The Idiocracy Goes to Texas

Melania Trump sporting her new fashion statement
of the obvious during a briefing in Corpus Christi, TX

Three cheers for Republican Florida Congressman Ron DeSantis.

A day after this clown introduced an amendment to the House spending package that would cut off funding of special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Trump took a day trip down to Texas for an ill-timed photo op / distraction event.

And 45 wasn't rolling solo either.

The elusive Melania Trump accompanied him, cementing her position as First Lady Of the Obvious by sporting a custom made black baseball hat with the words FLOTUS stitched on the front - as if people would be wondering who the woman who stepped out of the White House this morning in stilettos, Capri pants and aviator sunglasses was.

Thanks Melania, I think we got it. (Shaking my head)

Can you just imagine the backlash from Fox News and right-wing un-intelligentsia if Michelle Obama had appeared next to the President with a black hat with the words FLOTUS on it?

As the Times of Israel reported, Melania's fashion choices for a visit to a flood-ravaged Texas prompted one snarky female Twitter user to crown her, "Flood Watch Barbie".

Based on her delusional narcissistic husband's comments at a hurricane relief event in Corpus Christi, Texas earlier today, I'm not sure the flood, or the reality of what was going on 215 miles to the northeast in Houston, was even on his mind.

As Trump spoke today, at least 9,000 evacuees were sheltering in the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston - grateful for cots with warm blankets, dry clothes, hot meals and still trying to cope with the scope of the disaster that has upended their lives.

Houston PD Sergeant Steve Perez

On Monday, while Trump gleefully rescinded Obama's executive order limiting the types of military equipment that could be transferred to local police and sheriff's departments, Houston police were desperately searching for Sergeant Steve Perez.

A 34-year year veteran of the Houston Police Department who was one day shy of his 61st birthday when he left home on Sunday to drive to work despite the flooded roads and highways.

Today a visibly shaken Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo confirmed that police divers had located his body under at least 16 feet of water beneath an overpass.

He drowned on his way to help others.

Any normal  president (or anyone in their right mind) would have made mention of Sergeant Perez's name - but not 45.

A normal president speaking at an event during one of the worst storms on record would have at least attempted to offer some words of sympathy, hope, reassurance and meaning to the people who came out to hear a commander-in-chief lead.

But as an article on RawStory.com noted, the clinically insecure Trump stood atop a ladder suspended between two fire trucks and once again made the event about himself with the crass observation:

"What a crowd! What a turnout!"

As if he was at the opening of some cheesy casino in Atlantic City rather than standing in front of people partly traumatized from days of relentless rain wondering how the federal government is going to help thousands of Texans to rebuild their lives.

The comment prompted one Texas Twitter user named Laura to remark "Get him out of Texas."

Felix Sater and Trump

I'm not sure what word best describes Trump's visit to Texas. Surreal? Unnecessary? Bizarre?

In my view it was nothing more than a taxpayer-funded distraction from the New York Times article on Monday revealing that the sleazy Russian-born businessman and Trump-associate Felix Sater wrote an email to Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen at the start of 45's 2016 presidential campaign in which he bragged:

"Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin's team to buy in on this."

If the White House is desperate enough to strong-arm Republican Florida Congressman Ron DeSantis into adding an amendment into the Congressional spending bill that seeks to cut off funds for the special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign's collusion with Russia to intentionally interfere with the 2016 election, then they'd certainly hastily arrange a trip for him to grab some free media attention by flying down to Texas for a photo-op.

Aside from shilling for the 2020 presidential race, why else would he go down there?

Remember this is the guy who, just a week ago, rescinded the Federal Flood Risk Mitigation Standard introduced by the Obama administration in 2015.

The Houston cityscape - wth more rain to come

It would have required infrastructure projects that receive federal funds to plan and account for flood damage to minimize costs to U.S. taxpayers who must foot the bill for costly damage due to flooding.

So think about that.

When the billions in infrastructure repair work begins for Houston and other parts of Texas and Louisiana ravaged by Harvey (roads, bridges, highways, levies etc.) thanks to the Trump administration, none of that construction will have to adhere to design and construction standards that factor in lessons learned from Katrina and Harvey.

Does that make sense? No of course it doesn't.

No more than the White House budget proposal back in March that would have cut an astounding 12% ($1.3 billion) from the budget of the U.S. Coast Guard for fiscal 2018 - just as coastal flooding and severe storms are projected to worsen as the ocean temperature continues to rise.

But that's the kind of Idiocracy that this White House administration represents, it's just unfortunate that it had to travel down to Texas in the midst of one of the worst natural disasters in the state's history.

As if Harvey wasn't enough for Texans to deal with.

Oh and ten bucks says Melania's FLOTUS hat is available on sale on Ivanka Trump's Website within a week.

Harvey's Wrath & White Privilege in Charlottesville

Family Research Council Pres. Tony Perkins

Having seen and personally experienced the devastation of Superstorm Sandy here in New Jersey back in the fall of 2012, my heart goes out to the thousands of people and animals facing what some meteorologists are describing as a 500-year flood event.

Speaking of floods of Biblical proportions, it's ironic that Tony Perkins, the hyper-conservative gay-bashing president of the virulently anti-homosexual lobbying group the Family Research Council, had his home destroyed in flooding that hit Louisiana last week.

As Sky Palma observed in an article for Deadstate.org, on Tony Perkins' radio show in 2016, he piously agreed with self-described "Christian prophet" Jonathan Cahn that "Hurricane Joaquin was a sign of God's wrath for the legalization of gay marriage."

Joaquin killed 34 people and caused over $200 million in damage when it slammed into the Caribbean back in September of 2015 - so I'm guessing that Tony, who the Southern Poverty Law Center reports once spoke in front of a white supremacist group and purchased the mailing list of former KKK leader David Duke for a political campaign he was running, is coming to grips with the old adage that Karma is a bitch.

There's no question that Hurricane Harvey is shaping up to be one of the most devastating weather events to strike the continental U.S. in years, but it irks me when some journalists and media outlets excessively dramatize it or crank up the fear factor in their coverage.

Last night I was at my local having a couple of drinks and a news report came on the television with the graphic "Harvey's Wrath", and as I scanned some stories about the hurricane this morning on the Web, I noticed that a lot of outlets are using that same phrase to describe the damage.

As if a naturally occurring weather event was endowed with malice and somehow got pissed off and decided to intentionally strike the coast of Texas and Louisiana.

Some of the 120 members of the FDNY & NYPD
headed to Texas to assist with flood relief 

With Texas Governor Greg Abbott calling for federal aid, given my predilection for politics, I would point out that back in  January of 2013 when Congress was voting on additional aid for Sandy relief, 179 of the 180 no votes came from Republican Representatives.

And at least 20 of those no votes were from Texas Reps. Just sayin'.

As you watch Harvey unfold, and calls for federal assistance increase, remember that Donald Trump proposed cutting FEMA's budget by a whopping11%.

With thousands, of law enforcement, firemen and EMT's risking their lives to help rescue stranded victims who were either unable or unwilling to evacuate before Hurricane Harvey hit, it was reassuring to see that Trump woke up this morning and sent out a Tweet promoting a book by the unhinged nutjob Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke.

(No doubt traumatized storm victims huddling in shelters whose homes have been destroyed found THAT comforting.)

That said I wanted to take a few moments to pivot to the small fraction of bad cops that permeate the ranks of law enforcement.

Just because the Department of Justice under Attorney General Jeff Sessions has decided to essentially ignore the systematic racial bias that it's own research has found to be rampant within a number of police departments around the country, it doesn't mean the issue is going away anytime soon.

In recent days a couple of pretty disturbing examples have surfaced which demonstrate why Sessions' "ostrich head in sand" approach to a major human rights and justice issue in the United States seems so out of step with reality.

Bart Alsbrook

After an investigation by KXII-TV reporter Rachel Knapp, Bart Alsbrook, a reserve police officer recently named as the interim chief of the Colbert (Oklahoma) Police Department, was discovered to be the operator of two different Websites devoted to white supremacist / Neo-Nazi beliefs.

As Knapp's investigation revealed, Alsbrook's name and address were found on documents used to register both Websites, ISD Records and NS88.com - both of which sell a range of offensive racist memorabilia including patches, records and videos aimed at the fringe white supremacist subculture.


According to KXII-TV, Alsbrook was also identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as being the Texas coordinator of a group called Blood and Honour - a slogan listed on the Website ISD Records.

As a result of Knapp's investigation, this morning Tom Porter of Newsweek reported that Alsbrook is stepping down from the Colbert Police Department.

Much more disturbing is the New York Times article by Frances Robles published on Friday about the newly released video footage showing a white supremacist protester at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia two weeks ago who pulls out a handgun, yells out the word "Nigger" and fires a shot into a crowd of anti-racist protesters.

A community activist quoted in the article was quoted as saying that there was a group of Virginia State Police behind a barrier about ten feet from the shooting at the time but none of them did anything when the shot was fired even though they clearly heard and saw it.

That kind of reaction stands in stark contrast to the heavily-armed riot police in Ferguson, Missouri who assembled en masse (complete with armored vehicles) when crowds of peaceful protesters gathered to protest the killing of Michael Brown back in 2015.

An as-yet unidentified man firing into a crowd of
protesters in Charlottesville as State police watch

It's not my intention to focus on the "few bad apples" in the proverbial barrel, guys like Bart Alsbrook, or Ray Tensing, the University of Cincinnati police officer who was wearing a t-shirt with a Confederate flag on it under his uniform when he inexplicably gunned down unarmed African-American motorist Sam DuBose in 2016 after a routine traffic stop, are not isolated examples.

The ranks of law enforcement are populated by a lot of people like that.

Individuals whose personal racial or ethnic bias calls into question their ability to conduct their jobs objectively in accordance with the oath they take to protect and serve.

Do police officers have the right to their own personal beliefs? Sure they do.

But when those beliefs or views obstruct their ability to do their duty, and such actions come to light in the media, it undermines community trust in, and respect for, law enforcement.

So they make it harder for the vast majority of police officers who do the job the right way; like the men and women working to rescue flood victims in Texas and Louisiana right now.

It's unfortunate that the negative actions of the few outweigh the positive actions of the many, as a black guy in America I get that - I'm sure there are many Sheriffs in American who find former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's actions repugnant.

(Leave it to Trump to pardon a bigot convicted by a federal court of using his authority to systematically violate people's Constitutional rights, especially a man whose shown absolutely no remorse about it.)

But like many people of different races, ethnicities and religious backgrounds, I'm left wondering why a group of Virginia State Police just stood there while a white man pulled out a gun and fired it into a crowd in broad daylight, and did nothing.

As someone observed on Twitter about this disturbing 37-second video, it is the very definition of white privilege in America - especially considering the number of unarmed African-American boys and men who've been shot and killed by police officers who simply THOUGHT they had a gun.

It's a troubling reminder that the way people are treated by police officers in this country can be very different depending on the skin color (in the case of the guy in Charlottesville) of the person who pulls the trigger.

The Immigration Policy That Wasn't

Growing up in the suburbs of Bethesda, Maryland just outside Washington, D.C. in the 1970's and 80's, I knew families from all over the world who lived there as part of diplomatic, international trade, lobbying or military missions that interacted with various branches of the federal government.

Within two blocks of the street I grew up on there were families from Bangladesh, Australia, Japan, Columbia, England and Ghana.

To me, the kids from those families that I played with and went to school with were just kids, and as a child I didn't think of it as a racially and ethnically diverse neighborhood - it just was.

That's one of the reasons that I vented some frustrations about the Trump administration's approach to undocumented immigrants in my previous blog - the toxic vilification of people simply because of the color of their skin, their ethnicity, their religion or their country of origin makes no sense to me.

It's remarkable, and somewhat disturbing, that a country like the United States, one of the most culturally diverse nations on the planet where everyone who is not Native American is an immigrant, still wrestles with immigration in the 21st century.

Considering how much the issue of immigration reform was such a part of the political dialog in this country during the recent 2016 presidential race, it's remarkable how little the Republican politicians (who control both the House and Senate) have done about it.

For a White House which has almost rendered itself politically impotent as a functioning branch of the federal government because of the chaotic, delusional man who currently occupies it, the idea of immigration reform has basically been limited to poorly thought out executive orders restricting the flow of people from predominantly Muslim countries into the U.S. and ordering U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel to ramp up the arrests and deportation of the tens of millions of people who are in this country illegally.

Oh and spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money on building a really big wall between the U.S. and Mexico, even though data from the Pew Research Center shows that illegal immigration from Mexico has declined sharply in the past decade and most illegal immigrants are now coming from other countries.

Romulo Avelica-Gonzales with two of his daughters

Under the Trump administration ICE agents now lie in wait outside of schools waiting to arrest and deport parents dropping their children off in the morning.

Like Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez, a 48-year-old father of four who'd just dropped his 12-year-old daughter off at school in Los Angeles when ICE agents pulled him over and arrested him back in February as his wife looked on in horror and his other 13-year-old daughter cried uncontrollably.

Does that really make America safer?

Is that what "Making America Great Again" is supposed to look like? Breaking up American families?

According to an August 7th L.A. Times article the Board of Immigration Appeals has granted a temporary hold on his deportation while it decides whether or not the federal government is going to kick a married father of four daughters who has lived here for over 20 years out of the country.

What's unfortunate is that a fairly comprehensive immigration reform bill that would have offered someone like Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez a legal avenue to remain here in the U.S. was almost passed back in 2006 during the 2nd term of President George W. Bush.

Those old enough to remember will recall that Bush genuinely wanted, and fought for, meaningful comprehensive immigration reform.

With two years left in his tumultuous lame-duck presidency, Bush, desperate to leave some kind of political legacy not related to the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his failure to react quicker to Hurricane Katrina, swung for the fences.

As the brilliant investigative journalist Janet Reitman observed in her insightful profile of Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, in May of 2006 Bush pressed Congress to draft an immigration reform bill and after months of intense lobbying and negotiation, Republicans and Democrats reached what was touted at the time as "a Grand Bargain".

Then Sen. Jeff Sessions speaking against immigration
reform on the floor of the Senate chamber 

But it was not to be.

As Reitman reported, "On June 27th, 2007, a coalition of Republican senators backed by more than a dozen Democrats and independent Senator Bernie Sanders, defeated the bill 53-46". 

Delivering a stinging blow to the hugely unpopular Bush and establishing the foundation of a conservative coalition against moderate Republicans.

A coalition that continues to divide the Republican Party to this day and hamstrings their ability to pass meaningful legislation at a time when they have majorities in both the House and Senate and a Republican president in the White House.

The defeat of that immigration reform bill also put millions of folks who immigrated to this country illegally, people who've been here for years and established themselves as productive members of society with roots in their respective communities, back into the perpetual state of legal limbo, uncertainty and fear in which they now find themselves.

And as Reitman points out, the architect of the defeat of that bill was none other than the then-Republican Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.

He spent months on the floor of the Senate chamber ripping apart immigration reform, ironically helping to defeat legislation that would have authorized federal funds to strengthen the very same borders that Trump now wants build a wall to make more secure.

Why? Because Sessions' rigid ideology, so clearly rooted in his own antiquated southern views of white supremacy and prejudice against people of color, opposed any pathway that would have allowed undocumented immigrants to remain here in the country legally.

Since the inauguration in January, we've seen some disturbing examples of the consequences of the Trump administration's heartless, ramshackle immigration policy - or perhaps, anti-immigration might be a better term.

Are undocumented immigrants receiving proper
 medical treatment in the Hudson County Jail?

As The Guardian reported back in February, a woman who'd filed three previous police reports for domestic abuse against her partner (incidents in which she'd been choked, punched, kicked and had a knife thrown at her) was arrested by ICE agents moments after an El Paso, Texas court had granted her a protective order - they literally arrested her as she walked out of the courtroom.

Are undocumented women in the U.S. silently enduring physical abuse right now because they're afraid that if they go to the police to report it they'll be arrested by ICE?

On Wednesday afternoon reporters Hannan Adely and Monsy Alvarado were interviewed on the Leonard Lopate Show to discuss the results of their ongoing investigation published in a series of articles for the Bergen Record posted on NorthJersey.com looking into the deaths of undocumented immigrants while in custody in the Hudson County and other detention facilities in New Jersey.

They also shared some really troubling insight into detainees who are not getting proper medical treatment for life-threatening ailments and how activist groups are trying to pressure politicians and authorities into holding corrections staff and administrators responsible for ensuring the health and safety of people being held in jail simply because of their immigration status.

As Attorney General, Jeff Sessions rolled back Department of Justice restrictions on the use of private prisons to hold federal inmates that were put into place under President Obama, largely because he knew arrests of undocumented immigrants under the Trump administration was going to spike drastically - arrests are up 40% since the inauguration in January.

Not only did he order federal judges to border detention facilities to radically increase the processing of cases of undocumented immigrants targeted for deportation, back in April he also ordered federal prosecutors to being making deportation cases a higher priority.

Former U.S. attorney Jenny Durkan

"Which prosecutors and agents does he want to divert from the growing threats like terrorism, cybercrime, the opioid and heroin trade, organized crime and cartel activity? The 'surge' philosophy always requires taking agents, money and prosecutors from other priorities. In fact, the cost of satisfying Washington will reduce the ability of every U.S. attorney from addressing the greatest threats to their communities." 

Those are the words of Jenny Durkan, a former U.S. attorney.

She served as the federal prosecutor for the Western District of Washington under President Obama from 2009 to 2014 - she made that observation in an interview for the Washington Post back in April in article about the impact of Sessions' decision to take resources away from other cases in order to ramp up the prosecution of undocumented immigrants.

As a recent Quinnipiac University poll which shows that 71% of Americans think Trump is not levelheaded and 63% said he does not share their values or have good leadership skills, the void of leadership from the White House seems to grow by the day.

That's basically the guy dictating a flawed U.S. immigration policy that's being enforced by anti-immigrant zealot Attorney General Jeff Sessions - who may literally be putting Americans in danger by diverting the resources of the Department of Justice and federal courts to enforce the ideology of Trump and overtly racist White House advisers like Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka.

Anti-Trump protesters at Trump's Phoenix speech
vastly outnumbered Trump supporters inside

And so Trump plunders on, determined (as evidenced by his quasi-delusional unhinged rambling in Phoenix the other night) to keep the media's and public's attention away from the encroaching Russia investigation with an almost non-stop series of bizarre words and actions that read like a laundry list from a lunatic:

Granting a pardon to the former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a racist anti-immigrant nutjob who was convicted by a federal court for ignoring a court order to stop using the resources of his department to carry on a campaign of harassment against immigrants.

Threatening to shut down the federal government and plunge the economy into chaos if Congress doesn't authorize billions in taxpayer funds to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

Signing an executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military - even though he himself ducked military service in Vietnam after he graduated from military school.

America has always been a culturally diverse nation and it always will be, Trump's desire to somehow remold it into the image of some kind of ethnically-homogenous Neo-Nazi fantasy stands in total contrast to the rich cultural fabric which defines this nation.

His demented vision is nothing like the America that I grew up in, or the one I see every day.

As we close out yet another week in which the media cycle was dominated by a chaotic White House, to me the real question is how much longer are Republican politicians going to wait before they cut the cord, admit they backed the wrong horse and find a way to work with Democrats in order to remind Trump that Congress controls the purse strings and writes the laws?

(Of course there's the power of impeachment too...)

Or are Republicans just going to sit back and watch their brand become completely toxic before the 2018 mid-term elections?  Clock's ticking.

'America America': Elia Kazan's Look At the Immigrant Experience

Actor Stathis Giallelis reassures his mother before
leaving home in Elia Kazan's America America

Based on the Nielsen ratings of Monday night's presidential address on the war in Afghanistan, a paltry 28 million (about 9%) of the approximately 326,474,013 people in the United States tuned in to watch Donald Trump try and pitch the nation on his new strategy for a war which has already lasted 16 years.

I was not among those who watched 45 use the longest war in U.S. history as a wedge to try and prop up his failing presidency - nor did I watch him go off script last night in Phoenix.


With Trump in Arizona to visit a border crossing near Yuma to promote his beloved wall before ratcheting up his divisive rhetoric against immigrants, the New York Times is reporting that Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is now openly musing about whether the increasingly politically-isolated Trump can actually get any of his legislative initiatives passed.

In light of 45's recent wacky speculation on Fox News that he might use the rally in Phoenix to issue a presidential pardon to the immigrant-hating recently convicted former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, it seemed timely to unplug from the news and watch America, America - director Elia Kazan's 1963 film based on his family's accounts of his uncle's epic struggle to immigrate to the United States at the turn of the 20th century.

From my perspective, this compelling black and white film serves as the perfect contrast to the bombastic, irrational immigrant bashing that all but defined the 2016 Republican presidential race and continues to echo in the halls of the current White House; which has engaged in abhorrent, simplistic, fear-based hysteria regarding those who immigrate to this nation from other countries.

Elia Kazan has long been one of my favorite directors, and I've seen many of the classics he's directed multiple times, because there always seems to be something new to learn from watching his work.

Elia Kazan (left) directing Warren Beatty and
Natalie Wood in Splendor In the Grass (1961)

Films like A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (1945), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Pinky (1949), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), East of Eden (1955) and perhaps my favorite Kazan-directed film, A Face In the Crowd (1957), are films I've seen before and will watch again and again.

Born in 1909 in what is now Istanbul, Turkey to Greek parents, Kazan was one of the founders of the Actor's Studio and as his impressive film resume demonstrates, he was known for eliciting incredibly deep and realistic performances from actors.

For example, Andy Griffith's work in A Face In the Crowd, in which he plays a sly, charming but volatile country drifter who becomes an influential force in media and politics intoxicated with his own power, is (in my opinion) the finest role of Griffith's career - and it was his first film break.

If you've never seen it rent it when you get the chance, Walter Matthau, Patricia Neal and a young Lee Remick all have excellent supporting roles, and the script by Budd Schulberg is a searing and darkly cynical look at the intersection of the entertainment and media industry and politics.

Schulberg also wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront and wrote the influential 1941 novel 'What Makes Sammy Run?' a piercing character study of a ruthless Hollywood backstabber who claws his way to the top.

Gregory Peck (with Celeste Holm) confronts
anti-Semitism in Gentlemen's Agreement (1947)

Kazan was famous for preferring to work with unknown actors and he introduced stars like Marlon Brando, Warren Beatty, Karl Malden and James Dean to the big screen.

Kazan did not shy away from taking on a range of highly-controversial topics in his films including anti-Semitism, racism and political corruption, and he also insisted that each of his films in some way relate to his own life experiences.

For example the anti-Semitism he must've faced during his life is clearly reflected in Gentlemen's Agreement starring Gregory Peck.

While I'm not an expert on Kazan by any means, I am pretty familiar with his films, so as a casual observer my sense is that his 1963 film America America stands out as his most personal work.

I watched it on DVD (Netflix) the other day for the first time and came away impressed with the sheer scope of the story - if you get cable it's going to be broadcast on TCM on Thursday September 7th at 12:30pm EST if you want to set your DVR to record it and watch it.

But be prepared, the version I saw was almost three hours long, so it's not a quick watch or anything - it's one of those films you've got to be prepared to sit down and absorb.

In America America Kazan's trademark use of respectful doses of sentimentality are contrasted with some pretty intense helpings of reality so intense that they can be hard to watch at times.

The story, based on Kazan's uncle's experiences, centers on Stavros Topouzoglou (played by unknown actor Stathis Giallelis) the oldest son of a Greek family living in a hard-scrabble village in the mountains of Turkey in 1890.

Cinematographer Haskell Wexler shooting on the
set of America America

It's beautifully shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler and the opening scenes of the mountainous regions of Turkey are really stunning.

In fact, when I saw the opening scenes, they reminded me of the brilliant shot in the opening of David Leans' Dr. Zhivago (1965) as the story cuts to the past with a sweeping view of the Russian mountains where the main character was born.

Lean is a master filmmaker, but I wouldn't be surprised if he "borrowed" Haskell Wexler's shot.

In the first act of America America Stavros is exposed to the brutality of life under the Ottoman Turkish empire as Turkish soldiers brutally execute Armenian Christians before beginning to heard them into concentration camps.

The Armenian Genocide remains highly controversial to this day and it's interesting to see how careful Kazan was about discussing it in the film.

Kazan offers some interesting cut-away snippets of Turkish officials in meetings discussing what will become the foundation of the Turkish genocide of Armenian people that eventually took place during WWI between 1915 - 1918 and later between 1920 - 1923.

From the start, young Stavros dreams of going to America, urged on by an older Armenian friend who encourages them to both leave before the latter is killed by the Turks - after that, reaching America becomes an obsession for Stavros that drives the rest of the film.

His family entrusts him with all their valuables to set out across the country to Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) where his father's cousin has a small business.

But along the way Stavros is repeatedly taken advantage of, robbed, beaten and wrongly framed by the law to the point that his obsession to reach America morphs into a ravenous desperate hunger that gnaws at him day and night.

Stavros and other immigrants glimpse the coast
of the United States for the first time

He is eventually reduced to back-breaking menial labor to survive while he lives on the streets and eats from the garbage to save money.

Along the way, Kazan uses the scenery, characters and setting to describe the gut-wrenching struggles faced by immigrants trying to reach America at the turn of the century in ways that are far more effective than some kind of speech.

He dives deep into the brutal economic conditions that drove millions to come to the U.S. to search for a better life.


While it's clearly a personal film for Kazan, it's still Hollywood.

So things eventually turn for Stavros, but only after he comes face to face with frustration, desperation and repeated failure, and when he finally does meet some Americans, Kazan reminds us that human nature is human nature - bursting the bubble of the ideal of a land of plenty where the streets are paved with gold.

The America Stavros finds is decidedly un-Hollywood, but it is America.

The film compelled me to look with a new perspective at those scenes of desperate migrants from Africa and the Middle East packed onto boats crossing to Greece or Italy - risking their lives for a chance at a better life for themselves and their families.

A naturalization ceremony in Washington D.C

Or those who come from South and Central America who travel north to get here - people we glimpse every day in this country cutting lawns, taking care of kids, cooking, delivering food, washing dishes, working construction - or a hundred other things.

America America is set at the turn of the century and was released in 1963, but it's remarkably relevant to the crisis of global immigration that many countries are facing today - a crisis fueled by poverty, economic inequality, political oppression and war.

And of course, plain old greed and corruption.

I'm not sure the film answers those questions, but it does shed new light on the issue; and it offers fresh insight into the lives of the people who are so often reduced to degrading stereotypes by the likes of men like Donald Trump and Stephen Miller - both of whom had relatives who immigrated to this country from other lands.

How quickly they forgot - or perhaps, growing up ensconced in the privilege that surrounded both Trump and Miller, they simply never understood.

Elia Kazan's film could offer them both insight, but I'm not sure Trump or Miller care, or even want to learn - because by watching America America, it might just humanize the very people they both make a career out of dehumanizing.

It's unlikely men like that are ready to shed their rigid and divisive ideology in order to examine who they really are and where they come from.

Self examination like that takes courage, the kind Elia Kazan demonstrated in writing, producing and directing a film about the immigrant experience that shaped his own life - and hence the perspective of the audiences and artists alike around the world who've watched his films and been inspired.

Racist Jihad, Fake History & The Lone President

Thousands protest hate in Boston ahead of a planned
"Free Speech" rally by white nationalists  [Reuters]

It's only been a week since Heather Heyer was killed while protesting the hundreds of Neo-Nazis and racists who flooded the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia.

As Matt Novak of Gizmodo reported this morning, Jason Kessler, the organizer of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally, posted a Twitter message saying Heyer's death was "payback time" - part of a bizarre statement accusing her of being a communist responsible for the deaths of "94 million".


Despite widespread condemnation of their message of hate, right-wing proponents of racism and bigotry nonetheless planned similar rallies today in Atlanta, Dallas and Boston - as if they are determined to unleash a new wave of racist jihad across America.

During the course of the week, Boston's Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh and Massachusetts' Republican Governor Charlie Baker both unequivocally denounced the coalition of Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and alt right nationalists and their message of division, hatred and violence.

By some of the estimates posted on Twitter by people who were there, approximately 100 white nationalists / Neo-Nazis were outnumbered by a possible 20,000 anti-racist counter-protesters.

The vast majority of whom peacefully flooded the streets of downtown Boston, marching towards the historic Boston Commons in a display of unity against the intolerance that Trump spent most of the week defending.

His rants against the removal of Confederate statues further alienated the dwindling number of Republican supporters he has left on Capitol Hill, and even some members of his own White House staff.

A counter-protester in Boston with a poster of
Trump being shushed by Dr. Martin Luther King

On Thursday Trump once again took to Twitter to repeat the false claim the U.S. Army General Jack Pershing had ordered 50 Muslim insurgents executed with bullets dipped in pigs blood during America's military campaign in the Philippines between 1899 and 1903.

That story has been widely debunked by military historians for years.

It resurfaced in the wake of the anti-Muslim backlash after the 9/11 attacks, and Trump dredged it up at rallies during his 2016 presidential campaign in an effort to justify violence against Muslims.

Just one of the many lies repeated by Trump to justify his bigotry and racism.

According to Wikipedia, as a first lieutenant General Pershing commanded the all-black 10th Calvary Regiment for 19 months in 1895 - 1897, both in the western U.S. as part of the Army campaign to protect settlers and fight against insurgent Native American fighters, and later in Cuba as part of the Spanish-American War - where the unit performed with distinction in combat.

The 10th Calvary Regiment was one of the different groups of infantry and calvary units comprised entirely of African-American soldiers known as The Buffalo Soldiers; who were commanded by white Army officers.

In a reflection of the racism that permeated the ranks of the U.S. Army in the 1800's, some white officers turned down the assignment to command all-black units.

Including the flamboyant Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, a veteran of the Civil War whose bravery and desire for attention and fame often far outweighed his proficiency as a soldier and battlefield tactician.

Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer

It was Custer's poor tactical decision to ignore orders to wait for reinforcements to arrive at the mouth of the Little Big Horn River in eastern Montana before engaging twelve companies of the U.S. 7th Calvary Regiment against a superior force of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians that led to the disastrous defeat known as "Custer's Last Stand" on June 25, 1876.

Some 294 U.S. soldiers, including Custer, two of his brothers, his nephew and his brother-in-law, were killed (five of the twelve companies under Custer's command were totally wiped out) in what would be the largest engagement of the Great Sioux War of 1876.

But to get back to General Pershing, he was a shrewd and calculating commanding officer who rose through the ranks and earned distinction in part, as a result of his willingness to lead all-black troops.

Later at West Point where he was known as a demanding instructor, white Army cadets began derisively referring to him as "Nigger Jack" because he'd led black calvary troops.

When Pershing was later appointed leader of the American forces during World War I, the press softened the nickname to "Black Jack" Pershing, the nickname by which he's widely known.

Pershing was not some kind of ignorant anti-Muslim bigot prone to insulting Islam as a means to defeating Muslim terrorists in the Philippines as Trump suggested.

As reporter Alex Horton observed in an article in the Washington Post on Friday, Texas A&M history professor Brian M. Linn, author of a book on the American military in Asia in the early 20th century titled, 'Guardians of Empire', said of the suggestion that General Pershing ever ordered soldiers to dip bullets in pigs blood then use them to execute Muslim terrorists:

"There is absolutely no evidence this occurred."

General Jack Pershing

In fact, as Horton notes, Pershing went out of his way to not only read the Koran in order to better understand the Islamic faith, he also made an effort to meet and have the traditional tea with Muslim insurgent leaders in the Philippines and avoided killing their fighters whenever possible.

Unlike Trump, Pershing respected the Islamic faith.

Trump repeating the lie that General Pershing committed anti-Muslim atrocities is a reflection that despite graduating from the New York Military Academy and from the University of Pennsylvania, Trump has what can only be described as a remarkably feeble grasp of American history.

Same guy who accused President Obama, who lead the Harvard Law Review, of not graduating from college.

The removal of Trump's controversial chief strategist Steve Bannon on Friday capped off what is arguably one of the most chaotic and divisive weeks in recent American history.

There are conflicting media reports about what prompted this latest in a series of shakeups of Donald Trump's top advisers.

As Michelle Fox of CNBC reported on Friday, journalist Robert Kuttner, who interviewed Bannon just last Tuesday, is highly skeptical that Bannon actually handed in his resignation last Monday.

What seems more likely is that the announcement of his removal on Friday was not just another effort by a desperate White House to deflect media attention from the ongoing Russia investigation and Trump's own damaging statements on race.

It may well have been an effort to try and quiet the growing calls from members of both sides of Congress for Trump to purge his staff of the anti-immigrant bigots who sympathize with and even support known white supremacists - including Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka.

Congresswoman Pramila Jaypal 

In fact, Bannon's firing came in the wake of Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jaypal, who represents the 7th District of Washington State and filed a resolution calling for Trump to immediately fire any staff members known to have supported white supremacists last Tuesday.

After Trump's press conference in which he defended the white supremacists and claimed that "many sides" were responsible for the deadly violence that occurred in Charlottesville, Jaypal introduced another Congressional resolution calling for Trump to be censured for his comments.

79 members of Congress supported her censure resolution and the DailyKos is circulating a petition for people to sign on to it as citizen co-sponsors.

Almost 47,000 people have already signed it.


But it's not just progressive and Democratic members of Congress and concerned citizens expressing their condemnation of the Tiki Torch Nazis parading around Charlottesville.

Starting last Sunday with a Twitter message by the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, the leaders of the U.S. Army, Marines and Air Force all released messages rejecting racism and bigotry.

And they did it via Twitter to be sure that their erratic Commander-in-Chief got the message.

Praise for corporate American leadership isn't exactly a frequent topic on this blog.

But I do think the heads of some of the largest companies in the country deserve a measure of admiration for taking the initiative to call Donald Trump out for showing zero moral leadership for the first two days after an event which shook the conscience of the nation.

Despite Republicans holding majorities in both the House and Senate, and thus having control of the federal government, it was a high-profile citizen from the private sector who took the lead in standing up to Donald Trump's unwillingness to use the power of his office to immediately and unequivocally condemn the lackluster response from the embattled POTUS.

Merck CEO Ken Frazier 

Last Monday Merck CEO Ken Frazier became the first member of the White House's now-disbanded American Manufacturing Council to announce that he was resigning over Trump's initial comments on the incident in Charlottesville.

As the New York Times reported on Wednesday, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi had phone conversations with several members of Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum.

Subsequently, as you likely heard last week, various members of both groups, leaders of some of the largest companies in the nation, began announcing their resignation from both White House groups.

Before it could get really embarrassing, Trump released a brief somewhat snippy statement (via Twitter of course) announcing that he was dissolving both groups - this of course after most of the members had already cut the cord.

While corporate America, for the most part, has remained rather silent in the face of the growing extremism from this administration and from the Republican Party in general, I do applaud them for taking the initiative to use their influence in a respectful manner to send a message to Donald Trump for his initial refusal to demonstrate leadership on behalf of the entire nation by condemning the actions we saw in Charlottesville last Saturday.

Interestingly the corporate response seemed to nudge the members of Trump's party into weighing in on the controversy - including Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham.

Senators Cruz and Graham

Even though overall the past five days have been a pretty poor reflection of the Republican Party's overall moral backbone when it comes to taking a stand on bigotry and racism.

Sure, once it became clear that the vast majority of the U.S. population found Trump's initial wet dishrag "see no evil" response to the right-wing riots in Charlottesville repulsive, we finally started to see some Republican leaders calling Trump out.

But even though they're on vacation, it still took time.

It's interesting to see that very quickly, other business sectors are starting to consider the broader implications of the impact of racial hatred on their respective industry and customers.

Not long after the dustup in Charlottesville, I got an email from Uber summarizing the efforts they've taken to ensure that they're addressing accusations of discrimination within both the company and by their own drivers.

Within the industry in which I work, residential property management, there is conversation starting as well.

Last Wednesday, Brent Williams, a recognized figure in the industry, wrote an interesting blog post on MultifamilyInsiders.com on whether AirBnB should be banning white supremacists from their listings and properties and whether multi-family properties should be following suit.

The conversation is happening in various spheres in both the public and private sector, and that's a positive step for America - but it's sad that it took the events of Charlottesville for that to happen.

And that's still not addressing the vacuum of leadership on race in this country from the White House.

Sadly, as the events of the past couple weeks have shown, we're left with a failing president, one who's not only defending a deplorable ideology, but one who is increasingly isolated and left alone by virtue of his own words and beliefs.

A lone president, out of step and out of touch with the vast majority of the country he's supposed to serve and represent.

'In the Heat of the Night' & '99 Homes': Exploring Rage In America Though Film

Sidney Poitier & Rod Steiger's characters bid
farewell in the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night

Back in late March, just before his brilliant 1967 film In the Heat of the Night was set to open the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood on April 6th, director Norman Jewison sat down with journalist Stephen Galloway to reflect back on the making of the movie for an interesting article published in The Hollywood Reporter. 

On the 50th anniversary of his Oscar-winning masterpiece, Jewison marveled at how relevant his examination of race in America still is today - as he observed:

"I can't believe it's been 50 years. It's amazing how people are telling me, 'You know, that film plays today just as well as it did then.' But I say, 'That's sad. To still have that kind of racial confrontation in America, that's sad.'"


Considering the unrest in Charlottesville last Saturday, the film remains as relevant as ever.

Jewison shared some insights in Galloway's THR article that film buffs would find interesting.

Like the fact that his first inclination was to approach actor Harry Belfonte for the role of African-American detective Virgil Tibbs, but because producer Walter Mirisch had previously cast Sidney Poitier as the lead in the 1963 classic Lilies of the Field (for which he became the first African-American to win Best Actor) Jewison agreed to meet with Poitier - as he told Galloway:

"I met with Sidney and he was so intelligent that I thought he would be brilliant. They wanted me to use George C. Scott [as Sheriff Gillespie], another actor who was very powerful, but I held out for Rod Steiger, I knew Rod was a Method actor. I felt like it would help, to tell you the truth, because Steiger looked like a redneck sheriff."

It was a choice that paid off, Steiger won the Best Actor Oscar, one of five In the Heat of the Night won including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.

In a sad reflection of the times (the film was shot in 1966), Poitier agreed to do the film but told Jewison he didn't want to shoot on any locations in the south because he and Belafonte had had a frightening experience where a car they were in was chased and they were threatened in Georgia.

Larry Gates, Poitier & Steiger in the infamous "Slap Scene"

So most of the film was shot in southern Illinois near the Mississippi River across from Missouri, except for two days of shooting near cotton fields in Dyersburg, Tennessee for the brilliant scenes when Poitier and Steiger's characters Virgil Tibbs and Sheriff Gillespie drive out to visit the wealthy plantation owner Mr. Endicott - brilliantly played by actor Larry Gates.

The scene where Endicott slaps Tibbs and Tibbs slaps him back was pretty intense for 1966 given the tense racial climate of the time - it was a pretty daring, and powerful, choice in terms of the screenplay and the director.

In late 1966 or early 1967 once shooting was done, Jewison happened to meet Bobby Kennedy while vacationing in Sun Valley, Idaho and he described the film to the then-presidential candidate.

Kennedy told him he thought it would be an important film and observed that, "Timing is everything, in politics and in art and in life itself."

Speaking of timing...

On Sunday night after finishing my previous blog about the unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday, I watched the 2015 film 99 Homes for the first time on DVD.

I found that it helped me to step back and think more deeply about the deep-seated anger and rage driving the Neo-Nazis, KKK members and members of the alt-right who participated in the Unite the Right rally last weekend.

99 Homes just happened to be the next film in my Netflix DVD list, but I found the story's exploration of the rage currently felt by many everyday Americans (of all races and ethnicities) in the wake of the mortgage crisis to be both timely and relevant to the events that unfolded in Charlottesville.

As a screenwriter, I was taught that all good films are rooted in conflict; as the brilliant screenwriting teacher Robert McKee taught me (and many others) years ago, conflict drives the story.

It's the choices the character's must make in the face of that conflict that shape the story and define the film.

In Star Wars Luke decides to join Obi-Wan Kenobi and learn the ways of The Force, in The Godfather Michael Corelone decides to join the family business to help his injured father - you get the drift.


Good films, good screenplays, turn on those character choices - they propel the story off into exciting, unforeseen and sometimes unpredictable directions.

That essential character choice drives both In the Heat of the Night, and 99 Homes, but at the core, I think both films are vehicles for the exploration of rage that affects millions of people.

As director / writer Ramin Bahrani observed in an NPR interview with Kelly McEvers back in September of 2015, 99 Homes is a morality tale, or as he calls it " a deal with the devil film" that examines the question - what would someone do get what they want or protect the one's they love?

Actor Andrew Garfield (The Social Network, The Amazing Spiderman, Hacksaw Ridge) plays Dennis Nash, a Florida construction worker who loses his job in the midst of battling a bank foreclosure on his home - which he put up as equity for an $85,000 loan he can't pay back.

Dennis Nash hugs his mom as they're thrown out
of their house in 99 Homes

In a heartbreaking scene in the 1st act that's almost scarier than a horror film because it's a real scenario, a ruthless real estate broker played by Michael Shannon comes to the Nash home with two sheriffs and a small crew of laborers to serve him his eviction papers and remove Nash, his son and his mother (played by Laura Dern) from their long-time family home.

The family of three have nothing packed and are given minutes to throw some things in Dennis' pickup truck before being forced to watch as the laborers carry everything they own out onto the front lawn as the neighbors stand by watching in horror.

After they find a motel to stay in that's populated by other families who've been evicted from their homes, Dennis goes to confront the laborers who removed his things over some missing tools, he finds himself being offered a job by the same real estate agent who evicted him the day before.

Desperate for money, he makes the devil's deal and the film follows his growing moral dilemma as he gets deeper and deeper into the shady business of making profit off people whose homes have been foreclosed on in an effort to get his family home back.

99 Homes is very much an updated modern take on Italian Neorealist director Vittorio De Sica's 1949 classic film that explores post-World War II Rome, The Bicycle Thief  with it's theme of a young son who looks with scorn upon a desperate father trying to stave off economic ruin who turns into the very thing he despises in a heart-rendering effort to get back what was taken from him.

(If you're interested I blogged about De Sica's 1952 masterpiece Umberto D and the Italian Neorealism movement back in September of 2016)

A familiar sight in America in 2008 - 2012

Director Ramin Bahrani's excellent script dives deep into the various ways that millions of average Americans were preyed upon and pushed to the boundaries of economic ruin as a result of the unchecked greed of the Big Banks who extracted trillions in profit and tanked the economy by gambling with people's mortgages like casino chips.

Only to be bailed out by the same taxpayers whose lives and savings they decimated because they were deemed "too big to fail".

Watching some of the characters in 99 Homes, I could see how the anger, loss and sense of helplessness they felt could drive some people to seek dark outlets to vent their rage.

Against society or, as in the case of James Alex Fields who joined other white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia before he plowed a car into a group of innocent people, injuring 19 and killing a 32-year-old woman - venting their rage against people who don't look or worship like them.

As more information is revealed about Fields, we've learned that his father died before he was born and until very recently he'd been living with his mother in an apartment in Kentucky where they'd moved from Ohio so she could find work.

He joined the Army in August of 2015, perhaps to find purpose or direction, but four months later he was discharged for failing to meet the physical requirements of basic training.

According to various media accounts he'd been most recently working as a security guard, so like millions of Americans he was probably harboring a degree of resentment working a job which probably didn't pay well, or come with benefits like health care.

Apparently he found some solace or sense of purpose with other angry young white supremacists and Neo-Nazi's who were, or felt, disenfranchised from a society which didn't seem to value them; or validate their fragile sense of self.

Thousands of KKK members march on Washington
August 8, 1925

But the idea that scapegoating Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, LGTBQ folks, immigrants, Muslims and liberals as the cause of their perceived problems is just as outrageous as the senseless acts of violence many of them came to Charlottesville to commit.

Historically, America has always seen a spike in racism and white supremacist activity during times of economic crisis, as in the 1920's when KKK membership soared nationwide  - more than 50,000 KKK members paraded in Washington, D.C. on August 8, 1925.

An event that coincided with the U.S. economy beginning to spiral downwards towards the collapse of the stock market, massive unemployment nationwide and the Great Depression.

Sadly, we're seeing that trend towards rage as an outlet, and the normalization of hatred, repeat itself.

As wages remain stagnant, disparity in wealth is as high as its ever been, and the kinds of good paying manufacturing, assembly and heavy industry jobs that once helped the working and middle classes prosper in American, slowly disappear.

Lost to other countries with lower labor costs, or to technology and efficiency that requires less and less manpower; and left holding the bag are millions of disenfranchised Americans of all races, ethnecities and religious backgrounds.

99 Homes director Ramin Bahrani

While some find ways to enter new fields of employment, and some retrain for new careers or learn new skill sets to adapt to the 21st century economy, and some accept what they can get and find ways to cope with the help of family and friends, a small but significant fraction of those people have turned to hate.

Films like In the Heat of the Night and 99 Homes can help us understand where some of that rage comes from, but not enough to explain what we saw in Charlottesville.

Not by a long shot.

As director Ramin Bahrani observed during his NPR interview:

"it doesn't matter what side of the economic spectrum you're on, people are angry. They're angry about banks, they're angry about the government, they're angry about why is it that no matter how hard they work they're not getting anywhere?  They're angry about why is it that they have part-time jobs that don't have benefits? They're angry about so many things. And that's a global anger. And I don't think this is going away. This is just going to be escalating over time."          

Despite the overheated rhetoric of the Unite the Right protesters about "heritage", that rally wasn't about some musty old statue of Robert E. Lee - that rally was about something much darker and far more dangerous.

We as a society, along with our political leadership had better start figuring out what that is and how to confront it - or reality, as we saw in Charlottesville last Saturday, is going to start looking a lot stranger and more dangerous, than any fiction we see on a movie screen.