The New Road

Shut Up and Sing

Lori and I spent a small fortune to see "Shut Up and Sing" at an art house theater in Berkeley last night. I enjoyed it. It was an interesting mix of a concert film and a political story of protest and the effect of that protest.

I was slightly annoyed by the story not being told in a linear fashion. Though I understand that the story itself contains very few juicy tidbits. So the director would have to space them out to make the story compelling. And the death threats, and Natalie's very palpable concern for her life (which leads to some of the most dramatic content of the film) happened fairly early on in a straight time line. But was presented later in the film for dramatic effect.

And while I enjoyed the insight into the banter between the three main performers I found that only a few scenes actually lifted the veil to show their true feelings. One scene comes to mind though is where Emily breaks down talking about how she would quit it all if it would alleviate Natalie of her feelings of guilt for detonating their country career.

Another thing I found lacking was almost any scene were we caught the girls talking about the statement and having any real debate about it's validity, their support for it, and their positioning of it. In fact, Natalie comes off as this ceaselessly strong character who seems to know what to do from the get-go. When you can see that the whole situation took a serious toll on her. Clearly their livelihoods, and the jobs of all of the support team for the band were on the line from the moment the controversy started. And we never get to see so much as a debate about what to do. Even though in the beginning their were clearly fractures in their initial response on an individual basis. How did that get worked out?

As for the Freepers and the protest morons. It's what you would expect. These are people that believe strongly in whatever any Republican does. And I can respect that confidence even if I think it's both deeply misguided and very misplaced.

On a related note... at this point there are three categories of people that bother me when it comes to the situation we find our country in:

• People who strongly supported Bush and the war, but now are ambivalent about it: Either continue your support, or fight against the war. But don't one day call a person a traitor and then the next day say that politics is just too dirty and try to distance yourself from it. If it was so important to make sure that everyone supported a just war, it follows that it's equally important to fight against and unjust war.
• People who were always ambivalent and uninformed about the war: That's just wrong. This war is serious. We could easily become involved in a regional war between Saudi Arabia and Iran for control of Iraq at this point. And on the economic side we have spent ourselves into an unprecedented debt with the Chinese to fund our involvement in Iraq's civil war. It's all too important to not care about.
• People who strongly supported the war, but now don't and who don't want to apologize or fight to end the war: My example would be Pat Buchanan. They had video of him calling the girls the "Dixie Twits" during one of his many pro-administration/pro-war rants. Compare that to him on the talking heads this weekend saying that Iraq is definitely in a civil war that could well turn into a regional war. Thanks for joining the reality based community Pat. But could you please bring the rest of your herd along with you? if you are a thought leader it's your responsibility to let people know that you have changed your mind, let them know why, and try to get them on the right path. To do otherwise is nothing but gutless.

I've been wrong before on Iraq, and I have admitted that. I took Collin Powell seriously when he presented to the UN. I believed that Iraq had some WMDs. I stated at the time that it wasn't worth going to war over at that time. Which I still stand by. I thought at the time, and still think, that Al Qaeda in Afghanistan should have been our primary target. And that we should have use covert action to just kill him. Preferably just a few days after the 9/11 attacks.

So there were elements of my analysis that were wrong, and I admitted that. Why is it so hard for my friends on the right to do the same. It's as if they decided at the age of 13 that from now on everything they knew and thought was right, and never need to change. Which, from my point of view, is just intellectual death. You might as well turn off your brain... Anyway, I digress.