A Big Black Eye for the FBI -- Richard Jewell Is A "Must See"

Paul Walter Hauser and Sam Rockwell with director Clint Eastwood. 

This Clint Eastwood film is an absolute powerhouse. Eastwood has a history of creating compelling stories and in recent years some especially important ones. With Richard Jewell he's done it again.

The screenwriting was superb. In the first six minutes we have a series of scenes that show us who Richard Jewell was, revealing facets of his character and introducing us to the film's key players in a non-forced manner. Jewell was a good-hearted, but quirky, young man who wanted to do good, but who didn't have a clean sense of boundaries in that regard.

For those unfamiliar with the story, it is about a bomb that exploded in Centennial Park during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Jewell, a security guard at the event, found the backpack containing three large pipe bombs packed with nails and immediately reported it to authorities who called in the bomb squad. Though he did everything in his power to clear the area so that people would be safe, the bomb exploded before it could be defused. Despite his efforts, there were one or two killed and more than a hundred casualties. (Had he not been there it would have certainly done far more damage.)

Sam Rockwell, the other hero.

The media immediately recognized him as a hero, but the FBI placed him on a suspect list, perhaps because they had no other suspects. Instead of using all their powers to find the guilty, they used deceit and every kind of devious means to crucify this innocent man who had no motivation other than to do what was right.

Another real hero in this film is the attorney who stepped in and did everything within his power to protect a vulnerable man.

The real villains? Mainstream media and the irresponsible actions of the FBI.

In addition to an amazing story we see top-notch acting, and superb story-telling in this film. The tension is palpable as we watch the insidious actions of our lawmen trampling Jewell's rights, using bugging equipment and people wearing recording devices to get Jewell to admit he did it. It was literally unbelievable how far they were willing to go.

Jewell made one especially good move. When the FBI set him up and pretended to be making a movie of him as a hero, they gave him a clipboard and asked him to sign a document, on film, of him confessing to the crime. Richard Jewell knew right then he needed to call a lawyer. If he'd not made that call he probably would have received the death penalty and this film would never have been made. Instead he got his life back.

Do you have an attorney whom you could call were you suddenly accused of a crime you didn't commit? That was my own first thought upon watching this film.

Naturally the line from Dylan's "Hurricane" jumps to mind. "It makes you feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game."

Afterwards I looked through the movie reviews at imdb.com and thought these noteworthy.

Excellent portrayal of the sleaziness of law enforcement
I have experience dealing with the Feds and found this movie incredibly compelling. So much about this movie hit home for me. Just a few examples, when the Feds came to talk to Jewell and tried to make him sign shady documents, bugging his home, the slick self-righteous agent who thinks he decides who is right and wrong, cleaning out his home supposedly looking for evidence, wasting time on easy, harmless suspects instead of finding the real criminals to boost their career. It's sad. All that time spent looking at Richard Jewell as a suspect while the real terrorist got away. They knew he was innocent, all they had to do was actually do some actual investigative, science-based investigative work instead of using confirmation bias.

Watch a man get mauled by overzealous FBI and frantic media
Jewell becomes a "person of interest" and the frantic media jump on the story. It is frankly incredibly frightening when you put it all into context and see how a man's life gets mauled. Per the usual, Eastwood does a great job to keep the movie going forward. The all- star ensemble cast is incredible: Paul Walter Hauser IS Richard Jewell, and Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm and Olivia Wilde are equally outstanding. This movie was filmed in the Spring of this year, and now barely 6 months later, it is already in theaters.

Clint Eastwood, now 89 going on 90, called security guard Richard Jewell's story "a great American tragedy," and said it's a story he's been trying to tell for five years. I, for one, was gratified to have seen him finish what he started.

Rockwell, Bates and Hauser were pitch perfect.

There was a special moment in the film in which Kenny Rogers was performing the evening before the bomb blast. Rogers just passed away earlier this spring, so he very likely had a chance to see this film when it was released last year. He may even have received some royalties from the song's inclusion in the film. "You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em."

The media bloodhounds did not fare well in this film. Shrill, intrusive, careless. Not too unlike today, actually.

Richard Jewell was played by Paul Walter Hauser, a relatively unknown whom you may recall from the film I, Tonya, about another Olympics-related crime. Mad Men's Dan Draper was the lead FBI agent whose odious behavior really makes your gut churn. Kathy Bates as Richard's mother is likewise stellar as she sees the cruel way her son is maligned by the press and can't comprehend how this could be happening. And Sam Rockwell was pitch perfect as Watson Bryant, the attorney who rescued Richard from a fate worse than death, the permanent public indignity of being branded a terrorist bomber.

When it was over, another Eastwood film with a similar theme came to mind about a hero who gets treated like a criminal, the film Sully, starring Tom Hanks. Films like these and others--like Just Mercy, The Oxbow Incident, 12 Angry Men--show how Hollywood can serve a redemptive role in society. Who is stepping up to be the next Clint Eastwood with the courage and commitment to shed light on these kinds of stories?

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Related Links
A Kenny Rogers Memory
A Photo Gallery from the film
Richard Jewell, the man and the aftermath

Night of the Living Dead Foreshadowed Our COVID-19 Lockdown

"A ragtag group of Pennsylvanians barricade themselves in an old farmhouse to remain safe from a bloodthirsty, flesh-eating breed of monsters who are ravaging the East Coast of the United States."

Yes, it's campy. But this low budget 1968 zombie film by George Romero has a surprisingly large and passionate fanbase. With a budget just over 100K, the film grossed 12 million dollars domestic and 18 million in international theaters.

It's the kind of late night horror fare that Ghoulardi would have loved to deliver on his Friday Night Shock Theater in Cleveland. Even if you can't take the zombies seriously, the film does have some seriously interesting features.

The storyline is basic. Johnny and Barbra do their annual visit to their father's grave to place flowers there when they are suddenly set upon by cannibalistic zombies. Johnny, who was making fun of his sister for being scared, ends up himself being killed. Barbra runs for her life.

Chase scenes are always dramatic but in this case the pursuit is relentless. She manages to find a farmhouse and manages to get inside. No one is home it seems. Then Ben shows up, looking to fill up his vehicle with gas. Aware that the house is being surrounded by zombies, he keeps them at bay with fire, and proceeds to board up the doors and windows.

Before social media, this was the best way to find out what was happening
in the outside world. Duane Jones as Ben.

Don't look now, but there goes the neighborhood.

The big reveal is that there are five people hiding in a "safe room" in the basement, a family of three and another couple They emerge and a series of conflicts begin as regards the best course of action against this deadly coronavirus, I mean, zombie infestation.

And there it is. A lockdown. A quarantine. And a lot of tension due to their various opinions on how to respond to the life and death situation.

Here are some excerpts from imdb.com

The Shining, The Exorcist and The Omen are all films that owe some of their stylistic approach to this film. This is the film that re-wrote the rules of the horror genre as it went along, whilst acting as both social critique and fond homage to 'The Birds' as well.

And...

This is "the" film that changed the way zombie films were created - more horrifying than ever before. Almost all zombie films that came after this one were patterned after this movie. "Night of the Living Dead" is the most iconic zombie film ever made.

Much of the world is in lockdown and quarantine and while it's true that DUIs are down, domestic violence is up. Way up. Just as Night of the Living Dead seems to have foretold.

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Here's another 60's throwback... or at least a parody of one. Revised for our contemporary Safe Zone focused modern times... Have a party.

You can catch it when you're at the grocery store
You can catch it off the handle on a door
You can catch it from a friend that's droppin' by
You can catch it like a baseball from the sky
I know that you feel so alone
But everybody Must Stay Home.

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The Message Here:
Still in lockdown? Make music. Don't have fights. 
We really don't want to see anyone getting killed.

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Related Link

Night of the Living Dead in the Time of Confinement and the Coronavirus

(Note the nod to Love in the Time of Cholera)

Important Dates in Baseball History -- July (For Those Who Are Missing Their Favorite Game)

These notes were assembled by the late Robert Lookup, a very special person whom my wife and I befriended for the last 10 years of his life.  Links to important April and May dates can be found at the end of this entertaining collection of baseball trivia.

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IMPORTANT DATES -- JULY

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Roberto Clemente, right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates

July 1, 1997
Tiger's Bobby Higginson homers in first inning against the Mets to become 23rd Major League player since 1900 to homer in four consecutive At Bats over two games.

(EdNote: I remember listening to a Pittsburgh Pirates game in which Roberto Clemente hit three home runs in his first three at bats, and being bummed with his fourth at bat was a long fly that caromed six inches from the top of the wall and he only got a double. The greatly respected Puerto Rican all star was my favorite player in the second half of the 60s.)

July 4, 1905
Ossie Schreckengost caught all 29 innings in a Double Header vs. the Red Sox, without shin guards.

July 5, 1993
Ricky Henderson of the A's opens both games of a Double Header with a Home Run to become the first player to do this in 60 years.

July 8, 1918
Babe Ruth hits a Home Run but loses it to the antiquated rule that an extra inning game can only be won by one run. (Previous to 1920 an extra inning home run was recorded as a single if a man was on base.)

Hall of Fame pitcher Cy Young

July 12, 1901
Cy Young of the Red Sox records his 300th win, besting the A's 5-3. (EdNote: His lifetime win-loss record was 511-315.)

July 13, 1963
Early Wynn records his 300th win, Cleveland besting the A's 7-4. (EdNote: Early Wynn was the name of one of my teddy bears, named after the Cleveland Indians starting rotation when I was born in September, 1952. The week before, my family went to see him pitch in Cleveland, in hopes that he would achieve this career milestone. I can still remember our box seats just to the right of the Indians dugout and watching him stand on the mound facing the plate.)

July 16, 1920
Babe Ruth hits 30th home run, breaking his record of 29. The Yankees beat the Browns 5-2. Ruth goes on to hit 54 home runs in 1920.

July 17, 1941
Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak of 56 games is stopped by Al Smith and Jim Bagby of Cleveland, in Cleveland.

July 17, 1990
Twins become the first team in Major League history to pull off two triple plays in one game. The Red Sox still manage a win, 1-0.

July 18, 1970
Willie Mays gets 3000th hit off Montreal Expos' Mike Wegener to become the first Giant to accomplish this feat. He is still the only Giant in this esteemed club.

July 18, 1987
Don Mattingly ties Dale Long's 31-year-old Major League record when he homers for the 8th straight game in a 7-2 loss. Ken Griffey Jr would later tie this record in 1993.

July 18, 1918
Frank Baker is last player to lose a home run to the antiquated rule that said extra inning games could only be won by one run. It was labeled a single.

Ty Cobb, the Georgia Peach

July 19, 1927
Ty Cobb of the Philadelphia A's doubles for the 4000th hit of his career.

July 20, 1998
Brian Hunter of Detroit goes 0-13 in a 26 inning double header against the Yankees.

July 25, 1941
Lefty Grove wins 300th and last game, beating Cleveland 10-6.

July 30, 1980
Astro pitcher J R Richard has a stroke during a workout at the Astrodome. Doctors removed a blood clot behind his right collarbone.

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"On many summer day, I played baseball starting at 8 in the morning, running home at noon for a quick meal, and again with fielding and batting until it was too dark to see the ball."--Carl Sandburg

"Baseball suits the character of this democratic nation. Democracy is government by persuasion. That means it requires patience; that means it involves a lot of compromise. Democracy is the slow politics of the half-loaf. Baseball is the game of the long season where small incremental differences decide who wins and who loses particular games, series, seasons. In baseball, you know going to the ballpark that the chances are you may win, but you also may lose. There's no certainty, no given. You know when a season starts that the best team is going to get beaten a third of the time; the worst team is going to win a third of the time. The argument, over 162 games, is that middle third. So it's a game you can’t like if winning is everything. And democracy is that way, too."--George Will

Related Links
Historic Interview with Roberto Clemente
Important Dates in Major League Baseball for the Month of April
Important Dates in Major League Baseball for the Month of May
Important Dates in Major League Baseball for the Month of June

Twin Ports Art In May -- and More

It appears that Governor Walz has extended the quarantine for two more weeks. Alas, we may not get out to many events in person yet. Nevertheless, there are lots of things happening virtually. Here is the link to the TWIN PORTS ART blog maintained by Esther Piszczek.

There will be no Dylan Fest this month, though you might catch a few virtual events.
Follow on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/duluthdylanfest/

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The All-Seeing HAL from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
Exactly how much is Big Brother watching us today?

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I see this and wonder what Scott Murphy is up to these days.

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Same for Tanja Sell and many of our other fine local painters.

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Marshall McLuhan talked about Pattern Recognition. William Gibson wrote about it.

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Related Links

Paintings, drawings at my Many Faces of Ennyman blog, 2010

Plus things art that I posted there in 2015 

Aristotle, T.S. Eliott and Others... on Hope

Illustration by the author.

When times are monstrous, what people need more than anything is hope.

It's easy to be discouraged when times are crazy, when there is such vitriol being spread through the media and confusion seems to reign. Book titles like Phillip Yancey's Where Is God When It Hurts? and Jacques Ellul's Hope In Time Of Abandonment so concisely capture the need and the feeling that oppresses more than ever.

Any reader of the Psalms will see the recurring heart-anguish of writers expressing their grief at the feeling of abandonment. "Why are you cast down, oh my soul? And why are you so disquieted within me?" writes the author of Psalm 43. He then instructs his heart to hope in God. There is light at the end of this tunnel.

Emily Dickinson famously wrote
"Hope" is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —

Aristotle expressed it this way: "Hope is the dream of a waking man."

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
--T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, East Coker (1940), (III)

EdNote: The passage above brings to mind some of the writings of mystics from the Middle Ages like the Jakob Boehme and the unknown author of The Cloud of Unknowing. My first encounter with it was in the poems and writings of St. John of the Cross, a 16th century Catholic friar who was descended from Jewish converts to Christianity. It was later mentioned in the writing of A.W. Tower.

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When Benjamin Disraeli wrote, "I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best," I don't really know what he was referring to, but I'm pretty sure most of us--speaking here of our current global circumstances--have not been "prepared for the worst." We've lived so long in an easy-going, aw shucks manner, at least in the USA, that as this pandemic was kicking up dust elsewhere we just kind of assumed it would all blow over and we'd all be back to normal soon.

It seems like the ramifications of what has happened and is happening still haven't fully hit us. I, too, am hoping for the best, and hoping we're prepared for the worst. I'm certain many are not.

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"Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords." --Samuel Johnson

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope."--Helen Keller

"While there's life there's hope, and only the dead have none."--Theocritus

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"But God will never forget the needy; the hope of the afflicted will never perish."--Psalm 9:18

"The sun will come out Tomorrow.
Bet your bottom that Tomorrow
there'll be sun."
--Annie

Just keep breathing. And wash your hands.

Parkinson's Law of Triviality: Sad to Say It's All Too Common

We're all familiar with the expression "fiddling while Rome burns." Another, like it, is "re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." Whether true or not (the fiddle, for example, had not yet been invented during the time of Emperor Nero) both of these expressions have served as illustrations of Parkinson's Law of Trivialities.

It was C. Northcote Parkinson who in 1957 codified the argument that "members of an organization give disproportionate weight to trivial issues." We've all seen examples of it, no doubt. It's often at the heart of micromanaging. Spending hours on the size of a logo on an ad by a senior manager who never asks whether this is the right message for this publication or the right product for this audience.

Parkinson provides the example of a fictional committee whose job was to approve the plans for a nuclear power plant spending the majority of its time on discussions about relatively minor but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bike shed, while neglecting the proposed design of the plant itself, which is far more important and a far more difficult and complex task. (Wikipedia)

This is a wonderful example of why G.K. Chesterton said that you search the world over in all the cities and not find a statue of committees.

Parkinson's Law has been applied to software development and other activities. The terms bicycle-shed effect, bike-shed effect, and bike-shedding were coined as metaphors to illuminate the law of triviality; it was popularized in the Berkeley Software Distribution community by the Danish software developer Poul-Henning Kamp in 1999 and has spread from there to the whole software industry. (Wikipedia)

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Related: The Law of Diminishing Returns

Related Link
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
The Original Parkinson’s Law and The Law of Triviality

Ideas Have Consequences. Bad Ideas Have Bad Consequences. Earth Day Reflections

Eight or nine days ago we celebrated Earth Day, touting the importance of taking care of this Third Rock from the Sun, Spaceship Earth.I personally concur with the idea of taking care of our world, being wise custodians of our home planet and its natural resources.

Being good steward of the earth and caring about people should not be mutually exclusive. This is what scares me when I read quotes like this one by John Davis, editor of Earth First! "Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.” That just flies in the face of everything I believe about the value of people. Clearly we're witnessing a collision of worldviews in our time.

Here are some quotes by well-known people who have been leaders of the Green movement. If you take their pronouncements to heart, it scares me that there may be people who might actually be cheering the loss of life taking place as a result of our current pandemic.

“I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.” — John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

"The crippling human cover spread over the living layer of the Earth must forcibly be made lighter: breathing holes must be punctured in this blanket and the ecological footprint of man brushed away. Forms of boastful consumption must violently be crushed, the natality of the species violently controlled, and the number of those already born violently reduced — by any means possible." — Pentti Linkola, Can Life Prevail?: A Revolutionary Approach to the Environmental Crisis. page 170

"Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental."
--Dave Forman, founder of Earth First

“We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion-guilt-free at last!”
--Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue)

“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing… This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run.” --Economist editorial

“Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planet… Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”
—David Graber, biologist, National Park Service

Is COVID-19 anything like your "right virus" Mr. Graber? If you did not say this, I will remove it.

Here's another quote that seems especially disconcerting, in light of these present times.
“If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”--Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund

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I'm curious if these people have any regrets about such ridiculous assertions? 

What do you think?

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Related Links
Earth Day: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
Speaking For Themselves
Could These Be Lines from Avengers Infinity War Part 2?