MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2008

•  There is magnificent cultural news.  Oliver Stone, who gifted us with such films as "JFK," which taught a whole generation of adolescents the Hollywood truth about the murder of President Kennedy, will make a film about President Bush.  I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say that I see potential greatness here.  I will personally monitor this project and try to arrange special showings for Urgent Agenda readers in different parts of the country.  Try to limit your requests to two tickets.  Demand will be high.

According to Variety, known as the Bible of show business, or, in college film courses, the Koran of show business, Stone wants Josh Brolin to play the lead.  Josh Brolin, as many of you know, is the son of James Brolin, sometimes known as Mr. Barbra Streisand.  James played Ronald Reagan in the ill-fated CBS movie, "The Reagans," which the network declined to show after protesters suggested that executives actually look at the film before airing it.  They looked, they dumped.  Now son Josh will play George W. Bush.  What an acting tradition!  Why, they're regular Barrymores, or Barbramores.  Maybe Barbra will edit the script.

Stone, in the Variety piece, declined to give his opinion of Bush, saying, "the filmmaker has to hide in the work."  He then said the film "includes his belief that God personally chose him to be president of the United States, and his coming into his own with the stunning, preemptive attack on Iraq. It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors."

Surprise me.  Right.

•  There's a new study of lying that's just come out, done in Great Britain.  It says that, on average, we lie about 88,000 times in our lifetime.  There is no indication as to whether the study included leftist writers writing about the surge in Iraq, anthropology professors, or politicians claiming to have inside knowledge on global warming.  If we include those groups, the average lifetime lie rate may go over a million.

The subject, though, is serious.  We've seen, in recent decades, a casual acceptance of lying, especially in intellectual circles, where lies are often called "alternative narratives."  We're then told we can't question the lies, especially when they're told by "other cultures," and therefore not lies at all.  This logic is ideal for radical movements, where the truth has never been front and center.  After all, if a lie isn't a lie, then there's nothing wrong with it, right?  It's so obvious.

Oh, let's cool the "right" and "wrong" talk also, shall we?  It's so, so Bushie.

•  Bill Kristol, in his new op-ed column in The New York Times, presents John McCain as a man who refuses to go along with modern conventions.  First, it's good to know that Kristol's column got into The Times without the presses being sabotaged.  It is to be hoped that enraged readers will not steal bundles of the paper, they way they did in college when the college paper published something they didn't like.  It's so hard to be a grown-up.  

Second, Kristol's analysis of McCain gets to the heart of something that may turn out to be critical in this campaign, especially as we approach the actual election in November.  As an associate of mine said, "At least I'd be proud to have McCain as president."  President Bush, a man I admire, has never quite made it to high zone on the pride meter.  Americans, I suspect, are yearning for someone "to look up to."  That may be a huge plus for McCain, should he win the nomination.

I'll be laying out a McCain "victory scenario," probably tomorrow.  It will be a blueprint for McCain to win against Hillary Clinton, if those two face off.

•  The situation in Venezuela continues to haunt us.  While some mentally challenged celebrities, and a warped member of the Kennedy family, continue to pay their respects to Hugo Chavez, we forget that real people, whose hearts beat and who feel actual pain, are daily affected by the cruelty of the Caracas government.  Thor Halvorssen writes, for Pajamas Media, about the case of the brave Monica Fernandez, a jurist and human-rights advocate, who was mysteriously shot on January 4th.  Fortunately, she survived.  She'd just been denounced by the government on a Venezuelan TV show called "La Hojilla" (The Razor), a kind of Marxist version of People magazine, where the public learns who's up and who's down, and who gets to sit on the dais at a Hugo Chavez "get well Fidel" luncheon. 

Thor Halvorssen, by the way, is a true civil liberties hero, unlike the frauds and phonies of certain "civil liberties" groups, whose definition of civil liberties gets stranger by the hour.  Halvorssen was one of the founders of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Eduation, which has done more than any other group to protect the rights of students on college campuses, and to resist the growth of oppressive gimmicks like speech codes.  He was very helpful to me in setting up a project at HBO, which was later, sadly, destroyed by political correctness.  A first-rate guy.

•  The great John Bolton, my nominee for straight talker of the decade, is denouncing the "illegitimate politicization" of the American intelligence establishment.  Bolton is not a guy who "moves on" from issue to issue, to have something fresh to tell the press.  He sticks with important issues, and repeats his stand over and over.  So he tells the Jerusalem Post that the recent National Intelligence Estimate on the Iranian nuclear program "has had a devastating impact on our global efforts to try and constrain Iran."  He also denounces the lack of effective leadership of American intelligence.  The press, though, no longer seems interested.  The caravan has moved on, but the centrifuges in Iran keep spinning.

It's ironic that the original vision of the Central Intelligence Agency called for an organization that was neutral on policy, that would simply provide untainted information to the Government.  My, how that vision is blurred today.  Intelligence people seem to think they're policy makers, and no one seems willing to tell them, in an effective way, that they're not.    

Posted on January 21, 2008.