Another Week: Number 85

Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes

Last year, during Amy’s chemotherapy treatments, we watched a 2015 documentary on Ingrid Bergman narrated by her own voice via her audio diaries.

Now HBO has released a similar film about Elizabeth Taylor, using recently discovered interviews with journalist Richard Meryman. I watched it Sunday night with my mom, who is a big fan of classic Hollywood.

Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes is an adequate, image-heavy general biography beginning with her childhood and extending through her many marriages into her AIDS activism following Rock Hudson’s death. Her friendship with Michael Jackson goes unmentioned.

The main takeaway for me was how utterly cloistered Taylor was as an adolescent and a young woman, and the contrast between that and her tumultuous love life.

Kamala Harris adds Tim Walz

Sixteen days after President Biden announced he would bow out of the 2024 election race and endorse his vice president, Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her new running mate. It was an almost unprecedented case of things unfolding pretty much exactly as I had hoped they would once Biden’s performance at the June 27th presidential debate made it obvious that he could not convincingly prosecute his campaign nor fulfill another four-year term.

I didn’t know who Walz was until I saw his July 23rd appearance on Morning Joe, but his plainspoken naturalness immediately connected with me — as did his sense of humor. Kamala Harris has a rich sense of humor, and someone sharing that quality would make the partnership that much more successful — especially running against an opponent with no sense of humor whatsoever, try as Trump might to mimic The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts of 40 to 50 years ago.

I read Tim Walz’s bio and was impressed. The pundit world picked up on his use of the word “weird” like little kids with a joy buzzer. I would trace the polite putdown “weird dudes” back to fellow Midwesterner Johnny Carson. Walz also incorporates some of the timing and mannerisms of Waukegan’s own Jack Benny, and his big gestures to arena crowds remind me of Teller‘s pantomime skills.

Humor will help him swat away brainless attacks — like the one from the Trump campaign immediately slamming Walz for “embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote.”

The first Harris-Walz rally on Tuesday in Philadelphia was out of a movie — relief, joy, goosebumps, history, inspiration, reason, and teamwork.

Four years ago, watching Donald Trump pose for campaign photos atop the burned rubble of my hometown, it was starting to seem like the healthy, reasonable, fact-based, courteous, respectful vision of America I grew up with was toast.

Now it seems like it may still have a chance.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Because The Manchurian Candidate — which concerns an assassination attempt on a presidential nominee — was soon followed by the actual assassination of President Kennedy, it was unavailable for viewing for many years. I started watching it once but never saw the whole thing. So my mom, my sister Karen, and I screened it Thursday evening. TCM host Ben Mankiewicz praised it as Frank Sinatra’s best movie performance.

The plot is a bit involved. U.S. soldiers are captured during the Korean War and subjected to brainwashing via hypnosis. One of them will become a sleeper assassin upon his return to the States, triggered by a verbal suggestion to play solitaire and the sight of a red queen among the cards. The scheme surfaces in dreams among some of the men — including Frank Sinatra, who acts to stop it.

Today, the movie feels pretty dated. Women and Asians are caricatured. The story unfolds mechanically. The ending is so set up that it’s no surprise when it happens.

But now we’ve seen it.

Rachel Maddow Presents Ultra, Season 2

Two Octobers ago, Rachel Maddow launched her podcast Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra concerning the right-wing movement in America that was aligned with the World War II Nazi cause, and the 1944 sedition trial that resulted. Last October, her book Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism was published, expanding on that podcast’s material.

This past June, Maddow started releasing Season 2 of her podcast, focusing on — well, it doesn’t really focus.

There’s material about the Malmedy Massacre, a 1944 war crime in which German soldiers summarily killed 84 U.S. POWs. There’s a thread about a shadowy American fascist named Francis Parker Yockey, who worked to help Nazi war criminals and authored a cornerstone of antisemitic fascist propaganda called Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics. Eventually, this all connects to Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and his right-wing supporters. And there’s a nice dentist named Lester C. Hunt from Wyoming who becomes that state’s governor and then their U.S. Senator.

The point of all this history is that the fascism of yesteryear is echoing in America’s politics today. Over and over again, a phrase or a tactic or a legal quandary from these old events will jump out and ring a bell because they are also in today’s news — schemes involving state electors, media outlets pushing pure propaganda, super-rich men with crazy ideas. Maddow does not audibly mark these moments with a ding-ding-ding sound effect, but she ought to.

Instead, she keeps a straight voice while the narrative wanders back and forth across the ocean dropping threads here, picking them up later, and finally gathering the whole mess into a makeshift bundle as a lesson and a warning.

I have absolutely loved Rachel Maddow since I first saw her filling in for Keith Olbermann on his MSNBC show in 2008. She is one of the most brilliant minds around, and she’s great at presentation, analysis, and interviewing on television.

This season of her podcast, however, almost did me in. First of all, the week or more between episodes ruins the flow of an already meandering story. (All eight are now available, so delay is no longer an issue.) Then there’s the fragmentation between episodes. First, we hear about one guy, next time we hear about something else, and then a third part comes in. At some point, the names start piling up. During one episode, it felt like she went on for ten minutes just reciting names.

More importantly, what’s the point? Okay, so there are antecedents to the current wave of fascism. In the past, that stuff was narrowly thwarted. In Ultra, not enough emphasis is put on how it was thwarted. It’s enlightening to circle key features, I guess, but we really need to learn how to excise the disease.

You should still listen to this podcast because this history is mind-blowing. Just be prepared, because there are a lot of pieces and some assembly is required.