status. That this man can sleep with her and not pay is to concede too much power to a man, and she doesn’t allow it. John, despite Sydney’s lessons, refuses to submit to the world as it is now, and he kidnaps the man. When Sydney arrives on the scene, he is exasperated at their childish attitude and reckless actions. When he calls upon Clementine to “humble yourself!”, it is not a demand for obeisance to him, but to be humble before the state of the world, of the small things we can change, and the many things we cannot.

CLEMENTINE
You don’t have to help us.

SYDNEY
I sure as hell don’t.

CLEMENTINE
Then get the fuck out of here!

JOHN
Oh, good.

SYDNEY
You got yourself in this situation. I did not get you here. So you humble yourself. You humble yourself!

Sydney knows that the very humility he asks of these two, he has not practiced. He asks of these two that they see reality clearly, yet he doesn’t quite perceive all the difficulties of Clementine’s life. He shows her a gracious respect, but he has no sense of how this woman who is forced to humble herself before the world every day, in all the indignities of life as a waitress and prostitute, cannot humble herself in this moment, not because she is incapable of humility, but because there is only so much humility she can take.

Were Sydney to truly practice the humility he asks of others, he would not attempt to re-form these two so late in life, in the belief that somehow he can make them into better people. That he makes this attempt, however, is not an ignoble failure, but a noble one. After Jimmy, a friend of John’s, extorts money from Sydney, threatening to tell John of his part in his father’s murder, the movie ends with Sydney in the dark of this man’s house, with a gun drawn as he waits for him to return, and this is not the usual victory through violence, but a loss. Sydney has attempted to school two people in a better life, but he knows that he has shown the same impatience they did, and that he did not gain his position by submitting to the world, but by asking the world to submit to him, and killing those who stood in the way. In his youth, he was closer to this man he hates, Jimmy, who gets ahead not through humble compliance but through half a dozen schemes, than to John and Clementine. Where those two end up in dangerous circumstances, Jimmy has deliberately brought them about by threatening others, and in this, too, Sydney is very much like this man, and perhaps this only makes him hate Jimmy more. Sydney has tried to be something more than what he once was, someone productive and helpful, but he has ended up back as the man he always has been, perhaps doing the only thing he is really good at, waiting in the dark and destroying a life. The film ends with Sydney focusing on a bloodstain on his shirtsleeve, and this is not just Jimmy’s blood, but all the blood of the past, that will always be there and never go away.

Though he badly needs help, Freddie is not drawn into the Cause out of any intellectual or spiritual curiosity. Where the cosmogony and the therapeutic process of this movement might be examined by another neophyte, with their skepticism eventually overcome, Freddie shows no interest in either area. If he still has the intellectual wherewithal to examine such things, he doesn’t bother to exercise it. The initial appeal of the Cause is the simple fact that it lets him in, without qualifier. His first day on the boat is the day of the wedding, and Freddie is invited and welcomed as if he were any other guest. The belonging he sought in the outside world, he now feels here. This is an unacknowledged aspect of this movement, as well as many other non-traditional movements, and some of the basis for their appeal. They can be far more egalitarian and open than the country which contains them.

For instance, it is perhaps my giving weight to the wrong thing, or an example of historical amnesia on the part of others, but I think an important, unstated fact is that a man like Clark, with his olive skin and curly hair would be asked something like a two-fold question in many parts of the United States in 1950, were he to marry a girl who looked like Elizabeth Dodd: “a) are you white?, and b) how white are you?” There is no suggestion that the Dodds, whatever their other failings, ever raise such a question. Clark is brought into the family as any other upstanding young man might be.

Jenkins, again in Mystics, makes the important point that female led neo-religious movements would often show up in eras when women achieved greater political equality and power, such as in the 1920s and 1960s¹⁹. He does not, however, make the other obvious point, one made very clear in this film: that such non-traditional religious movements gave women the possibility of power and influence they could not achieve easily in the corporate or political world, and certainly not in traditional religious institutions. The Cause survives because of the funding of Mildred Drummond, and later, Helen Sullivan. The éminence grise of the group, the power behind the throne, is, of course, Peggy Dodd, who might be a fanatic, but is easily the sharpest tack in the entire film. When Mildred Drummond returns from a session where she visited a past life, we have this moment:

MILDRED DRUMMOND
That man in the armor, was that me?

THE MASTER
Yes. That was your spirit.

This matron has the knightly qualities of any man; there is nothing in the female biology that prevents or shapes this, her body is simply a temporary container for a spirit that is as heroic as any man’s, and when given a man’s form, has been allowed to act as heroically as any man.

All these characters are given a place at the table which they wouldn’t have outside. When the wedding begins, we hear for the first time Jonny Greenwood’s “Overtones”²⁰, the theme that will play over the happiest Cause events. It sounds like disparate random instruments ultimately joining together in a mounting, unifying anthem, one for a nation you would gladly join and fight for, an anthem appropriate for this eclectic group of those excluded and diminished by larger society, who will now link up and work together in their great mission.

The second, and more important, reason for why Freddie joins the Cause is that the intimacy he always seeks out, yet avoids with a woman, he achieves with Dodd. Dana Stevens, in a Slate podcast with Forrest Wickman, captures the mood in their processing session very well²¹:

On a second viewing, it really struck me, the homo-erotic current. It’s not overtly a flirtation scene, but it’s very, very intimate. They very, very quickly get to a very very deep place with each other. You get the sense that most processing sessions don’t go this way. Because most people don’t handle the questions the strange way that Freddie would, and that Dodd is really interested in that, and the two of them sortof have this spark. And you pointed out something I hadn’t noticed, they both smoke a cigarette after the processing session.

I think the relationship between these two intentionally parallels that of a man over a woman at the time (and perhaps not just at that time), with the power and the possibility of dominance resting entirely with Dodd. To use the word “homo-erotic” implies a physical attraction, and I don’t think that quite captures the qualities of this attraction, which is very deep, but might not involve physical lust at all. It is an attraction between opposites, attracted to each other because they are opposites. Where Quell has no social gifts, Dodd has bundles of them. Lancaster is expert as a performer, at projecting an image of a figure of authority, with his aristocratic speech and his professorial pose. The image is almost entirely false, but the act never drops, except in the briefest of moments when he loses his temper; the most extended period where the mask falls entirely, even the refined accent, is in the prison cell²². These two roles, the strong man and the saint – though a false one, here – are old ones, and we can see them detailed almost exactly as they are in The Master, in The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James:

The carnivorous-minded “strong man,” the adult male and cannibal, can see nothing but mouldiness and morbidness in the saint’s gentleness and self-severity, and regards him with pure loathing. The whole feud revolves essentially upon two pivots: Shall the seen world or the unseen world be our chief sphere of adaptation? and must our means of adaptation in this seen world be aggressiveness or non-resistance?

Compared with these beaked and taloned graspers of the world, saints are herbivorous animals, tame and harmless barn-yard poultry. There are saints whose beard you may, if you ever care to, pull with impunity. Such a man excites no thrills of wonder veiled in terror; his conscience is full of scruples and returns; he stuns us neither by his inward freedom nor his outward power; and unless he found within us an altogether different faculty of admiration to appeal to, we should pass him by with contempt.

In point of fact, he does appeal to a different faculty. Reenacted in human nature is the fable of the wind, the sun, and the traveler. The sexes embody the discrepancy. The woman loves the man the more admiringly the stormier he shows himself, and the world deifies its rulers the more for being willful and unaccountable. But the woman in turn subjugates the man by the mystery of gentleness in beauty, and the saint has always charmed the world by something similar. Mankind is susceptible and suggestible in opposite directions, and the rivalry of influences is unsleeping. The saintly and the worldly ideal pursue their feud in literature as much as in real life.

A society where all were invariably aggressive would destroy itself by inner friction, and in a society where some are aggressive, others must be non-resistant, if there is to be any kind of order. This is the present constitution of society, and to the mixture we owe many of our blessings. But the aggressive members of society are always tending to become bullies, robbers, and swindlers; and no one believes that such a state of things as we now live in is the millennium. It is meanwhile quite possible to conceive an imaginary society in which there should be no aggressiveness, but only sympathy and fairness-any small community of true friends now realizes such a society. Abstractly considered, such a society on a large scale would be the millennium, for every good thing might be realized there with no expense of friction. To such a millennial society the saint would be entirely adapted. His peaceful modes of appeal would be efficacious over his companions, and there would be no one extant to take advantage of his non-resistance. The saint is therefore abstractly a higher type of man than the “strong man,” because he is adapted to the highest society conceivable, whether that society ever be concretely possible or not. The strong man would immediately tend by his presence to make that society deteriorate. It would become inferior in everything save in a certain kind of bellicose excitement, dear to men as they now are.

There is, however, a very major distinction with how these types exist in The Master: it is the saint who entirely holds the power, who is the tyrant, and the strong man who is near helpless. They are not adversaries, but bonded by a deep attraction. Dodd has all the gifts which Quell lacks, while Quell shares Dodd’s animal-like temper, a temper which Dodd has the faculties to restrain, or channel into something else, while Quell has nothing of the kind: he is an unshaped and unrestrained creature of primitive instincts and feelings. That there is a mutual attraction should not imply that it is a symmetric one; James posits the saint as a female type, but here the false saint is very much a dominant male, though he dominates not through physical power but beguilement. Freddie reveals his deepest secrets to Lancaster, while Dodd gives away nothing equal to his student. Freddie has all the qualities of a perfect disciple, a man like a woman of sand, who can be re-shaped into a socially proper form, a vindication of whatever intellectual or political movement. One can easily picture someone like Freddie in any nationalist or nativist group, prepared to commit the most heinous acts out of fealty to his leader. Freddie’s devotion to the Cause is entirely rooted in his love for this man, a love that is something akin to the contemporary idolatry of an actor or singer, and his devotion ends not because of anything like Helen Sullivan’s questioning of the internal inconsistencies of their creed, but because he questions whether the reciprocal love from the Master is directed entirely to him, or whether it is just an outward radiance of a great performer, where each member of the audience thinks the connection is made exclusively with them.

That Freddie would make an ideal black shirt, or other political legbreaker, is not incidental, and I think there is a very obvious political resonance to this movie. It is an especially contemporary resonance at this time of a tragic anniversary, and it seems to be have been missed. I quote again from David Thomson’s review:

Surely when a movie is called The Master, the chance of revolution or extremism comes into play. And that dark vision of an outraged America ready to overthrow its government is more present now than at any time since 1919. This didn’t have to be a film about Scientology; it should have been a diagnosis of America ruined by kinds of belief that have gone mad and ecstatic with fear and loathing. Dodd needs to be touched by Ayn Rand’s fury.

Perhaps I make too much of certain things, but I see an obvious immediate relevance that appears to have been overlooked. The Cause is a movement that believes the universe is at the mercy of its will. It can transform the world into whatever it wishes, and reality is no obstacle. In the movie’s most striking moment, blue eyes are made black.

The egalitarian scientific method, a soundly democratic idea, where a theory either is or isn’t internally consistent, and either does or does not have an emperical basis, whether the proponent is a pauper or a prince, is considered a nuisance to the Cause. They impose their ideas through sheer will. When Dodd is questioned on the scientific basis of his ideas, it is by a stodgey man, a man who this movie rightfully requires to be stodgey, because his power does not reside in his charismatic appeal, but his skepticism, a skepticism not provoked by Dodd, but the ramshackle intellectual shabbiness of the theories themselves. I give lengthy and full excerpt to this dialogue, because it is crucial to understanding the movie’s contemporary relevance:

JOHN MORE
You’ve also said that these methods, Cause Methods, can cure leukemia, according to your book, and…

THE MASTER
Some forms of leukemia.

THE MASTER CONT’D
In being able to access past lives, we are able to treat illnesses that may have started back thousands, even trillions of years.

MORE
Trillions?

THE MASTER
With a sir.

MORE
The earth is not understood to be more than a few billion years old.

THE MASTER
Even the smartest of our current scientists can be fooled, yes.

MORE
You can understand skepticism…

THE MASTER
Yes!

MORE
…can you not?

THE MASTER
Yes, yes. For without it, we’d be positives and no negatives, therefore zero charge. We must have it.

MORE
Good science by definition allows for more than one opinion, does it not?

THE MASTER
Which is why our gathering of data is so far-reaching.

MORE
Otherwise, you merely have the will of one man, which is the basis of cult, is it not?

THE MASTER
‘Tis, ’tis.

THE MASTER CONT’D
And thankfully, we are, all of us, working at breakneck speeds and in unison towards capturing the mind’s fatal flaws and correcting it back to its inherent state of perfect. Whilst righting civilization and eliminating war and poverty, and therefore, the atomic threat.

MORE
Well…I find it quite difficult to comprehend, or more to the point, believe, that you believe, sir, that time travel hypnosis therapy can bring world peace and cure cancer.

THE MASTER
I have never been to the pyramids, have you?

MORE
No.

THE MASTER
And yet we know that they are there because learned men have told us so. May I ask, what is your name?

MORE
John More.

THE MASTER
Mr. More, if I may, is there something frightening to you about The Cause’s travels into the past?

MORE
Frightening? No, no.

THE MASTER
Yes.

THE MASTER CONT’D
What scares you so much about traveling into the past, sir?

MORE
I’m not frightened.

THE MASTER
Are you afraid that we might discover that our past has been reshapen? Perverted? And perhaps what we think we know of this world is false information?

MORE
Time travel does not frighten me, sir, because it’s not possible. What does frighten me is the possibility of some poor soul with leukemia coming to you…

THE MASTER
There are dangers of traveling in and out of time as we understand it.

THE MASTER CONT’D
But it’s not unlike traveling down a river, you see? You travel down the river, ’round the bend, look back, and you cannot see around the bend can you? But that does not mean it is not there, does it? But certain clubs would like us to think that a truth, I say truth, uncovered should stay hidden.

MORE
I belong to no club, and if you’re unwilling to allow any discussion…

THE MASTER
No, this isn’t a discussion, it’s a grilling. There’s nothing I can do for you if your mind has been made up. You seem to know the answers to your questions. Why do you ask?

MORE
I’m sorry you’re unwilling to defend your beliefs in any kind of rational…

THE MASTER
If you already know the answers to your questions, then why ask, PIG FUCK?!

For almost all of the film, I look at Dodd as a ridiculous figure and nothing more, but in this exchange, I feel anger, intense anger at the man, but not just this man, but for all those who he stands in for. This is a man who leads a movement that does not convince through intellectual argument, but charisma alone. They do not humble themselves before the universe, but demand that it humbles to them. Their claims meet no scientific standard, and those who have the temerity to demand they submit to such a standard are bullied and harassed. The Cause is not, to coin a phrase, a reality based community. On this tragic anniversary, what political administration does this man and his movement remind you of?

When Freddie is drawn to the cause because of his mixed up feelings about intimacy and sex, he meets his opposite, who is not Lancaster Dodd, but his wife, Peggy. Freddie has extraordinary problems with sex, because it compels intimacy, so he finds ways to avoid it. Peggy, who has all the drive and intelligence that in our time would have led her to be the CEO of a billion dollar company, has forsaken the pleasures of sex, and being seen as sexual in any way at all, because of the ways that being perceived sexually, and only sexually, can impair a woman. One of the only times that we break from Quell’s narrative, where we see what he does not, is when Peggy jacks off Lancaster, an act where the power should be with the man, but rests entirely with her; this is a woman without intimacy, even in the most intimate of acts.

There may be some confusion as to why this aggressive moment, which happens right after the surreal party, takes place. I quote from a conversation between Dana Stevens and Forrest Wickman²³:

FORREST WICKMAN
We definitely know that she’s picked up on the erotic charge of this gathering. From the next scene, she approaches Lancaster Dodd and she says something like, you need to not have these thoughts, I know you’re having these thoughts, and that’s when she gets him off. That’s more or less when she wins the power grab for the master’s favors.

DANA STEVENS
Here’s my question to you, what makes her do that? What motivates the handjob sequence? Why does she feel she needs to assert her sexual control over her husband, while telling him, you can do anything you want, as long as I don’t know about it…essentially giving him license to cheat on her as long as it’s private, right? But she’s also making sure that she’s calling the shots. And I would love to know what motivates that at that moment, whether it’s the gaze exchange between Freddie and her at the party, or just a general sense, everybody’s trying to get their hands on my man?

WICKMAN
So, I guess this is what I was trying to get into. This is when I think she really starts her dominance over the master. Partly because he’s starting to become attracted to Freddie Quell’s character, and I think it’s before this that we see Val, and this is one of the first crinkles in the Master’s facade, we see where Val, his son, says he’s just making it up as he goes along. And I think one of the reasons Val says that, he’s off on the porch, Dodd doesn’t spend much time with his son. He’s spending all his time with Freddie. And so, that’s how I think he disowns his relationship with his father.

This places too much focus on the party scene, which is important, and not enough on what happens right before. The Cause are being hosted by one of their wealthy benefactors, Helen Sullivan, who gives a presentation on the virtues of their thought cure. At this meeting, there are hints of two potential, separate infidelities.

Lancaster is drawn to Freddie’s unrestrained animality, but so is his daughter, Elizabeth. When Freddie goes to beat down John More, and asks if anyone else will be coming, Clark turns to his wife for her opinion on all this, and she gives him a simple, hard look: what are you waiting for? Be a man. GO.

The attraction Elizabeth has for Freddie’s animal violence recurs during the Helen Sullivan lecture, when she sits next to Freddie and is very, very forward about what she wants. Whatever ambitions this woman has, whatever influence she might yield in our time, is very, very limited in the fifties, and the only domain she’s given to play with is in this sexual area. In seeking out Freddie for an affair, she is at least able to exercise her own will, rather than that of others. When Freddie refuses her, the hurt she registers isn’t simply over the rejection, but that she hasn’t been allowed even that. She hates this man for not even allowing this exercise in freedom, and that is why she makes the false claim later, that Freddie made passes at her. Quell rejects her for the same reason he rejects the other women: he fears getting close.

This is the hint of one infidelity, and the other takes place during Helen’s presentation. She is speaking of the vivid qualities of past lives, when she turns to the Master to praise him, and her look might reflect something more than that of a devoted student. We then cut to Peggy, who is so very good at reading people, and she sees in all this something that makes her very, very upset.

HELEN SULLIVAN
Even human bodies seem to radiate a different kind of warmth when covered with the fabrics of another age. Now, memory filters all of that out. But…when we return this way, the Cause Way, the way Master has discovered, everything is intact.

It is the possibility that Dodd is having an affair with their chief source of funds which bothers Peggy so much, not that any marital intimacy has been violated. If the affair goes wrong, they lose their funding. This is why she is so angry at what she sees pass between her husband and Helen, rather than the sex itself. The guidelines she lays out in the bathroom are simple. He can do what he wants, as long as he is discrete and it doesn’t jeopardize their movement. “We have enough problems” doesn’t refer to the difficulties in their own marriage, but the issues facing the Cause:

PEGGY
You can do whatever you want…as long as I don’t find out. And as long as no one that I know knows about it. Other than that, stop with this idea. Put it back in its pants. It didn’t work for them, and it’s not going to work for you. We have enough problems as it is, OK?

There seems to be some confusion as well over the vision of the naked women at the party, whether the vision is that of Lancaster, Peggy, or Freddie, and what meaning there is in the look exchanged between Peggy and Quell²⁴. It is very much Freddie’s vision, and different dialogue in the screenplay makes this explicit²⁵. What we see is what Freddie wants, but does not want. The woman naked, revealed, while he remains clothed, something like the relationship of a man to the women in a strip club: intimacy with every woman, but without actual intimacy. I stress that at the same time this alone is what he does not want. He wanted to sleep with Doris, was deeply in love with Doris, wanted to be close to Doris, and the ersatz intimacy of simple images of women exposed are not enough. The look that Peggy gives him is not, I think, enigmatic at all. This woman, who can read people like a book, somehow perceives what he thinks right now, and there is something in it which disturbs her. This is not fear of him as a sexual predator, but her properly seeing him as her opposite: she avoids the intimacies of sex, while he deeply wishes for them. Lancaster may not see Freddie as an adversary, the physical man opposed to the priest, but Peggy does.

As part of his therapy, Peggy tries to re-shape Freddie, so that he is something closer to what she is, where sex offers no temptation, no power, nothing. It is an important moment, and one given too little comment. She reads from an erotic story, to which he must give no response. Freddie is in agony – not over any sexual impulse, but because he sees sex as corrupting, and he wishes to look upon Peggy as an ideal, a maternal figure.

PEGGY
This is difficult for you. Listen. “‘It’s really a damn shame to tease you so, my little whore, he laughed, ‘So, I will get the dildo out of my cabinet in the next room.’ He was scarcely gone many seconds before he returned, and I felt his fingers opening the lips of my cunt. ‘Oh, oh, who is that?’ I screamed from under my skirt.”

FREDDIE
I don’t want to hear any of this.

PEGGY
Just listen. No reaction. “Kiss her. Put your tongue in her mouth, my boy. Fuck, fuck, fuck away.”

After this, after Freddie’s successful therapy, we hear again the mounting anthem of “Overtones”, and we see Peggy as this maternal ideal, when she announces the move to Phoenix. She is seen as Freddie and the other Cause members see her, shot from below, a figure of holy purity, holy gravitas.

What then follows is key to Quell’s break from the movement. The anthem continues on as Freddie, and Freddie alone, works with the Master, in the sacred work of excavating the second book. The landscape, the weapons, the music, all lend this the quality of an epic. At this critical moment in the faith, its leader has chosen Freddie, and only Freddie, to accompany him in this task. Freddie, again alone, then helps out Dodd in a series of three photos: outdoor rustic, ridiculous pretense with a quill pen, and an author profile. After this, he joins the others in the audience for the presentation of the second book. Just as at the wedding, Freddie, the perpetual outsider, is welcomed by all. It is only during the presentation, that something seems to change, something upsets Freddie that still affects him afterwards.

As said before, Quell lacks the intellectual focus to examine the Master’s ideas, as Helen Sullivan does, uncovering their arbitrariness and inconsistency²⁶. Freddie’s devotion is not to any idea, but to the leader. He reacts violently to Val’s suggestion that their scripture is made up on the fly, not because the scripture has meaning for him, but because such an accusation would imply a falseness in Dodd. What upsets Freddie in the Phoenix presentation is that after their prolonged moments of intimacy – excavating the book and taking the photos – he recognizes that this closeness is false, a simple performer’s trick²⁷. When Dodd turns to him in the audience, he looks down on him as an intimate, but – not as a known intimate; instead as just one more audience member who is supposed to feel as if the actor is acting for them, the singer singing a song to them. Before his speech, we see Dodd in preparation, and it is like seeing an actor before he takes the stage: he shuts out everything else in order to take on his role. Watts, again in “Trickster Guru”, properly identified the link between these two professions, shaman and actor: “The attractions of being a trickster guru are many. There is power and there is wealth, and still more the satisfactions of being an actor without need for a stage, who turns ‘real life’ into a drama.”

When Norman Conrad says that the book stinks, it only strengthens Freddie’s doubts that this man to whom he feels so close, is false, and he is not close to him at all. He is upset at Conrad not for maligning his faith, but because it confirms what he already feels. He beats this man just as a man might beat someone who confirmed that the man’s wife hadn’t been at work, or hadn’t been at her girlfriend’s house, when she said she had.

This brutal outburst, a regression to Freddie’s animal-man state, is the end piece of this movie’s complex portrayal of this man’s relationship to violence. For this man, violence is his only power, his only form of expression with the wider world, and his chief quality valued by others. He guards againt yielding any intimacy, and he lacks the eloquence to express all that is going wrong with him, so he signals to the outside world that he doesn’t fit in and envies the fitting-inniness of others by assaulting a man posing for his picture. His beating of an opponent of the Cause must be condemned by Dodd as the sort of brutal behaviour he cannot acknoweldge, but it is never raised as a reason for his expulsion of the group; the destruction of one’s enemies because of the over-enthusiasm of one’s followers must be spoken of as unnecessary, and something that is by no means wanted, but at the end of the day…such destruction is awfully helpful.

This violent power, always ready to burst out, is what makes this man attractive to Elizabeth, and perhaps Freddie’s moment of greatest pathos is when this power is entirely suppressed, when he is made into a spineless submissive, handing out leaflets to strangers, barely able to contain his rage at strangers, yet containing it. By making clear that violence is this man’s only power, the movie makes obvious why a marginal man like this so often turns to violence – stupid, nihilistic brutality. There is no fantasy in this, no vicarious experience for the viewer: the unleashed brutality of this man is frightening, and meant to be so. We might travel almost always with Quell, feel ourselves more sympathetic to Quell than Dodd, yet when these two men are imprisoned, we are given only the perspective of the outside of their cells, and the inside of Dodd’s: because Quell is an animal, a disturbing, uncontrolled animal, and whatever our antipathy for Dodd, we feel closer to him and safer in his cell than in Freddie’s, for this man is a rabid animal, and all sentimentality aside, we would fear to share a space with him.

It is after his beating of Conrad that Quell takes a frontierless landscape for what it is, and drives off where he wants, without submitting to the direction or order of anyone. He is not entirely a violent man, or perhaps something prevents him from physically hurting Dodd: he does not rebel by striking him, but by a simple demonstration that he is a creature of free will. That his devotion to Lancaster had been something like an unerotic love is reinforced when this break is immediately followed by his return to his lost love, Doris. A great affair doesn’t work out, so you go back to a past flame. Time, for this man, has remained entirely still while others have moved on: Doris left home long ago. This man who idealizes women, who doesn’t want them corrupted by sex, discovers that his Doris, the girl who happily leaned forward to kiss him, is now Doris Day, just like the asexual good girl icon.

The very loneliness that Watts warns about, which causes people to seek out a guru, a direction, a sense of being part of something greater, Freddie feels now, and it is mixed up with his personal connection with Lancaster. While watching a movie²⁸, he dreams a very vivid dream that he has been summoned to London, and he goes there for his final encounter with Dodd. Neither man, however, is quite the same as before. The very fact that Freddie has it in him to rebel, that he is not simply clay to be re-shaped, diminishes his attraction in Lancaster’s eyes. The Master wants followers, not questioners or equals. Freddie may have returned, but he is not spineless. Before, Peggy was able to impose her own vision on him, have him render her eyes from blue to black, create her own reality, if you will. She now tries to impose her sight on him again, and this time, he rejects it.

PEGGY
Are you drunk?

FREDDIE
No. No, no.

PEGGY
You look sick. Freddie, you don’t look healthy.

FREDDIE
I don’t look like that. That’s not how I look.

PEGGY
You don’t think you can?

FREDDIE
It’s just not how I look.

There is a hint that Freddie has changed in other ways as well, because he may have sought out Dodd, but he may be open to other intimacies as well, one in particular: he asks where Elizabeth is. She is, Peggy says, “DCF”. This phrase remains unexplained in the movie and in the script, an acronym perhaps for some Cause university that has just been established, or something like Scientology’s “SP”, suppressive person, a former movement member who is now an enemy. The answer is unimportant to this story, Freddie’s story, as the significance is that he now has an interest in her, where before he did not. After Peggy leaves the room, Lancaster sings “Slow Boat to China”²⁹, and I think this is the culminating note in guru as performance, intimacy as performance. For the song sounds like it is being sung from Lancaster to Freddie, a deeply felt, sincere rendition, only to this man. But even with an audience of one, the suspicion arises, does this singer even see the person he is singing to, or does he remain entirely within his song, and anyone who hears it is touched by the illusion that the song is for them?

When Freddie leaves the school, we hear for the first time “Overtones” in a context outside of the Cause. Though Lancaster warns him of traveling as an outcast, he must now feel some kind of belonging, a belonging to something larger outside the movement, because this anthem now travels with him, and plays over the closing scenes. We see him have sex for the first time in this movie, not avoiding it or putting it off, and the very manner by which he reached deepest intimacy with Lancaster he tries out on his partner. Whether this is a full victory for Freddie is left unknown. He is close to this woman in a way he has been afraid of throughout. The play at a process session might be an attempt at intimacy, or a method to avoid it: it is the interrogee who always reveals themselves, not the interrogator. In a movie which shows how limited the roles were for women of the time, it ends with this woman, Winn Manchester³⁰, hoping for a next life: one with more possibilities than this one. The scene is a hopeful note on which I wish The Master would end, but it does not. The anthem stops, and we suddenly return to the past, Freddie lying down next to a woman of sand, and maybe, even now, he sees Winn as others have seen him, an object of particles that can be sculpted by their hands. Freddie feels intimacy for a brief moment, feels belonging for a brief moment, but he may well soon be an exile again.

(I remain unsatisifed with this post, and will probably continue to give it further aesthetic edits, without altering any of its major themes. The footnote on Anatole Broyard’s Kafka Was the Rage was added on April 2nd.)

FOOTNOTES

¹ Though I did not agree with many, or perhaps even all of them, reviews and commentary that I found useful while thinking about the movie included: “There Will Be Dud: ‘The Master’ Is Paul Thomas Anderson’s First Mediocre Movie” by Daivd Thomson, another “There Will Be Dud”, this time by Rich Juzwiak, “The Master” DVD review by Chuck Bowen, “An Intimate Epic of Irrational Need” by Geoffrey O’Brien, “‘The Master’: We Do Not Wish To Join Your Cult” by Maria Bustillos and David Roth, “Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, reviewed-again!”, The Master: Slate’s Spoiler Special with Dana Stevens and Forrest Wickman, “The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell: Interview with Paul Thomas Anderson”, “The Astonishing Power of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master”, by Richard Brody, and the reddit thread, “The Master by PTA: Considering who we are and if we can change that.”, to which I made a small contribution.

² The script gives a slightly different version of this in the processing session, with the aunt promising to pay Freddie for what he does:

MASTER
How did you come to sleep with your Auntie Bertha?

FREDDIE
She said she’d let me have my inheritance if I were to sleep with her. So I did and I never got my money. I was drunk. She looked good.

MASTER
And you did it again and again.

FREDDIE
Yes. Because I liked it. It felt good.

MASTER
She’s rich? Is she? She has your inheritance, does she?

FREDDIE
She controls it all.

MASTER
You feel you’re owed this?

FREDDIE
I am.

³ Excerpts from Anatole Broyard’s book, Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, a recollection of his post-war years in New York City which focuses on the transient sensual instance, rather than an encyclopedic detailing of a life, provides a helpful insight into society’s attitudes then:

Nineteen forty-seven was a time when any suggestion of extramarital sex in a movie had to be punished, just as crime had to be punished. To publish a picture of pubic hair was a criminal offense. Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer were banned and Portnoy’s Complaint was twenty-two years away. There was no birth-control pill, no legal abortion—yet none of this tells you what sex at that time was like. The closest I can come to it is to say that sex was as much a superstition, or a religious heresy, as it was a pleasure. It was a combination of Halloween and Christmas—guilty, tormented, clumsy, unexamined, and thrilling. It was as much psychological as physical—the idea of sex was often the major part of foreplay. A naked human body was such a rare and striking thing that the sight of it was more than enough to start our juices flowing. People were still visually hungry; there was no sense of déjà vu as there is now. As a nation, we hadn’t lost our naïveté.

Sex was the last thing such a girl gave a man, an ultimate or ultimatum. It was as much a philosophical decision on her part as an emotional one and it had to be justified on ethical and aesthetic grounds. To sleep with a man was the end of a long chain of behavior that began with calling yourself a liberal, with appreciating modern art—sex was a modern art—and going to see foreign films. Sex too was foreign. It was a postwar thing, a kind of despairing democracy, a halfhearted form of suicide. It was a freedom more than a pleasure, perhaps even a polemic, a revenge against history. Still, there had to be love somewhere in it too—if not love of a particular man, then love of mankind, love of life, love of love, of anything.

In a way I was just as inhibited as they were by my upbringing, which condemned me to a combination of boredom and desire. Like most young men, I hadn’t yet learned how to just be with girls, to exist alongside them, to make friends—and so once my desire was satisfied, I was bored. To make it worse, I suffered from a kind of boyhood chivalry and politeness that kept me from being natural, so that I was acting all the time, and that was fatiguing. I was guiltily aware that I was using girls badly—yet to use them well would have been to love them, and I didn’t have the time or space in my life for that. For all these reasons, there was always an aura of disappointment between us as we kept renewing a bad bargain.

The energy of unspent desire, of looking forward to sex, was an immense current running through American life. It was so much more powerful then because it was delayed, cumulative, and surrounded by doubt. It was fueled by failures, as well as by successes. The force of it would have been enough to send a million rockets to the moon. The structure of desire was an immense cathedral arching inside of us. While sex was almost always disappointing in retrospect, the promise of it ennobled and abstracted us; it made us pensive.

The saddest part of sex in those days was the silence. Men and women hadn’t yet learned to talk to one another in a natural way. Girls were trained to listen. They were waiting for history to give them permission to speak. They led waiting lives—waiting for men to ask them out, for them to have an orgasm, to marry or leave them. Their silence was another form of virginity.

Broyard’s life speaks to another way in the ways in which life then overlaps with life now, and yet is very different: this writer was, by the standards of the census form and the one drop rule, a black man, who passed for white. This detail of Broyard’s life is looked at in-depth by Henry Louis Gates in “The Passing of Anatole Broyard”, and it transforms a book like Greenwich into a series of coded phrases, adding an additional layer to the multiplicities to be expected of a gifted writer like Broyard. An example of this very specific, discretely hidden, theme might be found running through two excerpts.

On being brought in for a writing assignment on jazz music:

Then, just when I needed something to do, my friend Milton Klonsky asked me to collaborate with him on a piece he had been asked to write for Partisan Review. The piece was on modern jazz, a subject neither Milton nor the editors of Partisan knew anything about. Since I had always been interested in jazz, Milton suggested that I write the first draft and he would rewrite it. What he meant was that I’d supply the facts and he’d turn them into prose.

It never even occurred to me to resent this arrangement—I was awed by Partisan Review and flattered by Milton’s offer.

A later passage, on Broyard’s friend Saul Silverman, might be, in light of the previous citation, Broyard tipping his hand to his past. I bold the crucial part:

When he got sick Saul was working on a review for The New Leader. Isaac Rosenfeld, who was the book editor, sometimes gave reviews to friends, or friends of friends, even when they hadn’t published anything before. This was not as frivolous as it sounds, because the Village was full of young men like Saul who could be trusted to turn out a decent piece. Just as Negroes knew about jazz, Jews were expected to know how to write reviews.

⁴ From “Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, reviewed-again!”:

A series of flashbacks involving Freddie’s memories of his wartime sweetheart, Doris, seemed more conventional and less illuminating with each viewing, even if the girl was played with haunting directness by the exquisite Madisen Beaty.

⁵ From “The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell”.

⁶ The Master: Slate’s Spoiler Special

⁷ From Miller’s Messiah:

The laudable aim of ‘helping mankind’ sat rather uncomfortably with the requirement for security checks, which were stepped up during 1961. An even more intrusive questionnaire was introduced which appeared to have been designed with perverts and criminals rather than potential troublemakers in mind. Many of the questions reflected Hubbard’s morbid preoccupation with sexual deviation (‘Have you ever had intercourse with a member of your family’ and ‘Have you ever had anything to do with a baby farm?’) and a wide range of crimes were also probed (‘Have you ever murdered anyone?’ and ‘Have you ever done any illicit diamond buying?’). In addition Hubbard specifically wanted to know if the individual being checked had ever ‘had any unkind thoughts’ about himself or Mary Sue.

⁸ Hubbard disciple Ray Kemp in Miller’s Messiah:

‘One of the things he liked to do was ride his motorcycle – he had an Indian, a real monster – out into the desert. He played a game he called point to point. He’d pick a spot on the horizon and go for it, straight as he could, without deviating, regardless of what was in the way, cactus or whatever. Nibs and Dick Steves, from the org, used to chase him on their motorcycles, but Ron’s favourite trick was to put up dust devils behind him. That’s another thing he could do – manipulate dust devils. He could whip them up and move them around at will. I often saw him do that.’

⁹ Miller’s Messiah:

He also dashed off a new potted biography of himself adding further gloss to his already well-burnished career. It was included in a handout headed ‘What Is Scientology?’: ‘For hundreds of years physical scientists have been seeking to apply the exact knowledge they had gained of the physical universe to Man and his problems. Newton, Sir James Jeans, Einstein, have all sought to find the exact laws of human behaviour in order to help Mankind.

‘Developed by L. Ron Hubbard, C.E., Ph.D., a nuclear physicist, Scientology has demonstrably achieved this long-sought goal. Doctor Hubbard, educated in advanced physics and higher mathematics and also a student of Sigmund Freud and others, began his present researches thirty years ago at George Washington University. The dramatic result has been Scientology…’

Also from Messiah:

The various lectures delivered at this extraordinary event were later condensed into an even more extraordinary book titled All About Radiation and written by ‘a nuclear physicist’ and ‘a medical doctor’.

The doctor was anonymous, but the ‘nuclear physicist’ was none other than L. Ron Hubbard offering the benefit of his advice with customary scant recourse to the laws of science. He asserted, for example, that a sixteen-foot wall could not stop a gamma ray whereas a human body could, an assertion later described by an eminent radiologist as ‘showing complete and utter ignorance of physics, nuclear science and medicine’. In line with his philosophy that most illnesses were caused by the mind, Hubbard avowed, ‘The danger in the world today in my opinion is not the atomic radiation which may or may not be floating through the atmosphere but the hysteria occasioned by that question.’ Radiation, he added, was ‘more of a mental than a physical problem’.

¹⁰ From Miller’s Messiah:

At the beginning of April 1952, Hubbard packed his belongings into the back of his yellow Pontiac convertible and headed out of Wichita on the Kansas Turnpike with his teenage bride of four weeks beside him on the front seat. Their destination, one thousand miles to the west, was Phoenix, Arizona, where loyal aides had already put up a sign outside a small office at 1405 North Central Street, announcing it as the headquarters of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists.

Phoenix was so named because it was built on the ruins of an ancient Indian settlement on the Salt River, which had risen like the legendary phoenix. Hubbard, who had had more than enough of Wichita, could not think of a more appropriate location for the rise of his astounding new science from the still-smoking ruins of Dianetics.

In July, the Scientific Press of Phoenix (another Hubbard enterprise) published a book originally titled What To Audit and later re-named The History of Man. Introduced as a ‘cold-blooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years’, Hubbard intended the book to establish the foundations of Scientology and he had no desire to be unduly modest about its potential. With the knowledge gained by Scientology, he wrote in the third paragraph, ‘the blind again see, the lame walk, the ill recover, the insane become sane and the sane become saner.’

Even judged by the standards of his science fiction, The History of Man was one of Hubbard’s most bizarre works and possibly the most absurd book ever written, although it was treated with great reverence by his followers. An amalgam of mysticism, psychotherapy and pure science fiction, the content invited the derision which was inevitably forthcoming. ‘To say it is an astonishing document does not adequately convey the peculiar qualities or contents of The History of Man . . .’ one government report noted. ‘For compressed nonsense and fantasy it must surpass anything theretofore written.’

In a narrative style that wobbled uncertainly between schoolboy fiction and a pseudo-scientific medical paper, Hubbard sought to explain that the human body was occupied by both a thetan and a ‘genetic entity’, or GE, a sort of low-grade soul located more or less in the centre of the body. (‘The genetic entity apparently enters the protoplasm line some two days or a week prior to conception. There is some evidence that the GE is actually double, one entering on the sperm side . . .’) The GE carried on through the evolutionary line, ‘usually on the same planet’, whereas the thetan only came to earth about 35,000 years ago to supervise the development of caveman into homo sapiens. Thus the GE was once ‘an anthropoid in the deep forests of forgotten continents or a mollusc seeking to survive on the shore of some lost sea’. The discovery of the GE (Hubbard hailed every fanciful new idea as a ‘discovery’) ‘makes it possible at last to vindicate the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin’.

¹¹ The section of Miller’s Messiah which deals with the near-death experience which gave birth to the book and its strange qualities:

‘He opened his eyes and found a nurse standing over him looking very concerned. Just as a surgeon walked into the room, Ron said, “I was dead, wasn’t I?” The surgeon shot a venomous look at the nurse as if to say, “What have you been telling this guy?” But Ron said “No, no, I know I was dead.”

‘The next part of the story I would find very difficult to direct realistically if I was a movie director. According to Ron, he jumped off the operating table, ran to his Quonset hut, got two reams of paper and a gallon of scalding black coffee and for the next 48 hours, at a blinding rate, he wrote a work called Excalibur, or The Dark Sword.

‘Well, he kept the manuscript with him and when he left the Navy he shopped it around publishers in New York, but was constantly turned down. He was told it was too radical, too much of a quantum leap. If it had been a variation of Freud or Jung or Adler, a bit of an improvement here and there, it would have been acceptable, but it was just too far ahead of everything else. He also said that as he shopped the manuscript around, the people who read it either went insane or committed suicide. The last time he showed it to a publisher, he was sitting in an office waiting for a reader to give his opinion. The reader walked into the office, tossed the manuscript on the desk and then threw himself out of the window.

‘Ron would not tell me much about Excalibur except that if you read it you would find all fear would be totally drained from you. I could never see what was wrong with that or why that would cause anyone to commit suicide.’

[Forrest Ackerman] reported the good news to his client, but Hubbard, suddenly and uncharacteristically bashful, refused to produce the manuscript. ‘He said it was in a bank vault and it was going to stay there. I think he was quite sincere. He seemed like a man who had seen too many people go crazy or commit suicide, who had enough on his conscience already. I never did get to see the manuscript or show it to any publisher. In fact, I never encountered anyone who said they had seen it.’

From The Master screenplay, Clark, Dodd’s son-in-law, talks about the legendary book:

CLARK
…it’s what started all this. Back then…in 1941, the Master…he’d been in operation, in army hospital. He died on the table…gone for seven minutes…but came back:

And in a storm of vision and creative output from this experience he wrote The Split Saber aka The Darkest Cloud.

Whoever read it…either went insane or committed suicide. Twelve people read it. Six dead, four disappeared. The last time anyone saw it…was his last publisher in New York.

Master walked into the office to find out what the reaction was, the publisher called for the reader, the reader came in with the manuscript…threw It on the table…and flung himself out of the skyscraper window….

Master took the book and hid it where no one could get to it…it’s inside this book: all the history. All the facts. All too dangerous. He re-wrote it, using what he could as the basis for what we are able to accept and learn today…that’s Book One that we all study and know…but the real stuff. The things at the center…are still too dangerous. They (kill/cure) any man who reads it. It’s passing through the jaws of resistance. It’s the truth about all this. The book is protected and hidden. No one knows where but Master.

¹² The front cover of Split Saber:

Messiah:

In February 1953, Hubbard decided it was necessary to bolster his status with the phlegmatic British by acquiring some academic qualifications. He knew precisely where they were available – from Sequoia University in Los Angeles. The ‘university’ of Sequoia was owned by Dr Joseph Hough, a chiropracteur [sic] and naturopath who ran a successful practice from a large house in downtown Los Angeles and conferred ‘degrees’ on whoever he thought merited them. Richard de Mille was awarded a Ph.D. from Sequoia, somewhat to his surprise, for a slim volume he had written under the title An Introduction to Scientology.

On 27 February, de Mille, who was then living in Los Angeles, received an urgent telegram from Hubbard in London: ‘PLEASE INFORM DR HOUGH PHD VERY ACCEPTABLE. PRIVATELY TO YOU. FOR GOSH SAKES EXPEDITE. WORK HERE UTTERLY DEPENDANT ON IT. CABLE REPLY. RON.’ De Mille found Hough thoroughly agreeable and replied the following day: ‘PHD GRANTED. HOUGH’S AIRMAIL LETTER OF CONFIRMATION FOLLOWS. GOOD LUCK.’ It was in this way that Hubbard acquired the distinction of appending letters to his name – a mysterious ‘Doctorate of Divinity’ would follow shortly, along with a ‘D. Scn’.

¹³ I take these notes on Mary Sue from my previous post on Wild Palms.

From an interview about The Master conducted by Brent Bambury, with a former high-ranking scientologist, Kate Bornstein, on Mary Sue:

BAMBURY
Did you know Mary Sue Hubbard, who was L. Ron Hubbard’s wife, and the number two figure in the church for many years?

BORNSTEIN
I knew Mary Sue Hubbard well. And it was a brilliant performance. Amy Adams captured her, completely. And yes, Mary Sue was posted as L. Ron Hubbard’s guardian. That was the post, the guardian. It was her job to protect scientology from bad people. I was scared of Mary Sue. Everyone was.

Miller gives this description of the relationship between the two Hubbards:

Hubbard would never allow anyone to criticize Mary Sue and although he rarely showed much affection for her in public, it seemed, after two failed marriages and innumerable affairs, that he had at last formed a stable relationship, improbable as it had first appeared. They were indeed an unlikely couple – a flamboyant, fast-talking extrovert entrepreneur in his forties and a quiet, intense young woman twenty years his junior from a small town in Texas. But anyone who underestimated Mary Sue made a big mistake. Although she was not yet twenty-four years old, she exercized [sic] considerable power within the Scientology movement and people around Hubbard quickly learned to be wary of her. Fiercely loyal to her husband, brusque and autocratic, she could be a dangerous enemy.

Here is former member Cyril Vosper, from Miller’s Messiah on the implementation of the social control system of “ethics”; I bold his opinion on Mary Sue’s influence of this behavior code:

‘Conditions’ were an essential part of the new ‘ethics technology’ devised by Hubbard in the midsixties, effectively as a form of social control. It was his first, tentative step towards the creation of a society within Scientology which would ultimately resemble the totalitarian state envisaged by George Orwell in his novel 1984 . Anyone thought to be disloyal, or slacking, or breaking the rules of Scientology, was reported to an ‘ethics officer’ and assigned a ‘condition’ according to the gravity of the offence. Various penalties were attached to each condition. In a ‘condition of liability’ for example, the offender was required to wear a dirty grey rag tied around his or her left arm. The worst that could happen was to be declared an ‘SP’ (suppressive person), which was tantamount to excommunication from the church. SPs were defined by Hubbard as ‘fair game’ to be pursued, sued and harassed at every possible opportunity.

‘What happened with the development of ethics,’ said Cyril Vosper, who worked on the staff at Saint Hill, ‘was that zeal expanded at the expense of tolerance and sanity. My feeling was that Mary Sue devised a lot of the really degrading aspects of ethics. I always had great warmth and admiration for Ron [Hubbard] – he was a remarkable individual, a constant source of new information and ideas – but I thought Mary Sue was an exceedingly nasty person. She was a bitch.‘

An incident on one of scientology’s ships, from Miller, I bold Mary Sue’s part:

Arthur’s [a son of Hubbard's] special responsibility on board ship was to look after his father’s motor-cycles, in particular a huge Harley Davidson that had been given to Hubbard by the Toronto org. One afternoon, the Commodore told Doreen [a scientology member] to make sure Arthur had cleaned the Harley Davidson properly by wiping a tissue over the mudguards and petrol tank and bringing it back to show him. She returned with a black smudge on the tissue. Hubbard was incensed. ‘You go and assign Arthur liability,’ he roared at Doreen, ‘he’s not doing his duty.’

Doreen was relieved that Arthur didn’t seem to be too worried by his father’s reaction, or by the need to tie a grey rag round his arm, but it was not the end of the matter. Mary Sue, who was fiercely protective of her children, felt it was Doreen’s fault that Arthur had been assigned liability. Later that afternoon, she grabbed her by the arm and starting shaking her. ‘You little fiend,’ she hissed, sinking her nails into the girl’s arm, ‘you’re destroying my family.’

Another:

A few months later, Diana [a daughter of Hubbard's] upset her father in some way. Hubbard reeled off a long reprimand to the messenger on duty, adding at the end of it: ‘OK, go and spit in Diana’s face.’ The messenger was a little dark-eyed girl called Jill Goodman, thirteen years old. She ran along the deck to Diana’s office, burst in, spat in her face with unerring accuracy and began shouting her message as Diana let out a scream of fury. Mary Sue, who was in an adjoining office, burst in as her daughter was wiping the spittle from her face. She grabbed Jill round the throat as if she was going to strangle her and also began screeching. Jill started crying and when Mary Sue let her go, she immediately rushed off to tell the Commodore. Another acrimonious husband and wife row followed, which ended with Mary Sue throwing her shoes at the luckless messenger Hubbard despatched to chastise her further.

It is Mary Sue, following L. Ron Hubbard’s orders, who heads up the infamous Operation Snow White, an attempt by the church to eliminate any government account that might harm the church’s reputation by having scientologists take positions in government agencies, steal documents from various agencies, and destroy them.

Miller gives a good description of this project:

Now sixty-two, Hubbard was also beginning to ponder his place in posterity. The Church of Scientology had been swift to make use of the recently enacted Freedom of Information Act, which had revealed that government agencies held a daunting amount of material about Scientology and its founder in their files, much of it less than flattering. Hubbard, who had never been fettered by convention or strict observance of the law, conceived a simple, but startlingly audacious, plan to improve his own image and that of his church for the benefit of future generations of Scientologists. All that needed to be done, he decided, was to infiltrate the agencies concerned, steal the relevant files and either destroy or launder any damaging information they contained. To a man who had founded both a church and a private navy this was a perfectly feasible scheme. The operation was given the code name Snow White – two words that would figure ever more prominently over the next few months in the communications between the Guardian’s Office in Los Angeles and the Commodore’s hiding place in Queens, New York.

Operation Snow White, the impudent plan to launder public records that he had dreamed up three years earlier, was progressing rapidly and with a degree of success that few would have believed possible. By the beginning of 1975, the Guardian’s Office had infiltrated agents into the Internal Revenue Service, the US Coast Guard and the Drug Enforcement Agency. By May, Gerald Wolfe, a Scientologist working at the IRS in Washington as a clerk-typist, had stolen more than thirty thousand pages of documents relating to the Church of Scientology and the Hubbards. He was known to the Guardian’s Office by the code-name, ‘Silver’.

Within the hierarchy of the Church of Scientology, ultimate responsibility for the activities of Operation Snow White rested with Mary Sue Hubbard, the controller, but it was inconceivable that she was acting on her own initiative or not discussing progress with her husband. And although the amateur agents had discovered it was ridiculously easy to infiltrate, bug and burgle US government offices, the risks were considerable, both to the agents themselves and their church superiors. Hubbard was not too worried about who would take the rap if Operation Snow White was exposed, as long as it was not him.

Things eventually go wrong, with a number of these infiltrators arrested, and one of them, Michael Meisner, revealing the details of the operation, leading to an FBI raid on church offices, as well as the indictment and conviction of top church figures, including Mary Sue.

At six o’clock on the morning of 8 July 1977, 134 FBI agents armed with search warrants and sledgehammers, simultaneously broke into the offices of the Church of Scientology in Washington and Los Angeles and carted away 48,149 documents. They would reveal an astonishing espionage system which spanned the United States and penetrated some of the highest offices in the land.

On 15 August 1978, a federal grand jury in Washington indicted nine Scientologists on twenty-eight counts of conspiring to steam government documents, theft of government documents, burglarizing government offices, intercepting government communications, harbouring a fugitive, making false declarations before a grand jury and conspiring to obstruct justice. Heading the list of those indicted was Mary Sue Hubbard. She faced a maximum penalty, if convicted, of 175 years in prison and a fine of $40,000. On 29 August, all nine defendants were arraigned in the federal courthouse at the foot of Capitol Hill and pleaded not guilty.

Mary Sue never betrayed her husband, but then she had never intended to. The trial was scheduled for 24 September in Washington, but the government prosecutors and defence attorneys were still bargaining at that date and a stay was granted. On 8 October, in an unusual legal manoeuvre, an agreement was reached that the nine defendants would plead guilty to one count each if the government presented a written statement of its case, thereby avoiding a lengthy trial.

On 26 October, US District Judge Charles R. Richey accordingly found the nine Scientologists guilty on one count each of the indictment. Mary Sue and two others were fined the maximum of $10,000 and jailed for five years. The remaining defendants received similar fines and prison sentences of between one and four years.

¹⁴ That Scientology was started by an impoverished author as a money-making enterprise is made in many places, but for the moment I use as a citation this fascinating account of the New York science fiction writing community, related by Harlan Ellison to Robin Williams:

¹⁵ Jenkins’ Mystics:

In 1930 former medium, hypnotist, and gold prospector Guy Ballard claimed to have had a personal encounter on California’s Mount Shasta with none other than the Count of Saint-Germain, the figure who had fascinated [fiction writer Bulwer Lytton] and the original Theosophists. Though now thousands of years old, Saint-Germain lived on as an Ascended Master, who chose Ballard as his earthly vehicle and the channel of the forces of light: Guy and his wife, Edna, now became Accredited Messengers of the Masters. Ballard founded the movement of I AM, which claimed to show adherents how to achieve perfect unity with the higher self, the God within. Publishing under the pseudonym of Godfre Ray King, Ballard promulgated his beliefs in a number of books, including Unveiled Mysteries (1934), the title of which recalls Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled. In 1932 the movement set up headquarters in Los Angeles, and it used profits from the books to advertise heavily on radio.

Critics attacked I AM for its flagrant exploitation of public gullibility, especially in cult-prone California. In 1938, the Christian Century described the new movement under the weary headline “Another One in Los Angeles.” One of the deadliest enemies of the group was Gerald Bryan, who produced a series of embarrassing revelations about its origins through the late 1930s. Among other things, Bryan showed that Ballard had plagiarized much of his written material from Theosophical works written over the previous forty years or so, which described meetings with ascended masters in words almost identical to Ballard’s, specifically naming the Count: of Saint-Germain. Visual portrayals of the Ascended Masters were also borrowed, uncredited, from standard Theosophical works.

Bryan shows once again how commonplace such esoteric ideas had become in popular culture by the 1920s and how easily a whole religious system could be concocted from materials lying readily at hand. He claimed that the Ballards “imbibed a little of Christian Science, read a bit of the Walter Method C. S. [Christian Science], branched over to the Unity School at Kansas City, linked up with the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), joined the Order of Christian Mystics [the Curtiss group], studied under Pelley the Silver Shirter, sat at the feet of some of the Swamis, read a little of Theosophy, looked into the magic of Yogi philosophy and Oriental mysticism, [and] interested themselves in Baird T. Spalding and his Masters of the Far East.” Ballard also consulted with Frank Robinson, who “just warned him to keep off my [Robinson's] stuff.”64 Pelley had also had his vision of the Masters on a California mountain, and like Pelley, the Ballards drew from the pulps and popular science magazines. I AM claimed access to “great and mighty Ascended Masters speaking audibly over a dazzling LIGHT AND SOUND RAY [sic],” which manifested in the Ballard headquarters in Chicago. This could easily have been borrowed from a contemporary science fiction magazine like Astounding, if not from a Flash Gordon movie serial.

Whatever its origins, I AM developed its own style of meetings and ceremonials, emphasizing the roles of both Jesus and Saint-Germain. To attract the curious, large public meetings were held in elaborately decorated public auditoria, while permanent I AM temples were developed to serve the fully committed initiates, the Hundred Percenters. Five I AM centers appeared in California, two in Florida, others in Philadelphia, Seattle, and Chicago. Members’ services were reminiscent of traditional seances. Also recalling spiritualism, the Ballard system involved exorcising the countless psychic entities that threatened the human race, with the believer invoking Saint-Germain or some other higher presence: on one occasion in 1939, some four hundred thousand troublesome entities were removed from greater Philadelphia. As well as raiding the ranks of spiritualism, “they have taken followers from Christian Science, Unity, the various metaphysical cults and even from the older religions; many persons of education and refinement are included in their number.”

I AM played to enthusiastic audiences across the nation, with a series of ten-day classes or crusades focusing on particular cities and regions. The movement’s claim to have a million followers is doubtful, but there were at least tens of thousands prepared to support a sizable merchandising operation, which included books, records, pins, rings, posters, and portraits of the Masters, including Saint-Germain and Guy Ballard himself. I AM rings sold for $12, photographs of Ballard for $2.50, a chart of the Magic Presence for $12, and $1.25 bought a special binder in which to store the flood of continuing I AM edicts. New Age Cold Cream was also available.67 By such means I AM allegedly took in $3 million during its first decade of existence.

¹⁶ Mystics:

The occult vision was hierarchical in nature, reflecting the influence of Qabalistic and Neoplatonic thought as well as Hinduism. The universe contained countless beings at different levels of spiritual development, including what past cultures have called gods, demons, and angels, and these beings or forces could be induced to serve the human adept possessing the appropriate techniques. In 1888, a text on rosicrucianism claimed that members of the group “say that if our spiritual powers of perception were fully developed, we should see the universe peopled with other beings than ourselves, and of whose existence we know nothing at present. They say that we should then see this universe filled with things of life,” including the famous elemental spirits of Renaissance magic: nymphs, salamanders, gnomes, undines, and fairies. Far more exalted were the planetary spirits, former human beings who had attained near-divine powers.

Humans were an integral part of this celestial hierarchy. As the spiritualists had supposedly shown, sentient existence did not cease with death, so the soul existed as an eternal spiritual presence. Many went still further in their belief in human survival, as both reincarnation and karma became tenets of most mystical movements. The process of rebirth was part of the soul’s evolution towards perfection and union with the Divine, the ultimate goal of all mystical enterprise: in this vision, alchemy was a material symbol for the inner transformation of the baser elements of the individual soul into heavenly fire. The idea that humans could progress towards divinity meshed well with the optimism of New Thought and with the popular evolutionary ideas so prevalent at this time. Most occult authors were fascinated by evolution, seeing it, however, in terms far broader than materialistic Darwinism.

Great mystics or prophets might represent souls in a very advanced state of spiritual progress, who should be regarded as the rightful teachers of humanity, Masters or Secret Chiefs. This idea explains the ambiguous attitude towards established world religions: the Buddha, Jesus, and other leaders were seen as highly evolved souls who offered authentic wisdom, however much their words had been twisted by their followers. Many Western occultists saw their own belief-system as a return to an authentic Christianity, which preached a message that was identical to Buddhism, as well as to Mesmerism, alchemy, and rosicrucianism. Whereas conventional Christians saw only the external truths, esoteric believers heard the real Jesus. To quote Manly Hall again, “So wisdom drapes her truth with symbolism, and covers her insight with allegory. Creeds, rituals, poems are parables and symbols. The ignorant take them literally and build for themselves prison-houses of words…Through the shadow shines ever the Perfect Light.” In addition to the overall belief-system, believers were offered a vision of a vastly expanded human potential. Then as now, one of these fundamental truths was that human beings contained within themselves immense forces presently unknown to science and that these powers could be mobilized by an individual with the proper insight, training, and initiation. Though some of the methods advocated to this end were purely magical (such as the recitation of spells or names of power), much occult training consisted of attempts to master one’s own body and mind through breath control, the regulation of sexual desire, and the development of skills like meditation and visualization. This shared many points of contact with the New Thought belief in the power of the will to control the ailments of mind and body, though occultists went still further, suggesting that a trained adept would be able to exercise skills such as precognition, psychokinesis, telepathy, miraculous healing, astral travel, and other traditional magic arts.

¹⁷ Mystics:

Meanwhile, tales of lost continents not only flourished, they proliferated. Throughout the twentieth century, believers would claim access to a whole alternate history and archaeology of the human civilization, venturing many thousands of years before the meager period marked out by staid academics. The ancient civilization of Atlantis was soon joined by the lost land of Lemuria, said to lie under the Indian Ocean and to have left traces throughout the Pacific world, making it of great interest to West Coast occultists. Historical accounts of this lost society were mainly derived from mediumship and channeling. The most-cited source for the Lemurian idea was Rudolf Steiner’s The Submerged Continents of Atlantis and Lemuria, which was translated from the German into English in 1911. By the 1920s, James Churchward was claiming to have discovered secret records from yet another sunken continent, that of Mu, the “Motherland of Man,” which had left its remnants in Polynesia. In his view, “[t]he Garden of Eden was not in Asia, but in a now sunken continent in the Pacific Ocean,” and memories of Mu were found scattered across the world, in Mayan, Indian and Egyptian records, on Easter Island, and in the rituals of Freemasonry. Churchward claimed that Mu had foreshadowed and even excelled all modern science, “We are probably now treading the same road which our forefathers trod over 100,000 years ago.” Contemporary groups hoped to gain access to these ancient secrets: in 1936, a Lemurian Fellowship was founded in Wisconsin; it relocated to Los Angeles in 1942.

Theosophy, which possessed a widespread network of lodges in North America, deserves much of the credit for popularizing yoga and associated Hindu ideas, as well as terms like “karma,” “mahatma,” “guru,” and “chela.” The Theosophical tradition also disseminated ideas like the Ascended Masters and reincarnation, which diffused throughout the California sects of the next half century. In 1898, the American Theosophical Society fell apart amidst vicious internal squabbles, but several new groups sprouted from the wreckage. Some of these factions were short-lived but others thrived, such as Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy.

One American strand of Theosophy was dominated by Katherine Tingley, who in 1899 established her headquarters at Point Loma, her “White City in a Land of Gold beside a Sunset Sea.” This became a Xanadu dreamworld, in which forty buildings represented a spectrum of architectural styles, with “Muslim domes, Hindu temples, Egyptian gates, and Greek theaters.” Point Loma gave Tingley a base for her educational and archaeological projects, which included a theosophical university and a raja yoga college. At its height, the colony supported three hundred residents under the autocratic rule of the Purple Mother, and some 2,500 children were educated there between 1897 and 1942. The community became an established part of the southern California social landscape, and it survived for several years after Tingley’s death in 1935.

The experiment had enduring results. Carey McWilliams suggested that “[i]t was through Point Loma that the yogi influence reached
Southern California. . . . After Mrs. Tingley’s appearance in Southern California, the region acquired a reputation as an occult land and Theosophists began to converge upon it from the four corners of the earth.” The location fitted well with the Theosophical worldview, in which a series of great races are said to have dominated the planet at various times since the primeval Lemurians and Atlanteans. Soon, a sixth race was expected to arise and replace the European Aryans; some writers prophesied that this new group would appear in the Pacific regions of the United States. By the 1920s, other Theosophical visitors to California included Annie Besant, a bitter rival of Tingley, and Krishnamurti, whom Mrs. Besant proclaimed to be a messianic figure. Krishnamurti was presented as the long-sought world teacher, successor to Christ and the Buddha. He was lionized on several American visits in the late 1920s, until in 1929 he repudiated both Besant and the messianic claims: later, he would warn listeners against all would-be messiahs and prophets. Another Theosophical immigrant was Alice Bailey, a prolific British writer on all manner of occult topics, who claimed to be channeling a spirit known as “The Tibetan.” Bailey later relocated to New York, where her Arcane School (founded in 1923) dispensed correspondence courses in mysticism.

¹⁸ From “Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master‘s Master” by Scott Foundas:

For his part, Anderson is loath to see the movie as a variation on a pet theme. “Is it getting tired?” he asks when I say that Dodd and Freddie recall the surrogate father-son relationships in many of his films, beginning with the aging gambler Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) and his naive protégé (John C. Reilly) in Anderson’s 1996 debut feature, Hard Eight. He prefers to think of his Master characters as unrequited lovers, a subtle, homoerotic tension that is triangulated in the film by the presence of Dodd’s loyal, steely wife (Amy Adams). “But maybe that’s just my way of dressing it up and thinking I was doing something different this time,” he says. In any case, he seems happy that people-including us-are finally talking about something other than Scientology. “I’ve kind of loved these screenings we’ve had, because no one’s talking about Scientology anymore once they see the film. They’re just talking about how fucking good Joaquin Phoenix is.”

¹⁹ Mystics:

Another social development of these years was the changing role and improving status of women. The suffragette years before 1920 show many parallels to the organized feminist movement that emerged during the late 1960s. In both eras, women enjoyed a higher degree of economic independence and a new social and political power, which was symbolized by important legal victories. For the generation of the 1920s, this meant the suffrage and prohibition; in the 1970s, it would involve sharply increased public awareness of issues of sexual violence. Both decades were also marked by the surging popularity of women-oriented religious ideas and sects, in the early part of the century, the groups founded by leaders like Madame Blavatsky, Aimee Semple McPherson, Myrtle Fillmore, Ellen White, and Mary Baker Eddy.

²⁰ “Overtones”, by Jonny Greenwood:

²¹ The Master: Slate’s Spoiler Special with Dana Stevens and Forrest Wickman

²² It’s here that the break in character comes:

MASTER
You’ve been implanted with a push-pull mechanism that keeps you fearful of authority and destructive. We are in the middle of a battle that’s a trillion years in the making, and it’s bigger than the both of us.

FREDDIE
You’re making this shit up! You make this shit up! You don’t know what you’re talking about.

MASTER
I don’t know what I’m talking about?

FREDDIE
No, you don’t.

MASTER
I give you facts.

FREDDIE
You don’t give me facts! What facts? What facts?

MASTER
They are fucking facts!

FREDDIE
What facts? What facts?

MASTER
Fuck you!

FREDDIE
Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!

MASTER
Why don’t you kick the bed some more?

FREDDIE
Fuck you!

MASTER
Fuck you, you lazy ass piece of shit!

FREDDIE
Fuck you. Fuck you. I’m not lazy!

MASTER
You’re fucking lazy!

FREDDIE
Oh, you make shit up…

MASTER
You’re fuckin’ lazy!

FREDDIE
Your fucking family hates you! Your son hates you!

MASTER
Oh, they do?

FREDDIE
Yeah! Your son hates you.

MASTER
Who fucking likes you except for me? Nobody! Except for me.

FREDDIE
No, you don’t fucking like me.

MASTER
Who likes you except for me? Except for me? I’m the only one who likes you.

The change in Dodd’s style of speech is there in the slightly different screenplay dialogue which is a jarring break from his usual speaking style. He never uses contractions, never vernacular like “wanna”, and now he does:

MASTER
ME shut my mouth? You’re a fucking DRUNK.

You CACTUS. Play a game with me?

I don’t think so, you little yo-yo. That ain’t the way. You want to shut me up? I’m the best and only friend you have, shut me up for saving you? HELPING YOU. ONLY WAY. FIND ANOTHER ONE, YO-YO. You wanna get rid of this or live this way or MASTER it?

You listen – you wanna spit in that cops face for touching you? I’m gonna beat him with you. Bash his skull in. BUT DON’T TURN ON ME, DRUNK.

²³ The Master: Slate’s Spoiler Special

²⁴ From “Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, reviewed-again!”:

Here’s one moment that started to unfold for me only upon a second viewing and became one of the principal reasons I couldn’t resist a third: the party scene I mentioned above, in which Hoffman’s voluble Master performs the mildly bawdy traditional song “I’ll Go No More A-Rovin’” for an admiring group of acolytes, including his pregnant wife Peggy (Amy Adams), while Freddie watches in a drunken stupor from a nearby chair. (The description that follows for the next few paragraphs contains no spoilers in the sense of significant plot revelations, but if you haven’t seen the movie and want to go in interpretively unspoiled, come back after you’ve seen it.) Abruptly, from one shot to the next, all the female partygoers appear stark naked, including the lady musicians. (I liked how the cellist kept on her ropes of pearls.)

The first time through, this sudden tableau of bare female flesh threw me for a moment-not only because a screen full of clapping, naked women will do that to a person, but because my relation to what I was seeing on screen had been unceremoniously destabilized. What was going on here? Was it possible that the women were truly naked-that the Master, established in earlier scenes as a skilled practitioner of mass seduction, had somehow compelled a roomful of his followers to strip mid-song? No, it had to be the sex-obsessed Freddie who was denuding them with his eyes (eyes which, for the majority of the scene, he can barely keep open as he lolls in his wing chair). Or the fantasy might be taking place in the mind of the Master himself, who’s clearly relishing the opportunity to show off his symbolic sexual power to everyone in the room, especially Freddie, who’s already emerged as Master’s pet “guinea pig and protégé.”

Only on a third viewing did it occur to me that the naked singalong might also be read as unfolding in the mind of Peggy Dodd, who’s one of the nude clappers on view, albeit modestly shielded by the arm of her chair. To the extent that there’s any dramatic action in this scene, it unfolds not between Master and the pretty young women he teases and tickles, but between the silent Peggy, seen only in the background of a wide shot that includes her husband and all the other partiers, and Freddie, whom we see only in intermittent medium close-ups, alone in the frame – a disconnected outsider whose spatial relation to the action remains unclear. As the revelry unfolds, Peggy fixes the out-of-frame spot we assume Freddie must occupy with a baleful, indeterminate glare and is herself eventually blocked from view by the bobbing, dancing bodies of the women surrounding her. Is it possible that the vision of Master surrounded by roomful of naked temptresses is a paranoid fantasy on the part of the fiercely protective Peggy (who in the very next scene will assert her sexual authority over her husband in what I can only pray will be this year’s most hostile on-screen handjob)?

²⁵ An excerpt of screenplay dialogue from the prison scene:

FREDDIE
Helen’s house…all those girls walking around, the wives of…I want to fuck all of them.

MASTER
Sex is not an aberration. Never has been. So what’s wrong?

FREDDIE
I want to fuck ‘em all. I want to stick it in every one of them.

²⁶ From after the presentation:

HELEN SULLIVAN
You’ve changed the processing-platform question. Now it says, “Can you imagine…?”

THE MASTER
Yes.

HELEN
If our previous method was to induce memory by asking, “Can you recall,” doesn’t it then change everything if now we say, “Can you imagine?”

THE MASTER
We are invoking a new, wider range to account for the new data. “Can you imagine,” allows for a more creative pathway to the mind. More open.

HELEN
But if the new…

THE MASTER
What do you want?!

HELEN looks like she’s about to burst into tears at this.

THE MASTER
Helen. This is the new work.

²⁷ There are many examples of this, but I pick the one most conveniently at hand, a good and recently read piece by John Seabrook, “Factory Girls”, on K-Pop bands:

Standing beside me was Jon Toth, a twenty-nine-year-old white guy, a computer scientist who had driven twelve hours straight from New Mexico. Toth is a fan of Girls’ Generation, a nine-member girl group in the process of recording its American début album, with Interscope Records. At the time he stumbled across the Girls, on YouTube, Toth was an alt-rock guy; he loved Weezer. “I was definitely not the kind of guy you’d expect to get into a nine-girl Asian group,” he told me. But before long Toth was studying Korean, in order to understand the lyrics and also Korean TV shows. Then he started cooking Korean food. Eventually, he travelled all the way to Seoul, where, for the first time, he was able to see the Girls—Tiffany, Sooyoung, Jessica, Taeyeon, Sunny, Hyoyeon, Yuri, Yoona, and Seohyun—perform live. It was a life-changing experience.

“You think you love them, but then you see Tiffany point directly at you and wink, and everything else that exists in the world just disappears,” Toth wrote on Soshified, a Girls’ fan site. “You think you love them, but then you see Sooyoung look you dead in the eye and say in English, ‘Thank you for coming.’ ” Toth concluded, “I might not know how much I love these girls.”

I had arranged to meet Toth because somewhere between my tenth viewing of the Girls’ video “Mr. Taxi” and my twentieth click on “Gee” it occurred to me that I might not know how much I loved these girls, either. “Listen, boy,” Tiffany coos at the outset of “Gee.” “It’s my first love story.” And then she tilts her head to the side and flashes her eye smile—the precise crinkle in the outer corner that texts her love straight 2U.

Later in the story, the writer meets Tiffany herself:

From out in the arena came a long, low wailing sound—the screams of the fans, dying for the idols to appear.

“O.K., we have to go,” the S.M. [S.M. Entertainment, the music agency of Girls’ Generation] man said.

But I did have one personal question for Tiffany. “Your eye smile: did you learn that or is it natural?”

“No,” Tiffany replied, giggling. “My dad smiles this way.” She eye-smiled me from two feet away: a jolt of pure cultural technology.

After this meeting, he sees them in performance:

I was watching the show from beside the stage when the nine members of Girls’ Generation came out, in bluejeans and white T-shirts, to perform “Gee.” The whole place shouted the hook: “Geegeegeegeebabybaby.” Whenever a song ended, the Girls deployed around the stage. At one point, Sooyoung came to where I was standing and began frantically winking and waving her way through the crowd, wearing a blissful smile and shaking her glossy hair. She was no longer the cold idol I had encountered in the press room but a super cheerleader. It was just as Jon Toth had said it would be: the Girls had come to see us.

²⁸ For those curious, the cartoon Freddie is watching is “Casper and the Deep Boo Sea”, which has the very fitting theme, for a movie about a deeply lonely man, of a very lonely ghost seeking out friends.

²⁹ In the original script, the choice of song also serves as a bookend to the film’s opening, where Freddie leaves the military hospital without permission, leaving behind a note:

HALLWAY, DOCTOR’S OFFICE
Freddie places a note on the door of the Doctor. He walks away, CAMERA sees the note, it reads:

“I’VE GONE TO CHINA. SEE YOU AGAIN SOMETIME. THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP.”

³⁰ One can perhaps take a little lexical game a little too far, and say that the names of these characters imply they’ll end up together. Winn is short for Winnie. Anderson is a fan of Kubrick, so he no doubt knows the dialogue in The Shining, where Shelly Duvall’s character is asked, are you a Winnie or a Freddie, because her name, Winifred, is a union of both.

(The Master images copyright The Weinstein Company; Hard Eight images copyright The Samuel Goldwyn Company and associated producers.)

Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained

(SPOILERS: what follows gives away plot details of Django, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs, Death Proof, Blade Runner, and The 25th Hour.)

A movie about slavery, and business transactions gone awry. It’s a movie I avoided seeing for a while because I expected my reaction to be closest to Roxane Gay’s “Surviving ‘Django’”. I think Quentin Tarantino sometimes plays with images as if they have no context, thinking that they can be placed anywhere. This is both connected with, and apart, from his dealing in history’s tragedies. When Kill Bill opens with the Bride covered in blood, begging for the life of herself and her child, I think it is too potent, too wrenching for a simple revenge film, and this suffering overwhelms it. What might give us emotional distance in a gallo with such a scene – the incompetence of the crew, the poor ability of the actress – are absent here with an excellent actress and a skilled director able to bring out the best of his collaborators. The scene is the opening of a simple tale of vengeance, when it calls for something deeper, along the lines of Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War. This same issue is in effect in Inglourious Basterds where the transformation of an extermination into a winnable fight is, I think, an obscenity.

That this doesn’t take place in Django is due to a difference in approach taken from Basterds and the Kill Bill movies. We are constantly given devices which distance the movie from the real, establishing that we are in a fantastic, constructed place. When the slaves march during the opening, there is a series of quick, attention-calling zooms. But more importantly, the forest they march through, with its icicle thick trees and where the lantern light is the only gleam in the shot, suggest a fairy tale forest – we do not truly feel the cold these men suffer¹. When Schultz is killed, his body flies across the room; when Lara Lee is killed, it’s as if she’s yanked from the stage by the old burlesque cane. What reality is let into the shootout scenes, is solely for the movie’s own benefit – such as Django having to move from body to body while under fire to retrieve guns, because these six shooters actually do carry only six bullets. The movie is often shot like a civil war-era ambrotype photo, black and white photos where one color tint was added by hand. Often there seems to be no color at all in the frame, except for the golden light of flame or beer. Before Candieland explodes, Broomhilda (I’m unsure if she gets the cartoon witch’s name or the Norse myth name, so I give her the witch’s name listed in the IMDB) puts her fingers to her ears to keep out the sound, the kind of gesture you associate with cartoons and broad comedies. The movie ends in the fairy tale tone with which it began, Django and Broomhilda lit with moonly light, and the verdant green behind them. Where Basterds is a simple, obvious lie, Django is deliberately a myth, a myth possibly kept hidden by plantation owners and their successors².

The approach makes the movie feel like something out of an alternative history, where Reconstruction may have taken place a little differently, a great racial inequality did not persist, and slavery ended up an out in the open topic, finally becoming fodder, just like World War II and everything else, for TV shows, and what we see here are clips from a 1970s show of this alternate universe, “The Bounty Hunters”: two men, one a former slave, encounter various adventures in the pre-Civil War south as they search for the freed man’s captive wife. The final episode culminates in the striking events of such series finales: the death of the german bounty hunter and the rescue of the enchained woman. Abuse of slavery’s most powerful images is avoided by treating them as things that are already out in the open, and do not need explicit reference. The most upsetting sequence, for me, is when D’Artagnan is torn apart by the dogs: though Tarantino has a reputation for dwelling on violence, when the event takes place, we are only given a brief shot, at an overhead distance, and then another from D’Artagnan’s perspective. The rest is entirely the reactions of the trackers, Schultz, and the slaves to this horror, with the explicit moments of the event only seen in the microsecond memories of Schultz at the plantation. We are similarly given only the briefest shots of Broomhilda emerging from the hot box – as if we live in a world where a hot box is as well known as a gas chamber, and only a passing reference is needed. This approach avoids the double quality of such images, where a sequence of a man torn apart by dogs ostensibly has been designed to repel us, when it may also end up sating our appetite for torture. It also avoids a repulsive self-serving piety that takes place when showing such things, explicitly: this movie is good, its makers are good people, because they have shown such horrors unembellished.

This is a deliberate approach, not arbitrary, and it works for much of the movie, but not all. There are some things that are too strong, that the movie cannot contain, and demand a different movie, just as the opening of Kill Bill summons a different slant. Only one of these is an image, and it’s of Broomhilda branded as a runaway. It is brief, and yet it is still too long, and shot too close. The pain is too great, the submission too much, and it requires the movie to somehow explore this, and it does not. The other times when Django dives into too deep waters have nothing to do with explicit horror, but a limiting of life that cannot simply be touched on, then walked away from, but this is what happens: it does walk away. There is Django stumbling over the simple english of the “Wanted” poster, and there is pliant Bettina unable to understand, as if this were magic or anti-gravity, what a free black man is. In this alternate universe, such issues may have been explored in-depth, and a passing reference is sufficient, but that universe is not our own.

The serious flaw of Django has to do with its character approach, and this is both related and unrelated to its dealings with its historical subject. E.M. Forster distinguished between round and flat characters, with round characters demonstrating gradual change throughout the course of a story, while those that are flat appearing entirely unchanged, demonstrating the same attitude throughout the story. Michael Corleone is a round character: he moves steadily and quietly from the cheerful boy, outside his father’s business, to the cold-souled tactician of the first movie’s end and its sequel. Sitcom characters are flat: Homer will always be stupid, Marge practical, Lisa bookish, and Bart a juvie. Deviations from this type are temporary or for comic effect: Homer will have a life-changing experience where he ceases to be so insensitive to others, but by the next episode he has returned to being the same man. The roles of Pulp Fiction – kingpin, moll, boxer, hitmen – stay immutably the same; Jules Winfield may have a crisis of conscience, but his overall character remains indistinguishable from what it was before. It is a change that compels his exit from the movie, just as an abrupt change in a sitcom character compels their exit: the Fonz falls in love and decides to finally get married.

That Tarantino’s characters are flat often goes unnoticed, because their dialogue is so colorful³. Where, however, what is said, and unsaid, by a character in another movie or book might open itself up to a large forking path of possibilities – Tarantino’s writing is usually a very ornate and intricate expression of a simple idea. This gold watch is of great value to your family, and much was done to preserve it. If you don’t throw the fight, we will kill you. I say you have african ancestry, and this upsets you. This is not unique to Tarantino, and it is not an indictment of him. I quote at length from Orwell describing a similar gift on the part of Dickens (from “Charles Dickens”):

Dickens is a writer who can be imitated, up to a certain point. In genuinely popular literature – for instance, the Elephant and Castle version of Sweeny Todd – he has been plagiarized quite shamelessly. What has been imitated, however, is simply a tradition that Dickens himself took from earlier novelists and developed, the cult of ‘character’, i.e. eccentricity. The thing that cannot be imitated is his fertility of invention, which is invention not so much of characters, still less of ‘situations’, as of turns of phrase and concrete details. The outstanding, unmistakable mark of Dickens’s writing is the unnecessary detail. Here is an example of what I mean. The story given below is not particularly funny, but there is one phrase in it that is as individual as a fingerprint. Mr. Jack Hopkins, at Bob Sawyer’s party, is telling the story of the child who swallowed its sister’s necklace:

Next day, child swallowed two beads; the day after that, he treated himself to three, and so on, till in a week’s time he had got through the necklace – five-and-twenty beads in all. The sister, who was an industrious girl and seldom treated herself to a bit of finery, cried her eyes out at the loss of the necklace; looked high and low for it; but I needn’t say, didn’t find it. A few days afterwards, the family were at dinner – baked shoulder of mutton and potatoes under it – the child, who wasn’t hungry, was playing about the room, when suddenly there was the devil of a noise, like a small hailstorm. ‘Don’t do that, my boy’, says the father. ‘I ain’t a-doin’ nothing’, said the child. ‘Well, don’t do it again’, said the father. There was a short silence, and then the noise began again, worse than ever. ‘If you don’t mind what I say, my boy’, said the father, ‘you’ll find yourself in bed, in something less than a pig’s whisper.’ He gave the child a shake to make him obedient, and such a rattling ensued as nobody ever heard before. ‘Why dam’ me, it’s in the child’, said the father; ‘he’s got the croup in the wrong place!’ ‘No, I haven’t, father’, said the child, beginning to cry, ‘it’s the necklace; I swallowed it, father.’ The father caught the child up, and ran with him to the hospital, the beads in the boy’s stomach rattling all the way with the jolting; and the people looking up in the air, and down in the cellars, to see where the unusual sound came from. ‘He’s in the hospital now’, said Jack Hopkins, ‘and he makes such a devil of a noise when he walks about, that they’re obliged to muffle him in a watchman’s coat, for fear he should wake the patients.’

As a whole, this story might come out of any nineteenth-century comic paper. But the unmistakable Dickens touch, the thing that nobody else would have thought of, is the baked shoulder of mutton and potatoes under it. How does this advance the story? The answer is that it doesn’t. It is something totally unnecessary, a florid little squiggle on the edge of the page; only, it is by just these squiggles that the special Dickens atmosphere is created.

That a character is flat does not suggest a limit in talent or a lower standard of writing. In “Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction: A Wax Museum with a Pulse”, I tried to explain why such flat types are necessary for the movie to work, and that the problem with its many imitators is they didn’t note the importance of this detail. Many of the humorous characters of Shakespeare and Dickens are flat. The comedy of “The Simpsons” requires flat types, and this does not take away from it being a fiendishly well-written show. The only qualifier is that such flat types work effectively, but only in certain contexts, and when they are placed in a lengthy scene where they are the focus, where, whatever their witty dialogue, they remain unchanging, they become dull in the same conditions that Hamlet or Michael Corleone are fascinating. There is nothing unknown about flat types, they always act for the same reason, and they give explicit statement for why they act the way they do. It should be noted that a round character does not need to belong to a conventional drama, and it does not require us to know much of them in biographic detail; Blade Runner is a science fiction thriller whose title character is an enigma throughout. Yet when he crushes the origami in his hand at the end and we hear a line from his nemesis, Gaff, we must guess at what this man is thinking.

Tarantino avoided the flaws of flat characters two ways early in his career. The first was by having them share the movie with so many others, that their screen time was shortened. Some of his best writing comes from characters who are on so briefly, we don’t even see their flatness, whether it’s the single monologue scene given over to Captain Koons, or the dialogue between Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken) and Clifford Worley (Dennis Hopper) – Worley has two scenes, Coccotti only one. The second solution was to feature characters for which the audience has a distanced attitude, which creates tension over their fate. Different characters could have different ends in Fiction, with Mia dying, or Jules getting killed and Vincent leaving the killing spree life, without the movie becoming a tragedy. The men and women of Fiction could well be the villains in another movie. In Reservoir, there is only one character who is something close to a hero and that’s the undercover cop. That he has this heroic quality is only revealed to us in the middle of the film, and it is almost immediately qualified by his having shot a civilian point blank during the robbery aftermath. Even if Mr. Orange were to survive, he would still have killed that woman and felt as if he betrayed Mr. White – the story’s arc would remain tragic, and life would be little consolation.

All this changes from Jackie Brown on. Jackie is clearly the hero, and Ordell Robie is the villain. If she doesn’t win, the story is a tragedy. It is also Tarantino’s first and only piece of writing where we see round types. Jackie grows in confidence from the beginning of the movie to its end, while Ordell starts out calm and descends into exasperated anger as his failed schemes pile up. It is a movie where a character’s motives remain unknown: we’re given no explicit reason as to why Jackie doesn’t end up with Max Cherry at the end, and are left to our own best guesses. After this, we return to flat types, but with clear heroes as in Jackie. The bride must win against Bill, just as Jackie must win against Ordell; the first set of women can die in Death Proof, but the second set must win; the military unit must succeed in their mission against the Nazis in Basterds and, impossibly, they do; Django must save Broomhilda. If these heroes don’t win, their movies must be told as tragedies, of heroes pursuing a noble cause, and failing. That the characters are flat doesn’t matter as much in Kill Bill, because so much of the movie is devoted to kinetic action – most action movies contain flat types, and must have flat types, and that doesn’t keep them from being memorably written, the best example perhaps being the dialogue of John McClane and Hans Gruber in Die Hard. It’s an issue with Death Proof where the women need to be distinct, individual, with parts unknown – these qualities would give their conversations on sex and relationships a sense of revealed intimacy, rather than banal explicitness. And it’s a problem with Basterds where the heroes are their missions alone, and nothing else. We never feel, for instance, the impact of Aldo Raines’ scar from a hangman’s rope in anything he does or says. This near death mark feels as incidental as the color of the hands of a timepiece he might wear. The shortcomings of flat characters might be an even greater issue in Django, maybe best evidenced by the lengthy Candieland dinner scene.

The conversation between the four men – Django, Schultz, Calvin, Stephen – properly has a slow rhythm, and properly feels endless. Tarantino has compared the quest for Broomhilda to the journey up the river in Apocalypse Now, and this house has the feel of the lost plantation in the Redux version of the film, a place somehow entirely outside of time and civilization itself. There’s the brilliant, paradoxical detail of Lara Lee as a woman beyond a certain age, whose dress and manner are still that of a girl at her first cotillion. The problem is not the setting, but the instruments: the four men are almost entirely static. Django is the angry man who wants his wife back. Schultz the helpful wit. Calvin the evil slave owner. Stephen, his cruel servant. There is nothing these men can expose in themselves, and there is no gradation in their character, whereby they shift from one place to another. When Kareem Abdul-Jabar calls the movie a B picture, rather than A picture (“Django is wonderful. But it shouldn’t be up for best picture.”), I think it is this that he’s getting at. Though they have more dialogue, they exist only along the same polarities as in Game of Death: Django is on a righteous quest, and the obstacle to his goal is the Fifth floor guardian, Calvin Candie.

There are many ways in which the dynamic between the four could be made more interesting by using rounder characters, and I give one, not as a solution, but as a contrasting example of available possibilities. We re-make Calvin a little as a man with a demeanor that is only outwardly slow. He defers to the far greater intelligence of Schultz. The doctor, while clever, is a little too self-confident, and thinks Calvin a fool from whom he can get Broomhilda easily, once he buys Eskimo Joe. As the dinner progresses, it becomes more and more clear that Calvin is much smarter than he lets on, that he knows what these two men want, and may even have a trap ready for them. Django picks this up before Schultz does, and he hates Schultz for it: hates the doctor for being so self-confident, and hates that he has to rely on this man for help. Calvin reveals that, thanks to helpful sources, he has known who these men were and what they wanted before they even met. Though no guns are drawn, Schultz and Django realize they are in mortal danger. Calvin then gives an incredibly eloquent speech on enlightenment values and christian charity, a speech that might sound uncannily, and not coincidentally, like something out of the writings of Thomas Jefferson – we expect its conclusion to be his announcement of the emancipation of all his slaves. But, no: he makes chillingly clear that his vision of enlightenment includes only the race of himself and Schultz, and anyone of african descent be damned. At this moment, Schultz himself reveals that he has known before this lengthy, deceptive oratory how to elude Calvin’s trap, and he then explains to the plantation owner how. Django is relieved, grateful for his friend’s resourcefulness, yet angry still, at this man and himself, for his dependence on him, a dependence necessitated entirely by the dangerous condition of an ex-slave setting foot on the Candieland plantation. After this, we might return to the movie’s arc: the purchase of Broomhilda, the bloodbath, and the resolution.

The changes here are small: the only alteration is to give these men the possibility of mystery, of something hidden that we all possess. I make this example not out of arrogance, but to suggest a possibility of the balance shifting in a way that doesn’t take place in the scene as is. That Calvin should be able to briefly outsmart the bounty hunters, and that he should give his speech of narrow charity, does not exculpate slaveowners, but only brings it closer to our world, where the pro-slavery and pro-segregationist faction has often shown a frightening cleverness, and where the writings of Thomas Jefferson make an eloquent and thorough case for liberty, while side by side his other writings give unwavering support to the manacling of a good portion of humanity. By making these characters round in this way, Calvin Candie becomes more than a simple villain, but that does not necessarily make him any less a villain – however, the primary objective is aesthetic. Where now the dinner conversation is a straight river towards which we move to the shoot-out, it now becomes a more winding, twisty place where the boat comes close to toppling over, before it finally does fall off the edge when guns are drawn.

I make mention of possible changes to three of the quartet, while leaving Stephen out for an obvious reason: though he is as flat a character as the others, there is something of an enigmatic depth to him as well⁴. That he is easily the most interesting man in the film is not just a tribute to the formidable gifts of the actor playing him, but that this character has a quality the others lack. He is a man who has found a freedom, strength, and dignity as Candie’s lieutenant, the executor of his edicts and the power behind the throne. The very moment Stephen sees Django, his face twists up into a snarl: he hates this man for having attained these same things without needing to kowtow or betray anyone. Though Schultz is intended to be our proxy, an enlightened man of our times with no first-hand knowledge of slavery⁵, it is this resentment, though expressed by a caricature, that more closely resembles ignoble human feeling than anything in the movie, our anger at those akin to us who have achieved what we fought so hard for, and seemingly without the moral compromises we have had to make. When Stephen goes through the list of similes of how much he missed his master, and reaches “I miss you, like I misses a rock…in my shoe”, there is the uncertainty of whether he likes this man at all, or in fact despises him for being so stupid and so powerful at once. Yet when Calvin dies, Stephen openly wails, though there are no white people alive to appreciate his keening. Perhaps he truly feels grief for this man, or maybe he is an onion of deception, where underneath every lie is another lie. Before his death, he lets his cane fall, and he stands without difficulty – though even when alone in his first scene, unobserved by anyone, he shuffles bent over, as if he effected feints and masks not for others, but because he felt naked without them. These are mysteries without easy explanation, and none of the other characters have anything akin.

This is why I think it has been a mistake for critics to say that Schultz is simply a re-write of Christoph Schultz’s Hans Landa. It is Stephen who is the proper reprise of the Landa character, and just as Stephen’s ambiguity makes him more interesting than anyone else, such was the same with Landa. Here was a man of substantial intellectual ability, extraordinary charm, and great sympathy for others. His interrogations showed such understanding of the subject that it seemed impossible that they would move towards a malign intent, but so they moved. Just as Stephen has his unknowns, the unknown for Landa was how such a figure, who has all the qualities one expects in the enlightened resistance hero, was an ardent nazi. The partial answer, given at the film’s end, is that he is nothing of the kind: he is a simple opportunist, who will adopt any ideology which is to his benefit. That Schultz lacks this quality of Landa is to the detriment of that character, and the movie. Schultz says his lines with all sorts of zigzags and pauses, but they are fundamentally dull because there is nothing to be revealed. Questions such as how a man might move from dentistry to ace marksmanship go unanswered, and though in a rounder character their answer might be an intriguing revelation, or a haunting riddle, they are of no interest here: this is a flat man, a kindly, well educated gunman from the movie’s beginning to his end.

That Stephen is easily the smartest man on Candieland, a man without whom the whole plantation would fall apart is no doubt part of a larger critique of the entire plantation society. The southern towns are mud filled eyesores, while the estates are degenerate, but lush palaces; the moral decay only makes the plantation soil more fertile. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes was something of an idiot savant, brilliant at airplanes and publicity, inept at everything else. DiCaprio’s Calvin Candie is also an idiot savant, but without the savant part; a good-for-nothing who goes for bunko phrenology scholarship and a francophile who doesn’t speak a word of french. This pre-confederate society is a dysfunctional place where everyone is either slave, poor trash, or one of the fools fortunate to be born to the right place, as Candie’s lawyer testifies: “Calvin’s father and I were about eleven when we went to boarding school together. Calvin’s father’s father put me through law school. One can almost say that I was raised to be Calvin’s lawyer.”

The first meet between the bounty hunters and the slave owners is in the Julius Caesar room in the Cleopatra club. Candie’s mistress is named Sheba, after the well-known queen of the extinct kingdom. Corrupt, declining empires shadow this slave empire which will soon end. When one of Jerry Goldsmith’s best themes, “Nicaragua” plays over the approach to Candieland, this is not arbitrary magpying by the director; it was Nicaragua that the southern states hoped to conquer, in order to extend the life of the slave empire by extending its reach⁶. It is the legacy of the plantation system that is the root cause of the long-term inequality of latin america, and it is the legacy of the plantation system in the south which is the root cause of its repellent inequality as well. The landowner class of many of these countries, including Nicaragua, backed military juntas who could guarantee their business interests, and the movie Under Fire, the source of Goldsmith’s theme, is about the fall of Antonio Somoza, the man who received substantial U.S. aid as military dictator of the country for which Goldsmith’s theme is named.

As said, that the smartest man on the Candieland estate, whose non-slave elite is made up of idiot rich and street trash, is a black slave, and that the estate is almost entirely run by this man, is intended as scathing satire. I do not think the satire was made with any hidden malign message, but if we treat this satire in analogy fashion to another historical tragedy, I think we see one major problem with it. Imagine, as a thought experiment, Django Unchained re-made and set instead in World War II europe. Two men, one jewish, the other christian, travel through the continent incognito, searching for the jewish man’s wife, who is trapped in one of the many concentration camps. The jew is portrayed as a man indifferent to the condition of all the jews in these camps; his quest begins and ends with his wife, that’s all. When they finally find the death camp in which his wife is located, they discover it staffed by incompetent and stupid germans. The only reason why this camp keeps functioning in any way is through the supervision of a brilliant jew turncoat. It is the christian, and not the jew, who is finally so outraged by the camp conditions that he ends up being killed after shooting the ostensible camp commander. The camp’s destruction is incidental to the rescue of the hero’s wife, and the movie ends with the killing of the chief villain, the jew who was actually running the camp the whole time. The problem, apparently, is not german nationalism, or german ideology, but jews having no sense of community or regard for each other.

It is this lack of any sense of community or common plight which is Django‘s other important flaw. Tarantino is often labeled, pejoratively or not, as a hipster director, with little thought given to the definition and tradition of the word “hipster”. John Leland’s flawed but valuable Hip: The History ⁷ makes a strong attempt at finding such defining traits, some of which we can find in Tarantino’s movies. One central idea is ambiguity: that something said might be both one thing and another, or neither. He cites the old school use of “bad”, where the word might carry its traditional connotation, or be a compliment, all based on how it’s said. The lyrics of Bob Dylan carry this same mystery. So does the music of Kind of Blue, where the feeling is keen, yet difficult to define: certainly not happy, but not quite melancholy either.

There is also another kind of ambiguity, though I think Leland misunderstands it, where music or clothing may or may not be a put-on: are you wearing this with sincerity, irony, or both? The moment such fashion loses this quality, it ceases to be fashionable. When Leland writes of the benighted era of the trucker hat – an era I don’t remember except for the fact that, as always, Ashton Kutchner was somehow to blame – he tries to find some anthropological basis for this trend, when it’s entirely unnecessary. Such fashion, in the proper context, asks the question, am I putting you on? This is similar to the pose where stylish gear surrounds a t-shirt of an out-of-fashion icon, Michael Jackson a few years before his death, Madonna a few years from now. Is your t-shirt sincere or ironic? If the answer is obviously and immediately one or the other, then the effect doesn’t work.

The ambiguity of Tarantino’s work begins in one place and ends in another, with Jackie Brown the dividing line. Reservoir and Fiction are ambiguous the way detective fiction and hard-boiled stories (Fiction‘s very title a hat-tip to this ancestry) are ambiguous: what should our attitude be towards characters who are kept at a distance, outside the range of traditional sympathy?

This section from Hip, on detective fiction, captures the disconnect well:

The books served up a masculine swinger in action. Equally comfortable with lowlifes or swells, he was detached from both. In the high art of the period, modernism cracked the continuity of narrative. Pulp writers applied this disjunction to sex and violence, rendering them as discontinuous facts, without foreplay or afterglow. The action assumed a slapstick illogic:

I giggled and socked him. I laid the coil spring on the side of his head and he stumbled forward. I followed him down to his knees. I hit him twice more. He made a moaning sound. I took the sap out of his limp hand. He whined. I used my knee on his face. It hurt my knee. He didn’t tell me whether it hurt his face. While he was still groaning I knocked him cold with the sap.

In this passage, from Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely (1940), the violence is all in the syllables, short and fast, but the rub lies in Chandler’s small wisecrack: He didn’t tell me whether it hurt his face. Even in the midst of this pounding, the narrator distances himself from the violence by converting it to attitude and performance. Violence, then, becomes a kind of language, with its own humor and point of view. Through this device action becomes consciousness.

Tarantino’s later movies lose this ambiguity when they have clearly defined heroes and villains. We might find Stephen and Hans the most fascinating, most quotable characters of their respective movies, but if they win, those same movies are now tragedies. Our attitudes towards them are fixed because of the complicity of these men in unquestionable suffering. The ambiguity in Tarantino’s later work instead becomes that of someone wearing an outré piece of clothing: am I putting you on, or aren’t I? Should I treat the violence in Kill Bill as sickeningly real, or comic exaggeration? Are Basterds and Django serious attempts to grapple with historic tragedies, or are they callous jokes? There is evidence for both sides, and again, if there weren’t both such possibilities, the ambiguity wouldn’t be there.

Django‘s seeming indifference to a greater good lies with another quality of hip which Leland pinpoints. If the thesis of the good citizen is “to subordinate the self to the doctrine of the community, to conform to the values of the charter”, the hip are its anti-thesis. Those who Leland cites as belonging to this antithetical group – jazz musicians and Beat writers, among others – were frequently in this position of exile because of their race and sexual orientation. Their work did not concern the larger community, because they had been excluded from the larger community. Their explorations are often inward, rather than outward, though not without larger purpose – by simply establishing these depths, by creating work that contained qualities undefined and unknown, they made clear that, however they were seen, they were men and women as substantial as those who had exiled them. This is the crux of Django’s problem, because this is a movie where its lead carries no such ambiguities, and more importantly, he has seemingly no interest in his own community, the exile community of which he is one of the exiles.

Neither problem is tied to the race of the man, both traits are inherent in Tarantino’s work, and only problematic in the context of this historical story. His characters, as said before, are often flat. The Nelson George critique of the quality of roles for top name black actors, “Still Too Good, Too Bad or Invisible”, misses this point; George writes, “Mr. Foxx’s Django is undeterred and implacable in search of his lost wife. But he is not a true human being. Like most action movie heroes he is more an idea of a character, one with no detectable flaws who’s enjoyable to root for.” This accurately describes the flatness of Django, without noting that this flatness exists in the rest of the cast, and the casts of most of Tarantino’s other movies – though these characters might be different, more loquacious than Django, they are ultimately as static, as unreal as he is.

That there is a lack of kindred feeling among people is to be expected in Fiction and Reservoir, which deal almost entirely with criminal society. That Kill Bill involves a woman fighting almost entirely alone, without any allies, is traditional to the revenge genre. Basterds, despite the subject matter, is one where the larger society of jews is irrelevant; if Raines’ unit were made up of people, whatever their race, who had lost family members to the Hitler war machine and were trying to extract vengeance, it’s the same movie. If Shoshanna is a christian woman who wishes to avenge parents killed by the Reich because of their opposition to the regime, we have the same movie. The end of the holocaust as a result of Hitler’s death is never brought up, and none of the apaches ever mention it. Both sets of warriors, Shoshanna and Raines’ unit, are devoted to their deadly missions, rather than the plight of any larger community. Jackie, Tarantino’s only movie with round characters, breaks this trend: Max and Jackie shouldn’t trust and help each other out, but they do. This indifference to any larger community only becomes starkly obvious, and a problem, when we reach Django: this is a hero who wants to rescue his wife, and doesn’t seem to care about any other slave – barely even speaks to other slaves. That Candieland slaves are ultimately freed through his actions is incidental to his quest.

This aversion to fellow feeling provides the movie one of its most provocative moments. Schultz and Django go in character to meet with Candie, as a fight fan and a black slaver. The difficulties of these men playing these roles is not equal, because the true feelings that Django has to submerge in order to play his role are far greater than what Schultz has to hide. Django gives himself away almost immediately during the mandingo fight, when he sits at the bar, looking away from the violence, burning with anger. The barman sees him, and knows right away the man’s front is false: no black slaver would be so upset by this spectacle. Taking on this role for Django means being hated in a way Schultz isn’t, not just by the estate hands, but by the marching slaves as well. “100 Black Coffins” sounds in Django’s head as he looks at the Candieland elite, but it sounds in the slaves’ heads as well, as they look on this one eyed charlie. The disturbing apex of this is when Schultz offers to buy D’Artagnan, so that he isn’t torn apart by dogs, and Django stops him from doing so. There is a practical reason to do so, but I also read an anger, which, if it was allowed to play out between the two men, would have made for a more interesting relationship. When Django stops Schultz, one can imagine him thinking: if I have to put up with looking at these atrocities, and doing nothing, I’m going to force you to do the same. I won’t allow you any self-serving sentimentality that in saving this man’s life, others like him won’t die every day. The movie avoids any cheap schmaltz in this moment, but also implies that such a moment could only be cheap schmaltz. It avoids life-saving benevolence as well.

That this problem is not specific to its historical context – if the military unit of Basterds came across jews on the verge of deportation and did nothing for them, it’s the same problem – doesn’t make it any less problematic. That this lack of selflessness is wholly false makes the issue even worse: former slaves who had only briefly held freedom gave their lives as soldiers in order that the slave empire be defeated. This might be an apt place to note that the point at the opposite end of hipster ambiguities is the pious, the sincere, the message movie. These are always explicit in their statement, always asking for a better world, and always of noble intent. Tarantino’s films are antithetical to this: that they never show any larger community feeling isn’t simply skepticism of false pieties, but skepticism of all pieties. The closest we get to earnest, benevolent people in his movies are in their inverse: Lance and Jody, the hippie dealers, who are an evil mirror of the achingly sincere, well meaning archetype. They do not want to help Vincent when Mia is dying; Lance sells heroin to Vincent – not the gentler ecstasies of weed or hallucinogens – and when questioned on his quality, he asks, “do I look like a nigger?” The conflict between Tarantino and Spike Lee is often presented in racial terms, when these are its actual polarities. Do the Right Thing is about the righteous thing to be done, with the characters in disagreement over what that thing is. The protagonist of The 25th Hour is given the possibility of salvation, and the possibilities of this saved life are an explicit reference to The Last Temptation of Christ: if he makes a break for it, this man must lead a benevolent life and help others. The respective critiques of the work of both men reflects this divide: the knock against Tarantino is that his movies devolve towards nihilism, that his characters don’t care about anything except themselves and their immediates. The knock against Lee is that his films have become didactic sermons.

Any sense of greater fellowship in Django is on the part of Schultz, and it always strikes me as false. This man, who has gone from dentistry to assassination for financial reasons, is moved to help Django because his quest resembles that of Siegried’s. He is suddenly so upset over the condition of slaves as to lose his life over it – this man who travels throughout the south has somehow never before come across the reapings of its bloody institution. The arbitrariness of both moments, both in the service of the larger necessity of the plot, are what we might associate with the writing of an old school TV series. We might again imagine “The Bounty Hunters” where episode by episode, this pair have adventures throughout the pre-Civil War south. That their pairing up is hokey and forced is irrelevant, because the start of the relationship in episode one is never referred to again, and has no bearing on the later episodes. The state of these characters is the same in episode two, as it is for episode seventeen, and they make no mention to the conditions that brought about their initial pairing. That the doctor, in the series finale, suddenly gets upset about slavery is arbitrary as well, but to be expected in a drama where what takes place in one episode seems to have nothing to do with what happens before or after.

The most obvious motivation for the bonding of these two men is not myth, not benevolence, but economics. Django is first necessary to get the bounties for the Brittle brothers, and he then becomes extraordinarily helpful in obtaining other bounties through his expert marksmanship. We never see acceptance of Django as a citizen; we see acceptance of him as a businessman, when he is treated as any other man, without reference to his race, in the scene where they bring in the corpses of the Wilson-Lao gang. Django and Schultz are not outlaws, but lawful capitalists. The slave traders deal in life, this pair deals in death. That there is something vile in the trade they engage in is something the movie acknowledges, but critics seem to have ignored. If you are declared a criminal, by anyone or any company whatsoever, these men are given license to kill you without trial or evidence. The squalor of their trade is brought up by Django, and Scultz’s argument is two parts. The weakest is tautological: if the handbill says you are guilty of the crime, then you are guilty of the crime and we can kill you. The second, and strongest part is financial: this will get us the money to buy your wife.

SCHULTZ
Let’s take out Smitty Bacall’s handbill.

SCHULTZ does just that, unfolds it, and gives it over to DJANGO.

SCHULTZ
Read it aloud. Consider that today’s lesson.

DJANGO
Wanted. Dead. Or alive. Smitty Bacall and the Smitty Bacall…gang. For murder and stagecoach…robbery. Seven zero zero zero…

SCHULTZ
Seven thousand.

DJANGO
Seven thousand dollars. For Smitty Bacall…one thousand dollars for each of his gang…members. Known members of the Smitty Bacall gang are as follows: Dandy Michaels, Gerald Nash, and…

SCHULTZ
Crazy Craig Koons.

SCHULTZ emphatically stabs the handbill with his finger.

SCHULTZ
That is who Smitty Bacall is. If Smitty Bacall had wanted to start a farm at twenty two, they never would have printed that. But Smitty Bacall wanted to rob stagecoaches, and he didn’t mind killing people to do it. You want to save your wife, doing what I do…this is what I do. I kill people and sell their corpses for cash. This corpse is worth seven thousand dollars. Now quit being a pussy, and shoot him.

DJANGO aims at the man steering a plow over fields, and his shot is dead solid perfect. The farmer, no larger than an ant, falls to the ground. His son, at the foot of the plow, rushes over to the dead man, and we can hear him cry “Pa!” even from this great distance.

This trade might be murderous, but it is protected under the law. Just as slavery is legal, and runaway slaves must be returned to their masters, Schultz and Django have full immunity in what they do. This is what allows them to kill a town sheriff in broad daylight, and to kill the whip hands on Big Daddy’s estate. We have one set of capitalists, the death dealers, versus another set, the life dealers, and the movie’s thesis appears to be that slavery hasn’t simply destroyed millions of african lives, but this reliance on human labor has held the south in a premodern stasis, over which the technological skill and vitality of these two men have infinite advantage. The bounty hunters are not simply more moral men because of their opposition to slavery, they are better capitalists.

The businessmen of the movie who preserve slavery do so not just because they hold business sacred, but because slave ownership enhances their sense of self. Slavery is sale of human property, a business practice that is protected because business is sacrosanct. Yet when the death dealers show up on Big Daddy’s property, engaging in their legal business, they are not protected – because a black man killing whip hands threatens this very sense of self. Though this has been a simple business transaction, just as slavery is such a transaction, Big Daddy tries to stop them, not through economic means, but as leader of a mystic force⁸, a crowd of torch carrying horsemen, an image that evokes nothing less than the quasi-mystic rituals of the Nuremberg rallies. We cut behind the scenes, and find the men who compose this crowd to be petty, stupid wretches, the show of horror they’re about to put on giving grandeur to their lives. This here is the cause for the continuance of slavery, not any economic reason. These men have status if others, simply because of their race, live in mortal fear of them. The killings at Big Daddy’s are the first business transaction that goes awry, and the second, of course, is when Broomhilda is sold. The transaction is completed, the papers have been signed, but: Candie insists his hand be shaken. The ownership of men and women is not simply owning of property, it is power over human life. Candie requires deference to this power, and this Schultz cannot show. However, by the very failure of this business transaction, this movie can get made and we get to see it; a movie about slavery, even one directed by Tarantino, would have a deuce of a time getting funds. A Tarantino revenge movie, on the other hand, with a massive shoot-out at its end, is a slightly easier sell. The commercial transaction inside the movie must fail in order that the commercial transaction outside the movie can go ahead.

That these capitalist heroes, Django and Schultz, are a break from the traditional concept of hipsterism, of celebrating people outside society’s structure, outside its economic structures, also seems to have gone unnoticed. Tom Carson, a talented writer whose work I sometimes find astonishing and funny, and sometimes repellent, misses this in his review, “Tarantino, Chained”. He focuses on the movie as one more in a series of racial games that Tarantino plays, then brings up as reference point, though he never mentions it again, a keystone work: “Despite my teenage fascination with Norman Mailer’s tellingly bonkers midcentury essay, ‘The White Negro,’ I hardly thought I’d end up citing it as a relevant text in connection with any filmmaker’s work in 2012.” Mailer was a man disgusted with the banalities of advertising, capitalism, and contemporary society, so he attempted to find refuge from such things in the primitive, the mystic, the magical, the violent. Such questing did not begin or end with Mailer, and the only problem with an essay like “The White Negro” is that he found such qualities entirely in one race of men and women. He hated the sterile, prepackaged adventure in such things as the Apollo mission, and so he tried to find salvation in african americans, who he thought would counter the rise of the engineer class through, as he saw them, their mystic powers and utter inability in mathematics⁹.

I raise this not to debate Mailer, but to make clear that Django and Schultz contain none of these elements. They are not mystics. They are not rebels. They are very successful businessmen. The death at a distance, whether by drone or carpet bombing, which Mailer hated, these men deal out. The mystic is the province of Big Daddy’s ante-Klansmen. The religious feeling that animated Nat Turner¹⁰, which animated the abolitionists, is entirely absent from this movie, except for Big John, who sermons while he whips. Carson bring up Mailer to give support to his claim that Django is part of Tarantino’s continued fetishization of black americans, then taunts the director for lacking the sand to depict the sexual assault of slave women – as if the miseries of slavery revolved entirely around that. This was not, I believe, cowardice on Tarantino’s part; I think you can discern two obvious reasons for his approach, an approach that goes directly against Carson’s primary claim. Though black americans may have been first valued, then fetishized, for their physical qualities, this movie takes pains to have Django’s victories be connected entirely to skill, and his mastery of the technology of the pistol. Django pulls a man down from his horse, whips Little Raj, but never engages in a fistfight. When he walks about the Big Daddy estate, we are shown the disparity between this modern capitalist, and the primitive men of the plantation, in obvious symbols: he is able to see at great distance with a telescope, while Ellis Brittle has an eyepatch. Little Raj is barely able to pull out his gun, while Django is lightning fast. He kills Big Daddy at great distance through the use of a rifle scope. Whatever Django’s innate ability, this is a skill, something obtained through the practice sessions we observe. That it is not some extension of “primitive” virility, is proved by the example of the man who is probably, after Django, the best marksman in the movie: the middle-aged fussy merchant, Schultz.

The second reason involves the movie’s ending: if the sexual ill treatment of Broomhilda is made explicit, or even brought up, then it makes the movie’s ending impossible, because such abuse would overwhelm the lovers’ kiss. Again, rather than focus on their physical essence, and the physicality of the kiss, we are conveyed the ephemeral float after an eternity apart through silhouette. This image also properly evokes myth: one is sure, without having seen them, that such a shot is there in Casablanca or Gone With the Wind, and these lovers are now placed on the hallowed Olympus too. This consecration into legend is in the movie’s final moment as well. Jesse James, a confederate partisan and indifferent gunman, was somehow promoted into the best gunslinger of the southern states. But there was in fact, another man, unknown up to this time, who could easily outdraw him. “You know what they’re going to call you?” asked his mentor, “The fastest gun in the south.” Django Freeman, who started out as a german myth, has become an american one.

FOOTNOTES

¹ A contrasting example in which the true physical aspect of the world is conveyed, and a man truly feels this cold, can be found in William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, as Turner waits in his cell.

Over Jerusalem hung a misty nightfall, over the brown and stagnant river and the woods beyond, where the water oak and cypress merged and faded one into the other, partaking like shadows of the somber wintry dusk. In the houses nearby, lamps and lanterns flickered on in yellow flame and far off there was a sound of clattering china and pots and pans and back doors slamming as people went about fixing supper. Way in the distance in some kitchen I could hear a Negro woman singing-a weary sound full of toil and drudgery yet the voice rich, strong, soaring: I knows moon-rise, I knows star-rise, lay dis body down … Already the dusty fall of snow had disappeared; a rime of frost lay in its place, coating the earth with icy wet pinpricks of dew, crisscrossed by the tracks of squirrels. In chilly promenade two guards with muskets paced round the jail in greatcoats, stamping their feet against the brittle ground. A gust of wind swept through the cell, whistling. I shivered in a spasm of cold and I closed my eyes, listening to the lament of the woman far off, leaning up against the window ledge, half dreaming in a half slumber of mad weariness and longing: As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me …

² It is this unreality which, I think, prevents the frequently used racial epithet from having anything like its full impact. I quote, in contrast, an excerpt from Hemingway’s “The Killers”, where each use of the word is like a hard, painful tap. The story also serves as a helpful comparison in the establishment of tension through characters who, though their intents are simple – kill or be killed – are rounded enough that there is tension in what might happen next in this short story. George is the owner of the business which two hitmen have taken over while looking for their quarry, a man named Ole Anderson. Al is one of the hitmen, Nick Adams is one of the customers, and Sam is the cook.

“What’s the idea?” George asked.

“None of your damn business,” Al said. “Who’s out in the kitchen?”

“The nigger.”

“What do you mean the nigger?”

“The nigger that cooks.”

“Tell him to come in”

“What’s the idea?”

“Tell him to come in.”

“Where do you think you are?”

“We know damn well where we are,” the man called Max said. “Do we look silly?”

“You talk silly,” Al said to him. “What the hell do you argue with this kid for? Listen,” he said to George, “tell the nigger to come out here.”

“What are you going to do to him?”

“Nothing. Use your head, bright boy. What would we do to a nigger?”

George opened the slit that opened back into the kitchen. “Sam,” he called. “Come in here a minute.”

The door to the kitchen opened and the nigger came in. “What was it?” he asked. The two men at the counter took a look at him.

“All right, nigger. You stand right there,” Al said.

We see the greatest fullness in Sam, after the hitmen leave. He might be dismissed as nothing by these men, but he knows more of the world than any of them, and thinks they are ridiculous naifs for trying to help out any of the hitmen’s targets.

“Listen,” George said to Nick. “You better go see Ole Anderson.”

“All right.”

“You better not have anything to do with it at all,” Sam, the cook, said. “You better stay way out of it.”

“Don’t go if you don’t want to,” George said.

“Mixing up in this ain’t going to get you anywhere,” the cook said. “You stay out of it.”

“I’ll go see him,” Nick said to George. “Where does he live?”

The cook turned away.

“Little boys always know what they want to do,” he said.

³ That Tarantino’s characters are flat is why they seem so referential. Anna Karenina does not signify, or refer to anything else other than Anna Karenina, she is so full and vivid a character. The flatter a character, the more it seems to point to something else, just as a simple graphic of an eye or a skirted figure suggests a symbol representing something else, and a large scale oil painting does not.

Stephen, for instance, may or may not call to mind the title figure of Uncle Ben’s rice:

Big Daddy might be just an antebellum plantation owner archetype, and he might also be a wink at the Ole Miss mascot, Colonel Reb (mascot picture originally from CNN story “Legislator pushes bill to restore Colonel Reb as Ole Miss mascot”):

When Django puts on tinted glasses, he may simply be hiding the anger in his eyes from the Candieland staff, and he also amy be a reference to the photo of civil rights figure Elizabeth Eckford:

The historical context of the photo by Johnny Jenkins can be found here:

⁴ The only other character who has anything like this is the tracker played by Zoe Bell. Her riddlesome nature is due to a good chunk of the scripted part being cut, so we are left with a mess of contradictary details that make her more mysterious than anyone else on-screen. She has been disfigured in some way, either by wound or disease, so that she must cover up her face; she is the only woman in a crew of rough housing men, suggesting that she is a very tough piece of work; the only close glimpse we’re given shows her going over old photos, which imply that she and Django knew each other as children. The expression on her face after looking at this photo is cryptic, one of the rare times in the film where we can only guess at what is felt by a character.

We are also left to infer the character of another silent role, Sheba, Calvin’s escort, though given the way this role has been constructed as a woman who is a consort, only a consort, and finds value in this relatively elevated position, her expressions and gestures, though always mute, have, I think, a single meaning. When Django arrives at the bar, she moves away from him, and towards the fight: this man is beneath her. After Calvin’s funeral, she is dispatched to prepare coffee, and she gives a poisoned look to the maid she accompanies: again, such a lowly service as making coffee is below her station.

⁵ Tarantino himself makes this point in an interview on Elvis Mitchell’s radio show / podcast, “The Treatment”.

⁶ From James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, about William Walker, a former journalist, who maanged to take over the country of Nicaragua, briefly, giving hope that it might serve as a bulwark against attempts to end the slave empire:

In 1854 Walker signed a contract with the rebels in Nicaragua’s current civil war and in May 1855 sailed from San Francisco with the first contingent of fifty-seven men to support this cause. Because Britain was backing the other side and American-British tensions had escalated in recent years, U. S. officials looked the other way when Walker departed. With financial support from [Cornelius Vanderbilt]‘s transit company, Walker’s filibusters and their rebel allies defeated the “Legitimists” and gained control of the government. Walker appointed himself commander in chief of the Nicaraguan army as Americans continued to pour into the country-two thousand by the spring of 1856. President Pierce granted diplomatic recognition to Walker’s government in May.

Although Walker himself and half of his filibusters were southerners, the enterprise thus far did not have a particularly pro-southern flavor. By mid-18 56, however, that was changing. While much of the northern press condemned Walker as a pirate, southern newspapers praised him as engaged in a “noble cause. . . . It is our cause at bottom.” In 1856 the Democratic national convention adopted a plank written by none other than Pierre Soulé [a member of then-President Samuel Pierce's administration] endorsing U. S. “ascendancy in the Gulf of Mexico.” Proponents of slavery expansion recognized the opportunities there for plantation agriculture. Indeed, Central America offered even more intriguing possibilities than Cuba, for its sparse mixed-blood population and weak, unstable governments seemed to make it an easy prey. Of course the Central American republics had abolished slavery a generation earlier. But this was all the better, for it would allow southerners to establish slave plantations without competition from local planters. “A barbarous people can never become civilized without the salutary apprenticeship which slavery secured,” declared a New Orleans newspaper that urged southern emigration to Walker’s Nicaragua. “It is the duty and decreed prerogative of the wise to guide and govern the ignorant . . . through slavery, and the sooner civilized men learn their duty and their right the sooner will the real progress of civilization be rescued.”

During 1856 hundreds of would-be planters took up land grants in Nicaragua. In August, Pierre Soulé himself arrived in Walker’s capital and negotiated a loan for him from New Orleans bankers. The “greyeyed man of destiny,” as the press now described Walker, needed this kind of help. His revolution was in trouble. The other Central American countries had formed an alliance to overthrow him. They were backed by Cornelius Vanderbilt, whom Walker had angered by siding with an anti-Vanderbilt faction in the Accessory Transit Company. The president of Nicaragua defected to the enemy, whereupon Walker installed himself as president in July 1856. The Pierce administration withdrew its diplomatic recognition. Realizing that southern backing now represented his only hope, Walker decided “to bind the Southern States to Nicaragua as if she were one of themselves,” as he later put it. On September 22, 1856, he revoked Nicaragua’s 1824 emancipation edict and legalized slavery again.

This bold gamble succeeded in winning southern support. “No movement on the earth” was as important to the South as Walker’s, proclaimed one newspaper. “In the name of the white race,” said another, he “now offers Nicaragua to you and your slaves, at a time when you have not a friend on the face of the earth.” The commercial convention meeting at Savannah expressed enthusiasm for the “efforts being made to introduce civilization in the States of Central America, and to develop these rich and productive regions by the introduction of slave labor.” Several shiploads of new recruits arrived from New Orleans and San Francisco during the winter of 1856-57 to fight for Walker. But they were not enough. Some of them reached Nicaragua just in time to succumb to a cholera epidemic that ravaged Walker’s army even as the Central American alliance overwhelmed it in battle. On May 1, 1857, Walker surrendered his survivors to a United States naval commander whose ship carried them back to New Orleans. They left behind a thousand Americans dead of disease and combat.

Ed Harris, who played a mercenary in Under Fire, would play the title role in a bio-pic of this man, Walker. It is a surreal movie, somehow taking place both during Walker’s time and the 1980s, when the U.S. made attempts to prop up the contra rebel movement in that country.

⁷ I am thankful to Leland’s work for his many insights, as well details on Jesse James and Elizabeth Eckford that I have used in this post; I do, however, think one major flaw in Hip is his attempt to find some moral striving in those who have belonged to hip communities and made hip works, when there is no necessity of any such thing, and a moral earnestness may even be an obstacle to the quality deemed hip. I try and imagine someone who fully embodies all the qualities which are contained in Leland’s amorphous concept of hip, and I think of a hypothetical Actress X. She is a figure of the past, because in the present where any information can be found instantaneously, there are no tribes of fringe fashion, or obscure musics – everything is known and available, and nothing is in the shadows. This Actress X is hauntingly beautiful, and this already connotes the amorality of hip, because there is nothing inherently moral or good in beauty. There is always a hint of mischief, and sometimes bored malice, in her face. She is not stupid, and she does not suffer fools. Her most well-known photo is one of her giving a cold look to the camera for interrupting her while halfway through Dostoevsky’s The Devils. Some, uncharmed by this figure, point out that she appears in a number of photos, months and years apart, with the same half-read Dostoevsky, but these claims are in turn questioned – the issue always remains unresolved.

She is without industry or ambition, someone bored with acting but casually great at it, someone outside of the traditional demands of work and money earning. Again, there is nothing moral in this, simply the fortunate circumstance of the elite actor, and this lack of any link to traditional work or work ethic only adds to her pose. A good part of her appeal is that she acts as she will, giving no explanation or justification, and feeling no such need to do so. She acts not simply in a manner that is anti-authourity, but as if authourity doesn’t exist. Again, this places her in the past, when there was such thing as a strong moral scolding center, taken semi-seriously when it lectured public individuals about their private behaviour. She has probably slept with many men, and a few women – but she doesn’t give much mention of it, and it is beneath her to be “naughty” in such an ostentatious manner. Who she has slept with exactly remains unknown – she is always very discrete about this, and other men and women are always bragging about things they haven’t done.

The albums of Prince, Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen, and Nine Simone are among her favorites, of course; but so too are The Carpenters’ Greatest Hits. She does very good acting in some good to great movies, and she is on the verge of something greater, that exciting, well hyped moment when someone will produce their breakthrough work, when she dies at a tragically youthful age, a few years shy of thirty. Again, there is nothing moral or just in this young death, but it helps her be even closer to hip: she is always on the edge of eclipsing what she once was, of developing into someone else, without ever becoming so. Whether she would actually produce anything like this great work is doubtful, given her bored indifference with anything to do with her career. Any compromises she would have to make with relationships, with work, surrendering to the responsibilities of children, all those are never reached. She is always amorphous, about to form into something new, something unknown. She dies, and forever there is speculation on who she was, and these questions are answered, the answers refuted, and the questions asked again. Though many companies attempt to bid on her image for commercial use, with the top grab the photo of her with the open Dostoevsky, they are all refused, even Apple and their “Think Different” campaign. Actress X remains unknown, Actress X remains untouchable, Actress X remains hip eternal.

⁸ I refer to this pre-Klan as a “mystic force” as their imagery is a deliberate attempt to evoke the supernatural; the lengthy and ridiculous preparations of the men are intended not for material effect – their hoods, hilariously, make it more difficult to see, reducing this material effect – but to invoke an image that might be associated with the powers of an almost supernatural entity. There is a good deal of evidence for this as a reason for the Klan’s outfits, but I pick the nearest at hand, an interview with David Cunningham, author of Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan, on “Fresh Air”, hosted by Terry Gross, (“‘Klansville, U.S.A.’ Chronicles The Rise And Fall Of The KKK”):

TERRY GROSS
And how did the white sheet, and the white hood get created as both a symbol and as a costume of the Klan, and the covering of the Klan to protect their identity?

DAVID CUNNINGHAM
Well, again there are a lot of stories about where the particular aspects of these symbols came from. The general story, I think, is that the white hood, the masks over the face, were designed to create the sense of a spectre or ghost. In some ways, it was designed to both hide people’s identity, and create these ghastly personas where they could go out at night, under the cover of darkness, often on horseback, and sortof combine these pranks that would sortof move back to then resonant folklore tales, and things like that, ghosts who would drink enormous quantities of water, and all these kinds of supernatural things, but turn it in a way that also be terrorizing. So, the people that they would target with these quote unquote “pranks” were not random certainly, and they were people they really wanted to scare and send a message to.

⁹ Norman Mailer’s blind devotion to his instincts leads him to places that are sometimes sublime, sometimes ridiculous. He ends up in the latter place, with the strange racial theories of his account of the Apollo lunar landing, Of a Fire on the Moon:

Aquarius [the nickname Mailer gives himself in this book] had never been invited to enter this Black man’s vision, but it was no great mystery the Black believed his people were possessed of a potential genius which was greater than the Whites. Kept in incubation for two millennia, they would be all the more powerful when they prevailed. It was nothing less than a great civilization they were prepared to create. Aquarius could not picture the details of that civilization in the Black professor’s mind, but they had talked enough to know they agreed that this potential greatness of the Black people was not to be found in technology. Whites might need the radio to become tribal but Blacks would have another communion. From the depth of one consciousness they could be ready to speak to the depth of another; by telepathy might they send their word. That was the logic implicit in CPT. If CPT was one of the jokes by which Blacks admitted Whites to the threshold of their view, it was a relief to learn that CPT stood for Colored Peoples Time. When a Black friend said he would arrive at 8 P.M. and came after midnight, there was still logic in his move. He was traveling on CPT. The vibrations he received at 8 P.M. were not sufficiently interesting to make him travel toward you – all that was hurt were the host’s undue expectations. The real logic of CPT was that when there was trouble or happiness the brothers would come on the wave.

Well, White technology was not built on telepathy, it was built on electromagnetic circuits of transmission and reception, it was built on factory workers pressing their button or monitoring their function according to firm and bound stations of the clock. The time of a rocket mission was Ground Elapsed Time, GET. Every sequence of the flight was tied into the pure numbers of the time line. So the flight to the moon was a victory for GET, and the first heats of the triumph suggested that the fundamental notion of Black superiority might be incorrect: in this hour, it would no longer be as easy for a militant Black to say that Whitey had built a palace on numbers, and numbers killed a man, and numbers would kill Whitey’s civilization before all was through. Yesterday, Whitey with his numbers had taken a first step to the stars, taken it ahead of Black men. How that had to burn in the ducts of this Black man’s stomach, in the vats of his liver. Aquaris thought again of the lunar air of technologists. Like the moon, they traveled without a personal atmosphere. No wonder Blacks had distaste for numbers, and found trouble studying. It was not because they came – as liberals necessarily would have it – from wrecked homes and slum conditions, from drug-pushing streets, no, that kind of violence and disruption could be the pain of a people so rich in awareness they could not bear the deadening jolts of civilization on their senses. Blacks distaste for numbers not because they were stupid or deprived, but because numbers were abstracted from the senses, numbers made you ignore the taste of the apple for the amount in the box, and so the use of numbers shrunk the protective envelope of human atmosphere, eroded that extrasensory aura which gave awareness, grace, the ability to move one’s body and excel at sports and dance and war, or be able to travel on an inner space of sound. Blacks were not the only ones who hated numbers – how many attractive women could not bear to add a column or calculate a cost? Numbers were a pestilence to beauty.

If the Blacks yet built a civilization, magic would be at its heart. For they lived with the wonders of magic as the Whites lived with technology.

¹⁰ From The Confessions of Nat Turner, a transcribed testimony of the leader of the most successful slave revolt in the United States, a description of the mystic vision that he said inspired him to action:

About this time I was placed under an overseer, from whom I ran away-and after remaining in the woods thirty days, I returned, to the astonishment of the negroes on the plantation, who thought I had made my escape to some other part of the country, as my father had done before. But the reason of my return was, that the Spirit appeared to me and said I had my wishes directed to the things of this world, and not to the kingdom of Heaven, and that I should return to the service of my earthly master-”For he who knoweth his Master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes, and thus have I chastened you.” And the negroes found fault, and murmurred against me, saying that if they had my sense they would not serve any master in the world. And about this time I had a vision-and I saw white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened-the thunder rolled in the Heavens, and blood flowed in streams-and I heard a voice saying, “Such is your luck, such you are called to see, and let it come rough or smooth, you must surely bare it.” I now withdrew myself as much as my situation would permit, from the intercourse of my fellow servants, for the avowed purpose of serving the Spirit more fully-and it appeared to me, and reminded me of the things it had already shown me, and that it would then reveal to me the knowledge of the elements, the revolution of the planets, the operation of tides, and changes of the seasons.

After this revelation in the year 1825, and the knowledge of the elements being made known to me, I sought more than ever to obtain true holiness before the great day of judgment should appear, and then I began to receive the true knowledge of faith. And from the first steps of righteousness until the last, was I made perfect; and the Holy Ghost was with me, and said, “Behold me as I stand in the Heavens”-and I looked and saw the forms of men in different attitudes-and there were lights in the sky to which the children of darkness gave other names than what they really were-for they were the lights of the Saviour’s hands, stretched forth from east to west, even as they were extended on the cross on Calvary for the redemption of sinners. And I wondered greatly at these miracles, and prayed to be informed of a certainty of the meaning thereof-and shortly afterwards, while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven-and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighborhood-and I then found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters, and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens. And now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me-For as the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of sinners, and was now returning to earth again in the form of dew-and as the leaves on the trees bore the impression of the figures I had seen in the heavens, it was plain to me that the Saviour was about to lay down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and the great day of judgment was at hand.

(Some edits and additions have been made, unaffecting the overall themes, since the original posting. The footnotes dealing with Of a Fire on the Moon and Hemingway’s “The Killers” was added March 9th.)

(Django Unchained images copyright The Weinstein Company; Blade Runner image copyright Warner Brothers.)

Black Swan: Traumanovelle

(SPOILERS, obviously. The shooting script differs enough from the finished movie that the dialogue excerpts in this post are transcribed from the movie, rather than taken from the screenplay, available here.)

A movie which I am only able to see in one context, and it is this context which makes it a heartbreaking and powerful experience. Richard Brody, whose reflections on every movie I read, and which I value whether or not I agree with them, writes in “Performance Anxiety” of it as a picture about art itself, and the devotion necessary to make it. One becomes so committed, that it is something like madness, and the movie embodies this: it is mad, and it is indifferent to its madness, and how its madness appears to others. However, I see Swan differently, can only see this movie in this one way, and I do so instinctively, viscerally, and not out of any attempt to give it any depth, or to fit pictures into a puzzle, but for the same reason a gesture signifies something so overwhelmingly to the watcher, and it can signify nothing else. I think it is very much a movie about sexual abuse, abuse we never see firsthand, abuse of Nina by her father, where the events of the movie are both echos and aftershocks of this sexual abuse. The mirroring that takes place, where Lily is a sensual double of the chaste Nina, makes me think of nothing other than the displacement that takes place among those who are abused: this did not happen to me, it happened to someone else; I did not do that, someone else did. The climactic moment of this film is, of course, when this girl realizes that all the qualities of her double are her own, and the profound emotional consequences of that. For me, this is the movie’s context, and it cannot be anything else; I think I can make a fairly diligent case for this, but whether it results from deliberate intent or strange accident, I cannot say.

A MIRROR, DARKLY

Black Swan opens with Nina dancing the lead in Swan Lake, her face wearing an expression of earnest sunniness, a desperate desire to please, that she carries through so much of the film. This is a movie dominated by handheld camera shots which seemingly stalk this beleaguered woman, and we have the first one here, but with a twist: it does not follow her, but Von Rothbart, trailing him as he moves toward her¹. In Swan Lake, Von Rothbart is the magician who has turned several young women into swans, including Odette, the heroine of the story. Von Rothbart has a daughter, the black swan, Odile, who looks almost exactly like Odette². Nina’s own father is noticably absent, his absence never explained, or even mentioned. The only images we have of a father are the figure of Leroy, and the cruel magician Rothbart. Odette and Von Rothbart dance together now, Von Rothbart becoming more and more monstrous, until we cut away to Nina in her bedroom. She relates to her mother the story of this dream, the frightening dance with Von Rothbart, but the mother gives no response, no indication that she’s even listening, and Nina looks down.

NINA
(while stretching)
I had the most amazing dream last night. I was dancing the White Swan.

No answer.
NINA (CONT’D)
Different choreography, like the Bolshoi’s. It was the prologue, when Rothbart casts his spell.

This is the closest we get to a direct reference to the abuse Nina once suffered. The later relationships are a re-play of what once took place, and which explain the tension between mother and daughter, but never in anything like explicit terms. Nina’s father forced himself on her, just as Leroy forces himself on Nina, but Erica did not see her daughter as the victim, but as the seducer, just as Beth sees Nina as the seducer. All the conflicted feelings about sexual abuse – a daughter wanting to please a father, a daughter feeling like a whore for what she’s done, a mother suppressing her daughter’s own sexuality because she sees her as a rival, a daughter hating her own body for its attractive powers – all these are played out again in Nina’s contemporary relationships.

An important, often mentioned, trait of this movie is its campiness. Dennis Lim’s “Dirty Dancing: Is Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky’s tawdry thriller, a work of camp?” is perhaps the most in-depth and insightful investigation of this quality, but I think it gives insufficient focus to what gives the film this trait. Camp cannot be knowing, it cannot be deliberate; there is something unworldly and innocent about it. If we associate musicals with camp, it is because these involve an unrestrained and guileless exposure, something child-like. The antithesis to this is the cynical and the carnal, and mixing these two opposing forms often produce dramatic contrasts, such as the musicals of Trey Parker and Matt Stone like Orgazmo and The Book of Mormon where wide-eye innocents sing profane songs, or Pennies From Heaven where characters stuck in the sinful earthliness of our world sing songs of naive hope. There can be no cynicism in camp, no immediate profit motive or ambiiton; it must embody an almost delusional ideal that art can make the world a better place – if camp is art that fails at this ideal, it does not make it any less poignant or diminish a fan’s admiration for it. Lim cites Showgirls as partial camp or failed camp, but I don’t think he sees the same contradictary forces I believe make it both camp and not camp: it is not camp because it was made with the intent to make money through a lot of women getting naked in a movie directed by the guy behind Basic Instinct; it moves towards camp because instead of simply giving the people what they want, it is somehow a genuine attempt to try to make art – pornography does not need to be this ambitious.

What is central to Black Swan‘s campiness is not the ballet setting, or Swan Lake, or its horror movie elements, but the heroine, Nina, who has all the qualities of camp I have mentioned – she is guileless, innocent, and unworldly. Nina is a pliant blank, a woman who simply wanted to be a good daughter, but was forced to submit to sexual abuse as part of this role. Sex for her now has become something toxic. She still has sexual desires, but she has them only in another displaced identity – the girl Lily, who always ends up blending into a malevolent version of herself. A rigidly chaste figure like Nina would usually be seen from outside, as a figure of ridicule, but here we adopt her perspective entirely, without irony, and this is what gives the movie its campiness. Critics have written of the part as one playing to Natalie Portman’s focus and control – but I don’t see this at all. The power in this role is that it is entirely affectless, vulnerable, without the safety net of irony. Nina is a ridiculous figure, but she is ridiculous for tragic reasons – yet Portman makes no attempt to curb the ridiculousness of this figure, and the ridiculousness only makes her more heartbreaking, underscoring the tragedy at the heart of her life. It is this pliant blankness, whose unworldliness is so alien to us now, so alien especially in a place like New York City, which summons in the observer the idea that this woman must be the victim of abuse. “Black Swan: Movie about Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse” is a blog post that takes an entirely different perspective on who is responsible for Nina’s sexual abuse; I do not agree with the hypothesis, but I highlight it as an example of how Nina’s pose itself, outside of physical evidence or theories of who is responsible, provokes the visceral reaction that this woman has been such a victim.

After breakfast with her mother, Nina goes to ballet school, and we get the first of many handheld shots where Nina is pursued. This is entirely consistent with a woman haunted by abuse – she is a woman who never loses the sense of being prey. Beth is the star ballerina, Leroy’s girlfriend, but because she is now of a certain age, she will soon be let go. Nina looks up to her, admires her, as a daughter might look up to a maternal figure. When Beth storms out of her dressing room, Nina steals some of the items that mark a woman from a girl – her perfume, earrings, and lipstick. We then see her wearing lipstick for the first time in a meeting with Beth’s boyfriend, Leroy, and we assume it is Beth’s lipstick. It is just as if a little girl might try out the lipstick of an older sister or mother, a daughter playing the role of her mother.

Leroy forces himself on her, to which she is passive until finally, she bites him – he is astonished at the violence of this reaction. She is perhaps reacting not just to this incident, but her past abuse as well. This moment and its aftermath contain all the ambiguties of this earlier abuse – she is playing chaste role-playing, her father assaults her, she feels that she provoked this reaction in her father, and her mother reinforces this, blames her for being a seducer. She gets the lead role in Swan Lake, and though she did not consent to Leroy’s assault, she is viewed as the temptress, that the role was given in return for her sexual consent – someone writes WHORE on the mirror. But perhaps not someone else: it is written in lipstick, and we immediately think of Beth’s lipstick, and that Nina has written this in condemnation of herself – because she has been assaulted, she must have brought it on. The self-hatred is what we would associate with a child who has been sexually abused by a parent – that the child blames themselves for provoking it, and if the parent shows love or affection for the child, gives gifts to the child – that affection, those gifts are shot through with the feeling that it is shown in exchange for some past sexual act.

This is a movie where a hatred of the body recurs again and again, and specifically, the post-pubescent body. Nina scratches constantly at her back, where she’ll develop wings. Her double, Lily – the part on which all sexual experience is displaced – has a flower openly tattooed onto her back, a flower that develops into wings during sex.

I cannot accept the movie’s look at ballet as a serious criticism of ballet in and of itself because Nina’s ballerina life is so false – her role as ballerina is only as passive instrument, only at the command of others, taking no joy or excitement as a collaborative artist in what she does. Her diet and training are never seen as something like that of an intensely dedicated athlete or creator, but only as self-punishment. These images do not work for me at all as some kind of indictment of ballet: I think they fit perfectly with the idea of dance as an abstraction for sex. Nina can only see sex as an experience of suffering, where she is acting on the order of others – and this is what dancing is like for her as well. Her body is in pain from dancing, and of course, she often has bleeding wounds; we might take this as a symbol of her menstrual cycle, a sign of a sexuality repressed, or a more disturbing symbol: the breaking of Nina’s hymen, the loss of her virginity to her father³.

Her mother has made her feel that she tempted her father, that she wronged her mother, and Nina’s attitude towards her mother is one of constant penance for this past misdeed, and her dance training is masochistic, a self-adminstered punishment. Her bedroom remains that of a much younger girl, filled with stuffed animals; she wishes to remain in a pre-pubescent state forever, a place before her body got her into trouble. Her sensual double has a full, curvaceous body, while Nina starves herself so that her curves might disappear. When Lily dances, she is enthusiastic and enjoys herself, qualities absent from Nina’s dancing, who has made herself into a machine that will please others – an asexual pleasure. She makes all these attempts to desexualize herself and still she fails – she sits on the subway and an old man mimes masturbation. After the reception, she fixes on a statue that she feels kin to, one with wings, but no arms to defend itself, without sex, its face a mask of pain.

In “Performance Anxiety”, Brody rightly gives attention to the eyes of the four principals, and though these features are distinctive and emphasised, it is crucial that this is not a movie about voyeurism. The gaze primarily emphasised is not others spying on Nina, but Nina looking at herself – this self-awareness, this awareness of who she is, is what she fears and wants to avoid. This haunts her, but so does the look of her mother, though this is an implied gaze, and, I think, a gaze of something specific: her mother witnessing the abuse of her child, and not properly seeing it, seeing her daughter as the seducer, just as Beth sees Nina as a seducer when she’s done nothing. Nina masturbates, and suddenly she realizes that her mother is in her bedroom, asleep – there is the obvious, general shame of sex, but a more specific one as well; it is Nina’s sex that caused so much trouble. She walks into her mother’s studio, and the eyes of a drawing of herself, with a forced, pliant smile, follow her around the room – she cannot stop seeing what she has done though she only wants to forget it. A second time in the studio, all her mother’s work is alive with gazes, looking at her, blaming her, and doing nothing.

Both Erica and Nina know a secret, and both conceal it: when Nina scratches herself, Erica has cover-up they’ll use that they’ve used many times before.

ERICA
Sounds like quite an evening. I wish I could’ve been there.

NINA
You know I asked.

ERICA
I know you did. Susie told me. Guess he wanted you all to himself.

NINA
That’s not why.

ERICA
I don’t blame him. Where’d you get these? (ERICA touches one of NINA’s diamond earrings, the ones she stole from BETH)

NINA
They’re fake.

ERICA
Fooled me.

ERICA helps her take off her dress.

NINA
I can do it.

ERICA
He must have been by your side…all night. Showing you off.

ERICA finishes unbuttoning NINA’s dress and sees the scratches on her back.

ERICA
Oh, Nina!

NINA
It’s just a rash.

ERICA
A rash, what are you talking about?

NINA
It was worse a few days ago. It’s fine already.

ERICA
You’ve been scratching yourself again.

NINA
No, I haven’t.

ERICA takes off her dress.

NINA
Mom!

ERICA
Thought you’d outgrown this disgusting habit.

They run to the bathroom.

ERICA
Jesus christ, Nina, I’d thought you’re done with this. The shrugs. You keep wearing the shrugs. Sit down. You have the white one. And the pink one. And that’ll help hide it. And then I’ll dig out that expensive cover-up. We still have some. No one will see it.

NINA
Mom, please.

ERICA cuts NINA’s nails.

ERICA
It’s the rule, isn’t it? It’s all this pressure…I knew it’d be too much, I knew it.

ERICA cuts a nail too close, and NINA ows. ERICA kisses NINA’s knuckle.

ERICA
Gonna be alright, gonna be alright, gonna be alright.

NINA looks away.

The last moment, where her mother’s gaze is not implied, but finally direct, is at the ballet itself. Nina is the black swan, the dark wings are her own, not displaced onto another – and her mother witnesses it. The sexual self that the black swan embodies, Erica always tries to suppress. Erica wants to keep Nina from going out, from having sex, not for any religious reasons (though the relationship of Erica and Nina is most often compared with the mother and daughter of Carrie, where the mother was a religious fanatic) but because she feels her daughter’s sexuality was destructive in the past. Nina takes a small bar to jam her door so that she isn’t confronted with her mother’s prying eye, but she blocks the door with such familiarity that I cannot help but think she has done this before: to keep her father from entering her bedroom.

Leroy plays the role of a proxy father, forcing himself onto Nina. After an unsatisfying rehearsal, he asks the cast to go, and he then plays the role of the prince, where he proceeds to touch her all over the place. He calls Beth his “little princess”, and, in the end, calls Nina “little princess” as well. Lily calls this “gross” though she doesn’t explain why – but isn’t “little princess” exactly the nickname a father would have for his daughter?

This encounter with Leroy is intensely painful for her, and it triggers the appearance of her double, Lily, who is both her and not her. When this figure first appears in the shadows, it is her, but in Lily’s clothing. She does not ask, “Who is there?”, but “Who is that?” The conversation that follows is that between two parts of Nina in reaction to an abusive father, with the self-confident, sexual Lily raising the most difficult, taboo questions. Nina looks at the father in platonic terms, the qualities which require admiration and inspire obedience. Lily brings up the possibility that fathers can be disobeyed, that this abuse is not an extension of a parent’s love, but a violation of it. Nina defends the abuse, the way a child might defend abuse, because otherwise it requires that they see the parent as violator – “well, you don’t know him”. Lily then raises the difficult subject of Nina’s own attraction to this man, the way a child’s pre-sexual and sexual feelings intertwine with abuse. We admire qualities in our parents, and we wish to see them in our mates, qualities that in others inspire attraction; an abused child sees these qualities in the abusive parent, and questions whether they are the guilty ones, whether they brought on such abuse, whether the admiration the child feels for the parent is a reciprocation of the parent’s explicit sexual feeling.

NINA
You can’t smoke in here.

LILY
Well…I won’t tell if you won’t.

LILY sits down.

LILY
Big day’s getting closer and closer, huh?

NINA stays silent.

LILY
Well, I can’t wait. I think you’re going to be amazing.

NINA (softly)
Thanks.

NINA takes a cigarette, and LILY lights her up.

LILY
So…do you want to talk about it?

NINA starts crying.

NINA
I just had a hard day.

LILY
Leroy playing a little too rough for you?

LILY cont’d
C’mon Nina, he’s a prick.

NINA
He’s brilliant.

LILY
Sure. But it’s not like he’s all warm and fuzzy.

NINA
Well, you don’t know him.

LILY
Someone’s hot for teacher!

NINA gets up to leave.

LILY
C’mon, it’s okay. I don’t blame you.

NINA
I should go home.

LILY
C’mon Nina, I’m just playing around.

LILY cont’d
Nina.

But NINA is gone.

When Nina gets the lead, Beth hates her for it, calls her a whore⁴, and then the maternal figure, Beth, is badly hurt in a car accident. This, I think, is an echo of the way an abused child might look at abuse, and how Erica has made Nina see it: I tempted my father, and I have destroyed my mother through this temptation. Leroy interviews Nina at his apartment about her intimate life, opening with the statement, “I don’t want there to be any boundaries between us”: there were no such boundaries with her real father, either. When asked about boyfriends and whether she’s a virgin, though she says otherwise, her whole demeanor suggests someone who has been entirely chaste, except perhaps for one taboo relationship. He asks the question of whether she enjoys sex, and though for most people the answer would be a qualified yes, Nina doesn’t answer – nor does she say why the answer might be no.

LEROY
I don’t want there to be any boundaries between us.

NINA
No, me neither.

LEROY
So…you got a boyfriend?

NINA (very softly)
No.

LEROY
And…you’ve had many in the past?

NINA
A few, but…no one serious.

LEROY looks at her for a while.

LEROY
You’re not a virgin, are you?

NINA smiles, looks down.

NINA
No.

LEROY.
So. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

NINA takes a drink.

LEROY
And: you enjoy making love?

NINA
Excuse me?

LEROY
Aw, c’mon. Sex. Do you enjoy it?

NINA doesn’t answer.

LEROY
We need to be able to talk about this.

NINA nods, always looking away and down.

LEROY
I got a little homework assignment for you. Go home, and touch yourself. Live a little. It’s late. There’s lots of work tomorrow. The doorman will find a cab for you.

THE AWFUL TRUTH

As I wrote earlier, the first scene where Odile dances with Rothbart, a frightening, violent dance, is the closest we get to a direct reference to abuse. It is Rothbart as Nina’s father that carries such disturbing power for her, not Rothbart the character itself. During the concluding ballet, when she is backstage, the actor playing Rothbart gives greeting, and she barely notices him.

There are three other scenes when Rothbart shows up, all frightening. Nina looks at herself in the mirror, and the reflections take a life of their own, looking back at her. In the corner of the mirror, his perspective gazing down on her, is a photo of Rothbart. She wishes to forget this memory, she never mentions it, and yet it is there – she knows who she is and what she’s done, her own reflections confront her with this.

Another is much, much more direct. Lily is the identity on which all of Nina’s sexuality is displaced; at crucial moments, of course, there is no separate person, and she is Lily. Such is the case where Nina spies Lily having sex with Leroy, the father figure. Suddenly, the scene changes nightmarishly. It is now Nina on the table having sex with Leroy. And then: Leroy is no longer Leroy, but Rothbart, Odile’s father.

The music used to score this is the same as in the opening scene, the frightening dance. That this discovery fits the pattern of a previous sequence is notable as well. Nina practices with the dancer playing the prince, but Leroy tells her she’s doing the part of the black swan wrong. The lights go out, and Leroy has to yell that they’re still working, and the lights go back on. He dismisses the others, then practices with Nina alone, playing the part of the prince, fondling and kissing her. He ends the session by telling her why she’s doing the part wrong, which might be why someone might have told her she’s not being a good daughter: she’s not responding to his passion in kind – it is she who should seduce him, not the other way around. We now have this second sequence, where she practices practices practices, repetitively, punishingly, at such length that the accompanist finally leaves. She then is haunted by mirror images that seem to turn round and scrutinize her with a cold, piercing look – they can see all of her, all her memories. The lights go out, just like before, but this time no one listens when she says someone’s still working. She goes out to the stage, and there makes her discovery.

There is one other moment when Rothbart shows up, and it would have entirely eluded me were it not for the valuable work done at the Cinematic Corner by the blogger Sati, “48 hidden images in ‘Black Swan’” (reached via the Reddit thread, “48 hidden images in Black Swan”), which breaks down the images of the nightclub scene, images we see only in the briefest of microseconds. I assumed, wrongly, that they show us Nina relaxing, when they only do so on the surface. Looked at frame by frame, they show nothing of the kind, but only reinforce the idea of a woman falling apart, the images often not of dancers in the club but constructs from her own hallucinations, chock full of images of importance to her. There is much in these, but I believe there is at least one obvious recurrent theme: Rothbart, a symbol standing in for someone else, as her predator.

One of the first frames has the statue which fascinated Nina in the background:

We then have the gates to the Swan Lake castle:

Followed by the white swan, Odette, with Rothbart behind her:

She dances with Andy, Rothbart in the background:

She dances with Andy, who first becomes Leroy:

Then transforms into Rothbart:

Another nightmarish frame of Rothbart:

Though I consider the work on Cinematic Corner on this film invaluable, I disagree on one point of their description of these frames. They label these eyes as belonging to the black swan; I think they are Rothbart’s eyes, the same distinctive eyes that burn with frightening brightness in the opening dance:

Rothbart silhouetted by the moon:

In the arms of Rothbart:

Nina seems to remember something very upsetting, while to her side is an image of herself splitting apart. From here, until Lily shows up, calling Nina’s name, we hear on the soundtrack, “Sweet girl, sweet girl” over and over in a distorted singsong; this, of course, is a name her mother has for her, and which Lily mockingly says after she brings Nina to orgasm⁵. Her mother may call her a sweet girl, but there are things in her past that make Nina feel not sweet at all, but corrupt.

Nina represses her sexuality because she looks at it as a destructive force, something which her mother blames for tempting her father, and which she associates with the pain of abuse. In the club, we see visions of an asexual ideal as well as a few moments which contain images that specifically reference female sexuality. The asexual ideal shows up in the images of the statue, as well as a brief frame of the black swan distorted into this sexless figure.

Still focused on this upsetting memory, while to her right we see someone with the distinct eye shadow of the black swan:

Which then distorts into this alien, hairless, sexless creature:

Then, an image of her nonchalant, yet by her side an image of her screaming in agony:

Still outwardly calm, paired with an obvious sexual image, a bare breasted woman with her face veiled:

A realization, of something horrific, where in one frame she is the black swan, and in others, she splits apart:

The black swan behind the scrim of her room’s butterfly wallpaper. Nina is a butterfly who forces herself to remain larval, the black swan is the sexual self she both wants to be and fears being:

Again, transfixed by a memory, and Rothbart right beside her. After this image, the “Sweet girl” singsong stops.

After she dances with Andy and Tom, these dark images cause her to reflect, and she never dances again with the boys, dancing only with Lily, who, transforms into herself. Another memory, with the statue’s pained face and Lily in the background:

With Lily, and the tower from which she’ll fall to her death:

Nina with Lily, the moon by their side; the moon is in the background of one of Odette’s dances, and a woman’s menstrual cycle was once thought to be linked to the cycle of the moon:

Nina with Lily, Nina with Lily and the butterfly wallpaper as a background:

Another disturbing image of Rothbart:

Another of the obvious images of female sexuality, this time it’s the curve of a woman’s breast:

The moon, again:

A woman’s breasts, underwater:

The eyes of Rothbart staring out at her, a hand holding a moon-like globe with light falling on the water. The ocean’s tides are moved by the moon’s motion, just as a woman’s menstrual cycle was once thought to be guided by the lunar sphere. Odette is under Rothbart’s spell, just as the ocean is in the command of the moon. A hand holds this globe as if it possesses it: her father has possessed her; her father has taken her virginity.

She was dancing with Lily, now she is dancing with herself:

The black swan in the background:

LAUGHTER IN THE DARK

Nina is the little princess, but also the swan queen. In the credits, Erica’s title is Erica Sayers / The Queen. Leroy’s name isn’t the american pronunciation, Leroy, but the french – “Le Roi”, “the king”. Nina takes over the role of queen from Beth, Leroy’s girlfriend. When Leroy makes the announcement that Nina is taking on the role of queen, there is applause, but there is also Lily laughing at something very funny about this. Lily, who delves into the taboo areas that Nina forbids herself, and who asks the taboo questions that Nina does not ask, but who is ultimately just a projection of Nina, is laughing at a joke that Nina knows, but does not allow herself to laugh at: a father figure is giving her the mother figure’s role, just like before. Lily’s laughter here echoes the recurrent, eerie laughter in the movie, which I think always centers around the sick joke of Nina’s relationship with her father, and the memories Nina does not want to have.

Other than its first use during the opening credits, we hear the laughter when there is a moment that might remind Nina of her past abuse, a symbol loaded with the possibility of her past abuse, or when a reflection of Nina, a Nina without a mask, looks back at Nina coldly and fully, as if seeing every part of her, including all the horrors she keeps hidden. The laughter is there when Leroy kisses Nina for the first time, the moment blood, hymenal or menstrual, drops into the bath water (a moment discussed in greater detail later), when Nina cuts her nails and suddenly she is a fiercer, less saccharine figure, her reflection turning as the photo of Rothbart looks down, her reflection turning when she practices alone after the accompanist leaves. And there is one last instance of this laughter, and it’s crucial: after the lights go out in the practice room, Nina goes to the empty stage, sees Rothbart across the wings, and as she crosses it, she hears the haunting laughter, which then becomes very real, the laughter of Lily having sex with Leroy, then Nina with Leroy, then Nina with Rothbart.

LEROY
But: as we bid adieu to one star, we welcome another. We’re opening our season with my new version of Swan Lake. Taking the role of the new swan queen, the exquisite Nina Sayers.

THE NEXT TIME YOU SEE ME, IT WON’T BE ME

What Leroy keeps demanding of Nina, what she will not give, is complicity, that she actively participate in sex, that she enjoy it. This, I think, relates to one of the great shames that victims of sexual abuse feel, that the pleasurable apsect of sex is not entirely absent – and though this does not make abuse any less abuse, it is what shames Nina, and causes her to turn away from sex. The image of Rothbart having sex first with Lily, then her, is frightening because she sees herself consenting and enjoying it. She does not want to be the person who did these things, and so she isn’t; it was someone else, a double, who did these things and to whom these things were done. She consents, and did not consent at all. This idea is there again when she clearly sees Lily put something into her drink, but drinks it anyway – then, after a debauched night, gets upset at Lily for putting it in her drink. It is on this same night that I think there’s another crucial moment, in the cab ride home. Lily walks her fingers over to Nina’s pants, but Nina gently takes them away, and then holds her hand: no, right now, I just want the comfort of a held hand. She looks out the window, light passes over the glass, and we hear on the soundtrack a man having an orgasm: it seems unconnected to any man in the movie, and maybe it is a memory that requires the comforting clasp of another’s hand, and maybe this is a memory of her own father.

These clasped hands are of sufficient importance that they show up in the club scene, which is chock full of images, from her past and future, significant to Nina. She sees Rothbart, the statue she feels kin to, the tower from which she’ll fall to her death, and these hands in a specific context; Rothbart’s eyes stare out, a hand holds a globe, possesses it, and off to the side, the clasped hands.

Dance, for Nina, is always associated with pain. Her own participation in sex she links with self-destruction and death. She displaces sex onto women who aren’t her, doubles that she envies for their self-confidence and power. Her first double is herself, walking past with a cool gaze unafraid of anything in the night, before she pushes this identity further away onto a more sensual type – Lily, who’s curvy with olive skin⁶, and has no inhibition about pissing in a sink.

A small note: Nina’s earrings are always rounded, while Lily’s are almost always sharp, sword-like, we might even call them phallic. Lily has the sexual confidence and strength that Nina associates with a man.

That she envies Lily’s self-confidence, her strength, and wants it, shows up in one particular scene – one that makes clear that this very strength is her own. She is at home with her mom and they fight; her mom is worried that Leroy will prey on her daughter. Even though he already has, Nina denies that anything has taken place. They get into the thorny issue of Erica giving up her career for Nina, and Nina mocks her. Erica asks her daughter about her skin, then insists that she see it, and Nina refuses her bluntly: no. The very moment that she shows a strength she’s never shown before in dealing with her mother, Lily suddenly shows up, knocking at their door.

ERICA and NINA, at opposite corners of the room, ERICA sewing one of NINA’s shoes, NINA tempering the material of another with a lighter.

ERICA
Has he tried anything with you?

NINA looks up, then back down, but doesn’t answer.

ERICA
He has a reputation.

NINA still doesn’t answer.

ERICA
I have a right to be concerned, Nina. You’ve been staying late so many nights, rehearsing. I hope he isn’t taking advantage, that’s all.

Nina now looks up.

NINA
He’s not.

ERICA
Good.

ERICA cont’d
I just don’t want you to make the same mistake I did.

NINA (a quiet sarcasm)
Thanks.

ERICA
Not like that. I just mean as far as my career is concerned.

NINA (still quiet, but fiercer sarcasm)
What career.

ERICA gives NINA a long, hard look. It’s as if you can hear the metal of a sword unsheathed. From now until NINA’s “Nothing”, ERICA gives NINA an unrelenting stare, while NINA looks down.

ERICA
The one I gave up to have you.

NINA (the sarcasm is not as bold, but still there)
At twenty eight.

ERICA
So?

NINA
Only-

ERICA
Only what?

NINA
Nothing.

She punctuates this with a look up at her mother. NINA has the strength to meet ERICA’s gaze.

ERICA
How’s your skin?

NINA goes back to looking down.

NINA (quietly)
Fine.

ERICA
Are you leaving it alone?

NINA hm-mmms, without looking up.

ERICA
Let me see.

ERICA stands up, and her expression could break through steel.

ERICA
Take off your shirt.

NINA
NO.

NINA looks up at her mother, and she has inherited enough of her mother’s hard stare to meet hers.

At this very moment, the doorbell rings, and both women turn in the direction of their possible guest.

The struggle between these two types is not rote game playing, it is a struggle because it requires Nina to see the earnest, affectless type as the false one, and this other, stronger type as her truer self. Yet she also looks at this other self as evil, evil for what she’s displaced onto her – the act of having sex with her father, and evil because this girl, this truer self, can destroy who she is. For her to become this other person, she must confront her memories of the past, and this she cannot do. Nina masturbates, but stops when she sees her mom in the room – her mom has made her think that her sexuality destroyed their lives. In the bathtub, she masturbates again, then sinks below the water. That she has this sexual desire makes her want to drown. Blood, from nowhere, suddenly appears in the water. I associate it with blood of the hymen – this girl lost her virginity to her father. Right after, in the movie’s most frightening moment, a malevolent Nina appears above the water, ready to drown her.

When she and Lily are in her bedroom, it is not a sign that Nina is actually into girls – it’s because the only sexual partner she trusts is herself. Yet even this fantasy goes awry – because she wants this girl to be both herself, the one person she trusts, and another displaced identity that is not her. At various moments Lily is briefly not Lily, but Nina – the first, and most striking one, her reflection in a mirror.

Lily does not simply eat Nina out – she consumes her⁷. During sex, there are intermittent, frightening moments for Nina, when Lily is suddenly her. Nina reaches orgasm, and this physical pleasure makes her see clearly that Lily, this other on whom all her sexuality has been displaced, is in fact her as well. This briefly destroys her – the other Nina smothers herself with a pillow.

Nina returns the lipstick, perfume, and earrings to Beth, and Beth is upset: “You stole them from me?” The scene’s importance is, I think, as an echo of earlier abuse: Nina takes items that signify to a little girl what it is to be a woman and Nina stole her mother’s role as her husband’s lover. Nina is treated as the guilty one, but to present herself as the victim of abuse would require that she acknowledge to herself that abuse took place, so she instead presents herself as another kind of victim, a girl whose role is in turn being stolen by someone else, this sensual other, Lily. Beth stabs herself in self-hatred, much as Erica may have shown self-hatred – outrage at her daughter as romantic rival, rather than abuse victim. Beth stabs herself, and suddenly it is Nina stabbing herself – her role is Beth’s, her role is Erica’s, she has tempted their men, a proxy father and an actual father, and she wishes to destroy herself for it.

That Nina feels she has taken the place of both Beth, a mother proxy, and Erica, her actual mother, in relations with Leroy, a father proxy, and her actual father, shows up in this scene and the next as she seemingly sees herself in both roles. After leaving the hospital, where Beth transforms into her, Nina returns to a seemingly abandoned house. She washes her hands in the empty kitchen, turns the light off, and hears someone say, “sweet girl”, her mother’s name for her which recurs through the movie, a phrase that haunts her because she doesn’t feel sweet at all. She switches the lights back on, but instead of her mother, it’s her in the hospital gown, as Beth. She rushes to her mother’s studio, where the paintings confront her, chanting “Sweet girl, sweet girl, it’s my turn, it’s my turn.” She looks in the mirror, and again, sees herself as Beth, then, when she turns round to confront the reflected figure, she sees not herself, but her mother.

The movie’s last part revolves around Nina fully becoming this other self, and how this acceptance is annihilating. She throws out all the dolls that she kept, the souvenirs of her prepubescent life. Her skin tone and hairstyle change, so that when she lies in bed before throwing out the dolls, we might briefly think we’re looking at Lily. Finally, the rash in her back sprouts dark feathers, her feet web, her eyes go blood red, and her legs arch like a swan’s – it is all like the physical changes of pubescence, the very transformation that caused her so much trouble.

She asks Leroy for help because she thinks Lily is trying to take over her part; but Lily, the strong, sexual girl is already taking over her part: she fights back against her mom and escapes from the house; when Leroy talks about her not playing the lead, Nina refuses him with steely will.

A SWAN SONG (FOR NINA)

Before getting to the last sequence, culminating in the image of Nina lying back on a mattress, it might be helpful to point out that the movie is organized around variations in Nina right before going to sleep and waking from sleep, with some of the most important moments coming at this time. Although the practice for Swan Lake must takes months, the action of the movie seems to occur in less than a week and a half. I mention only necessary and relevant events around these moments of waking up and going to sleep.

The movie opens with her nightmare of Rothbart, but rather than waking up disturbed, she has a vague smile on her face, as if unwilling to see the fearful images we’ve just seen. Something then briefly changes in her expression, as if inferring some memory hidden in this dream, and then she returns to smiling happiness.

She returns home from ballet, her practice having gone awry with Lily’s entrance, and she’s very upset. Her mother re-assures her daughter, “Everything will be better in the morning. It always is.” I bold the last for empahsis, because I don’t think she speaks just of today, but events long ago as well. She then calls her the name that repeats again and again, always with mocking irony throughout the film, “sweet girl”.

Nina gets the lead, there is the reception where Beth calls her a whore, and accuses her of using sex to get the part. Leroy asks about her sexual history, and her mother cuts her nails after she sees the rash on her back. When shes wakes up this time, she appears in a much worse state. It is after this that she tries to masturbate, before stopping when she sees Erica in the room.

Possibly in the evening of the same day, she finds a bar to block the door, but does not put it in place yet. Nina lies in bed, and Erica asks, “Are you ready for me?” Those who believe that Nina is sexually abused by her mother put great weight in this line, but I think this is a more conventional question of a mother asking her daughter whether she’s set to be tucked in. Though I think Erica is domineering, I don’t her as someone with a sensual attitude towards her daughter. From all her visible behavior, we see the opposite attitude, of someone trying to eliminate Nina’s sexuality.

Nina rebels against her mother, she goes out with Lily, on the way home in the cab we hear what might be her father for the only time in the movie. Sex with Lily makes her orgasm, and then destroys her – Lily does not simply resemble her, she is Lily, and her double now smothers her. She wakes up for the third time in the movie, and she’s in even worse shape.

She goes home, and lies in bed, but does not sleep. She smashes her music box and throws out her dolls.

Nina has the stunning vision of Rothbart with herself, then goes to the hospital where Beth transforms into her. She flees home, there to be haunted by the role of proxy mother, a hospital gowned Beth who is actually her, who then becomes her own mother. She rushes to her bedroom, blocks the door, and her transformations become more disturbing and violent; red eyes, feathers, arched legs. Her unfamiliarity with these new legs cause her to trip, and she is knocked unconscious.

The focus for the first time in a wake-up scene is not on Nina, but her mother, most likely up all day and night, by her side, in the bedroom. Her mother has placed mittens on Nina to keep her from harming herself by scratching, but we might also see these as insulation from the tactile world, a last attempt to keep the sensual at bay. Nina wakes up, and for the first time, she does so not in the morning, but at night – she’s been unconscious for so long she might miss the premiere. She fights past her mother and leaves the bedroom.

At the ballet, Nina waits in the wings to go onstage, looks over at Leroy, and then at the actor playing the prince. She sees Lily aggressively sexual with this man, an aggressiveness she both wishes for, and which she turns away from because she associates so much of sex with her abuse. She is held aloft during the dance by this prince, and just as abuse colors the later sexual lives of the abused, it affects her here: she is held in this man’s arms, she is afraid, and she falls out of them. If this dance with the prince is like sex, then what makes her fall out of the prince’s arms is the past association of sex with her father’s abuse – she sees Lily in the chorus, and then sees herself in Lily’s place; Nina is also Lily – Odette does not simply resemble the black swan, Odile, she is Odile, and Rothbart is her father.

She fights Lily, and now finally the line between these two selves, the image of chastity she holds onto and the person on which she displaces her whole sexual identity, literally shatters. The mirror breaks during the fight, and Nina stabs her opposite with one of its shards. She dances the part of Odile, the black swan, Von Rothbart’s daughter, with assurance. Where before Leroy imposed himself on her, she now kisses him passionately.

When she returns to her dressing room, she discovers that Lily’s body was never there, a fight never took place, the qualities of this person have been hers all along. Just as her orgasm was followed by her being smothered, her becoming the black swan is followed by her death: she wants to be this self-confident, sexual other, yet if she is this other, then it means certain things have been done to her, and she has done certain things, and this makes her want to destroy herself. She extracts the mirror shard: literally, her reflection is inside of her. Her wound is like a bloody vagina – a symbol so literal it requires no explanation.

We see her weep as she holds the shard, and her tearful expression is not that of one anticipating death, but one of remembering.

Though she is literally dying inside, she now wipes away her tears and puts on a white mask of make-up, an act very much of a part with a life spent having to hide the pain she suffered.

She goes out for the last dance. She ascends the steps, and just as she looked from Leroy over to the actor playing the prince, her gaze now moves from Von Rothbart to the prince on stage. We see her mother in the audience, the first time we see her outside the shelter of her house, and just as she witnessed her daughter with her own father, she has now seen her daughter transformed into this sexual self, the black swan.

Nina falls from the stairs onto the mattress, the camera closes in on her face like a lover, and it is like her own submission to her father as she tumbles onto the bed: a surrender to her father, and to death as well. The cast gathers round and they realize that she is dying. Her last words are to Leroy, the proxy father. “I felt it”, she says. LeRoy asks, “What?”, and she answers, “Perfect”, and this is not about the performance now, but what took place years ago: the pain she felt then is one she has always felt, no matter how much she has tried to hide it, and there has been something perfect in what she suffered, like a bullet that is a direct hit on a mortal place. “It was perfect”, are her last words. When Odette dies, Rothbart’s spell over her is broken, and in her last moments, the spell Nina’s father has cast on her has ended as well. This campy, irony-free girl is for the first time ironic: she speaks of her past trauma the way we speak of an ideal sexual experience, but she is not speaking of it as an ideal sexual moment at all. What was inflicted on her then was a perfect wound, and it has now destroyed her.

FOOTNOTES

¹ The image of a camera shooting from behind a character with their back turned, looking at Nina, is repeated twice again, both with significant figures.

Again, Rothbart in the opening:

Leroy’s first entrance, looking down at the practice session:

Nina, looking at herself, in the practice room, after Leroy fondled her. Nina transforms into Lily when she makes her entrance.

² A good synopsis can be found here.

³ The connection between sex and the grinding, disciplined forms of the ballet is not simply the intuitive, obvious connection between dance and sex, but a point made as well through the use of music.

We see Nina dance alone in front of a mirror, accompanied by “Lose Yourself”, a sinister, pulsing piece that moves over the same notes, again and again. The music’s steady, prominent beat might be called sexual, but it is a joyless, menacing, machine-like sex. This scene might be a solo practice, and we might call “solo practice” a euphemism for something else. In the midst of this practice, something interrupts her, the broken toenail. Something interrupts her sexual thoughts as well: a past violation, a past breaking.

“Lose Yourself” is played again, when Nina tries to masturbate. She stops abruptly when she realizes that her mother has been in the room, asleep, the whole time. Erica either did not see, or refused to see the abuse which took place, and her reaction to this was to restrict and restrain her daughter, who she saw as the instigator.

We then have a brief play of “Lose Yourself” in the cab, when Lily moves her hand into Nina’s pants, and it then fades out when Nina makes clear she wants to hold someone’s hand right now, not anything more forward than that. We then have Nina possibly remembering something, the sound of a man having an orgasm, and this might be a past memory of her father. Each time, the “Lose Yourself” theme ends with a moment that might be a veiled reference to past abuse: the broken toenail, the mother who is close to her daughter’s sexual intimacy but asleep to what takes place, the sound of a man climaxing.

The theme from “Lose Yourself” occurs one last time, in the selection “Opposites Attract”, which plays over the sex scene between Nina and Lily. Lily, of course, is not exactly there: this is Nina with a fantasy version of herself, the only partner she trusts. It can be thought of as a variation on the first scene featuring “Lose Yourself”; that was solo practice in front of a mirror, and this is a sort of solo practice before a mirror too. Where before the horns jumped in when Nina saw her mother, now they sound when Nina realizes that Lily is her, that Lily’s sexuality isn’t someone else’s but her own, and is reminded of the painful history which accompanies this part of her.

“Lose Yourself”, by Clint Mansell:

⁴ The dialogue between them:

BETH appears, suddenly.

NINA
Beth! I’m so sorry to hear you’re leaving the company.

BETH
What’d you do to get this role? He always said you were such a frigid little girl. What’d you do to make him change his mind? Did you suck his cock?

NINA
Not all of us have to.

BETH
You fucking whore. YOU FUCKING LITTLE WHORE.

LEROY
Woah woah woah…what’s going on here?

BETH
I NEED TO TALK TO YOU.

LEROY
Beth. My little princess. Please.

BETH
I’m coming by later. I have something for you. A token of my appreciation.

BETH cont’d
You make the most of it, Nina.

⁵ She calls her this in one of the first scenes, right after the opening nightmare, and before the first ballet session.

ERICA moves to put a top on NINA

ERICA
Up.

ERICA sees the mark where NINA’s wings will sprout.

ERICA
What’s that?

NINA looks at the blemish in the mirror.

NINA
Nothing.

ERICA puts the top on her daughter.

ERICA
You sure you don’t want me to come with you?

NINA gives a smiling no thanks.

ERICA
Sweet girl.

ERICA hugs NINA, a sober look on ERICA’s face.

⁶ That the more sensual type is always the more “ethnic” type is a trope still with us, though from the perspective of many in the past, we are all ethnic types now.

⁷ There might be a jokey foreshadowing to this early on in the movie, during the reception. Nina and Lily have their first exchange of dialogue in the bathroom. Nina is about to leave as Lily gets ready to piss in a sink; Lily asks her to stay and keep her company, but Nina leaves anyway. Right after this, Leroy runs into Nina as the reception lets out and these are his opening lines:

LEROY
Hey. They tried to eat you alive, but there you are.

(The material on the club scene was added to this post on February 16th – when that edit was made, earlier material on the different earrings of Nina and Lily, as well as a brief examination of the post-practice conversation between the two women got taken out. It was put back in the next day. Some small additions and edits have been made since then. The footnote on “Lose Yourself” was added March 7th. This same footnote was edited on March 13th, because I’d forgotten about the use of this music in the cab ride.)

(All images copyright Fox Searchlight Pictures.)

Has Donald Trump Ever Been Rich?

I had always thought of Donald Trump as someone who had once been very rich, has lost a great deal of money, and now tried to pass off his fractional fortune as the bounty of a Midas. This ancient article, “All of the People, All the Time” from the valuable Spy magazine archive puts that idea to rest for me. This creature was always a nuisance, and never rich.

I excerpt the beginning, three interesting points, and its conclusion.

The opening:

YOU CAN FOOL ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME

How Donald Trump Fooled the Media, Used the Media to Fool Banks, Used the Banks to Fool the Bondholders and Used the Bondholders to Pay for the Yachts and Mansions and Mistresses

by John Connolly

With his bluster and his extravagance and his tabloid love life, Donald Trump has always been a source of considerable entertainment. If we’re honest, we all have to admit that after his every achievement in greed or vanity we’ve said to ourselves, Heck, you’ve gotta love that guy! Like some funny, impossibly venal puppet in a Punch-and-Judy show, Trump has always given us a good laugh. In fact, Trump’s image as a buffoon is just another example of how the press has protected him from real scrutiny for so long. While one would prefer not to be considered a joke, that is not so bad if it distracts people from seeing what one really is: a charlatan, a liar, a cheat. But if Trump has thrown the press and public off his trail during the last year, he has not managed the same trick with law enforcement. SPY has learned that Trump’s 1988 sale of Resorts International to Merv Griffin is now the subject of two criminal investigations, one by the FBI. “We are looking into the organized-crime [side of it],” says a law-enforcement official. Furthermore, John Sweeney of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement confirms that his agency is also studying Trump’s participation in the Resorts deal.

A former…well, top Trump executive told SPY he considers Trump “evil incarnate.” A mobster who knew Trump socially said of him once, “He’d lie to you about what time of day it is – just for the practice.” And indeed, a close study of Trump’s actions over the past few years reveals a man addicted to deception, a man who invested like a fool, a man who shaved from deals and bled failing companies of cash so that he could live with absurd excess, a man who borrowed huge amounts from credulous banks and investors, a man who not only is not now a billionaire but never had $1 billion or $500 million or – very possibly – even $100 million and who has been strapped since 1987. Donald Trump is not just some cartoon character, a guy with a comb-over and a press agent and a board game named after him; he is and always has been a real and fairly treacherous human being.

In the history of finance, Donald Trump will be known for one brilliant innovation. No one before Trump had used the press so cunningly to give himself legitimacy with creditors. Trump made the media his balance sheet. Reports of Trump’s wealth in newspapers and especially in sober business magazines such as Fortune and Forbes and Business Week were the basis upon which banks lent him money and the public bought his bonds.

A spokesman for Arthur Andersen, Trump’s accountants until 1990, admitted to SPY that they had never conducted a financial audit of Donald Trump. Andersen did conduct “financial reviews” – the term for a very superficial analysis of management and procedures, a once-over quite unlike an audit, which would include the accountants’ solemn opinion of the finances under examination. Sources at Chase Manhattan and Citibank – from which Trump borrowed $290 million and $990 million, respectively – say that although Trump may have given the bank audited financial statements for certain specific properties, they never had an audited statement of Donald Trump and his finances generally. Bankers Trust – which has lent Trump more than $100 million with no collateral – declined to comment for this article. Manufacturers Hanover – which has lent Trump $160 million – also declined to comment.

Two of the most powerful banks in the world report that no one ever audited Donald Trump. Some of the loans that the banks made to Trump even had provisions stating that if his net worth fell below a certain level ($600 million, for example), Trump would have to pay back the loans immediately. Very prudent – except that the banks never insisted that Trump verify his net worth by audit.

So, without audits, often without collateral, how did Trump manage to borrow all that money? Well, every one knew that Donald Trump was a billionaire, and who wouldn’t lend money to a billionaire? Banks are in the business of making loans, and in the overheated eighties, a banker couldn’t wait to make a loan to Donald Trump. The banks and the people who bought Trump’s bonds were influenced by the news accounts of Trump’s billions.

If Trump had told the press the truth, or if the press had held his claims up to even a rudimentary level of scrutiny, then Trump might not owe the banks $2 billion on which he has suspended interest payments, and he might not have sold $1.277 billion in bonds that are now worth only $493 million. But Trump didn’t tell the truth, and the media were pathetically gullible. Even the press reports of Ivana’s prenuptial agreement are wrong – it is for $10 million, not $25 million. The information presented below is not based on hindsight – if journalists had been inclined to look, they could have found out the truth at any time.

Interesting point one:

Trump Tower and the Grand Hyatt were Trump’s first major projects. Both were initiated when New York was still reeling from the fiscal crisis of the mid-seventies and was willing to make any deal with any developer, just as long as he developed. As New York’s economy took off in the early eighties, the deals made Trump look like a winner. What the media have ignored for purposes of assessing Trump’s wealth and ability, though, is that neither project was Trump’s alone. The Hyatt, a renovation of the 64-year-old Commodore Hotel, is half owned by the Pritzker family of Chicago. Equitable Life holds the mortgage to the hotel, and since the Pritzkers presumably really are worth about $5 billion, Equitable probably felt safe entering a deal with them. What did Trump bring? He knew his way around city government, so he won the tax abatements that made the Hyatt a success.

Equitable then agreed to be Trump’s partner in Trump Tower, putting up half the money. Equitable sold those condos at the height of the market and then wanted out of the market and then wanted out of the retail and commercial space. Trump bought them out with a $75 million loan from Chase Manhattan. He has come to them with other plans, but they have decided to pass on these ventures.

It is difficult to determine exactly what value to place on Trump’s equity in the Hyatt and Trump Tower. One popular misconception is easily remedied, however: Donald Trump in no sense owns Trump Tower. The condominiums that make up all but 19 floors of the building are owned, of course, by the people who bought the apartments. Trump owns only the retail space and his apartment and office. He surely made some money on those condominiums, with Equitable’s help, and the Hyatt continues to be profitable. But like a movie star with a couple of early hits, Trump traded on those successes for a decade.

Two:

During our look into Trump’s stock transactions, we came across an interesting item. In 1986, Trump, the “billionaire,” needed $31 million to meet a margin call for his purchase of Bally Corporation stock. The funds to meet the margin call came from his Holiday Corporation stock profits; a credit line from Bankers Trust; a distribution from Trump Equitable 5th Avenue Corporation, which is the agent for Trump Tower commercial space; miscellaneous credit lines from other banks; and a 1985 federal income tax refund. All this desperate scrounging by a top-of-his-form billionaire for a measly $31 million.

And three; the cited article is “The Unmaking of a Documentary” by Edwin Diamond.

“[Trump] had the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen & Company do a special audit. The CPAs declared Trump had cash assets of $700,125,00 as of November 30, 1988…So much for Trump’s not being as big as he says he is”

- “The Unmaking of a Documentary,” New York, September 4, 1989

Ah, yes, “So much for Trump’s not being as big as he says he is.” In some ways, his use of the Arthur Andersen letter is Trump’s most elegant deception. The accountants’ carefully worded letter did say – perfectly accurately – that on the specified date Trump had $700,125,000 in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. Having seen the lengths to which Trump was driven in order to raise a mere #31 million back in late 1986, we may be surprised to learn that on a typical day in 1988 he had 20 times that in liquid assets. Fortunately, a simple explanation presents itself: if one interprets it properly, which the Trump-adoring editors at New York were in no way inclined to do, the Andersen letter actually demonstrates that on November 30, 1988, Donald Trump was $20 million in the red.

The date of the review was not the end of a fiscal year or quarter, but neither was it arbitrary. It happened to be eight days after Merrill Lynch had given Trump $651 million in cash specifically for the purpose of building the Taj Mahal. The money had been raised through a junk-bond offering. The accountants’ letter made only passing reference to the possibility that any of the $700 million was earmarked for specific projects. It also failed to explain that the marketable securities were shares in Alexander’s department stores – stock that Trump had borrowed $69 million from Citibank and Bear Stearns to buy.

Andersen stated that Trump had $700 million in cash and stock. Deduct the $69 million owed on the stock, and that leaves Trump with $631 million. But Merrill Lynch had just given Trump $651 million for the Taj Mahal, so, in fact, he was “overdrawn” for $20 million.

The conclusion. The Castle referred to is the Trump Castle Casino, an Atlantic City casino, now called the Atlantic City Golden Nugget.

A fool and a liar and a deadbeat Trump may be, but no one can say that he doesn’t have touching, human qualities. Take his solicitude to his aging father. In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had surreptitiously borrowed $3 million from Fred Trump to help him make an $18.4 million Castle Casino bond payment. A week before Christmas, Trump had Howard Snyder, an attorney for his father, walk into the Castle, go up to the cashier’s window, buy $3 million in chips and leave with those chips. With that $3 million, Trump had the money he needed to make the bond payment.

The CCC requires that all loans be reported. Needless to say, Trump did not advise the Commission of the loan from Fred. “We found out about [the transaction] the next day. We began to look into it right away,” John Sweeney, the new director of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, told SPY. “We sent a letter to the Trump Organization saying, ‘We are treating it as a loan.’” This is what things have come to for Donald Trump. The boy from Queens had to go back to Queens for a bailout.

Angola, Namibia, South Africa, and a Tea Party Leader

Occasionally, one comes across an old story, an obscurity, that is like a small rock launched at fine glass, the spiderweb of cracks traveling out from the initial impact, all the way to the edges of the frame. It is marring, and destructive, yet we are held agape at the reach of this forgotten moment. The auguring incident is a magnet for any writer, so much so that a now extinct magazine Spy made fun of this technique, with its Ten Years Ago in Spy Today, where it would approvingly quote a decade-old story from its pages unerringly anticipating contemporary events; Spy was a magazine full of vicious satire, and these decade old stories were always made up. The necessary repetition involved in writing is too frequently unacknowledged, and I am by no means the first to cite this feature in an introduction; James Traub, a Spy veteran¹, did so effectively in “The Way We Live Now”, and he gives a more succinct intro to this feature: “There used to be a column in Spy magazine, Ten Years Ago in Spy, which featured astonishing and, of course, completely fictitious acts of journalistic foresight. ‘NASA’s enthusiasm notwithstanding, the space shuttle is a potentially deadly hodgepodge of untested technologies,’ ran one breathless article. ‘High on the list of suspected components are the enormous flexible gaskets…’”

I give some extensive mention to this, because it is in the pages of this magazine that we can find the epicenter of one such quaking event. This magazine is ancient, this magazine is extinct – an ad makes you think, “Oh, these are the people Patrick Bateman killed” – but its tremors reach us even now. The story is diligent, quality reporting – Spy‘s alumni are widely spread and fertile spores, its writing a shaming standard to the low watermark that’s attempted now – but very much a back of the book, short feature, its ominous qualities impossible for the writers of the time to discern, but obvious to most readers now. We go back not ten years, but twenty two, to August 1990, the magazine’s cover featuring a weeping pseudo-billionaire still very much with us, and inside is “Fooled on the Hill: How some die-hard Cold Warriors and a Belgian con artist tried to change U.S. policy in Africa”, by David Aronson and David Kamp.

The piece opens with the tumult around the inauguration of the president of Namibia, a country sharing borders with both Angola and South Africa. The nation was beginning its transition to independence, after decades of being the vassal state of apartheid South Africa, the ruthless segregation policy of that country imposed on Namibia as well. For this transition to independence to take place would require UN supervision, which would require funding from wealthier nations, including the United States. Many hard-line conservatives, however, did not want this independence to take place, people like the notorious senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms. They tried to stop it from happening through legislative chicanery and deception. I quote extensively from the piece, because it tells the story better than I can paraphrase it, and I begin such quoting now:

Four months earlier Helms and his right-wing allies had managed to put the United States in a position of disapproving of Namibian independence by sneaking a rider through a budget bill through Congress. The rider authorized the president to halt U.S. funding for a United Nations team, called UNTAG, that was overseeing Namibia’s peaceful, carefully negotiated secession from South Africa. As we shall see, the basis of Helms’s legislative gambit was bogus, a fabrication that might have been revealed had Congress administered some rudimentary tests before enacting the bill into law.

Helms, like most of Capitol Hill’s extreme conservatives, never wanted an independent Namibia, a country whose dominant party (SWAPO) is aligned with Moscow. Neither do Helms and his ilk hold much affection for Namibia’s friendly neighbor, Angola, whose Marxist government is backed by Cuba and is fighting a civil war against Jonas Savimbi’s U.S.-supported UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) guerillas. In December 1988, Angola, Cuba, and South Africa signed an agreement in which Cuba promised to withdraw its troops from Angola by mid-1991 and South Africa agreed to allow Namibia’s independence. This deal was not universally approved; Duncan Sellars, chairman of the conservative International Freedom Foundation (IFF) in Washington, says that after the agreement was signed, right-wingers thought of it as “a sellout of [South Africa-controlled] Namibia and a sellout of UNITA.”

This group then goes into action:

Helms and a platoon of right-wing operatives (the lobbyists at Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, who represent UNITA, and the think-tankers at the Heritage Foundation and the IFF) coalesced around a piece of legislation – the rider to the budget bill – that would have given President Bush an excuse for withholding Washington’s funding for the UN team in Namibia if any evidence was found that the Cubans were using chemical weapons to support their Marxist pals in Angola. In other words, the bill said that if the Commies misbehaved in Angola, we couldn’t help pay for Namibia’s transition to independence.

We are then told the genesis for this action:

The idea for the bill was born during a trip taken to Angola in March 1989 by Michael Johns, the Heritage Foundation’s policy analyst for African affairs.

There he met Andries Holst, a West German who claimed to be filming a documentary about Cuba’s use of chemical weapons in Angola. Johns brought Holst to Washington where the German filmmaker was introduced to Helms, State Department officials, lobbyists and other conservatives likely to be moved by his footage, which purported to show the horrors of chemical warfare.

The filmmaker’s evidence, however, does not persuade, so another tact is tried:

For whatever reason, Holst did not impress, and Hems’s bill foundered. To salvage the effort, the IFF’s Duncan Sellars refocused attention on a scientific report Holst had commissioned from Aubin Heynrickx, a toxicologist from the University of Ghent in Belgium, which substantiated Holst’s claims. In July, Sellars brought Heyndrickx to Washington to tour the same conservative network Holst had earlier traveled. The difference: Heyndrickx’s opinions carried the heft and credibility of science.

And this time, it works.

While Heyndrickx held forth, Helms rallied his allies on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to lash the rider to a vital appropriations bill and Black, Manafort’s lobbyists hit the Hill. And son of a gun, with the boost Heyndrickx provided, the plan worked: on November 21, George Bush put his signature on a bill containing the Cuban-chemical-warfare provision.

There is a caveat:

But what might look like a model of parliamentary maneuvering is more likely an instance of ultraconservative fraud. For as it turns out, Holst is an impostor with no serious journalistic or filmmaking credentials, and Heyndrickx, on whose reports the rider was entirely predicated, is a publicity-seeking showboat.

The evidentiary foundation of this bill, the evidence of use of chemical weapons, is soon revealed to be bunk:

Heyndrickx’s examination of Holst’s bomb fragments and environmental samples showed that chemical weapons were used. Other chemical-weapons experts – one is tempted to say real chemical-weapons experts – disagree. Finland’s Marjatta Rautio, who is perhaps the world’s preeminent expert in this field, examined Heyndrickx’s data and reports. “I don’t see the connection between the results and the conclusions,” she says. Julian Robinson, senior researcher at the University of Sussex, doubts Heyndrickx’s descriptions of the victims’ medical conditions. And André De Leenheer, Heydrickx’s overseer at Ghent, is frankly contemptuous. “I’ve been studying everything in detail that has been written,” De Leenheer says of Heyndrickx’s findings. “It’s a real joke.” De Leenheer says he would kick out any student who handed in a similar report.

A toxicologist claims that a soviet journal gave high marks to Heyndrickx’s work, but it turns out that the source for this commendation is Heyndrickx himself. The lobbying firm behind this whole effort, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, gave no scrutiny whatsoever of the work of this supposed expert. When Heyndrickx passed the material on to the state department, their tests came back negative for any evidence of chemical contamination. A representative of UNITA, the Angolan military group that helped shepard Heyndrickx’s work to those in the U.S., claimed that he had discussed the work with other experts at “a university of chemical warfare” in Switzerland. When a swiss embassy is contacted, the reporters are told that no such studies are undertaken at any swiss university, and no such university in Switzerland exists. The article puts it best: “this significant piece of legislation was passed with no credible substantiation whatsoever.”

The article ends with a definitve putdown: “Is Heyndrickx a charlatan?” A chemical weapons expert at the state department responds, “I have no doubt about that,” adding, “That’s for sure.” Of course, this is not the story’s true end, but part of a larger picture. Anyone who reads this piece now sees immediately its unconscious prescience for the war in Iraq: poorly examined evidence passed to the U.S. by third parties with a vested interest that such evidence prompts the U.S. into action, all helpfully co-ordinated by a lobbying group that has no problem representing a murderous dictator, but has no interest in anyone working minimum wage. Then, the price would have been Namibian independence, in Iraq, it was death and maiming for hundreds of thousands. So, this small story (though not small at all, especially if one is from Namibia) holds that illumination, but it holds other light as well, by simply examining some of the players in the context of what a brief two decades of extra knowledge can give us.

At least one of the participants, the film-maker Andries Holst, has seemingly disappeared from the eye of history. Aubin Heynrickx, the ridiculed toxicologist, shows up again during the lead-up to the trials over the massacre of Kurds in northern Iraq, “In Iraq chemical arms trial, scientists face many burdens of proof”. He is described as “somewhat of a maverick in the field”, Heynrickx asserting that the Iraq army used cyanide and biological toxins, an assertion which most in his field disagree with². No mention is made of his sorry involvement in the attempt to block Namibian independence. The best known members of the lobbying powerhouse Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly are Charlie Black, Roger Stone, and Lee Atwater. Atwater, a man best known for his use of the infamous Willie Horton ad during the 1988 election, died, thankfully, very young. Roger Stone, a Nixon campaign alumnus, would go on to stage the Brooks Brothers riot in the 2000 election in order to stop vote counting in Miami³, help destroy the Reform party in that same year in order to eliminate a third-party threat on the right⁴, as well as fund and co-ordinate Al Sharpton’s 2004 presidential run in order to hurt the eventual democratic candidate with black voters⁵. Other notable incidents included his work as a liaison for the ill-viewed NXIVM cult⁶, flogging the possibility of a Michelle Obama “whitey tape”⁷, and a consulting venture with Scott Rothstein, the man behind the largest ponzi scheme in Florida history, now serving half a century in prison⁸. After a New York campaign in which he backed distribution of a flyer accusing a libertarian candidate of being a pedophile⁹, he would go on to run the campaign of the libertarian federal candidate, Gary Johnson, either out of devout libertarian belief, financial need, or perhaps again manipulating a third party or outsider candidate to arrange for a republican win¹⁰.

Charlie Black would continue to be a man of incredible power and toxic clientele. His list of clients would include Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile behind most of the bunko evidence of biological and chemical weapons, as well as the mercenary firm Blackwater, which he called “a fine company that’s provided a great service to the people of the United States and Iraq”, along with Phillipine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, and Phillip Morris¹¹. He would retire from lobbying when he went to work in the 2008 race for the crusading anti-lobbyist candidate John McCain; following the campaign, he un-retired from lobbying, and went back to work at his old firm¹². During that same campaign, Mitt Romney criticized McCain for having so many lobbyists as associates. When someone pointed out that Romney had plenty of lobbyists in his campaign as well, the candidate insisted that they were not involved in his campaign, but simply informal advisers¹³. In 2012, Black would join Romney as an informal adviser as well. Not that he was actively participating in any way: “No formal role in the campaign. Just offer advice occasionally.”¹⁴

These men, however, were well known already for their ignoble work. There was one player, crucial in the incident, that was behind a veil, and this was the International Freedom Foundation. I re-quote again their first appearance in the story: “Duncan Sellars, chairman of the conservative International Freedom Foundation (IFF) in Washington, says that after the agreement was signed, right-wingers thought of it as ‘a sellout of [South Africa-controlled] Namibia and a sellout of UNITA.’” The IFF was a think tank started by Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist who served half a decade in prison¹⁵. This, however, is not the chief notoriety of this organization; its chief notoriety is that a substantial amount of its funding secretly came from the apartheid government of South Africa, for the purpose of opposing sanctions, defaming its opponent, the ANC, and the ANC’s leader, Nelson Mandela. The funding of the IFF within the South African intelligence service was sometimes referred to as “Pacman”, and sometimes as “Operation Babushka” – a babushka is one of those wood russian dolls which contain another doll within¹⁶. This operation was handled by Craig Williamson, an intelligence agent who was also behind the assassination of Ruth First, Joe Slovo, and other anti-apartheid activists¹⁷. The South African interest in this case was that the country very much wanted to remain in Namibia, where it could continue its apartheid policy. Namibian independence would end all that.

This information all came out a half-decade after the Spy magazine piece, during South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Here is the foundation as described in volume two of the commission’s summary report:

An overview is provided below of certain projects undertaken by the South African Defence Force (SADF), South African Police (SAP), National Intelligence Service (NIS), Department of Foreign Affairs and Department of National Education, as presented to the Kahn Committee, the Ministers’ Committee on Special Projects and the Secret Services Evaluation Committee.

Most projects appear to be related to the establishment of front organisations or actions aimed at counteracting the activities of the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies, primarily in the sphere of information, communication, disinformation, propaganda and counter-propaganda. Other projects were aimed at circumventing sanctions.

South African Defence Force (SADF)

The SADF secret projects covered a range of activities such as publications, front organisations, and support to surrogate groups.

Two of the more costly projects were Pacman and Byronic. Pacman was the code name for the International Freedom Foundation, which had offices in Johannesburg, Washington, London, Brussels and Bonn. Its objectives were described as the combating of sanctions and support to constitutional initiatives through publications, lobbying, conferences etc. It specifically supported Mr Jonas Savimbi and UNITA. Leading personalities in government circles in Europe and the USA were involved, with half of its funds coming from abroad. Pacman’s annual budget for 1991/92 was listed as over R10 million. In late September 1991, the Minister of Finance agreed to a one-off payment of R7 million, approved by Minster of Defence, “to enable the country to withdraw from the enterprise”. This payment was vested in a trust controlled by trustees appointed by SADF.

All those who had any connection with the IFF, or might have had any connection with the IFF, denied knowing of the south african funding. “This is nothing I ever knew about. It’s something that I would have resigned over or closed the foundation over. I would have put a stop to it,” said Sellars, now a Virginia businessman¹⁸. Jesse Helms, the senator who put the rider in the original legislation, would deny even having knowledge of the group, through his then spokesman, Marc Thiessen: “Helms has never heard of the International Freedom Foundation, was not chairman of their advisory board and never authorized his name to be used by IFF in any way shape or form. We never had any relationship with them.”¹⁹ Thiessen would go on to be a speechwriter for George W. Bush, and would write a book defending the administration’s use of torture, Courting Disaster. In her review, “Counterfactual: A curious history of the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program”, Jane Mayer, author of the definitive torture history The Dark Side, would write that the book “downplays the C.I.A.’s brutality under the Bush Administration to the point of falsification.”²⁰

Abramoff also denied knowing of the source of funds for his organization, though another Abramoff venture makes this less credible. The IFF was only one Abramoff project which involved Africa; another was a symbolic meeting of anti-communist unity, the Democratic International, organized in Jamba, Angola, of various cold war anti-communist leaders: contras, afghan mujahaiden, Angola’s UNITA, among others. None of these groups spoke each other’s language, they soon ran out of food, the pact of co-operation signed there had no meaning and led to nothing²¹. The only one to benefit from this meaningless ceremony was Abramoff, who was approached to make a movie of Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA, a man who was later to be charged with war crimes, before being killed in battle²². “Nobody watches documentaries,” replied Abramoff, and instead he made Red Scorpion ²³. Scorpion is a too little examined movie which is ostensibly anti-communist (cuban and russian military are the main villains), but whose chief purpose appears to serve as South Africa propaganda²⁴. Its hero is a russian defector who does not look slavic at all, but resembles nothing less than the aryan ideal of a blonde superman. This man helps the black insurgents against their true oppressors, the soviet alliance, much as south africa tried to set up allied governments in Namibia and Angola which fought against anti-colonial movements that had soviet support. The movie ends with a triptych that illustrates how a white south african military man might see himself during that struggle – the aryan ideal flanked by his allies, an unctuous american reporter and a black rebel leader. That the movie strongly suggests south african propaganda is not an accident – Williamson, the south african intelligence agent would say that Scorpion was funded by “our guys”, and that they also provided military equipment for the production²⁵. Russell Crystal, an adviser to F.W. DeKlerk, South Africa’s president, was an informal producer on the film²⁶. After Swaziland fell through as a filming location, it would be shot in Namibia, then the protectorate of South Africa²⁷. Abramoff planned on using South African Defense Force (SADF) troops and equipment; Carmen Argenziano, the actor playing the villainous Cuban colonel, confirms that many of those playing russian and cuban troops were SADF soldiers²⁸.

That South Africa was heavily involved in such ventures, a connection seemingly unknown to so many, was seemingly known very well to others. “We heard that very right-wing South African money was helping fund the movie,” said Argenziano, “It wasn’t very clear. We were pretty upset about the source of the money. We thought we were misled. We were shocked that these brothers who we thought were showbiz liberals – Beverly Hills Jewish kids – were doing this.”²⁹ Chester “Chet” Crocker, assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1981 to 1989, did not think there was any way the Democratic International could have been organized without help from the SADF.³⁰ “We knew that the IFF was funded by the South African government,” Herman Cohen, who ran Africa operations for the National Security Council during the Reagan era, would tell Salon magazine. “It was one of a number of front organizations.”³¹ When asked about South Africa’s involvement with the IFF and Scorpion in 1995, at the time of the Truth commission revelations, Abramoff called them “outrageous.”³² When his brother, Robert, was asked about the allegations in 2006, after Jack’s arrest, he would say, “It’s a family matter and I prefer not to comment on anything.”³³

The exact influence of the South African government on the conservative movement is difficult to discern exactly, because they often seem to move in lockstep, without dissent or question, whether it be opposition to sanctions, support for South Africa in Naimbia, support for the South African proxy in Angola, Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA, harsh criticism of Nelson Mandela, or strong support for Madela’s rival, Mangosuthu Buthelezi. A good way of getting insight into this is by looking at the writings of Michael Johns, then an africa specialist for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. It is Johns, remember, who is the seed of the Namibian chemical weapons story. I quote again the relevant section:

The idea for the bill was born during a trip taken to Angola in March 1989 by Michael Johns, the Heritage Foundation’s policy analyst for African affairs.

There he met Andries Holst, a West German who claimed to be filming a documentary about Cuba’s use of chemical weapons in Angola. Johns brought Holst to Washington where the German filmmaker was introduced to Helms, State Department officials, lobbyists and other conservatives likely to be moved by his footage, which purported to show the horrors of chemical warfare.

Johns was a passionate supporter of Jonas Savimbi, the head of Angola’s UNITA – as mentioned already, a man later indicted as a war criminal and killed in battle. After Angola’s independence from Portugal, UNITA would break away from the coalition which fought for this independence, and wage a long civil war; it fought entirely out of self-interest, colluding with the former colonial power of Portugal³⁴. UNITA had nothing like the support of the other political parties in the country, and would not have been able to wage its long struggle without military support and funding from South Africa and the United States³⁵. Savimba was fluent in four languages, an educated man, a brilliant tactician, an opportunist, and a sociopath³⁶. Chester Crocker described him as “a brilliant military warlord who operated by the gun, lived by the gun, and died by the gun.”³⁷ Don Steinberg, ambassador to Angola during the first Clinton administration, on Savimbi: “He was the most articulate, charismatic homicidal maniac I’ve ever met.”³⁸ He recruited children into his armies, he burned women for being witches, he specifically targeted medical workers and school teachers for killing³⁹. When he suspected top members of his command of betrayal, the men who were his ambassadors to the United States, he had them and their families killed. UNITA, according to one survey, was responsible for the majority of the landmines in Angola, supplied by the United States, and placed in fields – a measure which had a devastating effect on agriculture and triggered a famine⁴⁰. He was seen as an anti-communist by the U.S., but those within his movement say that Savimbi ran UNITA like a communist organization⁴¹. After a long, bloody war, there were finally elections in 1991. When Savimbi lost at the ballot box, he went back to living by the gun⁴². The campaign of maiming, killing, and mining by UNITA continued for another decade, funded by blood diamonds⁴³. In 1999 he was indicted for war crimes, and then, finally, out of some strange mercy, he was killed in battle, and Angola’s civil war ended. Angola is still recovering from this time of horrors: it is a hideously inequitable place, the most expensive country in the world, its economy designed around guest workers for the oil industry and the ruling elite, who get swimming pools, nightclubs, and underage girls, while most citizens get shantytowns⁴⁴.

It is in this context that we can read Johns on Savimbi. In 1990, after the end of the Cold War, he argues for continuing aid to this man so that he might finally take power. In the essay, “With Freedom Near Angola: This Is No Time To Curtail UNITA Assistance”, he charges that the obstacle to freedom and democracy in Angola lies not with Savimbi, but his opponents:

Since it began arming UNITA in 1986, Washington has made a substantial investment in UNITA’s bid for a democratic Angola. American support for UNITA has discouraged Soviet and Cuban military involvement in southern Africa. Indeed, having been defeated in battle, some 65,000 Cuban troops in Angola are now headed back to Havana as a result of a negotiated settlement reached in December 1988.

American support for UNITA since 1986 has also helped advance the cause of democracy in Angola, raising hope that the 15-year conflict can be settled without further loss of blood. Angola’s Marxist regime took power in 1975 promising free and fair multi-party elections; it has yet to hold them. Since 1975, UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi has been demanding that the Angolan regime keep its promise. George Bush has supported Savimbi’s objective, promising last January that UNITA will receive American support `until genuine national reconciliation has been achieved.’

Ted Kennedy, the usual conservative bogeyman, is the enemy in all this for his opposition to more aid for Savimbi. Kennedy’s action, Johns warns, will lead to a longer war:

In Angola, where a civil war has raged for 15 years between the country’s Soviet-backed Marxist regime and an American-supported resistance movement, peace and freedom are now within sight. Unable to achieve a military victory, the Angolan regime of Jose Eduardo dos Santos is at last considering resistance demands for multi-party elections. These elections would allow a cease fire in the Angolan civil war. An obstacle to this has appeared not in Angola, but in the U.S. Congress. There Senator Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat, intends this week to attach an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would end American military assistance to Angola’s democratic resistance forces, known as the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Kennedy thus would remove all incentive for Angola’s Marxist regime to continue negotiations, and would likely encourage that regime again to seek a military–rather than diplomatic–solution to Angola’s civil war.

It ends with this vision of what would take place if military aid to Jonas Savimbi is ended:

It would open the door for further militarism on behalf of the Angolan regime, and close the door on the democratic aspirations of the Angolan people.

We also have this piece, again by Johns, “Namibian Voters Deny Total Power to SWAPO” read into the congressional record by Indiana congressman Dan Burton, in reaction to the vicious smear of Savimbi by those who wanted an end to U.S. aid for this man. Again, it is Savimbi fighting for democracy and good government, ideals blocked by his opponents:

Over the past 12 months, an estimated $1.5 billion in Soviet military assistance has arrived in Angola with the sole intention of driving the Angolan freedom fighters into the ground.

But Jonas Savimbi is still standing. His forces operate in every Angolan province, and over one-third of the country is firmly in their control. All this from a movement whose every survival remains nothing short of miraculous.

In resistance terms, Savimbi is clearly correct. UNITA has won the war. In political terms, however, the struggle for Angolan freedom remains even elusive. The Angolan regime shows little sign of agreeing to the free and fair elections it promised in 1975, leaving Savimbi with little alternative but to continue his battle for freedom.

In Washington, the picture is no prettier. The Angolan government had launched a propaganda campaign intended to discredit the Angolan freedom fighters among its Washington supporters.

Last week, the Angolan government purchased advertising space in the Washington Post and the New York Times in which it quoted from an August National Review article that described Savimbi’s intentions as fighting to extend `his autocratic grip on the people within his domain.’ Despite Savimbi’s consistent support for democratic values, the author described UNITA as `a highly centralized, Leninist organization.’

The radical organization TransAfrica, which has received donations from the governments of Cuba and Angola, is also weighing in against the freedom fighters. Last week TransAfrica director Randall Robinson held two press conferences in one week to denounce UNITA, and in an apparent effort to overturn any diplomatic gains made by Savimbi’s Washington visit, his organization invited Angolan dictator dos Santos to visit Washington to press his case for a termination of UNITA aid.

We can discern a strong contrast with the way in which Johns views Savimbi and Nelson Mandela. While Savimbi’s murder of civilians goes unmentioned in Johns’ writing, Mandela, though praised sparingly for his work combating apartheid, is described as a terrorist, the head of a communist affiliated terrorist organization, the ANC, and a man who deserved to spend decades in prison. From “For Mandela’s Visit, Some Words of Caution”, written after Mandela was released from prison, just prior to his first visit to the United States:

It is appropriate that one of apartheid’s most heralded resistance figures, Nelson Mandela, will be welcomed to the U.S. next week. Mandela will meet with George Bush on Monday. He will address a joint meeting of Congress the following day, joining the ranks of Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Douglas MacArthur, and more recently Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa.

Americans nevertheless have reasons to be skeptical of Mandela. First, Nelson Mandela is not a freedom fighter. He repeatedly has supported terrorism. Since Mandela’s release from prison and his subsequent refusal to renounce violence, the Marxist-dominated ANC has launched terrorism and violence against civilians, claiming several hundred lives. Further, the ANC, in which Mandela serves as Deputy President, has tortured and executed its own members when they have refused to tow the party line, a fact Mandela conceded in a press conference on April 14. ANC dissidents who escaped to Kenya in April contend that at least 120 political prisoners are being detained and tortured in ANC camps in Angola and Uganda. Because of its support for violence against civilians, Mandela’s ANC was labeled a “terrorist” organization last January in the U.S. Defense Department’s Terrorist Group Profiles.

He then goes on to paint Mandela as a potential communist dictator:

Second, though Mandela has spoken out against apartheid, he is not likely to support economic and political freedom if he or the ANC takes power in South Africa. At the very moment communism was collapsing in Eastern Europe, Mandela praised the South African Communist Party in his first speech following his release from prison. Mandela said in Cape Town on February 11: “We are heartened by the fact that the alliance between ourselves and the [communist] party remains as strong as it always was.” Mandela also continues to propose the nationalization of South African industry, even though this failed policy has been rejected not only throughout Europe, Latin America, and Asia, but increasingly in Africa.

Johns appears to have a strong preference for Mandela’s rival, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, instead:

In forming its South Africa policy, Washington must now decide what sort of political system it wants in South Africa. Partly because of its terrorism and alliance with South Africa’s communist party, not all South African blacks support the ANC, and many have sought political alternatives. Foremost among these is the Zulu-dominated Inkatha movement, led by Chief Manosuthu Buthelezi, which represents some 1.5 million black South Africans.

A deferential attitude on the part of Johns towards South Africa is most strikingly revealed in a Heritage lecture on Namibia. From “Namibia and the Global Democratic Revolution”:

Part of the reason the potential dangers of the Namibian independence process, most notably, the rise of a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in Namibia, receive so little attention in the U.S. is that there is a general feeling that South Africa knows about Namibia – that South Africa has carefully weighted the potential benefits and costs of granting Namibia independence, and if South Africa views the independence process as acceptable to their security interests, there is little reason for the U.S. to have further concern. Our questioning South Africa’s Namibia policy is viewed a little bit like South Africa questioning our Mexico policy.

This lecture was made in 1989, after the U.S. had imposed sanctions on South Africa with overwhelming public support. The apartheid state was viewed as utterly evil; yet here Johns is arguing that the common sense U.S. perspective is that this same apartheid state should have full sway over the government of its neighbors. Note that this is not simply his perspective, it is supposedly the general feeling in the United States, at a time when the public was strongly supporting sanctions, that South Africa should have such sway, and that it is expected for such rule to go unquestioned.

Equally insightful is a review of After Apartheid: The Solution for South Africa by Leon Louw and Frances Kendall (“Swiss Family Buthelezi”). Though the anti-apartheid struggle involved the collective effort of people from many native tribes, as well as south-east asians, Johns opens his review by portraying the country as a place of ethnic strife, where prejudice of white against black is just one conflict of many, and as if that hostility is equal to both sides, and between parties of equal power:

South Africa is a rich and beautiful land where many people hate each other. The hostilities are not simply betwen black and white, or Zulu and Xhosa, or Hindu and Moslem, or Afrikaner and Anglophone. Sometimes the bloodiest conflicts are between rival political organizations within the same ethnic group, especially between radical blacks in the townships associated with the African National Congress (ANC) and the leaders of tribal homelands with strong rural power bases.

We have the continued defamation of the ANC:

It has long been the aim of the South African Communist Party, which exerts significant influence on the ANC, to take control in a unitary state, destroy the power bases of the country’s independent black leadership, and assume totalitarian control. And in pursuit of this objective they have accepted and actively sought the support of the Soviet Union. Occasionally, the ANC might try to cover these facts with cosmetic remarks and there may even be differing viewpoints toward Marxism-Leninism within the organization, but it remains clear that the ANC leadership is, in fact, wedded to terrorism and violence, and very much aligned with Soviet ambitions in southern Africa.

[If] there has been one common characteristics to ANC rhetoric and actions since its 1969 Morogoro conference, it has been that total uncompromising power in South Africa is their only objective, and they have seldom spared any level of violence to achieve this end.

Another figure is brought in to deal with this book’s primary flaw of its insufficiently critical look at the ANC. The man is Warwick-Davies Webb, and I award no points for guessing which think tank he’s from. I will also make the small observation about a strange quality of this review of a South Africa policy book: the only people quoted in the review on the feasibility or commendability of a canton type government appear to be members of its white minority.

However since the ANC cannot thrive without Soviet and other external assistance, why not insert a meaningful constitutional provision that would outlaw foreign intervention in South African affairs? “The book does not take into consideration the possible exploitation of the system by totalitarian groupings,” says Warwick Davies-Webb of the International Freedom Foundation’s Johannesburg office, a group committed to individual liberty and free-market values. The totalitarian threat, Webb thinks, would probably be greatest during the transitional phase. “By bringing in the SACP, ANC, and PAC (Pan-Africanist Congress) into the transitional phase, Leon [Louw] fails to take into account their nature and their short term expedient tactic of accepting co-option into the system in order to further their own political agenda,” he says.

This might be one of the only times where I have seen a book, and its review, refer to the apartheid state as a product of both right and left prejudice, of apartheid as a problem of statism, and most strikingly, one characterized as implicitly racist – if there is any system whose defining, explicit purpose is racist, it would be apartheid.

Again, from the review:

The book contains a brilliant analysis of how apartheid has thrown the South African economy into near shambles. While mineral wealth has kept the country alive, regulations on who can buy and sell goods, who can own property, and who can be employed have generally crippled economic growth. Before “grand apartheid” was enacted by the National Party in 1950, apartheid laws were intended to protect white farmers and workers from black competition. And this is a shame, Kendall and Louw argue, because the South African black tradition – back to the 1800s when the Mgengus and Ngunis were successful herdsmen and farmers – falls solidly in the entrepreneurial tradition. “There is an extraordinary implicit racism in all of this,” remarks Louw, “from the Left and the Right, but especially from the Left. The Left regard blacks as welfare cases, disabled people, for whom the only hope is a masssive paternal welfare state.”

Today South Africa is swamped with a whole array of white-sponsored statist laws that discourage individual initiative and disrupt free enterprise, including minimum standards regulations, extensive licensing laws, discretionary laws regulating the opening of new businesses, and large levels of government ownership over the means of production. South Africa remains perhaps the most overregulated economy in the non-Communist world, and the dead hand of bureaucracy is most stifling for blacks.

The problem is not primarily apartheid, but a strong state. The state must be weakened, for the greater economic benefit of South Africa, to avoid the dominance of a white minority by a black majority, and to prevent the outbreak of ethnic strife warned of in the first paragraph.

The “one man, one vote” unitary state proposed by the ANC and its front organization, the United Democratic Front (UDF), would be unacceptable to Afrikaners and other whites who fear being governed by a black majority, to smaller black ethnic groups who fear oppression of tribal minorities so typical in much of the rest of Africa, and to homeland leaders who fear they would lose their local political authority. The most pressing political challenge for the nation, then, is to find a way of broadening democratic participation while at the same time preventing any one racial, ethnic, or political group from dominating the others.

The book’s solution, one that Johns commends, is for a federal, decentralized state:

For a number of years, many South Africans have argued that strong local government – federalism – is the only democratic system that realistically could replace apartheid. With power decentralized, each group would have the opportunity to govern itself in the areas where it composes a majority. The struggle for national power would become less important if each group knew it would be protected in its own area; national conflict would therefore be diffused.

Johns presents this solution as one equally opposed by the ANC and the pro-apartheid National Party, which is a little unusual, since this federal solution seems uncannily like the one put forth by the same National Party during negotiations over the post-apartheid state, and described by Nelson Mandela in his memoir Long Walk to Freedom, as apartheid in disguise:

Despite [F.W. De Klerk's] seemingly progressive actions, Mr. de Klerk was by no means the great emancipator. He was a gradualist, a careful pragmatist. He did not make any of his reforms with the intention of putting himself out of power. He made them for precisely the opposite reason: to ensure power for the Afrikaner in a new dispensation. He was not yet prepared to negotiate the end of white rule.

His goal was to create a system of power-sharing based on group rights, which would preserve a modified form of minority power in South Africa. He was decidedly opposed to majority rule, or “simple majoritarianism” as he sometimes called it, because that would end white domination in a single stroke. We knew early on that the government was fiercely opposed to a winner-takes-all Westminster parliamentary system, and advocated instead a system of proportional representation with built-in structural guarantees for the white minority. Although he was prepared to allow the black majority to vote and create legislation, he wanted to retain a minority veto. From the start I would have no truck with this plan. I described it to Mr. de Klerk as apartheid in disguise, a “loser-takes-all” system.

The Nationalists’ long-term strategy to overcome our strength was to build an anti-ANC alliance with the Inkatha Freedom Party and to lure the Coloured Afrikaans-speaking voters of the Cape to a new National Party. From the moment of my release, they began wooing both [Mangosuthu] Buthelezi and the Coloured voters of the Cape. The government attempted to scare the Coloured population into thinking the ANC was anti-Coloured. They supported Chief Buthelezi’s desire to retain Zulu power and identity in a new South Africa by preaching to him the doctrine of group rights and federalism.

The use of Inkatha and Buethelezi to divide and conquer is another example of the striking lockstep in the attitudes of the hardline conservative intellectual class of the U.S., including Johns, and the government of South Africa. We have seen this already in the way Johns gives far more sympathetic treatment to Buthelezi than Mandela in his writing. Buthelezi, along with Savimbi, were both invited to speak at Johns’ think tank, the Heritage Foundation⁴⁵. The other side of this wicked arrangement took place in South Africa, again, like the funding of the International Freedom Foundation, behind a veil. For even though he was thought to be an independent actor, Buthelezi, just like the IFF, had received secret aid from the South African government. Some of this was both to sustain his party, the Inkatha, while the more nefarious involved collusion and training between Inkatha members and the South African Defense Force, collusion which resulted in the Inkatha instigating ethnic violence, the very violence that Johns cites as a reason for why a strong, single state would be impossible.

This is a controversial subject, so I quote at length from the relevant notes on Buthelezi from the Truth commission – on his attraction for conservative whites overseas, his collusion with the apartheid government, as well as the violence and autocracy which characterized KwaZulu, his tribal region (note: Buthelezi refused to co-operate with the Truth commission and did not offer testimony which might have qualified or refuted any testimony against him). All the following excerpts are from volume two of the commission:

During the latter part of the 1970s, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi became vocal in his opposition to protest politics, economic sanctions and the armed struggle being promoted by the ANC in exile. This, together with his calls for investment and a free-market economy and his embracing of constituency politics, won him increasing support from the white business and white community at large. However, it placed him at odds with the ANC’s leadership in exile. The leaders of the two parties met in London in October 1979 to discuss their differences. At the London meeting Chief Buthelezi accused the ANC leadership of being hypocritical and of having deserted black South Africans.

Following the 1979 meeting, Chief Buthelezi faced growing hostility from an increasing number of Zulu-speaking people in Natal and the KwaZulu homeland for his rejection of the ANC’s strategies and, in particular, for his decision to participate in the homeland system, to work through the tribal authorities, the KLA and the black urban councils. The two organisations’ differing approaches to opposing apartheid laid the basis for the bitter and bloody political conflict that ensued.

Note that the roots of the conflict between these groups is not ethnic, as Johns states, but over political beliefs.

During the early 1980s, Chief Buthelezi still had high standing in the international community and amongst South African (white) businesspersons. Part of this was due to Inkatha’s official and international rhetoric of non-violence. This was indeed true of Inkatha’s stance towards the South African government and the white electorate. Inkatha supporters did not bomb shopping centres or defence force installations, or kill black Security Branch members. However, Inkatha members clearly employed violence against the ANC/UDF and against other extra-parliamentary opponents of the state, as did members of the UDF. The following quotes from speeches made by Chief Buthelezi at Inkatha meetings or in the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly during the early 1980s indicate an increasingly militaristic tone emerging in his addresses to his constituency:

I believe we must prepare ourselves not only to defend property and life but to go beyond that and prepare ourselves to hit back with devastating force at those who destroy our property and kill us.

I have stated that our commitment to peaceful change does not take away the inalienable right which every individual has to defend himself or herself…We cannot, just because we are a peaceful movement, lie down so that people can trample on us or destroy us without lifting a finger.

There are many examples of such violence; one of the more prominent was the Umlazi Cinema massacre:

On 1 August 1985, Victoria Mxenge, an UDF executive member, was murdered at her home in Umlazi, Durban. A memorial service was held in her honour in the Umlazi Cinema building on 8 August 1985. Whilst the service was in progress, hundreds of Inkatha vigilantes armed with assegais, knobkieries and firearms burst into the cinema, and began randomly stabbing and shooting at the mourners. In the attack, fourteen people were killed and many others injured. Witnesses allege that the attackers included Inkatha vigilantes recruited from the adjacent shack settlements and from Lindelani, north of Durban. The soldiers and police were allegedly still present but did not act to prevent the attack. This was the worst incident yet of clashes between Inkatha and UDF.

The following excerpts provide some illustration of the co-operation between Buthelezi, Inkatha, and the South African government:

An Inkatha-supporting and state-sponsored vigilante group known as the A-Team was set up with the help of the SAP [South African Police] Riot Unit, in 1983/4 in the Chesterville township, Durban. Statements made to the Commission allege that the A-Team was responsible for the perpetration of human rights abuses in the township between 1985 and 1989. These included at least ten killings, several cases of attempted killing and many incidents of arson and severe ill treatment.

The picture painted by witnesses who gave evidence at public hearings of the Commission in Durban was that this group established a reign of terror in Chesterville over a number of years. They took over Road 13, illegally occupying houses in that road and burning surrounding houses in order to make a safe area for themselves. They also allegedly brought in Inkatha youths from other townships to bolster their power-base. Their sole aim was to target members of youth and other UDF-linked organisations. This they did with the active complicity of the SAP, including the Riot Unit and the Security Branch.

In his application for amnesty, former member of the Durban Riot Unit, Mr Frank Bennetts, gave evidence of the extent of the Security Branch’s involvement in and collusion with members of the A-Team. He described the A-Team as:

a group of Inkatha supporters who were acting in their capacity, or so I believed, in assisting the police in the curbing of the growth and support of groups and organisations opposed to the government and the order of the day.

According to Bennetts, the A-Team assisted the Riot Unit by identifying alleged perpetrators and UDF activists to be detained. They also served as informants, passing on information to the security forces. In return, the Riot Unit offered them protection by putting extra patrols into the street where they lived, and giving them escorts in and out of the township if and when they required it.

Bennetts told the Commission that the A-Team members were never detained under the emergency regulations, although there was good cause to detain them. He said that had the police arrested the A-Team members, the incidents of violence in Chesterville would have been reduced “by 99.99%”. In his words, ‘[The A-Team] wrecked half the township”. Nevertheless, the Riot Unit openly and blatantly sided with the A-Team, perceiving the gang as a legitimate ally in their struggle against the UDF.

The latter 1980s: Collusion with the South African security forces

By 1985, Inkatha supporters found themselves increasingly under attack by virtue of the positions they held within local government and homeland structures. Threats of assassination against Chief Buthelezi in 1985 prompted the Inkatha leader to turn to the South African government, in particular to the SADF, for assistance to take on the ANC/UDF. Contact with the central government had of necessity to be secret given Chief Buthelezi’s public stance towards the South African government. During the latter half of the 1980s, Inkatha began to draw increasingly upon the support of the South African government, and to rely more heavily on the South African and KwaZulu government’s infrastructure and resources. In the process, its aggression turned away from the apartheid state and became directed at those who were advocating alternative structures and thus threatening its power-base.

The South African government not only welcomed but also actively promoted this covert alliance with Inkatha, as it fell squarely into its response to what it saw as the total revolutionary onslaught against it. Covert logistical and military support to UNITA in Angola, RENAMO in Mozambique and to the Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA) was a critical part of the South African government’s counterrevolutionary strategy. Although these operations were external, the State Security Council resolved in 1985 to establish such groups internally, in addition to those it was already supporting. Inkatha was seen as being able to play the same counter-mobilisation role inside the country as their external surrogates (such as UNITA) had played, and had become a “middle force” between the South African government and its political enemies. A common feature of the external and the internal operations, was that in both cases training and weapons supply were undertaken by the SADF’s DST, and by Special Forces personnel.

Furthermore, the media images projected of white policemen assaulting and shooting at black demonstrators were clearly unacceptable internationally, and there was a feeling that repression should as far as possible not be carried out by state security forces, but by black surrogate groups. Part of the government’s strategy was to characterise the political conflict in the country as “black-on-black” violence.

One of the first instances of covert military assistance between Inkatha and the South African government was Operation Marion, the SADF Military Intelligence project set up in early 1986 in order to provide assistance to Inkatha and the KwaZulu government. During 1985, Chief Buthelezi was alerted by Military Intelligence to alleged assassination plans against him. This prompted him, in late 1985, to approach Military Intelligence with a request for various capabilities, including an offensive paramilitary capacity, in order to take on the ANC/UDF.

Flowing out of this was what has become known as the Caprivi training, the clandestine training in offensive action of some 200 Inkatha supporters conducted by the Special Forces arm of the SADF in the Caprivi Strip, South West Africa/Namibia in 1986. Secret military intelligence documents make it clear that the project was undertaken as much to further the strategic aims of the South African government and Defence Force, as it was in response to a request from Chief Buthelezi. Planning for this project took place in circumstances of utmost secrecy, and involved the highest echelons of the State Security Council and Military Intelligence on the one hand, and Chief Buthelezi and his personal assistant, Mr MZ Khumalo, on the other. The defence force was at pains to ensure that the entire project was covert, and that the funding of the project could not be traced back to its source.

The trainees were controlled and supervised by a political commissar, later to become their commander, Mr Daluxolo Wordsworth Luthuli. Luthuli was a former ANC guerrilla fighter who had recently joined Inkatha after being released from a lengthy term of imprisonment on Robben Island. His appointment was authorised by Chief Buthelezi.

Luthuli was unequivocal concerning the purpose of the Caprivi training. He told the Commission that the training was aimed at equipping Inkatha supporters to kill members of the UDF/ANC. According to Luthuli and other Caprivi trainees who spoke to the Commission, this is what they were explicitly told by their SADF instructors. They knew that they were being trained as a hit squad.

With their deployment in various parts of KwaZulu and the former Natal, the trainees were partly responsible for the dramatic escalation of the political conflict in the region, and fundamentally changed the political landscape in the former KwaZulu homeland, the repercussions of which are currently playing themselves out in this region. Their modus operandi, their mobility, their access to infrastructure and sophisticated weaponry exposed large numbers of people and vast areas of the province to their activities. As a result, they were responsible for facilitating the easy and quick resort to violence as a means of settling political scores and greatly enhanced the development of a culture of impunity and political intolerance that is so well established in the province at the present time.

The Commission heard evidence of the involvement of Caprivi trainees in the KwaMakhutha massacre on 21 January 1987 in which thirteen people, mostly women and children, were killed and several others injured in the AK-47 attack on the home of UDF activist Bheki Ntuli. A large number of people including former Minister of Defence General Magnus Malan and MZ Khumalo of the IFP, were tried for murder in 1996 in the Durban Supreme Court. Although the accused were acquitted, the Supreme Court found that Inkatha members trained by the SADF in the Caprivi were responsible for the massacre and that the two state witnesses, being members of the SADF Military Intelligence, were directly involved in planning and execution of the operation. The court was not able to find who had provided backing for the attack.

Following the revelation of the depth of their collusion with the apartheid government, Buthelezi’s Inkatha party would end up boycotting the elections: “Inquest Finds South Africa Police Aided Zulus in Terror Campaign” by Bill Keller.

With the end of the Cold War, Johns leaves the Heritage Foundation, goes to work for Eli Lily, health care lobbyists S.R. Wojdak & Associates, then Gentiva Health Services, and for the past decade, work as an executive at Electric Mobility Corporation⁴⁶. Electric Mobility sells Rascal scooters, motorized wheelchairs which allow the elderly and disabled to travel with greater ease; it is an interesting company. Prior to Johns tenure there, it was fined close to a quarter of a million dollars by the state of New Jersey and signed an agreement with the state’s attorney general to cease hard-sell practices, such as misinformation on medicare reimbursements⁴⁷. Michael Flowers, the president of the company, objected to the reporting of this as a fine. Electric Mobility was not fined, he wrote: “Electric Mobility entered into an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance with the State of New Jersey. By doing so, we believe that we have set the industry standard for ethical sales practices.”⁴⁸ This same Consumer Affairs site now lists 69 complaints about Rascal scooters. I include some of the more notable, from 2005 through to December of last year, all after Johns had joined the company:

I have Rascal 115 scooter that quit working. I called Rascal in February 2012 and was directed to service center Watkins & Riggs in Ocala, FL. I was called a couple days later and was told speed controller was bad and was on backorder. After three weeks, I called service center to find they were still waiting on parts. So I then called Rascal and left message as directed but never got a call back. A month later, I called Rascal again and call got redirected to new owner who in just a few words told me that they just purchased Rascal and any problem before the buyout two weeks ago was not their problem. Again, I called service center who again told me parts are still on backorder. What good is a product that you need but cannot get parts?

Bought Rascal 600 scooter. It worked for about 6 months then just stopped working. Was taken to an authorized repair shop, they didn’t know what was wrong & why it stopped. After having it at their shop. Weekly calls on when it would be fixed, was told someone would call. Finally had to stop at shop. They would try to find what was wrong. Repeated calling again, I took it home worked for couple of months, stopped again-took back to same shop for help. Both times had to pay for shop time & was not told what the problem was.

I am 83 years old-diabetic neuropathy both legs and feet. Can’t walk. Has caused mental/emotional distress! My lifestyle is limited. Very unhappy with performance! Help. Medicare will not let me get another & I am on limited income. I would like to live the rest of my life enjoying the outdoors and being mobile again! I would like to have this “Lemon” scooter replaced! Can I sue for damages or another option? Please help me!

I was looking at numerous electric mobility scooter, and I chose the “Rascal 600 B”. The representative came to my home to show me how the “rascal 600 B” looks and operates. I was told that the Rascal company would file with Medicare all papers that I provided to him at the time of purchasing. He told me that I would be getting 80% of my money back. I had all the correct paper work that he needed to file my claim on 5-27-10. Since then I’ve been turned down by Medicare, stating that the forms & codes were improperly filed.

I have contacted and informed the Rascal company regarding this matter. I have stage 4 lung cancer and cannot walk short or far distances without the help of this scooter. I have neuropathy of both feet & legs and some in my hands. Using this scooter has improved my living skills in my home and outside, where I could not walk w/o pain. I’m asking that someone check into this claim. If I don’t get any compensation for this scooter, fine, but I was told that I would get 80% back. No consequences, I’m using the scooter for self well being. It’s just that I was lied to and nothing can take that away. If I’m not going to get some money back, don’t tell me such.

I just found your site and read complaints from buyers of the Rascal Scooters. My parents, in their 80′s at the time, were also scammed by the saleswoman, promising Medicare would reimburse the cost of the Rascal Scooter. I contacted the Rascal Company and the creditor to no avail. I contacted the saleswoman and she claimed she never said any such thing, and that there was nothing she could do for them now. Unfortunately, my father suffered a massive stroke and never even used the thing. I ended up paying off the remainder of the bill, just to relieve some of the stress in the months following my father’s death. It now (2 1/2 years later) sits in my driveway with a For Sale B/O sign. I know we’ll never get near the full purchase price. Oh well, live and learn. Do not trust the Rascal sales reps!

My 82-year-old mother received an unsolicited high pressure sales call today from a salesman named Mike who insisted he had an appointment for a scooter demonstration and said he would not leave unless she agreed to a demo. When she said she had not requested an appointment and did not want a demo and was not able to participate in a demo because of her health, he became very hostile and repeatedly said he would not leave until she agreed to a demo. She said she was going to call the company and demand to know who said they scheduled the demo. The salemand [sic] physically jerked his business card from my mothers hand and left.

The hostile and high pressure sales tactics including refusing to leave when asked threatened my mother who is recovering from hip replacement surgery with complications from a staff [sic] infection.

I was told by Jerri, telephone sales, that I could get a new scooter by having an Orthopaedic Surgeon order one for me. Mine gave me a prescription for one, but she sent papers for a power chair to him. He filled them out and I received a power chair INSTEAD of the scooter, which I needed. I was told by Lauren, who made the delivery, that it was a power chair or nothing!

I did not want it, but was afraid to refuse it, since I don’t know when I may get worse. I have serious heart trouble and, being preoccupied with my other disabilities, I just let the chair sit unused until October when I began to try to get it exchanged for a scooter.I was told by another dealer that Electric Mobility pushed the chairs because they made 3 times as much on them as on the scooters. Tim called me last week and said that my family physician could now request a scooter for me and, if he filled out the papers, EM would pick up the chair and bring me a scooter.

Today I was called by an arrogant motor-mouth named Steve who would hardly let me get a word in edgewise. HE said Tim was wrong about the family physician, etc., and pretty much told me I was out of luck. He would not allow me to talk with a rational representative and kept threatening to terminate this conversation until I finally gave up and hung up. I refuse to believe that I have to be run over and mistreated by Electric Mobility and that they have a license to steal from Medicare and Blue Cross. They billed around $6,000 for a useless chair; I have seen scooters for sale at Costco for $1,200! Something doesn’t smell right! Do you agree?

They seem to figure that all older people who have trouble walking are also brain-dead. They assign a fast-talking slick,sleazy spokesman to out-talk and put off the old folks. Since my brain still works, I want to see that this abuse is corrected.

This is Johns’ vocation, but he has a far more distinctive avocation. Of all those involved in the Namibia chemical weapons scam, Charlie Black is the most powerful, but Johns is the most visible. He has not vanished from the earth, in fact is more prominent than ever before. He is the national chairman of The Patriot Caucus, a three thousand member strong Tea Party organization, listed in National Journal’s “12 Tea Party Players To Watch”. By virtue of his leadership of this group, he’s also listed on “The Top Conservatives to Follow on Twitter”, in the coveted intellectual acreage between Michelle Malkin and John Boehner. He’s there speaking at the March for Liberty, Washington D.C. (part one and two); the Dallas Tea Party, same day (part one, two, three); a Philadelphia Tea Party rally; a softball Katie Couric interview with Tea Party patriots; he has a blog devoted to freedom and prosperity, and a twitter feed devoted, presumably, to these same.

Johns is Janus-like in his promotional work; with Couric, he affects a congenial, open-minded pose. At tea party rallies, his voice is almost always an uncontrolled, angry shriek, so he resembles no one so much as Chris Farley’s lunatic motivational speaker. His rhetorical approach at these meetings is simple, beginning with a premise that few would consider controversial (we differ on many issues, but we still have shared beliefs) and then moving on to the supposed shared belief, which is more than a little controversial – Hillary Clinton is a traitor, America is inherently a christian nation, etc.

One example, from a Philadelphia Tea Party rally:

Let me say this: America has a unique standing in the world. And we may differ over issues here and there, but I know we are united on one. This state department, under Mrs. Clinton, is surrendering american autonomy to international bodies…they are surrendering our constitutional rights to form our own foreign policies, to make our own national security interests [sic], the message needs to go out to Washington, MR. OBAMA, WE WILL DEFEND AMERICA, NOT THE UNITED NATIONS!

Another, from a Boston Tea Party gathering, 2009:

Let me just say, as we gather today, republicans and democrats, liberals and republicans, independents, third party members, many members of the Ron Paul movement, maybe there is a new coalition emerging right now. Maybe this is the beginning of something truly exciting. Maybe we can put aside whatever petty differences that have kept us from working together and start anew, and build a new resistance in this country that is rooted in the belief of the american people [sic], in a free market enterprise system, in our democratic processes, and our national autonomy.

I want to be clear on one other comment. Mr. Obama was in Europe. Made a very controversial statement. Said this is not a christian nation. (audience loudly boos) The message needs to go forward to Washington, Mr. Obama every historical document signed in Philadelphia, every founding document of this nation, has cited our creator, that is the basis on which we distinguish ourselves from the world (audience cheers). That is the foundation of our liberties, and our god-given freedoms. AND THEY ARE GOD GIVEN FREEDOMS. A nation that denies its creator, and rejects its principles will not long endure. And we need to re-unite today with an understanding of the principles, start with Sam Adams, start with the bravery of these men and…who led this great initiative which has started and begun the most powerful nation in the world. The time has come to defend those principles, THEY ARE BEING ERODED!

When America stops being a christian nation, it will end up living in a van down by the river.

Most of his writing is the expected angry boilerplate. “Release the Birth Documents Already”, demands one blog post; “Van loads of Somalis being transported to #Ohio polls, instructed to vote straight Dem ticket. goo.gi/qLVv“, warns a tweet⁴⁹. When a Marvel comic pokes fun at the tea party movement, by suggesting they are slightly less than heterogeneous in skin color, he is alert, active, and involved, demanding why Marvel didn’t issue an apology the moment they saw the comic panel⁵⁰. “The Tea Party movement has been very reflective of broad concerns of all Americans,” says Johns, who appears to live in a different universe than I do, “Membership is across ethnic, religious and even political lines.” He was an unambivalent supporter of the Iraq war; in 2007, he defends the cruddy intelligence that got the U.S. into the war, then waves the point away, insisting that whatever started the war is irrelevant, since Iraq is now the central point of the war on terror, then demands an apology from Harry Reid for having the audacity to call the Iraq war a failure⁵¹.

There is a foolish game that someone outside Africa can play, and I’m certain I’ve played it, where, as if by a magic trick, the people of the continent are made to be either people or as inanimate as sticks, depending on one’s convenience. When one wants to feel warmth over some compassionate act, they are human; when one feels guilt over some neglect, or the possible horror that a politician one supports has inflicted on a country there, they are suddenly sticks again. When one wishes to grief an enemy over the harm they’ve caused some place on the continent, they are human, and when this griefing is returned in kind over one’s own misdeeds, the continent’s people are suddenly sticks again. For me to invoke the dead of Angola for the sole purpose of an argument is to diminish them, and as someone outside Angola, I cannot demand an apology on their behalf. So, my curiousity is my own, and my curiousity is this: whether this man, Michael Johns, who demands apologies of so many, for so many slights, has ever felt the impulse to ask forgiveness for the thousands dead from the civil war unleashed by Jonas Savimbi, the man he abided, abetted, and encouraged. The head of Zambia’s government, which gave support to Savimbi during the long civil war, gave apologies for this support⁵². I know that the dead of Angola are not an important issue – nowhere near as important as a panel in a Marvel comic – but I can only hope that they are important enough that what took place there would be remembered, prompt some questions of why it took place and how to keep such a thing from ever happening again – might prompt something other than the simple dictum that african life is cheap. That african life is viewed cheaply is beyond dispute, but that other lives can be viewed as cheaply, that there is nothing inherent in those who live on the continent that renders it cheap, is not beyond dispute either. The lives of Angolans were thrown away easily. The independence of Namibia was almost thrown away just as easily. Ten years later, the lives of americans in Iraq were thrown away very easily as well. That Iraqi life was extinguished with even greater ease is another indisputable. That all these lost lives once had great political significance, their fight of great political convenience, and their deaths now incredibly inconvenient, something that must be forgotten as soon as possible, so that we might all move on to the next frame of the movie, to a place without horror – this is a horrific truth as well.

On February 27th, 2008, William Buckley died, and Johns eulogized him as if he were a messiah: “There was the time before him and there was the time after him…We will not likely see his type again.” (“Walking the road that Buckley built”) It is in this modern messiah that we might have the rosetta stone of why conservatives were so pliant before the efforts of South African intelligence, why their approach was often indistinguishable from official policy in South Africa. In 1957, the public conflagration over civil rights only kindling, Buckley’s National Review would feature an editorial, unsigned – though most likely written by the messiah himself – which asked, “whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced one.” Then: “If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.”⁵³ Thirty years later, National Review would ask whether the South African majority were “intellectually and practically prepared to assume the social, economic, and political leadeship in a highly industrialized country?”⁵⁴ Africa was across the ocean, and Africa was here as well. Just a few short years before apartheid was destroyed, Buckley would advise the U.S. to forget about the “one man/one vote” business over there⁵⁵. Various states are now weighing measures so that rural votes count for more than urban ones⁵⁶. George Will praised the idea of deterring “potential voters with the weakest motivations”⁵⁷. The day after Barack Obama’s re-election, Johns’ former employer, the Heritage Foundation, declared war on the president⁵⁸.

In 1989, the year before Namibian independence, the article “Young Bucks”, by Bob Mack, a very good writer perhaps best known as editor of the greatest magazine in the history of journalism, appeared in the now extinct Spy. “Young Bucks” dealt with the going-ons at the National Review. One staff meeting, headed by Buckley, discussed the issue of the week before, one featuring a provocative cover story titled “Blacks and the G.O.P.: Just Called to Say I Loved You”, on the difficulties the republican party had attracting black voters. Buckley was a man known for his sterling silver wit, and he had just the bon mot for this provocative cover. “Maybe,” he began, the brilliant, rare wine of a yacht and windsor knot mind about to be poured, “Maybe it should’ve been titled ‘Just Called to Say I Love You, Niggah.’”⁵⁹

FOOTNOTES

¹ He wrote this insightful piece on William Kunstler, “Still Crazy After All These Years”.

² He is mentioned at the beginning of “In Iraq chemical arms trial, scientists face many burdens of proof”:

For 18 years, Dr. Aubin Heyndrickx has tended the sealed jars containing strands of hair and scraps of clothing he gathered from a dead woman’s body. Collected in Halabja, one of many Kurdish towns in northern Iraq that were attacked with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein’s army in 1988, they have sat in a blue plastic drum in his lab ever since, waiting.

Now, as prosecutors prepare to try Saddam in Baghdad for genocide against the Kurds, Heyndrickx would like the material to be analyzed. “May I insist these proofs are mentioned at the trial?” the doctor asks.

He is one of a small group of doctors, scientists and Middle East experts who have studied chemical weapons use by Iraq against its Kurdish citizens in the 1980s. Now, they are dusting off evidence and attempting to collect new data in an effort to define the scope of a distant tragedy that is only now to come under scrutiny in court.

Near the very end is a brief reference to his maverick quality:

Because of the lack of hard data and the imprecise testing there is some disagreement about how many people were affected and what chemical compounds were used.

Heyndrickx, somewhat of a maverick in the field, believes that the Iraqi Army also used cyanide and biological toxins, although most other scientists disagree.

Still, he was one of the few Western experts on the ground in Halabja just after the attack, and the samples in his lab – particularly the clothing – could still provide valuable clues if they were properly sealed and stored, Hay said.

³ From a profile of Stone, “The Dirty Trickster” by Jeffrey Toobin; Stone’s role in the riot is disputed.

A substantial contingent of young Republican Capitol Hill aides, along with such congressmen as John Sweeney, of New York, who had travelled to Miami, joined in the protest. Thanks to this delegation, the events at the Clark center have come to be known as the “Brooks Brothers riot,” but Stone disputes that characterization. “There was a Brooks Brothers contingent, but the crowd in front of the courthouse was largely Spanish,” he said. “Most of the people there were people that we drew to the scene.”

At one point on November 22nd, Stone said, he heard from an ally in the building that Gore supporters were trying to remove some ballots from the counting room. “One of my pimply-faced contacts said, ‘Two commissioners have taken two or three hundred ballots to the elevator,’ ” Stone said. “I said, ‘O.K., follow them. Half you guys go on the elevator and half go in the stairs.’ Everyone got sucked up in this. They were trying to keep the doors from being closed. Meanwhile, they were trying to take the rest of the ballots into a back room with no windows. I told our guys to stop them-don’t let them close the door! They are trying to keep the door from being closed. There was a lot of screaming and yelling.” (In fact, the Gore official in the elevator, Joe Geller, was carrying a single sample ballot.) The dual scenes of chaos-both inside and outside the building-prompted the recount officials to stop their work. The recount in Miami was never re-started, depriving Gore of his best chance to catch up in the over-all state tally.

As is customary with Stone, there is some controversy about his precise role. “I was the guy in charge of the trailer, and I coördinated the Brooks Brothers riot,” Brad Blakeman, a lobbyist and political consultant who worked for Bush in Miami, told me. “Roger did not have a role that I know of. His wife may have been on the radio, but I never saw or heard from him.” Scoffing at Blakeman’s account, Stone asserts that he was in the trailer; he said that he had never heard of Blakeman. (Rule: “Lay low, play dumb, keep moving.”)

⁴ “The Sex Scandal That Put Bush in the White House” by Wayne Barrett explores the strange and labyrinthine sex scandal involving Pat Buchanan and the reform party. Stone himself confirms his work in a Reason magazine interview:

QUESTION:

Should the libertarian party continue to exist?

STONE:

Well, as one who, I think, either helped kill, or killed the Reform party, because I believe they cost us the White House in 1992 and 1996…their lack of any ideology at all…it was a hodgepodge of vegetarians, goldbugs, and a few libertarians, and gun people, and gun control people, there was no consistency there other than people who couldn’t make it in any other party.

⁵ Wayne Barrett’s “Sleeping with the GOP: A Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton’s Campaign” is the definitive piece on the strange alliance of Sharpton and Stone.

On Sharpton’s attacks on the front-runner, designed by Stone himself:

While Bush forces like the Club for Growth were buying ads in Iowa assailing then front-runner Howard Dean, Sharpton took center stage at a debate confronting Dean about the absence of blacks in his Vermont cabinet. Stone told the Times that he “helped set the tone and direction” of the Dean attacks, while Charles Halloran, the Sharpton campaign manager installed by Stone, supplied the research. While other Democratic opponents were also attacking Dean, none did it on the advice of a consultant who’s worked in every GOP presidential campaign since his involvement in the Watergate scandals of 1972, including all of the Bush family campaigns.

On the Sharpton campaign as part of a larger Bush strategy:

The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush campaign was planning a special advertising campaign targeting black voters, seeking as much as a quarter of the vote, and any Sharpton-connected outrage against the party could either lower black turnout in several key close states, or move votes to Bush. Both were widely reported as the consequences of Sharpton’s anti-Green rhetoric in 2001, [Mark Green, democratic candidate for New York City mayor, beat Fernando Ferrer, the Sharpton backed candidate in a bitter primary race]a result Sharpton celebrated both in his book and at a Bronx victory party on election night.

⁶ Stone’s connection with NXIVM was first reported in the New York Post, Top GOPers ‘Cult’ Favorites; The Times-Union series on NXIVM is the definitive work on the cult, comprising “Secrets of NXIVM”, “‘NXIVM is a litigation machine’”, “In Raniere’s shadows”, “‘Ample evidence’ to justify investigation”, all by James M. Odato and Jennifer Gish. “Poor Little Rich Girls: The Ballad of Sara and Clare Bronfman” by Maureen Tkacik, is an insightful read as well.

⁷ “Roger Stone Brings Up the Infamous ‘Whitey’ Tape!”:

⁸ Stone’s work at the Rothstein firm is mentioned in “Roger Stone, Political Animal” by Matt Labash.

Stone has a nice life in Miami. He gets out to kayak quite a bit, enjoying the year-round good weather. He and Nydia have five grandchildren. A power law firm based in Fort Lauderdale, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler, recently brought him on to head their burgeoning public affairs side. The firm’s head, Scott Rothstein, is a pitbull litigator with a taste for Bentleys and $150,000 watches. He shares Stone’s operating philosophy, telling me that he tells all his lawyers, “Get into the game, or get the f– out of the way.”

A good overview of the Scott Rothstein scheme can be found on the episode of “American Greed”, “$1.2 Billion Scam: Ft. Frauderdale”

⁹ The flyer in question:

From “False, Defamatory Lit Distributed Against Libertarian Warren Redlich” by Celeste Katz:

This grossly false and damaging flier, accusing Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Warren Redlich of being a dangerous “sexual predator” and credited to “People For A Safer New York,” is being circulated in the Capitol Region and perhaps beyond. Redlich, as you can read below, has naturally condemned the material.

I am admittedly late to the game on this one, and it’s frankly because I struggled with whether to write about this at all. Redlich, by nature of his candidacy, is a public figure, but this is extreme, to say the least. (The usual reminder: I am not a member of any political party and I do not support any candidate for any office, financially or otherwise.)

The backstory is that this seems to come out of a comment Redlich made on his “Stop Wasting Money” blog about the “hubbub” over racy pictures of Miley Cyrus, which reads, in part, “If you look at literature like Shakespeare, and at some historical figures like Sir William Johnson (a prominent pre-revolutionary leader in New York), you get the impression that it used to be normal for men, even much older men, to be interested in teenage girls.”

From the Times-Union “Capitol Confidential”:

I asked Roger Stone, a self-avowed political dirty trickster and Davis’ campaign manager, if he knew about the mailer. (The sex predator flier came from a group called “People for a Safer New York” that I can’t find a record for.)

“I’ve seen both mailers, I think that they’re both accurate. People for a Safer New York is called a first amendment group,” Stone told me by phone. “I’m in touch with them. Who are they? They’re a first amendment organization I urged them to do this, this is a first amendment issue.”

He defended the flier, even though he declined to claim credit for it when I asked him. (Or otherwise characterize how heavily involved with this he is.)

“Let’s be very clear: everything here is 100 percent legal, everything here is 100 percent accurate,” Stone said. “As somebody who has two granddaughters, I really find Redlich’s advocacy and defense of sex with underrate girls disgusting and repugnant, and voters need to know about it prior to voting on Tuesday.”

¹⁰ The NSFW Corporation’s “The Gary Johnson Swindle and the Degradation of Third Party Politics” by Marc Ames looks at this story in-depth; my own “Maureen Otis: A Mystery Inside A Mystery” touches on it as well.

¹¹ From “‘Steady Hand’ for the G.O.P. Guides McCain on a New Path” by Kate Zernike:

Blackwater, he says over steak salad at the Morton’s off the K Street lobbying corridor, “is a fine company that’s provided a great service to the people of the United States and Iraq.” Saudi Arabia, another client: “a great ally.” Mr. Savimbi, the brutal Angolan leader whom President Ronald Reagan promoted as a freedom fighter but many Democrats derided as an ally of apartheid South Africa: “a great pleasure to work with.”

From “McCain Adviser’s Work As Lobbyist Criticized”, by Michael D. Shear and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum:

In addition to Savimbi, Black and his partners were at times registered foreign agents for a remarkable collection of U.S.-backed foreign leaders whose human rights records were sometimes harshly criticized, even as their opposition to communism was embraced by American conservatives. They included Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, and the countries of Kenya and Equatorial Guinea, among others.

From “‘Steady Hand’” by Zernike:

Mr. Black has worked for some of the city’s most controversial clients (Jonas Savimbi, Philip Morris, Blackwater) and with the baddest boys of Republican politics (he cut his teeth on Jesse Helms‘s campaigns, and was a mentor to Lee Atwater). But he has managed to stay ahead of controversy himself.

That year was the last moment when Black was able to stay outside of controversy; during the election, a MoveOn.org ad would specifically target the list of reprehensible men the super-lobbyist had taken on as clients.

¹² From “McCain Adviser’s Work As Lobbyist Criticized”, by Michael D. Shear and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum:

Black has retired from lobbying, having left BKSH & Associates recently. But he says he has no intention of leaving the campaign and is unapologetic about a lobbying career spanning 30 years and seven presidential campaigns. He said his firms never represented foreigners “without first talking to the State Department and the White House and clearing with them that the work would be in the interest of U.S. foreign policy.”

“Veteran Lobbyist to Advise Romney Campaign” by Shear:

During 2008, Mr. Black resigned from the lobbying firm he founded, BKSH while he traveled with Mr. McCain. He returned to the firm after Mr. McCain lost to President Obama. The firm has now merged with another company and is called Prime Policy Group.

¹³ “Veteran Lobbyist to Advise Romney Campaign” by Michael D. Shear:

Four years ago, Mr. Romney assailed Mr. McCain for having close ties to big-time Washington lobbyists like Mr. Black.

“I don’t have lobbyists running my campaign,” Mr. Romney said at the time. “Somebody doesn’t put the kind of financial resources that I have put into this campaign and the personal resources I have put into this campaign in order to do favors for lobbyists.”

When a reporter pointed out at the time that Mr. Romney had lobbyists who worked on his campaign, Mr. Romney insisted they were merely informal advisers, and were not paid to run his campaign.

¹⁴ “Veteran Lobbyist to Advise Romney Campaign” by Michael D. Shear:

In an e-mail to The Caucus, Mr. Black said he and his wife, Judy, decided to support Mr. Romney about six weeks ago, but he said he was not actively participating in the presidential campaign.

“No formal role in the campaign. Just offer advice occasionally,” Mr. Black said. “The right man to be president.”

¹⁵ “The tale of Red Scorpion” by James Verini:

In 1986, [Jack Abramoff] founded the International Freedom Foundation, whose stated goal was “to foster individual freedom throughout the world by engaging in activities which promote the development of free and open societies based on the principles of free enterprise.” More specifically, among the IFF’s aims were to oppose the Anti-Apartheid Act and other sanctions and to urge greater support in Washington for Pretoria and less support for the African National Congress, the party that would come to power in 1994 under Nelson Mandela. At its height, around the time “Red Scorpion” was released, the IFF employed about 30 young ideologues in offices on G Street in Washington, Johannesburg, London and Brussels. Churning out reports and presentations (for one such presentation on the Contras, it borrowed the slide show that North had used to raise money for his arms-deal network, according to Pandin), the IFF attracted notable members such as Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.

¹⁶ This material comes from an important Newsday article, “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps, that has almost entirely vanished from the web, except for Lexis-Nexis. It can be found in full at the disreputable conspiracy site bilderberg.org, though its most shocking points are re-iterated in the AP story, “Report: Conservative Think Tank Was Front For Apartheid”. The post “Apartheid Regime” by Joe Amato at the Crooks and Liars blog also contains many relevant extracts.

The relevant excerpt about the IFF:

The International Freedom Foundation, founded in 1986 seemingly as a conservative think tank, was in fact part of an elaborate intelligence gathering operation, and was designed to be against apartheid’s an instrument for “political warfare” against apartheid’s foes, according to former senior South African spy Craig Williamson. The South Africans spent up to $1.5 million a year through 1992 to underwrite “Operation Babushka,” as the IFF project was known.

“We decided that, the only level we were going to be accepted was when it came to the Soviets and their surrogates, so our strategy was to paint the ANC as communist surrogates,” said Williamson, formerly a senior operative in South Africa’s military intelligence, who helped direct Babushka. “The more we could present ourselves as anti-communists, the more people looked at us with respect. People you could hardly believe cooperated with us politically when it came to the Soviets.”

I re-post the article from the bilderberg site, making only the small correction of Thiessen’s name (they had it as “Mere”).

FRONT FOR APARTHEID
Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power

Sunday July 16, 1995

This article was reported by Dele Olojede in South Africa and Timothy M. Phelps in Washington, and was written by Olojede.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa A respectable Washington foundation, which drew into its web prominent Republican and conservative figures like Sen.. Jesse Helms and other members of Congress, was actually a front organization bankrolled by South Africa’s last white rulers to prolong apartheid, a Newsday investigation has shown.

The International Freedom Foundation, founded in 1986 seemingly as a conservative think tank, was in fact part of an elaborate intelligence gathering operation, and was designed to be against apartheid’s an instrument for “political warfare” against apartheid’s foes, according to former senior South African spy Craig Williamson. The South Africans spent up to $1.5 million a year through 1992 to underwrite “Operation Babushka,” as the IFF project was known.

The current South African National Defence Force officially confirmed that the IFF was its dummy operation.

“The International Freedom Foundation was a former SA Defence Force project,” Army Col. John Rolt, a military spokesman, said in a terse response to an inquiry. A member of the IFF”s international board of directors also conceded Friday that at least half of the foundation’s funds came from projects undertaken on behalf of South Africa’s military intelligence, although he refused to say what these projects were except that many of them were directed against Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress.

A three-month Newsday investigation determined that one of the project’s broad objectives was to try to reverse the apartheid regime’s pariah status in Western political circles. More specifically, the IFF sought to portray the ANC as a tool of Soviet communism, thus undercutting the movement’s growing international acceptance as the government-in-waiting of a future multiracial South Africa.

“We decided that, the only level we were going to be accepted was when it came to the Soviets and their surrogates, so our strategy was to paint the ANC as communist surrogates,” said Williamson, formerly a senior operative in South Africa’s military intelligence, who helped direct Babushka. “The more we could present ourselves as anti-communists, the more people looked at us with respect. People you could hardly believe cooperated with us politically when it came to the Soviets.”

The South Africans found willing, though possibly unwitting, allies in influential Republican politicians, conservative intellectuals and activists. Sen. Jesse Helms, now chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, served as chairman of the editorial advisory board for the foundation’s publications. Through a spokesman, Helms said that he did not know anything about the foundation.

“Helms has never heard of the International Freedom Foundation, was not chairman of their advisory board and never authorized his name to be used by IFF in any way shape or form. We never had any relationship with them,” Marc Thiessen, a Helms spokesman, said.

Rep. Dan Burton, who was the ranking Republican on the House subcommittee on Africa, and Rep. Robert Dornan were active in IFF projects, frequently serving on its delegations to international forums. Alan Keyes, currently a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, also served as adviser. (He did not return a call seeking comment.) The Washington lobbyist and former movie producer Jack Abramoff, and rising conservative stars like Duncan Sellers, helped run the foundation.

All those contacted denied knowing that it was controlled and funded by the South African regime.

Although there are strong indications that U.S. laws may have been broken some IFF officials have admitted in interviews that they knew that South African military intelligence money helped pay for the foundation’s activities in Washington there is no clear evidence that the politicians associated with IFF either took campaign contributions or otherwise directly benefited financially from the foundation .

Under U.S. law, anyone who represents a foreign government or acts under its orders, direction or control, has to register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent. Asked if a “think-tank” sup up and supported by a foreign government has to register, a Justice official said, “If the foreign [government] has some say in what they are doing and, obviously, if they are funding it they probably do then they probably do have to register.” Violation of the law carries a fine up to $10,000 and a prison term of up to five years.

Several key figures involved in the IFF and contacted by Newsday denied any knowledge that the foundation was a front for the political agenda of a foreign government. Duncan Sellers, now a Virginia businessman, said, “This is nothing I ever knew about. It’s something that I would have resigned over or closed the foundation over. I would have put a stop to it.”

“The Congressman didn’t know anything about it,” said a spokesman for Dornan, Paul Morrell. “This is all news to him if it is true.” Morrell described Dornan’s impression of the IFF as simply “pro-freedom, pro-democracy, pro-Reagan.”

Phillip Crane, another U.S. representative listed as an IFF editorial adviser, joined the board in 1987 at the request of Abramoff, said an aide, and by 1990 had quit. “He never attended a board meeting that he can recall,” said the aide, Bob Foster. “He had no idea that any such situation [intelligence connections] existed.”

Williamson said that the operation was deliberately constructed so that many of the people would not know they were involved with a foreign government. “That was the beauty of the whole things guys pushing what they believed,” he said. Helms for example, voted against virtually every punitive measure ever contemplated against South Africa’s white minority government, however mild. And Burton was nearly hysterical in arguing against sanctions that a large bipartisan majority passed in 1986 over President Ronald Reagan’s veto, at one point warning that “there will be blood running in the streets” as a result.

But in some cases, such as Abramoffs, the relationship with the South African security apparatus was more than merely coincidental, according to Williamson and others. A former chief of intelligence, now retired, said emphatically that the South African military helped finance Abramoffs 1988 movie “Red Scorpion.” The movie was a sympathetic portrayal of an anti-communist African guerrilla commander loosely based on Jones Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader allied to both Washington and Pretoria. Williamson also said the production of “Red Scorpion” was “funded by our guys,” who in addition provided military trucks and equipment – as well as extras.

Abramoff reacted with anger when told of the allegations Friday, saying his movie was funded by private investors and had nothing to do with the South African government. “This is outrageous,” he said.

Details of South Africa’s intelligence operations in the last years of apartheid have begun to rapidly emerge with the imminent establishment of a Truth Commission by the Mandela government. The commission will elicit confessions of “dirty tricks” by apartheid’s foot soldiers and their Commanders, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Williamson, for instance, recently revealed that he was involved in the assassination of Ruth First, wife of the ANC and South African Communist Party leader Joe Slovo, and other anti-apartheid activists.

In South African government thinking, the IFF represented a far more subtle approach to defeating the anti-apartheid movement. Officials said the plan was to get away from the traditional allies of Pretoria, the fringe right in the United States and Europe, “some of whom were to the right of Ghengis Khan,” said one senior intelligence official. Instead, they settled for a front staffed with mainstream conservatives who did not necessarily know who was pulling the strings.

“They ran their own organization, but we steered them, that was the point,” Williamson said.

“They were very good, those guys, eh?” said Vic McPheerson, a police colonel who ran security branch operations and participated in the 1982 bombing of the ANC office in London. “They were not just good in intelligence, but in political warfare.”

Starting in 1986, when Reagan failed to override comprehensive U.S. economic sanctions, the South African government began casting about for ways to survive in an international environment more hostile to apartheid than ever. A very senior official in South African military intelligence, to whom IFF handlers reported at the time, said the operation cost his unit between $l million and $1.5 million a year. The retired general said the funds represented almost all of the IFF’s annual operating budget, although the foundation gained such legitimacy that it began to attract funding from individuals and groups in the United States.

On at least one occasion, the IFF had trouble accounting for its money. It was unable to comply in 1989 with a New York State requirement that it provide an accountant’s opinion confirming that its financial statements “present fairly the financial position of the organization.” It was eventually barred, in January, 1991, from soliciting funds from New York. According to financial records provided by Jeff Pandin, the foundation’s last executive director in Washington, IFF revenue in 1992 dropped by half of the preceding year’s, to $1.6 million. It just so happened that President Frederik W. de Klerk ended secret South African funding for the foundation in 1992, in response to pressure from Mandela to demonstrate that he was not complicit in “Third Force” activities. Pandin expressed shock that much of the organization’s money had been coming from clandestine South African sources. “I worked for the IFF from Day One to Day End,” he said. “This is complete news to me.” He said he once had met Williamson when he was in Mozambique, but was unaware of any official links.

On the surface, the IFF’s headquarters was in north-east Washington, D.C., , at 200 G Street, next door to the Free Congress Foundation, another conservative institution. From that base, it launched campaigns against communist sympathizers and perceived enemies of the free market. It broadly supported Reaganism, and its principal officers ran with the Ollie North crowd. But it always paid special attention to ANC. When Mandela made his first visit to the United States in 1990, following his release from prison, the IFF placed advertisements in local papers designed to dampen public enthusiasm for Mandela. One ad in the Miami Herald portrayed Mandela as an ally and defender of Cuba’s Fidel Castro. The city’s large Cuban community was so agitated that a ceremony to present Mandela with keys to the city was scrapped.

The IFF published several journals and bulletins, in Washington and in its offices in Europe and Johannesburg. One of its contributors was Jay Parker, an African-American who was a paid public relations agent of successive apartheid regimes throughout the 1970s and 1980s. People like Henry Kissinger were invited to IFF seminars to deliver keynote speeches. The foundation brought together the together the world’s top intelligence experts at a 1991 conference in Potsdam, Germany, to mull over the changing uses of intelligence in the post-Cold War world. Among those in attendance was former CIA director William Colby and a retired senior KGB general, Oleg Kalugin. The IFF also waged a major but not surprisingly futile campaign for U.S. retention of the Panama Canal. But its main purpose was always to serve the ultimate goals of the South African government, according to those who helped nudge it in that direction. The former senior South African military intelligence official said he traveled to the United States and Canada in 1988 as a guest of the IFF. But the real reason for his trip, he said, was to try to strengthen South African intelligence operations on the ground, at diplomatic posts and the North American offices of Satour, the country’s tourism promotion agency.

“I was surprised at the kind of access the IFF operation provided us,” said Wim Booyse, who went by the title of Senior Research fellow at the Johannesburg office of the IFF. Booyse said when he visited Washington In 1987 to attend IFF-sponsored seminars, part of the propaganda training he and other visitors received came from a disinformation specialist at the United States Information Service, an official he identified as Todd Leventhal. Leventhal said in response that he remembered meeting with Booyse and possibly a few other IFF people, but gave no formal talk and talked to them only about countering disinformation, not spreading it

Far from being a mere branch of the IFF, the Johannesburg office was in fact the nerve center of IFF operations worldwide. According to Martin Yuill, who served as administrator of the “branch,” he began to realize that perhaps Johannesburg was not just a branch office after all, since it was always deciding how much money the other offices, Including the Washington headquarters, should have. “I guess one would have to conclude that that was the case,” he said.

Although he insisted that the IFF was no clandestine operation, Russell Crystal who ran the Johannesburg office, said it was vital to the foundation. He said Friday in an interview that “jobs” for South African intelligence provided at least half of total IFF revenue, and that he sometimes asked military intelligence to send the fees from these “jobs” directly to the Washington office of the IFF.

“The military intelligence, there were certain things they wanted done — tackling the ANC as a terrorist-communist organization,” Crystal said. “The projects we did for them, they paid for. ” He added that it was not impossible that South Africa accounted for far more than his estimated 50 percent, of IFF revenues.

As an example of this “tackling,” Crystal cited the targeting of Oliver Tambo, whenever the late exiled leader of the ANC traveled around the world. Once, when Tambo visited with George Shultz, then-secretary of state, the IFF arranged for demonstrators to drape tires around their necks to protest the “necklace” killings of suspect ed government informers in black townships in South Africa.

“The advantage of the IFF was that it pilloried the ANC,” said Williamson. “The sort of general western view of the ANC up until 1990 was a box of matches [violence] and Soviet-supporting — slavishly was the word we latched on. That was backed up with writings, intellectual inputs. It was a matter of undercutting ANC credibility.”

By 1993, the IFF effectively shut down after de Klerk pulled the plug on many politically motivated clandestine operations. But the IFF did not go down before one final parting shot.

In January that year, the foundation financed a investigation into alleged human rights abuses during the 1980′s at ANC guerrilla camps in Angola. Bob Douglas, a South African lawyer, concluded there was evidence of torture and other abuses, forcing the ANC to acknowledge some abuses. Douglas said Friday he did not believe that the IFF worked for military intelligence. “I did a professional job for which I charged professional fees,” he said crossly. “I did my job of work, I finished my work, and had nothing to do with it since then.”

¹⁷ From “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps:

Williamson, for instance, recently revealed that he was involved in the assassination of Ruth First, wife of the ANC and South African Communist Party leader Joe Slovo, and other anti-apartheid activists.

¹⁸ “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps:

Several key figures involved in the IFF and contacted by Newsday denied any knowledge that the foundation was a front for the political agenda of a foreign government. Duncan Sellers, now a Virginia businessman, said, “This is nothing I ever knew about. It’s something that I would have resigned over or closed the foundation over. I would have put a stop to it.”

¹⁹ “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps:

“Helms has never heard of the International Freedom Foundation, was not chairman of their advisory board and never authorized his name to be used by IFF in any way shape or form. We never had any relationship with them,” Marc Thiessen, a Helms spokesman, said.

²⁰ From “Counterfactual: A curious history of the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program”, by Jane Mayer:

“Courting Disaster” downplays the C.I.A.’s brutality under the Bush Administration to the point of falsification. Thiessen argues that “the C.I.A. interrogation program did not inflict torture by any reasonable standard,” and that there was “only one single case” in which “inhumane” techniques were used. That case, he writes, involved the detainee Abd al-Rahim Nashiri, whom a C.I.A. interrogator threatened with a handgun to the head, and with an electric drill. He claims that no detainee “deaths in custody took place in the C.I.A. interrogation program,” failing to mention the case of a detainee who was left to freeze to death at a C.I.A.-run prison in Afghanistan. Referring to the Abu Ghraib scandal, Thiessen writes that “what happened in those photos had nothing to do with C.I.A. interrogations, military interrogations, or interrogations of any sort.” The statement is hard to square with the infamous photograph of Manadel al-Jamadi; his body was placed on ice after he died of asphyxiation during a C.I.A. interrogation at the prison. The homicide became so notorious that the C.I.A.’s inspector general, John Helgerson, forwarded the case to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution. Thiessen simply ignores the incident.

²¹ From “My Dinner with Jack” by Mark Hemingway:

In the summer of 1985 Abramoff helped plan and organize an event that, as Abramoff told me, inspired Red Scorpion. Abramoff joined forces with Jack Wheeler, another anti-Communist activist, to create the “Jamboree in Jamba”–known more formally as the Democratic International. The pair approached Lewis Lehrman, a conservative benefactor who made a fortune off his Rite-Aid drugstores, with the idea: For years the Soviets had been sponsoring what amounted to supervillain summits, where Sandinistas, African Communist insurgents, and representatives of the PLO and Cuba convened presumably to stroke their fluffy white cats and update their arms-dealer Rolodexes.

Abramoff convinced Lehrman that this put the “good guys” at a comparative disadvantage–the Nicaraguan contras, the Afghan mujahedeen, Savimbi’s rebels in Angola, and other freedom fighters needed a meeting of their own. Congress was in the process of cutting off aid to the contras, and anything that could be done to bolster the group’s public reputation would be politically helpful to Reagan. Lehrman agreed to fund it, and Rohrabacher was brought in to help muster support from inside the White House. Abramoff and Wheeler would handle the details on the ground.

According to Abramoff, the event was a goat rodeo from the start. Hardly a government in the world was enamored of the idea, and simply deciding where to hold the event was no small affair. Only two governments were publicly supportive: South Africa and Israel, and for PR reasons it was quickly decided that neither country was a suitable venue.

So they settled on Jamba, Angola, the home base of Savimbi’s UNITA movement (National Union of Total Independence for Angola), which was fighting the Cuban troops that propped up the Soviet-backed Angolan government. Not exactly the most hospitable locale.

Logistically, the event was a nightmare. Simply trying to get the attendees into the Angolan hinterland provoked international incidents. Pakistan blocked some Afghan rebels from leaving, and skittish Thai officials almost stopped Laotian anti-Communist leader Pa Kao Her from departing Bangkok.

Facilities consisted of little more than grass huts and an airstrip, and managing the various cultures and egos proved challenging, as demonstrated by Abramoff’s deft and hilarious impersonation of a frenzied Afghan warlord who insisted on ranting and raving for 45 minutes, long after the translator who had been procured on his behalf proved worthless. Not only was Abramoff’s mimicry compelling, he gestured wildly with his hands in a way that caught me totally off guard, making me laugh harder. He clearly wasn’t afraid to embarrass himself, a quality that was endearing, considering I had started out the evening somewhat intimidated. I also became aware of how carefully he was gauging my reaction to his tale. He didn’t care about impressing me; it was obvious he had little to prove. But he did tell his story in a generous way–he wanted me to enjoy it, and I did.

The final insult in Jamba was running out of food. Abramoff, who keeps kosher, had packed all his own provisions into the African jungle. Upon leaving the event early, he stood on the stairs of the plane auctioning off his remaining cans of tuna for as much as $20 to ravenous members of the press who had yet to leave.

The jamboree itself ended up being largely ceremonial. Everyone pledged to share intelligence, and Lehrman read a letter Rohrabacher had drafted on Reagan’s behalf, expressing solidarity with those struggling against the Soviet empire. The Time reporter on the scene concluded that the meeting marked the beginning of “a new lobby to urge Congress to support the Nicaraguan contras and other anti-Communist guerrillas.” Considering the improbability of the thing coming together at all, everyone involved considered it a success.

²² “Angola seeks Savimbi’s arrest” by Lara Pawson:

The Angolan Government has issued a warrant for the arrest of Unita leader, Jonas Savimbi.

Late on Friday state radio broadcast a statement from the national department for criminal investigations.

Rebellion, sabotage and the use of explosives are among a long list of crimes alleged to have been committed by the Angolan rebel leader.

The announcement comes seven months after the Prosecutor General labelled Savimbi a war criminal, shortly after a fresh outbreak of war in the battered southern African state in December.

Under Angolan law, the Unita leader is accused of committing a myriad of crimes, ranging from murder and assault to the trafficking of war material.

Indeed, there is no shortage of allegations against Dr Savimbi.

Aside from official testimonies given by victims of Unita, hundreds of thousands of Angola’s displaced recount similar tales of massacres in their rural villages. More often than not, they blame Dr Savimbi for the deaths of their relatives and friends.

From “Jonas Savimbi, 67, Rebel Of Charisma and Tenacity” by Michael T. Kaufman:

Jonas Savimbi, who was killed yesterday by Angolan government soldiers, spent more than 35 years in the African bush battling first for Angolan independence and then for personal power.

At least one conservative mourned the death of this man, even after all the blood on his hands, and this was Howard Phillips.

He is mentioned in the John’s article arguing for continued aid to UNITA, read into the congressional record by Indiana’s Dan Burton:

Savimbi told conservative leader Howard Phillips and me last March during a visit to Savimbi’s headquarters in the Angolan bush, `there are a lot of loopholes in that agreement. The agreement is not good at all.’

A background on this figure can be found at “Howard Phillips’ World” by Adele Stan.

On the event of Savimbi’s death, Phillips and his son, David, issued a statement via Newsmax, “Angolan Christian Rebel Leader Assassinated”, mourning the rebel’s death and blaming it on the collusion of George W. Bush, the state department, Chevron, and the Angolan government.

From the statement of David Phillips:

My family and I have spent the weekend grieving the loss of a longtime friend and heroic Christian leader, Dr. Jonas Mahleiro Savimbi.

Savimbi was the leader of the only organized opposition to the totalitarian rule in Luanda. He sacrificed his life for more than 40 years in pursuit of liberty and self-determination for his people. He had a following in Angola up until his death because he personified hope for the most marginalized and downtrodden segment of Angolan society, the indigenous non-assimilated African people.

The son of an evangelical pastor and railway stationmaster, he relied on his Christian faith for strength, courage and wisdom to wage a lifelong struggle for the freedom of the Angolan people.

Africa has lost one of its best Christian leaders and America has lost one of its most faithful Cold War allies.

From the statement of his father, Howard:

Dr. Jonas Savimbi was a great Angolan patriot, truly a man who served as a loving, self-sacrificing father to those of his countrymen who shared his love of freedom and who were willing to die to escape the bonds of Portuguese colonialism and Communist tyranny.

In the war against Soviet imperialism America had no more faithful and courageous ally.

In 1992, Savimbi won a popular election, which victory was stolen from him even more blatantly than Mayor Daley stole Illinois for John F. Kennedy in 1960.

[With] no fear of rebuke from those who govern the New World Order of socially respectable international opinion, the Angolan Reds targeted Dr. Savimbi to be hunted down and murdered.

His death is a tragic loss.

His blood is on the hands of the government of the United States, as well as on the hands of the Angolan gangster government which directly gave the orders.

²³ Mark Hemingway’s “My Dinner with Jack”:

But for Abramoff, the pivotal moment in Jamba came when he was approached by someone trying to secure funding for a documentary about Savimbi. Abramoff scoffed. Rambo: First Blood Part II had just been released in theaters three weeks earlier, becoming the first film to open on more than 2,000 screens. “Why would you want to make a documentary? Nobody watches documentaries,” he told me. “I said to the guy, ‘You should make an action film.’”

YOU CAN ALSO SAY THIS for Abramoff–the man has a gift for making wild ideas a reality. Jack revisited his movie idea in an entertainment law class he took while finishing his degree at Georgetown a few years later. He sketched out a story based loosely on what he knew about Savimbi’s plight and the Soviet operations in that part of Africa.

²⁴ The movie opens with the credits featuring a name that is now indissolubly linked with D.C. scandal:

It is a movie about a russian fighter who, after seeing the plight of africans under russian siege, defects to their cause and fights on their behalf. His appearance, that of a blonde, muscular uberman, is the aryan ideal; his identity is inextricably linked with being a warrior. He is a member of the spetsnaz – russian special forces – and, over and over again, this is how he identifies himself: “I am spetsnaz.” After defecting, he is re-captured, and his captors humiliate this man by exiling him from this group: “you are no longer spetsnaz.” One of his last lines is declaring that he still belongs to this military ideal, while no longer belonging to the soviet state: “I am still spetsnaz, but I am no longer you.” This man fits the aryan ideal, but the fascist ideal as well, a man for whom belonging to the military group is more important than his belonging to the larger society.

That this man defects from a colonial group, then ends up fighting against it, is analogous to the Boers of South Africa, who came as colonizers to the continent, and then ended up fighting against Europe itself. The National Party which took power after World War II was pro-Germany and opposed to South African involvement on the side of Britain. The Red Scorpion title character fights against the colonizers of which he was once one, becomes a savior to african freedom fighters, and possibly, the true heir to africa. This man’s transformative moment is to meet the chief of a group of Kalahari San (they are also called the Bushmen, which I believe is considered a pejorative), who burns on this man a tattoo signifying membership in their tribe. The Red Scorpion hunts with an african spear as well or better than the chief, and the chief gives this man his spear, a gesture which I read as signifying tribal membership, access to tribal hunting grounds, and status as an african warrior.

It is impossible to watch the movie without thinking immediately of Susan Sontag’s “Fascinating Fascism” which found links between the aryan ideal of the Nazis and the warrior ideal of the Nuba tribe. Even though the Kalahari are not the Nuba, the Kalahari’s culture distinct and dissimilar from that of the Nuba, what is striking is that all the features Sontag cites as a crucial part of the warrior ideal celebrated by Leni Riefenstahl in both Europe and Africa are in Red Scorpion: the celebration of the physical over the mental – the title character never solves a problem through ingenuity, only strength or marksmanship – and the sublimation of the self into some larger martial force, in this case, the spetsnaz. The Red Scorpion moves from being a warrior in a soviet military force to being a warrior in a tribe of hunters – the same warrior character is never altered, only re-directed towards a different enemy. There is also an important distinction. When Riefenstahl traveled to Africa, the Nazi warriors were either dead or elderly, while the Nuba still had youthful devotees to their ideal. The Red Scorpion, on the other hand, is the youngest member of the cast, and the youngest, fittest man compared to any of the Kalahari, whose chief is elderly, and played by an actor in his nineties; the implicit message is that the future of Africa lies with the Red Scorpion, not the Kalahari.

The movie ends with an image which might embody how a white south african military man might see himself: the aryan ideal, flanked by a sycophantic american journalist, their conservative allies in the U.S., and an african anti-Soviet freedom fighter, someone like Jonas Savimbi, to whom the South African government gave so much financial and military aid.

²⁵ From “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps:

A former chief of intelligence, now retired, said emphatically that the South African military helped finance Abramoffs 1988 movie “Red Scorpion.” The movie was a sympathetic portrayal of an anti-communist African guerrilla commander loosely based on Jones Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader allied to both Washington and Pretoria. Williamson also said the production of “Red Scorpion” was “funded by our guys,” who in addition provided military trucks and equipment – as well as extras.

²⁶ “The tale of Red Scorpion” by James Verini:

[Jeff] Pandin [an Abramoff associate] recalled that Abramoff enlisted Russell Crystal, the head of the IFF’s Johannesburg office and an advisor to F.W. DeKlerk, to be an informal producer on “Red Scorpion” (whether this meant Crystal helped fund the film, Pandin did not remember).

²⁷ “The tale of Red Scorpion” by James Verini:

Initially, the movie was set to shoot in Swaziland, but at the last minute Abramoff moved the production to Namibia, which was occupied by South Africa’s apartheid government.

²⁸ “The tale of Red Scorpion” by James Verini:

The actor Carmen Argenziano, who played the villainous Cuban colonel, said he knew that many of the men playing Russian and Cuban soldiers were actual SADF soldiers.

²⁹ “The tale of Red Scorpion” by James Verini:

“We heard that very right-wing South African money was helping fund the movie,” [Carmen] Argenziano said. “It wasn’t very clear. We were pretty upset about the source of the money. We thought we were misled. We were shocked that these brothers who we thought were showbiz liberals – Beverly Hills Jewish kids – were doing this.”

³⁰ “The tale of Red Scorpion” by James Verini:

By 1988, when shooting started on the film, Abramoff likely had connections in the South African government. For a decade, after all, South Africa had been Savimbi’s main backer, and according to [Chester] Crocker and others, Abramoff would not have been able to put together the Democratic International without extensive help from the SADF.

³¹ “The tale of Red Scorpion” by James Verini:

“We knew that the IFF was funded by the South African government,” Herman Cohen, who ran Africa operations for the National Security Council, told Salon. “It was one of a number of front organizations.”

³² From “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps:

Abramoff reacted with anger when told of the allegations Friday, saying his movie was funded by private investors and had nothing to do with the South African government. “This is outrageous,” he said.

³³ “The tale of Red Scorpion” by James Verini:

After Jack returned to Washington, Robert Abramoff stayed in Los Angeles and continued to produce films. He is now a full-time lawyer. Reached at the offices of Burgee & Abramoff in Woodland Hills, he refused to speak about his brother or “Red Scorpion.” “It’s a family matter and I prefer not to comment on anything,” he said.

³⁴ From “Angola’s Jonas Savimbi Was No Freedom Fighter” by Piero Gleijeses:

During Angola’s war of independence against the Portuguese in 1961-1974, Savimbi was an impressive guerrilla leader, but his movement, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or UNITA, was far weaker than Neto’s Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA.

In February 1972, Savimbi proposed to have his forces cooperate with the Portuguese to “eliminate” the MPLA. The Portuguese responded favorably, and for the next 18 months Savimbi was their ally. But in late 1973, Lisbon broke the agreement and attacked UNITA. And so Savimbi became known, much against his will, as a “freedom fighter,” even though he was still trying to forge a new alliance with Lisbon when the Portuguese regime was overthrown in April 1974.

By 1977, the story of Savimbi’s betrayal of the Angolan independence movement was public knowledge in Western Europe. In 1979, the mainstream Lisbon weekly Expresso concluded: “The fact that Savimbi collaborated with the Portuguese colonial authorities has been so amply proven that no one can question it in good faith.”

No one, that is, but Americans.

Savimbi’s betrayal of the independence struggle has been overlooked in the thousands of press reports and scores of books written about Angola, and, even now, in the articles about his death.

³⁵ From “Angola’s Jonas Savimbi Was No Freedom Fighter” by Piero Gleijeses:

Within weeks of the collapse of the Portuguese dictatorship, Savimbi approached the white rulers in Pretoria for help in the impending civil war in Angola. If he won, he promised to maintain friendly relations with the apartheid regime. How tempting, particularly when the MPLA vowed that there would be no peace in southern Africa until apartheid had been defeated.

In July 1975, with Washington’s blessing, South Africa began its covert operation in Angola to support Savimbi.

Yet Savimbi was not a South African puppet. He was simply being true to himself. He was a warlord whose overriding principle was absolute power, and if this required an agreement with Portuguese colonial authorities first, and then a dalliance with apartheid, so be it.

In October 1975, with Washington’s urging, South African troops invaded Angola. Crashing through MPLA resistance, they would have taken Luanda, the MPLA stronghold, had Fidel Castro not sent Cuban soldiers to Angola in early November. Contrary to U.S. reports of the time, Castro did so without consulting Moscow. He was no client. “He was probably the most genuine revolutionary leader then [1975] in power,” Kissinger writes in his memoirs.

From “Land Mines in Angola: An Africa Watch Report”:

In late 1983, the UN Security Council demanded that South Africa withdraw from Angola. Shortly afterwards, Angola and South Africa signed the Lusaka Accords, under which South Africa agreed to withdraw if Angola ceased support for SWAPO. However, South African withdrawal was extremely slow, and was reversed in 1985 when another invasion was launched, in support of UNITA which was facing defeat against a full-scale attack by FAPLA with Cuban support. The government clearly believed that if South African support for UNITA was withdrawn, it would be able to achieve a military solution to the conflict.

³⁶ From “Jonas Savimbi: Washington’s ‘Freedom Fighter’, Africa’s ‘Terrorist’” by Shana Wills:

Jonas Savimbi, a member of Angola’s largest ethnic group, the Ovimbundu, was born and raised in the southern Angolan province of Moxico. A bright, charismatic, former doctorate student, Savimbi became fluent in more than six languages–including Portuguese, French, and English. His knack for learning languages boosted his credibility among the various groups with whom he negotiated. His gift in European languages facilitated his dealings with political opponents, diplomats, and foreign reporters, while he switched into Umbundo when rallying his followers among the Angolan people.

From “Angola’s Jonas Savimbi Was No Freedom Fighter” by Piero Gleijeses:

Friend and foe acknowledged the abilities and charisma of Jonas Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader who was killed by government troops last month.

“Savimbi is very intelligent,” Lucio Lara, a senior aide to his bitter rival, Agostinho Neto, once admitted.

Savimbi also never deviated from his overriding goals or principles. It is odd, however, that Americans have failed to appreciate what these goals and principles were.

During Angola’s war of independence against the Portuguese in 1961-1974, Savimbi was an impressive guerrilla leader, but his movement, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or UNITA, was far weaker than Neto’s Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA.

We might end this note on Savimbi’s formidable intellectual abilities with a contrast in how he is portrayed in the videogame Black Ops II; from “Call of Duty: the recall of Jonas Savimbi” by Sean Jacobs:

Black Ops II paints Savimbi as some kind of brute with his halting English and screams. But he was, in fact, a consummate media figure and understood the power of western press on public opinion. Three clips – the first in French (with Portuguese subtitles), the second in Portuguese, and a third in which Savimbi answers questions, in English, at a surreal “Unita News Conference with Republicans” – provide a brief contrast to his depiction in Black Ops II. He spoke many languages fluently. His English speech and diction was refined – not the kind of brutish bush English they give him.

³⁷ “The tale of Red Scorpion” by James Verini:

[Chester] Crocker described Savimbi, who was killed in 2002, as “a brilliant military warlord who operated by the gun, lived by the gun, and died by the gun and ultimately had a failure of judgment, like warlords often do.”

³⁸ “The tale of Red Scorpion” by James Verini:

Others are less charitable. “He was the most articulate, charismatic homicidal maniac I’ve ever met,” said Don Steinberg, ambassador to Angola during the first Clinton administration.

³⁹ From “Jonas Savimbi: Angolan nationalist whose ambition kept his country at war” by Victoria Brittain:

By the end of the 1980s his proxy army, supplied and funded by the CIA and aided by numerous South African invasions, had sabotaged much of Angola. Swathes of the countryside were cut off from agriculture by minefields, mine victims and malnourished children swamped the hospitals and tens of thousands of children were also kidnapped by Unita troops and taken to Unita-controlled areas in the south around Savimbi’s capital at Jamba.

Appalling rites, such as public burning of women said to be witches, characterised the reign of terror in which many of Savimbi’s close associates were imprisoned or killed on his orders.

From “Jonas Savimbi: Washington’s ‘Freedom Fighter’, Africa’s ‘Terrorist’” by Shana Wills:

For decades, Savimbi’s forces fought Angola’s MPLA government, which was supported militarily by the Soviet Union and thousands of Cuban troops–and was recognized by every country in the world except South Africa and the United States. In order to instill terror in the population and to undermine confidence in the government, Savimbi ordered that food supplies be targeted, millions of land mines be laid in peasants’ fields, and transport lines be cut. As part of this destabilization effort, UNITA frequently attacked health clinics and schools, specifically terrorizing and killing medical workers and teachers. The UN estimated that Angola lost $30 billion in the war from 1980 to 1988, which was six times the country’s 1988 GDP. According to UNICEF, approximately 330,000 children died as direct and indirect results of the fighting during that period alone. Human Rights Watch reports that because of UNITA’s indiscriminate use of landmines, there were over 15,000 amputees in Angola in 1988, ranking it alongside Afghanistan and Cambodia.

⁴⁰ “The dragon of death who had to be slain”, an account by Fred Bridgland of Savimbi and the murder of one of Savimbi’s closest associates, Pedro “Tito” Chingunji, and Chingunji’s family:

With Savimbi that day was a tall, slim 19-year-old guerrilla with soft, intelligent eyes, wearing a beret set at a jaunty angle. Pedro “Tito” Chingunji was to become my closest African friend; in due course, Savimbi would execute him and his entire family, including his one-year-old twins.

Later:

Then Tito asked me to fly to meet him in Washington on a matter of life or death. It was the most disturbing conversation I have ever had.

His mother, father, three brothers and a sister had been executed by Savimbi. His wife and children were being held hostage at Savimbi’s bush headquarters, Jamba, to ensure that Tito continued to perform diplomatic miracles in Washington.

The slaughter of his family was only part of the horror, said Tito. Savimbi had also ordered the public burning on bonfires of dissident women and their children.

On his next visit to Jamba, Tito was arrested and put on trial for trying to open a dialogue with the MPLA, for allegedly trying to overthrow Savimbi and for allegedly having had an affair with one of Savimbi’s many wives and concubines.

I never saw Tito again. We now know that he and his wife and children were executed shortly before Angola’s first election in 1992. Savimbi narrowly lost the election. With Tito and a whole range of other second-tier leaders he either executed or forced to flee, Savimbi might have won.

From “Land Mines in Angola: An Africa Watch Report”:

In Africa Watch’s 1992 survey, among a total of forty-five, six said that FAPLA [Forças Armadas Popular para a Libertação de Angola, the Angolan army] was to blame (including one soldier blown up by a mine his colleagues had planted earlier), twenty-seven said UNITA, and twelve said that they did not know. Many of the “don’t knows,” particularly the six who were interviewed in Luanda, may have been reluctant to mention FAPLA.

The 1990 ICRC survey came up with a similar result. Eighty-three blamed UNITA (73.5 percent), fourteen blamed FAPLA (12.4 percent), one blamed the Cubans (0.7 percent), and fifteen said that they did not know (13.3 percent).

The war was fought in a manner that reduced much of Angola’s population to a state of famine. There were no recognized front lines, and fighting raged backwards and forwards over large areas of the country. As a result, a very large proportion of the population was directly affected by the war, and an even larger number of people lived with the pervasive fear that fighting could come to their locality at any time. The widespread use of land mines, especially on roads and paths, was a crucial factor in creating famine. The threat of land mines prevented free movement of people and commerce, and proved a serious obstacle to relief efforts.

During 1990, serious food shortages threatened much of the country. According to estimates by the US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, up to 10,000 people died in the first four months of the year. In September, the United Nations estimated that about 1.9 million Angolans in nine central and southern provinces faced famine. About three quarters of those at risk were in areas made inaccessible for relief. About 1.2 million people were in the central Planalto of Huambo and Bíe provinces and the neighboring areas. This, the most fertile and densely populated part of Angola, was the center of UNITA’s war effort. UNITA aimed to destabilize the government by preventing it from exercising any form of authority in these provinces. This strategy, together with the shifting battle lines, meant that the delivery of relief to the Planalto by establishing tranquil zones or safe passage agreements would be possible only if UNITA dramatically revised its military strategy.

The United States government and Congress have been significant though inconsistent supporters of UNITA, and have provided financial and military support. At least seven types of US-manufactured mines are present in Angolan soil. Major Cox of the British army noted that “the mines laid by UNITA forces were mainly from the USA.” He did not, however, say who was the immediate supplier of mines to UNITA. His fellow British officer, Col. Griffiths also declined to characterize the US as a major direct supplier of mines. At this writing, the United States government has not accepted that it bears any responsibility for the large number of US-manufactured mines in Angola.

⁴¹ From “Jonas Savimbi: Washington’s ‘Freedom Fighter’, Africa’s ‘Terrorist’” by Shana Wills:

Whatever the case, Savimbi certainly showed his skill as a political chameleon. In 1988, several former UNITA members reported to the Portuguese newsweekly, Espresso, that UNITA’s political elite all followed the precepts of Savimbi’s Practical Guide for the Cadre, which was described as “a manual of dialectical materialism and Marxism-Leninism with a distinct trait of Stalinism and Maoism.” The UNITA dissidents claimed that the Guide was taught in a room filled with Lenin and Mao Tse-Tung busts, where the anthem of the Communist International was sung every day. These former UNITA members denounced as fraudulent Savimbi’s widely publicized pro-Western ideology and defense of democracy. They pointed out that there was a huge discrepancy between what UNITA claimed abroad as its objectives (i.e., negotiations with the MPLA, reconciliation, and coalition) and what the Guide taught. The Guide, said to be written by Savimbi, was considered a secret book accessible only to the political elite of UNITA.

⁴² “Jonas Savimbi: Angolan nationalist whose ambition kept his country at war” by Victoria Brittain:

US pressure brought the Angolan government to accept a peace agreement at Bicesse in 1991 that required both sides to disarm and demobilise before a UN-monitored election in 1992. Washington was confident that Savimbi would win the election. But in February 1992 his oldest associate, Antonio da Costa Fernandes, and another leading Unita cadre, Nzau Puna, defected, declaring publicly that Savimbi was not interested in a political contest, but was preparing another war. However, so strong were US ties to Savimbi that those warnings and others were disregarded.

He launched a catastrophic new war when he lost the election in late September, and came close to seizing power in the following months.

⁴³ From “Jonas Savimbi: Angolan nationalist whose ambition kept his country at war” by Victoria Brittain:

Jonas Savimbi, who has died aged 67, was, for 20 years, a figure as important in southern Africa as Nelson Mandela, and as negative a force as Mandela was positive.

For the past 10 years, using the proceeds of smuggled diamonds from eastern and central Angola, he fought an increasingly pointless and personal bush war against the elected government in which hundreds of thousands of peasants were killed, wounded, displaced, or starved to death.

⁴⁴ From “Welcome to the World’s Richest Poor Country” by John Kampfner:

Aihameselle Mingas beckons me inside his house. He wants to show me his new architect-designed kitchen, with its floor-to-ceiling fridge, and its architect-designed sitting room with its Italian furnishings. Each room has a plasma home-entertainment screen. “Come see the marble. It’s from Brazil,” he says.

I have seen conspicuous consumption in London, Moscow, New York, and Paris, but never a contrast such as this. Outside the high walls of Aihameselle’s house stand two dilapidated tower blocks. The holes in the road resemble lunar craters. Dozens of bored youths stand around, their eyes blank. And the stench. The shit is, literally, floating down the street.

Luanda was built for less than half a million folk. The war drove the population up to four million people, fleeing as the two sides – the communist government backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and the rebel UNITA forces supported by America and apartheid South Africa – fought out one of the most vicious conflicts of the Cold War. That is why you have such fast urbanisation. That is why everywhere you look, you see shanties, shacks in fetid and treeless slums that stretch for miles to the horizon. That is why the city suffers power cuts, why traffic doesn’t move and why sanitation has collapsed. When it rains, the polluted Bengo river overflows; the water merges with the garbage-strewn banks, producing yet another bout of cholera.

By night, people party – hard, until dawn. Then, before they return home (drivers have been sleeping in the car park), they gather for one last time to eat fish soup. A popular night-time venue for drink and watching bands play Kuduro music, is Miami. This is a younger, more local and hipper crowd, a far cry from the sad middle-aged men I see at another place down the road, accompanied by their catorzinagas, 14-year-old escorts.

For the rest, life consists of eking out a miserable existence, working on construction sites, if you are lucky, or hawking anything you can find. Life expectancy is 42. Angola has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. Three quarters of the population earn less than a dollar a day – the UN definition of absolute poverty. Some 50 per cent of people have no access to clean water; 24 percent of children under 14 are forced to work.

⁴⁵ “My Vision For South Africa” is the lecture Buthelezi gave at Heritage; Savimbi’s has the sick joke of a title, “The Coming Winds of Democracy in Angola”.

⁴⁶ From Johns’ LinkedIn profile:

Michael Johns is a health care executive with extensive experience in leading medical device, medical supply, home health, pharmaceutical and specialty pharmaceutical revenue and market share growth. His industry expertise includes executive management, sales and marketing management, operational management and efficiencies, Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance contract and reimbursement management, investor and public relations, the development and implementation of organic and acquisition-oriented growth strategies and other industry functions.

As Divisional Head and Corporate Vice President for Electric Mobility Corporation, a global medical device company, Mr. Johns drove top-line sales from $3.8 million to $30 million, increased divisional profit contribution by 150 percent, and reduced Medicare, Medicaid, and managed care DSO by 75 percent. He launched a national clinical sales force of 200 from scratch and developed over 250 managed care contracts. Prior to this, he was Vice President and a member of the senior management team of Gentiva Health Services, the world’s largest home health care company.

Prior to beginning his health care management career in 1994, Mr. Johns was a White House speechwriter to the President of the United States, a senior aide to the Governor of New Jersey and a U.S. Senator, and a policy analyst and editor at one of the nation’s most influential public policy research institutes.

⁴⁷ From the Consumer Affairs website, “Electric Mobility Fined $225,00 by New Jersey”:

Electric Mobility has agreed to pay more $225,000 in fees and consumer redress after an investigation by the state of New Jersey. The company also agreed that it distributors will prominently state the conditions under which Medicare is likely to pay some or all of the purchase cost of a motorized wheelchair.

The company also agreed to clearly disclose the requirements for transporting the scooter in the consumer’s personal vehicle, including the need to disassemble the device or to use a ramp or other accessory that must be purchased separately.

⁴⁸ The full letter, from the Consumer Affairs site:

Mr. James R Hood
Editor in Chief & President
Consumer Affairs.Com
400 N Capitol St., NW Suite G-50
Washington, DC 20001

Dear Mr. Hood,

Once again, I have viewed, with great concern, the misinformation you have posted to your website concerning Electric Mobility Corporation. Electric Mobility was not fined $225,000 by the State of New Jersey as your website erroneously reports.

Electric Mobility entered into an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance with the State of New Jersey. By doing so, we believe that we have set the industry standard for ethical sales practices. It is also important to note that this was an amicable agreement and that Electric Mobility voluntarily cooperated and agreed to this Assurance of Voluntary Compliance. Furthermore, the agreement resolved and settled all issues in controversy without any findings of law or fact. Moreover, the agreement, executed by the Attorney General of the State of New Jersey and me, specifically acknowledges “Electric Mobility admitted no wrongdoing and the fact that Electric Mobility promises to act in specific ways or not to act in specific ways does not constitute an admission that Electric Mobility has acted any differently in the past. Indeed, Electric Mobility contends that it has always been in compliance with the laws and regulations of New Jersey.”

The majority of the provisos contained in the Agreement have been in place for many years. Medicare coverage criteria is a complicated issue—one that we have always addressed during our sales presentation. Whenever customers do not meet this criteria, we have had the customers execute an Advance Beneficiary Notice, as required by Medicare regulations. We have taken additional steps to change our documentation to assure that all Medicare beneficiaries now acknowledge, in writing, that they have received both the Medicare coverage criteria and the fee schedule amount applicable to their state of residence.

Electric Mobility paid the amount specified in the Agreement for “attorney fees, investigative costs and future consumer initiatives” and to establish an escrow fund. After resolution of any previous consumer concerns, the remaining balance of the escrow fund will be returned to the company. Nowhere in the agreement is the there any mention of “fines” as purported in your website.

We believe that we have always upheld high ethical standards in our industry. We voluntarily entered into this Agreement to assure our customers and all persons associated with the company are aware of the standards to which we are committed.

Sincerely,

Michael Flowers
President

⁴⁹ The tweet itself:

Van loads of Somalis being transported to #Ohio polls, instructed to vote straight Dem ticket: goo.gl/qiLVv—
Michael Johns (@michaeljohns) October 27, 2012

⁵⁰ From “Tea Party Jab to Be Zapped From Captain America Comic, Writer Says”:

In issue No. 602 of Captain America, “Two Americas, Part One,” the title hero and The Falcon, a black superhero from New York City, stumble upon a protest rally in Boise, Idaho. They see scores of protesters carrying signs that say “Stop the Socialists!” and “Tea Bag The Libs Before They Tea Bag YOU!”

Captain America says the protest appears to be an “anti-tax thing,” and The Falcon jokes that he likely would not be welcomed into the crowd of “angry white folks.”

Ed Brubaker, who wrote the story, told FoxNews.com he did not write the “Tea Bag The Libs Before They Tea Bag YOU!” sign shown in the edition, insisting that the words were added by someone in “lettering or production” just before being shipped to the printer. It will be changed in subsequent editions, he said.

“I don’t know who did it, probably someone who thought it was funny,” Brubaker wrote in an e-mail. “I didn’t think so, personally. That’s the sign being changed to something more generic for the trade reprint, because I and my editor were both shocked to see it.”

But the change may come too late to placate a chorus of critics who noticed the apparent jab at the Tea Party movement and who accused Marvel of making supervillains out of patriotic Americans.

Michael Johns, a board member of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, said he felt the “juvenile” dig will ultimately do more damage to Marvel’s brand than to the Tea Party movement. He also disputed the insinuation that the growing movement lacks diversity.

“The Tea Party movement has been very reflective of broad concerns of all Americans,” Johns said. “Membership is across ethnic, religious and even political lines.”

Johns accused Brubaker of “blame-shifting” and questioned why an apology or retraction hadn’t been issued as soon as the writer or Marvel executives noticed the politically charged signs.

The offending image:

⁵¹ From “One Iraq Option Only: Victory”

Disturbingly, there is an emerging consensus among the Democrat-led United States Congressional leadership that the war in Iraq is “lost.” The most recent example that this thesis has worked its way into official party talking points was offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, who pointedly stated last month that “…this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything….”

Setting the obvious contrarian politics aside, could there be a more defeatist, demoralizing and undermining statement at this time?

Clearly, one hopes that is not a message Congressional Democrats want to be sending al-Qaeda and America’s enemies in the region at this juncture, and I think it would be unfair to assign any member of Congress such malicious motives. But it’s already becoming very clear that driving the Republicans from the White House will first mean ensuring no 2008 Republican candidate can run on the coattails of a Bush-led victory in that nation. Putting politics ahead of national security, this nation’s Democratic leadership knows all too well what the prolonged nature of the Iraq War has done to President Bush’s national popularity. It has set the table for the Democrats to reclaim the Presidency in a mere 20 months.

If it is not politics that is driving the Democratic inclination to label the Iraq War “lost,” then Senator Reid’s course of action should be clear: He owes this nation, its deployed troops and their families an apology because this conflict has been anything but “lost.”

This demand for an apology from Reid for calling the Iraq war “lost” is especially interesting given the veneration Johns has for William F. Buckley. From “Buckley Says Bush Will Be Judged on Iraq War, Now a `Failure’”, by Heidi Przybyla and Judy Woodruff, a year before Johns made his demand:

William F. Buckley Jr., the longtime conservative writer and leader, said George W. Bush’s presidency will be judged entirely by the outcome of a war in Iraq that is now a failure.

“Mr. Bush is in the hands of a fortune that will be unremitting on the point of Iraq,” Buckley said in an interview that will air on Bloomberg Television this weekend. “If he’d invented the Bill of Rights it wouldn’t get him out of his jam.”

⁵² From allAfrica, “Angola: Zambia Leader Apologises Over Past Support to Jonas Savimbi”

Lusaka – Zambia has apologised to neighbouring Angola over the Frederick Chiluba-led Government’s support to late rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, President Michael Sata confirmed today.

Savimbi, who waged an almost three-decade-long civil war against President José Eduardo dos Santos’ regime, died in combat aged 68 in 2002.

Speaking at State House in Lusaka when he received credentials from Angola’s new Ambassador to Zambia Balbina Malheiros Dias Da Silva on Wednesday, President Sata said he had sent Zambia’s founding father, Dr Kenneth Kaunda, to apologise to President José Eduardo and Angolans.

President Sata, a long-time ally of the late Chiluba – Zambia’s president between 1991 and 2001 – and key leader of the then ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), said the MMD was “very treacherous” during Angolan Government’s battle against Savimbi.

“I apologise on behalf of Zambia that what our colleagues in MMD did was fraudulent, was greed,” said President Sata, 74, who is less than one month old in power.

“As I am talking, our first president Dr Kenneth Kaunda is in Angola. I sent him as my envoy to go and personally apologise to the President.”

⁵³ This editorial, along with much National Review archive material has been pulled by the magazine from the internet. I am deeply grateful to Bradford DeLong who preserved a copy in his post “From National Review’s Archives”, and I re-paste it here.

National Review editorial, 8/24/1957, 4:7, pp. 148-9: The most important event of the past three weeks was the remarkable and unexpected vote by the Senate to guarantee to defendants in a criminal contempt action the privilege of a jury trial. That vote does not necessarily affirm a citizen’s intrinsic rights: trial by jury in contempt actions, civil or criminal, is not an American birthright, and it cannot, therefore, be maintained that the Senate’s vote upheld, pure and simple, the Common Law.

What the Senate did was to leave undisturbed the mechanism that spans the abstractions by which a society is guided and the actual, sublunary requirements of the individual community. In that sense, the vote was a conservative victory. For the effect of it is–and let us speak about it bluntly–to permit a jury to modify or waive the law in such circumstances as, in the judgment of the jury, require so grave an interposition between the law and its violator.

What kind of circumstances do we speak about? Again, let us speak frankly. The South does not want to deprive the Negro of a vote for the sake of depriving him of the vote. Political scientists assert that minorities do not vote as a unit. Women do not vote as a bloc, they contend; nor do Jews, or Catholics, or laborers, or nudists–nor do Negroes; nor will the enfranchised Negroes of the South.

If that is true, the South will not hinder the Negro from voting–why should it, if the Negro vote, like the women’s, merely swells the volume, but does not affect the ratio, of the vote? In some parts of the South, the White community merely intends to prevail on any issue on which there is corporate disagreement between Negro and White. The White community will take whatever measures are necessary to make certain that it has its way.

What are the issues? Is school integration one? The NAACP and others insist that the Negroes as a unit want integrated schools. Others disagree, contending that most Negroes approve the social separation of the races. What if the NAACP is correct, and the matter comes to a vote in a community in which Negroes predominate? The Negroes would, according to democratic processes, win the election; but that is the kind of situation the White community will not permit. The White community will not count the marginal Negro vote. The man who didn’t count it will be hauled up before a jury, he will plead not guilty, and the jury, upon deliberation, will find him not guilty. A federal judge, in a similar situation, might find the defendant guilty, a judgment which would affirm the law and conform with the relevant political abstractions, but whose consequences might be violent and anarchistic.

The central question that emerges–and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal–is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced ace. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. The British believe they do, and acted accordingly, in Kenya, where the choice was dramatically one between civilization and barbarism, and elsewhere; the South, where the conflict is by no means dramatic, as in Kenya, nevertheless perceives important qualitative differences between its culture and the Negroes’, and intends to assert its own.

National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numberical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.

The axiom on which many of the arguments supporting the original version of the Civil Rights bill were based was Universal Suffrage. Everyone in America is entitled to the vote, period. No right is prior to that, no obligation subordinate to it; from this premise all else proceeds.

That, of course, is demagogy. Twenty-year-olds do not generally have the vote, and it is not seriously argued that the difference between 20 and 21-year-olds is the difference between slavery and freedom. The residents of the District of Columbia do not vote: and the population of D.C. increases by geometric proportion. Millions who have the vote do not care to exercise it; millions who have it do not know how to exercise it and do not care to learn. The great majority of the Negroes of the South who do not vote do not care to vote, and would not know for what to vote if they could. Overwhelming numbers of White people in the South do not vote. Universal suffrage is not the beginning of wisdom or the beginning of freedom. Reasonable limitations upon the vote are not exclusively the recommendations of tyrants or oligarchists (was Jefferson either?). The problem in the South is not how to get the vote for the Negro, but how to equip the Negro–and a great many Whites–to cast an enlightened and responsible vote.

The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class. It is tempting and convenient to block the progress of a minority whose services, as menials, are economically useful. Let the South never permit itself to do this. So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function.

⁵⁴ From Jacob Heilbrunn’s masterful “Apologists Without Remorse”, on the sorry history of conservative intellectual attitudes toward South Africa:

As [Chester] Crocker [undersecretary of state] told a South African reporter in October 1980, “all Reagan knows about southern Africa is that he’s on the side of the whites.” “To what extent,” asked the March 14, 1986, National Review, “is the vast majority of South African blacks intellectually and practically prepared to assume the social, economic, and political leadership in a highly industrialized country?”

⁵⁵ From Jacob Heilbrunn’s “Apologists Without Remorse”:

On August 1, 1986, William F. Buckley, Jr., advised the United States to forget about the “one-man/one-vote business.”

⁵⁶ There are may pieces out there discussing this issue. One of the more recent is Jonathan Chait’s “Who Needs To Win To Win?”

⁵⁷ From “Mountain out of a molehill”:

Because the likelihood of any individual’s vote mattering is infinitesimal and because the effort required to be an informed voter can be substantial, ignorance and abstention are rational, unless voting is cathartic or otherwise satisfying. A small voting requirement such as registration, which calls for the individual voter’s initiative, acts to filter potential voters with the weakest motivations. They are apt to invest minimal effort in civic competence. As indifferent or reluctant voters are nagged to the polls – or someday prodded there by a monetary penalty for nonvoting – the caliber of the electorate must decline.

⁵⁸ “Stand With Us”:

⁵⁹ As this is a slightly controversial quote, I upload scans of the article portion where it’s featured, so there won’t be doubts as to its veracity. The anecdote begins on page 73 and continues on to page 74; I thought it was a distraction to mention in the main piece the insight of one of the Review editors that, “under a real government, Bishop Tutu would be a cake of soap.”

David Lynch’s Lost Highway: Who is Dick Laurent?

(Obviously, there are spoilers – but the post is so focused on certain details of the movie that it will be incomprehensible to those who have not seen the film. Since I assume anyone who has interest in what follows has seen Lost Highway, I give no summary of its plot, but simply plunge into a few of its intriguing aspects. As usual, for convenience sake, the post title omits the name of one of the writers: his name is Barry Gifford, and though I have not had the fortune to read many of his works, I have read his memoir, Phantom Father, and it is excellent. For quotes, I rely on the original draft script, as well as a transcript of the film – the movie differs often from its draft screenplay.)

Possibly David Lynch’s darkest movie, it is from beginning to end the world of a sociopath: the color palette is greys, browns, yellows that are sickly, greens that are hospitally, a few reds that are always ominous. There is something essential missing in this man, Fred Madison, and there is something essential missing in the colors of the movie. A question I’ve had for a while about Highway is in the post title: why does the movie take the time to establish that the same character, played by Robert Loggia, doing a great job as usual, has two separate and distinct names, Mr. Eddy and Dick Laurent? This man is a brazen, intimidating figure with armed guards; he has no need for the discrete cover of a secret identity, and the movie gives us no hint that one identity is a cover for the other, does not give us any explanation at all – he simply appears to be known by two names without connection to any other. The answer provided on the film’s wikipedia page, is, surprisingly, completely wrong: “Arriving at a cabin in the desert, Alice reveals to Pete that Mr. Eddy is actually a porn producer named Dick Laurent and he forced her to do the films.” There is a flashback (at a much earlier hotel rendezvous, not at the cabin) where she first meets Eddy and she is forced at gunpoint to take off her clothes – but no mention is made of his name. Additionally, there’s no evidence that she’s coerced into making these movies, and this complicity is a crucial point.

I think Lost Highway is a simpler movie than some believe it to be (though that doesn’t detract from its quality), and I think the reason behind the names used for this character is simple as well. Highway, as most concede, is about a man who, after killing his wife, enters a fantasy world where he is now a younger, more virile character, who gets to have sex with a woman who is a double of the wife he could not perform with. It is world of denial and forgetting, where a man is able to deny his responsibility for his wife’s murder by blocking all memories of it, where everyone else is the villain, and he is the victim. If it is enjoyed less than some of Lynch’s other work, it is because there is only one character, Fred Madison, and his double Pete Dayton; his wife is a distant enigma to him, and the characters of the fantasy world are variations on those of his past life, his projections, the people he wants them to be. This, I think, is the reason for the two names, Dick Laurent and Mr. Eddy of this character. Fred Madison, a few days before killing his wife, killed the man he suspected was her lover, and this man is Dick Laurent. Just as Alice Wakefield is a fantasy variation of Renee, Mr. Eddy is such a variation on Laurent.

Before I go into this important point, I’d first just like to clarify what’s a confusing, and deliberately mysterious elemt of the film: the layout of the Madison house.

FRED AND RENEE’S: A MAP

The Madison house is a great background for the first part of the movie, because it seems labyrinthine, a place the characters can get lost in its mysterious corners, though its layout is simple, consistent (no tricks which add or remove rooms), and mapped without difficulty, allowing us to easily place the action at its various points.

Two polar points on the house seem to be presented as the domain of Fred and Renee, respectively, the rehearsal space and the bathroom. We only ever see Fred in the rehearsal room, and when Fred enters the bathroom while Renee removes her make-up, she gives him a hard stare in the mirror until he leaves.

I go through various parts of the first part of the film and give physical context for some action, where such context is ambiguous or where such context might offer additional insight.

The movie opens with Fred in the dark, on his side of the bed, smoking. The curtains, which are operated by an automatic mechanism to open at a specific time in the morning, open, and we now see Fred reflected in the mirror.

He gets up to answer the intercom, then goes down the corridor, so effectively used in this movie, to the living room, to peek out at whoever left the message. He moves from window to window, before reaching the window of the rehearsal space.

A small note: some have speculated that this intercom message, and this whole scene happens the morning of Renee’s murder. I don’t believe this is the case, but I don’t know whether there’s any direct evidence that I could cite to refute this. I should mention, however, that the last time we see Fred and Renee before they enter their house the night of the murder, the car is parked in the street. When Fred looks out this morning, there’s no sign of his own car in the street.

Fred gets his equipment ready for his gig in the rehearsal room, Renee comes out of the hall, Fred walks from the music room to Renee, the living room fireplace in the background:

When he calls the house that night, we see the phones in the living room,

the rehearsal space,

Renee’s side of the bed,

When he comes home from the gig, we see him ascend the stairs, then turn down the corridor to the bedroom. He sees his wife asleep on her side of the bed.

Fred’s dream involves him emerging from the corridor, then turning about in slow motion from the perspective of the fireplace to the stairs – yet I’m never sure if he’s at all times in the same place, or if he is moving through the twists of the corridor, back to the bedroom.

He sees the fireplace burning with a speeded up fire.

He may then turn around to the other side of the room to see smoke ascend from the staircase. This smoke might be thought of as an intruder into the house – always the evil without, never within. Then, we have a further ambiguity, because the camera then travels down the hall, as if it were taking the perspecive of this smoke moving through the corridor, yet we cut back to Fred, turning, either still in the living room, or navigating the twists of this hallway. We then reach the bedroom, and Renee raises her hands in fear.

The morning that the second videotape arrives, Renee goes out to get it. Fred, however, is up already, entering the living room from the direction of his music room.

The second videotape carries an unexpected detail: we would assume that the cameraholder would move from the area of the staircase to the Madisons’ bedroom, but the motion instead is from the rehearsal space, Fred’s domain, across the living room to the corridor.

On the night of the muder, Fred goes inside the house to make sure it’s safe. The phone is ringing. We see Fred move through the corridor.

Then, the camera moves from the phone out into the hall, as if following a spirit that’s been trasmitted from the device into the house. This spirit seemingly meets Fred, who is very scared of it, and a look crosses his face as if he’s been given an order he doesn’t want to follow but is afraid to refuse.

Fred re-enters the house with Renee, Renee takes her makeup off, and gives Fred the already mentioned cold look. Fred moves down the dark corridor.

We have now one of the more ambiguous and, for me at least, most disturbing, moments of the film – Fred appears to be at the end of the corridor which opens into the living room. We do not expect a mirror to be here, yet Fred now encounters his reflection. Perhaps the viewer has misplaced where Fred is in the house, or perhaps this is not a reflection at all: this is Fred meeting his double. This double comes, expectedly, from the direction of Fred’s space, the music room.

Alice calls for her husband, just as she did in Fred’s dream, from the bedroom’s edge of the corridor.

This, however, is not quite a re-play of the dream. There, the fireplace was lit with an accelerated fire. Now, the fireplace is vacant. Fred may have met his double in the earlier sequence; now we see a pair of shadows move across the living room walls, again, from the position of Fred’s space, the music room, towards the corridor.

We now see Fred emerge from the hall, into the bedroom.

The camera pulls back from a bordered darkness – but this is not the hall. It’s the next morning, and this is the Madisons’ television.

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

It is helpful to look at the way Alice Wakefield¹ is portrayed before getting to Dick Laurent. Alice belongs to a fantasy world that Fred constructs for himself, one where he hopes to find a happiness that eludes him in his present state. Before reaching this fantasy world, we see Fred often looking upward, as if for some kind of deliverance.

This begins after the cops arrive, Fred looking up while following some mysterious noise, only to see one of the cops near a skylight.

He makes the same gesture on the morning that the last tape is delivered, before he starts watching it.

When in prison, he looks up, but his way is, literally, barred: any salvation is blocked.

Fred looks up from his bed in his prison cell and sees only the light of a lightbulb, a dim fraction of the salving light he looks for. The bulb itself is behind a grill:

He is forced to look up in the prison hospital, in order to take a sedative – a kind of release, a kind of escape, but a brief and shallow one.

He looks again up at the light, then turns to the prison wall, which unfolds like a curtain upon a cabin which returns to its form after its destruction. The same process will take place with Fred: he is now in prison, his life destroyed, yet somehow, impossibly, he will return to life. Out of the cabin appears the Mystery Man; Fred’s deliverance will come, not from god, but this force of malevolence.

Finally, Fred is in his prison cell, and there is a great noise, and a light, much like some divine visitation. Again, Fred looks upward, and this time he is delivered.

Fred is re-born as Pete into this new world, but it is not a fully constructed one. His focus is on sating his lust for the wife who is not quite his wife, Alice, the double of Renee, and other parts are left awry, a telling clue that this is all fantasy.

This shows up most clearly with his parents, who seem sketched in, an afterthought, not quite animated by actual credible life, and sometimes disappearing altogether².

They sit on a couch, watching a banal, ancient documentary on berry picking:

Later, speaking to Pete about the mysterious circumstances of his disappearance, they sit in their living room, without any light on.

Pete leaves his room to go out, looks around the house to say goodbye, but his parents are gone.

He speaks to Eddy on the phone, his parents standing right there in front of him, and then, suddenly, they disappear.

In this fantasy world, Alice is Renee with all the virtues and vices Fred wants. She is beautiful, and sexually hungry, but, of course, in this world, he is able to satisfy her. She is also deceptive, malicious, wanton, mendacious – he wants these qualities in her as well, as they vindicate Fred’s view of this woman and her murder. The creation of this very fantasy, the very thing he wants, a sexually ravenous lover who will betray him, is the very thing that will destroy the fantasy. He wants this woman to lead him into murder, because it cannot possibly be his fault that he killed anyone, and she must be deceptive, so that even if he did kill her, she had it coming. These very elements lead to the movie’s nightmarish end, where the qualities Fred wants in this woman bring about a murder where he ends up chased by the police. Long before things fall apart, Fred may has a sense that whatever world he dreams up, it will disappoint him. He arrives in his new life, and we see him relaxed in the backyard of his parents’ home, the only scene of bright, rich color in all of Highway. He should be blissfully happy, and yet he gets up, looks over the fence at the neighbouring house, and ponders the life next door.

Just as Fred looks for deliverance in his cell and sees only the false light of the bulb, Fred creates another image of false light in Alice, an incandescent creature with glowing blonde hair. In their second meeting, she is a bright beacon, dressed all in white. We might look at her shoes here as part of this fantasy design as well; we might refer to these heels as ultrahigh, vertiginous, insane, or, doubtlessly how Fred sees them, slutty.

He is drawn to this light, like a moth, and it will end him. We are given this very image in Pete’s room, as the face of Alice twists around the room, and then we cut to the room’s bulb:

Throughout the Pete Dayton sequence, we see images of Renee played again, but skewed, so as to give them a different cast, always of a sinister, malevolent feeme fatale.

A close-up of Renee’s lips when she’s on the phone to the cops:

A close-up of her eyes when watching the tape:

In both images, we see a deeply frightened woman. When the images recur as Alice, they are of a woman rabid with lust, betraying her husband, Mr. Eddy.

The mouth:

The eyes:

We might take this specific contrast even further, by giving the full context of some of these images: a pan over Renee’s face when she’s on the phone to the cops that is mirrored in Alice’s phone call to Pete; one moves from Renee’s mouth to her eyes, the other from Alice’s eyes to her mouth.

We see a shot of Renee, overhead, unsatisfied, after Fred’s failed attempt at sex.

There is a very similar overhead, later, Alice’s face lying in bed, only now she’s asking Pete to help rob her friend:

ALICE
I’ll set it up for tomorrow night. You’ll meet me at his place at eleven o’clock… Don’t drive there… Take a bus … Make sure no one follows you…His address is easy to remember… It’s 2224 Deep Dell Place… It’s a white stucco job on the south side of the street… I’ll be upstairs with Andy…The back door will be open… That leads into the kitchen – go through the kitchen to the living room – there’s a bar there… At eleven fifteen, I’ll ask Andy to fix me a drink… When he does, you can crack him in the head… Okay?

Of course, there is the contrast of Fred and Renee trying to make love, their lips never touching, and the passionate embrace of Pete and Alice near the end:

Renee is friends with Andy, a skeevy type who Fred does not like at all. On the ride home, Fred asks his wife how they know each other. It involved work at a place called Moke’s:

FRED
How’d you meet that asshole, Andy, anyway?

Renee stares out the front window – thinks back.

RENEE
It was a long time ago…I met him at this place called Moke’s…We…became friends…He told me about a job…

FRED
What job?

RENEE
I don’t remember…Anyway, Andy’s okay…

FRED
He’s got some fucked up friends.

Pete asks Alice how she got mixed up with her unsavory ring of friends, and the story touches on the same points as Renee’s, but here they fill in the details of what she did at Moke’s, exactly according to Fred’s fantasy of this woman: she is a whore. The job at Moke’s his wife never talked about involved her making pornography, and Alice liked making it.

PETE
How’d you get in with these fuckin’ people?

ALICE
Pete… Don’t…

PETE
How’d it happen, Alice?

ALICE
It was a long time ago…I met someone at this place called Moke’s…we became friends. He told me about a job…

PETE
In pornos?

ALICE
No… A job…I didn’t know what. He set up an appointment for me to see a man.

(we have the lengthy scene where she’s forced to strip at gunpoint, we then cut back to Alice and Pete)

Alice’s hand reaches up and strokes Pete’s cheek.

PETE
Why didn’t you just leave?

Alice doesn’t say anything. She drops her hand – looks down.

PETE (CON’T)
You liked it.

ALICE
If you want me to go away, I’ll go away.

Alice not only liked making these pornos, she married the man who forced her to take off her clothes with a gun to her head. She’s a woman who respect force, who likes it rough.

Since Fred sees her as a lying, malicious bitch, it should be expected that this woman is happy to set him up for the murder:

PETE
We killed him.

ALICE
You killed him.

They travel to the cabin in Andy’s car, which, for some reason, looks very similar to that of Fred’s.

This is Fred’s:

This is Andy’s:

This car ride involves a series of shots that’s almost an exact mirror of the scene of Fred and Renee driving from the party – both in the shot, close-up of Alice, close-up of Pete; the original ride has both in the shot, close-up of Renee, close-up of Fred, two-shot again. In the original car conversation, Fred assails his wife with a series of suspicious questions about Andy, about Moke’s, questions that exhaust her. The second conversation shows us how Fred sees himself, as Pete, the perpetual victim of this treacherous woman, dragged further and further into this criminal enterprise – he’s very scared, she’s coldly confident.

I quote again the conversation, about Moke’s, in the first car ride.

FRED
How’d you meet that asshole, Andy, anyway?

Renee stares out the front window – thinks back.

RENEE
It was a long time ago…I met him at this place called Moke’s…We…became friends…He told me about a job…

FRED
What job?

RENEE
I don’t remember…Anyway, Andy’s okay…

FRED
He’s got some fucked up friends.

The conversation in the second car ride:

PETE
Where the fuck are we going, Alice? Where the fuck are we going?

ALICE
We have to go to the desert, baby. The fence I told you about…He’s at his cabin.

Here is a sequence of the images from both car rides, a pairing of almost exact symmetry – the first car ride ends with the two characters in the shot, the second car ride does not:

DICK LAURENT IS DEAD

Only one set of characters refers to Eddy as Dick Laurent, and those are the cops surveilling Pete. The first time takes place when Eddy goes to the garage:

AL
Lou, you recognize that guy?

LOU
Yeah…Laurent.

The identification is made only one other time, at Andy’s murder scene:

AL
Ed… Take a look at this!

ED
Yeah. That’s her all right. That’s Fred Madison’s wife with Dick Laurent.

This, of course, raises the question – how does Fred know that Eddy is also called Dick Laurent, famously saying at the film’s end, “Dick Laurent is dead” when he never hears such information?

Just as the unfaithful wife he cannot satisfy is turned into a vicious femme fatale, Fred turns Renee’s lover into someone else to justify his killing; Dick Laurent becomes the homicidal lunatic Mr. Eddy. We are, however, so engulfed in Fred’s own fantasy world, that we’re unable to even see the distinction between the actual man and created character. Unable to see that when Fred assaults and kidnaps Laurent, then cuts his throat, this man has perhaps no connection to the crime world whatsoever, but whose only transgression is having an affair with Renee.

Following the scene in the Mystery Man’s cabin, we suddenly jump to the “Lost Highway Hotel”, with no explanation as to why Fred has gone there. His wife and Dick Laurent are in room #26, and he takes room #25.

He carries with him the gun Alice gave him, because of course he is never a violent man, only an instrument of others. His wife leaves, and he storms into the room with the gun, knocking Laurent unconscious, then taking him to the desert.

After Fred cuts the man’s throat, he stands over him with his double and helper, the Mystery Man. As Laurent waits for some explanation for why this has happened to him, the Mystery Man hands him a console showing him video playback. Earlier in the film, we had this crucial and well-known exchange between Fred, Renee and the detectives:

AL (to Renee)
Do you own a video camera?

RENEE
No. Fred hates them.

The Detectives both look at Fred.

FRED
I like to remember things my own way.

AL
What do you mean by that?

FRED
How I remember them. Not necessarily the way they happened.

The Mystery Man now shows Dick Laurent Fred’s own memories, of how he wanted things to happen, of the man he wants Laurent to be: Mr. Eddy, a sexual pervert, a mobster, a monstrosity.

He kills Dick Laurent, and leaves the body in the desert.

Because Laurent’s body is lost in the desert, Andy has no idea that Laurent is dead. We might also note that during this conversation, the moment after Andy brings up Laurent’s name (“He’s a friend of Dick Laurent, I think”), and Fred repeats it (“Dick Laurent?”), we cut to Renee; what connection does she have with Laurent that we cut to her now? When she joins the conversation, for reasons either deliberate or accidental, Laurent’s name goes unmentioned – as if either Andy or Fred know that she’s having an affair with this man, and don’t want to provoke a reaction by speaking of him as dead.

FRED
Andy, who’s the guy on the stairs? Guy in black?

ANDY
I don’t know his name. He’s a friend of Dick Laurent, I think.

FRED (troubled)
Dick Laurent?

ANDY
Yeah. I believe so.

FRED
But Dick Laurent is dead, isn’t he?

ANDY
He is? I didn’t think you knew Dick. How do you know he’s dead?

FRED
I don’t. I don’t know him.

ANDY
Dick can’t be dead. Who told you he was dead?

RENEE
Who, honey? Who’s dead?

FRED
Let’s go home.

The killing of Laurent also gives significance to the images of the desert that recur throughout the movie, seemingly for no reason at all – Fred has suppressed his memory of the killing, just as he has managed to forget his killing Renee, yet both rise to the surface. He has visions of Renee’s dead body when he is Pete, in Pete’s room, and the memory of the surrounding desert returns again and again, beginning when Alice comes back to the garage, then again when they have a rendezvous at a hotel.

We also see this memory surface explicitly at another moment: Pete sees the photo of both Renee and Alice together at Andy’s house, and his nose starts to bleed. He rushes to the upstairs bathroom, and he’s suddenly in the hall of the hotel. There’s room #25 where he lay in wait, and there’s room #26, the very room where we see Renee and Laurent in bed. When he opens that door, he sees his wife, a nasty, sarcastic vixen, having sex, betraying him.

During the killing of Laurent, though we see Fred as Fred, I think he still thinks of himself as Pete: the man who does these murderous deeds is always someone else, not him, not Fred, who’s somehow gotten blamed for these killings. We note the almost magical quality of Pete’s clothes: though Fred and Pete are men of very different height and bulk, somehow Pete’s clothes fit Fred without difficulty. We note also what the Mystery Man yells at Fred, that Alice is Renee, as if this name would be unfamiliar to him. The Mystery Man demands of this man his name. Though we see him as Fred, this is a man still playing a part.

FRED / PETE
Where’s Alice?

MYSTERY MAN
Alice who? Her name is Renee. If she told you her name is Alice, she’s lying. And your name? What the fuck is your name?!

There is now a cut back to the detectives at Andy’s mansion, who discover Pete Dayton’s prints all round the murder scene. Conveniently, they connect this killing to that of Renee: Fred isn’t guilty of that murder, it was always Pete Dayton who was the guilty one.

ED
Hey, Al, look at this.

(a shot of the framed picture of Laurent, Andy, and Renee together)

AL
It’s her, all right. Fred Madison’s wife … with Dick Laurent and Mr. Dent-head over there.

AL
We’ve got Pete Dayton’s prints all over this place.

ED
You know what I think?

AL
What’s that, Ed?

ED
There’s no such thing as a bad coincidence.

So, we have Pete who somehow is the villain all along, and Fred is blameless. Pete is the one who killed Renee, Andy, and Laurent. Fred kills Laurent, leaves him in the desert, yet he imagines himself as Pete doing this, Pete delivering the message to Fred that Laurent is dead. Pete is a stranger, Fred does not know this man, yet somehow he is also his servant, doing his bidding, killing this man he wanted dead, and then delivering the news.

The cryptic opening shot of Fred at the beginning, smoking in the dark, is him in the dawn after he has actually killed Laurent. He has entirely blocked out what he has done, and yet he somehow feels what he has done. The knowledge of his wife’s betrayal and his part in the death cast a shadow on him, and his expression is grim. In this movie of doubles and reflections, where we find it difficult to distinguish between what is Fred’s life and his fantasy world, this opening shot of Fred staring into the camera is actually a shot of his reflection in the bedroom mirror.

The bedroom mirror is clearly seen in this shot:

I will raise one last possibility, of which there is little evidence, but I find tantalizing nonetheless. Though we never see this, I think Fred somehow knew someone like Pete in passing, and decided to try to set him up for the murder of his wife and Laurent, just as Pete ends up fingered as the actual killer by the detectives, at Andy’s mansion. I think Fred paid a hoodlum like Pete some money, then gave him access to his house, either by leaving a door unlocked or providing him some keys, so that he could come in at night and film the outside and inside, then send the videotapes to his address. A mysterious request: but Fred will be pay this man a lot of money for this task, no questions asked. All in order to put the suspicion on this young man for the murder of Renee. Whether Pete stumbled onto the murder as it took place when shooting the last videotape, or whether Fred imagines this last videotape, I have no answer. Again, I have no evidence of this, except one moment, which might give indirect support.

This is a movie with various intricate visual connections, the shots of Renee linked to the shots of Alice. After the killing of Laurent, the Mystery Man whispers something in the ear of Fred, which might be instructions on what to do next. We then move to a close-up of Fred’s eyes. There is, I think, only one other moment where we have a close-up of Fred’s eyes, and that is when they receive the first videotape. I detect in him a different feeling here than in Renee, as if he has been expecting the videotapes to arrive. We have a possible veiled reference to this in the draft script, after they watch the second videotape. My bolds:

Fred and Renee stare at the snowy TV picture. After a few moments of silence, Renee gets up and switches off the set. She is visibly shaken, trembling. She stares fearfully at Fred who seems less disturbed.

Again, as I said, we only have one other close-up of Fred’s eyes, and that’s while they watch the tape. Here are the close-ups of Fred after the Mystery Man whispers to him, and then when he watches the tape with his wife:

Renee’s eyes show fear. Perhaps Fred’s show something else: a sense of a plan slowly going into effect, a plan both known and unknown, the memory there and the memory suppressed, of his criminal acts, and the blood he’s shed.

ADDENDUM: THE KILLERS INSIDE ME

Within this movie are two men, one a suspected killer, the other a man who killed many. The Mystery Man was played by Robert Blake, an actor who appeared to have had a blessed start in life as a child actor in Treasure of the Sierra Madre and as a regular on “The Little Rascals”. This blessed life was nothing of the kind. As related in “To Die For”, by the always excellent David Grann, he was beaten and resented by a father who would later kill himself. His “Rascals” co-stars would die in barfights, commit suicide, or become addicted to drugs. Blake would exile himself from his family and become a heroin addict, selling drugs to keep his habit going. He would get three comebacks, once as a young killer in the movie In Cold Blood, once as the star of Baretta, and a final one as the malevolent riddle in Highway. His comebacks would always end in bitterness, and his last would be finished with his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, shot to death in a restaurant. Bakley was a troubled woman who hadn’t been allowed to wash as a child because her grandmother feared running water. She grew up obsessed with the ideal of fame and wanting to marry someone famous, first setting her sights on Jerry Lee Lewis, then on Blake. After her death, a quickie biography was rushed out, a Hollywood scandal tour bus would stop at the place of her last meal, and Hustler published some old nude photographs. This is what she always wanted, her sister would say; “This is what she died for.” Blake would be indicted, found not guilty of the murder, though believed by many to be the killer. His role in Highway is haunting and brilliant work, and at the time of this writing, his last.

In Slavoj Zizek’s “Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway”, an analysis of great repute which I find flawed and over-complicated, Zizek identifies the Mr. Eddy figure as a paradoxical law-making jouisseur, a paternal authority who also looks on the world as a carnal feast, there for his unrestrained enjoyment. I disagree: Mr. Eddy is entirely an agent of chaos, and his passion for proper driving etiquette is not evidence of lawgiver authority, but a tic whose aberrance throws the rest of him into absurd contrast, the agent of chaos who doesn’t see himself as such. A similar example might be Joe Cabot in Reservoir Dogs, who insists on proper tipping before heading out to rob a bank.

That I don’t think this label applies to Mr. Eddy, however, does not mean I think it doesn’t exist. I believe it does apply to someone in Lost Highway, though not to any character, but to one of the cast members: Louis Eppolito, who played Ed, one of the two detectives who visit Fred and Renee.

Louis Eppolito’s grandfather was Diamond Louie, a man who stole diamonds, fenced goods, and ran prostitutes. He was friends with Lucky Luciano, and three of his sons would join organized crime. The debonair Freddy the Sheik would become a Gambino underboss, Jimmy the Clam became a hitman, and Ralph, Fat the Gangster, was a mafia soldier. Fat the Gangster, a man who hated rats and cops, was Louis’s father. He killed a nightclub owner, he beat his son, and, when a priest slapped his son for causing a disturbance, he sucker punched the priest. When Louis Eppolito went to school, FBI agents investigating his father’s heroin trade would tail him. Joe Profaci, a distinguished mafia eminence, told the son to be like his dad: “You got to grow up and have a lot of honor like your father.” Follow his footsteps, counseled Profaci. “If you want to grow up right, grow up like your daddy.” Louis Eppolito became a cop. In one class, a diagram of the Gambino crime family was used as a teaching aid. Look, said a fellow student to Eppolito, this guy’s got the same name as you, and the fellow student pointed to the diagram node that was Louis Eppolito’s father.

The cops of Lost Highway are Mutt and Jeff pairings, and Eppolito was half of a Mutt and Jeff pairing as well. He was boisterous and physical, a doo wop lover, a former Mr. Universe before his bulk turned to fat. His first partner was Steve Caracappa, a thin, quiet man who wore tailored black suits, pearl tie tacks, and a gold nugget pinkie ring with the NYPD logo. He would go on to be considered one of the best detectives in the department and an expert in organized crime. His cold, always watchful eyes gave him his name: the Prince of Darkness. When Eppolito and Caracappa arrested a member of a gang that was robbing dance clubs, Eppolito dunked the man’s head in a bucket filled with a mixture of hot water and ammonia. When one husband beat his wife, Eppolito didn’t arrest the husband but instead came back to the scene wearing a ski mask and beat the man with a lead pipe. Abused women, according to Eppolito, were an easy source of sex: “Every time we went on a call where a husband smacked his wife, I went back that night and smacked it to her, too. Battered wives were the most vulnerable.” After nearly choking one man to death, he had an affair with the man’s wife, a woman with a gorgeous body who fell a little too hard for the detective: “She was a cop’s dream — until she’d cry and tell me how much she loved me. I knew deep down there was no way in the world I’d consider throwing a ring on this one’s finger.”

Eppolito would describe all these events in his book, Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop, a memoir which related many fascinating stories from his career, while leaving a few out. Though it was an intriguing story, he did not mention the time jewelry went missing from the scene of a homicide that Eppolito and Caracappa were investigating. When a man was arrested in his office by Caracappa, the arrestee would allege that money and office property were gone; another man would be arrested and handcuffed, then find three hundred he had with him missing. A DEA informant told the government that Eppolito dealt drugs. Another informant would allege that Caracappa and a second detective unknown to the informant had offered to show her a copy of a homicide report in return for ten thousand dollars. All these stories went untold, and received no disciplinary actions or censure. All cops, especially busy cops, received complaints – but these complaints seemed out of proportion with the amount of arrests Eppolito and Caracappa were making, and without the usual motivations. You could understand the self-interest of an arrestee lodging a complaint, but why would two separate confidential informants allege that cops they didn’t know were dealing drugs and selling confidential reports?

Mafia Cop closed with the incident that brought Eppolito’s career as a detective to a close. In 1984, after mob boss Carlos Gambino’s nephew was arrested in a drug deal, his house was searched and a confidential NYPD file related to the investigation of Gambino’s nephew was found on the premises. In order to obtain fingerprints from the document, it was placed in a bell jar, and photographed after it was fumed with a corrosive chemical – the chemical would destroy the document shortly after the photographs were taken. The fingerprints were obtained, and they matched Louis Eppolito’s. This was the last, most explosive accusation leveled yet against Eppolito while he was still a cop. The detective was suspended, then transferred to another unit, before retiring in 1990. As said, this was the last, most explosive accusation made towards Eppolito while he was still a cop.

Four years after Eppolito’s retirement, a Luchese underboss named Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso became a federal informant. He confirmed what another mob turncoat, Pete Chiodo, had already revealed: the mob had a source inside the NYPD which gave them access to any and all intelligence they wanted – federal, state, local, anything. They called this source “the crystal ball”. Chiodo was not close enough to this source to reveal who they were, but Casso could. The crystal ball was not one man, but two, and their names were Steve Caracappa and Louis Eppolito.

Casso was a frightening and deadly man. He had helped many people to their death, and these two detectives had sometimes helped out as well. When Jimmy Bishop, a Luchese associate and head of a painters union, a man who knew enough to do a lot of damage to the Lucheses, became a confidential informant, it was a secret known only to the police department’s Organized Crime Investigation Division. After he began his co-operation with the police, Bishop was shot several times outside his mistress’s house. James Heidel, truck hijacker, Luchese associate, and member of an ace robbery crew known as the Bypass Gang (they could bypass just about any alarm), was another confidential informant. Among many other things, Heidel revealed to his police contact that Luchese underboss Anthony Casso had a source inside the police who shared crucial information, but he didn’t know the name of the detective. A few months later, Heidel had just finished a game of handball and was gong to his car when a man walked up and pulled out a gun. Heidel turned and ran into some on-coming traffic when this man and others started to shoot. Shot several times, Heidel managed to jump onto a passing motorcycle, before being shot again multiple times and then falling off, dead. The Times, the next day: “Another Man Slain in Mob-Style Killing.” It was the eighties, and such daylight murders were happening all the time. A few days later, the crystal ball passed on to Casso a recording that Heidel had made while wearing a wire, proof of his betrayal.

When Casso associate Burton Kapan was involved in a scheme to steal treasury bills and sell them overseas, one person involved in the scheme pocketed money that he should have handed over. This person, Israel Greenwald, had no connections with organized crime and no knowledge that the bills were stolen. The FBI, having caught on to the scheme, convinced him to co-operate and wear a wire. Shortly after, on his way to work, he was pulled over by two police officers who told him he was a suspect in a hit-and-run investigation and needed to appear in a line-up. He was never seen alive again, and more than a decade later his bones were found in the dirt under a parking garage. When an attempt was made on Anthony Casso’s life, he was given the confidential NYPD report on his own attempted murder. The report identified the chief suspect as Jimmy Hydell, head of a mafia crew. Kaplan would later explain that the detectives accepted no payment for handing over this report:

Q: What did Casso ask you?
A: What do I owe them for this? I told him the story that they wouldn’t take no money because someone tried to hurt him, and he shook his head, he said, Boy, that’s really nice of them. They must be pretty good guys.

Jimmy Hydell would be arrested, handcuffed, and disarmed by two cops, who dropped him off in front of a Toys ‘R’ Us, where the detectives taped up Hydell’s legs and stuck a handkerchief in his mouth, before putting him in the trunk of the car of Frank Santora, another Casso associate. Hydell was taken to the basement of a house in Bergen Beach, where he was tortured by Casso and others for several hours. Hydell knew he would die, and pleaded with Casso that his body be left somewhere it could be found, so his mother could collect the life insurance. Casso assured the man he would do so, then shot him multiple times. To this day, Hydell’s body has never been found.

When Casso made these revelations, Eppolito and Caracappa were retired cops living opposite each other in Las Vegas. Eppolito made some money as a bodyguard, and some acting in films such as Goodfellas, State of Grace, Predator 2, and as “Al the Guard” in Switch. He would write the screenplay for Turn of Faith, a movie about a hero cop who is best friends with a mob killer and a priest. The world it depicts is one that is unremittingly cutthroat and profane. The cop beats a man in an alley and gives the mob killer tips on upcoming investigations; the priest says things like, “Get your fucking hands off me, fuckface.” He was hired to write a comedy about a homeless bag lady; he entered talks with LaToya Jackson’s ex-husband, Jack Gordon, about writing Jack Gordon’s autobiography. After Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish were convicted of killing casino magnate Ted Binion, Eppolito formed a one-man committee, “Citizens to Ensure Justice Is Done”, which bought a full-page ad in a Vegas paper declaring Murphy’s innocence, all in the hopes of getting a screenplay deal out of the woman, which would, of course, tell her side of the story.

This was Eppolito’s post-detective career: acting on the fringes of movies by great directors such as Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and David Lynch, while writing scripts that were never bought or produced. Jayne McCormick, a former call girl, mortgaged her house to pay him to write a screenplay based on her unpublished autobiography. McCormick saw Reese Witherspoon as a good choice to play the lead, but Eppolito preferred Angelina Jolie. When Eppolito sent over the finished script to McCormick, she was appalled. It was filled with misspellings, typos, and grammatical errors. Eppolito shushed her: a good screenplay didn’t need proper spelling. I Never Met a Stranger: The Jane McCormick Story traced the life of an escort from her difficult beginnings to her time as a rat pack consort. The movie opened with a thuggish man trying to convince his girlfriend to become a prostitute. “It’s gonna be a piece of cake,” the boyfriend said to someone played by either Reese Witherspoon or Angelina Jolie, “Besides, with a body like you have, he’ll cum in two minutes and it will be all over.” Eppolito told McCormick he always wrote a cameo for himself in his scripts, just like Alfred Hitchcock. That’s why Stranger had a scene where a fat man took a prostitute to his hotel room, but passed out before he could have sex. McCormick would end up going bankrupt paying Eppolito for his work. When she called the ex-cop to cuss him out, he would get angry back. “Don’t call me when you’ve been drinking,” he would reply, “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

The other movie he was trying to get made was Murder in Youngstown, a crime film set in the notorious Ohio city, and Eppolito was having more success with this project. He had come across an eager and well-connected investor in Steve Corso, a mob connected accountant. Corso wanted to get into the movie business, and he was also looking to score drugs and girls for some friends coming to Vegas for the weekend. Eppolito assured Corso that he could provide him some great movie investment opportunities, and that he and his son, a local dealer, could help him out with the other stuff. Corso had led an interesting life. He had come out of working-class Hackensack, gone to school at New York University, then Cornell, then joined a white shoe accounting firm that had offices all the way from Los Angeles to Switzerland. He lived in the wealthy neighbourhood of Greenwich, Connecticut, and he took frequent trips to Vegas. But his life was even more interesting than that. He gambled often in Vegas, and he often lost. He owed over half a million to various casinos. This was in addition to past debts, for which he’d stolen over five million from the white shoe accountants to pay. These thefts had caused the FBI to raid his firm. Corso went on the lam, then cut a deal. He would be a confidential agent for the bureau, and act the part of a mob accountant. That was why he was wearing a wire at the meeting with Louis Eppolito. And when Eppolito entered the restaurant where a follow-up meet was scheduled, that was why four agents pushed the ex-cop against a wall, handcuffed him, and announced he was under arrest.

William Oldham had been working towards this moment for years. He had quested after the crystal ball since he was with the Major Case squad, the very place Steve Caracappa had worked, when the series of confidential informants were killed with almost unearthly prescience. Caracappa worked across from Oldham, in the Organized Crime Homicide Unit (OCHU), where he had literally written the book on mafia death in New York City – an index of every mob killing in the city; if a homicide detective wanted to see how a victim fit into the larger structure of the mob, they would consult Caracappa’s book. Caracappa had fought for the creation of the OCHU, it was disbanded after he left, and Oldham had always been haunted by a horrible thought: that Caracappa had wanted to establish the OCHU to make his intelligence work for the mafia easier. The arrest of Caracappa and Eppolito was one important moment; the other was the co-operation of Burton Kaplan.

Kaplan had been a Navy codebreaker during World War II, a man so good at breaking japanese codes that he was offered a job at the new born National Security Agency. He went back to Brooklyn instead, and became an appliance salesman. A gambling habit he’d had since he was thirteen meant he needed more money than a legitimate job could give him, and he soon became a top notch fence in stolen goods, a successful marijuana dealer, and an associate of Anthony Casso. In his seventies and near blind, he was convicted on drug charges that meant he would probably die in prison. Oldham would meet him there, with the offer of a deal: there are two guys we are interested in, and you know which two guys. Kaplan chose his words carefully: “With all due respect, and I do respect you guys because my father-in-law was a cop, I got nothing to say.” Kaplan didn’t need to explain why he wouldn’t co-operate, but he did: “I took an oath.” Oldham lost it. “They took a fucking oath,” said Oldham. “I was a cop for twenty-five years. I was in Major Case with one of those guys. I know what a fucking oath is about. If every cop in New York City was like these two, no one could walk the streets.” Kaplan got up to leave. Oldham had one more thing to say, his voice now without anger. “Burt, you’re giving up your grandson.” Oldham, again: “You’re going to die in jail without ever touching him. You’re choosing the fat guy and the skinny guy over your only grandson’s chance to know his grandfather.” Some shadow of hate fell over Kaplan’s face. He avoided looking at Oldham for the few seconds left in the meeting. But he wrote down the name of his lawyer on a legal pad, and passed it to the detective.

Caracappa and Eppolito were indicted on eight counts of murder, as well as kidnapping conspiracy, witness tampering, bribery, money laundering, and drug trafficking. Kaplan’s testimony would be crucial in their eventual conviction. The following was given on his first day of this testimony, and said without any emotion at all:

Q: Did you have a business relationship with Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa?
A: Yes.
Q: Can you please tell the jury what the nature of that business relationship was?
A: They were detectives on the New York Police Department who brought me information about wiretaps, phone taps, informants, ongoing investigations, and imminent arrests and murders. They did murders and kidnapping for us.
Q: What did you do for them in exchange for this?
A: I paid them.

When the crystal ball was at the height of its powers, John Gotti had demonstrated his invulnerability in beating yet another murder conviction. By the time of the Caracappa-Eppolito trial, his Ravenite social club was a shoe store. Tony Café, the head of the Bonanno family, once one of the five powerful mafia families in the city, had five hundred dollars lifted from his pocket by a woman. Café was upset about that. He was upset about a lot of things. He had two broken toes from diabetes, he’d been hit with a bookmaking charge, and if he was convicted, he’d lose his social security and veterans’ benefits. His co-defendants had four bypass surgeries among them, and they all needed afternoon naps. When they were arraigned, a federal agent was worried that one of the defendants would escape by running out the back door. Run out?, asked the incredulous judge, this man can hardly walk. What’s the worst thing that happened to the mafia, Café was asked. “Gotti”, he says.

Caracappa and Eppolito would be found guilty on all counts. Eppolito would take off his jacket, his belt, his tie, and his gold chain after the verdict. He was a cop, and he knew the procedure: you hand over valuables, and anything that can be used to hang yourself. A few days later, during the hearing where the cops were sentenced to prison for life, there was a ruckus. In 1988, Eppolito had walked off his beat into a Brooklyn deli, took a soda from the refrigerator, drank it, and was about to leave when a counter worker gave him a hard stare. “You got a problem with me?” asked Eppolito. “You didn’t pay for the soda.” said the counter worker. Eppolito threw some money down. Two days later, he came back and arrested the counter worker, Barry Gibbs, for the murder of a prostitute. Gibbs would be convicted, and serve close to twenty years, before the key eyewitness would reveal that Eppolito had threatened to arrest the eyewitness’s mother for drug possession, drugs that Eppolito would plant on her, unless he named Gibbs as the killer.

“Remember me?” Gibbs would yell from the gallery. “Remember, Mr. Eppolito?” The attention of the court, Eppolito, everyone, fixed briefly on this man. “Do you remember what you did to me? Barry Gibbs! Do you remember? I had a family, too. You remember what you did to my family? You don’t remember what you did to my family and to me? Remember what you did to me? Me! Do you remember?” The judge ordered that Gibbs be removed from the court for causing a disturbance.

The preceding, however fantastic, is real. It is taken, with mild re-arrangements, from The Brotherhoods by Guy Lawson and William Oldham; the Kaplan transcripts, the paragraph on Tony Café, and Eppolito’s conduct after the verdict are taken from The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin. Both books present different facets of the Caracappa-Eppolito case, and both are excellent.

FOOTNOTES

¹ In the original script, Alice’s last name is Wyatt; though it may be a coincidence, the context of the surrounding plot makes me immediately think of the Nathaniel Hawthorne story that shares Alice’s last name.

There, a man has the mad urge to leave his house and happy marriage in order to observe his wife over a period of two decades, a nearby neighbour in heavy disguise. It is a story of analysis of the mind of this man, rather than events, and nothing that takes place in Highway is borrowed from this story. The only thing they share is this obsession of a husband observing his wife when he is absent, though of course in Highway a husband does not simply observe his wife, but re-creates her as he wants her to be.

In describing Wakefield’s condition, his in-between state after he retreats to this role of voyeur, we may have an apt description of Fred’s state of mind in creating his fantasty life:

The singularity of his situation must have so moulded him to himself, that, considered in regard to his fellow-creatures and the business of life, he could not be said to possess his right mind. He had contrived, or rather he had happened, to dissever himself from the world–to vanish–to give up his place and privileges with living men, without being admitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise parallel to his. He was in the bustle of the city, as of old; but the crowd swept by and saw him not; he was, we may figuratively say, always beside his wife and at his hearth, yet must never feel the warmth of the one nor the affection of the other. It was Wakefield’s unprecedented fate to retain his original share of human sympathies, and to be still involved in human interests, while he had lost his reciprocal influence on them.

This section, the penultimate moment before Wakefield returns to the wife he abandoned decades earlier, is perhaps apt as well:

He ascends the steps–heavily!–for twenty years have stiffened his legs since he came down–but he knows it not. Stay, Wakefield! Would you go to the sole home that is left you? Then step into your grave!

As is this, the story’s end:

He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which shall lend its wisdom to a moral, and be shaped into a figure. Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the Outcast of the Universe.

² This idea is taken ever further in the original screenplay. The parents are not simply phantom characters, but malevolent spirits who are party to the illusion that Fred has created for himself, but also laugh at his foolishness: this illusion will eventually destroy him. The characters they are most similar to are the elderly couple at the beginning of Mulholland Drive who cackle with glee at the nightmare that this actress has created for herself.

A relevant excerpt of the same scene in the film where Pete walks about the house and finds his parents strangely gone:

Pete is sitting perched unsteadily on the very edge of his bed. He HEARS a succession of highly-amplified SOUNDS at intervals with eerie stretches of silence: CRICKETS in fractured cadence a distant TELEVISION – a FLY buzzing slowly in the room a MOTH’S wings beating against light bulbs in the ceiling fixture – the washing of DISHES.

Pete’s reaction to these sounds is one of petrified confusion. Underlying these sounds is a kind of unearthly, steady DRONE.

Pete gets up off the bed, unsteadily. He moves toward his bedroom door. As he moves the amplified SOUNDS shift.

He can hear laughter. The laughter seems to be LOUD, but at the same time coming from people who are trying to contain the laughter – to hide it.

Pete opens his door and peers out.

Pete’s POV down the hall toward the living room – his mother and father have stopped laughing and are turned with guilty smiles in his direction. They are smoking a joint, passing it back and forth. They are not looking directly at him. They seem to be looking, but not seeing.

Pete’s parents POV down the hall toward Pete’s room. There is no one there – just an empty hallway.

Pete’s parents continue to stare, but then turn away toward each other – they start to laugh quietly again.

Pete’s Pov – the hallway and the living room – there is no one in the living room. It’s empty.

CUT TO:

INT. DAYTON HOUSE – PETE’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

Pete turns from the hallway and comes back in his room – unsettled and confused.

He can hear laughter coming from the living room.

(All images copyright October Films, CiBy 2000, Asymmetrical Productions, and associated producers.)

Celebrity Profiles: Actress X

You get paid to be looked at. You get paid for looking away. The now infamous profile by Steve Marche, “Megan Fox Saves Herself”, embodies both ideas. It is an essay centered around looking, her moon pale skin, her divine symmetries; where another piece might note the sweater or unruly hair of the subject, here, the physical essence is its heart. This looking is not simply lexical, there are accompanying photos. The actress may not have been paid, or paid only a token fee, for this attention, but she gets the publicity of a magazine cover. There is also a looking away: the writer’s focus is only pm the extraordinary beauty of this person, the fame of these looks, and the evocation of mystic ritual to somehow capture the power of this woman’s symmetries. Though this entire transaction is financial (Fox gets her cover publicity, Esquire gets sales and clicks with their cover), the more direct, finance-based, question is never asked: is it possible that this beautiful woman, famous for her beauty, isn’t bankable at all?

The profile, almost always of female celebrities, where you get proximity and don’t get anything like proximity, did not begin and end with this piece, but is part of a long, painful tradition. The perspective of the essay reproduces the perspective of the accompanying photos: a beautiful woman, a more beautiful woman than we will ever know, is briefly made known to us, in her underwear or intimates, her being known to us, briefly, a moment of great significance to the humble man, because her looks are touched by the divine. For a small interval, a goddess walks among us. Such a profile enforces a relationship between an attractive woman and a writer, of object and adulator, and both parties hate it. It opens up both for mockery for playing these roles. “Esquire’s Interview with Megan Fox Is the Worst Thing Ever Written” wrote Jamie Lee Curtis Taete; five years prior, Ron Rosenbaum had asked¹, of an essay on Angelina Jolie which accompanied a photo of her nude with a sheet, is this “The worst celebrity profile ever written?”. That the process is openly disliked by both is there in the profile itself, by Tom Chiarella of Halle Berry, “Halle Berry’s Date with a Perfect Stranger”: “I never like meeting celebrities. Worst part of the job, really. Invading someone’s life, if only for a moment — lousy. Everything you do is built upon a trust that is illusory at best, an utter lie at worst.” Chiarella describes throwing up all morning before these interviews, and of how one writer feels sickest right before the car arrives to take him to the meet: the sort of physical reaction one expects before a sitdown with a mafia chief or the head of a country’s secret police. They asked me, Chiarella has to repeat to himself, over and over again. They asked me.

That the writing is bad is not due to the writer, but the Procrustean bed in which he has been fitted: the woman will be photographed and positioned as an object of divine beauty, not simply as an attractive, charming, or incredibly eye-catching woman, but the most beautiful woman in the (United States/World/Universe) / of (the decade/century/history of earth) (Beyoncé, for example, has just been granted by GQ one such title). Tom Junod, the writer of the Jolie profile is a man of excellent skills with an enviable track record (there are many to choose from, but my favorite piece of his would be “Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America?”). The problem is the constraint of writing an ode to a building that is not a building, a garden that is not a garden, a statue that is not a statue.

The beauty is presented as something mystic, something without limit, something outside man, infinity. This is not a new idea, and is simply a modern extension of what can be found in Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex:

To be certain, each of the sexes embodies the Other in the eyes of the complementary sex; but to his man’s eyes it is, in spite of everything, the woman who is often regarded as an absolute other. There is a mystical surpassing insofar as “we know that in and of ourselves we are insufficient, hence the power of woman over us, like the power of Grace.” The “we” here represents only males and not the human species, and faced with their imperfection, woman is the appeal of infinity.

That the woman does not simply have gorgeous skin or hair, but must be written of to embody this infinity is what provokes the risible metaphors. This infinity calls to mind the mystic and the overwhelming, so images associated with these are cited, and the association is ridiculous. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day, asked one scribbler; that he was writing of a boy doesn’t matter. Simple modest lust has found more than enough in a newfound day to convey the pleasure in seeing the woman who carries the nimbus of all our hopes and appetites. Infinity, however, demands something greater; the Jolie profile asks, shall I compare thee to 9/11? The Fox piece: shall I compare thee to an Aztec sacrifice? What about the search for bigfoot? Leprechauns?

Like nuclear war, which Angelina Jolie’s gorgeous looks may or may not have been compared to, the only way to win this game is not to play it. Even, however, when the game is exposed as a game in the first paragraph of such a profile, the game continues to be forced on others. Here is Bill Zehme, a biographer of Andy Kaufman, laying it all out in the opening of his feature, “The Heather Graham Story”:

Here in the new world of magazine making, it is a distinct pleasure to give you precisely what you want. It is a pleasure most distinct. For instance, the various persons who nowadays frequently appear on our covers without wearing very many clothes appear there for you and for people just like you. They know that you want them to appear there as much as we want them to, especially because you want them to. Often, these cover persons are photographed weeks before a writer is dispatched to divine their inner truths and tender secrets–that which becomes the nutmeat of the text (this) that accompanies photographs like the ones you may be noticing at present (those).

What follows is less a profile of Graham than an examination of the celebrity profile process itself:

Here in the new world of celebrity appraisal, this is how things have been working: A writer is first permitted to meet a famous subject someplace other than the subject’s home (intrusive, presumptuous), and then they Go Do Things together (or Create Events) so that the writer can observe the subject attempt to Approximate Reality, whereupon the writer can then write about these experiences as though they were, in fact, actual unchoreographed happenstance, so that the reader will gain visceral glimpses of revelatory behavioral traits, or candor, thus rich insight. If this sounds like fun, it is. Publicists and editors generally broker the details of such staged assignations between client and writer, so that the initial meeting will often feel like a blind date–albeit one set up by other people whose judgment (both parties pray) will be trustworthy. If this sounds exciting, it is.

This was one way to evade the usual indignities; the other is “Halle Berry’s Date with a Perfect Stranger”, where the profile is actually an interview of Tom Chiarella by Berry, with the writer, Tom Chiarella, appearing in the footnotes. It’s more entertaining than Zehme’s piece, and probably the best I’ve read in this cringeworthy genre: the hilarious buddy movie that the actress hasn’t made yet. Berry laughs at the fact that Chiarella is trying to lose weight and avoids the bread, but eats the pastrami. “Hey, genius, ever heard of the Atkins diet?”, quips a footnote. The essay does not feel like an escape to a gossamer world of breath-taking unearthly objects, but very much our own. Chiarella writes of an ex-wife delivering premature babies from crack addicts who quote scripture instead of taking birth sedatives. When Berry enters the restaurant, her name is sounded through the crowd of diners like a drum signal, and the sensation does not feel welcome or comforting, a sensation far more acute than the banality celebrity is hard stuff, guys!, but Berry takes no notice: “The woman could walk a steel wire through an ice storm”, Chiarella writes, admiringly. That the work of Zehme and Chiarella has not ended the genre is because movies still need advertising, celebrity profiles are free (or close to it) advertising, and what Zehme and Chiarella do is not safe. The Graham profile shifts the focus to the profile itself; in the Berry profile, Chiarella comes off better than Berry, simply because one is an experienced writer, and one isn’t: even a goddess has her limits.

The sole purpose of this exercise, after all, is to sell a movie and to sell mags. This is a profile designed around the photos of the woman, and its primary function is to pose this woman’s physique as something close to divine, and to present an intimacy that is not intimacy. The movies are a business, the magazines are a business, the woman is a business. This is made clear in the ways the article is made search engine friendly². Zehme’s “The Heather Graham Story” gets the title “Heather Graham Hot Pics – Sexy Photos of Actress Heather Graham”; Chiarella’s “Halle Berry’s Date With A Perfect Stranger” has “Halle Berry Photos – Hot Pictures of Halle Berry in Lingerie”; Carla Gugino, an actress I’m greatly sympathetic to and whose talents are substantial, receives the aboveboard “Carla Gugino: A Woman We Love” and the belowboard “Carla Gugino Nude Pics – Carla Gugino Naked Pictures and Video”; Naomi Watts and Rosario Dawson are given nunly discretion with, Watts’ “Naomi Watts: The Storm Took Its Sweet Time Building” carrying “Naomi Watts Pictures – Naomi Watts Photos and Interview” while Dawson has the dignity of an article where the web page title matches that of the profile, “Breaking Commandments with Rosario Dawson”; Angelina Jolie “Dies For Our Sins”, and since she’s anyway dying, sin away with “Angelina Jolie Photos – Sexy Gallery and Profile of Angelina Jolie”; Megan Fox is offering herself up for sacrifice, as the article title implies, “Megan Fox is Saving Herself” but she’s offering herself up as well, as the web page title implies: “Megan Fox Cover Interview – Megan Fox Sexy Photos”. Fox may be a beauty that connects her to a long mystic tradition, but the essay’s accompanying photos carry the tags of the material world: “Megan Fox Lingerie”, “Megan Fox Sexy”, “Megan Fox Dress”, “Megan Fox Breasts”. It seems we campaign in poetry, govern in biology.

So, the potential reader, or more likely, potential viewer, is expected to be an impatiently sex hungry lowbrow, an inferior creature in supplicatory adoration of this greater object. Though I don’t think I’m a big fan of A.J. Jacobs’ work, his “Breaking Commandments with Rosario Dawson”, assumes the aptest pose for all this: because of a book he was writing that I don’t think I want to read, he must live biblically, spending some time with the gorgeous actress without besmirching himself with sinful thoughts. That he must be so close to this woman who will be presented as an erotic object, without any erotic possibility, where the very evasion of the erotic only emphasizes the erotic quality of the object, all these are the common traits of the writer’s role in these profiles, acting as the reader’s proxy; the dutiful schoolboy composing laudatory odes of this distant goddess, all while trying so very hard not to masturbate.

That this approach is not inevitable given its subject, even a female performer who defines herself by her sex, can be found in other profiles. There is the possibility that “Jenna Jameson’s Forbidden Desires”, about the porn star, and “The Dirtiest Girl In The World”, about Sasha Grey have a different tone because the writer is female than male, and certainly the talents of Vanessa Grigoriadis, the author of both, are formidable³, but a large part of the distinction is the simple choice to write of these women, not as objects of divine beauty briefly granted to humanity, but as one writes of any man or woman, the closely observed details forming a portrait, which, though not unsympathetic, does not create the amorphous pliant image of, to employ the Esquire style, hot sexy Sasha Grey acting hot and sexy! Jameson comes across as savvy, tough, with a growing disenthusiasm for porn, and a low simmering hostility towards the rest of the world. Do you remember me from that night in New York, asks a fan, I spent twenty thou on you. If you spent twenty thou on me, Jameson replies, I would have remembered you, before she turns away⁴. There’s a mention of how awful it is to get your period in Vegas, and only one mention, in the story’s middle of her looks: “Her body is really beautiful. Everything except for her breasts is utterly in proportion, her skin creamy, thighs and ass taut, no evident blemishes or cellulite.”

Grey comes across as a horny boy’s genie wish, the typical such wish gone awry, though it’s exactly what’s been wished for: a beautiful smart girl, who’s also into girls, with the sexual hunger and attitude of a man. Sometimes women are referred to by their genitalia, and some might refer to female genitalia as an abyss: Grey is an abyss that stares back. The overwhelming sense of her is someone smart, cold, dedicated, and intimidating, able to switch an erotic hunger on and off like a switch. She lives a carnal life on-screen, but an aesthete’s one off: she has only slept with six men, doesn’t do drugs, doesn’t drink. Again, there is only a brief, unpoetic mention of her looks: “At five feet six and 110 pounds, with straight black hair that shoots to her lumbar spine, Grey’s naked body is exquisite and natural, with taut skin free of blemishes and tattoos (she resembles Kate Beckinsale in physique, and her affect is a similar mix of languor and brutal hauteur).” In different circumstances, she might have been a hedge fund manager rumored to own a mansion with a well-equipped dungeon, or the notorious head of a revolutionary cell, known throughout tsarist russia for her discipline, endurance, and lack of mercy. “You’re like the wife!”, she yells at her sweet, liberal fiancé. As they say, this is what you want, this is what you get.

Another approach can be found in, “Leap of Faith” by Adam Green, last month’s Vogue profile of Anne Hathaway. It is actual life sculpted into fantasy, though a fantasy as active subject, rather than object, a fantasy that would appeal to some women: being very successful in a competitive and glamorous profession, getting the role of Fantime, being photographed by Mario Testino, ending up married to a solid, kind man, wedded in a wedding gown designed by Valentino. Though Steve Marche, in the Fox profile, turns up his nose at many attractive women, I think even he would concede the beauty of Hathaway, but this quality is only given a one sentence mention: “Hathaway is known for walking the red carpet in Valentino or Stella McCartney, but I can report that she also looks pretty swell in a T-shirt and jeans.” Her looks are obvious, and they must be considerable if she’s on the cover of Vogue, but the degree of such beauty goes unstressed. Dwelling on such a thing would imply less a gift, than an inconvenience – being a well-admired statue gets in the way of doing actual work. For this is the other striking difference from the other profiles, as it gives lengthy space to her surrounding workplace of Les Misérables, what the part involves, and what she did to prepare for it. It remains, I think, movie life portrayed as fantasy: there are no saccharine episodes, but we get only the good moments of film-making, a hard-working cast and crew getting along. That she is at work, actual difficult work, of which she is a part of a larger project, rather than a vanity piece seemingly designed around her, there is no question, and that this is part of the fantasy there is no question either; the active achieving life, rather than life as still object. At one point, on set and in costume, Hathaway, rail thin with two missing teeth, asks the Vogue writer, teasingly, aren’t you going to tell me how I look? It is followed with: “Welcome to my world.” One wonders, what world? The world of acting, or the world where it’s decided one’s chief role is as an object of desire and all else is a detriment to that?

Work is what all these women seek, and it is the search for work, the difficulty of finding good work in Hollywood, which is the undertone of many of the profiles. “We are supposed to be actors, aren’t we?”, asked Carla Gugino with exasperation over people being unable to link her to a specific part from the varied ones she’s played. In 2000, Heather Graham was declared to be the twenty-sixth sexiest woman in the world, but: “it’s still hard to get some jobs.” Adam Stein writes in “The Summer of Jessica Biel” of her role in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, “there has got to be better material than this.” Or, perhaps not, he thinks, as he moves on to her work in Cellular and Blade: Trinity. Biel, in the profile: “I want choices. I want options. I want to lay out all the directions I could go and have the ability to choose.”

Doing publicity such as this, to be photographed in your underwear and for others to wax lyrical about, supposedly expands the choices available to you, demonstrating that you are co-operative and willing in the studio’s wishes, that you will do your part to generate publicity for a movie; of course, such publicity demands are all in your contract, but you are helpful enough to allow them to be in your contract. The humble demographic mass of men may have nothing like the powers of this exceptional woman, a goddess, but they have one: they can make her strip. In being given the gift of one infinity, another is taken away, because beauty fades. The woman defined as a divinity by her looks will discover soon that she is no longer divine, and she will be defined by what she used to be, what she is not now, a fallen goddess, and people will take pleasure in her taking this fall, at her arrogance for even assuming a title of divinity, even when it was given to her by others. In reply to a Slate article, “Porn and the media: How the pornography industry wants to be covered”, one commenter wrote: “‘Entourage’ in no way means that Sasha Grey has gone mainstream. She will be back doing the adult film stuff in no time, if she isn’t already. Because she’s good at it, and not very good at all at the mainstream stuff.” It was said, I think, not without glee, and even as cold-blooded an animal as Grey might feel heartbreak at this dismissal. Some glee might be felt over this heartbreak as well, as if some sword had finally managed to pierce the skin of some deadly beast.

Marche, in an infamous passage of “Megan Fox Saves Herself”, writes:

Megan Fox is a bombshell. To be a bombshell in 2013 is to be an antiquity, an old-world relic, like movie palaces or fountain pens or the muscle cars of the 1970s or the pinball machines in the basement. Bombshells once used to roam the cultural landscape like buffalo, and like buffalo they were edging toward extinction.

Liberation and degradation both played their part. If you want to see naked women, of virtually any kind, do virtually anything to their bodies, it’s a click away. And women no longer need to be beautiful in order to express their talent. Lena Dunham and Adele and Lady Gaga and Amy Adams are all perfectly plain, and they are all at the top of their field.

There’s no doubt that this transformation has been overwhelmingly excellent. But we’re losing something in this process. Because creativity is, was, and always will be sexual. Some of the very first works of art were figures of hugely fecund women dropped all over Europe tens of thousands of years ago. American movies expressed that great fusion of sex and art, too. They are magnificent pagan dreams, utterly profane and glorious. Such movies need bombshells. They need to consume beautiful flesh in their sacrifices.

De Beauvoir, in Second Sex, anticipates all this, and invokes the mystic tradition just as Marche does:

In any case, some will object that if such a world is possible, it is not desirable. When woman is “the same” as her male, life will lose “its spice.” This argument is not new either: those who have an interest in perpetuating the present always shed tears for the marvelous past about to disappear without casting a smile on the young future. It is true that by doing away with slave markets, we destroyed those great plantations lined with azaleas and camellias, we dismantled the whole delicate Southern civilization; old lace was put away in the attics of time along with the pure timbres of the Sistine castrati, and there is a certain “feminine charm” that risks turning to dust as well. I grant that only a barbarian would not appreciate rare flowers, lace, the crystal clear voice of a eunuch, or feminine charm. When shown in her splendor, the “charming woman” is a far more exalting object than “the idiotic paintings, over-doors, decors, circus backdrops, sideboards, or popular illuminations” that maddened Rimbaud; adorned with the most modern of artifices, worked on with the newest techniques, she comes from the remotest ages, from Thebes, Minos, Chichén Itzà; and she is also the totem planted in the heart of the African jungle; she is a helicopter and she is a bird; and here is the greatest wonder: beneath her painted hair, the rustling of leaves becomes a thought and words escape from her breasts. Men reach out their eager hands to the marvel; but as soon as they grasp it, it vanishes; the wife and the mistress speak like everyone else, with their mouths: their words are worth exactly what they are worth; their breasts as well. Does such a fleeting miracle — and one so rare — justify perpetuating a situation that is so damaging for both sexes? The beauty of flowers and women’s charms can be appreciated for what they are worth; if these treasures are paid for with blood or misery, one must be willing to sacrifice them.

The poses in the photos from the Fox piece, the whole purpose of the enterprise, glow not so much with sensuality, but boredom. One, of Fox lying on a couch in a white dress with a partly see through top, evokes despair. What perhaps helped Fox as much as her appearance in Transformers were some accompanying photos for a GQ story (“Megan Fox was a Teenage Lesbian!”, by Mark Kirby), shot by Terry Richardson, which emanate a raw, nasty sexiness. The current Esquire pictures, especially the cover, suggest a hostage situation: the game is dull now, the game has been dull for quite a while. In “The Self-Manufacture of Megan Fox” by Lynn Hirschberg, she complained, “I do live in a glass box. And I am on display for men to pay to look at me. And that bothers me. I don’t want to live that character.” That was three years ago.

Occasionally, I copy the sentence of the book I’m reading so I can keep track of where I am. One, from my notes, is “We won’t be pinned down, either. We have no one law that governs us. For me there is only one law: I am I.” It’s from Lawrence’s Twilight of the Unconscious; but I was sure it was from The Second Sex.

(Originally, this piece was supposed to be part of something slightly longer, dealing with other themes – whether it ever assumes this other, native ideal, is an open question.)

FOOTNOTES

¹ Though I knew of this piece beforehand, and was planning on referencing it, I think I would be remiss if I did not mention that a Slate podcast which deals with, among other subjects, the Steve Marche profile, brings it up as well, along with the earlier Lynn Hirschberg piece on Fox. I would also be remiss if I didn’t note that Junod gave a reply to Rosenbaum’s piece: “Tom Junod Responds To 2,000-Word Slate Swipe”.

² Again, I would be remiss if I did not mention that Choire Sicha, in his evisceration of the Marche piece, “Lena Dunham, Adele, Lady Gaga, Amy Adams All Very Ugly, Says ‘Esquire’”, also brings up the strange contrast between the titles written for swooning hearts, and the titles written for, well, let’s say more earthly purposes, and designed for search engines; the slate podcast makes the point as well.

³ Though just about every by Grigoriadis is worth reading, I’ll quote a section from her recent “Bret Easton Ellis’s Real Art Form Is the Tweet”:

And then we’re sauntering down the well-proportioned corridors of the mall at the same lugubrious tempo as everyone else, and he’s talking about the Microsoft swag event in Venice last week, and he’s saying “it’s crazy it’s so nice out—it’s the winter.” And he buys some noise-canceling Bose headphones that he selects from under a blue sign with white lettering that reads GIVE THEM WHAT THEY REALLY WANT and we go into the Mac store to get him an iPhone case and he looks at them but thinks they’re too expensive and he gets flustered and says “it’s so fucking annoying” but buys one anyway. And we’re back outside waiting for a coffee and people are buying Christmas cards and he’s talking about the Gus Van Sant premiere that he walked out of last night because he likes to sit in a particular place in the ­theater and he was nowhere near that place.

The next paragraph begins: “In a lot of ways, it’s more Ellis’s world than ever, as if he had invented it.” And, of course, the previous paragraph, done without explicit mention of its intent, is a pitch-perfect imitation of Ellis’s style.

⁴ This is a slight, unmalicious, juggling of the material. I give the original section from which this is taken from.

There’s a bodyguard and a rope blocking the banquette, but people keep leaning over. “Do you remember me from that night in New York?” asks a guy with a goatee. “I spent $20,000 on you.”

“Um, I think I would remember if you spent $20,000 on me,” says Jameson, turning away.

Another man grabs her hand.

“You give me pleasure,” he whispers.

“Ewww she shrieks, cowering. “I’m so over this.”

Bruce Wagner’s Wild Palms

(Spoilers, obviously)

A TV mini-series about a milquetoast lawyer who becomes engulfed in mystery: now twenty years old, it was set, at the time, in the near future of 2007, which is now our past. It is a show that has almost entirely vanished from the collective cultural memory¹, and though this is not damning in itself, I do think the show is a failure – but it has one notable aspect, which is jaw dropping. This aspect, however, went seemingly undetected when it was written about upon its release. This key aspect proves that one can write about anything, even the most litigious of subjects, as long as one changes the setting a little, placing characters which can easily be linked to their real counterparts in a slightly different setting, a science-fiction dystopia rather than their native habitat. I leave this notable aspect to last, and write briefly on why I think this series does not work.

Though it perhaps could not have been made without the rubric of Oliver Stone (he serves as executive producer), this production is ultimately novelist Bruce Wagner’s, who executive produced, wrote every episode, and on whose comic strip, a series that ran on the back of Details magazine, the show was based. The comic, illustrated by the late, talented artist Julian Allen², has an entirely different tone from the later series, and this, I think, is a major change for the worse. Wild Palms³, both comic and movie, are about a man who deals with increasingly absurd incidents. The series deals with these in the baroque tones of a soap opera or a religious story (it can be seen as both), everything in exclamation marks: I’m falling in love with another woman! I’ve been asked to kill my best friend! My son isn’t my son!

The comic’s attitude, on the other hand, is as cold as frost, the indifference of The Stranger, by Albert Camus: mother died today, and I wish I cared, but I don’t. I am handicapped by not having read the whole comic, but what I describe as its tone is ever present in every panel, the narrator Harry Wycoff giving precise, cold narration: “I had a nightmare recently where I was yelling at someone. I don’t know why that was so frightening.” “Beth and I made love that morning. It was the first time since a cyst on her ovary ruptured.”

The first time he describes his son, Coty: “Coty is already five. It’s practically a miracle to get to five without being molested.”

His friend since adolescence, Tommy: “Tommy sells thousand-dollar vintage eyeglasses on Melrose. We went to Beverly High together. He has more money than me.”

He meets with an old friend, Paige Katz, who wears a shirt, “Life’s a bitch…than you kill someone.”: “Paige asked me if I wanted to go somewhere as an ‘observer.’ I thought it was some faddish, thirtysomething joke like a hazing.” Then, for reasons unknown to him, he sees his friend beaten. He experiences something visceral to this, yet his voice retains its frost-like calm, unmoved: “Then I saw the blood. And it made my stomach hurt. It was Tommy.”

This voice, for me, comes across not as affect, that of a desensitized class, but something close to our own thoughts so often, as we see the extraordinary or the horrific, which we observe without any tremor of great feeling. We have become reconciled to the idea that these things take place in our world, and we can no longer even remember when we become reconciled. Whether for the need of appearances, the appearance of a moral compass – television at the time might tolerate wanton violence, but it could not conceive an ordinary man unmoved by such violence – or dramatic momentum, rather than existentialist drama, we are given instead overexcited melodrama, where everyone acts louder than real life.

This Wild Palms is an unreal, plot heavy work dealing with virtual reality technology. It opens with Harry Wycoff, patent attorney, having a nightmare: he comes across a rhino in his empty pool, then hears his son call out for him. His son, we later learn, has the very same dream, the dream a prescient one for both. This vision marks both as members of a spiritual elect: the rhino, we are told, is all that is left of that significant creature the unicorn⁴. In the dream, Harry runs toward his son’s door, marked by a cross, the door opens, and his son’s room is filled with ominous red light: his son will be seen as a saviour, a successor to a church, but he is also utterly demonic.

An old girlfriend, Paige Katz, hires him to find her missing son, and Harry soon ends up working for Paige’s employer, Tony (Anton) Kreutzer, the media tycoon behind TV network Channel Three, founder of a new religion and developer of a technology that will transmit interactive holograms via television. Harry’s wife, Grace, thinks he’s having an affair and tries to commit suicide. Harry becomes aware of a resistance group, the Friends, acting in opposition to Kreutzer and his associates, the Fathers; the Friends include both his father-in-law and his close friend Tommy. His son, Coty, is recruited first to play a part on a channel three sitcom, and then to kill one of the Friends, a co-worker of Harry’s. Where the comic has Harry passively watching his friend Tommy get beaten, here, Paige Katz brings in Harry to chase down the man she believes has kidnapped her son, and when it is revealed to be Tommy, his capture ends with Tommy’s portentious line: “This…is the beginning.” Both acts feel like a blooding, an initiation ritual to be performed before inductment into Kreutzer’s organization.

The Friends and the Fathers race to acquire various elements of virtual reality technology, both sides suffering losses. Paige and Harry end up defecting from Kreutzer’s group and joining the Friends, while his son stays on. In a series of revelations, we learn that Harry’s son, Coty, is in fact not his son at all, but has been switched at birth with his real son, Peter; Harry and Coty are actually brothers, born to the same father, Kreutzer. Harry’s wife, in turn, is daughter to a merciless woman named Josie Ito, who is Kreutzer’s sister: Harry and his wife, Grace, are actually first cousins. Early on, Harry compliments one of his aides on a dress, the aide thanks him and replies that it’s from his wife’s store, and Harry replies, in turn, that things are getting just a little too incestuous. If he only knew. The series ends with almost all the major characters dead, with Grace killed by her own mother, the destruction of Kreutzer and his organization, Harry re-united with his biological son, and with Paige now Harry’s girlfriend.

Though it might be considered a political series, it provides neither specific insights, nor does it provide any eerie sense of familiarity with the world we live in. The oppressive Fathers chant the poems of Auden, the resistant Friends chant from Whitman; a screechy hippie woman celebrates the victory of the Friends – these aren’t images that suggest some difference of virtue between the groups, but that any political activity is a fool’s game, tainting everyone equally, and drawing its energy, whatever the cause, from blindly obedient riffraff. We are told there has been a nuclear accident in Florida, and a massive depression in the early twenty-first century, both instigated, for its own purpose, by the state itself – though we never intuit why the state might do so. It’s politics designed for a credulous militia member – the state is a killing machine, politics is a fool’s game, so the only response is to retreat from political life altogether into a cabin or a bunker. More crucially, these great events don’t feel as if they’ve touched the unfolding world of the series at all – and this is crucial if this world is to feel like it’s some self-contained life, as all great fictional worlds do. “I’m a survivor of the disaster of Boca Raton,” says a disheveled figure at one point, and my first thought is, how bad can things go with a timeshare?

It is this sense that this future world is clumped together of various discrete elements, rather than a living possibility, which is the show’s other crucial flaw. That this future world is in visual stasis, almost entirely the same city as it is now, is not a problem – 9/11 and the housing crisis may have had a huge impact on the united states, but they have not produced anything visually novel or unprecedented, just the same old, same old: suburbs that became ghost communities, or veterans living on the street. Kurt Anderson’s too little known, incredibly insightful essay, “You Say You Want a Devolution?” notes a startling phenomenon: that our visual landscape, in architecture, clothes, and advertising, has reached a stasis point in the past fifteen or twenty years. Where before we see a distinct and astonishing difference in the visual look of the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, when we reach the nineties, the aughts, and our decade now, an equilibrium seems to have been reached, an unchanging look that does not change as it encompasses all things. This may well be because in an internet age there are no longer any subterranean cultures, and one cannot “discover” hiphop fashion, or brazilian music, as an intrepid few might have done – almost all obscurities are now accessible to all.

So, that the series contains little of a futuristic look is unimportant, but rather prescient. What is important is that such a future world should hold together, should be unlike are own, yet feel as if it is entirely its own world, with not a single inch directed by an outside force, but every part organic, a growth of its own. One should be able to intuit why every feature of the world is there, and not find any part to be out of place. The very opposite effect is most obvious in the show’s use of virtual reality and holograms, given a solid mocking by the AV club, “The future won’t look like this: 11 unintentionally ridiculous depictions of virtual reality”. We see a virtual reality in which cyberspace consists of people dressing up as eighteenth century nobles, and holographic versions of sitcoms and advertising. Both are ridiculous, conceived as something different or new, rather than in the terms by which a product gets to market: does anybody actually want this?

Even if we have the possibility of talking or seeing someone via Skype, we prefer to communicate in text on facebook or twitter; never mind dressing up in fancy outfits for a simple meeting – the only thing that approaches this model of the internet is Second Life, and it’s a virtual ghost town. A three-dimensional holographic sitcom is untenable because a sitcom, with its rigid structure and laugh track is specifically unreal, the steady laughter (whether taped or from an audience) not simply telling the audience that something is funny but reinforcing the artifice of the program, a necessity for the jokes to work. Comedy programs that do not adhere to this format, Parks and Recreation and The Office among the best known, have an entirely different rhythm to their jokes, and must have an entirely different rhythm – without the laugh track we are in a different setting, a setting we take to be more real than that of the sitcom. Palms, in fact, does cross paths with the future of television, with a program whose power lay not in the fact of its vivid proximity to life, but its very artifice. This future appears in the brief character Mortie, because this man is played by Dan Castellaneta, who of course provides the voice of a character so well-known that he does not even need be named.

The issue of a makeshift world also troubles one of the more fascinating ideas of the program, with japan, at the time of the series an economic powerhouse expected to equal or eclipse the United States in national influence, showing a heavy sway in the furniture and clothes throughout.

The only problem is that, again, it doesn’t feel intuitively right – were Japan to have become the dominant force of the series, changes would no doubt be there, but in many ways unsettlingly invisible. Artwork would be the same mishmash of the world selected by style curators, but the characters would be far more knowledgeable about the intricacies of japanese politics, and far more of them would be fluent in japanese, just as today there are many western news outlets that provide in-depth coverage of chinese political life, and there are a growing number of chinese speakers in the world – these details signal the growing importance of china, not any dramatic changes in fashion or interior design. The dramatic shifts of the future are near invisible, and this works to the show’s advantage with a largely unchanged Los Angeles, and to the disadvantage when it tries to give us fantastic changes in visual communications systems and japanese decor. The astonishing impact of the past fifteen years of technology can be seen not in what has appeared but disappeared – the bankruptcy of book and record shops, the extinction of newspapers, the end of watches, the absence of payphones – a visitor from the near past might be able to infer that there’s now a combination of microtechnology and an information network that has caused the disappearance of these things, but it would be a difficult, tenuous hypothesis.

The most memorable and unsettling images of this series – there are several, and there well should be several given that the series directors included Kathryn Bigelow, Phil Joanou, and Keith Gordon – have nothing to do with the visual elements of the future world, but could be placed in any contemporary drama, their allure derived from making the ordinary exotic. Whether because of my own preferences, or their own inherent power, I find the best of these come from Gordon’s work.

For example, two children watching TV, but shot from the TV’s perspective, so they stare, rapt, out at us:

A waiter attends on two diners, Harry and his friend Tommy, but he is not a passive servant. He asks them if they are ready to order, impatiently – it is they who are guests at his place of business, and he is not dependent on them, but the other way around. This high-end restaurant has plenty of customers and has no need of their business, but were these men unable to gain entrance to this restaurant, it would reflect poorly on their status. The haughty demeanour of the waiter is an intentional pose to reinforce this relationship. We then cut to a scene with almost the exact same composition, but now the relationship is very much reversed, the Wykoffs’ domestic attending on their children, and she is very much dependent on them, rather than the other around.

The resistance group The Friends use networks underneath swimming pools to meet surreptitiously and travel about the city. Here, as Beethoven’s Seventh swells in the background, Coty Wycoff, Harry’s son, stares intently at the pool, almost as if he sees through the concrete, through to the meeting taking place underneath – but this context is unnecessary for the image’s power. The only elements necessary are an intelligent boy staring with focused intensity at nothing at all, the empty water.

As Harry tends to his wife, Grace, after her suicide attempt, the characters are shot at a distance that is almost never used in a TV show, their faces obscured behind a veil. It all fits with the sense of someone who has just tried to kill herself, who has reached the very edge of death before being brought back that she is in this small place of light in a vast dark room. As we might imagine Grace moving steadily closer and closer back to life, we move nearer to this lighted section. Her husband has become increasingly unknowable to her, so his face is a blur behind the veil, or falls into a shadow. I offer this explanation, but it is unnecessary; the scene is the most visually powerful in the entire show, and like all great images, requires no words to justify or explain it.

The future world that feels like something organic, its every element in vitro, has been created most successfully in two movies, two obvious choices, by the same director: Blade Runner and Alien. In the first, the earth has been abandoned for better worlds, and the planet has the mood of a depressive turning inward and backward to past memories, as it falls into a decay it is entirely indifferent to. Deckard is obsessed with a past, a past that might be entirely false, but so is all of the Los Angeles he lives in, holding onto its memories as a noir landscape. Alien features a ship that isn’t a streamlined beauty, but a crude utilitarian piece of technology, like an oil derrick or a supertanker. The crew find the outpost of a civilization which, literally, dwarfs them, but whoever was here is already long dead; rather than a dream fulfilled of intergalactic contact, it is only an exhausted society breaching a tomb. Great technology has not brought the space crew happiness or enlightenment – the future is ugly, and it is cheap. The long dead civilization has itself been destroyed not for any moral transgression, or by a creature of greater intelligence, but a simple armor plated, acid blooded thing which is designed solely to host, reproduce, and kill. There have been attempts at explanations and extensions of this movie’s story, but they are unnecessary, and in fact diminish it. The spaceflight of this movie is not some lyrical dream, but just one more industrial expedition. Humanity, whatever its past dreams, is here concerned only with functionality, getting the work done as cheaply and effectively as possible; the alien of the title is a sick joke on all this, a creature that has no beauty or elegance, but one that, just like the ship, is a piece of ugly metalwork designed solely for efficiency – and far more efficient at survival than we are.

Though both movies have a distinct and overwhelming mood, they are not designed to create such a mood, but rather, it arises out of the clutter of elements that are there – and I do not use clutter disparagingly, but something necessary for the effect. For our lives are not planned, even in the most planned societies, but a pile of details playing off each other, a jazz group of a million musicians, rather than a small orchestra conducted by a martinet. The overall tone of both these movies is fatigue, which another writer might label as fin-de-siècle; great technology has arrived and it doesn’t matter, anymore than the wonderful toys of our time have given us the excitement and happiness embodied by the spokespeople of an electronics show⁵. We take these toys for granted, and they hold no magic for us. We trudge through our work with these devices as Deckard navigates through the photos with the Esper machine (a device that, unlike the virtual reality machines of Palms we immediately see the practical use for), exhausted, needing a bottle of scotch to finish the work. Here, again, we acutely note the loss in the change in tone from the Palms comic to the Palms series – an ice-cold narration entirely apt for the supposed wonders and magic of a future, the apt tone of exhaustion that imbues Alien and Blade Runner, and our world now as well.

THE DIVINE COMEDY: HELLA JOKE, A BITCH

I have focussed on the flaws of this series, and now I move to its one astonishing feature, and it is a striking one. I state it bluntly without suspense: it is the most scathing depiction of scientology I’ve ever seen, making “South Park”‘s “Trapped in the Closet” episode look like a piker’s game. Where “Park” ridiculed the movement as a con game, this series appears to take key figures from the movement – L. Ron Hubbard, his wife, Mary Sue, and scientology’s current head, David Miscavige – and transplants them into this story, only slightly veiled by a fictional scrim, portraying all three as amoral homicidal sociopaths. What is astonishing is that this show was produced, not at a time of weakness for the church, but at the height of its powers, when it had just received tax-exempt status as a religion. Equally astonishing, given that the target is clear and the fired arrows are soaked in venom, is that it seems to have eluded the critics of the time: John J. O’Connor of the Times, in “The Sunshiny Menace of ‘Wild Palms’” gives a one sentence tip of the hat to the movement’s appearance, “any resemblance of the “Synthiotics” movement depicted in this series to L. Ron Hubbard’s “science” of Dianetics may not be entirely accidental”; Entertainment Weekly‘s Ken Tucker in his review gives another single sentence mention, “Kreutzer would seem to be Wagner’s wicked caricature of the late author and Church of Scientology founder, L. Ron Hubbard”; David Gates, reviewing the show in the late Newsweek, writes in “Invasion Of The Soul Snatchers” that Anton Kreutzer is “a neo-psychedelic demagogue resembling L. Ron Hubbard, Pat Robertson, Timothy Leary and Ross Perot”; that is the only mention of anyone associated with the movement, let alone the movement itself, in the review. This misinterprets the satire here as a glancing blow, when it’s a repeated punch to the kidneys.

This is the dialogue between Harry and his ex-girlfriend, Paige Katz, that introduces Tony Kreutzer, after a demonstration he gives on his pioneering hologram technology:

HARRY
That’s the guy you work for? The guy who founded that freaky religion in the sixties?

PAIGE
Synthiotics. It’s helped a lot of people.
en
HARRY
New realism is very hip right now. I read about it in People.

PAIGE
Don’t be so cynical. You should read some of his books.

HARRY
Nah, I don’t dig bad science fiction.

After a ceremony in which Harry is inducted into the church,

we see the outside of the building, “The Church of Synthiotics”:

Synthiotics is, I believe, a variation on dianetics, the Hubbard philosophy which preceded scientology. Hubbard developed scientology around a similar set of ideas after he lost control of dianetics in a rights dispute with former business associate Don Purcell. One of the only critical histories of the movement and its founder available at the time of this series, Bare Faced Messiah by Russell Miller, describes what took place:

At the beginning of April 1952, Hubbard packed his belongings into the back of his yellow Pontiac convertible and headed out of Wichita on the Kansas Turnpike with his teenage bride of four weeks beside him on the front seat. Their destination, one thousand miles to the west, was Phoenix, Arizona, where loyal aides had already put up a sign outside a small office at 1405 North Central Street, announcing it as the headquarters of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists.

Phoenix was so named because it was built on the ruins of an ancient Indian settlement on the Salt River, which had risen like the legendary phoenix. Hubbard, who had had more than enough of Wichita, could not think of a more appropriate location for the rise of his astounding new science from the still-smoking ruins of Dianetics.

Hubbard would introduce Scientology as a logical extension of Dianetics, but it was a development of undeniable expedience, since it ensured he would be able to stay in business even if the courts eventually awarded control of Dianetics and its valuable copyrights to ‘that little flatulence’, the hated Don Purcell. The difference between Dianetics and Scientology was that Dianetics addressed the body, whereas Scientology addressed the soul. With his accustomed bombast, Hubbard claimed that he had ‘come across incontrovertible, scientifically-validated evidence of the existence of the human soul’.

So, a church of synthiotics might be seen as the same as a church of dianetics, or, a church of scientology.

Just as scientology has been very successful at recruiting celebrities to enhance their image and evangelize on their behalf, the synthiotics church of Palms has two notables on hand to help them out.

There is the singer Chap Starfall:

As well as the actress Tabba Schwartzkopf, who belongs to the high echelons of the church:

Throughout the series, black vans full of organization thugs show up to chase down or take away dissidents. This may be an expansion of at least one incident that took place along these lines, described in Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology. It involved two top members of the church, Gale Irwin and Pat Broeker, who were pushed out when the current head, David Miscavige, took over:

Now genuinely afraid of [David] Miscavige, [Gale] Irwin slipped off the base at Gilman Hot Springs to call Pat Broeker, using his special callback system. Waiting at a gas-station pay phone for Broeker to return her call, Irwin suddenly saw Miscavige roll up with a number of his aides in a black van. As she’d later recall, he got out, walked to the back of the van, took out a tire iron, and as she watched, proceeded to smash the pay phone so it wouldn’t work. Then he grabbed a terrified Irwin, ordered her into the van, and accused her of mutiny.

A key product developed by Memocom, a branch of the synthiotics church, is Mimezine, a drug which makes holograms appear as vivid as real life. The name of this drug seems to echo one that Hubbard attempted to market, Dianazene, on the basis that it was an antidote to radiation sickness. A lengthy excerpt from Miller:

By April it seemed that Hubbard had given up his heroic, single-handed attempt to rid the world of nuclear weapons by ‘as-ising’ [a scientology term meaning to make disappear] the atomic bomb, for in that month he hired the Royal Empire Society Hall in London in order to preside over the ‘London Congress on Nuclear Radiation and Health’. The various lectures delivered at this extraordinary event were later condensed into an even more extraordinary book titled All About Radiation and written by ‘a nuclear physicist’ and ‘a medical doctor’.

The doctor was anonymous, but the ‘nuclear physicist’ was none other than L. Ron Hubbard offering the benefit of his advice with customary scant recourse to the laws of science. He asserted, for example, that a sixteen-foot wall could not stop a gamma ray whereas a human body could, an assertion later described by an eminent radiologist as ‘showing complete and utter ignorance of physics, nuclear science and medicine’. In line with his philosophy that most illnesses were caused by the mind, Hubbard avowed, ‘The danger in the world today in my opinion is not the atomic radiation which may or may not be floating through the atmosphere but the hysteria occasioned by that question.’ Radiation, he added, was ‘more of a mental than a physical problem’.

Fortunately, however, no one needed to worry about radiation, since Hubbard had devised a vitamin compound called ‘Dianazene’ (after his first child by Mary Sue [Hubbard's last wife]?) which provided protection: ‘Dianazene runs out radiation – or what appears to be radiation. It also proofs a person against radiation to some degree. It also turns on and runs out incipient cancer. I have seen it run out skin cancer. A man who didn’t have much liability to skin cancer (only had a few moles) took Dianazene. His whole jaw turned into a raw mass of cancer. He kept on taking Dianazene and it disappeared after a while. I was looking at a case of cancer that might have happened.’

The doctor, writing under the pseudonym Medicus, confirmed in his section of the book that ‘some very recent work by L. Ron Hubbard and the Hubbard Scientology Organization has indicated that a simple combination of vitamins in unusual doses can be of value. Alleviation of the remote effects and increased tolerance of radiation have been the apparent results . . .’

The Food and Drugs Administration in the United States was inclined, after studying a copy of All About Radiation, to disagree. FDA agents swooped on the Distribution Center Inc, a Scientology company in Washington, seized 21,000 Dianazene tablets and destroyed them, alleging that they were falsely labelled as a preventative treatment for ‘radiation sickness’.

Hubbard was an energetic, engaging man, as seen in this brief description, again from Miller:

Ron [Hubbard], ebullient as always, was not in any way intimidated by the egregious company and surroundings [a rambling mansion filled with bohemians, intellectuals, and exotic ne'er-do-wells]; on the contrary, he felt instantly at home. Most evenings he could be found dominating the conversation at the big table in the kitchen, where the roomers tended to gather, telling outrageous stories about his adventures. One night he unbuttoned his shirt to display the scars left by arrows hurled at him when he encountered a band of hostile aborigines in the South American jungle.

This vitality and charisma is captured well in the show’s best performance, Robert Loggia as Kreutzer⁶. Some sense of this can be found in the speech Kreutzer gives when introducing his hologram technology:

KREUTZER
You know, I was in Tokyo just last week. And in Japan, they call me Fuji, because I am white on top. (laughter) To paraphrase Aristophanes, I have all the traits of a popular politico. Bad breeding…vulgar manners…and one hell of a tan.

A samurai suddenly appears, pulls out his sword, and attacks the senator, but when the sword slices through Kreutzer, it passes through him as if he were a ghost. The samurai retreats, the disappears in a flash.

KREUTZER
I’m not here, children. I’m a synthetic hologram. Talking to you, real time. From the penthouse of this hotel. One day, very soon, this is what it’s going to look like in the living room. You will co-star in weekly sitcoms. You will fight the samurai battles, and experience the heartbreak of first love. All between commercials, and if you own a TV, any old TV…and an adapter from Mimecom that you can get for under a $1000 dollars, then you have bought a ticket. I have seen the future…and it is channel three.

The practices and principles of synthiotics are never discussed, except in one brief exchange between Harry and Paige, after Kreutzer’s presentation:

HARRY
What the hell was that all about?

PAIGE
He’s bigger than life, huh?

HARRY
Scary, like a roman emperor with the fingers. (makes gesture)

PAIGE
All he’s saying is that there’s more than one reality. That doesn’t make synthiotics any different than, say…buddhism.

Here we find a fit with one of Hubbard’s favorite ideas, truth is what is true for you. Miller describes a moment in a lecture of Hubbard’s at the Academy of Scientology:

Perhaps the most revealing thing Hubbard said about himself during the lecture was a comment on one of Commander Thompson’s ["Snake" Thompson, a supposed associate of Freud and mentor of Hubbard, who may not have ever existed] favourite little aphorisms. It appeared that the Commander used to tell Ron, ‘If it’s not true for you, it’s not true.’ It aligned with his own personal philosophy, Hubbard explained, ‘because if there is anyone in the world calculated to believe what he wants to believe it is I’. Never did L. Ron Hubbard speak a truer word.

In the series, Kreutzer’s past is always murky, but before we find out that Kreutzer is Harry’s father, we hear of a past association between the man Harry still thinks of as his father and Kreutzer, revealed by his father-in-law, Eli Levitt:

ELI
There was a famous chemist back in the sixties, who was playing around with the fugu, puffer fish, ever hear of it? A delicacy in Japan? Dose of a single fish could kill, lesser amount gets you high. Mimecom grabbed it, tweaked it, came up with something of their own. They called it mimezine. Allows you to interact with holograms, is it real or is it mimecom? Impossible to tell.

ELI
That famous chemist I was telling you about, the one who pioneered it all…his name was Dex Wycoff, your daddy.

HARRY
You knew my father?

ELI
No, but the senator did. They were partners.

Harry tells Kreutzer of this meeting, and the senator adds a few details:

HARRY
I saw Eli Levitt last week. He said you knew my father.

KREUTZER
Indeed I did. He was the real thing. The Chicky [Eli's son, and a brilliant inventor in his own right] of his day. Old Dex was legendary for two things. The purity of his LSD, and the fact that he was never seen in public without a tie. Your father wanted to use computers to free the brain from the body, and this was the seventies, there wasn’t even video. Critics dismissed him as an acid casualty, which he was.

HARRY
What happened?

KREUTZER
Blew his face off with a shotgun. Because of the recoil, the coroner determined that the first shot was not fatal. Ten minutes later, Dex finished the job. And I have always wondered what went through his mind in those last ten minutes.

The association between Kreutzer and this man maps with the connection between Hubbard and a brilliant scientist named Jack Parsons – not a chemist, but an engineer – who was also heavily involved with the occult. Miller gives a detailed description of this fascinating character:

John Whiteside Parsons, known to his friend as Jack, was an urbane, darkly handsome man, not unlike Errol Flynn in looks, and the scion of a well-connected Los Angeles family. Then thirty-one years old, he was a brilliant scientist and chemist and one of America’s foremost explosives experts. He had spent much of the war at the California Institute of Technology working with a team developing jet engines and experimental rocket fuels and was, perhaps, the last man anyone would have suspected of worshipping the Devil.

For Jack Parsons led an extraordinary double life: respected scientist by day, dedicated occultist by night. He believed, passionately, in the power of black magic, the existence of Satan, demons and evil spirits, and the efficacy of spells to deal with his enemies.

While still a student at the University of Southern California, he had become interested in the writings of Aleister Crowley, the English sorcerer and Satanist known as ‘The Beast 666′, whose dabblings in black magic had also earned him the title ‘The Wickedest Man In The World’. Crowley’s The Book of the Law expounded a doctrine enshrined in a single sentence – ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’ – and Parsons was intrigued by the heady concept of a creed that encouraged indulgence in forbidden pleasures.

Jack Parsons was in a serious relationship with a Sara Northrup, who played an active role in his occult ceremonies – until she met Hubbard, fell in love, and married him.

Miller, on the intersection of Hubbard, Parsons, and Sara “Betty” Northrup:

One afternoon in August 1945, Lou Goldstone, a well-known science-fiction illustrator and a frequent visitor to South Orange Grove Avenue [Parsons' house, where he rented out rooms to a large group of eccentrics], turned up with L. Ron Hubbard, who was then on leave from the Navy. Jack Parsons liked Ron immediately, perhaps recognized in him a kindred spirit, and invited him to move in for the duration of his leave.

He considered that Ron had great magical potential and took the risk of breaking his solemn oath of secrecy to acquaint Ron with some of the OTO [Ordo Templi Orientis, an organization set up by the satanist Alistair Crowley that focused on sexual magic] rituals. Betty, too, was much enamoured with the voluble naval officer, so much so that she soon began sleeping with him. True to his creed, Parsons tried to pretend he was not concerned by this development, but others in the house thought they detected tension between the two men.

Alva Rogers [one of the many residents of Parsons' house], too, sensed that Parsons was suffering. ‘Jack had never boggled at any of Betty’s previous amorous adventurings, but this time it seemed somehow different…although the three of them continued to maintain a surface show of unchanged amicability, it was obvious that Jack was feeling the pangs of a hitherto unfelt passion, jealousy. As events progressed, Jack found it increasingly difficult to keep his mind on anything but the torrid affair going on between Ron and Betty and the atmosphere around the house became supercharged with tension.’

Nevertheless, Parsons clearly remained convinced that Ron possessed exceptional powers. After Ron had left to report back to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, Parsons wrote to his ‘Most Beloved Father’ to acquaint him with events: ‘About three months ago I met Captain L. Ron Hubbard, a writer and explorer of whom I had known for some time…He is a gentleman; he has red hair, green eyes, is honest and intelligent, and we have become great friends. He moved in with me about two months ago, and although Betty and I are still friendly, she has transferred her sexual affection to Ron.

The anecdote of the painful suicide of Dex Wycoff appears to be a comingling of two events: the death of Parsons in a massive explosion when he dropped some nitro-glycerine, an event which was often suspected to be a suicide, and the suicide of Parsons’ mother on hearing of her son’s death, her suicide a prolonged moment as the sleeping pills took a half hour for their lethal effect, while a friend, too crippled to stop or save her, looked on helplessly as she died. Again, Miller:

On the afternoon of Friday 20 June 1952, Parsons was working alone in the garage of the coachhouse, which he had converted into a laboratory. At eight minutes past five there was an enormous explosion. The heavy stable doors were blasted from their hinges, the walls blew out and a huge hole was torn in the floor timbers. When the dust had cleared, a partially dismembered body could be seen still bleeding in the rubble.

Further horror was to follow. Police traced Parsons’s mother, Mrs Ruth Virginia Parsons, to the home of a crippled woman friend in West Glenarm Street. Informed of the accident and her son’s death, Mrs Parsons returned to the room where her friend was sitting in an armchair. She sat down in another chair out of reach, unscrewed a bottle of sleeping tablets and, watched by her helpless and appalled friend, rapidly swallowed the entire contents. Unable to move from her chair, the terrified cripple watched her friend slowly die.

The inquest found that the explosion had been caused by Parsons accidentally dropping a phial of nitro-glycerine. But because of his known interest in the occult, there were inevitably rumours of suicide or even murder; none of his friends could believe that a man so experienced in handling explosives would have dropped nitro-glycerine accidentally.

Whatever the truth, no black magician could have wished for a blacker departure from the world.

Kreutzer’s revelation in one of the last scenes that Harry is his son touches on a similar romantic triangle, and hints that Dex didn’t commit suicide, but was killed by the senator.

HARRY
How well did you know my mother?

KREUTZER
We enjoyed each other’s company, Berniece and I. Dex wasn’t too thrilled. We had a child together. Did you know that? Dex thought it was his. Named the boy Harry. He found out, Dex did. He tried to kill me. I had to defend myself.

Harry’s plotline, a son rebelling a father, a son joining this formidable figure late in life, might be taken, I believe, from the story of Hubbard’s own first son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr. – though referred to by everyone by his nickname, Nibs. Just like Harry, he lives apart from his father and joins the church late in life. From Miller:

While Hubbard was writing and lecturing in Phoenix in the summer of 1952, a somewhat unexpected event occurred – his son, L. Ron Hubbard Junior, turned up in town apparently intent on becoming a Scientologist. Nibs was then eighteen years old, a plump young man with a shining, cherubic countenance topped by wispy curls of pale orange hair. He had been living with his grandparents in Bremerton for the previous two years, but had been unable to settle down in high school and had decided to join his father in Phoenix.

Nibs enrolled at a correspondence school in an attempt to complete his high school education and his father gave him a job at the Hubbard Association of Scientologists, at the same time arranging for him to be audited intensively. As the son and namesake of the founder, Nibs was treated with some deference by other Scientologists and made rapid progress in the organization – he was soon designated as ‘professor’ of the ‘Advanced Clinical Course’, one of a number of courses on offer to ambitious Scientologists in Phoenix. He also acquired a number of initials after his name to support his professorial status.

Just like Harry, he ends up an adversary of the father and his church, the highest ranking defector at the time:

While he was still in Melbourne, Hubbard received an urgent telephone call from Washington with bad news. Nibs, he was told, had ‘blown’. To Scientologists, ‘blowing the org’ (leaving the church) was one of the worst crimes in the book: it was almost unbelievable that the highly-placed son and namesake of the founder would take such a step.

After ‘blowing the org’ in 1959, fortune had not smiled on Nibs. He had drifted from job to job, finding it ever more difficult to support his wife and six children, and as the realization dawned that he would never be allowed back into Scientology, he became an even more prominent critic of his father and his father’s ‘church’. When the church was locked in litigation with the Internal Revenue Service, Nibs testified on behalf of the IRS.

In July, Nibs gave an interview to the Santa Rosa News-Herald in which he portrayed his father as a wife-beater who had experimented in black magic and fed him and his sister bubble gum spiked with phenobarbitol. ‘He had one of those insane things, especially during the ’30s, of trying to invoke the devil for power and practices. My mother told me about him trying out all kinds of various incantations, drugs and hypnosis…He used to beat her up quite often. He had a violent, volcano-type temper, and he smacked her around quite a bit. I remember in 1946 or 1947 when he was beating up my mother one night, I had a .22 rifle and I sat on the stairway with him in my sights and I almost blew his head off.’

[Nibs] surfaced again in the June 1983 issue of Penthouse magazine, making even more sensational allegations – that Hubbard had been involved in black magic since the age of sixteen, believed himself to be Satan, wanted to become the most powerful being in the universe, smuggled gold and drugs, was a sadist and a KGB agent. He had bought Saint Hill Manor, Nibs claimed, with money obtained from the Russians. ‘Black magic is the inner core of Scientology,’ Nibs stressed, ‘and it is probably the only part of Scientology that really works. Also, you’ve got to realize that my father did not worship Satan. He thought he was Satan.’

Some of these claims could be substantiated by others – that Hubbard had beaten this boy’s mother and he had been involved in occult rituals conducted by Parsons – while others, such as the length of his involvement in the occult, and his connections with the russians most likely had no basis.

Miller:

It was wild stuff, perhaps a little too wild. Just like his father, Nibs lacked subtlety. Had he been more restrained, the interview might have made an impact. Instead, it simply strained the reader’s credulity to such an extent that it was hard to decide who was the most deranged – L. Ron Hubbard Senior or L. Ron Hubbard Junior.

The show ends with Kreutzer attempting to evade death and become a virtual hologram, something of a god, who will rule the thoughts and dreams of the world. Again, Hubbard’s own end is mysterious as well: he lived as a recluse at the end of his life, his last public appearance taking place six years before his death, a death without a public funeral, only a cremation conducted quickly in the midst of the night, the identity of the dead never mentioned to those performing the cremation, and only discovered by the chapel owner after she read the death certificate. The cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemmorage [sic]. No autopsy was ever performed.

The telephone was already ringing when Irene Reis, co-owner of the Reis Chapel in San Luis Obispo, arrived for work on the morning of Saturday 25 January. A voice at the other end of the line identified himself as Earle Cooley, an attorney, and asked if they did cremations. Mrs Reis replied that they did, although the crematory was usually closed at weekends. Special arrangements could be made if necessary. Cooley then asked if a body could be collected from the Whispering Winds Ranch on the O’Donovan Road in Creston. Irene’s husband, Gene, drove the hearse out to Creston, not imagining it was anything but a routine job.

Cooley accompanied the body back to San Luis Obispo. At the Reis Chapel, a tasteful white adobe building with a red pantile roof on Nipomo Street, he asked Mrs Reis if arrangements could be made for an ‘immediate cremation’. He presented a death certificate signed by a Gene Denk of Los Angeles certifying the cause of death as cerebral haemorrhage and a certificate of religious belief forbidding an autopsy. It was not until Mrs Reis looked at the documents that she realized the body lying in her chapel was that of L. Ron Hubbard.

Mrs Reis knew enough about Hubbard to insist on informing the San Luis Obispo Country sheriffcoroner. Deputy coroner Don Hines arrived at the Reis Chapel within a few minutes. No one had had any idea that Hubbard was in the vicinity and Hines wanted to make sure that everything was done by the book – it was not every day that a ‘notorious recluse’ turned up in San Luis Obispo. Hines said that no cremation could take place until an independent pathologist had examined the body. He also ordered the body to be photographed and fingerprinted to ensure positive identifications. (Later the fingerprints were revealed to match those on file at the FBI and the Department of Justice.) It was three-thirty in the afternoon before Hines was satisfied and agreed to release the body for cremation. On the following day, the ashes of L. Ron Hubbard were scattered on the Pacific from a small boat.

This is not announced as a death by the church of scientology. Just as Kreutzer abandons his decaying body to become a virtual ghost, this is but a leave-taking of a physical state.

The news of the death of the founder of Scientology was broken to 1800 of his followers hastily gathered in the Hollywood Palladium on the afternoon of Monday, 27 January. David Miscavige made the announcement that Ron had moved on to his next level of research, a level beyond the imagination and in a state exterior to the body: ‘Thus, at 2000 hours, Friday 24 January 1986, L. Ron Hubbard discarded the body he had used in this lifetime for seventy-four years, ten months and eleven days. The body he had used to facilitate his existence in this universe had ceased to be useful and in fact had become an impediment to the work he now must do outside its confines. The being we knew as L. Ron Hubbard still exists. Although you may feel grief, understand that he did not, and does not now. He has simply moved on to his next step.’

Probably the most malevolent character in Palms is Josie Ito: she has the eyes of one her enemies torn out, drowns another, and chokes her own daughter to death with her bare hands⁷. One character says of her, “the friends have a nickname for Josie…Hannya…female demon”.

She is portrayed throughout as a close confidante of Kreutzer, but whose relation we can only guess at, until it is revealed that they are sister and brother. This is a slight shuffling of details of her real-life counter-part, a determined, ruthless woman who was L. Ron Hubbard’s last wife, Mary Sue.

From an interview about The Master conducted by Brent Bambury, with a former high-ranking scientologist, Kate Bornstein, on this figure:

BAMBURY
The leader’s wife in this film, portrayed by Amy Adams, is a forceful character, and maybe even the real power behind the movement…

AMY ADAMS as PEGGY DODD
We do what we have to do to grow. The only way to defend ourselves is to attack. If we don’t do that, we will lose every battle we are engaged in. We will never dominate our environment the way we should unless we attack.

BAMBURY
Did you know Mary Sue Hubbard, who was L. Ron Hubbard’s wife, and the number two figure in the church for many years?

BORNSTEIN
I knew Mary Sue Hubbard well. And it was a brilliant performance. Amy Adams captured her, completely. And yes, Mary Sue was posted as L. Ron Hubbard’s guardian. That was the post, the guardian. It was her job to protect scientology from bad people. I was scared of Mary Sue. Everyone was.

Miller gives this description of the relationship between the two Hubbards:

Hubbard would never allow anyone to criticize Mary Sue and although he rarely showed much affection for her in public, it seemed, after two failed marriages and innumerable affairs, that he had at last formed a stable relationship, improbable as it had first appeared. They were indeed an unlikely couple – a flamboyant, fast-talking extrovert entrepreneur in his forties and a quiet, intense young woman twenty years his junior from a small town in Texas. But anyone who underestimated Mary Sue made a big mistake. Although she was not yet twenty-four years old, she exercized [sic] considerable power within the Scientology movement and people around Hubbard quickly learned to be wary of her. Fiercely loyal to her husband, brusque and autocratic, she could be a dangerous enemy.

Here is former member Cyril Vosper, from Miller’s Messiah on the implementation of the social control system of “ethics”; I bold his opinion on Mary Sue’s influence of this behavior code:

‘Conditions’ were an essential part of the new ‘ethics technology’ devised by Hubbard in the midsixties, effectively as a form of social control. It was his first, tentative step towards the creation of a society within Scientology which would ultimately resemble the totalitarian state envisaged by George Orwell in his novel 1984 . Anyone thought to be disloyal, or slacking, or breaking the rules of Scientology, was reported to an ‘ethics officer’ and assigned a ‘condition’ according to the gravity of the offence. Various penalties were attached to each condition. In a ‘condition of liability’ for example, the offender was required to wear a dirty grey rag tied around his or her left arm. The worst that could happen was to be declared an ‘SP’ (suppressive person), which was tantamount to excommunication from the church. SPs were defined by Hubbard as ‘fair game’ to be pursued, sued and harassed at every possible opportunity.

‘What happened with the development of ethics,’ said Cyril Vosper, who worked on the staff at Saint Hill, ‘was that zeal expanded at the expense of tolerance and sanity. My feeling was that Mary Sue devised a lot of the really degrading aspects of ethics. I always had great warmth and admiration for Ron [Hubbard] – he was a remarkable individual, a constant source of new information and ideas – but I thought Mary Sue was an exceedingly nasty person. She was a bitch.‘

An incident on one of scientology’s ships, from Miller, I bold Mary Sue’s part:

Arthur’s [a son of Hubbard's] special responsibility on board ship was to look after his father’s motor-cycles, in particular a huge Harley Davidson that had been given to Hubbard by the Toronto org. One afternoon, the Commodore told Doreen [a scientology member] to make sure Arthur had cleaned the Harley Davidson properly by wiping a tissue over the mudguards and petrol tank and bringing it back to show him. She returned with a black smudge on the tissue. Hubbard was incensed. ‘You go and assign Arthur liability,’ he roared at Doreen, ‘he’s not doing his duty.’

Doreen was relieved that Arthur didn’t seem to be too worried by his father’s reaction, or by the need to tie a grey rag round his arm, but it was not the end of the matter. Mary Sue, who was fiercely protective of her children, felt it was Doreen’s fault that Arthur had been assigned liability. Later that afternoon, she grabbed her by the arm and starting shaking her. ‘You little fiend,’ she hissed, sinking her nails into the girl’s arm, ‘you’re destroying my family.’

Another:

A few months later, Diana [a daughter of Hubbard's] upset her father in some way. Hubbard reeled off a long reprimand to the messenger on duty, adding at the end of it: ‘OK, go and spit in Diana’s face.’ The messenger was a little dark-eyed girl called Jill Goodman, thirteen years old. She ran along the deck to Diana’s office, burst in, spat in her face with unerring accuracy and began shouting her message as Diana let out a scream of fury. Mary Sue, who was in an adjoining office, burst in as her daughter was wiping the spittle from her face. She grabbed Jill round the throat as if she was going to strangle her and also began screeching. Jill started crying and when Mary Sue let her go, she immediately rushed off to tell the Commodore. Another acrimonious husband and wife row followed, which ended with Mary Sue throwing her shoes at the luckless messenger Hubbard despatched to chastise her further.

It is Mary Sue, following L. Ron Hubbard’s orders, who heads up the infamous Operation Snow White, an attempt by the church to eliminate any government account that might harm the church’s reputation by having scientologists take positions in government agencies, steal documents from various agencies, and destroy them.

Miller gives a good description of this project:

Now sixty-two, Hubbard was also beginning to ponder his place in posterity. The Church of Scientology had been swift to make use of the recently enacted Freedom of Information Act, which had revealed that government agencies held a daunting amount of material about Scientology and its founder in their files, much of it less than flattering. Hubbard, who had never been fettered by convention or strict observance of the law, conceived a simple, but startlingly audacious, plan to improve his own image and that of his church for the benefit of future generations of Scientologists. All that needed to be done, he decided, was to infiltrate the agencies concerned, steal the relevant files and either destroy or launder any damaging information they contained. To a man who had founded both a church and a private navy this was a perfectly feasible scheme. The operation was given the code name Snow White – two words that would figure ever more prominently over the next few months in the communications between the Guardian’s Office in Los Angeles and the Commodore’s hiding place in Queens, New York.

Operation Snow White, the impudent plan to launder public records that he had dreamed up three years earlier, was progressing rapidly and with a degree of success that few would have believed possible. By the beginning of 1975, the Guardian’s Office had infiltrated agents into the Internal Revenue Service, the US Coast Guard and the Drug Enforcement Agency. By May, Gerald Wolfe, a Scientologist working at the IRS in Washington as a clerk-typist, had stolen more than thirty thousand pages of documents relating to the Church of Scientology and the Hubbards. He was known to the Guardian’s Office by the code-name, ‘Silver’.

Within the hierarchy of the Church of Scientology, ultimate responsibility for the activities of Operation Snow White rested with Mary Sue Hubbard, the controller, but it was inconceivable that she was acting on her own initiative or not discussing progress with her husband. And although the amateur agents had discovered it was ridiculously easy to infiltrate, bug and burgle US government offices, the risks were considerable, both to the agents themselves and their church superiors. Hubbard was not too worried about who would take the rap if Operation Snow White was exposed, as long as it was not him.

Things eventually go wrong, with a number of these infiltrators arrested, and one of them, Michael Meisner, revealing the details of the operation, leading to an FBI raid on church offices, as well as the indictment and conviction of top church figures, including Mary Sue.

At six o’clock on the morning of 8 July 1977, 134 FBI agents armed with search warrants and sledgehammers, simultaneously broke into the offices of the Church of Scientology in Washington and Los Angeles and carted away 48,149 documents. They would reveal an astonishing espionage system which spanned the United States and penetrated some of the highest offices in the land.

On 15 August 1978, a federal grand jury in Washington indicted nine Scientologists on twenty-eight counts of conspiring to steam government documents, theft of government documents, burglarizing government offices, intercepting government communications, harbouring a fugitive, making false declarations before a grand jury and conspiring to obstruct justice. Heading the list of those indicted was Mary Sue Hubbard. She faced a maximum penalty, if convicted, of 175 years in prison and a fine of $40,000. On 29 August, all nine defendants were arraigned in the federal courthouse at the foot of Capitol Hill and pleaded not guilty.

Mary Sue never betrayed her husband, but then she had never intended to. The trial was scheduled for 24 September in Washington, but the government prosecutors and defence attorneys were still bargaining at that date and a stay was granted. On 8 October, in an unusual legal manoeuvre, an agreement was reached that the nine defendants would plead guilty to one count each if the government presented a written statement of its case, thereby avoiding a lengthy trial.

On 26 October, US District Judge Charles R. Richey accordingly found the nine Scientologists guilty on one count each of the indictment. Mary Sue and two others were fined the maximum of $10,000 and jailed for five years. The remaining defendants received similar fines and prison sentences of between one and four years.

Mary Sue would end up exiled from control of the church by its current head, a young upstart dynamo named David Miscavige, who is portrayed in Palms with equal vitriol as the Hubbards. Like Harry, he is Kreutzer’s son, but where Harry is an apostate, this boy is the true heir to the church. Palms does not give the current church leader the status of a man, but makes him into a petulant, sociopathic child. In his most disturbing scene, we see him in the moments before he kills a co-worker of Harry’s:

COTY
I just wanted to talk to you. You know, I made up all the stuff about Peter [another boy, working with the resistance group The Friends, who's Harry's real son] being here. This is a hard time for us. Exciting, but hard. I’m sure you know about, mom being in the hospital [Grace's suicide attempt]. There’s lots of pressure on dad, too. “Windows”, ["Church Windows", a program produced by the church of synthiotics] the new job. Everyone thinks he’s doing a great job, though. Just extra hard when the Friends tell him a bunch of stuff that isn’t true. You know what’s funny to think about? You love food so much! (COTY reaches for bag, and takes out a set of surgical tools.) But you’re never going to eat again. Not an egg, or a strawberry. Even a little baby pea. They’re gonna come in soon, talk to you about Peter. It won’t be so bad. They showed me how, but I’m a little nervous. I’m gonna do some cutting now, okay?

The Sea Org, the top tier of Scientology is well-known for dressing in naval uniforms, and this entity started out staffing the various ships of Hubbard’s which traveled the oceans. In the last two episodes, for no given reason, Coty and others suddenly start showing up in naval outfits, with Coty’s father witnessing a ceremony where his son is inducted into a position of high rank on one of Kreutzer’s yachts, The Floating World.

We see Coty prominently filming the wedding of Kreutzer to Paige Katz; Miscavige started out in the scientology organization as a cameraman.

From Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology:

[David] Miscavige was one of the many young disciples who formed a protective shield around Hubbard at his desert hideaway, “W.” Assigned first as a “traffic Messenger,” managing the flow of communications to and from Hubbard, he showed an interest in cinematography and ultimately became a member of the camera crew, working with the Commodore on his technical films.

Retiman’s book describes many of the details of the Miscavige character that show up in Coty; making this man’s fictional counterpart a child is a reference to his precociousness and intemperateness, but something else: his short stature.

[Daivd] Miscavige was born in Philadelphia in 1960 and grew up in a modest suburban home in Willingboro, New Jersey. His parents, Ronald Sr. and Loretta, a professional trumpet player and a nurse, were Catholics who raised their four children-Ronnie Jr., the oldest, followed by the twins David and Denise, and the younger sister, Laurie-to believe in Jesus and attend Mass at least somewhat regularly. Despite his Catholic faith, Ronald Sr. was drawn to Scientology, which he’d heard about from a business contact, and began to read some of Hubbard’s books, hoping it might help his younger son. A pint-sized, headstrong little boy, David was sickly, suffering from severe asthma and allergies.

Hubbard, who encouraged parents to look at their children as men and women whose bodies simply hadn’t attained full growth-”big thetans in little bodies,” as some parents said-had never established rules about when a child could or couldn’t be audited, go to work, or audit others. A precocious overachiever, David Miscavige learned to audit when he was twelve. By thirteen, he was counseling people two or three times his age and, some recalled, giving security checks to senior Scientology executives.

Now the self-appointed head of the All Clear Unit, Miscavige was twenty-one years old and, a highly aggressive and frequently belligerent young man, had come into his own. Though he could be supportive of those upon whose approval he depended, Miscavige was mistrustful of many others, with an “almost pathological” certainty, according to one former colleague, that he, of all the Messengers, was right. To some he seemed like a reflection of L. Ron Hubbard on his very worst days, cursing and barking orders at other Sea Org members, including some staffers much older than he, or screaming at those who disagreed with him. He chewed tobacco and in meetings would frequently make a show of spitting the juice into a cup. Brennan was appalled. “As I saw him, DM was like a highly impressionable spoiled child.”

After Hubbard’s death, Miscavige would be ruthlessly efficient at consolidating his power, exiling the rival force of Mary Sue Hubbard from the church.

In May 1981, [David] Miscavige visited Mary Sue in her Los Angeles office and told her that, as a convicted criminal, she could no longer be officially connected to the Church of Scientology. It would be “for the good of the church,” as well as for the good of her husband, if she resigned, he said. Furious, Mary Sue refused and, in one often-told account, became so enraged that she threw an ashtray at Miscavige’s head. But the twenty-one-year-old was intractable.

Numerous Scientology officials, particularly those loyal to David Miscavige, applauded his initiative. It was felt that Mary Sue Hubbard had blackened the name of the church; now it was only right that she be ostracized.

This conflict is reproduced in Palms with Coty worried that he will somehow be taken from power; the public revelation that Josie killed her own daughter, making her a liability for the church; and Coty giving one of Josie’s victims the opportunity to kill her.

JOSIE
Ahoy, captain! Well, don’t you look grand.

COTY
Deidre [Coty's sister] been cooped up too long. It isn’t healthy.

JOSIE
Has she complained? I haven’t heard a word.

COTY
Grandma, what’s gonna happen after “Church Windows”? [the sitcom on which he's been selected to star] You know when people get tired of watching?

JOSIE
They’ll never get tired.

COTY
Don’t lie to me. In a year, I could be history.

JOSIE
What’s gotten into you?

COTY
Are there other shows being developed?

JOSIE
Well, of course there are.

COTY
For me?

JOSIE
Yes! Don’t be silly!

COTY
Well, what are they?

JOSIE (flustered)
I don’t know darling, that’s the programmer’s domain.

COTY
I want the details. Now.

JOSIE
You’re acting like a child.

COTY grabs tanning mirror, then slaps JOSIE with mirror.

COTY
Don’t you ever say that to me. Don’t underestimate me. When you killed your daughter, your pulse never rose above normal. We’re alike in that way. But my crimes will be grander. I assure you. One day, I’ll put out the sun, and make bare every womb there ever was.

COTY
There is a way to pay back the woman who did this to you. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Tully?

The series ends with Coty screeching as the church headquarters falls about him in flames. In 1993, such an ending might have seemed a little premature. Now, finally: maybe not.

FOOTNOTES

¹ To give an idea of how much this series has fallen out of consciousness, even when a reference is made to the show, it goes unnoticed. For instance, when researching this, I came across the summary of a “How I Met You Mother” episode titled “Everything Must Go”. This is also the name of the first episode of Wild Palms, and it is a recurrent and important phrase in the show. This episode of “Mother” involves a plot detail of someone buying a painting with a frame by Anton Kreutzer, the same name of the senator of Palms, who is involved in framing, manipulating, media. One would think the possibility might be raised here that this is a small, elegant in-joke, but the compiler of the summary makes no mention of it – instead, mis-hearing the name as Anton Kreitzer (I am not a Mother aficionado, have not seen a single episode, but a transcript of this episode is definite that it is Kreutzer), and writing of a reference to an old Cheers episode.

² Samples of his other work can be found at his web site. The frames of the comic used here I took from a sample of the first Palms strip, found at the William Gibson Message Board, in the thread focused on “Gibsonian” material.

³ The show’s title is shared with that of a well-known and reputable Faulkner novel (I have not read it – I sometimes fall into his work with ease, and sometimes I find his endless sentences brutal as triathalons). Wagner hints at his appreciation of the novel’s title in a brief moment in his Force Majeure, a book so scathing and cruel in its portrayal of Hollywood and Los Angeles life, where everyone is a thief, an opportunist, a plagiarist – all the gold rings are bronze, all the bronze is tarnished, all the rings are stolen off the fingers of the dead – that in a better world, it would disillusion a far wider audience. It was this book that Oliver Stone originally wanted to make into a TV series and, unsurprisingly, the television industrial complex demurred, prefering something a little less corrosive.

The moment is this, when Perry Bravo, a former convict who briefly becomes a cause célèbre, discovers the Faulkner on the shelves of the Force protagonist, Bud Wiggins:

He fingered The Wild Palms and said it was a title so beautiful he was going to use it himself.

⁴ I touch on it only briefly in the main text, to avoid getting bogged down, but the symbolism of the rhino is specific, explicit, and recurrent throughout the series. It is an important symbol, important to both factions, the Fathers and the Friends, but not an ambiguous one – both view it the same way, as an image of totemic significance. Both factions, however, see the rhino as marking themselves, and not the other as the saved. Harry has the dream of the rhino, but so does his son; this is significant to members of both factions, and marks both as figures of crucial importance to each. Each, however, views itself as something like the true church.

Kreutzer states what the rhino means to the series, in bold type, in the first episode, “Everything Must Go”:

KREUTZER
Harry do you know what the rhino is? It’s all that’s left of the unicorn. A magnificent atavism. The remnant of ecstatic myth, rough, nearly blind, utterly exquisite. I bet you think I’m a twee old bastard, don’t you?

Kreutzer’s other son, Coty, also has the dream of the rhino and this is of importance to Josie. Coty cannot reveal his dream, because this might reveal to others his great importance as an heir to the church:

COTY
I had the dream again last night…with the rhinoceros.

JOSIE
Tell anyone? (COTY nods no) Not even your dad? (COTY nods no again)

JOSIE
You’re not afraid, are you, darling monkey? If you’re afraid of the rhino, then the dream goes away. Then you’ll be like everybody else. And that’s the most terrible thing in the world.

Harry has a second dream, where he goes down to the kitchen for some milk, then sees a rhino. He runs back up to his bedroom, to wake his wife, but instead he finds Page Katz in his bed, marked with a Wild Palms tattoo. He turns her over, but she’s suddenly transformed into Kreutzer, who makes rhino noises. The dream is an omen: Harry will have an affair with Paige, he will join the Wild Palms group, and he will discover that Kreutzer is closer to him than he could possibly imagine – he is Paige’s lover, the father of his son, Coty, and his own father as well. Since the rhino marks one as someone of spiritual significance, he makes the noise of a rhino since he’s the leader of his church.

When Harry first meets the Friends, he hears that the Friend leadership have all had the dream of the rhino as well.

TULLY
Still having the visions, Harry?

GAVIN
The rhino’s key, Harry. We all saw the rhino.

STITCH
Not everyone sees the rhino.

When members of the Friends are killed, their bodies are marked with a rhino – a mocking note: if they are members of an elect, why weren’t they saved from death? Coty leaves his toy rhino on Gavin after he kills him, and a rhino is left with the body of the Friend doctor who extracts the Go chip from Harry’s hand.

When Eileen, Gavin’s wife, visits Grace, to tell her of the circumstances of the death of her husband, Gavin:

EILEEN
Oh, hey I almost forgot. I brought you something. Here. (hands over toy rhinoceros)

GRACE
Where’d you find this?

EILEEN
Gavin had it in his pocket when they found him. I thought it belonged to one of the kids, and then I remembered the night we had dinner here, and Coty showed us his collection of sweet rhinoceri.

Tommy gives Harry a knife with a hilt made from rhino tusk. He’ll use it to perform his first heroic act, forcing a technician to broadcast his wife’s murder by her mother, the heroic act making clear that he is member of the elect.

The series began with Kreutzer explaining that the rhino is the last earthly vestige of the unicorn, and as the series ends, Kreutzer speaks in his death scene of the unicorn again, as he gives his reason for transforming himself into a hologram. There is no place for the mystic, the mythic, in the world of crude substance, and so it must leave for another plane entirely.

KREUTZER
Do you know what the unicorn does when it is surrounded by hunters? It sommersaults into the nearest abyss, breaking the fall with its horn!

⁵ It’s easy to find an example of this, I find one at “Baudrillard and Babes at the Consumer Electronics Show”, by Lydia DePillis:

A few feet away, a tall, slim guy named Jason Silva-a self-described “epiphany addict” and “techno-philosopher” – paced a stage freestyling on the amazingness of evolution and the Internet. Then he turned on a video of himself doing it even faster against a galactic backdrop, tossing out quotes from famous futurists as he built towards a climax. “Radical openness is huge!” Silva rhapsodized. “It’s a universe of possibility, it’s gray infused by color, it’s the invisible revealed, it’s the mundane blown away by awe! We need to cultivate radical openness as a way of participating in and celebrating evolution!”

⁶ There are many excellent actors in the cast, which includes Angie Dickinson, Ben Savage, David Warner, Brad Dourif, Dana Delaney, Ernie Hudson, Charles Hallahan, Rondi Reed, François Chau, and Kim Cattrall. The stand-out, for me, apart from Loggia, is Nick Mancuso who does a great job despite the crippling hindrance of not being able to show emotion through his eyes – they are veiled for much of the program by the dark glasses that provide him with artificial sight. Bebe Neuwirth, as always, is given neither enough screen-time or enough to do. Robert Morse gives off a strange, beautiful menace when he sings “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” that verges on greatness – he seems able to do so much, was asked to do too little, and now, he is no longer of this earth. James Belushi, who was beleaguered with slight notices for his work, is physically, the right choice, for he is Kreutzer’s son, and should carry the same traits of bulk and belligerence, of his father, but overshadowed by a passiveness, a disinterest, that he ultimately must overcome in order to attain the role of hero. What makes the work of Belushi and the others more difficult is that the writing is designed for momentum and exposition, so it feels as if the characters are seized by the plot, rather than animating it through their own initiative.

That Loggia gives the best performance here is not simply by virtue of his qualities as an actor, which are formidable, but that there is a complexity to this character that is lacking in the others. I have emphasised the strong similarities to the character of Hubbard, but there are two speeches that Kreutzer makes which distinguish him from this real-life figure, and make him more complicated, more sympathetic than a simple villain – however contemptible his actions might be.

The first, is a speech made right after he makes his hologram presentation where a samurai attacks him, and he meets Harry for the first time. He launches into the following speech, without prompting:

KREUTZER
My father owned a little clothing store, downtown L.A. Did you know that, Harry? He started out a tailor. Oh yes, the jews were the only tailors. My father was murdered by the Friends. They broke into the shop, they stole his things. They defecated in his shop, and they beat this old man, this maker of…suits. They didn’t kill him. That came…months later. He stayed alive, long enough to have a fire sale. A fire sale. In an inferno. Can you imagine it, Harry? And I’ll never forget the sight of him: death, already in his eyes, slumped on a chair. Beneath a great, colorful banner: Everything must go.

A second insightful moment happens in the second to last episode of the series, “Hungry Ghosts”, during a conversation with Harry, the only other time Kreutzer speaks of his parents. There are many references to movies, music, and novels in this series, and this garden meeting between a father and son (though the son doesn’t know it yet), calls to mind the garden meeting of another father and son, Vito and Michael, in The Godfather:

KREUTZER
Everybody’s hungry. Everybody’s a hungry ghost.

HARRY
What’d ya mean?

KREUTZER
It’s a buddhist thing. Like our hell. Hungry ghosts are souls. Doomed to wander the earth, tormented by an insatiable desire.

HARRY
Should I have that developed? Sounds like a channel three sitcom.

KREUTZER
(laughs) Play the ponies, Harry?

HARRY
Once in a while. I like the exactas.

KREUTZER
Santa Anita. Lovely track. They used it during the second world war. Called it an assembly center.

HARRY
For the camps?

KREUTZER
They moved them out from there. Heart Mountain. Manzanar. The people have forgotten all about that. Pearl Harbor changed everything. Oh, mama.

HARRY
Your mother was japanese?

KREUTZER
Just a drop. But enough to satisfy executive order 9066. They sent her to Manzanar.

HARRY
I’m sorry.

KREUTZER
And he never took us to see her, once. Crazy drunk. All the time. “Mama was in the desert”, he said, “helping government agents bury children who were bad. So we’d better stay away.” She died a few weeks before the camps were liberated.

HARRY
And your father?

KREUTZER
Cirrhosis, thank god. I still think of him, wandering the earth, speaking in tongues. The original hungry ghost.

This is a man who is the son of persecuted americans, though they are not simple victims – his father neglected his mother at her time of greatest need, and Kreutzer, rightly or wrongly, damns him for this. Here we see a hint that Kreutzer does not wish power simply for power itself, but stemming from an early sense of vulnerability, of wanting the protection of great power. His mother was persecuted by the state, and his solution is not to reform the state to make it more just, but to simply take it over, and have it serve his ends. As said before, that these complexities exist does not make his actions any less contemptible; L. Ron Hubbard was a complex man as well, and that he felt want, that he suffered, does not prevent one from judging his deeds. For the curious, Hubbard’s father was an officer in the navy, often absent from the home, and his profession may have caused his son to equal this distant idol by inventing various seafaring heroics he was supposedly involved in, as well as the idea of the Sea Org. His mother worked as a clerk. His father was not jewish and did not die of cirrhosis. His mother was not part japanese.

A final note: In this series that is peculiarly averse to difficult issues of race and ethnicity – though it was made a year after the L.A. riots, no reference is made to those things which provoked that historical moment, and not a single character ever breaks into spanish – Kreutzer’s heritage provides one small insight. As so many of the characters end up being related to him, by the close of the series it becomes clear that a great chunk of the cast that we’ve been watching is both part jewish, and part japanese; the mongrel nation that has been feared for so long has already arrived. A suitable epigraph of this point is the line said by a japanese american character of the series, Hiro, before he commits suicide to avoid falling into enemy hands: “I come from a long line of tough bastards; my grandfather raided Dachau.”

⁷ There is an unexpected gender asymmetry in the quality of the villains; a defining trait of many soap operas is a great villainess, and even though I don’t watch soap operas, the names of the great ones are well known to all – Melrose Place‘s Amanda Woodward (Heather Locklear), Dynasty‘s Alexis Carrington (Joan Collins), All My Children‘s Erica Kane (Susan Lucci), etc. – they are women who act however they wish to achieve their own ends. One can understand the appeal of these characters in a world where so often women are shamed into restricted forms of behavior through social codes; these women have no shame, so they’ll act according to their own code to get what they want. Josie Ito should belong to this tradition, but she doesn’t. Because she has been conceived (in part, I think, because of the real-life figure she is based on) as acting solely in the service of her brother’s agenda, she lacks the appeal of being her own woman, acting for her own ends. Since neither her devotion to her brother, nor her faith are fully explored, she is simply, vividly, violently cruel – and the great female villains of this genre are more than simple sadists. Their appeal does not lie with their callousness, but because they are some of the few women characters to act according to their id, as so many men do, without restraint.

There is a separate and strange problem with the other major female character, Josie’s daughter, Grace. Her existence on the show is an unending nightmare, a series of the worst possibilities that can burden a woman: her husband starts cheating on her – despite the fact that she’s much better looking than her mate, she’s unable to keep him; her child turns out not to be her child; she commits herself to love him anyway, then she finds out that he’s a sociopathic murderer; her mother hates her; finally, her mother kills her. It is a life without salvation or relief, and what the intent here is, I’m uncertain. Perhaps an acerbic depiction of how nasty the lives of women on contemporary TV can be, in contrast to their TV husbands – Harry ends the series a hero with the girlfriend he cheated on Grace with. That there can be no possibility for anything like happiness for a good woman such as this in a soap opera, and that her best choice is to leave it, might be hinted at in an event that takes place after Grace’s death. An old lover, Hiro, who is much better looking than her husband, commits suicide, and pledges to join Grace in the afterlife; a woman like Grace can have a happiness and the companionship of a kind, good-looking man, but she needs to exit television life to have it.

(A few aesthetic changes have been made since publication, and some material has been added. No part of the essence of the analysis made, however, has been altered in any way.)

Anne Hathaway: Neither Plain Woman, Nor, Damnit, Woman of the Plains

From the assorted youtube commentary:

i wanted catwoman like the original

I assume that by “the original” you mean like the one in Batman Returns? Guess what THAT IS ALMOST NOTHING LIKE THE ORIGINAL VERSION. It wasn’t a bad character, but the history, personality, weird stupid nine lives thing–that was NEVER Catwoman. She’s supposed to be a THEIF, sometimes antihero with a somewhat soft spot for Batman.

Still, Anne didn`t have the decency to cut her hair, plus, the movie try to hard to make her likeable, she`s was supposed to be a prostitute too.

You’re dead wrong on that – Anne cut her hair on Les Miserables. Do you really think that what an actor does with their hair is up to the actor?! That’s all up to the director/stylists.

Then she should cut her hair and refuse to use hills on her own will, out of respect o the source material

“And refuse to use hills”? What does that even mean? And let me repeat this for you – what an actor wears IS NOT UP TO THE ACTOR. THAT IS UP TO THE DIRECTOR AND STYLISTS. Anne Hathaway does not decide what her outfit and hair and makeup will be like, do you actually think that? You think actors just walk on set and go “K this is what I’m wearing”

Some of them are divas, but I will give you this one, damn he or she.

Maureen Otis: A Mystery Inside A Mystery

(occasionally, some supporting text and links are in footnotes)

While reporters have given their utmost attention to anecdotal points and gaffes of political candidates, Maureen Otis has passed invisibly among great events, given no notice, a figure of almost no possible consequence; she is something like an attractive woman whose face blends into the crowd, of small notice in a photo taken on the cusp of some national tragedy, except: she slowly develops an eerie presence as you flick through other pictures of historical significance, and there she is, always off to the side, in every one of them.

I enjoy looking out for interesting people on the fringes, yet it was only after I read the excellent “The Gary Johnson Swindle and the Degradation of Third Party Politics” by Marc Ames that I came across her name. Ames isn’t dazzled by this idiosyncratic candidate as others have been, bur disgusted instead at what he sees as a very dirty, nasty trick by a few powerful men. He notices something that the roving herd which must invest every Mitt Romney “golly” with existential significance doesn’t have time for: the filing papers for this clean hands third party candidate’s PAC, “Our American Initiative”, are signed by two long time conservative operators, James Lacy and the near invisible woman, Maureen Otis.

(the Our American Initiative registration documents can be found here; I’ve also uploaded them to sendspace)

Before we move entirely to Otis, a short note on Lacy will indicate why Ames was so disturbed at seeing his name on the filing document, as well as hinting at Otis’s own skills. Lacy specializes in direct mail, often employing mailers that are deceptive, cajoling seniors that some unrelated new proposition will cause medicare cuts, or say, convincing liberals to vote against a minimum wage law by sending out a flier that has a panel of prominent democrats with the directive to vote against the new law¹. The politicians whose likenesses are used, are all in support of the law, and have no knowledge of the fliers.

Otis shares some of the skill set of Lacy, but where Lacy is a contained virus, Otis is closer to a wide-ranging avian flu. She runs a firm in Stafford, Texas, called American Caging and the name may or may not have a malign connotation. Caging, in this possible sense, came to broader attention when Monica Goodling, former justice department counsel, testified that the deputy attorney general had not been fully honest about his knowledge of an appointee’s involvement with “vote caging” in the 2004 election. “What the heck is vote caging, and why does nobody care?”, asked Dalia Lithwick in Slate. She then gave a succinct, solid answer:

Vote caging is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren’t living at (because they are, say, at college or at war).

The appointee, Tim Phillips, would pointedly disagree, in a short piece by Jane Mayer, “Bullets”:

“Caging is not a derogatory term,” he [Tim Phillips, the appointee in question] said, as soon as he got on the phone.”It’s a direct-mail term. It derives from caging categories of mail in steel shelves and files.” He said that the implication that he had run an operation to suppress African-American voters, which could be a violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, was “false and close to libelous.”

By contrast, the description that American Caging gives of its activities on its website leaves one puzzled. They appear to be involved in noble, charitable work for the betterment of those in urgent need, that has nothing to do with direct mail, with or without voter suppression, or elections at all:

Headquartered in Houston, Texas, American Caging is one of the leading providers of lockbox and data management services, founded in 1990. Since the company’s foundation, it has maintained its core focus for accurate, trustworthy and affordable lock box services.

Our first clients hired us, not because we were located in Washington, D.C. or because we had expensive processing equipment. They came to us because of the high level of customer service, our affordable pricing and because they trusted us to accurately process their contributions.

Over the years our company grew and expanded primarily because of referrals from existing clients who were part of the ACI family. In early 2001, the national headquarters of the American Red Cross joined ACI’s family. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, ACI processed hundreds of thousands of contributions from around the world to the American Red Cross. In 11 years, we went from a very small operation with a handful of clients, to the caging company primarily responsible for handling contributions during one of our worst national tragedies. We are proud and honored to be a part of the effort to heal the nation.

(Because occasionally these things disappear on the internet, I’ve put up a screenshot of this web page.)

This description is a mild evasion of what American Caging has done for a decade and a half, and for what it is well known for. It handles fundraising and related direct mail projects for two types of non-profits, standard benevolent entities as well as hard-line religious and conservative organizations. There is, of course, a tricky game being played here – many of these entities appear to be lobbying groups set up for the interests of a particular group, when in fact they’ve been designed for issue advocacy. Of the many possible examples of this is the “60 Plus Association”, whose name implies an advocacy group founded by seniors for the interests of seniors. They are nothing of the kind – they receive a large chunk of their money from pharmaceutical companies, as well as the Center to Protect Patients Rights, an anti-Obamacare non-profit run by Sean Noble, an associate of the Koch brothers². Other donors include the American Petroleum Institute and Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS³. This group, whose name suggests it lobbies for the interests of seniors, has fought against Obamacare, fought against the regulation of greenhouse gases, fought to have Yucca mountain used as a storage site for nuclear waste, and demanded, in the wake of the Katrina disaster, not to sacrifice lower taxes in favor of disaster relief, but rather, to rely on market solutions to help Katrina victims⁴. Most strikingly, ersatz seniors advocacy groups such as these, fought against legislation to reduce drug prices⁵. Beyond the gains of misleading voters of their true intents, another advantage to a non-profit lobbying for political causes that is not an explicit political advocacy group is that it does not have to disclose its donors – these are 501(c)(4) entities, the dark money that’s shaped recent elections: “How Nonprofits Spend Millions on Elections and Call it Public Welfare”.

The “60 Plus Association” lists Maureen E. (the E is for Elizabeth⁶) Otis as a legal contact, but it is one of only many that do so. To give an idea of her prolific skills, I list all the non-profits, which can be divided between benevolent organizations (the most prestigious of which is easily the Mayo Clinic) and political advocacy groups, that have her as a legal contact from a 2006 charity list from the secretary of state’s office of Tennessee. Another list of non-profits which heavily features Otis as legal contact is at the State of New Hampshire’s Justice Department – there is heavy overlap between the two lists, though some groups are on one and not the other; the list below should not be considered exhaustive of all groups with an Otis association, but it serves the purpose of showing how wide-ranging her reach is.

?

We may find her as the legal contact for cancer charity Cancer Schmancer (affiliated with Fran Drescher)⁷, Dress For Success (affiliated with make-up artist Bobbi Brown)⁸, the troubled project of the National Women’s History Museum⁹, a PAC supporting Texas republican Louis Gohmert¹⁰, as well as conservative powerhouses The Club for Growth¹¹, and The Richard Norman Company¹². She is the legal contact for Jewish Voice Ministries International, whose stated purpose is “bringing the Gospel to the Jew first”¹³, the Corrie Ten Boom Fellowship, a christian zionist organization whose purpose is to share god’s love with the jewish people¹⁴, and Policy Issues Institute, also known as Impeach Obama Campaign, which also lists James Lacy’s law office as its address¹⁵. Otis is the legal contact for the Christian Research Institute, a religious advocacy group that views the church of latter-day saints and the jehovah’s witnesses as non-christian cults¹⁶. Otis’s name is there as contact for the National Vaccine Center, a controversial group that fights against early childhood vaccinations¹⁷. She’s also there for Californians for Population Stabilization, a group opposed to legal immigrants¹⁸. She isn’t listed as the legal contact for The Society For Truth and Justice Inc. – there the contact is infamous pro-lifer Randall Terry – but the mailing address is once again, “4850 Wright Road, Ste 168 Stafford, TX 77477″, the address of American Caging and the one she often uses when she’s the legal contact; the very same place that shows up as the address listing for the pro-republican Patriot PAC¹⁹. She is the legal contact for the Declaration Alliance (also known as Secure Borders), a part of whose website manifesto I quote here:

Whereas the United States of America is under relentless attack by foreign invaders who neither obey our laws nor honor our institutions; and

Whereas this foreign force now numbers up to 20 to 30 million people within the geographic boundaries of the United States; and

Whereas these invaders are bankrupting the United States by overwhelming our medical, educational, and judicial systems; and

Whereas the foreigners sneaking into the United States have no plans to assimilate and become Americans, but instead desire to see the southwestern states transformed into Spanish-speaking provinces of Mexico; and

Whereas members of radical Islamic terror groups (classified by US Border Patrol as “OTMs or Other Than Mexicans”) continue to execute a plan of infiltration of the United States mainland through incursions along the border with Mexico, for the purpose of establishing terror cells and training operations within our homeland;

Therefore, let it be resolved that we, the people of the United States, citizens by birth or naturalization, do hereby DEMAND that the Congress of the United States immediately secure our border with Mexico, enforce current laws by arresting and deporting all criminal illegal aliens, and block all attempts to pass any type of amnesty legislation.

(Because occasionally these things disappear on the internet, I’ve put up screenshot of this web page.)

Of more relevant note for this post, as well as for the recent election, is that she is the legal contact for True The Vote²⁰, an anti-fraud vote group with Tea Party links, which was accused of harassment during the presidential election, and whose members were rejected as poll watchers in Ohio because names had been falsified on forms requesting observer status²¹. Those who attended a True the Vote training session spoke of being told to use cameras to intimidate voters and to do what was possible to prevent “questionable” voters from getting access to voting machines²². This may not fit the strict definition of “caging”, voter suppression through mail, but I think it unquestionably can be called voter suppression.

The place where Otis’s first achieves a mainstream prominence is not through her association with organizations clashing with those on the left, but those fighting amongst themselves on the right. In 2005, an anti-immigrant organization, the Minuteman Project, suffered a violent rupture when its two founders, Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist, fell into dispute with each other, with Gilchrist, along with many of his followers, leaving the group²³. A major point of contention was what had happened to money raised by its members for construction of a private border fence that was intended to replicate that used by Israel against Gaza, with a six foot trench and bullet-proof cameras, but ended up being just a barbed-wire cattle fence, fencing that costs a hundredth of the projected high-tech barrier²⁴. Gilchrist and others demanded to know what had happened to the donated funds, with Simcox refusing to give answers, dismissing those who continued to question him, and assuring critics that the funds were safely being taken care of by a reputable company, a reputable company called American Caging²⁵.

Otis released a statement, making clear that “since the day MCDC [Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the new name for the Minuteman Project after Gilchrist left] was incorporated, my company has acted as the comptroller and escrow agent for MCDC.”²⁶ When the arch-conservative Washington Times did a story on the brouhaha, Otis could not divulge any figures to the paper, as she had not been given permission to do so by Simcox or members of the board²⁷. That she handled donations for the group only hinted at the various ways she was interconnected with the story. She was the MCDC’s board secretary²⁸; she was the legal contact for the aforementioned Declaration Alliance, which sometimes appears to be an arm of the former presidential campaign of Alan Keyes, and not only did the Declaration Alliance give substantial funding to the MCDC, but the MCDC’s website claimed that it was a project of the Declaration Alliance²⁹; following Gilchrist’s departure, the MCDC contracted with Diener Consulting for public relations work – Diener Consulting was an American Caging client, run by Philip Sheldon, son of Louis Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition (listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group), for whom Otis was listed as legal contact³⁰; Philip Sheldon was previously known for obtaining the names of donors to Terry Schiavo’s legal fund for the use of Response Unlimited, which provides mailing lists to conservative organizations. He now helped this same Response Unlimited obtain access to MCDC’s donor rolls for its own mailing list purposes³¹; Response Unlimited was, of course, an American Caging client³². This company, American Caging, was involved in all this at the same time the Texas state comptroller had listed them as “not in good standing” because of their non-compliance with state tax requirements³³.

This tumult in 2006 is where Otis achieves her greatest personal prominence³⁴, but she had already shown up, in a very brief cameo, at a much more important debate. The year before, when the Bush administration was attempting to push forward a program of social security privatization, private retirement accounts as a replacement for traditional social security. Given that a major opponent of the privatization move was the AARP, a lobby composed of seniors acting in the interests of seniors, a useful opponent to the AARP might be a lobby ostensibly designed to serve the interests of seniors, when in fact it was actually funded by interests attempting to craft their own legislation, in prescription drug laws and pension reform. We might imagine this entity to be something like the United Seniors Association, also known as USA Next, also known as Americans Lobbying Against Rationing of Medical Care (ALARM), USA, chaired by Charles Jarvis, a former aide to Iowa Republican Charles “Assume Deer Dead” Grassley and a former employee of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family³⁵. Though incorporated in 1991 by Richard Viguerie, a conservative with a genius for direct mail, it was in that last decade of the twentieth century something ike a creature that barely moved above the ocean’s surface³⁶. One of the few times that I’ve been able to come across its presence then was when Pete Stark, California congressman, submitted mail from the group to the federal postal inspector, arguing that the non-profit was committing mail fraud:

I wish to report a postal fraud by United Seniors Association, 3900 Jermantown Road, Suite 450, Fairfax, VA 22030 and urge your immediate action to impose appropriate penalties.

Enclosed are two mailings from the United Seniors Association (USA) urgently asking for money on the basis of false pretenses and representations. The USA letter contains innumerable inaccuracies and errors of fact. It is so blatantly wrong that it cannot be a simple act of stupidity, but is a calculated scheme to frighten Medicare beneficiaries out of money. In particular, in the letter of September 22, 1997, the paragraph on the first page which reads `Here’s what this appalling new law does: if you are a Medicare patient and you want to personally pay for a treatment which Medicare does not want to cover–it will be nearly impossible to do so. . ..’

This statement, repeated in numerous ways throughout the mailings, is false.

Medicare beneficiaries have always been able to contract privately with doctors for services which Medicare does not cover. Nothing in any law has changed that right. Under certain conditions, the new law actually extends that `right’ to services which Medicare does cover–a new right to be billed more than the Medicare payment rate by physicians, which did not exist before. See enclosed memoranda.

I also urge you to investigate for fraud the enclosed recent Seniors Coalition [yes, indeedy: Otis is listed as legal contact for this group] mailing (11166 Main Street, Suite 302, Fairfax, VA 22030). This mailing calls for `an emergency contribution’ to help fund a lawsuit on the private contracting issue. The cover letter is rather extraordinary in that it asks people to send money to help fight something for which the writer has `no time to explain.’ The statements in the letter over Mary Martin’s signature is false: `your health care will be rationed in a Clinton HMO.’ The enclosed news articles contain numerous errors and misrepresentations. I believe that this mailing may also be a mail fraud because it uses false statements in the cover letter and inaccurate or incomplete statements in the news articles to scare people into sending money to support plans for a lawsuit. I know of no such lawsuit or any grounds for it, and I ask your investigators to determine whether there is in fact such a planned use of the money bilked from the public.

It was in 2001 as prescription drug legislation was being crafted, that this organization achieved a higher profile. It received $1.5 million in donations that year from PhRMA, a trade association for U.S. drug companies, then received close to $25 million over the next two years from a group that can only be guessed at – because USA Next is a non-profit, ostensibly non-partisan organization, it does not have to disclose its donors, and it must be gleaned from what’s there in the IRS filings. The donor does begin with the letter “P”; its spokesman would neither confirm nor deny that the donor was PhRMA³⁷. A 2004 article noted that though USA Next claimed a million members, its most recent tax return claimed zero income from individual member donations³⁸.

In 2002, this organization spent over $14 million in ads defending republicans on how they voted on a prescription drug bill³⁹. In 2005, they picked a fight with the AARP, which was opposed to the privatization of social security. “I’m trying to kill, destroy the bad public policy of AARP,” said Jarvis at the time⁴⁰. It was this fight that gave the group greater prominence, causing Josh Marshall, of Talking Points Memo, to note that United Seniors Association was “affiliates” with O’Neill Marketing Company. It must be a very tight affiliation, Marshall noted, since USA Next listed as its address 3900 Jermantown Road, Suite 450, while O’Neill listed its address as 3900 Jermantown Road, Suite 450A⁴¹. Marshall then gave this succinct observation:

Despite my now living in New York I sometimes still feel the need to translate from Beltwayese into standard English. So in this case, in DC-speak we would say that United Seniors Association is ‘colocated’ with O’Neill Marketing Company whereas in standard English we would say that United Seniors Association ‘is’ O’Neill Marketing Company.

Other O’Neill clients were: Empower America/Citizens for Sound Economy, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the Republican Governors Association, and the Republican National Committee.

Jarvis, again at the time: “I’m very aggressively pro-free-market solutions.” He would continue: “I am very aggressively finding people who agreed with our rock `n’ roll free-market approach.”⁴² Part of Jarvis’s rock’n'roll approach was to try and use the cultural wars agains the AARP – they, USA Next, were for mainstream values. The AARP was not. This was the controversial ad they put out to make the difference clear, exposing the real agenda of the long-time seniors association. It caused an immediate and hostile backlash, not towards the AARP, but the craven opportunists who had created it:

USA Next was sued by the couple featured in the photo⁴³. Jarvis, his rock’n'roll lifestyle undeterred, had no regrets about using the photo except for not obtaining permission first⁴⁴. It was the Scaramouche Blog entry, “Agenda Makers & The Real Agenda” which noticed another important detail. I apologize for the melodramatic bold, but I think this warrants it:

The other day this ad was running on the conservative site The American Spectator. It clicked through to USA Next.org which is running Swift Boat Vet’s type campaign against the AARP which opposes Bush’s destruction of Social Security.

So who is behind USA Next? According to a Whois search the site is registered to

William Brindley
3900 Jermantown Road, suite 450
Fairfax, VA 22030
tel. (703)359-6500

So who else shares that address with them? There is United Seniors Association, Inc. or USA, Inc, which morphed into USA Next. I ran another search on the phone number. Again, there is United Seniors Association, Inc. (USA, Inc.), also known, as ALARM -Americans Lobbying Against Rationing of Medical Care, USA (notice the lovely choice of acronyms) and I saw there is also Maureen E. Otis sharing the same address.

Now if you had had thriving business in registering fundraising groups in, lets say, the State of Washington you would most likely have a mention of that on your website. I can only speculate on why one would play that down unless various connections weren’t meant to be known. Otis is tied to The Richard Norman Company also which has carried on some fundraising activities for USA/USA Next Inc. and funneled quite sum of money [sic] to the Swifties.

The links, in this ever-changing web, no longer point to the same thing – Jarvis is now contact person for USA Next. Otis now always uses the Stafford, Texas address, not one in Virginia. What her previous ties to the Richard Norman Company were, I’m not sure. However, she is still named as the legal contact for this entity, which is listed as a commercial fundraiser. What charities have used the services of this fundraiser? The Alliance for Marriage, the Alliance for Marriage Foundation, Californians for Population Stabilization, the Club For Growth, the Declaration Alliance, the Monepelier Foundation, and True the Vote – all with, of course, I-think-you-can-guess as their legal contact.

There are no doubt many other points in recent history when Otis shows up – but I move forward to her next interesting moment that I came across in my brief investigation. In 2011, the National Organization of Women found itself envelopped in civil strife, with the traditionally liberal group taken over by a conservative national leadership, its state chapters in open revolt.

Angie King, the San Luis Obispo chapter co-ordinator for NOW, sent out an open letter on this last year. I quote the opening paragraphs, which give succinct summary of what was taking place⁴⁵:

Since 2008, when the current national board of directors for the National Organization of Women was elected by only 8 votes, following a scorched earth campaign by the current officers, troubling news keeps leaking out of Washington, D.C., where national NOW has its headquarter offices. At first, the problem was that there was no news. The transparency of former administrations in keeping the grassroots membership informed of executive decisions ceased. Access to the board meetings was restricted. Dues rebates, the heart blood of the local chapters’ ability to maintain a presence, were cut off. Rumors circulated about illegal (or at least bylaw violative) financial accounting instituted by this national board.

Remember when Shelly Mandell introduced Sarah Palin in Los Angeles, calling herself “president of LA NOW” even though she had been forcibly dismissed some years earlier? Remember the Harpers (October 2010) article by Susan Faludi about the improper financial shenanigans at the national NOW level? Well, this is worse.

CA NOW has held numerous discussions among its members how to respond to the issues raised. In the beginning, we felt it better to continue the positive messages and actions we are known for, without airing our “dirty linen,” so to speak. With each revelation, however, came the realization that we can’t continue to maintain that silence when it comes to the underlying reason we belong to NOW.

The perception by state level organizations of NOW and many chapters (including our own) was that the national NOW had been subverted by a dedicated tight-knit group of anti-woman, probably anti-feminist, women committed to the goal of ruining the integrity of NOW in the public’s eye and thus, neutralizing all the years of advocacy on behalf of women and girls.

I now move to the letter where a certain figure shows up, again. I bold her appearance.

In June this year, CA NOW became the latest target for the cabal. There are many reasons why CA NOW has been targeted. We forced national NOW to acknowledge that Mandell was not president of LA NOW and to hold an election; we complained about the lack of dues rebates in a specially called meeting, which has caused the national organization to resume sending checks. Perhaps our defense of NOW alarmed the increasingly conservative national board, who sought to replace the long-standing infrastructure of CA NOW with a known right-wing anti-woman lobbyist, as the “official” contact in the state for NOW Foundation Inc.

First, CA NOW received a request from the executive vice president of National NOW in June requesting it agree to Maureen Otis as our state contact. National NOW had been unable to register in California due to a name conflict with CA NOW. Attached to the request was the letter from the Secretary of State rejecting the registration, addressed to the Law Office of Maureen E. Otis in Texas. We were confused because NOW has been registered in California for many years so this appeared to be a new registration, which didn’t make sense.

Obviously, CA NOW never gave permission to file for this new registration to do business in California because National NOW and the Foundation are already registered in the state. Despite already being registered, the California Secretary of State accepted the new filing with Maureen E. Otis’ name, contact information in Texas, and Melvin D. Green as the agent for process, with an address listed as 5466 Santa Monica Blvd. #106, Los Angeles, CA 90029. This National Organization for Women’s agent for service of process is a Dollar Discount Store. A people search fails to connect Melvin D. Green to the address above, and the only Melvin D. Green found in the Los Angeles area is deceased. A California Secretary of State website search shows Melvin D. Green’s name on a suspended corporation C0850195 filed and suspended in 1977 named NOW Incorporated with the same address sans the suite number. This search may explain where the name came from, but not why service for process for the National Organization for Women Foundation would be a Dollar Discount Store.

Since the letter from the Secretary of State to Maureen E. Otis in Texas was troubling to us, we began our research on Maureen E. Otis. What we discovered from a simple Google search on Maureen E. Otis is disturbing. We discovered that she is the acting secretary of Freedom Watch, a Minuteman group out of Texas as well as being legal counsel for the Franklin Center, both of which have ties to the Koch brothers. Maureen E. Otis operates her law office out of an organization she leads called “American Caging” where she has established charities for the Impeach Obama Foundation, Club for Growth, Alliance for Marriage Foundation, Border Fence Project, American Conservative Union Foundation, American Patriots for Conservative Action, Committee for Justice, Common Good, Leadership Institute, OUR America Initiative, the Minutemen Project and countless more right-wing organizations. Her own website (American Caging) lists such clients as the Declaration Alliance, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, and the Traditional Values Coalition. The Declaration Alliance runs a petition on their website to disbar and impeach Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.

If that wasn’t bad enough, we were left speechless to discover that Maureen E. Otis also works for the Terry Family Trust whose purpose to is help Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, to recover from legal victories won by NOW and others.

I give a further lengthy quote from this letter as to what Ms. King thinks the motive behind the takeover strategy might be, and bold the most pertinent part:

As a side note, but related, a search on the Secretary of State’s website using NOW and National Organization for Women revealed that the conservative San Rafael law firm Nielsen Merksamer filed incorporation papers on June 20, 2011 for a “new” California NOW non-profit, with the purpose “to promote healthy public debate over the critical issues facing California, advance meaningful reform and hold public officials accountable.” Merksamer represents the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization of primarily conservative members of state legislatures, and the Free Enterprise Coalition, a conservative organization. We take note of this new non-profit corporation using our brand because this occurred at or near the time that Otis was hired. Whether these are independent acts to corrupt the NOW brand or acts in concert is of no matter. The issue remains – the corruption of the NOW brand with right wing associations.

California NOW members, through California NOW, have no control over the National Organization or Women (NOW), the use of its trademark or the National Organization for Women Foundation and its trademark. That responsibility primarily resides with the National Organization or Women Board of Directors. It isn’t hard to see the advantage to the right wing if they can control the NOW logo. Our logo has become a trusted symbol of initiatives and candidates who support women. We must act decisively in order for that symbol to retain its meaning.

I digress briefly to an episode that does not involve Otis directly – a brief mention of a near successful attempt to do what was done with NOW, a takeover of a liberal organization in order to use its brand to advance a reactionary agenda. This would be the 2004 attempt to put into place an anti-immigrant leadership of the environmental group, the Sierra Club. It is described in these interview excerpts with J. Robert Cox, former Sierra Club president with the invaluable Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report, “Former Sierra Club Director Discusses Hostile Takeover Attempt by Anti-Immigrant Activists “. I bold significant parts⁴⁶:

INTELLIGENCE REPORT: What was your first personal contact with anti-immigration activists interested in the Sierra Club?

ROBBIE COX: When I was president of the Club for the first time. In 1996, volunteer leaders in the Club’s population program approached the board of directors to alert us that new members were coming into the Sierra Club wanting to push immigration as an issue. These leaders thought this was simply inappropriate for the Club, because we had no evidence that U.S. immigration was detrimental to the environment.

So we agreed that year to refine the existing policy by adopting a statement of neutrality on U.S. immigration.

COX: Once the board adopted the neutrality policy, it apparently motivated what we thought was simply a small group of Sierra Club members who began to object. The board held steadfast – we simply did not see the evidence. This group then initiated the ballot proposition process.

The Sierra Club is very open and democratic in its governing structure. It not only allows all its members, over 700,000 people, to elect its board of directors. It also allows members to put forward a ballot proposition, if they gather enough signatures, that can alter the Club’s existing policies.

So this group organized itself as SUSPS, or Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization, and began a petition drive to get their proposition on the ballot. This happened in 1997, and the election occurred in the spring of 1998.

IR: Do you know who the principals of SUSPS were then?

COX: One principal actor was Ben Zuckerman. Zuckerman had formerly been a director of an anti-immigration group called Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, which is a group whose name does not suggest its goal of restricting immigration into the U.S. Zuckerman was also an officer on the board of another group called Californians for Population Stabilization, or CAPS.

We frankly didn’t know some of the people working with him at the time. I think we underestimated how serious this was in 1998.

IR: In the next few years, anti-immigration candidates Ben Zuckerman and Paul Watson ran for the board – both of them unsuccessfully at first, but winning in the end. Did you realize then that the anti-immigration effort had not yet concluded?

COX: We weren’t aware at the time of an organized effort, either within the Sierra Club or stretching beyond it with some of the outside allies that we now know they have. But this began to change in the last two years.

In 2002, Zuckerman ran a second time and was elected. This time, he dramatically altered his ballot statement and began to speak of his concerns about the Club being more visible on college campuses and about funding for our conservation program.

He did mention population, too, but he never talked about immigration, as he had in his first campaign. He was elected that year.

IR: Since winning, has Zuckerman discussed immigration with the board?

COX: He has asked for time in many board sessions to make speeches to us about the importance of immigration, often citing non-environmental reasons to reverse our neutrality policy, most recently having to do with post-9/11 security concerns. He has also cited concerns about U.S. workers being displaced by immigrants.

At one point, we asked about the link between the environment and a story that he sent us about illegal crossings on the southern border. As far as I could see, the only documented environmental impact was that they were littering the desert with water bottles and trash – there was a photo of discarded bottles at a campsite.

Most recently, he sent to several of us on the board an article from VDARE.com that claimed that Hispanics were spreading disease and crime in the U.S., and that “Hispandering politicians” were allowing this to happen. I was quite upset by that.

IR: What happened after Zuckerman’s election in 2002?

COX: I think SUSPS realized they had a winning strategy.

The following year, 2003, they ran three more candidates, including Doug LaFollette, the Wisconsin secretary of state, and, once again, Paul Watson. They referred to many conservation issues and to population in general, but never mentioned immigration.

Two of them, LaFollette and Watson, were elected.

So by May of last year, we had begun to realize that we had an organized effort to put in place enough directors to take control of the board.

If Watson is to be believed, the intent is not only to seize control of the board, but also of the Club’s assets and credibility – the reputation of the Club itself.

IR: What ultimately is at stake here?

COX: I think the very identity and character of the Sierra Club is at stake if these outside forces succeed in taking it over. We will lose the historical values that have made the Club what it is – a grassroots-driven organization whose members care deeply about the protection of the wild places of the Earth, human health and the quality of the environment overall.

This takeover attempt would ultimately fail, with Sierra Club members alerted to what was going on, and the anti-immigrant candidates receiving only a fraction of the votes in the next election. The connection to Otis is indirect, but it is there: Ben Zuckerman, one of the principal actors in the takeover was an officer in the anti-immigrant group Californians for Population Stabilization, a group funded by anti-immigrant activist John Tanton, who also founded Federation for American Immigration Reform and U.S. English (FAIR), as well as being involved with the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF) and California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR)⁴⁷. FAIR, AICF, and CCIR have all been designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Foundation. Californians for Population Stabilization, in which Zuckerman was an officer, has as its legal contact on its registration papers a Maureen E. Otis.

We now have the tactic of what was already done with non-profits, the 60 Plus Association or USA Next, these organizations outwardly appearing to be lobby groups for constituents, when they are in actual fact lobby groups for industry, taken to its next, logical step: grabbing an existing progressive brand, and transforming its function to one’s own ends. The brand persists, but its objectives are now those of whatever group conquers it.

This, I emphasize, is the next logical step – but not the final one. This piece ends where it begins, with my reading “The Gary Johnson Swindle and the Degradation of Third Party Politics” by Marc Ames: that article gives succinct, acerbic summary of the past works of Gary Johnson, Jim Lacy, and Maureen Otis – though because their focus is broader than mine, they do not quite give Otis the scope her story is due. One more character of crucial importance in “Swindle” I have made no mention of yet is Roger Stone, a former Nixon dirty trickster; I quote from a Matt Labash profile, “Roger Stone, Political Animal”, cited in “Swindle” of a trick he pulled during the 1980 presidential election to split the vote of New York state, delivering its electoral votes to Reagan:

Around the time [Stone] became northeast chairman of Reagan’s 1980 campaign, he had another awakening when he started working with the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, former McCarthy henchman and also a Reagan supporter. “I’m still kind of a neophyte,” Stone admits, “still kind of thinking everything’s on the level. ‘Cause the truth is, nothing’s on the level.” At a 1979 meeting at Cohn’s Manhattan townhouse, he was introduced to major mobster and Cohn client Fat Tony Salerno. “Roy says to Tony, ‘You know, Tony, everything’s fixed. Everything can be handled.’ Tony says, ‘Roy, the Supreme Court’ Roy says, ‘Cost a few more dollars.’” Stone loved Cohn: “He didn’t give a s– what people thought, as long as he was able to wield power. He worked the gossip columnists in this city like an organ.”

Stone, who going back to his class elections in high school has been a proponent of recruiting patsy candidates to split the other guy’s support, remembers suggesting to Cohn that if they could figure out a way to make John Anderson the Liberal party nominee in New York, with Jimmy Carter picking up the Democratic nod, Reagan might win the state in a three-way race. “Roy says, ‘Let me look into it.’” Cohn then told him, “‘You need to go visit this lawyer’–a lawyer who shall remain nameless–’and see what his number is.’ I said, ‘Roy, I don’t understand.’ Roy says, ‘How much cash he wants, dumbf–.’” Stone balked when he found out the guy wanted $125,000 in cash to grease the skids, and Cohn wanted to know what the problem was. Stone told him he didn’t have $125,000, and Cohn said, “That’s not the problem. How does he want it?”

Cohn sent Stone on an errand a few days later. “There’s a suitcase,” Stone says. “I don’t look in the suitcase . . . I don’t even know what was in the suitcase . . . I take the suitcase to the law office. I drop it off. Two days later, they have a convention. Liberals decide they’re endorsing John Anderson for president. It’s a three-way race now in New York State. Reagan wins with 46 percent of the vote. I paid his law firm. Legal fees. I don’t know what he did for the money, but whatever it was, the Liberal party reached its right conclusion out of a matter of principle.”

I ask him how he feels about this in retrospect. He seems to feel pretty good–now that certain statutes of limitations are up. He cites one of Stone’s Rules, by way of Malcolm X, his “brother under the skin”: “By any means necessary.”

The details on Lacy, Otis, and Stone in “Swindle”, damning to the Johnson campaign in and of themselves, are there to put forward a thesis: that the Johnson campaign was intended to split votes just as the Anderson candidacy did, between a democrat and a libertarian, anti-security state, anti-drug war candidate, thus delivering the election to Mitt Romney. Though “Swindle” does not mention it, Stone was also involved in two earlier efforts to shape the vote through outsider candidates. In 2000, he worked to have Pat Buchannan made the head of the reform party, then made threats of revealing information on a possible out-of-wedlock child of Buchanan: whether the result of this or something else, Buchanan led a vapor campaign in the general election, leaving Bush without a third-party challenger on the right, while Gore had to give up some of his vote to Nader. In 2007, Stone would brag in an interview of helping to destroy the reform party, because, in his view, it had cost the republicans the white house in 1992 and 1996⁴⁸. In 2004, Stone backed Al Sharpton in the democratic primaries, with Sharpton pushing the message that the democratic party was unresponsive to the demands of black voters. The intent appears to have been to either dissuade black voters from voting that year, or maybe even move them over to vote for George W. Bush – both stories come from the diligent work of the Village Voice‘s Wayne Barrett, whose work on Sharpton and, especially, Stone, is invaluable, a reporter who exercises an aggressive insight this world can never have too much of⁴⁹.

I include the relevant sections of “The libertarian/marijuana conspiracy to swing the election” by Dave Sirota, another article employed by Ames to further his hypothesis:

Here in the center of the Intermountain West, we have polls showing a nail-bitingly close race between the Democratic and Republican nominees for president. We have a chief election official, Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who has tried both to engage in mass voter purges and to block the mailing of ballots to eligible voters, all while openly saying a “good election” is one in which “Republicans win.” On the ballot, we also have a headline-grabbing ballot initiative about marijuana legalization and a popular former two-term governor of a neighboring state, Gary Johnson, running a Libertarian Party presidential candidacy.

The armchair pundits in Washington and New York typically write off these latter two factors as forces destined to aid the president’s reelection campaign. The conventional wisdom is rooted in oversimplified cartoons and caricatures of voter preferences. Essentially, the idea is that the marijuana measure will bring out liberal, Obama-loving hippies, yuppies and crunchies from Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins, while the libertarian candidate’s campaign will siphon conservative votes that would otherwise go to Mitt Romney, thus making Johnson the Republican “version of Ralph Nader,” as the New York Times predictably projects. But that kind of hackneyed red-versus-blue story line – so prevalent in the national media echo chamber – ignores how these forces are playing out on the ground.

This is particularly true considering the intersection of the pot initiative and the Johnson campaign. Despite the punditocracy’s narratives to the contrary, the former New Mexico governor has already been taking as much – or more – support away from Obama in Colorado as he has been from Romney, according to polls. And Johnson’s anti-Obama effect could become much more pronounced in the next few weeks, thanks to how his supporters are deftly leveraging all hoopla around the marijuana initiative to sharpen their candidate’s appeal and message to disaffected Democrats.

This message is not just word-of-mouth anymore; it has been elevated to the big leagues by a new voter outreach campaign. Indeed, a new automated telephone call focused on the pot measure and playing to liberal disappointment is right now hitting Democratic households in Colorado. Here’s what the message says (you can listen to the full audio below):

Hello fellow Democrat. Like you I was thrilled to vote for Barack Obama in 2008. In 2008, candidate Obama promised not to use the Justice Department to prosecute medical marijuana in states where it was legal. But the real Obama did just that, more than doubling prosecutions, putting people in prisons and shutting down medical marijuana facilities in Colorado. That’s not the change you wanted on health freedom. But you can still be a force for hope and change by voting for Gary Johnson.

Officially funded by the Libertas Institute⁵⁰, the message is accurate in its factual broad strokes. Candidate Obama did explicitly promise to restrain the Justice Department from prosecuting medical marijuana offenses in medical marijuana states, and President Obama has nonetheless overseen an intense Justice Department crackdown on medical marijuana in those states, directly contradicting his pledge.

Sirota, however, is skeptical of any larger plan:

Is this a brilliant GOP conspiracy theory? In other words, is the libertarian candidate deliberately trying to help Romney, as Obama partisans will no doubt grouse? Almost certainly not, as Johnson is no fan of Romney, to say the least. He has run a consistently honest and principled campaign that has been equal – and equally harsh – in its criticism of both parties.

When I first read Ames’ piece I thought the most important revelation was the simple collection of very unsavoury characters this supposedly clean hands candidate had gathered round him. That there was some larger goal involved in the candidacy, I waved away. I am now, however, of a different mind.

I should preface the following by saying that I am not a conspiracy theorist: I believe that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the thesis that Oswald killed Kennedy. Shakespeare is not Marlowe or anyone else, but Shakespeare. The harmful propaganda surrounding the illuminati are insightfully discussed and utterly destroyed in Umberto Eco’s Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, Arthur Goldwag’s The New Hate, and Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch. I do not, however, think the third party thesis requires a terribly complex or all-encompassing conspiracy.

To address Sirota’s point, I don’t think that it necessary to dispute Johnson being at the same skeptical nexus as Nader, a man critical of both parties. I slightly dispute this idea – I do not remember Nader being as Janus-like as Johnson, who is both critical of america’s war machine and at the same argues for strike teams to Uganda, commits himself to something like continued drone warfare, and promises that if Iran were to test a nuclear warhead it would be wiped from the face of the earth⁵¹ – but I can concede this point without issue. I do not think that Mr. Sirota would contest the point that despite Nader’s bipartisan criticism, he ultimately had a far greater impact on votes cast to Gore than to Bush, that this asymmetry exists, despite Nader’s equal animus of both parties.

So, I think it can be agreed that in a tight election like 2012, a candidate equivalent to Nader would be very useful to someone who wanted Romney to win. The only issue then is whether the candidate must necessarily be a knowing participant, and I do not see why this is necessary at all. All that is required is that he take certain positions which will cause some to vote for him, rather than Obama, and we have a Romney victory. There is also, when invoking the word “conspiracy” the suggestion of a large group of people being involved, and I think this is equally unnecessary. All this tactic requires is the money needed to run a campaign, which is an extraordinarily small amount given what some billionaires were spending on anti-Obama ads, and a few people who might conceive a campaign and lightly design it⁵².

Who might implement such a campaign? A man who managed to get minimum wage legislation voted down because democrats could be made to misperceive that prominent democratic politicians were against it. A man who once placed a third party candidate on the ballot to win a liberal state for a republican president. A woman who has been involved in the creation of a seniors lobby which in actual fact lobbied for the interests of prescription medicine, receiving no donations from seniors. A woman who was involved in trying to take over California NOW, so that a progressive logo might be used to deceptively endorse anti-progressive, anti-liberal causes and candidates. Someone who is expert in achieving a political end by causing the voter to think that a group is for their interests, when this group is being manipulated so that this voter’s very interests are defeated. People speak of conspiracy, but why would a false front presidential candidate be any different from a false front lobby like the 60 Plus Association or USA Next? All it would require is a slightly vain candidate (and what presidential candidate is not slightly vain?) lacking the necessary funds for a run for office, which it would then receive from certain large donors – donors who might well appear to be supporting a libertarian candidate, but whose purpose was instead to elect Romney. This does not require the involvement of anyone else, the RNC, the supreme court, anybody – just a few political consultants and a chunk of money. What is so complicated about that? How is that any more difficult than the creation of USA Next or the takeover of a long-time feminist organization?

Two notable details might be mentioned in the final chapter of this story. The first are possible financial irregularities on the part of the Johnson campaign. The Johnson PAC, Our America Initiative, the one whose registration carries the names of Otis and Lacy, was suspended after it failed to file quarterly reports with the FEC listing its donors: “Johnson’s PAC suspended for financial reporting violation” by Peter St. Cyr. Given that it doesn’t show up on any FEC filings, or such sunlight sites as Open Secrets, this violation may have kept them from ever continuing in the general election. There is also the question raised in “Complaint filed with FEC questions Johnson campaign’s use of funds” by Maggie Haberman, for which I was unable to find any answer: who paid off Johnson’s primary debts, making it easier to run in the general election? However, the main focus of this piece is an FEC complaint filed by Addison Smith, arguing that Johnson’s monthly expenditure listings, which did not distinguish between expenditures for media, political advisers, and travel, violated FEC regulations⁵³. A trouble-making email sent out that month raised a similar question, which tried to make the case that money was not being spent on media, but on advisers – that the campaign was a scheme to simply move money from donors to the consultants.

The major article that deals with this email, “Johnson Allies Reject Spending Charges” by Rosie Gray, makes clear that media buys were being made – though it also stresses that the campaign money seems to be going entirely to companies associated with campaign advisers. The article cites an expense for media which is the same mix of media buys, campaign travel, and, presumably, adviser pay, mentioned in the FEC complaint – all three mixed in a sum going to an entity labeled “Political Advisors”⁵⁴. The Johnson post-election filing had $140K going for media, “FEC Disbursements by Purpose”, and almost twice as much,$277K, going to political advisers, “FEC Disbursements by Payee”. Both charges, the FEC complaint and the email, were dismissed by the campaign as political attacks – Addison Smith, who filed the FEC complaint, is a long-time republican, though without visible associations to the Romney campaign⁵⁵. Roger Stone emphasized that he was working for the campaign on a volunteer, pro bono basis⁵⁶. This may well be true; however, it should be stressed that Stone worked pro bono on Carl Paladino’s 2010 campaign for governor, a campaign whose expenses were ably dissected in “Carl Paladino: The Dirty Details in His Campaign Filings”, by Wayne Barrett, where he discovered huge sums being paid out to Stone associates Dianne Thorne and Michael Caputo, as well as payments associated with Stone from a previous lobbying effort⁵⁷. He further cites the accounts given by Larry Klayman, the anti-gay hardline evangelical who ran for the Florida Senate with Stone as a consultant; Klayman says that Stone barely did any work and bled his campaign dry⁵⁸. Caputo was not with Johnson, but Thorne was⁵⁹. We may see here the possible mix of venality and practical purpose exploiting donors who think they are giving to the libertarian cause, when they are contributing to something entirely different, the salaries of sundry advisers, and not for the end purpose of furthering libertarian ideas, but to split the vote to obtain a republican victory. This might be seen as part of a larger tradition, brilliantly described by Rick Perlstein in “The Long Con: Mail-order conservatism”, with enthusiastic conservative donors gouged again and again, with only a fraction of the money sent to a conservative cause going to the cause itself, the healthy majority ending up in the grabby hands of consultants far richer than the donors will ever be. We might see this as well in the possible exploitation of the minutemen group, the money of the anti-immigrant faithful not going to any border fence, but to a clump of groups which all have one woman as their contact, the addresses of these generous zealots soon taken into their maw as well, for even more donations.

This, of course, returns us to our main character, and the other strange detail of this final part of the story. It comes from the twitter profile of Otis. She lists herself as owner of two businesses, one of which is American Caging. She lists, however, something else:

The blacked out portions, by the way, are family details only of relevance to Otis herself. If Ms. Otis ever reads this, and wonders why I took that step, it’s because of a concept unfamiliar to her, of having a conscience.

Back to the chase: in her profile, she says she’s the treasurer for Restore America’s Voice PAC. This is a PAC that worked exclusively against Obama. Why is someone who sponsors a third-party candidate, also treasurer of a PAC that works against only one of his opponents? This is leaving aside that many of the non-profit advocacy groups for which Otis is legal contact are entirely counter to libertarian ideas on immigration, whether it’s Californians for Population Stabilization, or the MCDC, for which she is not only legal contact, but on whose board she served. I ask these questions, wondering who is this mystery woman, and what is the mystery which surrounds her: was there an actual attempt this year to employ a third party stooge in order to elect a republican president? Here is a more mundane, rhetorical one: would anyone consider such behavior more outrageous than the voter intimidation of True the Vote, or the deceptions of USA Next?

I move towards a conclusion, with a piece on the “North Decoder” website from a year ago, “The Koch Brothers’ Slow Poisoning of America” by Chet (just like Nico, you get a pseudonymous four letters, and that’s it). The author of this piece writes passionately, despairingly, of the way press coverage of North Dakota is slowly being taken over by outside, well-funded conservative interests:

A story in the Grand Forks Herald originated with a Plains Daily blog post about the University of North Dakota using a UND Foundation aircraft to ferry people to and from Bismarck to (among other things) testify on issues relevant to the University. Plains Daily’s capitol beat “reporter” — the author of the UND plane story — is Kate Bommarito. Before becoming a fake “journalist,” Kate worked on Kevin Cramer’s 2010 Republican Party campaign for the U.S. House. She has been active in North Dakota Republican Party politics for quite a while. Her husband, I’m told, is Mike Bommarito, a former ND GOP executive director. When Kevin Cramer’s campaign for Congress was caught buying support of delegates to the GOP convention by paying convention fees a couple years ago, the Bommarito family name came up as the conduit for some of those payments.

He traces the source of the funds to an entity located in a small-town mini-mall:

One of the shops in the mini-mall is the Rushmore Mountain Taffy and Gift Shop. Like virtually every other retail store in town, the taffy shop closes when the Musical shuts down for the “Winter” right around Labor Day and will open back up again some time just before Memorial Day.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at the taffy shop from the outside — or inside, for that matter — but for several years now, it has been the legal home to “The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity,” a multi-million dollar right-wing non-profit set up for the sole purpose of facilitating indoctrination of Americans through the creative use of old-fashioned, right-wing misinformation and fake, slanted “news.”

The Franklin Center (FC) is a non-profit organization that uses a “post office box” in the United Parcel Service Store in Bismarck. The UPS Store provides a mail forwarding service to the folks at the Franklin Center. But the taffy shop, until very recently, was FC’s “official” mailing address. North Dakota law requires nonprofits to have a “physical address,” too, so citizens have a place to go if they want to ask for a copy of records nonprofits have to make available for public inspection, or to serve court papers on the organization.

Yes, dear reader, you know what comes next.

The Franklin Center was officially incorporated in North Dakota in January of 2009. The Secretary of State (SOS) 2009 filings list a Texas attorney’s address — actually a “caging” operation — as the organization’s mailing address and the local UPS Store mail-forwarding service PO Box as it’s physical address

The Texas lawyer/caging operation, coincidentally, also does legal work for “Club for Growth,” Alan Keyes’ “Declaration Foundation,” the CPAC sponsoring “Young Americas Foundation,” the “Minuteman” militia people, the “Traditional Values Coalition,” and a whole host of mostly far right-wing fringe organizations. It appears the lawyer — Maureen E. Otis — operates her law office out of an organization she leads called “American Caging.“

The Franklin Center raised about $3 million in its first year of operation, 2009.

You read that right.

For you headline-writing copy editors out there, here’s your headline:

“THREE MILLION DOLLARS raised by a little North Dakota non-profit based in a taffy shop in tiny town of Medora”

I conclude in this fashion, excerpts from a well-written piece by a pseudonymous writer ending in a picturesque taffy shop, to make clear a line of demarcation. It demonstrates that to control the news, all that is necessary is for the structures of journalism to decay and finally die, just as institutions that help the elderly, the vulnerable, and the worst off have been allowed to die. There have been two major profiles of Gary Johnson that I know of, which appeared in a prestige publication: “Pipe Dreamer” by Molly Ball and “The Zen of Gary Johnson”. Both are entirely light-weight, touching on none of the less sanguine details of Johnson’s political life or his campaign. To read about the seamy underbelly of political life, you would have to go to the fringes of the internet, the NSFW Corporation, the North Decoder website, or, I humbly submit, a post from an obscure blog that is something like this. I do not consider this media indifference some part of any larger conspiracy – it is simply a condition of mainstream journalism now that the most pressing questions are not asked. They leave it to others to shine a lantern on a nest of rats. And they consign themselves to irrelevance.

(Since publication, some edits have been made for aesthetic purposes; the section, with accompanying footnote, on Roger Stone’s involvement with the 2004 Al Sharpton campaign was added after initial posting; so was the footnote featuring a brief interview excerpt with Jim Gilchrist. The section on the takeover of the Sierra Club was added on January 3rd, 2013. On January 5th, the material on the strange financial details of Roger Stone’s past campaigns was added. The detail that Stone publicly admitted to destroying the reform party, and the video clip where he made the admission, were added on January 14th.)

FOOTNOTES

¹ From “Slate Nailer: Conservative James Lacy plays turncoat to sway elections” by Nick Schou:

Just before Election Day, [James] Lacy unleashed a series of slate mailings urging Santa Monica residents to vote for prominent Democrats who support liberal causes such as abortion rights and education. The same mailers also directed them to vote “NO on JJ,” a vote to kill the city’s living-wage ordinance.

Designed to lift minimum-wage workers out of poverty and reduce the burden on city social-welfare funds, JJ would have required downtown and coastal Santa Monica employers earning more than $5 million per year to pay employees $12.50 per hour, or $10.50 per hour plus health-care benefits. Although it led in polls up to Election Day, JJ lost by a tiny margin on Nov. 5.

The fact that registered Democrats in Santa Monica were flooded with thousands of misleading mailers in the last days of the race seems to be the best explanation for why that happened. One questionable mailer endorsed two prominent Democrats, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Santa Monica) and Assemblywoman Fran Pavley (D-Woodland Hills). In massive bold type at the bottom of the page, the mailer states, “NO on JJ.”

While an asterisk next to those words informed voters that the mailer was paid for by an organization called Democratic Voters Ballot Guide, neither Waxman, Pavley nor the Democratic Party-all of whom publicly supported JJ-had anything to do with the mailer or the Democratic Voters Ballot Guide, which didn’t exist until a few weeks before the election. In fact, hotel owners paid for the mailer, and the so-called Democratic Voters Ballot Guide was just a front group consisting of a pair of career right-wing political consultants, including Lacy.

Lacy was also behind two other anti-Measure JJ mailers. One said, “Attention Pro-Choice Voters” and announced that “Santa Monica’s pro-choice leaders agree: no on Measure JJ.” A third bore the caption “Important Santa Monica Issues for Women, Our Young & Our Poor” and urged recipients to vote no on Measure JJ.

² From the site Open Secrets, Top Organizations Disclosing Donations to 60 Plus Assn, 2012.

From the site Talking Points Memo, “Arizona Dark Money Group Gave Lavishly To Other Groups”, by Eric Lach:

The Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR), the secretive Arizona dark money group tied to the movement of millions of dollars between political nonprofits, gave almost $15 million in 2011 to a number of groups that spent heavily on political ads in 2012, according to IRS documents obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The CPPR, run by former congressional aide Sean Noble, spent $23.2 million in 2011, with $14.8 million given in grants to 19 other nonprofits. Bloomberg has previously reported that the CPPR contributed $55.4 million to other nonprofit political groups in 2009 and 2010.

From “Kochs brothers’ plan for 2012: raise $88 million” by Kenneth P. Vogel and Ben Smith in Politico:

Sean Noble, another top Koch operative, has been hired by Americans for Limited Government, another group that sources say received donations from Koch conference attendees for its efforts to attack Democrats during the 2010 midterm campaign.

³ Open Secrets, Top Organizations Disclosing Donations to 60 Plus Assn, 2012.

⁴ From “‘The Rachel Maddow Show’ for Monday, August 10, 2009″:

60 Plus is well-known in Republican and conservative circles. And like other corporate-funded P.R. operations, it often takes on causes that you wouldn’t logically connect to their stated purpose. The 60 Plus Association, which again, bills itself as a seniors advocacy group, they took on a subject they want us to believe is near and dear to the hearts of seniors.

Back in 2003, it was the issue of nuclear waste, urging Congress to, quote, “move forward and approve the safe storage of nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain.” Because seniors love nuclear waste being stored in Nevada. Old people love that.

⁵ From “High drug prices return as issue that stirs voters” by Thomas Edsall, originally published in the Washington Post:

In addition to lobbying, the drug industry spent more than $100 million in 1999 and 2000 to create a supposed grass-roots group called Citizens for Better Medicare. Led by PhRMA’s former marketing director, Tim Ryan, CBM flooded the airwaves with commercials accusing congressional Democrats of “playing politics” by backing legislation to reduce drug prices.

Also, the industry awarded unrestricted “educational grants” — declining to disclose the exact amounts — to two supportive groups, United Seniors and 60-Plus. In this election cycle, United Seniors has bought $12 million worth of ads, according to consultants working for the Democratic Party, while 60-Plus has spent $595,000 on radio ads in seven battleground congressional districts.

⁶ Family Tree Maker Site for Maurine Elizabeth Otis

⁷ Cancer Schmancer Foundation Charitable Solicitations Program Charity Profile Report

Mailing Address:
C/o Law Offices Of Maureen E. Otis PC
4850 Wright Road, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477

Street Address:
C/o Grandparents.com
589 8th Ave, 6th Floor
NEW YORK NY 10018

The Cancer Schmancer website, prominently featuring Drescher is here.

⁸ Dress For Success Charitable Solicitations Program Charity Profile Report

Mailing Address:
C/o Law Offices Of Maureen E. Otis, P.C.
4850 Wright Road, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477

Street Address:
32 East 31st Street
7th Floor
New York NY 10016

Purpose Description

The mission of Dress for Success is to promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.

The filing for Dress for Success Worldwide in Texas, again by Otis, has Bobbi Brown as CEO and founder: Business Profiles.com: Dress For Success Worldwide

⁹ “National Women’s History Museum Makes Little Progress After 16 Years” by Andrea Stone and Christina Wilkie gives an excellent account of the museum’s troubles.

¹⁰ Ultimate Memorial, part of the Houston Chronicle:

Goh Conservative PAC – Louiepac, Inc., 4850 Wright Road Suite 168

¹¹ Club for Growth Charitable Solicitations Program Charity Profile Report

Mailing Address:
C/o Law Offices Of Maureen E. Otis, P.C.
4850 Wright Road, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477

Street Address:
2001 L Street NW
Suite 600
WASHINGTON DC 20036

¹² Richard Norman Company Charitable Solicitations Program Charity Profile Report

Mailing Address:
c/o Maureen Otis
4850 Wright Road, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477

Street Address:
Two Riverbend
44084 Riverside Parkway, Ste 350
LANSDOWNE VA 20176

¹³ Jewish Voice Ministries International Charitable Solicitations Program Charity Profile Report

Mailing Address:
C/o Law Offices Of Maureen E. Otis, PC
4850 Wright Rd, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477

Street Address:
10850 N 24th Ave
PHOENIX AZ 85029

Purpose Description

Jewish Voice Ministries International is dedicated to bringing the Gospel to the Jew first and also to the Gentile throughout the world. The Good News is proclaimed through television, radio and large scale Messianic Outreach Festivals. This is followed up by planting new and strengthening existing congregations to nurture and disciple new believers. We also partner with other ministries to establish and operate Messianic Bible Schools to train leadership for Jewish Ministries.

¹⁴ Corrie Ten Boom Charitable Solicitations Program Charity Profile Report

Other Names Used

Christian Women of the Year
Jerusalem Prayer Team
Save Jerusalem

Mailing Address:
C/O Law Offices Of Maureen E. Otis, P.C.
4850 Wright Road, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477

Street Address:
1527 W. State Hwy 114,
Suite 500
GRAPEVINE TX 76051

The founder of the Jerusalem Prayer team, Michael Evans, is a prominent christian zionist known for taking a hardline stance on middle east issues. From “How Israeli PM wooed, and lost, Christian dollars”, by Adam Entous and Ari Rabinovitch, in Reuters:

[Ehud] Olmert [former prime minister of Israel] was long a familiar speaker on the U.S. fundraising lunch and dinner circuit. Public records show that, for example, he attended a series of three meetings in churches organised by a group known as the Jerusalem Prayer Team, whose founder Mike Evans’s stated mission is “to protect the Jewish people … until Israel is secure and the redeemer comes to Zion”.

From 2002 to 2004, church fundraisers organised by the Jerusalem Prayer Team, including the one in Dallas, raised $239,300 for the New Jerusalem Foundation. NJF records say it spent its money on parks, charity meals and other programmes.

In January, Evans made clear his view of Annapolis [the Annapolis peace talks between Olmert and the palestinian leadership]: “I was completely outraged when I heard that Ehud Olmert, whom I have known for 26 years, stood next to President Bush and declared that he would work to fulfill the final status solution.

“This means the division of Jerusalem,” he wrote on his Web site. “I will do everything in my power to resist that.”

¹⁵ Policy Issues Institute Charitable Solicitations Program Charity Profile Report

Other Names Used

Impeach Obama Campaign
United States Investigative Unit
US Health Congress
White House Watch, The

Mailing Address:
C/o Law Offices Of Maureen E. Otis, PC
4850 Wright Road, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477

Street Address:
30011 Ivy Glenn Dr
Ste 223
LAGUNA NIGUEL CA 92677

This is the office address of James Lacy.

¹⁶ Christian Research Institute, Inc. Charitable Solicitations Program Charity Profile Report

Mailing Address:
C/O Maureen E.Otis, P.C.
4850 Wright Road, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477

Street Address:
6295 Blakeney Park Drive
CHARLOTTE NC 28277-7007

A description of the Christian Research Institute can be found at wikipedia:

The establishment of CRI in 1960 is closely linked to Walter Martin. It represents one of the pioneering organizations in what is called the Christian countercult movement, but also relates to the wider history of Evangelical Christian apologetics in the mid-Twentieth century.

The christian countercult movement is described in this wikipedia entry:

The Christian countercult movement is a social movement of Christian ministries and individual Christian countercult activists who oppose religious sects thought to either partially abide or do not at all abide by the teachings that are written within the Bible. These religious sects are also known among Christians as cults. They are also known as discernment ministries.

¹⁷ From National Vaccine Information Center Charitable Solicitations Program Charity Profile Report:

Mailing Address:
C/o Law Offices Of Maureen E. Otis, P.C.
4850 Wright Road, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477

Street Address:
407 Church Street
Suite H
VIENNA VA 22180

The National Vaccination Information Center is described in “The ad that could help fuel a health crisis”, from Salon, by Rahul Parikh:

Among other things, the founders of NVIC seem to suggest vaccines are toxic, full of ingredients that will harm your child, none of which has ever proved to do so. Founded in the 1980s, NVIC is the granddaddy of anti-vaccine groups (though they go to great lengths to claim they are not). In the words of Michael Specter, journalist and author of “Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet and Threatens our Lives,” NVIC is “the most powerful anti-vaccine organization in America, and its relationship with the U.S. government consists almost entirely of opposing federal efforts aimed at vaccinating children.” Taking what NVIC says about vaccines at face value is akin to believing Joe Camel when he tells you that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer. The ad was created in conjunction with mercola.com, the website of Dr. Joseph Mercola, another anti-vaccinationist who espouses other out-of-step ideas. For more details see his blog on – where else – the Huffington Post.

The NVIC is also mentioned in “Swine Flu Revives Debate About Vaccines” by Jennifer Steinhauer.

¹⁸ A good introduction to this group might be “What the heck was that population stabilization ad in last night’s debate all about?” at Talking Points Memo.

¹⁹ Bizapedia entry for The Society for Truth and Justice; Find the Data entry for Patriot PAC and Campaignmoney.com information on Patriot PAC.

²⁰ A good introduction to True the Vote can be found in “Who Created the Voter Fraud Myth?” by Jane Mayer.

²¹ A report on True the Vote activities can be found at ABC News, with their report, “Is True the Vote Intimidating Minority Voters From Going to the Polls?”; the rejection of True the Vote as poll-watchers in Franklin County, Ohio can be found in “Tea party-linked poll watchers rejected in Ohio county”:

“The Franklin County Board of Elections did not allow Election Day polling location observer appointments filed by the True the Vote group,” said board spokesman Ben Pisctelli in a statement. “The appointments were not properly filed and our voting location managers were instructed not to honor any appointment on behalf of the True the Vote group.”

There were charges yesterday that the candidates’ names had either been falsified or merely copied on forms requesting observer status for the True the Vote at several Franklin County polling places. Many are in predominantly African American neighborhoods.

Elections Director William A. Anthony Jr. said the group may be investigated for possibly falsifying documents after today’s election. The forms themselves warn that elections falsification is a fifth-degree felony.

²² From “True the Vote observers barred from Franklin County polling places”:

One person told the elections board that she attended True the Vote training sessions and the observers were instructed to use cameras to intimidate voters when they enter the polling place, record their names on tablet computers and send them to a central location, and attempt to stop questionably qualified voters before they could get to a voting machine.

²³ From the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Ruckus on the Right”:

[Jim] Gilchrist and [Chris] Simcox publicly battled for control and camera time during the original Minuteman Project, when Simcox’s high-handed leadership style earned him the sarcastic sobriquet, “The Little Prince.” But following the conclusion of the month-long “citizens border patrol” operation in Arizona last April, the co-founders appeared to arrange an amicable parting and division of the public relations spoils. Gilchrist kept the Minuteman Project name and announced he was handing over “border watch” operations to Simcox, who would manage them as president of a new group, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

²⁴ From the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Ruckus on the Right”:

The pivot point on which [Chris] Simcox’s own kind turned against him is his refusal to account for the $1.6 to $1.8 million in private donations he estimates MCDC raised, including $600,000 for the “Minuteman Border Fence,” — a slick fundraising campaign with a stated goal of $55 million. Simcox pledged the money raised by the campaign would go to build a high-tech security barrier along 70 miles of private ranchland on the Arizona border. Mass-mailed MCDC solicitations and full-page color advertisements in The Washington Times since mid-April promoted the Minuteman Border Fence as an “Israeli-style” barrier “based on the fences used in Gaza and the West Bank.” Fundraising illustrations depict a 6-foot trench and coils of concertina wire backed by a 15-foot steel-mesh fence crowned with bulletproof security cameras. Estimated cost: $150 per foot.

Construction began Memorial Day weekend with much fanfare. Since then, MCDC volunteers erected just over two miles of five-strand barbed wire attached to short metal posts. What they built is a standard cattle fence, costing about $1.50 per foot, or about one one-hundredth the cost of the advertised “Israeli-style” barrier.

So far, in other words, the Minuteman Border Fence hasn’t come to much. “It wouldn’t stop a tricycle,” American Border Patrol’s Glenn Spencer posted in a recent online tirade

²⁵ From “Ruckus on the Right”:

At press time, the MCDC had yet to begin constructing the “Israeli-style” fence. Also, [Chris] Simcox has denied all requests by current and former MCDC members and donors as well as journalists to release any MCDC financial records. He will not say where the money is, how much has been spent, or for what, and he lashes out at anyone inside or outside his organization who dares question his honesty or authority. Gary Cole, the MCDC’s former national director of operations, said he was fired last summer for “asking too many questions about the money.”

²⁶ From “Ruckus on the Right”:

In his late July statement, released the same week as The Washington Times story, Simcox claimed “all donations which have been received have been recorded, processed, and banked by a highly reputable and responsible caging company which specializes in nonprofit accountability. Funds are safely and appropriately held in a secured bank account, overseen by a certified public accountant and a lawyer, disbursed by an authorized escrow agent only against approved, invoiced expenses.”

The “highly reputable and responsible” accounting company hired by MCDC to oversee donations is Houston-based American Caging, Inc. Maureen Otis, president of American Caging, released a statement confirming “since the day MCDC was incorporated, my company has acted as the comptroller and escrow agent for MCDC.”

²⁷ From “Border group’s finances a secret” by the Washington Times:

A Texas firm that manages hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps says it has not been authorized to divulge a detailed accounting of the funds, despite assurances by the MCDC’s top official that it would do so.

Maureen E. Otis — president of American Caging Inc. in Stafford, Texas, an agency hired to collect, deposit and disburse donations to the civilian border-patrol group — told The Washington Times that neither MCDC President Chris Simcox nor the group’s board of directors had given her permission to “disclose any numbers.”

²⁸ Alan Keyes and the Minutemen Morass from the Non-Profit Quarterly:

MCDC, for example, lists one Maureen Otis as its board secretary. Otis is president of a firm called American Caging, sharing MCDC’s address (from its 990), and MCDC paid American Caging $15,202 for “caging fees.”

²⁹ Alan Keyes and the Minutemen Morass from the Non-Profit Quarterly:

Apparently, the Declaration Alliance has been a funnel for resources going to MCDC. The most recent 990 of the Alliance, for example, reports $739,353 in “program services expenditures” in support of MCDC, plus a direct contribution to MCDC of another $112,500. The Web site of MCDC claims that it is a project of the Declaration Alliance, and the first and last MCDC 990 reports $418,493 in revenue (almost $1.2 million less than Simcox’s public estimate of the public support his organization had received), including the Declaration Alliance’s $112,500, but the 990 made no reference to the Declaration Alliance’s other programmatic involvement or its expenditures on behalf of the Minuteman project.

While the Declaration Alliance is a “civic public policy and issues advocacy organization that aggressively defends the Founding principles of the American Republic,” its Web site appears to be more like an Alan Keyes presidential campaign arm. The heading at the top of the page is a link to “Alan Keyes on the 2008 Election,” which redirects to the site of a group called Renew America, another tax-exempt entity founded by Keyes. The Renew America Web site leads with a link to a group called “We Need Alan Keyes for President,” which calls itself a PAC. The Declaration Alliance Web site also devotes a page to Keyes’s share of the vote in the 2000 Republican primaries.

³⁰ From “Ruckus on the Right”:

This omission of design specifics may have been the product of advice [Chris] Simcox received from Diener Consultants, one of the country’s largest right-wing political consulting and fundraising machines. At around the same time Simcox broke off from Gilchrist to form MCDC, he contracted with Diener, which is based in Chicago and led by Phillip Sheldon, son of Traditional Values Coalition founder and vitriolic gay-basher Rev. Louis Sheldon.

From “Border group’s finances a secret” by the Washington Times:

American Caging also handles other clients aligned with MCDC, Mr. Keyes and the Alliance organizations, including Diener Consulting Inc., which serves as the Minuteman group’s public-relations arm, as it did in Mr. Keyes’ unsuccessful presidential and senatorial campaigns; and Renew America, a fundraising organization founded by Mr. Keyes that provides a link for donations to MCDC through Declaration Alliance.

³¹ From “Ruckus on the Right”:

The younger Sheldon is known for brokering the ghoulish deal in which Response Unlimited, a direct-mail marketing firm, obtained a list of donors to Terry Schiavo’s legal fund from the brain-dead woman’s parents several days before her death in March 2005. Earlier this year, Response Unlimited — “the nation’s best and most comprehensive source of mailing lists for conservative and Christian mailers and telemarketers” — began offering for sale a list of 61,000 Minuteman Civil Defense Corps donors at a price of $120 per thousand names.

³² From “Border group’s finances a secret” by the Washington Times:

Other American Caging clients include Response Unlimited, which makes mailing lists — including the MCDC membership — available to conservative mailers and telemarketers and has an “exclusive contract” with Declaration Foundation; and RightMarch.com, which raised $500,000 for Mr. [Alan] Keyes’ 2004 senatorial campaign and helps raise Minuteman donations through a link on its Web page to Declaration Alliance.

³³ From “Ruckus on the Right”:

The “highly reputable and responsible” accounting company hired by MCDC to oversee donations is Houston-based American Caging, Inc. Maureen Otis, president of American Caging, released a statement confirming “since the day MCDC was incorporated, my company has acted as the comptroller and escrow agent for MCDC.” But that may do little to alleviate the concerns of MCDC donors, since American Caging apparently has some trouble keeping its own books in order. The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts office lists the status of American Caging Inc. as “not in good standing” because it “has not satisfied all state tax requirements.”

³⁴ The details involving this split, including the presence of Otis, have almost entirely disappeared from national consciousness six years later. An interview with Gilchrist by Conor Friedersdorf does not bring up Simcox or Otis, and Gilchrist does not bring it up either, at least not explicitly, though he may making implicit reference in his last answer in the published interview. From “Friday Interview: What the Minuteman Project Taught Its Founder”:

Friedersdorf:

What if someone came to you and said, Mr. Gilchrist, I’m starting a grassroots effort on behalf of a cause that’s dear to me. Do you have any advice?

Gilchrist:

Be extremely careful of volunteers who say they want to help you because they’re passionate about your cause. Especially if there is fundraising involved. What I have found is that the same persons will attempt to steal your organization to get access to your money. I’m told that’s commonplace in a lot of activist groups. And be wary of some extremists trying to infiltrate the organization to exploit it for their own philosophical advantage, and ultimately destroying it.

Another group… had a rebellion in its ranks due to the fact that the fundraising company it was using was keeping all the money and not using it to bring people to the border. I think they made about $10 million over three or four years. Apparently not a penny of it got to people on the border. There are various reasons for people to get involved in activism. This is not just the immigration issue. It could be the abortion issue, the religious issue, whatever. Number one, the fundraisers want to make money off it, it’s not about the issue to them. It’s really about making money.

Gilchrist would be fired by his own Minuteman project in 2007, with the issue again missing funds; this episode in described in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Jim Gilchrist Fired By Minuteman Project” by David Holt:

The Minuteman Project, one of the country’s largest, richest and most influential nativist extremist groups, is in a state of crisis.

Its founder, Jim Gilchrist, was fired in February by members of the group’s board of directors amidst swirling allegations of embezzlement, gross mismanagement and fraud.

³⁵ From the Chicago Tribune, “The business of influence in Washington”:

[Charles] Jarvis took USA Next to a different level when he assumed control in 2001. The board was stocked with influential Republican lobbyists and consultants with strong ties to the GOP congressional leadership and the White House.

A former aide to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) who also served in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Jarvis was well-positioned for his organization to benefit from Republican control in Washington.

From Talking Points Memo:

You can pick up the story on the United Seniors money mill from this July 2003 consumer bulletin from, of all places, the dreaded AARP.

One thing we learn from the AARP bulletin is that they apparently picked up USANext chief Charlie Jarvis from that notorious Spongebob-basher radical cleric James Dobson. Before he got the USANext gig, Jarvis was an executive vice president of Dobson’s group Focus on the Family.

³⁶ From the Chicago Tribune, “The business of influence in Washington” by Michael Tackett:

United Seniors, the name by which USA Next is formally incorporated in Virginia, was started in 1991 by Richard Viguerie, a longtime conservative and direct-mail specialist.

In its first 10 years, United Seniors was a modest force at most, taking in $8 million to $11 million and spending nearly 50 percent of contributions on fundraising. It relied heavily on direct-mail solicitation of members and whatever larger donations it could attract, and it operated for most of its existence at a deficit.

³⁷ From the Chicago Tribune, “The business of influence in Washington” by Michael Tackett:

In fiscal year 2001, records show, PhRMA gave United Seniors $1.5 million, 100 times the amount it had given the previous year. Pfizer gave $25,000 in each of those two years. PhRMA does not dispute the accuracy of the records.

In the next two years, just as Congress and the White House worked out details for a prescription drug benefit for Medicare, United Seniors received $24.8 million from a single source, records show. A redacted copy of the tax filing obscures the name of the donor, other than the first letter, “P,” in 2003. A $20.1 million donation was reported in 2002 from a single source, but that donor’s name is completely blacked out.

Asked whether PhRMA was the donor, Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the trade group, said, “I’m not confirming it or denying it.”

³⁸ From “Bush’s Secret Stash” by Nicholas Confessore, in the Washington Monthly:

Then there’s the benignly-named United Seniors Association (USA), which serves as a soft-money slush fund for a single GOP-friendly industry: pharmaceuticals. USA claims a nationwide network of more than one million activists, but, just like Progress for America, listed zero income from membership dues in its most recent available tax return.

³⁹ From “Bush’s Secret Stash” by Nicholas Confessore, in the Washington Monthly:

During the 2002 elections, with an “unrestricted educational grant” from the drug industry burning a hole in its pocket, the group [United Seniors Association, or USA Next] spent roughly $14 million–the lion’s share of its budget–on ads defending Republican members of Congress for their votes on a Medicare prescription-drug bill.

⁴⁰ From “The business of influence in Washington” by Michael Tackett:

Now the group [United Seniors Association, or USA Next] has clawed its way into the Social Security debate with AARP as the primary adversary. To make its case, [Charles] Jarvis has adopted the scorching tactics of negative campaign advertising and employed some of the best practitioners of political dark arts to do it.

His group has benefited from donations and consultant work from operatives and donors associated with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

“I’m trying to kill, destroy the bad public policy of AARP,” Jarvis said.

⁴¹ From Talking Points Memo (though some of the links for this seven year old post are broken, I have included them anyway):

Hmmm … So is USANext, aka United Seniors Association, aka Americans Lobbying Against Rationing of Medical Care, USA, really just a Republican party front operation operating at the behest of Karl Rove?

Well, let’s see.

BBB Wise Giving Alliance, a rating and reporting bureau for public charities and nonprofits, notes that one of United Seniors Association’s (USA) “affiliates” is O’Neill Marketing Company (OMC).

Apparently, it’s a very tight affiliation since both are located at 3900 Jermantown Road, Suite 450. (USA lists Suite 450; OMC lists 450A).

⁴² From “The business of influence in Washington” by Michael Tackett:

For [Charles] Jarvis, it is a convenient convergence. “I’m very aggressively pro-free-market solutions,” he said in an interview at the group’s office just off Capitol Hill. “I am very aggressively finding people who agreed with our rock `n’ roll free-market approach.”

⁴³ From “The business of influence in Washington” by Michael Tackett:

United Seniors has shown lethal capacity. But its most notorious effort–an ad that showed two photos, one of two men kissing and the other of a soldier, with the not-so-subtle message that AARP supported the gay couple and not the soldier–may also be one that costs it dearly.

The couple in the photo recently sued USA Next and a subcontractor for $25 million, alleging defamation.

⁴⁴ From “The business of influence in Washington” by Michael Tackett:

The couple in the photo recently sued USA Next and a subcontractor for $25 million, alleging defamation. Jarvis said his only regret is that his subcontractor didn’t get a proper commercial release of the couple’s photo.

⁴⁵ The Susan Faludi piece, “American Electra: Feminism’s Ritual Matricide” can be found in pdf format on the author’s site; it provides an in-depth examination of the struggle between an older leadership and younger feminists, providing the fascinating context of a century old tension between women of different ages, going back to the division between suffragettes and flappers, the struggle always having the persistent undertone of a fight between mothers and daughters; a short piece on Shelly Mandell introducing Sarah Palin in 2008 can be found at Jezebel: “NOW L.A. President Shelly Mandell Endorses McCain/Palin”.

⁴⁶ Doug LaFollette, of course, ran unsuccessfully for governor against Scott Walker in the 2012 recall election; that he would be helpful to anti-immigrant forces in a takeover does not imply that he was a knowing participant – it might have been expected, for instance, that he would vote favourably for proposals that ostensibly dealt with the issues of finite resources and an ever expanding population, but were in fact anti-immigrant. This ruckus was brought up when LaFollette ran again in 2006 for secretary of state: “Sierra Club dust-up draws fresh flak” by Bill Lueders. A good overview of the other candidates can be found at “Hostile Takeover: Race, Immigration and the Sierra Club” by the Center for New Community. An article written at the time on the possible takeover of the Sierra Club is “Immigration dispute spawns factions, anger in Sierra Club” in The Seattle Times by Florangela Davila.

⁴⁷ “John Tanton’s Private Papers Expose More Than 20 Years of Hate” goes into the depth of Tanton’s racist ideas, and “John Tanton’s Network” lists the groups associated with Tanton; both are at Southern Poverty Law Center. The Sierra Club’s election results from 1998 to 2012, showing the gains of the anti-immigrant faction and their eventual defeat can be found in pdf form at their site.

⁴⁸ From a Reason magazine interview with Roger Stone:

QUESTION:

Should the libertarian party continue to exist?

STONE:

Well, as one who, I think, either helped kill, or killed the Reform party, because I believe they cost us the White House in 1992 and 1996…their lack of any ideology at all…it was a hodgepodge of vegetarians, goldbugs, and a few libertarians, and gun people, and gun control people, there was no consistency there other than people who couldn’t make it in any other party.

⁴⁹ “The Sex Scandal That Put Bush in the White House” by Wayne Barrett explores the strange and labyrinthine sex scandal involving Pat Buchanan and the reform party. Barrett’s “Sleeping with the GOP: A Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton’s Campaign” is the definitive piece on the strange alliance of Sharpton and Stone. I also heartily recommend Barrett’s other excellent work on Roger Stone, “Carl Paladino: The Dirty Details in His Campaign Filings” and “The (Roger) Stone Around Carl Paladino’s Neck”.

The opening sentence of “Sleeping with the GOP”:

Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton.

On Sharpton’s attacks on the front-runner, designed by Stone himself:

While Bush forces like the Club for Growth were buying ads in Iowa assailing then front-runner Howard Dean, Sharpton took center stage at a debate confronting Dean about the absence of blacks in his Vermont cabinet. Stone told the Times that he “helped set the tone and direction” of the Dean attacks, while Charles Halloran, the Sharpton campaign manager installed by Stone, supplied the research. While other Democratic opponents were also attacking Dean, none did it on the advice of a consultant who’s worked in every GOP presidential campaign since his involvement in the Watergate scandals of 1972, including all of the Bush family campaigns.

Halloran works for free on the Sharpton campaign, just as Stone did for Johnson:

Halloran is a capable operative who claims he did advance work in the first Clinton campaign, and that he worked as a consultant in a statewide Democratic race in Georgia and as a volunteer for Al Gore during the recount battle. He has become so close to Stone over the last two years, however, that he stays at Stone’s 40 Central Park South apartment when he’s in New York working for Sharpton. Halloran and his wife celebrated Stone’s 50th birthday with him and his wife last year, and the two operatives talk virtually every day. By his own account, Halloran made so much money in the Golisano and Bermuda campaigns, he has so far worked for Sharpton since September 4 without receiving a single cent in pay.

The Golisano and Bermuda campaigns Halloran was involved in are described briefly:

Halloran was busy anyway with another Stone- arranged assignment-running the parliamentary campaign for the United Bermuda Party, ironically the white-led party seeking to unseat the island’s first black government. Halloran had also managed a Stone-run campaign in New York in 2002, spending nearly $65 million of billionaire Tom Golisano’s money and getting the Independence Party candidate a mere 14 percent of the vote in the gubernatorial race. Stone, whose firm represented the prior Bermuda government, did initial work in the 2003 race there and left, recommending Halloran.

On a possible future attempt to use Sharpton not simply to depress turn-out, but to split the vote:

Stone, whose Miami mob even jostled a visiting Sharpton during the recount, said recently in The American Spectator that if Sharpton were to run “as an independent” in the 2006 Hillary Clinton race, she would be “sunk,” implicitly suggesting that this operation may be a precursor to another Stone-Sharpton mission.

On the Sharpton campaign as part of a larger Bush strategy:

The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush campaign was planning a special advertising campaign targeting black voters, seeking as much as a quarter of the vote, and any Sharpton-connected outrage against the party could either lower black turnout in several key close states, or move votes to Bush. Both were widely reported as the consequences of Sharpton’s anti-Green rhetoric in 2001, [Mark Green, democratic candidate for New York City mayor, beat Fernando Ferrer, the Sharpton backed candidate in a bitter primary race]a result Sharpton celebrated both in his book and at a Bronx victory party on election night.

The attempt by the Sharpton campaign to qualify for matching funds by getting donations from at least twenty states, is notable for the presence of one figure. I bold the significant name:

In fact, the treasurer of the Klayman campaign, Paul Jensen, a top Bush administration transportation official, joined his wife, Pamela, in making $250 donations on December 30 to Sharpton, helping get him over the threshold in a third state. Jensen contributed to Sharpton, who favors a federal law certifying civil unions for homosexuals, even though the lawyer has filed suits in 16 states seeking to defrock Presbyterian ministers who’ve “violated their vows” by ordaining gays.

Jensen shows up again this year as Johnson’s attorney, sueing the FEC for not granting sufficient matching funds. From “Gary Johnson sues FEC for $750k” by Marc Caputo:

Johnson claims that, as a minor-party candidate, he’s entitled to a set amount of funds that are supposed to be distributed by the commission. The amount is set forth in a complicated federal formula that awards public funds to parties based on their candidates’ prior performances in other elections.

The federal law suggests in one place that a candidate such as Johnson “is eligible to receive pre-election payments” only if his party “received at least 5% but less than 25% of the total popular vote” in the prior election. But Johnson’s attorney, Paul Rolf Jensen said that 5 percent threshold doesn’t apply.

Total owed: $747,115.34, Johnson’s suit says.

A brief profile of Jensen, when he was in the news for defending a soldier who refused to follow orders because he did not believe the president was born in the United States, is “Attorney For Birther Army Doc Is Former GOP Staffer And Anti-Gay Crusader” by Justin Elliott.

Another piece, citing Barrett’s excellent work, which re-inforces the idea of Sharpton as a chess piece of a larger game is Joe Conason’s “A GOP trickster rents Al Sharpton “:

To anyone familiar with the buccaneering careers of Al Sharpton and Roger Stone, their convergence in the 2004 presidential campaign is not quite as “unlikely” as the New York Times suggested in a headline last week. Indeed, the alliance between the conservative consultant and the pompadoured preacher makes perfect sense.

Whatever excuse each man offers to justify their embarrassing embrace, Stone certainly serves the Republican party by sustaining and promoting Sharpton. Ever since the reverend announced his candidacy, right-leaning commentators have gleefully predicted that he will pose “a major threat” to the Democrats in 2004.

⁵⁰ The Libertas Institute web site.

⁵¹ The examples of the strangely non-libertarian foreign policy of Gary Johnson are brought up in this blog’s “Conor Friedersdorf: An Almost Irrelevant Man”.

⁵² One might see evidence of this design in the answers Stone gave in a far too deferential sketch by Mark Warren, “Roger Stone to GOP: Payback’s a Bitch”; my bolds:

[Roger Stone:] “Johnson is polling at 9 percent in Arizona [according to PPP], and it’s all gonna come out of Romney’s hide, and he’s at 6 percent in Wisconsin (according to the Reason poll), which is all out of Obama’s hide. I am helping Gary figure out where to put his emphasis.”

We may also see this as the motivation behind Stone’s criticism that Obama did not go far enough in his statements on gay marriage, quoted in a piece by Michael Musto, “Obama Actually Betrayed The Gay Marriage Cause”

That’s what one writer says.

Before you start screaming “foul” en route to resuming your gay-victory celebration, kindly check out the article by Roger Stone.

It makes some points.

“Once Gay Americans are through celebrating President Barack Obama’s ‘personal’ support of Gay marriage equality, they will learn that Obama’s ‘evolution’ changes nothing. Obama’s new position is a bullshit cop-out.

“This comes on the heels of a cynical Obama campaign pirouette where Team Obama trotted out first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then Vice President ‘Crazy’ Joe Biden to say they support gay marriage and imply that the President would too–after the election.

“Now, incredibly, Obama says Gay marriage is a state issue. That’s what they used to say about abortion and before that, slavery. Now the President says he believes that gay couples should be able to marry but he doesn’t believe they have a right to do so. Obama would leave the question to the states–in other words–the status quo. This is like saying that public schools ought to be integrated but if the people of Mississippi disagree, well it’s up to them.

“If Obama believes that marriage equality is a constitutionally guaranteed civil right, as former Governor Gary Johnson does, than it can’t be abridged by the states. Forty-four states currently ban gay marriage. Under Obama millions of Americans in most states will continue be denied the right to marry the person of their choice.”

“Barack Obama is playing a cruel and cynical game with peoples lives and happiness. He did nothing to establish that gay marriage is a right yesterday.”

Given how starry eyed Musto has gotten over this pronouncement, it might behoove readers to look at the other side of the balance: that Stone worked as a consultant for the anti-gay fanatic Larry Klayman in his Senate campaign, and that Stone’s close associate is Paul Jensen, who filed suit to defrock presbyterian ministers who’ve been so audacious as to ordain gays, mentioned by Musto’s Village colleague, and definitive Roger Stone chronicler, Wayne Barrett, in “Sleeping with the GOP: A Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton’s Campaign”. If that is not a cruel and cynical game to play with people’s lives and happiness, as well as a rankly hypocritical one, what isn’t?

⁵³ In “Complaint filed with FEC questions Johnson campaign’s use of funds” by Maggie Haberman, the retiring of primary debt is dealt with in one sentence, “Others have raised issues about exactly how Johnson has paid off debt from when he ran for president as a Republican in the primary.”

On the FEC complaint, again from Haberman’s “Complaint”:

A Washington man who’s worked in Republican politics has filed a notarized complaint with the FEC about Libertarian presidential hopeful Gary Johnson’s campaign and the way his consultants have reported expenditures, raising questions about how huge chunks of the campaign’s coffers went to a single entity.

The complaint, viewable here, was filed by Addison Smith, a Republican who was part of the George W. Bush reelection effort in 2004, according to his bio, and is currently a VP at Sphere Consulting.

In addition to the fact that the expenditures aren’t labeled as primary or general election, there are major sums – in some cases as much as 120 percent, when debt is factored in – going to a single entity called Political Advisors, based in Utah. It’s listed in the filings as for a wide variety of things like media buys.

But it’s not clear from the filings exactly what the money was used for, as the FEC demands. For instance, things like campaign travel are lumped in as the same activities as media buys.

Asked to comment on the subtance of the FEC complaint, Johnson campaign counsel Alicia Dearn responded in an email suggesting a political conspiracy.

Dearn did not respond to the questions in the complaint about why the payments were conducted that way – including why debt was suddenly reported in the latest filing.

⁵⁴ “Johnson Allies Reject Spending Charges” by Rosie Gray:

With just a few weeks before election day and his campaign making no significant progress, an email has begun circulating in libertarian circles accusing campaign manager Ronald Nielson of syphoning nearly 90% of the campaign’s $2 million to his consulting firm and charges Johnson has not paid for any radio or TV ads, direct mail or paid staff.

But the email’s claims are dubious: according to the campaign Johnson has several paid staffers and the campaign has distributed 60,000 yard signs, 165,000 bumper stickers, 670,000 brochures and flyers, and has aired almost 1,000 radio spots. The campaign has also been regularly sending out direct mail to voters and routinely organizes campaign events.

The email, which is signed by an apparently fictional person named Eric Stevens of Twinsburg, Ohio, also implicates Roger Stone, the longtime operative who became an advisor for Johnson earlier this year.

Still, the email does generally point to the fact that much of Johnson’s expenditures are in fact going to firms that appear to be connected to his aides.

According to Federal Election Commission reports, a large portion of the campaign’s disbursements went to “Political Advisors” or “Politcal [sic] Advisors,” with the address of 781 East South Temple Street in Salt Lake City.

No businesses are listed at 781 – but 731 East South Temple Street is the address of the Johnson campaign, according to its website, and also the address of Nielson’s communications firm. A call to the number listed for the building led to a voicemail for Natalie Dicou, a Johnson and Libertarian Party spokeswoman.

The September monthly report, for example, lists “Politcal [sic] Advisors” as receiving $229,563.42, by far the biggest expense that month. In the reports, the Political Advisors expenses are for “Media Buys. Candidate Travel and Advisory Services.” The report doesn’t itemize specific vendors for these services.

⁵⁵ From “Complaint filed with FEC questions Johnson campaign’s use of funds” by Maggie Haberman:

The complaint, viewable here, was filed by Addison Smith, a Republican who was part of the George W. Bush reelection effort in 2004, according to his bio, and is currently a VP at Sphere Consulting.

Smith declined to comment on why he did the filing when I reached him by phone. A source familiar with the effort said it arose from an exercise with intern training, and Johnson’s filings were used as an example – and they were surprised by what they saw.

Smith doesn’t work for a political campaign and is non-active this cycle, a source close to him said. His firm is represented by Patton Boggs, which employs Mitt Romney’s veteran campaign counsel, Ben Ginsberg, who is an alum of many national efforts, including both the Bush election in 2000 and the reelect. Romney aides said the complaint has nothing to do with them.

⁵⁶ From “Spoiler Alert! G.O.P. Fighting Libertarian’s Spot on the Ballot” by Jim Rutenberg:

Mr. Stone says he has become so frustrated with the party’s attempts to shut down Mr. Johnson, whom he says he is advising at no charge, that he vowed in an e-mail last month, “Republican blood will run in the streets b4 I am done.”

“Johnson Allies Reject Spending Charges” by Rosie Gray:

Stone, a lifelong Republican, changed his affiliation to Libertarian in February 2012. He became involved with the Johnson campaign in March to help Johnson get federal matching funds, telling BuzzFeed at the time that he was a volunteer.

⁵⁷ From “Carl Paladino: The Dirty Details in His Campaign Filings” by Wayne Barrett:

*Two companies controlled by Stone’s secretary Dianne Thorne, and registered out of her Miami apartment, have received a total of $84,320 so far from the campaign. The payments started in March, shortly after the campaign also made the first of $17,000 in payments to Thorne’s stepson, Andrew Miller, who listed a St. Peters, Missouri address. Miller was confounded when the Times told him he’d actually appeared on the payroll for four months longer than he was aware. Thorne, down on the beach, was described as Paladino’s “scheduler.” She actually once had a company registered out of the same address called Hype LLC.

*Caputo himself was paid $407,190 in the first six months of the campaign, a remarkable sum for a hired mouth, suggesting that he gets expletive bonuses. Since Stone recommended his former driver Caputo to Paladino, and Caputo and Stone have worked together on and off since the mid-90s (when Caputo handled the press response to Roger’s group-sex scandal), this largesse may not belong exclusively to the lien-laden Caputo. In any event, it was paid to Caputo Public Relations at an East Aurora address, a village near Buffalo. No such company is incorporated in the state, according to the secretary of state’s office. Caputo’s firm does have a website, listed at the address of Caputo’s father’s insurance company, as well as a Florida location. But Florida officials tell the Voice that the state dissolved the company on September 25, 2009 for failing to meet registration requirements. Even junkyards incorporate a petty legal requirement with large tax implications.

*These are hardly the only avenues available to Stone if he was seeking to supplement his charitable good works on Paladino’s behalf. The campaign has adopted the extraordinary new tactic of making major payments to a Paladino family real estate company, which, in turn, pays the wages of unnamed campaign workers. So far, it has hidden $62,278 in payments to this invisible staff, an apparent violation of state laws requiring the actual identities of people paid to work in campaigns. Paladino has also formed his own advertising firm for this campaign, Ellicott Advertising, which was paid $1.8 million by the campaign to do TV and radio ads. These insider deals make it all the easier to conceal Roger rewards.

*Stone simply moved his traveling troupe of “misfits,” as Caputo himself characterized the Paladino crew in an Observer piece, from a 2009 losing effort last November in Ohio. Stone was in Ohio as the “strategic consultant” to an anti-casino campaign, trying to defeat a referendum legalizing casinos in four cities. Having made a fortune in the Indian gaming business, Stone also opposes casinos when a casino interest pays him to, and that’s precisely what he was doing in Ohio. Stone, his onetime top client Donald Trump, and a third party were hit with a record $250,000 fine by the New York lobbying commission in 2000 over their similar effort to kill New York casinos that might compete with Trump’s Atlantic City empire.

⁵⁸ From “Carl Paladino: The Dirty Details in His Campaign Filings” by Wayne Barrett:

[Larry] Klayman soon discovered that Stone was barely tending to business. He found him “sitting in an outdoor café salivating at the cavalcade of bodies, both male and female, marching up and down Lincoln Road” or in New York, “allegedly attending to his sick father.” By the time Stone and Klayman parted company that fall, “I had a campaign debt of several hundred thousand dollars, much of it on my own lines of credit.”

⁵⁹ She is listed as media contact on a lot of Gary Johnson materials, such as this announcement, “Libertarian Vp Candidate Judge Jim Gray Calls Vp Debate “Animated Agreement”:

Judge Gray is available for interviews. To schedule, please contact Dianne Thorne, [etc.]