Setsuled's Journal

My interest in the presidential race has prompted me to watch a bit of the 24-hour news networks. Damned scary stuff. I mean, I'd heard there was a right wing bias on most of these channels but it was nevertheless astonishing to see it at work. From so-called "fact-checkers" who wilfully misinterpreted or brazenly misquoted Kerry in order to make him wrong, to panels of political journalists who argue the most absurd and irrelevant points.

The other day I watched a show on MSNBC called Scarborough Country consisting of host Scarborough debating with a number of people, most of whom were right-wingers. The two representatives of the left wing were young women whom I suspected may've been either plants or were simply chosen because they were cute and not very bright. Every single one of the right wingers harped on Kerry's display of flip-flopping in the debate and not one of the left wingers thought to point out that Kerry did not display any flip-flopping during the debate. The item Scarborough was primarily alluding to, the fact that Kerry called Hussein a threat while also calling the war a mistake, was never even suggested as not being a contradiction. It was telling that when Al Franken came on for a one on one with Scarborough, Scarborough carefully avoided the issue; Franken was too high profile to be owned by the network.

Ugh.

I watched Anthony Adverse last night, a late 1700s melodrama made in 1936. Every time I see Olivia De Havilland in a movie I like her just a little more. Which is, I guess, the way with great movie stars. It's hard to believe that she's not only still alive, but is currently teaching Sunday school at a church in Paris. A woman born in Japan to British parents, who became an American movie star, and now lives happily in France.

Anthony Adverse was itself a strange mishmash of nationalities and I had trouble figuring out where it took place half the time. The confusion culminated in one scene where Claude Rains, a British actor, said to Edmund Gwenn, who was speaking with a Scottish accent, "Au revoir, senor!"