OK - I just saw the “Borat” film, and I have highly mixed feelings.
I should say first that, while I had been aware of Sacha Baron Cohen and his “Ali G.” and “Borat” characters, I had never seen an episode of any of his shows, and had the vague impression that “Borat”, in particular, was a childish stunt. I was surprised at movie reviews claiming that the Borat film was really a biting social commentary and that it showed how well he reveals the truth about the people he interviews - I hadn’t understood just quite what he was supposed to be getting at by acting like a fool with a funny accent. (And, as a friend of mine pointed out, with his “idiotic Kazakh” character that bears no relation to reality, he’s really just doing a trivial variation on “Pollack” jokes - which supposedly are passe’. So what’s to like?) So I decided to check it out, and came away feeling that there really is a profoundly revealing quality to his shtick, and also that I don’t necessarily like him any better for that.
November 13th, 2006
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General, Reviews, Culture, Media, News & Current Events |
16 comments
Figure skating is not a sport. It is athletic and involves amazing displays of skill, but it is not a sport. The winners and losers are decided by the subjective opinion of judges. Often, skaters have to “pay their dues” over a few competitions, even years, before they are given the highest marks by the judges. In other words, it is just like college football’s “championship”.
Who gets to play in the “championship” game is largely decided by the polls, which are nothing more than the badly formed opinions of people who cannot possibly have watched all the teams they are voting on each week. since the polls start in the preseason, position is determined by everything BUT how well the teams perform on the field. This year, Rutgers could go undefeated in the Big East conference, a team with three top ten teams and the second highest rated conference in college football, but has no chance to play in the national title game. Why? Because they hadn’t “paid their dues” — they were not a big time program, and so they were not ranked in the pre-season polls. College football has adopted, for all intents and purposes, the figure skating method of determining a champion. Just more proof that college football isn’t a real sport.
November 13th, 2006
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Sports, Olympics, World Cup |
5 comments
And this is a good one:
A battle is shaping up between Democrats and the White House over the Military Commissions Act, signed into law last month by President George W. Bush.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is expected to take over as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and The (Calif.) Daily Journal reports that Leahy is drafting a bill to undo portions of the new law in an effort to restore habeas corpus rights for enemy combatants.
This is why I stick with the Democrats, despite their numerous faults. They are the only counterweight to the authoritarians that have come to dominate the Republican Party. Leahy understands that you cannot win a war of ideas with indefinite detention and kangaroo courts. Habeas Corpus has been the foundation of freedom for hundreds of years, until the Bush Administration threw it away a few weeks ago. Now Leahy and the Democrats are going to try and win it back.
That’s enough of an agenda for me.
November 13th, 2006
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Politics, Legal Issues, Terrorism, Torture |
2 comments
