The history of cinema is rich with political films that have given us pause for reflection, cause for alarm, even inspired us to be more than we might have otherwise been.Mr. Smith Goes To Washington.
The Parallax View.
All The President’s Men.
The Manchurian Candidate.
The Day The Earth Stood Still.
And even if you’re not much for “that kind” of movie, you’ve most likely seen, more than once, one of the most insightful and illuminating political films of the last twenty-five years.
It features Will Smith getting barfed on by an alien baby.
“Men In Black”.
The first one. Not the sequel.
The only barfing going on in the sequel was by those of us who wasted two hours watching it.
Ebert-esque outbursts aside…
One very funny scene, among a lot of funny scenes, in the original has Tommy Lee Jones showing Will Smith around the MIB headquarters. In the course of their tour, they come across the big video board, being monitored by Odsifjsdofgsdmp and Bob (if you haven’t yet seen the movie, that, right there, is a pretty good chuckle). The board is made up of a variety of faces all of whom, Jones explains, are actually aliens living on Earth. Among them, of course, such “everyday” folk as Tony Robbins and Sly Stallone.
The obvious and funny gag being that it turns that there’s a reason that some of the “slightly odd” types here on the blue ball are slightly odd.
Cause they ain’t from around these here parts, if ya catch my meanin’.
Like many of you, I imagine, I totally identified with that scene.
But possibly not for the same reason you did.
It wasn’t so much that I had people in my life whose “eccentricity” suddenly made sense, cause Lord knows, I did and do.
Abe, a co-worker in the grocery store where I bag boyed as a kid, who knew pretty much everything about everything and cut meat for a living (think Cliff Clavin in a butcher’s apron)…
Mr. Formosa, my high school junior year geometry teacher. Trust me. You had to be there.
And, of course, at least two of the ex-wives.
No, the scene in the movie wasn’t so much about the potential aliens in my life that made me nod and smile.
It was about my own life suddenly making a little more sense.
For a long time now, I have suspected that I, myself, am not really of this Earth.
The reasons are many and too complex to go into here in a simple blog.
They will, of course, be available in my soon to be written next novel, which will be on sale at a fine bookstore and/or online. Watch for a release date and tell your friends and family.
And now, back to the blog.
Just this morning, I came across yet another sign that I am merely a visitor to this delightfully diverse part of the galaxy.
It came in the form of a news story.
This news story.
(CNN) -- The White House found itself on the defensive Friday over what would ordinarily be considered the most uncontroversial of events: a back-to-school speech to the nation's children.
The White House said the address, set for Tuesday, and accompanying suggested lesson plans are simply meant to encourage students to study hard and stay in school.
Many conservative parents aren't buying it. They're convinced the president is going to use the opportunity to press a partisan political agenda on impressionable young minds.
"Thinking about my kids in school having to listen to that just really upsets me," suburban Colorado mother Shanneen Barron told CNN Denver affiliate KMGH. "I'm an American. They are Americans, and I don't feel that's OK. I feel very scared to be in this country with our leadership right now."
School administrators are caught in the middle of the controversy. Some have decided to show the president's speech, while others will not. Many, such as Wellesley, Massachusetts, superintendent Bella Wong, are deciding on a class-by-class basis, leaving the decision in the hands of individual teachers.
"The president of the United States has asked us to facilitate his outreach to students. And in that vein, we have decided to honor the request," Wong told CNN. "We'll trust in his judgment."
Republican leaders have not shied away from the debate. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a possible contender for the GOP's 2012 presidential nomination, said Friday the classroom is no place to show a video address from Obama.
"At a minimum it's disruptive. Number two, it's uninvited. And number three, if people would like to hear his message they can, on a voluntary basis, go to YouTube or some other source and get it. I don't think he needs to force it upon the nation's school children," he told reporters at the Minnesota State fair.
Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer released a statement this week accusing Obama of using taxpayer money to "indoctrinate" children.
"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology," Greer said.
"The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans ... is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power."
Nonsense, the White House replied.
"The goal of the speech and the lesson plans is to challenge students to work hard, stay in school and dramatically reduce the dropout rate," an administration spokesman said. "This isn't a policy speech. It's a speech designed to encourage kids to stay in school."
White House officials noted that Obama's speech, which will be available for anyone to view on the Web on Monday, is not unprecedented. President George H.W. Bush delivered a nationally televised speech to students from a Washington D.C., school in the fall of 1991, encouraging them to say no to drugs and work hard.
In November 1988, President Ronald Reagan delivered more politically charged remarks that were made available to students nationwide. Among other things, Reagan called taxes "such a penalty on people that there's no incentive for them to prosper ... because they have to give so much to the government."
Charles Saylors, president of the national Parent Teacher Association, said the uproar over Obama's speech is "sad."
"The president of the United States, regardless of political affiliation, should be able to have a presentation and have a pep talk, if you will, to America's students," he told CNN.
Some of the controversy surrounding Obama's speech stems from a proposed lesson plan created by the Education Department to accompany the address. An initial version of the plan recommended that students draft letters to themselves discussing "what they can do to help the president."
The letters "would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals," the plan stated.
After pressure from conservatives, the White House said that the plan was not artfully worded, and distributed a revised version encouraging students to write letters about how they can "achieve their short-term and long-term education goals."
A number of the president's critics, however, were not placated.
"As far as I'm concerned this is not civics education -- it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality," said Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell, a Republican.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed the whole dispute Friday as part of "the silly season."
The administration, while acknowledging it made a mistake with the initial lesson plan, has been frustrated by the controversy, said CNN Senior White House Correspondent Ed Henry.
It was a much different atmosphere when Bush made similar remarks 18 years ago, Henry noted.
"Let's face it. You didn't really have blogs. You didn't have as many cable networks out there as you do now," Henry said. "I think people just sort of take something and blow it out of proportion in this environment right now."
The controversy is the latest example of how sharply polarized political debate has become.
"Ninety percent of Americans who identify with the president's party approve of him, but 85 percent of those who belong to the opposition party disapprove," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
"In that kind of environment, almost nothing Obama does is immune from politics."
Nothing kicks the tires and lights the fires like a good old-fashioned political brouhaha.
And one of the immense charms of this country is the capacity its citizens have for snarling, growling and, metaphorically, beating the living shit out of each other after which they gather on Sunday, give thanks for the good life and then head off to Denny’s together.
One of the guys in Monty Python once said something about religion that I think fits just as well when it comes to political affiliations.
“We all want to get the very same place…we just keep killing each other arguing over the best way to get there.”
This latest tempest in a teabag is proof positive of two things.
There is no point of view in existence that will ever, ever, ever satisfy all of the people all of the time.
And I am, very likely, not an Earthling.
Oh, it’s okay. I’m totally happy and proud to be here with all of you. I have been blessed with more than my fair share of the joys that life on Earth, and America, have to offer. I have seen the family that I started here grow into a loving group of fine people who make, and will continue to make, substantial contributions to the world.
It’s just that when I read stories about how folks “from around these parts” get all bunged up about things that don’t really seem bunge worthy, it’s just one more confirmation for me that I am, by birth, a stranger in a strange land.
In this case, here’s the thing about the thing.
My memories of childhood and the applicable school years are memories of being taught that all points of view were to be considered and every opinion was to be heard. We actually had a saying on my planet…it escapes me at the moment, oh, wait…it was “everyone is entitled to their opinion”…yeah, that’s it.
And in the culture where I was raised, the leader of the people was welcomed as, at best, a role model and, at worst, deserving of the respect of his office.
I even recall a few times when our teachers brought that cathode ray tubed device into the classroom so that we could watch various “political” events, like debates and elections and inaugurations. And if any of our parents had objections or concerns about our witnessing these “events”, lest we be “tainted”or “manipulated” into becoming obedient mind monkeys to any particular manifesto being offered up, the complaints didn’t trickle down to where we were sitting.
More than all of that, though, I remember being taught that hearing something someone had to say was never an automatic endorsement of them or their opinion, but that we would be diminishing the quality of our lives if we didn’t hear them out. And, most importantly, the only way for us to grow into adults with the capacity for making the right decisions about our lives and the lives of our families was to be exposed to all points of view so that we could learn to tell chaff from wheat, shuck from jive, shinola from shit.
You see, the thing is on the planet where I grew up, we would have sat respectfully in the classroom while the leader of the people spoke to us and encouraged us to get better grades, study hard, work diligently and not waste the opportunity that we were being given, the opportunity to receive the gifts that thousands of dedicated teachers in our school system were prepared to give us every day.
And, with the exception of those few kids who came to school on the short bus and sat in the back of the class carving swastikas in the desktop, I’m sure that if that leader of the people tried for even a second to sneak a partisan political agenda into the pep talk, we would have tuned it out.
Because on my home planet, kids seem to always know something that adults seem to forget.
Politics is mostly bullshit.
And bullshit is boring.
Oh. One more thing.
On the planet I came from, kids are given credit from almost the get go for an ingrained ability to tell the difference between right and wrong, chaff and wheat, truth and trash.
And the enlightened adults and teachers in tandem nourish that ability by letting kids see and hear it all, so as to hone their choosing skills.
If the kids of this planet are so lacking that ability that it’s necessary to shield them from any particular point of view or opinion, I would think that to be more cause for alarm than letting them hear one man encourage them to do their homework.
Of course, I’ll grant you that I could be wrong.
After all, apparently, I’m not from around these here parts.
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