"What are some famous examples — in truth or fiction — of a character who puts a lot of effort into being able to be lazy?"

I ask ChatGPT, a propos of the previous post about the "Lazy Girl" jobs. I was influenced by a comment from Jamie, who wrote, "Heinlein wrote a story called 'The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail,' about a smart but lazy guy who spends his life and career thinking up efficiencies and ends up very successful."

ChatGPT answered me:

The NYT reveals its shortlist of 25 books, one of which will be named "the best book of the past 125 years," and "Gone With The Wind" is on the list.

Isn't that weird?

I read that book when I was about 16, and I thought: This is the best book I have ever read, and I don't think I will ever read a better book, because how can any book be better than this? 

There's a lot in the book that's not in the movie, as I was disappointed to see when I finally got a chance to see the famous flick. I was 16 in 1965, and back then, you could only see an old movie if it showed on TV or played in a theater. "Gone with the Wind" never played on TV, not until 1976, but it did have a theatrical rerelease in 1967, which I missed, and another in 1971, which is when I did finally see it.

What I remember loving in the book and missing in the movie was all the detail in Scarlett O'Hara's experience of other women — her mother, Melanie, (the prostitute) Belle Watling, etc. Scarlett was always on the lookout to see what made a woman great, wanted to see herself as a great woman, and she kept needing to recognize that other women were great.

Anyway, that made a big impression on me, more than half a century ago, but I'm surprised to see something so out of step with the times making the NYT shortlist. I haven't delved into what the NYT is saying it means to be "the best book of the past 125 years," but I wonder if what is "best" is to be judged by the standards of our point in time or whether we are somehow counting what the book meant to people at the time it was published and what it has meant to people over the course of time.

Here's the whole shortlist:

"Just watched as a massive crane took down the magnificent and very famous statue of 'Robert E. Lee On His Horse' in Richmond, Virginia."

"It has long been recognized as a beautiful piece of bronze sculpture. To add insult to injury, those who support this 'taking' now plan to cut it into three pieces, and throw this work of art into storage prior to its complete desecration. Robert E. Lee is considered by many Generals to be the greatest strategist of them all. President Lincoln wanted him to command the North, in which case the war would have been over in one day. Robert E. Lee instead chose the other side because of his great love of Virginia, and except for Gettysburg, would have won the war. He should be remembered as perhaps the greatest unifying force after the war was over, ardent in his resolve to bring the North and South together through many means of reconciliation and imploring his soldiers to do their duty in becoming good citizens of this Country. Our culture is being destroyed and our history and heritage, both good and bad, are being extinguished by the Radical Left, and we can’t let that happen! If only we had Robert E. Lee to command our troops in Afghanistan, that disaster would have ended in a complete and total victory many years ago. What an embarrassment we are suffering because we don’t have the genius of a Robert E. Lee!

Said Donald Trump, in a written statement at his website, here. 

1. I had some trouble finding the original statement. News sites quote without linking, and Trump's website is rather hard to find by casual Googling. They don't want you to see it. So, when I finally found it, I made a bookmark, and now I intend to make a point of checking it every day. These efforts to hide things can backfire.

2. I notice that Trump is far more grounded in aesthetics than your run-of-the-mill politician. The first thing he talks about is the magnificence and beauty of the statue. That's my first reaction to this issue: Richmond, you have had a beautiful statue in your midst! Regardless of the extent to which you want to honor or dishonor the man it depicts, it is a work of art. To tear it down because of the ideas you think it represents is like the Taliban blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas.

3. Trump has a visual mind: The "magnificent statue" is attacked by the "massive crane." He's especially drawn to the huge. That's his word — yooge. And here you have 2 huge things in confrontation. It's epic, the crane vs. the statue, like Godzilla v. Rodan. For that link, I Googled "Godzilla vs." and Google wanted to autocomplete that as... let's just say another large movie monster that it would be distracting to name.

4. But I will sidetrack you into this crucial piece of the Trump-and-art puzzle: To prepare the site for Trump Tower, his yooge monument to himself, Trump famously destroyed prominent Art Deco bas-relief sculpture that had been a focal point of 5th Avenue in New York City. In his new statement, Trump observes that the statue of Lee will be cut in 3 pieces, but Trump completely destroyed that stone artwork. 

5. More visuals: The cut-up sculpture is "thrown" into storage. It will be stored, not completely destroyed. On first glance, you might think you read "complete destruction," but Trump writes "complete desecration."

6. To say "desecration" is to say that the statue of Robert E. Lee contained sacredness. 

7. But the rest of the statement is not about holiness but military aptitude. Trump vaunts Lee as a great military strategist. Like a moviemaker pitching an alternative history script, he visualizes Lee in command of the Union Army: "the war would have been over in one day." And Lee in command in Afghanistan: There would have been "a complete and total victory many years ago."

8. It's not enough to end wars. You need to end them well, something we didn't do with Afghanistan, but which Lee — in Trump's telling — did: "He should be remembered as perhaps the greatest unifying force after the war was over, ardent in his resolve to bring the North and South together through many means of reconciliation and imploring his soldiers to do their duty in becoming good citizens of this Country." 

9. That makes me think of Trump's January 6th speech. After losing (or ostensibly losing) the 2020 election, Trump could have been more of a "unifying force," "ardent in his resolve" to bridge the partisan divide. He could have pursued "many means of reconciliation and implor[ed his supporters] to do their duty in becoming good citizens."

10. Trump enlarges the picture — I think of the crane shot in "Gone With The Wind" — and we see the entire culture. The Radical Left is destroying not just this one sculpture, but everything. This is Trump's cinematic visual mind operating again. The filmmaker has us concentrating on Scarlett looking for one man then pulls back and exposes hundreds of wounded men. 

11. Trump had us looking at one sculpture, then pulls back and urges us to gaze upon the entire culture. The Left is besetting all of "our history and heritage, both good and bad." He's so protective of our culture that he's alarmed about extinguishing "both good and bad." What's wrong with extinguishing the bad?! And isn't the demand for more teaching about slavery and racism the opposite of extinguishing the bad? Let's see it! Let's make kids look right at it.

12. I'm just noticing the very close similarity in the words "sculpture" and "culture." Just pull the "s" and the "p" out of "sculpture" and you have "culture." Sorry, that's just me being visual about letters and words. Is there any meaning to that? Of course there is! Go farther down that road and you might be a poet.

"Adolf Hitler favored [Clark] Gable above all other actors. During World War II, Hitler offered a sizable reward to anyone who could capture and bring Gable to him unscathed."

An interesting fact I ran across, reading the Wikipedia article for Clark Gable, which I was doing a propos of reading my son John's write-up about his favorite movies from 1939. "Gone With The Wind" came in third for that year. In any case, here's what got me started researching:

One of this great but frustrating movie’s weaknesses is the lackluster performance by the out-of-place Leslie Howard, who, unlike Vivien Leigh, couldn’t manage to put aside his real-life British accent and commit to playing a Georgian. I agree with this BBC piece (“Gone with the Wind: Is it America’s strangest film?”): 

The idea that anyone — let alone anyone as unconventional as Scarlett — would choose this wishy-washy character over ... Rhett is absurd: the most preposterous aspect of a daringly, bewilderingly idiosyncratic film. After more than 75 years, we’re still mesmerised by Scarlett. We’re still tantalised by Scarlett and Rhett. But Scarlett and Ashley? Frankly, we don’t give a damn. 

If only he’d been played by Jimmy Stewart! 

The reference to Jimmy Stewart makes more sense in the context of the entire post, the #1 choice for the year being a Jimmy Stewart movie. And the #4 choice.

Leslie Howard died in 1943 when his plane was shot down by the Nazis:

"'Gone with the Wind' was pulled from HBO Max while the long-running TV show 'Cops' was outright canceled..."

"... a sign that entertainment companies are re-examining the content they offer in the wake of nationwide protests for racial justice and against police brutality.... In a statement, HBO Max said 'Gone With the Wind' is a 'product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society.' When the movie returns to the platform it will be 'with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions, but will be presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. If we are to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history.'... On Monday, John Ridley, who won an Oscar for the adapted screenplay for the movie '12 Years a Slave'... call[ed] for 'Gone With the Wind' to be taken off HBO Max.... 'Cops,' once considered a groundbreaking look at the day-to-day life of police on the beat is now also out of fashion. Featuring the song 'Bad Boys'—with the lyrics 'Bad boys, bad boys whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?'— ...  'Cops' presented a very positive look at policing, showcasing officers handling everything from domestic disturbances and drunken driving to robberies and sex crimes...."

The Wall Street Journal reports (and this was not behind a paywall for me).

I liked the 2 times at yesterday's Las Vegas rally when Trump talked about computers — first, to say what's wrong with movies and second, enacting a scene between him and Barron.

1. Explaining his "Bring back 'Gone with the Wind'":



"What I say is: Make great movies. Not this computerized crap. Computerized garbage."

2. Talking about the bad $5 billion Obamacare website:



"I have a son at home — he's a genius with computers" — mimes typing on a keyboard, does his Barron voice — "'Hi, Dad. What's up, Dad? Get outta here'/'Hey, listen, I'm the President of the United States, Barron, don't talk to your —'/'Dad, can't you see I'm playing with my computer?' The guy talks to me, he's working with his computer. These guys are genius. You know, they grow up with that. It's like walking. But he's looking at me. I could have given him their health care site. He would have done it for nothing, and it would have been better than what they have there..." — mimes typing and does the Barron voice again — "'Come on, Dad. I'm busy, Dad. Whatdya want? Whatdya want, Dad?'" — the crowd cheers, chants "Barron, Barron!" — "Whoa! Wow!... He's gonna like — he's a good boy. He's a tall boy. He's up there. Just turned 13. I say" — looks up — "'Hi, Barron. How ya doin'?"

I love the father-son interaction where the father tries to use his I'm the President of the United States,  in the classic don't talk to your father like that format.

And I totally agree with him that computerized movies are crap.

What's going on here between 0:34 and 0:35? What exactly does it mean — that young blonde woman (just before the image of Scarlett O'Hara and "Mammy")?

Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party and those running to lead our nation must show up for them—not just with words, but with action. pic.twitter.com/LEjcpzHxfj

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) December 13, 2019

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:

"BBC Culture polled film critics from around the world to determine the best American movies ever made."

"The results are surprising – Gone With the Wind appears at 97."

What's supposed to be surprising — that film critics from around the world put "Gone With the Wind" as low as 97 or that they put it on the list at all? We're talking about film critics. From around the world. 

And: "Critics were encouraged to submit lists of the 10 films they feel, on an emotional level, are the greatest in American cinema – not necessarily the most important, just the best."

Greatest, best, on an emotional level. What can that possibly mean? Scan the list and you'll get an idea. Or read this one critic's musings on how he thought about the task. Richard Brody (in The New Yorker):

None of the movies on my list were among my favorites in childhood, a time when I watched lots of movies, mostly on TV.... All are films that I discovered at or after the age of eighteen... The one ringer on the list is “Love Streams,” which isn’t the film by John Cassavetes that I have in fact watched most often (that would be “Husbands”); it’s the one in which several simple gestures and glances, the tilt of a head, the tone of a voice, even just the shadow on a face, move me in a trans-aesthetic, oddly intimate, utterly unconsidered way.

Oh, well, then, okay. I was a big John Cassavetes fan back when “Love Streams” came out (in 1984). It was mostly because I was deeply attached to "Husbands." But I avoided even seeing "Love Streams" because it got bad reviews and I'd loathed "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" (in 1976) and that got good reviews. I never wanted to have that Killing-of-a-Chinese-Bookie feeling again. But maybe "Love Streams" deserves a viewing, on some rare occasion when, these days, I'm in the mood to sit through a movie. Frankly, these days, just about any movie gives me that old Killing-of-a-Chinese-Bookie feeling.

Movies! Ah, there's something to be said for Brody's target age of 18. All the movies I discovered when I was 18, back in 1969 and in the 10 to 15 years after that. Those are the movies that are structured into my brain — on an emotional level — but the idea that they are "best" is silly. Not that it's silly for BBC to make a list. People love lists. They're easy to read. They're provocative...  unless you can resist the provocation.

Cass Sunstein says "Gone With the Wind should not be mistaken for a defense of slavery or even the Confederacy."

"[Margaret] Mitchell is interested in individuals rather than ideologies or apologetics. She parodies the idea of 'the Cause,' and she has no interest in 'States’ Rights.' She is elegiac not about politics, but about innocence, youth, memory, love (of all kinds), death, and loss (which helps make the book transcend the era it depicts). Irrevocably stuck in the past, and a bit of a ghost, Ashley Wilkes reminds Scarlett of 'the sad magic of old half-forgotten songs,' and 'the far-off yelping of possum dogs in the dark swamp under cool autumn moons and the smell of eggnog bowls, wreathed with holly at Christmas time,' and 'Stuart and Brent with their long legs and their red hair and their practical jokes,' and 'a whisper and a fragrance that was Ellen,' Scarlett’s mother, who died during the war. Mitchell draws a sharp distinction between those pathetic souls who keep hearing that sad magic, like Ashley, and those who want to move forward, like Scarlett and Rhett. Her own heart ultimately sides with the latter. But she also cherishes, and tries to capture, the magic, the yelping, the practical jokes, and a mother’s whisper.... [The Confederate flag] should be taken down. But even so, it would be a mistake to disparage the sad magic of half-forgotten songs. Americans have good reason to remember the sweetness, and the deaths, of the countless real-world Tartletons—and never to dishonor those who grieve for them."

From "Finding Humanity in Gone With the Wind/The classic novel shows that individual lives cannot be reduced to competing sets of political convictions."

Disrespecting Judy and Liza.

Last night at the Oscars, in the opening monologue — TV-style, isn't it, beginning with a comic stand-up routine? — Ellen DeGeneres made Liza Minelli uncomfortable. The camera zoned in on Liza, and Ellen described the person on camera as "one of the most amazing Liza Minnelli impersonators that I have ever seen in my entire life." Liza — who'd done seemingly all she could to look fabulous — squirmed in obvious psychic pain.

It was only much later that I got a clue why Liza was there and why anyone would focus on her of all stars present in the arena. There was a tribute to the movie "The Wizard of Oz," which came out exactly 75 ago — as if the 75th anniversary of something is especially big. And the same year — 1939 — was the year of "Gone With the Wind." Given the prominence of "12 Years a Slave" amongst the nominees last night — it ultimately won Best Picture — it would have been apt to delve into Hollywood's most famous presentation of slavery, especially since the Academy awarded an Oscar to a woman who played the slave called Mammy, Hattie McDaniel:



That was for Best Supporting Actress, and last night the Academy gave the Best Supporting Actress Award once again to a black woman who played a slave, Lupita Nyong'o.

But forget the absurd resonance and strange racial history of Hollywood. The 1939 movie that got a long segment last night was "The Wizard of Oz." Who knows why? But there was Liza in the audience, not on stage singing. She was listening to Pink singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," while a montage from the 75-year-old movie played in the background. When the first image of Judy Garland went up, I thought the audience should have erupted in cheers and applause, but there was silence. Generally, the audience last night was stiff and dull, filling the seats as if according to instructions from management. Maybe when they saw Judy mouthing the words "There's no place like home," they felt something, a desire to be out of the un-Oz-like hall, at home or at least at some after party.

Pink was wearing a big glittery red dress that looked as if it had been made out of the skin of a thousand pairs of Dorothy's ruby slippers. After Pink had fully emptied the contents of her prodigious lungs, there was an empty stage and finally Ellen tripped out, in a makeshift Glinda-the-Good-Witch costume. The comic trope was that Ellen was one of these "Wizard of Oz" fans who might paste together a DIY costume of a favorite character for a night at the movies. Ellen joked:

"Did I miss it? Is it over? Not cool, guys, they were gonna call me. I'll do it by myself, 'You had the power' ... Oh, never mind."

She mocked Liza, and then she mocked the loser-fans who believe in the magic of movies, the people who really love Judy and Liza.