There's a great future in....

--I just want to say three words to you. Just three words. 

--Yes, sir. 

--Are you listening? 

--Yes, I am.

--"Active skin electronics."

--Exactly how do you mean?

From n+1, projected to arrive at a Travelodge conveniently distant from where you live.

The Set-Up

I was in New York recently for the Robert Ryan film festival at the Film Forum. I enjoyed it immensely. Especially The Set-Up, an almost real time movie that is better than any other boxing film out there, and better than many gangster films as well.

Here's a scene:


The obvious musical accompaniment would be Who Killed Davy Moore. But I think Crucifixion would be more appropriate.

Paraît qu’y a pas d’sot métier...

.. y a toujours des p’tits trous. I'll put this as a labor post as well.

To those who cut the cane...

... Burn! with Marlon Brando and Evaristo Márquez, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. An amazing opening sequence:

Robert Ryan...

...is in the Times and on the screen.

Salt of the Earth

1954. The Union against the Bosses. The Mexicans against the Anglos. The Women against the Men. Excellent film, embedding three struggles for equality in the broader context of class conflict, with the labor movement being the necessary vehicle for the realization of racial, sexual, and class equality. But equality is not just some abstraction. The demand for equality is a means of achieving something with a bit more spleen to it: dignity. It is dignity that is the object of struggle.

Dignity is central to the film, and is perhaps best materialized in the radio Esperanza had urged Ramon to purchase ("installment plans, the curse of the working man"). 

The film was written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico, all of whom had been blacklisted for alleged communist politics. The film was bankrolled by the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, which had been kicked out the CIO in 1950 because it would not purge the communists from the leadership [1].


Two of the professional actors, Will Geer and Rosaura Revueltas, would be blacklisted by the studios for working on the film. Most of the actors were non-professionals from the community and the Mine, Mill local that had been at the center of the actual strike against Empire Zinc. From Wikipedia

The film was denounced by the United States House of Representatives for its communist sympathies, and the FBI investigated the film's financing. The American Legion called for a nation-wide boycott of the film. Film-processing labs were told not to work on Salt of the Earth and unionized projectionists were instructed not to show it.

After its opening night in New York City, the film languished for 10 years because all but 12 theaters in the country refused to screen it. By one journalist's account: "During the course of production in New Mexico in 1953, the trade press denounced it as a subversive plot, anti-Communist vigilantes fired rifle shots at the set, the film's leading lady [Rosaura Revueltas] was deported to Mexico, and from time to time a small airplane buzzed noisily overhead....The film, edited in secret, was stored for safekeeping in an anonymous wooden shack in Los Angeles."....  The Hollywood Reporter charged at the time that it was made "under direct orders of the Kremlin." Pauline Kael, who reviewed the film for Sight and Sound in 1954, said it was "as clear a piece of Communist propaganda as we have had in many years."

Watch the film and assess where, exactly, you see the communist propaganda. Here it is:

[1] It was, alongside Harry Bridges' International Longshore and Warehouse Union, one of the most racially progressive unions in the United States. So, of course, the CIO would try to break Mine, Mill by encouraging its white locals in the south to defect. Mine, Mill would eventually fold into the Steelworkers' union. 

These precious days...

...I'll spend with you.

And here we are.

They will be praised...

....it has come to this.

The administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a blunt acknowledgment that thousands of young black and Latino men are cut off from New York’s civic, educational and economic life, plans to spend nearly $130 million on far-reaching measures to improve their circumstances. 
The program, the most ambitious policy push of Mr. Bloomberg’s third term, would overhaul how the government interacts with a population of about 315,000 New Yorkers who are disproportionately undereducated, incarcerated and unemployed.
To pay for the endeavor in a time of fiscal austerity, the city is relying on an unusual source: Mr. Bloomberg himself, who intends to use his personal fortune to cover about a quarter of the cost, city officials said. A $30 million contribution from Mr. Bloomberg’s foundation would be matched by that of a fellow billionaire, George Soros, a hedge fund manager, with the remainder being paid for by the city.

It was once believed that the provision of assistance services was, rightfully, a charity, an opportunity for those who provided rather than a right for those who received [1].

I blame Jesus.

" 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They will also answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick in prison and did not help you?'. He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me' "
Matthew 25:41-45

There are those who consider the need and misery of others as opportunities to be righteous. Charity serves this impulse. Social welfare rights do not care one lick about the opportunity for the taxpayer, or the gratitude of the receiver. As rights, they insist upon the dignity of the recipient, not the redemption of the provider. It is probably unfair to blame Jesus: the passage is pretty clear that the hungry, naked, imprisoned, stranger is not to be treated as a means but as an end. But Christianity is like Fichtian metaphysics. When what matters is your soul, everything comes to be about you.

So, when Bloomberg and Soros are being praised, let us remember who is not [2].

[1] Also, it was once considered the responsibility of the noble and the well-heeled gentle to step up their spending in times of hardship, to compensate for the loss of business and markets experienced during a downturn. Noblesse oblige and all that. Glad to see that that's back as well.
[2] To be clear.