Need some cinematic therapy while waiting for election night? Here are 10 thrillers intense enough to break your 538.com addiction and get you through the long afternoon.
Clockwise from top left: “Rear Window,” “Basic Instinct,” “Seven Days in May,” “The Fugitive,” “The Usual Suspects,” “Wait Until Dark,” and “The Andromeda Strain.”
Listen: You think I don’t understand. But I do. You’ve hit bottom, haven’t you? You’re powerless to control your addiction. Take a deep breath and say it. It’s OK. Well, it’s actually not all that OK. But I’m here to help.
At first it seemed innocent and fun. It always does. An election, you said. I’m interested in politics, you said. I have opinions! Somebody I like might actually win this time! Maybe I’ll find some really cool election sites on the Internet.
And now look at you. Join me in a mirthless, hollow laugh at your own predicament, hunched in uncomfortable positions over 538.com or RealClearPolitics or electoral-vote.com, sweating out simulated elections at 2:30 in the morning. You get itchy and irate when you talk about Zogby’s random fluctuations, don’t you? Outlier polls showing a closer-than-expected result in Minnesota render you sleepless, don’t they? Does the Morning Call poll in Pennsylvania have a Democratic or Republican lean, this cycle? No, stop. I don’t actually want to know.
Not very pretty, is it? Remember when you used to laugh at people who obsessed about Magic: The Gathering, or whose social life revolved around the NFL fantasy draft? Well, ha freakin’ ha. At least those guys have got a social life. But here’s the real problem. You’re well and truly hooked, and it’s brave of you to admit it. And now you’ve got to go cold, cold turkey.
Your power to influence the outcome of the election through Talmudic study of Betfair transactions and early-voting trends in Nevada and other magical talismans was always — how shall I put this? — limited. (For one thing, you are laboring under the delusion that the United States is actually a functioning representative democracy. But forget I said that. Let’s focus, for now, on problems we may be able to manage.) But now the big day is here.
You’ve voted, for all the good it’s likely to do you, and so has everybody else who can actually be bothered. There’s no more polling data to read. I know how painful it is to hear that, but it’s a good and true and real thing. And I am here to stop you from reading exit-poll data. No, really, stop. Not only is relying on exit polling a little like getting down on the carpet at 5 A.M. and snorting up bits of fiber and cat dandruff and your roommate’s toenails on the theory that they might, you never know, contain lost micrograms of illegal drugs — not only that, but you know what happened last time. It still hurts, doesn’t it? You don’t want to go through that again.
I’m here to get you through today, and today only. We’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. (You can tell I’ve been to some of these meetings in real life, can’t you?) You need diversion, mon ami. You need some powerful cinematic methadone to get you through the next several hours. We’re not talking quality cinema here, at least not necessarily. We’re talking some truly suspenseful shit, a movie-drug high strong enough to keep you off the Internet and disassociated from the outside world for a few hours, until the so-called real results come in. It ought to be a mercifully early night (that’s a prediction) and then, after we all get some sleep, we can start talking about the hard work of recovery.
What’s that you say? My bad attitude is nothing but a self-protective mask? Jeez. Whoa. OK.
Dude, I didn’t think it was so obvious. But it wasn’t like I was pretending not to care. I mean … yeah, OK. You’re right, you’re right, you’re right. Ahem: My name is Andrew and I’m a 2008 election addict. Group hug! Group hug! Now pass me that Dixie cup of black coffee and turn on the damn DVD player. First up in our stack of surviving-Election Day videos is:
1. “The Andromeda Strain” (1971) Like all such evaluations, this one’s personal — I saw this as a small boy (and read the book) and was mortally terrified. Still, I think the Robert Wise-Nelson Gidding tick-tock based on Michael Crichton’s bestseller remains one of the classic world’s-end suspensers ever made. Scientists trapped in a super-secure underground facility must stop an outer-space pandemic before it escapes from the Southwest and kills off the human population of planet Earth. Remade for TV this year, but in the words of my homey Hammer, can’t touch this.
2. “The Wages of Fear” Actually, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s quasi-existentialist masterpiece about four deadbeats transporting deadly loads of explosive through remote South America, where every pothole could mean death, is one of the greatest thrillers ever made. (I guess it speaks to my arthouse tendencies that Clouzot gets two entries on this list.) I’ve got it on here because it’s absolutely harrowing, and you’ll have difficulty breathing for the last hour and a half. William Friedkin’s 1977 remake, “Sorcerer,” is also good, if unnecessary.
3. “Seven Days in May” A hokeball lump of post-JFK paranoia, but, whoo — quite an effective one. Fredric March plays the librul president seeking an arms-control deal with the Russkies, and Burt Lancaster is the charismatic right-wing general who schemes to replace him with a more, you know, pro-American regime. Stagey as it is, SDIM cannot be treated as purely outrageous fiction, given the still-controversial Business Plot against Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the proto-fascist activities of the late Gen. Edwin Walker (on whom Lancaster’s character was based). Wait, I’m recommending this movie to people who are nervously awaiting the election of our first black president? Um, let’s move on.
4. “The Fugitive” A little affirmative action for recent Hollywood, in a faint Obama-esque effort to shed my bicoastal-socialistic, elitist-snob reputation. Best performances of Harrison Ford’s and Tommy Lee Jones’ careers, in the same movie, and what a crackerjack chase thriller it is. While we’re here, co-writer David Twohy is also the writer and director of the pulse-pounding, Vin Diesel-starring sci-fi thriller “Pitch Black,” which could easily have squeezed onto this list.
5. “Wait Until Dark” Does the presence of Audrey Hepburn and a certain pseudo-sophisticated, mid-’60s gloss somehow overcome the fact that this film is manipulative, sadistic trash? Hell, I dunno. We report, you decide. Audrey is the blind woman whose Greenwich Village apartment is invaded by three low-lifes (their leader is Alan Arkin) in search of a heroin-stuffed dolly. It’s a gut-twister with a dilly of an ending. And did you catch Quentin Tarantino a few years ago on Broadway, playing the Arkin role? No? Believe me, that’s OK.
6. “Rear Window” Hell, we could come up with an entire list of Hitchcock suspensers to get you through the day: “Shadow of a Doubt,” “North by Northwest,” “Rebecca,” “Frenzy,” just for starters. Furthermore, I could bore you for a while with my dissertation about the profound cynicism about men and women and art and life reflected in this film and “Vertigo,” probably Hitch’s two best. But let’s not bother. If you want one of Hitchcock’s brilliant, cold-ass technical accomplishments to absorb your consciousness for a couple of clicks on the cosmic clock, this one’s my choice.
7. “Duel” I’m aware that it’s obnoxious to proclaim this 1971 made-for-TV flick — about a driver pursued, for no clear or obvious reason, by the faceless driver of an 18-wheeler — as Steven Spielberg’s best film. But there you are. I can’t help it. OK, I’ll bite: “A.I.” is actually Spielberg’s best film. But this minimalist, monomaniacal highway-chase flick, mercilessly depicting the reductio ad absurdum of American life in 90 bladder-crunching minutes, comes a damn close second.
8. “Diabolique” (“Les Diaboliques,” 1955) Hitchcock hoped to make this movie about a man’s jointly disgruntled wife and mistress who conspire to murder him — only to have his body disappear from the scummy swimming pool where they’ve dumped it. But even the Master of Suspense couldn’t have outdone Clouzot’s atmosphere of black-and-white dread and crypto-sexual (not to say crypto-homosexual) repression, and none of Hitchcock’s ice-blonds could have matched Simone Signoret’s haunting performance. Commonly cited as the greatest suspense thriller of all time, and although that critical consensus may reflect the teensiest bit of Europhile prejudice, I won’t disagree.
9. “Basic Instinct” And if that one didn’t convince you that politics and all other forms of human endeavor are pointless, this one might. Beneath the glossy, pulpy, pseudo-Hitchcockian surface of Paul Verhoeven’s twisted 1992 San Francisco thriller lies a profound sexual terror, a belief that all Eros is Thanatos and that everything men do to women and vice versa is a form of violence. In English: This is one scary fuckin’ movie. A pro-lesbian, anti-Verhoeven protest group in S.F. gave themselves the monicker Catherine Did It, in the belief that they were spoiling the movie’s ending. They weren’t. Brilliant, trashy, still appreciated more as a phenomenon than a film.
10. “The Usual Suspects” This 1996 puzzler has an inflated reputation and an overexcitable fan base, but damned if the narrative switchbacks and great cast — Kevin Spacey, of course, but also Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Kevin Pollak, Chazz Palminteri, Pete Postlethwaite, Giancarlo Esposito and so on — won’t keep you hooked right through to the final twist. What’s that? McCain is conceding on another channel? That’s great, that’s great. But how did all those guys end up dead in San Pedro? And who the hell is Keyser Söze?
Baseless Condi Rice speculation making a comeback
Updated: To celebrate its return, a brief history of this variety of pundit fantasy writing
Condoleezza Rice (Credit: Reuters)
[UPDATED BELOW] Joseph Curl, former White House correspondent for the Washington Times, is bringing me back to the good old days of 2006 in his latest opinion column for the conservative paper. It’s a breathless report that Condoleezza Rice will seek the vice presidency, and it’s a classic of the genre.
Any amateur can speculate that Chris Christie will enter the presidential race, or posit a Mike Bloomberg third-party run, or imagine Hillary Clinton launching a primary challenge against Barack Obama. After all, those three have actually won elections and expressed political ambitions. It takes a real pro to decide to build buzz around someone who not only hasn’t ever run for anything, but who’s never expressed a desire to run for anything.
Rice, the national security advisor in George W. Bush’s first presidential term and secretary of state in his second, is currently a professor at Stanford with the requisite right-wing think tank fellowship. She has not said or done anything “political” in years. But Curl has been hearing things!
America’s first black female secretary of state is quietly positioning herself to be the top choice of the eventual Republican presidential nominee, ready to deliver bona fide foreign-policy credentials lacking among the candidates. The 56-year-old has recently raised her profile, releasing her memoir in November and embarking on a monthlong book tour.
After 2 1/2 years as a professor at Stanford, Miss Rice is reportedly getting “antsy” to get back into the political game. “She’s ready to go,” said one top source.
Oh, a month-long tour in support of her book about her time in the Bush administration! She must be running for vice president, along with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Scott McClellan and George W. Bush.
There’s more. (And not just the part where Curl calls Rice “a spicy Rice dish” and waxes fetishistic about “her guns” being “a match for those of our first lady Michelle Obama.”)
Plus, her selection would be a giant chess move to counter the expected replacement of Vice President Joseph R. Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, the White House denies and denies, but that should really make any political watcher more suspicious. One White House insider even told me that the position swap was the only reason Mrs. Clinton joined the administration in the first place.
Curl has so many inside scoops packed into this column! I had no idea that our first presidential running mate swap since Ford’s 1976 campaign was basically a foregone conclusion and not just a weird Beltway journalist fantasy! But yes, I can see why the still un-chosen GOP candidate would definitely be looking pretty closely at Rice — who’s been strongly making the case for her selection by not explicitly denying interest in the position — in case Obama replaces Biden with Clinton, which he will surely do.
The column gets worse (“Funny thing is, she is, unlike Barack Obama, an ‘American black’”) but that’s not really important. What’s important is exploring how someone like Condoleezza Rice ends up a perennial name on the fantasy ticket list.
Rice has been a subject of these columns since 2005, when she became Bush’s second secretary of state, and the White House tasked communications operative Jim Wilkinson — previously known best for inventing the false story of Jessica Lynch* — with getting Rice (and her boss) some much-needed positive press. Wilkinson did his job beautifully (remember when Rice’s knee-high boots were a topic of actual serious news coverage for weeks?) and Rice began receiving the “rock star” treatment.
In the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, author of the 2007 Rice bio “The Confidante,” summarized the exact moment of the birth of the presidential speculation:
In March 2005, before Rice sat for an interview with the Washington Times, Wilkinson slipped a note to the editorial page editor, Tony Blankley, suggesting that she be asked whether she would consider running for president. It was an audacious proposal — she had been secretary for only six weeks — but such speculation would bolster Rice’s image as a leader. (Wilkinson and Blankley said they do not recall the incident, but others present said they saw Wilkinson’s note.)
Oh, the Washington Times.
Shortly thereafter, Dick Morris wrote a book claiming — nay, insisting — that 2008 would be “Condi vs. Hillary.”
As Iraq descended into a violent civil war in 2006, Rice-for-president buzz bizarrely grew. There was enough of a false grass-roots movement for a paint-by-numbers AP trend piece with a silly nickname and everything. Tim Russert asked her point blank. As always, she said no in no uncertain terms.
Then, of course, everyone began to speculate that she’d be McCain’s running mate. Robert Novak claimed as much on Fox. Dan Senor said she was pushing for the pick on some Sunday show. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a Talk of the Town piece on the subject! McCain and Rice both finally denied “reports” that she was angling for the spot on the ticket.
Now, I guess, it’s time to start up the rumor mill anew.
But before you put pen to paper on that column about how a Gingrich-Rice ticket would surely win moderate women in Ohio, consider this: In addition to the fact that she’s always denied wanting the job, and in addition to the fact that she was an unmitigated failure in the Bush administration, downplaying terrorism as a priority prior to 9/11 and selling the public on the Iraq invasion with untruths, Condi Rice is pro-choice.
*Update: Jon Krakauer recently rescinded his claim that Wilkinson, then a communications aide to General Tommy Franks, was responsible for the initial false Washington Post report on Lynch’s apparent heroics before her capture. Though Wilkinson was obviously involved in the PR campaign surrounding Lynch’s rescue and return to the U.S., he apparently isn’t responsible for falsifying her actions or leaking that false story to the press.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene
Breitbart shock: Obama was in same place at same time as New Black Panthers
Right-wingers once again try to connect the president to a fringe group of laughable conservative boogeymen
Members of the New Black Panther Party, including, Divine Allah, left, arrive for funeral services for 13-year-old shooting victim, Tamrah Leonard, at the Friendship Baptist Church in Trenton, N.J., Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Credit: AP/Mike Derer)
Andrew Breitbart’s loud, dumb BigGovernment site has a loud, dumb story about how Barack Obama “appeared and marched with the New Black Panther Party in 2007.” The occasion was the 42nd anniversary of the march from Selma, Alabama, and in addition to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Al Sharpton were also there, along with dozens of civil rights era luminaries and thousands of other people because it was a massive annual celebration and not actually an Obama campaign event.
The New Black Panther Party is a cartoonish fringe group of a couple guys who play “’60s radical” dress-up and say mean things about whitey for Fox cameras in order to scare old white people. They have been explicitly rejected by the old Black Panther Party. For some reason, various conservatives have dedicated themselves to proving that this weird, marginal group of Nation of Islam cast-offs is somehow supported by or deeply connected to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration in particular, because, you know, Eric Holder and Barack Obama, those are two guys who very obviously share the values of extremist anti-white proponents of racial separation.
So Breitbart “proves” something or other about the essential anti-white racistness of the Obama campaign by noting that members of the inane New Black Panther Party were spotted by cameras near Obama, at various times, and also NBPP head Malik Zulu Shabazz spoke at the event.
(Brietbart goes on to publish two pictures of the event despite the photographer withholding permission, because “The First Amendment allows photographs of such enormous public importance to see the light of day.” Good luck with that argument in court?)
Andrew C. McCarthy gleefully endorses Breitbart’s story in a breathless post at the National Review’s The Corner:
This is a shocking story, and a breathtaking indictment of the mainstream media which went out of its way to avoid vetting Obama as a candidate — and to make sure anyone who tried to do due diligence got no sunshine. A candidate who chose to appeared in the company of, say, the KKK, would have provoked relentlessly hostile media coverage and, in short order, have been marginalized as disqualified to hold responsible elective office.
If only the media had reported that some fringe weirdos also participated in this event that both Democratic candidates and thousands of other people participated in, and then the fringe weirdos sort of followed Obama around for a while. That would’ve opened America’s eyes! (I mean the media besides NPR, which did report that the NBPP was there.)
Here’s the bit of this sad, desperate reach that is the saddest and most desperate: “Andrew further reminds us that, in March 2008, the Obama campaign website posted an endorsement of Obama by the New Black Panther Party.” Whoa, did they really? Shocking if true! It is, of course, not true. It was a user-generated blog post on the Obama campaign site that the campaign removed as soon as they became aware of its existence. Because websites do not “post” things to themselves, generally, McCarthy’s statement can’t even be charitably described as technically accurate. It’s just a lie.
A random stupid incorrect Breitbart smear is worth paying attention to only to the extent that the smear threatens to bubble up to the more reputable conservative press, or Fox, or Republican elected officials. The McCarthy endorsement means keep an eye on this one!
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene
Palins give free publicity to book bashing Palins
Joe McGinniss' "The Rogue" gets a big marketing boost from its subject's classic (and predictable) overreaction
Sarah Palin
Here, according to the National Enquirer, are the shocking revelations in Joe McGinniss’ new book about Sarah Palin, “The Rogue”:
- She has done drugs.
- She had sex with a basketball player before she married Todd.
- She is mean and petty.
- She is a bad mother.
- She had an affair after she married Todd.
There is also, obviously, some stuff about Trig’s birth, but I have not yet read the book, so I couldn’t tell you how far down the rabbit hole that goes.
Here’s my reaction to those revelations: Sarah Palin is a person! She’s done drugs and pissed people off and slept with people, like 90 percent of American humans. If Sarah Palin was smart she’d dismiss the book with a chuckle, say nobody’s perfect, laugh off the “gossip,” and move on.
Sarah Palin might not be smart.
The Palins always prefer grand self-pitying martyrdom to quiet dignity, of course, which is why picking on them can be so profitable: They will always respond, and always help you drum up more publicity for your Palin-attacking venture. Instead of depriving the book of oxygen, they launched a multimedia attack on Joe McGinniss before he’d finished the first draft, and what they accomplished was … giving him more material and ensuring that even more breathless anticipation awaited the book’s release.
Now that the book’s rollout is underway, the Palins might as well get paid for their marketing efforts. Todd Palin angrily denounced it, again accusing McGinniss of having a “creepy obsession” with Sarah Palin. Oooh, it’s so creeeepy to write an unauthorized biography of a prominent public figure, right?
How bad did the Palins allowed themselves to be trolled? Sarah Palin’s people released a statement on behalf of Brad Hanson, Todd Palin’s former business partner, with whom Sarah Palin is alleged to have carried on an extramarital affair, some years back. The statement is a blanket denial, but what does having the supposed beau directly address the press accomplish, exactly? It just drives more interest in the book’s salacious, shocking revelations about the secret life of Sarah Palin. This guy, of all guys, should be kept out of it.
I am sure that Todd and everyone else is very personally pissed off that McGinniss went to Wasilla, talked to a bunch of people who hate them, and published a book full of stories about how bad and awful they are, but blowing up publicly just sends the message that there’s stuff in the book worth getting worked up about.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene
Will “Joe the Plumber” run for Congress?
And if so, how many minutes will it take for him to say something embarrassing to a reporter? Ten?
“Joe the Plumber,” a man named Sam who is not a plumber, may run for Congress. Joe, a briefly famous desperate attempt by the John McCain campaign to paint Barack Obama as an enemy of the working man, is mulling a run against Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, who’s been in the House since 1983. Joe told Yahoo’s “The Ticket” his thoughts on the potential campaign:
“I’m not ruling anything out,” Wurzelbacher told The Ticket in an interview Thursday. He added that he thought it was an “interesting idea” and that people have been asking him to run for office since he confronted Obama four years ago. He’s spent much of his time since then on the speaker’s circuit, he said, encouraging others to run for office.
“I like the idea of it — just regular Americans running. If a regular guy runs, right away the media’s going to attack him,” Wurzelbacher said. “What kind of education does he have? What does he know about this? My answer to that is, regular Americans aren’t experts, but dammit, look where the experts have gotten us. Maybe we need some regular guys in there. That’s what I’ve been doing the past two and a half years, just encouraging regular Americans to run. Tell the liberal media to go to hell and I don’t care what you guys say about me, I’m going to try to fix this country.”
Man, I hate it when people condescend to regular Americans! Especially when people like Joe the Plumber condescend to “regular Americans.” Regular Americans don’t have publicity agents, Joe!
The local Republican Party is begging Mr. The Plumber to enter the race, because while running against a 30-year veteran is usually a pointless task, a pseudo-celebrity candidate can at least make a game of it. Kaptur won with 60 percent of the vote in 2010 and 74 percent in 2008, though there’s a chance redistricting could make her vulnerable. (Kaptur also introduced a bill restoring Glass-Steagall! So basically I like her.)
Local Republicans say there’s about a 90 percent chance Joe will enter the race, at which point once again he will be asked questions on camera and he will say embarrassing things, like he did last time.
But as dumb and small-minded and tiresome as Joe the Plumber is, there’s no reason why he couldn’t be a congressman. Ben Quayle is!
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene
Sheriff Joe: Birther?
Arizona's "toughest" lawman tells some kooks that he'll investigate the president's birth certificate
Joe Arpaio
Sheriff Joe Arpaio might be a birther, now. A quasi-birther, at least. WorldNetDaily “broke” the “news” that Arizona’s most civil rights-disregarding lawman “has agreed to examine evidence challenging the validity of Barack Obama’s purported long-form birth certificate in a determination of the president’s eligibility for the 2012 election ballot.” Which certainly sounds like a very good use of the resources of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, right? There is even a picture of Arpaio with Jerome Corsi, author of “Where’s the Birth Certificate,” a book whose title question was answered twice before publication:
Arpaio told the tea-party leaders that he expects political pressure, but he pointed out that as the chief law enforcement officer of Maricopa County, he’s taken an oath to respond to citizens who approach him about enforcing the law.
Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Justin Griffin confirmed to WND that Arpaio is “waiting to receive all the documentation and all the investigative material from Dr. Jerry Corsi, and then he will look into the matter and compare it to the Arizona revised statutes.”
Ha. Ha ha ha. He picked a great time to join this particular conspiracy theory, months after the president released his original birth certificate, to complement the first, perfectly legally valid one he released years ago. In August of 2011 you really have to be a colossal moron to still believe that the president’s birthplace and presidential eligibility are seriously in doubt. So kudos, Sheriff Joe, for either being a colossal moron or being too scared of a small minority of colossal morons to actually say the truth, which is that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, which is at this point better documented than Arpaio’s own citizenship status. (He looks kinda French, to me.) Even Governor Jan Brewer is smart enough to reject birtherism, and she can barely form sentences.
Arpaio “clarified” his stand by… confirming that he’s looking into it.
“What I have agreed to do, contrary to some published media reports, is simply look at the evidence these people have assembled and examine whether it is within my jurisdiction to investigate the document’s authenticity,” Arpaio said in a written statement Friday.
In the time it took you to write that statement, Sheriff Joe, you could’ve concluded the investigation. With one Google search!
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene
Page 1 of 602 in 2008 Elections
The Fictional Obama 
The People's Action Committee: A Super PAC Bucks The Trends 
The things I carry 
When I lost the ability to type 
Pop art, the beaded edition 
The beautiful banality of high school 
The unemployed meet MacArthur’s tanks 
Demi’s last night out 
One day you’re in 
Pitch and catch 
Whip-it 
