Salon.com > J. Edgar

America needs more powerful bureaucrats

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Following the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, President Barack Obama appointed a little-known civil servant to become its public face. Displaying a genius for publicity, including self-promotion, the American infrastructure czar became one of the most visible figures in American public life.

Working tirelessly to rebut claims that the stimulus was nothing but a boondoggle, he made the otherwise boring subject of public investment in roads, bridges, parks and harbors glamorous in a way it had not been since the days of the WPA. From the beginning the infrastructure chief generated as much controversy as praise.

Investigative reporters accused him of sweetheart deals and political cronyism, while congressional demagogues roasted him regularly in auto-da-fés on Capitol Hill. Stories circulated of his vanity, paranoia and ruthlessness. But the criticism only increased the devotion of many young Americans who admired him and his team. For the first time in living memory, a career in public service was attractive to the young, talented and ambitious.

That didn’t happen, of course. And one reason it didn’t happen is the legacy of J. Edgar Hoover.

The long shadows of Nixon and Hoover

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:00:00 +0000

J. Edgar Hoover passed away on May 2, 1972. The legendary FBI director lay in state at the Capitol rotunda, the doors kept open all day and night for the convenience of mourners.

I remember because I was still at college in Washington then, and around 3 o’clock in the morning a bunch of us drove up there, not to pay our respects, but to make sure he was really dead.

In those pre-9/11 days, you could still do that sort of thing.

The memory of our predawn visit came rushing back last week as I introduced a screening of “J. Edgar,” the new film directed by Clint Eastwood, and interviewed its screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black, who won the Oscar a couple of years ago for the movie "Milk."

There’s a sequence toward the end of "J. Edgar" right after Hoover dies: President Richard Nixon appears before the cameras to solemnly announce the news. Cut to Nixon in the Oval Office ordering chief of staff Bob Haldeman and other members of his Praetorian Guard to seal off Hoover’s offices and seize his fabled stash of secret files on every prominent politician, past and present. Meanwhile, Hoover’s faithful secretary, Helen Gandy, has locked herself away with a shredder and dutifully eliminates the evidence.

“J. Edgar”: Clint Eastwood’s lame and insulting Hoover biopic

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:00:00 +0000

We gather today to pay tribute to two genuine American icons, but without saying anything nice about either of them. Clint Eastwood has made a movie -- or at least I think that's what it is; the lighting is often so dim it's difficult to make out -- about longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who acted as the wacko third rail of American law enforcement for almost half a century. "J. Edgar" is one of those prestige Hollywood pictures that sounds, at first, as if it might be a good idea: a name director, a supposedly big star playing a major historical figure, and a script by young screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who since "Milk" has become the go-to scribe for what is no doubt described in story meetings as "gay material." But instead of a good idea, "J. Edgar" turns out to be one of the worst ideas anybody's ever had, a mendacious, muddled, sub-mediocre mess that turns some of the most explosive episodes of the 20th century into bad domestic melodrama and refuses to take any clear position on one of American history's most controversial figures.