"I made the list of top 5 Hitlers of all time - real Hitler's not even on the list!"

As much as I find this new season of UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT overly broad, the bit where Titus earns the wrath of a bunch of bloggers has really rung true as of late.

First, io9 issued the breathless "Reminder: Rudyard Kipling was a racist f*** and the JUNGLE BOOK is Imperialist Garbage", written with the zeal and incompetence of a fourteen year old who just discovered Howard Zinn. I'm not really interested in arguing with this piece, other than to point out that any halfway decent point gestured at in the article was already made, in a more coherent and readable manner, by George Orwell, a man whose leftist bonafides and direct knowledge of the workings of imperialism are unimpeachable. At the very least, it is hilarious to read Bombast McGawker going into hysterics over "lesser breeds without the Law" as coded to represent the White Man's Burden over other continents, where Orwell points out that it was probably a dig at the Germans.

But let it not be said that Slate, with its delusions of grandeur evidenced by a paywall, is afraid to sally forth into the fray that Gawker Media has started with a mostly unmourned dead author in the public domain. "Not only was Kipling racist," Katy Waldman must argue, "but so was Walt Disney!" Which is probably true, but Waldman then picks the hill she wishes to die on.

But as far as pure and explicit racism goes, Kipling’s novel scores lower than Disney’s 1967 movie, which introduced a great ape called King Louie (after Louie Armstrong) who sang minstrel songs about his desire to get civilized.

*crickets sound*

I might have only been born in the mid-80s, but I do still remember a time when writers, before turning in an article, had to actually do some research. Waldman, who is apparently Slate's "words" correspondent, whatever that even means, has probably watched the 1967 animated Jungle Book at some point, but that appears to be where her knowledge and research ended.

Now, Disney and his studio certainly deserve criticism. But if you are going to attack Disney on racism, at least pick a time when he and the studio were intentionally racist. Because Waldman didn't bother to do any research.

King Louie in Disney's 1967 Jungle Book is voiced by Louis Prima. Louis Prima was an Italian-American band leader and singer who grew up in New Orleans. He is the one who sings "I Wanna Be Like You", which is not a minstrel song, but a swing/jazz song. Which is the type of music Louis Prima played.


A quick visit to Wikipedia's entry on The Jungle Book shows that Prima was suggested for the part early on. And the book the Wikipedia entry cites (accessible here) mentions that Prima brought down his entire band for his audition, and performed their regular Vegas act. Key point: "Some of the antics of Prima and his crew also found their way into the film".

So the 1967 King Louie was not meant to be a caricature of African-Americans. His image, attitude and mannerisms were inspired by the man who voiced him, a pop-culture icon, who was an Italian-American (!). If this can somehow be construed as racist, then the word has lost all meaning. Instead, this is an example of lazy research. A high school freshman writing an article on Disney's The Jungle Book using Wikipedia would have turned in a more accurate paper with better sources than Slate's own 'words" correspondent.

I e-mailed Ms. Waldman about this error yesterday, and the article has yet to be corrected. Slate, a site that posts clickbait about how Hamilton, a musical where the Founding Fathers engage in rap battles has *gasp* indulged in artistic license, apparently has lower standards for its own content than a Broadway rap musical. Why anyone would even pay for this elephant dung Slate calls journalism is beyond me.

"Christianity is stupid! Communism is good!": IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO?

If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1971)
Directed by Ron Ormond
Based on the writings of Estus W. Pirkle
Starring Judy Creech, Cecil Scaife, and Gene McFall

While Ron Ormond might not be as famous as Ed Wood or Herschell Gordon Lewis, he occupies a very curious place among schlock auteurs. A hacky B-movie director in the 50s, Mr. Ormond found religion and decided to devote his "talents", such as they were to spreading the word of Jesus Christ, specifically as preached by Reverend Estus W. Pirkle. Of course, Ormond's talents did not improve despite his conversion, and, in conjunction with the very "fire and brimstone" preachings of Reverend Pirkle, produced some very odd movies aimed at the religious "market", to be shown on 16mm projectors at churches. The best way to describe If Footmen Tire You, is to imagine if Red Dawn were being done as a Christmas pageant by your local Baptist church, and the whole thing were directed by Ed Wood.

The first thing that might strike the viewer as odd is the year given as the release date: 1971. But with the exception of brief mentions of inner-city riots and campus protests (and one hilariously out-of-touch "sex education" scene), this might as well be a colorized version of INVASION USA (the 1952 propaganda film, not the 1985 Chuck Norris action film). Most of Pirkle's broadsides against youth culture are so vague, and Ormond's dramatizations so clueless, that they could be criticizing beatniks or rockers in the 1950s. And the gore effects (and yes, there are gore effects) could have come out of BLOOD FEAST... caro syrup drenched over "dead" people who are clearly still breathing.

The story, as much as there is one, is that Reverend Pirkle is giving a sermon to his flock one Sunday. Judy (played by Judy Creech), a rebellious teenager, comes to mass and realizes that her dead mother was right about believing in Jesus. And every so often, Ormond cuts away to dramatize Pirkle's vision of Communist-controlled America.

If this film has any cultural currency outside of a select film buff community, it is as the source of the sample for experimental rock group Negativland's track "Christianity is Stupid" (which is also the source of the post title). There is something absurdly thrilling about hearing a Southern Baptist preacher, in stentorian tones, yelling, "Christianity is stupid! Communism is good!" over and over again. And, if this movie has any value beyond historical footnote to Christian pop culture & exploitation cinema, it is the absurdity of a evangelical sermon that tries to scare the congregation with misunderstood facts and half-remembered anecdotes about the counter-culture and Communist countries.

On the most basic level, the movie fails because its image of a Communist take-over and its consequences are so absurd. While Pirkle, at several points, buttresses his arguments with claims that these events are inspired by true events that happened in Russia, China, and Vietnam, but without understanding the context or widespread nature of these events. Pirkle only talks about Christian persecution, but he doesn't say anything about the state-sanctioned persecution of other religious minorities, ethnic minorities, intellectuals, artists or business owners, or the starvation of millions of peasants in the name of industrialization.

Furthermore, Pirkle's vision of a Communist take-over, while barely believable in 1952, is absurd in 1971. He shies away from specifics, but the few hints he drops are big enough whoppers. He anticipates a 5th Column-esque takeover, claiming that within 15 minutes of a signal, a legion of shadowy Communists will murder the President, Congress and most state governors. Even Joseph McCarthy would have blanched at that claim!

Remember, this movie was released seven (!) years after DOCTOR STRANGELOVE,  but there is no discussion of a nuclear war of any extent. Pirkle envisions a Fifth Column takeover, which results in total subjugation of the U.S. by Communist Cuba!

That's right, not China, not Russia.

Cuba.

If Ormond was a good director, this movie would be offensive. But since he's a schlock auteur, it's hilarious.

Except for the occasional Pirkle whopper, the sermonizing is pretty static and dull. Even the extras playing congregation, which one would assume might include members of Pirkle's own congregation, look bored and on the verge of yawning throughout the film.

Where the film comes alive is in the flashbacks to Judy's (inoffensively) rebellious life and the flash-forwards (or visualizations) of the aftermath of the Communist takeover. Judy's scenes with her mother and un-named boyfriend are hilarious: watching Judy & her mother woodenly over-emote in each other's general direction as they deliver awkward dialogue is a delight, as is Ormond's depiction of Judy's whitebread rebellion, as she and Mr. Boyfriend drink beer and smoke cigarettes!'

But even better than that are the torments the Communists devise. They sound pretty gruesome:

- Soldiers sticking nails through the ears of children;
- Soldiers forcing children to lower their father onto a series of rakes stuck into the ground;
- A boy getting his head chopped off with a machete after refusing to step on a picture of Jesus.

But when all the depictions are as inept as the one below...


Next they made him wear a headband with an arrow on other side.

Well, you can't help but laugh.

Adding to the hilarious incompetence is the fact that all the Communists wear costumes that were made by a high school theatre department that can't do a hammer-and-sickle, while the actors playing the Commisar (Cecil Scaife) and the Deputy Commisar (Gene McFall) seesaw between a broad Russian accent and a Deep Southern accent, sometimes within the same word!


Oh, and the Commisar looks like he should be coaching the Sweathogs.


If you're someone who actually suffered under Soviet totalitarianism, this movie would make you want to pound nails into the makers' eardrums. But if you think evangelical Christianity and fear-mongering are absurd, well, this movie might prove rewarding.

Tramping the dirt down?

I'm not exactly a huge Russell Brand fan, so that's why I was so surprised to read his cogent recollections of growing up in Thatcher's England that doesn't devolve into sheer vitriol. And he latches onto something that the people who hero worship Thatcher seem to forget. Thatcher might have dismantled what she saw as a socialist government, but she also dismantled any relationship between the British people, their state, and their society, without building a new relationship. People were willing to die for the England Churchill ruled, but does anyone want to sacrifice anything at all for post-Thatcher England?

Maybe that's the reason for the Cult of Diana. She's the one person, post-Thatcher that the English people felt a personal connection with. Now you have a bunch of unappealing Royals who are either unpleasant or doddering.

I know Helen Rittelmeyer, at one point, wrote an article that touched on this (which I can't find the link to), but Brand sums it up rather well:

If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't [...] All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people's pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate.

And in a few sentences, Brand sums up the core contradiction of modern Conservatism: the pull between Free Market selfishness and the yearning for the bonds of a traditional, connected society. But if you say that everything must be bought at market prices, then "traditional society" is at best a hobby for privileged people, the Live Action Role Playing of a society. 

The Shadow of the Gunman and the Swordsman: Golgo 13 and Conan the Barbarian

Pop culture says a lot about a country, and the pop culture that best gives someone an idea about the country's mindset is rarely the culture that people praise. It's usually not the Pulitzer Prize winners or the Oscar winners that we look back on as time capsules of what America was like. It's the Valley of the Dolls and Dirty Harry.

Whenever people (usually conservatives) attack academia, it's for writing papers on TV or comic books or music or movies with little Harold Bloom-approved value. What's the value, your ivory tower-hating good ol' regular American pundit might say, of writing about the semiotics of Law and Order or the post-capitalist structuralism of Justin Bieber?

And I know this might seem like a straw-man kind of thing, but then again, take Naomi Schaefer Riley. Please.

Anyway, already-dated digs at blogosphere dust-ups aside, my point is, what we say in our trashy and/or guilty pleasures and what, more importantly, the public enjoys in their trashy and/or guilty pleasures tells the observer a lot about the public values. It hints at what is in their hearts, instead of what they claim to think.

Looking at Law and Order, for example, what's important is not the mild liberalism of the writers and producers. What is important is that we have the picture of a justice system that is incredibly perceptive and hands-on. The detectives, flawed or cynical as they might be, have a dogged determination and usually lay their hands on a suspect within a matter of days, if not hours. The prosecutors and defense attorneys are usually well-trained, highly-capable individuals, who fight out their battles in front of a jury, and win and lose their cases on the basis of savvy detective work and a keen grasp of the law.

You don't see the large number of cases that remain unsolved, the large number of cases that are quickly plea-bargained out, cops who are petty or mediocre, overworked and underpaid lawyers who offload a lot of their day-to-day duties onto paralegals. Have you ever seen a paralegal show up on Law and Order, or Criminal Minds or CSI: Whatever?

But yet, even at our most cynical, whatever our political background, we think that this is our ideal. This is how the system is supposed to work!

In the last couple of months, two of my trashier pleasures have been Conan the Barbarian (mostly the comics, though I also watched the first film) and Golgo 13 (the anime movies and TV episodes and a little bit of the manga). And on their surface, there are definitely a lot of similarities between the two works, at the generic level.

Conan the Barbarian is a muscle-bound, hard-fighting, hard-living quasi-Nordic warrior in a vaguely pre-medieval, post-Roman Eurasia, who wanders from town to town looking for wenches, wine, and chances to make money as either a thief or a soldier. The women he captures or rescues usually fall in love with him, for at least a little while.

Golgo 13 (a.k.a. Duke Togo) is a muscular Japanese assassin who travels around the world, shooting targets in incredibly impossible situations for money. When he's not killing people, he's usually bedding women in very manly ways.*

Both are clearly male empowerment fantasies, built around the idea that men express their manliness by killing/fighting and having sex with women. The most manly specimens are those that are paid for killing/fighting.

You don't have to look very far for other examples of this empowerment fantasy across genre and form of media. Almost all the Arnold Schwarzenegger protagonists, the Punisher, Wolverine, the Continental Op, most gangsta rappers, and so forth.**

I don't think it's necessary, at this point, to even discuss the fact that women are usually passive characters and victims, with their roles limited to mothers or whores.

But there is a deeper co-relation between Conan and Golgo 13 than that. Historically, culturally, and morally, they share a deeper kinship.

Conan was created by Robert E. Howard between 1929-1930, and his adventures first appeared in the 1930s. After Howard's suicide in 1936, his adventures were kept in print and republished by the executors of his estate, on and off, for the next three decades. However, it was not until the late sixties and early seventies that the character's success flowered with the publication of the Lancer/Ace paperbacks and the start of Marvel Comic's highly successful run of Conan comic books and black-and-white magazines.

Furthermore, post-Howard, a large part of Conan's image as a character was shaped by a series of collaborators, artists and editors with either a loose affiliation with Howard or no connection with him at all. A "studio system" aesthetic evolved, where writers like L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, Bjorn Nyberg and Roy Thomas, and artists like Boris Vallejo, Barry Windsor-Smith, and John Buscema, added significant portions to the Conan mythos or rewrote other non-Conan stories by Howard to become Conan stories. Roy Thomas, in a quest to create content for Marvel's comics and magazines, even appropriated and licensed the non-Conan works of other fantasy writers!***

Though there was mercenary element at work here, the creators intended to serve Conan (or at least their vision of Conan). This was no egotistical attempt by upstart crows to beautify themselves with another's feathers, as might characterize August Derleth's appropriation of H.P. Lovecraft's work.

Golgo 13 was created by Takao Saito in the late 1960s and was first published in 1969. Though Takao Saito was Golgo's creator, the art and writing duties of the series are generally handled by a studio under his supervision. Though Saito's role in the day-to-day operations of the studio are certainly open to speculation, his name is the only one that appears in the credits for the manga.

Furthermore, the live action movies and the anime movies and TV series are under the control of others, though they draw on the comics for inspiration.

What's important to emphasize here is that the late 1960s and early 1970s was the first time either of these characters could command mass appeal. Leaving aside the gore and gruesomeness of their adventures (with extreme violence becoming more mainstream thanks to film and the TV news), both characters possessed a sexual rapaciousness that was only starting to become acceptable toward the end of the 1960s.

However, at the same time, both characters occupy a space of protest against the hippie/protest movements of the time. Their sexual appetites might seem part of the "Summer of Love", but their attitudes towards women are not progressive or feminist. Both characters are satisfied with a market economy and have no qualms with positioning themselves as commodities. Insofar as they display a political consciousness, it could be characterized as conservative, though they are rather apolitical. And though neither is racist or nationalist, their adventures and interactions usually express chauvinism towards cultures than their own.

I will deal more with these characterizations of Conan and Golgo in my next post.

I also wish to say, as a disclaimer, that I am not trying to characterize the political convictions of the writers/artists/editors working on these characters. Roy Thomas, at the very least, strikes me as a relatively progressive writer from his other comic book work. The tenor of these characters' adventures, however, definitely are on the conservative end of the spectrum, and the generic conventions work against progressive or leftist influences.

Anyway, next time: what Golgo says about Japan and what Conan says about America. Yup, I'm aiming big!

*(For a more detailed history of Golgo 13 than I would ever be capable of writing, visit Joe McCulloch's detailed write-up of Golgo here, here and here.)

** However, from my point of view, these characters are not law enforcement and they are not government agents. James Bond might be the one exception. But all of these characters, though they might have a moral system, are not constrained by law or (usually) a chain of command. John McClane, for example, is very different from John Matrix (from Commando). While both kill bad guys,  McClane is functioning as a protector of society. Matrix only cares about his daughter and enforcing his own sense of justice. McClane goes back to being a cop. Matrix rejects the idea of going back to be a soldier.

*** Norvell Page's Flame Winds, which was originally about Prester John in China, became a Conan adventure!

The American healthcare system failed me...

This post has nothing to do with art. I'm sorry. I promise to resume posting on the stuff most people like to read about here soon. But this is something I've needed to say for a long time.

American health insurance has failed me again.

I've heard all the arguments for and against reforms to American health insurance. I've heard a lot of arguments for and against almost each specific reform. I'm not an economist, I'm not a politician. But I do know that health insurance is failing me, personally.

Tonight, I received an e-mail from yet another health insurance company telling me they will not accept me.

Until last summer, I worked a job that provided health insurance. When I left that job to move West, I continued that through COBRA. When the government allowed people under the age of 26 to get on their parent's insurance, I went back on my parents' plan. I turn 26 in June. I'm now looking for private health insurance. But I can't get any. I'm too high risk.

Of course, I'm "high risk" in insurance company terms. I'm the right weight for my heigh, I have low blood pressure, I don't smoke, I rarely drink more than 1 serving of alcohol a night. I haven't even ever gone to the ER since breaking my arm at 14.

However, I do have two pre-existing conditions. They're fairly mild (I've never needed to be admitted to the hospital for them) and I manage them with a few prescription drugs (all of which are on the formulary). In fact, I take a total of 3 prescription drugs, 2 of which are available as generics.

Apparently, this puts me beyond the pale for health insurers in the state of California.

Now, I haven't set high standards for health insurance. The plan I was just turned down for had a deductible of $1000 (and a prescription deductible of $7500, if memory serves). It didn't cover psychiatric treatment, or chiropractors or any other "controversial" treatments. I just wanted something that would cover me in case of an emergency and pay for a couple of regular doctor visits a year. And to pay less than $400 or $700 (those are the figures that COBRA ran me and the "High Risk" pool info I've received quoted me).

However, I'm too big a health risk for that.

I'm not asking for the government to pay for everything. I'm not asking for a handout. But I notice that the "free market" is failing me pretty consistently. And that everything that has been labelled government "interference" is what's keeping me from falling into that great big group of uninsured people that exist in the US.

If the free market can't provide options for a guy like me. then maybe the government should step in.

And if you think the stuff I've mentioned above are reasons I should be denied insurance, then you know where you can go.

Fantasy if it was written by sci-fi writers...

So, a random tweet made me think of Robert A. Heinlein's LORD OF THE RINGS, which in turn put me in mind of how classic fantasy is usually very conservative (in the little c sense). Science fiction writers usually have their own brand of crazy political ideology, but at least few of them share the same idiosyncrasies.

So without further ado, here are synopses of how sci-fi writers would have handled some classics of fantasy:

MOUNT DOOM IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert A. Heinlein - Clever, plucky adventurer overcomes monolithic state regulation and transformation into giant floating eye to become successful vulture capitalist. When elven and human monopolists try to break up his free-steading organization, he expands his operations and introduces the Industrial Revolution to his land.

I, HOUSE-ELF by Isaac Asimov - When a house-elf by the name of Dobby breaks the 3 Fundamental Rules of Hogwarts, an investigator from the Ministry of Magic has to figure out what caused this. He discovers a man named Dumbledore is trying to create a cult that will preserve magical knowledge after the collapse of wizard society, hidden as a religion built around a figure called "Harry Potter".

THE DOMINATION OF THE WHITE QUEEN by S.M. Stirling - Sexually-liberated pagan woman flees a disintegrating world to found a new one colonized by survivalists, soldiers of fortune and hunters. She subdues the primitive natives with her superior organization skills and weaponry. By her efforts, she slows global warming and does away with a hopelessly repressed, sexist society. Then a fanatical religious leader shows up with four children to serve as his figureheads, and does away with all her achievements.

I encourage you to add your own attempts in the comments.

On politics, art and selling out...

Perhaps the most thoughtful warning comes from Hannah Arendt, speaking of Brecht's acquiesence to the Communist regime:

"For the only meaningful punishment that a poet can suffer, short of death, is, of course, the sudden loss of what throughout human history has appeared a divine gift."
- page 215 of Men in Dark Times, Harcourt, Brace and Court, 1968

Something to think about this Fourth of July weekend.

"Stories that will last into history, long after you and me are gone": REDACTED

Redacted, d. Brian DePalma, 2007

Starring: A bunch of people you've never heard of or seen before and probably won't see again

"You don't want to hear a war story," says one of the main characters to a group of civilian friends at the end of the movie. And unfortunately, Brian DePalma spends most of the movie trying to prove that character right.

Now, conventional wisdom on Redacted, when it came out, was that Brian DePalma had turned in a shrill and ridiculously one-sided anti-war film with very little of his usual skill. And this is what even relatively sympathetic film critics said. In this case, conventional wisdom is right.

The plot, so far as there is one, is that it follows a few Marines serving in Samarra in 2006. Eventually, a couple of particularly awful Marines rape a 15 year old Iraqi girl and kill most of her family, claiming at various points that they were fighting insurgents, that it was a Sunni revenge killing, and that is was a Shiite revenge killing. This is all shown through various sources, including one Marine's video-recordings of his unit (in hopes of using it for a reality tv show or film school), a French documentary team, various blogs & youtube videos, security cameras and news footage.

The idea of the film, I think, is an interesting one. Trying to replicate the chopped-up news cycle & the multiplicity of viewpoints emerging around the Iraq War is a noble and interesting idea. In how many previous wars could civilians, with a minimum of effort, see the reaction of the occupied people without any intermediating authority. And when DePalma is merely presenting the contrast between Al-Jazeera, the French documentary team and a CNN stand-in's approaches deadpan, he gets across the problematic nature of the occupation and the way America's own POV prevents it from seeing those problems.

Unfortunately, most of the film is populated with one-note shrill stereotypes of Americans spouting on-the-nose dialogue when they're not doing horrible things. This is the kind of film where, six minutes in, one person says, "the camera never lies" and another person immediately responds, "the camera always lies". To a tiny extent, there might be moments when DePalma could have been arguing about the self-performative nature people develop when they know they're being recorded. But the fact so much of the Marine's documentary footage happens when the others don't know they're being recorded takes away that argument.

You'll notice I haven't really named any of the characters. That's because, with maybe one exception, all the characters make the space marines in Aliens seem complex and multi-faceted. It doesn't help that one character is unironically named Vasquez. One redneck soldier even calls himself a "wildcard", sparking images of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Charlie's hilariously pointless idiocy.

Every moment is so heavy-handed that even the documented incident that inspired this film starts to feel false. DePalma even compromises the (relative) integrity of his approach at the end by giving home video footage of the hero Lawyer McCoy (Robb DeVaney) giving an impassioned (if creaky) speech about the horrors of war and underlining it WITH A PROFESSIONAL HOLLYWOOD SOUNDTRACK! It's like DePalma is taking his stylistic cues from The Notebook!

Now, you can make a movie about horrible people doing awful things and make it interesting, but you have to display some empathy. But DePalma has our war criminals be the most brain-dead, racist sons-of-bitches you'll ever see. Robb DeVaney's character, the nominative good guy, is given some good moments and he rises to the occasion. But everyone else is given clunky dialogue, nonsensical motivations and the mostly non-professional actors respond by turning in awful performances.

Weirdly enough, the people playing Iraqis are really good, when they are given any screen-time. It might help that DePalma plays those moments unaffected and keeps the language simple.

And sadly, DePalma does have some good visual moments. Whether it's the echo of blood-spatter from an early checkpoint shoot-out in a Jihadi execution, or a flowing, surreal long-take of the checkpoint screening that highlights the incomprehensibility of the process, DePalma hasn't lost his touch with mise-en-scene. One of the early heavy-handed moments (a reading from Appointment in Samarra) is nicely undercut by the presence, right behind the reader, of cut-outs from pin-up magazines. In fact, the movie might play better left on mute.

In some ways, this movie is the opposite of another War on Terror flop, Richard Kelley's Southland Tales. Where Kelly's movie was sprawling and needlessly complex, DePalma's is shrill and to-the-point. Where Kelly stranded brilliant performances by actors in a go-nowhere plot, DePalma weds beautiful imagery to headache-inducing performances.

The most effective moment of the film is the closing "Collateral Damage" sequence, where DePalma presents a series of bloody photographs showing the civilians injured or killed by Iraq War violence. A movie about the innocents trying to survive both insurgents and the U.S. military could be effective, moving and reach across partisan talking points. Too bad no one's interested in making that film.

Grade: C-