"Is there footage of this thing gasping for breath for two minutes before expiring? I need some light comedy before bed."

Says one commenter on "SC cop killer Mikal Mahdi chose upscale final meal before he was executed by firing squad" (NY Post).

And there is this, from Mahdi's lawyer: "Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi had chosen the lesser of the three evils.... Mikal chose the firing squad instead of being burned and mutilated in the electric chair, or suffering the lingering death on the lethal injection gurney."

Having given you 2 sides of the death penalty issue, I will take the liberty to turn the topic to grammar — the lawyer's grammar. You shouldn't say "the lesser of three evils." It's correct to say "the lesser of 2 evils," but "lesser" is used when there are only 2 things. If there are more than 2, you've got to use "least" — "the least of 3 evils."

That "the lesser of 2 evils" is a very common phrase and "the least/lesser of 3 evils" feels new is evidence of our tendency to see our choices as binary.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok:

We watched this movie on Netflix yesterday. Recommended.

"You are looking for a way out of the decadent aristocratic game, the limbo of Jet Set desperados. I’ll show you the way."

Said Timothy Leary to Joanna Harcourt-Smith, quoted in "Joanna Harcourt-Smith, Lover of Timothy Leary, High Priest of LSD, Dies at 74/Traumatized by her experience with the psychedelic Pied Piper, she spent decades 'composting' her thoughts about him and learning to start her life over again."

She was 26 and he was 52 and a fugitive from justice when their lives intersected. She was with him when he was recaptured.

“Neither the counterculture nor the prosecutors and prison system knew what to make of her,” Michael Horowitz, Mr. Leary’s archivist, said in a 2017 interview. “Her outspoken, upper-class European manner put people off,” he said. “She had an edge and knew how to get her way. Tim empowered her, and she in turn was tremendously loyal to him, dedicated to getting him out — whatever it took. Alienating many in the counterculture was the fallout from that.”

He got out of prison in 1976, as the 2 of them became "federal informants" That led Allen Ginsberg to call her "a C.I.A. sex provocateur." The feds put them in the witness protection program — "outside Santa Fe under the aliases James and Nora Joyce."

They were both alcoholics and fought all the time before splitting up. Ms. Harcourt-Smith moved to the Caribbean and lived on a sailboat for a few years. She stopped drinking and taking drugs in 1983 and settled in Santa Fe, where she began life anew. “I felt like a child who grew up in the forest,” she said... “I had to relearn everything.... I had so much shame and guilt that I could barely write.”

The great filmmaker Errol Morris has made a documentary about her that will be on Showtime soon. She wrote a memoir "Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary: My Psychedelic Love Story."

It doesn't have any one star reviews at Amazon, so I read the 2 star reviews. Here's one: 

"Although [Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions] has spawned thousands of worshipful articles and books, it remains for me, at best, like Pet Rocks—a fad."

"When I first wrote this, I received instant criticism from my editor and others: fads are short-lived, while enthusiasm for Kuhn’s book has persisted for half a century. And unlike Pet Rocks, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was never sold as a forting companion, a solution to urban loneliness in a post-industrial society. So not exactly Pet Rocks. Maybe what emerged was more of a cult. With Kuhn as leader, dispensing his own brand of pernicious intellectual Kool-Aid. (In John Milius’s 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian, a peddler tells Conan about the cult of Set: 'Two, three years ago, it was just another snake cult. Now you see it everywhere.')"

Writes Errol Morris in an excerpt from his book "The Ashtray (Or the Man Who Denied Reality)."

The second link goes to Amazon, where you can pre-order the book (it comes out on the 22nd) and where it says: "In 1972, philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn threw an ashtray at Errol Morris. This book is the result.... Morris wants to establish as clearly as possible what we know and can say about the world, reality, history, our actions and interactions. It’s the fundamental desire that animates his filmmaking, whether he’s probing Robert McNamara about Vietnam or the oddball owner of a pet cemetery. Truth may be slippery, but that doesn’t mean we have to grease its path of escape through philosophical evasions."

"The Umbrella Man," by Errol Morris.

The strangeness of historical details... in this case, a man with an umbrella who was standing right near where John F. Kennedy was shot:

"[Filmmaker Errol] Morris studied history and philosophy of science under [Thomas] Kuhn at Princeton in the early 1970s and ended up loathing him."

"Morris suggests in a recent podcast that Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has contributed to 'the debasement of truth' and even the election of Donald Trump. Morris states: 'I see a line from Kuhn to Karl Rove and Kelly Ann Conway and Donald Trump.'"

From "Second Thoughts: Did Thomas Kuhn Help Elect Donald Trump?/Scholars debate filmmaker Errol Morris’s attack on Kuhn’s influential philosophy of science," by John Horgan in Scientific American.

Morris's podcast is here:

I wondered why Megyn Kelly didn't probe into what Trump saw in "Citizen Kane" and "All Quiet on the Western Front."

She asked what was his favorite movie and his favorite book and never stopped to ask why. I wanted to know more. A reader sent me this, footage from an Errol Morris project that became a short at the 2002 Oscars. Various celebrities talked about film. Trump's material didn't make the final cut, but he talks quite a bit about "Citizen Kane":



He says a rich man can be unhappy — even more unhappy than his wife — because wealth can distance you and insulate you from other people. He also says the right word matters — that "Kane" wouldn't be the same without that word "rosebud." He does not take what I hear as a prod to talk about the oft-discussed sexual connotation of "rosebud."

Here's a 2002 New Yorker article about the Errol Morris project, with this about Trump:

What should you be paying attention to right now?

"Errol Morris' documentary 'The Unknown Known,' a look at former Secretary of Defense and Iraq war architect Donald Rumsfeld will also hit the festival trifecta."

The director famously profiled another polarizing defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in his 2003 film 'The Fog of War'; that movie brought Morris and Michael Williams the Oscar for best documentary. The Rumsfeld film's U.S. release date has not been finalized.

I love Morris, and "Fog of War" was great. I look forward to seeing how Rumsfeld handles the intense Interrotron interrogation. By the way, I see that Rumsfeld is criticizing Obama's approach to war in Syria.

And here's McCain urging Obama along (via Real Clear Politics).

But don't get distracted. Pay attention to something that's truly alarming: Sandra Bullock in SPACE!

Errol Morris applies his documentarian style to the problem of people who don't vote.

Video.

Reading Morris's explanation below the video at the link, I see that — spoiler alert! — everyone in the video is actually going to vote and they were prompted to think about how people who don't vote must think. I'm seeing that after watching the video. So to the extent that these people seem dumb... ish... it's at least partly that they are attempting to embody the persona of other people, who they probably think are dumb. So we're seeing a subtle blend of opinion about the nonvoters.

At the end we see that the video was produced with Our Time, and I assume the intent is to improve the turnout for Barack Obama, but in style and substance, it's nicely neutral and quite amusing and charming.

"There is no need to worry. It’s just another instance of random violence."

Said the head of head of student health psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, back when Errol Morris was an undergrad. Now, he says, "I feel the same way about asteroids."

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
	An optimist.
	A pessimist.
	A subtle mix of the 2.
	Depends on my ever-changing moods, which are random.
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"President Obama on Monday unveiled a $3.8 trillion spending plan that seeks to pump billions of dollars into the economy while raising taxes on the rich..."

"... to tame a soaring national debt now projected to grow significantly faster than previously forecast."

President Obama, the debt-tamer.

A cool scene from that movie that led to Werner Herzog eating his shoe.

It's just this woman talking. Barely moving, but talking. She grew up on a farm...



The movie is "Gates of Heaven," a documentary about a pet cemetery, by Errol Morris. Herzog promised to eat his shoe if Morris finished his movie about a pet cemetery. At that link, you can watch the 20-minute film "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe" ("We cooked it for 5 hours.")

"Mrs. Ann, do you have (or could you produce) a list of 'DVD's you deem essential?'"

C Black sees a phrase I used and makes a request. I'm here to answer your questions, so, based on a quick scan of the shelf and probably leaving a few things out, here's my list (in alphabetical order) of 40 DVDs I'd try to get you to watch if you lived with me:

32 Short Films About Glenn Gould
American Movie
Aguirre the Wrath of God
Clockwork Orange
Coffee and Cigarettes
Crumb
Divorce Italian Style
Don't Look Back
Dr. Strangelove
Election
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
Fight Club
Grave of the Fireflies
Grey Gardens
Grizzy Man
Heathers
It's a Gift
Lolita
Memento
Modern Times
My Dinner With Andre
Nights of Cabiria
Pecker
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Room with a View
Rosemary's Baby
Royal Tenenbaums
Salesman
Serial Mom
Slacker
Spirited Away
Streetcar Named Desire
Stroszek
The Blood of a Poet
The Shining
The War Room
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
Wisconsin Death Trip
Wuthering Heights

Now, you may wonder which of these movies Meade had already seen and which ones have I succeeded in getting him to watch. You may wonder which ones, once watched, produced a negative reaction and about which ones did we see eye to eye. I'll leave that for Meade to say in the comments if he wants. The rest of you are welcome to guess, to produce your own lists, or to opine about mine.

"Has any single American of this century done more harm than Robert McNamara?"

"No one comes readily to mind. Yes, Lyndon Johnson bears greater responsibility for the damage done the nation by the Vietnam War. But McNamara is a Renaissance man. Before he helped ruin the American polity, he helped ruin the American economy, pioneering at Ford the bloodless, numbers-oriented management methods that helped bring so many corporations to their knees. After Vietnam, as head of the World Bank, he helped ruin the entire world's economy, shoveling out billions of dollars to fund failed 'development' projects. It's a tough record to match."

So wrote Mickey Kaus, in 1995.

Via Jac, who — like me in yesterday's McNamara obit-post — praises the Errol Morris documentary, "The Fog of War."

Robert S. McNamara, dead at 93.

"The war became his personal nightmare. Nothing he did, none of the tools at his command — the power of American weapons, the forces of technology and logic or the strength of American soldiers — could stop the armies of North Vietnam. He concluded well before leaving the Pentagon that the war was futile, but he did not share that insight with the public until late in life."

Here's an excerpt from the great Errol S. Morris documentary "Fog of War":

How to use ordinary people in political ads.

The great film documentarian Errol Morris -- who makes his living, he says, doing advertisements -- writes about the use of ordinary people in political ads. He surveys some old ads, going back to 1952, and he talks about how he went about using real people to manufacture make an ad promoting Obama:

If you’re not going to put words in people’s mouths, if you’re really listening to what they have to say, you’re going to learn something. Admittedly, the evidence is anecdotal. I haven’t selected these people through some kind of statistical sampling. These people are self-selected. They wrote in and said that they were registered Republicans, Independents or switch-voters who were planning to vote for Obama. People in the middle. And I was interested in talking to them on film about why they were making the switch from voting for a Republican to voting for a Democrat. Was it linked with policy? With the personality of the candidate?

Here's the ad :

The artistic qualities of this McCain ad completely distracted me from whatever words were spoken or shown.

Watching this ad was a strange experience for me. I clicked on the teaser at Politico, so I knew "'Temple' ad mocks Obama's stage," and I'd already decided I was going to watch it, so.... Well, you try to watch it:



Was your experience like mine? I was fascinated by the photographic effects in the beginning, the changing of the image to remove the crowd, and the way the "camera" pulled back from the stage. Then, before other images took over, I fell into a deep contemplation of the music: Was it from (one of my favorite movies) "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" or some other Errol Morris movie or was it simply music in the style of a sountrack in an Errol Morris movie? Could Errol Morris be making commercials for John McCain? If so, is he only in it for the money, does he actually support John McCain, or does he support Obama and somehow know how to hypnotize us so we cannot concentrate on the overt message, which is what happened to me?

In the end of the ad we are snapped out of it by the cheesy electronic music -- da da da da da da da da -- that ends most McCain commercials. So now that I've come to my senses, let me watch a second time. Okay, I've read the on-screen words and heard the concerned voiceover lady tell me Obama is "not ready to lead." But once again, I was struck by the artistry of the images and the music.

Oh, suddenly the irony of it all hits me. What I think about the ad is what the ad is trying to say about Obama! The style is fabulous, but what, really, is the content?

2 documentaries seen in the last 24 hours: "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" and "Standard Operating Procedure."

I would not have chosen to watch these 2 films so close together, even though they are thematically related enough to belong as a double feature, but I happened to watch the first one on HBO On Demand last night, and the second one is something I'd been meaning to see and learned would be gone after today.

"Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired." This is Marina Zenovich's nicely put together documentary about Roman Polanski's immense legal problem. Watching this was a very weird experience, because it's quite apparent that child rape was just not taken very seriously back in the 1970s. I was ready to cut Polanski a lot of slack because he survived the Holocaust and his wife and unborn son were slaughtered by the Manson family, but he has admitted to drugging a 13-year-old and having sexual intercourse with her. And he never really seemed to think he did much of anything wrong — as if he shouldn't have had to serve any prison time.

Much is made of the "media circus" surrounding the legal proceedings. We see footage of lots of guys with cameras crowding around trying to photograph him when he's trying to get in and out of the courtroom. (I thought: Big deal. Quit complaining.) And the main target of contempt is the judge, who's dead now and not able to respond to the charge that he sought the spotlight, played to the cameras, and abused his power. But there are interviews with the victim and the prosecutor (as well as the defense attorney), and neither of them is calling for Polanski's blood.

So it's a rather subtle inquiry into the legal process — and into the soul of a man who did something evil but is also a great artist and suffered beyond comprehension in his life. The vintage footage of him with the spectacularly beautiful Sharon Tate and crazed with pain after her death is heartrending. And the clips from "Chinatown," "Rosemary's Baby," and other films are very cleverly used to illustrate aspects of Polanski's legal struggles.

"Standard Operating Procedure." This is the Errol Morris documentary about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. I adore Errol Morris and have watched some of his documentaries multiple times, but this is not Morris at his best. The movie forces you to stare for many long minutes at giant talking heads, a technique used brilliantly in some of his very best movies: "Mr. Death," "Fog of War," and (one of my favorite movies of all time) "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control." The difference with "Standard Operating Procedure" is that the individuals are not at all fascinating people. They are dull and empty — with revoltingly flat affect.

But they have a story to tell. That is, they are witnesses. But they have been convicted of crimes, so they have the motive to lie, slant, and self-justify. It's like a close up on the direct examination of witnesses at trial — and no cross-examination! I wanted cross-examination. I had the impression that Morris wanted us to see that they were made to take the fall after the infamous photographs became public, but I found them repellent and unbelievable.

There is a lot of good material about how photographs tell an incomplete story. (And you see many, many uncensored Abu Ghraib photographs.) So perhaps Morris also meant to say: And the eyewitnesses also tell an incomplete story. Too damned bad if you are unsatisfied, because, like a photographer framing a shot, the government blocked our view of the whole story.

Morris teaches his lesson, and the viewer is subjected to a truly ugly ordeal. (There are occasional touches of beauty in the short, vivid recreations.) But if you were circumspect enough to attend this movie in the first place, you will probably feel that you have no right to complain about it, given the suffering depicted in the movie. That may be why the movie is leaving town — leaving Madison, Wisconsin — after a short run and why I was one of only 3 people in the audience.

Simulblogging the Oscars!

I've got to get home first. The flight to Madison is boarding, so let me get going. Start without me!

ADDED #1: Hey, I made it home. No flight delays, but you should have seen how buried my car was. Well, you will see, because I took pictures. Anyway, I can see you're way ahead of me talking about this. 29 comments as I start. But the TiVo is running, and I've seen the really charming Errol Morris film that kicked things off. A sweet, self-effacing attitude. And now, here's Ellen DeGeneres, continuing the sweet, charming, self-effacing tone. She's wearing a dark red velvet tuxedo -- with white shoes -- and looks very sharp. Her first joke makes me laugh. She has a nice joke about Americans not voting for Jennifer Hudson (on "American Idol") and then how they did vote for Al Gore. For no apparent reason, a gospel choir comes out and Ellen dances and plays tambourine. Now, for the first award, for Art Direction, and it's Nicole Kidman, looking very Barbie-like, all plastic-y and shiny. She's wearing an impossibly tall, thin red dress, with a knot at the side of the neck. The award goes to "Pan's Labyrinth."

ADDED #2: They didn't start with a supporting acting award. Good! Now, there's a comedy song, and I'm using it as a chance to try to catch up with you guys. On to the next award: makeup! Again, with the "Pan's Labyrinth." The makeup did look pretty cool. Ooh, now it's Abigail Breslin and Jaden Smith. Kids. They're short, so they do the nominees for shorts. Sorry, it's another fast-forward opportunity.

ADDED #3: Wow, you guys are up to 43 comments. I'm desperately trying to catch up with you. Ooh, it's Rachel Weisz. She looks just great in a strapless beige dress that has a nice jeweled swirl across the chest. I like her dark red lipstick and piece-y dark brown hair. She's doing the Supporting Actor award. Aw, Eddie Murphy looks like he really wants to win. It's Alan Arkin. My favorite. I love this guy. He puts the Oscar down on the floor so he can pull out his speech. The film -- "Little Miss Sunshine" -- can help us in our "fragmented times." It's a choice not to act out the speech. Surely, he could have memorized it. Maybe he was acting the part of a guy reading a speech.

ADDED #4: Melissa Etheridge performs the song from "An Inconvenient Truth," and then out come Leonardo DiCaprio and Vice President Al Gore. Al looks happy (and carries his great weight well). Leo asks him if he's got anything he'd like to announce. He says he's "just here for the movies." He thanks Leo for being "such a great ally" in his anti-global-warming efforts. Leo's all "thank you, sir," and the camera -- pretty randomly -- goes to Jerry Seinfeld, who's caught looking like this:



Cameron Diaz, who also has piece-y dark brown hair, gives the award for animation to "Happy Feet," and she's unbearable cutesy and phony. Nice clip show about movies about writers. At the end, we see Jack Nicholson -- who was featured in the clips for both "The Shining" and "As Good As It Gets" -- and he's shaved totally bald. (A tribute to Britney Spears?)

ADDED #5: "The Departed" wins Best Original Screenplay. Hey, you guys are up to 75 comments. I'm still not reading them, because I'm trying to catch up. I'm sure it's all clever and stuff. There's a great commercial for American Express -- must be a Jerry Seinfeld thing, explaining the "random" shot noted above. And a beautiful ad for iPhone... of lots of hellos from movies. (No need to convince me to buy one of those things when they are available, so the commercial seems to just be about getting me more excited about it.) They're doing the costumes award now. "Marie Antoinette" wins. Tom Cruise presents the Jean Hersholt "humanitarian" award to Sherry Lansing. We're in the depressing "dead" center of the show now, so let me regale you with pix of my car, as I encountered it after my long trip home. It was in this deep:



And here's how it looked after digging just enough of a space to back it out:



How did I get it dug out? Am I the kind of person who keeps a shovel in the trunk? No, but as I was walking to the car, dreading seeing how locked in it was, I ran across a woman with a shovel, and she loaned it to me. Then, carrying a shovel, I attracted a man who helped me because he needed a shovel and a second man who had his own shovel. These two guys dug out the snow while I scraped the windows and lights. (I do keep a scraper!) And I was out in no time. And don't just say: Guys! Because there was also that woman with the shovel. I asked her, "Do you work here?" And she said no, she just drove over with a shovel because a friend called her up, and she trusted me to return the shovel to a spot in the snow that we agreed on. I left that trust with Guy #1 and I'm sure he kept it.

ADDED #6: Speaking of movies, I got my little movie up at last in the previous post. You can hear me and my long-time ex-husband RLC talking about things seen in a record store window. Whoa! You guys are up to 119 comments! Okay, I've gotta rush. Visual Effects. Doesn't Naomi Watts look lovely in that yellow-gold, strapless dress with a thick black band under the breasts? "Pirates of the Caribbean" wins. Now, we see Catherine Deneuve for... what the hell is this? Ah! There's Sacha Baron Cohen in the audience. He's so adorable! "Best Foreign Language Film. "The Lives of Others." Oooh! It's George Clooney. He's handsome! Best Supporting Actress!!! Jennifer Hudson!!!!! She says: "Look what God can do!"

ADDED #7: It's Jerry Seinfeld. He's doing the Documentary award. Oh, so they showed him before when Al was on stage because later he was going to present the award for which Al is nominated. Seems too fix-y to me. And Al wins the Oscar!!!!! Closeup of the oh-so-pleased Steven Spielberg. Why did they make the film? Because of the problem of global warming??? Oh, no: "We were moved to act by this man." So says the director, reaching over to touch the hem of Al Gore's garment. He's gasping with awe. It's kinda embarrassing. He pumps the Oscar weirdly twice in Al's direction and he says "We share this with you." The camera goes to Larry David, clapping righteously. Now, Gore speaks: global warming is "not a political issue, it's a moral issue." I like Al. He makes his wooden squareness hip and cool.

ADDED #8: Kirsten Dunst is wearing a beautiful, witty dress. It's gray and has a see-through section at the top with a collar that seems to belong on a prim blouse. It's intelligent. And the dress makes me love Kirsten! The award is Original Screenplay, and it goes to "Little Miss Sunshine." Now, we see Jennifer Hudson sing a song, which must be fun for her, having already won the Oscar. I try to imagine how Simon Cowell would detect deficiency. Beyonce joins her, and -- isn't it true? -- Beyonce is the better singer. Does Beyonce feel she needs to prove her superiority?

ADDED #9: There's a Michael Mann montage about "America." We're racist war mongers, you know. Then the elegant Thelma Schoonmaker wins the editing award for "The Departed." Now, we see Jodie Foster, dragging excess yards of slate-blue fabric along with her. But she's introducing my favorite segment, In Memoriam. I'll impolitely name the ones that had the most effect on me: Don Knotts, Sven Nykvist, Robert Altman.

ADDED #10: Phillip Seymour Hoffman arrives to give the Best Actress award. It's no surprise that the wonderful Helen Mirren wins. I love the array of actresses as the award is announced. They all do a perfect performance of the thought: Indeed, Helen Mirren is grand! I love the way Mirren "salutes" Elizabeth Windsor.

ADDED #11: It's Reese Witherspoon, here to give the award for Best Actor. She's got major hair extensions and a simple black strapless gown. Oh, don't you want Peter O'Toole to win? Yikes, what is that incredibly smarmy look Jada Pinkett Smith gives Will? Does she hate him + is a terrible actress? And it goes, as expected, to Forest Whitaker. The look on Peter O'Toole's face says: And now, it's impossible. He's very old. Whitaker raves -- touchingly -- about how acting is the belief that we can connect to others and create a new reality.

ADDED #12: Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg gang up to deliver the long-awaited Oscar to Martin Scorsese, and the Oscar really does go to Marty. Li'l Marty hugs C, L, and S. He stammers and just thanks a lot of people. "So many people over the years have been wishin' this thing for me."

ADDED #13: Damn! I never caught up! I've been struggling and fast-forwarding, but I never could make it. I hope you accept my belated scribblings! Well, Best Picture now. Presenting: Diane Keaton (swathed in black) and Jack Nicholson (gloriously bald). I'm just thinking about how nobody made a political statement tonight. They kept it clean and elegant. And the winner is... "The Departed." Excellent!

ADDED #14: I turn off the lights and collect my bags to trudge upstairs after a long day. I peer out the front door and see the people came to shovel my walks as I was watching the Oscars. I'd parked my car in the street and stalked through foot high snow when I got home tonight. So I put on my big down coat and went outside to pull my car into the driveway. Let me leave you with one last shot of my car at the airport. Actually, this one is so abstract, I'm not positive it is my car:

Liberals ideate furiously over the black-and-white McCain website.

John McCain has an aesthetically pleasing website, which is distinguished by the very low color level. Instead of the usual florid blue and red, it uses elegant, crisp black, white, and gray. Perhaps that calls to mind some beautifully photographed black and white movie. Bring on the liberal commentators, and what movie do they think of? Of course, it's "Triumph of the Will," which, admittedly, is a film known for its crisp black and white photography (to go along with its Nazi propaganda).

Here's Atrios:

Imperial Stormtrooper Chic

And here's Ezra Klein:

But to get the full flavor of the terrifyingly martial undercurrent, watch the video "stand up," which is currently the default clip on the front page. It looks like an over-the-top parody of fascist campaign propaganda from a movie, and sounds like Triumph of the Will. It's also worth noting that in an effort to shore up his conservative credentials in a particularly pandering and ghoulish way, the next video is simply called "Reagan Tribute," and the weird shoehorning of McCain's time as a POW into his admiration for Reagan really has to be seen to be believed. I don't know how many cults of personality one web site can foster, but props to the McCain team for trying to find out.

What bugs me the most about their reaction is not the usual conservatives-are-Nazis business, it's the thoughtless tainting of the aesthetic of black-and-white design, this eagerness to score political points, with no feeling for art.

Klein does have a point about the film clip. The music is over-the-top. Visually, I think the film -- Errol Morris? -- and the website are excellent, but the music is off-putting. It announces the intent to manipulate you emotionally. That makes it a less effective effort at manipulation, though. I don't think Leni Riefenstahl would have done something so crude.

ADDED: I've amused Kevin Drum.