Pricey nostalgia
The fabulous soundtrack to "The Wonder Years" has kept the popular show off video.

By Scott Lieber
Denver Post Staff Writer

It's fair to say that no defunct television show commands the kind of craving for DVDs like "The Wonder Years."

Among shows that have yet to release full seasons, "The Wonder Years" - a nostalgic coming-of-age series set in suburbia circa 1970 - is one of the most sought-after. The website TVshowsonDVD.com lists the 10 most requested DVDs still unreleased by studios, and "The Wonder Years" sits at No. 2, right behind "Beverly Hills 90210."

Amazon.com offers the only two "Wonder Years" DVDs, and the cheapest one - "The Christmas Wonder Years: The Holiday Episodes" - costs $74.99. For the more affluent, a used 70-minute DVD of "The Best of The Wonder Years" starts at $97.84 and runs up to $186.99 for a new one.

But full seasons of the show remain locked up, as costly music licensing has postponed their release.

"We're not that far along," said Jyoti Sarda from 20th Century Fox Marketing, of releasing full seasons of the show. "We know it's something we'd like to put out. We know that people want it out. Consumers are waiting. Fans are waiting. We talk about needing to tackle it, but we haven't gotten to a place where it's being actively worked on."

"It's not imminent," said Steve Feldstein, senior vice president of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, "in that it's not going to be out in the next couple of months."

"The Wonder Years" aired on ABC from 1988-93. Set in the late 1960s and early 70s, it followed the adventures of Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) as he negotiated adolescence.

Actor Daniel Stern provided the voice- over narration of the adult Kevin, and it was this filtering of junior-high angst through an adult's memories that resonated with viewers. People can identify with Kevin's experiences growing up, right down to schoolkid crushes, bullying siblings, parental expectations and the general trials of teendom.

The period music on "The Wonder Years" is critical to the show's emotional resonance, serving as an aural touchstone to viewers of a certain age. In one of the series' most memorable scenes, Kevin climbs a tree to peer into on-and-off girlfriend Winnie's window after she's hurt in an accident. The background music: "We've Got Tonight," by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.

Sarda hopes to begin releasing the DVDs within two years. No matter when they come out, the original music most likely won't be on them.

"I think that's the only way really we're going to see it," says Gord Lacey, creator of the Web site TVshowsonDVD.com. "I don't have a list of the songs used in the show, but something tells me they're not going to be able to release a completely intact series."

The music-licensing hurdle is substantial. "The Wonder Years" borrowed more than 300 pieces of music for its 115 episodes. Even more daunting is the fact that the music is from what has emerged as a resurgent, nostalgic era.

"I'd love to put it out on DVD, so other people can enjoy it," Sarda said. "So we just have to work through these issues. It's not that simple, because music is an integral part of that show. So it's not like you can just go in and replace it all."

Rights to broadcast on TV differ from rights to distribute for home entertainment. Most shows now negotiate home-entertainment rights prior to production. Shows produced in the pre-digital days - like "The Wonder Years" - never negotiated those rights.

The only two DVDs of "The Wonder Years" out now - "The Holiday Episodes" and "The Best of The Wonder Years" - both used replacement music.

"You go in and see which songs are expensive that are not as essential," Sarda says. "And that process of going through each episode and doing that analysis is a more complicated process than putting out a TV show that doesn't have these issues."

Well, I don't agree with the premise of this question or all of the response from the blog of Bill Simmons, ESPN's Sport Guy. However, given my recent interest in YouTube and attendant Springsteen viewing, it's good to see there are other people who think about this kind of stuff, and to argue (albeit internally) with their conclusions. I mean, "Turn the Page" covered by Springsteen? Ugh.

Q: My favorite YouTube clip is the Boss' greatest TV performance: his surprise duet with the Wallflowers at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards. Keep in mind, the VMAs had grown tiresome by the mid-'90s and Bruce had sort of slipped into irrelevancy with passable acoustic albums like "Tom Joad." The situation was ripe for "sad former rock star shows up and creeps everyone out" potential (which did happen a few years later with Axl Rose.) But Bruce comes out looking leaner and meaner than he had in years, complete with bad-ass goatee and leather jacket, and snatches "One Headlight" right out of Jakob Dylan's feeble hands. He nails a great guitar solo, makes tons of great Bruce faces and even turns in the classic sharing-vocals at-the-same-mic-stand move. You're literally watching Bruce rediscover his ability to rock as the song goes on. It's like Elvis' 1968 comeback special. Watching this live with my college buddies at the time, I predicted a Bruce creative surge, which actually happened in the late-'90s, peaking with his reunion with The E Street Band and what is still the only artistically valid musical statement about 9/11: "The Rising."

So, it begs the question: what would be the sports equivalent? You'd need a superstar, returning after a notable absence, who makes a comeback and rediscovers his "love of the game," and in the process, mortally wounds or breaks the spirit of an up-and-coming star with a great pedigree, right?
--M. Drury, Hoboken, N.J.

SG: Wow, that question had everything -- lively material, a couple of funny jokes, a provocative question, even accompanying video evidence. Now THAT is how you get into the mailbag. And you're right, that's one of the best YouTube clips ever. I actually remember watching that live, seeing Bruce and saying, "I'm not getting my hopes up, but he looks pretty damned good," then watching in disbelief as he completely blew Dylan off the stage. It was like one of those pornos from the late-'70s when John Holmes is having a threesome with a girl and some random guy, and by the end of the scene, the other guy is hanging out with the crew and telling them, "Look, I'm not gonna compete with that."

Before we get to the answer, I wanted to point out a couple of things before you dive into the video:

1. The Wallflowers were flying pretty high at the time (looking back, you could even make the case that they were the most underrated mainstream band from the latter half of the '90s), and it's quite possible that Bruce completely derailed young Jakob, who already had enough of an uphill battle as Bob Dylan's son before another music legend hijacked his signature song as he was standing right there. I always thought the Wallflowers should have been bigger than they were. What would have happened if Bruce didn't agree to play the '97 VMAs? We may never know.

2. There's nothing funnier than Bruce creeping over to someone else's microphone, then overpowering the other guy as spit flies everywhere. (I'm convinced this is why Little Stevie initially left the E Street Band, he just couldn't take it anymore.) I always thought this would be a good SNL skit -- just Bruce walking around and randomly hijacking somebody else's microphone in various places (a street performer in a subway station, Michael Buffer doing "Let's get ready to rummmmble," a stewardess giving the pre-flight instructions, and so on).

3. "One Headlight" couldn't have been more in Bruce's wheelhouse. One of the best examples of a song that would have been twice as good if the band had just given it to the Boss from Day 1 and said, "Look, this could be a hit for us, but it's a potential Hall of Fame song for you, you have it."

Some other examples: "See a Little Light" by Bob Mould; "Taillights Fade" by Buffalo Tom (and just for the record, I absolutely love those guys, but that would have been a top-five Bruce song); "Way Down Now" by World Party; "Rain King" by Counting Crows; "Expresso Love" by Dire Straits; the theme to "Beautiful Girls"; "Turn the Page" by Bob Seger; and my personal favorites, "Santa Monica" and "You Make Me Feel Like A Whore" by Everclear. Bruce also would have done much better with "I Am Mine" than Pearl Jam did because Eddie Vedder mailed in that entire album during his "I don't want to be famous anymore" stage. But this should be Bruce's next album: "Songs I Should Have Sung."

4. So what's the sports equivalent of Bruce blowing Dylan off the stage? I was leaning toward MJ and the Bulls sweeping the Magic in the '96 playoffs, with the post-baseball MJ as Bruce and Nick Anderson (already reeling after blowing those four freebies in the '95 Finals) as Jakob Dylan. But I like this example better: Jack Nicklaus roaring from behind to win the '86 Masters, with Greg Norman and Seve Ballesteros (both of whom choked down the stretch) combining for the Dylan role. Remember, Norman was considered Nicklaus' heir apparent at the time, and everyone thought Seve was going to become the dominant golfer of that decade; they ended winning three more majors combined and that's it. Plus, the Nicklaus/Springsteen parallels are almost perfect, right down to their popularity, their respective résumés and the similar points of their careers at the time of the events. That seems like the logical choice to me.

From henryinstitute.org:

Dead Man Singing

A Commentary by Russell D. Moore

Friday, July 14, 2006

I liked the Johnny Cash life-story film, Walk the Line, but I've more and more had mixed feelings about it. People who watch the movie get an honest portrayal of part of Cash's life, but something big is missing. For a long time I wasn't quite sure what it was. At first, I thought it might be Cash's faith, at which the movie only glances. The more I think about it though, the more I'm convinced what is missing from the movie is weakness: weakness and death.

In the film Joaquin Phoenix portrays Johnny Cash at the height of his career, a relatively young man in a hurry. What he can't play is Cash at his most powerful: an old man singing about God, love, and murder with the shadow of the Grim Reaper on his guitar strings.

That's why Cash's new album, released now after his death, is the antidote to the cocky, young, addicted Johnny Cash most Americans have seen on theater screens. The album, American V: A Hundred Highways, was recorded shortly after the death of June Carter Cash and only months before Cash's own demise. And it's all about death.

It's not just that the lyrics of the songs deal almost exclusively with the themes of impending death. It's also that Cash himself is so obviously dying. The album leaves in quivering lips, weakened voice, and even gasps for air. There's no booming, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash" here.

Cash sings about a man who places his wife's casket "on the evening train," while he and his children watch the train carry her body away. He sings about others placing his own casket on "the 309" train. He acknowledges that death is coming and, though he says he's not the whining kind, "it sure would be nice if I could get my breath."

This isn't some New Age ode to the "seasons of life." Nor is it the typical Christian triumphalist jingle about "moving on up" to a heavenly reward. It is instead the songs of a man who recognizes the horror of death, and who is focused on what every man thinks about at such times: judgment. There is something especially powerful in Cash's warning in the song "God's Gonna Cut You Down," directed toward a murderous Klansman but applicable to all of us have sinned against an omniscient God:

Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand Workin' in the dark against your fellow man But as sure as God made black and white What's down in the dark will be brought to the light You can run on for a long time Run on for a long time Run on for a long time Sooner or later God'll cut you down Sooner or later God'll cut you down Go tell that long tongue liar Go and tell that midnight rider Tell the rambler, The gambler, The back biter Tell 'em that God's gonna cut you down

This is what Hollywood hasn't yet pictured on the silver screen, and I don't think they ever can. It is hard to imagine an American entertainment culture hearing Cash's words, in an era when pop singer Jessica Simpson now sings love songs in which consumers can tailor the lyrics so their own names appear. The early Johnny Cash, who gets the girl and triumphs over drugs and alcohol, is much easier to understand, even if he does it with a little help from Jesus.

That's different from the gasping, trembling faith of this album. And yet what Cash is singing about here has been sung about before. King Solomon never won a Grammy but, like Johnny Cash, he discovered the vanity of fame and finance as death approaches. The faith in American V is less like a celebrity testimony at a Billy Graham crusade and much more like the desperate faith of a crucified robber, sobbing as he drowns in his own blood: "Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom" (Luke 23:42).

All of us need to hear this, and sometimes we can only hear it from a dying man who we once saw as so vigorous and successful. The Cappadocian Father Gregory of Nyssa said much the same thing as Johnny Cash sings when he counseled the vain, strong, young men of his day to go and look at the pile of corpses at a graveyard. Gregory warned: "Have you not seen the heap of bones piled on each other, skulls stripped of flesh, staring fearsome and horrible from empty eye-sockets?"

Cash has always sung of the dark side of life, of the vacuity of human existence. He famously recorded Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" about a pitiable hung-over man wandering the streets, listening to children singing in Sunday school. Cash sings:

On a Sunday morning sidewalk, I'm wishing, Lord, that I was stoned. 'Cause there's something in a Sunday That makes a body feel alone. And there's nothing short a' dying That's half as lonesome as the sound Of the sleeping city sidewalk And Sunday morning coming down

It is not until American V that we realize that, whatever Cash knew about pain, he didn't know how lonesome dying is. Until now.

We can only hope that a generation of Americans will hear such a warning in this album from a dead man. But let's hope that they also hear, in this weakness, Cash's triumphant faith. Even in the face of a Judgment Seat, Cash's songs of death are hopeful, looking to a Day of Resurrection in Christ. He sings:

Further on up the road Further on up the road Where the way dark and the night is cold One sunny mornin' we'll rise I know And I'll meet you further on up the road.

The lyrics were written by Bruce Springsteen. And I know the Boss wrote them to say "one sunny morning."

Maybe it is just my imagination, but it sure sounds to me like I hear this dead man singing, "one Sunday morning," Sunday morning coming up.

Israel's Existence at Stake
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Next June will mark the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War. For four decades we have been told that the cause of the anger, violence and terror against Israel is its occupation of the territories seized in that war. End the occupation and the "cycle of violence'' ceases.

The problem with this claim was that before Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, every Arab state had rejected Israel's right to exist and declared Israel's pre-1967 borders -- now deemed sacred -- to be nothing more than the armistice lines suspending, and not ending, the 1948-49 war to exterminate Israel.

But you don't have to be a historian to understand the intention of Israel's enemies. You only have to read today's newspapers.

Exhibit A: Gaza. Just last September, Israel evacuated Gaza completely. It declared the border between Israel and Gaza an international frontier, renouncing any claim to the territory. Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory in history. Yet the Gazans continued the war. They turned Gaza into a base for launching rocket attacks against Israel and for digging tunnels under the border to conduct attacks like the one that killed two Israeli soldiers on June 25 and yielded a wounded hostage brought back to Gaza. Israeli tanks have now had to return to Gaza to try to rescue the hostage and suppress the rocket fire.

Exhibit B: South Lebanon. Two weeks later, on July 12, the Lebanese terror organization, Hezbollah, which has representation in the Lebanese parliament and in the Cabinet, launched an attack into Israel that killed eight soldiers and wounded two, who were brought back to Lebanon as hostages.

What's the grievance here? Israel withdrew from Lebanon completely in 2000. It was so scrupulous in making sure that not one square inch of Lebanon was left inadvertently occupied that it asked the U.N. to verify the exact frontier defining Lebanon's southern border and retreated behind it. This "blue line'' was approved by the Security Council, which declared that Israel had fully complied with resolutions demanding its withdrawal from Lebanon.

Grievance satisfied. Yet what happens? Hezbollah has done to South Lebanon exactly what Hamas has done to Gaza: turn it into a military base and terrorist operations center from which to continue the war against Israel. South Lebanon bristles with Hezbollah's ten-thousand Katyusha rockets that put northern Israel under the gun. Fired in the first hours of fighting, just 85 of these killed two Israelis and wounded over 100 in Israel's northern towns.

Over the last six years, Hezbollah has launched periodic raids and rocket attacks into Israel. Israeli retaliation has led to the cessation of these provocations -- until the next time convenient for Hezbollah. Wednesday was such a time. One terror base located in fully unoccupied Arab territory (South Lebanon) attacks Israel in support of another terror base in another fully unoccupied Arab territory (Gaza).

Why? Because occupation was a mere excuse to persuade gullible and historically ignorant Westerners to support the Arab cause against Israel. The issue is, and has always been, Israel's existence. That is what is at stake.

It was Yasser Arafat's PLO that persuaded the world that the issue was occupation. Yet through all those years of pretense, Arafat's own group celebrated its annual Fatah Day on the anniversary of its first attack on Israel, the bombing of Israel's National Water Carrier -- on Jan. 1, 1965.

Note: 1965. Two years before the 1967 war. Two years before Gaza and the West Bank fell into Israeli hands. Two years before there were any "occupied territories.''

But again, who needs history? As the Palestinian excuses for continuing their war disappear one by one, the rhetoric is becoming more bold and honest. Just last Tuesday, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, writing in The Washington Post, referred to Israel as "a supposedly 'legitimate' state.''

He made clear what he wants done with this bastard entity. "Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media,'' he writes, "the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank.'' It is about "a wider national conflict'' that requires the vindication of "Palestinian national rights.''

That, of course, means the right to all of Palestine, with no Jewish state. In the end, the fighting is about "the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967.''

In 1967, Israel acquired the "occupied territories.'' In 1948, Israel acquired life. The fighting raging now in 2006 -- between Israel and the "genocidal Islamism'' (to quote the writer Yossi Klein Halevi) of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran behind them -- is about whether that life should and will continue to exist.

Bush Needs to Better Explain Complex Terror War
By Victor Davis Hanson

The Bush administration should stop repeating that it is fighting the war on terror for truth, justice and the American way. Instead, the president and his staff should be blunt and explain that, since Sept. 11, it has had to choose between options that are bad or far worse.

By all means, the administration should invite critics to suggest constructive alternatives to the way it's handled this war. But it should also point out that those who have honed in on flaws in current U.S. anti-terror policies have so far been bereft of other workable ideas.

Take the uniform-less and stateless terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay. To be sure, there are alternatives to the current U.S. policy, but are they any better? Should we try hundreds of them in American courts like Zacarias Moussaoui or in international tribunals as the Europeans attempted with Slobodan Milosevic? Or send them home to face torture in autocracies like Egypt or Saudi Arabia? Or do we ship the terrorists back to countries that would simply declare them heroes and let them go?

And can the critics offer better ways to track terrorists than through wiretapping and surveillance? How, otherwise, would one have learned in time about those in Miami who plotted to take down the Sears Tower, or the Lebanese cadre who planned to blow up the Holland Tunnel?

The Bush administration can also use history to show that, despite what detractors say, its techniques aren't so unreasonable. It's worth reminding the American public that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and shut down newspapers; that Woodrow Wilson imprisoned prominent dissenters like Eugene Debs; and that Franklin Roosevelt ordered the internment of Japanese-American citizens and secret military tribunals for German saboteurs (six of whom were executed) and allowed for the cover-up of military catastrophes (such as the hundreds killed during training exercises for the Normandy landings).

In other words, there's an advantage to providing historical perspective by engaging one's critics and answering their charges. The public, for example, should be informed that the accusation that the U.S. went into Iraq for oil ("no blood for oil," as the slogan goes) is not merely inaccurate, but crazy. For starters, gas prices skyrocketed once we induced risky change in the Middle East. How does that benefit the American people? Meanwhile, because of the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's energy sector has been purged of corruption (such as the U.N.'s scandal-plagued oil-for-food program).

In Europe, a poll recently showed that people there view the U.S. as a greater threat than Iran. If this is the case, is it not time to politely suggest to our "allies" that many of our half-century-old military bases in prosperous Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain have outlived their usefulness?

The Arab world's perennial grievances against the United States don't hold up either, given that America has saved Muslims in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait and Somalia, and provided billions in aid to Egyptians, Jordanians and Palestinians.

The Bush administration would also be in the right to wonder aloud whether its domestic critics wish to go back to bombing away without consulting the U.S. Congress or the United Nations as we did in the Balkans. And when Americans are butchered, are we to skedaddle, as both Presidents Reagan and Clinton did, from Lebanon and Somalia respectively?

Our present muscular policy - and we also hear this all too infrequently - grew out of just such past bipartisan inaction that led to 3,000 murdered Americans. The truth is that the old way of doing business, rightly or wrongly, was seen by jihadists as encouragement to up the ante with Sept. 11.

Ultimately, the Bush administration needs to do a better job of presenting this current war in a far larger context. Jihadists of the Arab world for decades have been at war not with George Bush alone, but with modernity itself. The radical Middle East street may be fascinated by the Internet, satellite television, ATMs and cell phones - but not by the foreign anathema of democracies, religious tolerance, free markets and gender equality that ultimately accounts for such goodies.

Here at home, we are witnessing the end of the multicultural dogma. Yes, there are really evil people who wish to kill us for who we are, not what we do - and they embrace cultural assumptions that are not just different from our own, but, let us be honest enough to admit it, far worse.

So, there are many fronts in our struggle against Islamic terrorists from the 7th century. The American people must be reminded of our challenges constantly in lieu of platitudes about the inevitable triumph of freedom and democracy. In short, our government should provide much more explanation of this complex war and far less simple declarations about it.

Are Republicans Kidding Us?
By Cal Thomas

The following is not parody.

House Republicans are being told by their leaders to run campaigns this fall on a platform of fiscal discipline that includes cutting spending. This from a party that has given us new entitlement programs resembling Lyndon Johnson's Great Society; this from a party that has set new records in "earmarks" for pork barrel projects in their home districts and states; this from a party that under Ronald Reagan at least tried to eliminate the Department of Education, but under President Bush has thrown new money at it with no appreciable improvement in academic achievement.

To what should we compare this laugher? How about to a member of Alcoholics Anonymous who gets drunk between meetings and then gets up to testify that he has not had a drink in the last 10 minutes? Or, Madonna endorsing modesty.

House Majority Leader John Boehner has published a list of Republican talking points he wants members to use in their campaigns to convince voters they are reducing spending and tag Democrats with being "fiscally irresponsible."

There is much from which to choose for entertainment purposes. One of my favorites is Boehner's touting of the line-item veto proposal to "help rein in spending." This fiscal chastity belt will, according to Boehner, "make Congress more accountable for the spending it proposes, help eliminate worthless pork, and protect taxpayer dollars with a budget based on fiscal discipline." (Pause for guffaws from readers).

Yes, the deficit is coming down, but not because of fiscal discipline by the Republican majority or President Bush, who has yet to veto a single spending bill (or any bill). The roaring economy is responsible for the deficit decline. New tax revenue has been produced and Republicans can claim credit because of their tax cuts. But unless Republicans reduce spending, the deficit will increase when the economy cools and Democrats, should they ever again become a majority, can be counted on to raise taxes as well as spend. Where spending is concerned, the two parties are identical twins.

Boehner should consult Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) for examples of where this newly discovered fiscal discipline might begin. One place is the Health and Human Services/Labor Department fiscal 2007 spending bill. CAGW found many "egregious earmarks."

Among them is $100,000 for Frontier Community College in Fairfield, Ill., to help create a lineman training program (tell me this has nothing to do with football); Georgetown Visitation Monastery, Washington, D.C., for digitization and technology (whatever happened to contemplative monks with pens and scrolls and where is church-state separation when you really need it?); $500,000 for the Aerospace Museum of California Foundation, Inc., McClellan, Calif., for a new interactive exhibit.

This spending monstrosity goes on and on. There is $150,000 recommended for Healthy Eating Lifestyle Principles, Monterey, Calif., for a program to improve nutrition by promoting the accessibility and consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables in schools. Wouldn't removing the soda and candy machines and serving more fruit and vegetables with lunch accomplish this goal? Why is there a need for a federal program when common sense costs nothing?

There's $300,000 for the Boys and Girls Club of Delaware County, Jay, Okla., for equipment and operating expenses for programs to improve diet, physical activity and emotional health. Didn't parents used to perform this service at little or no expense?

Each of these recipients will defend their grants as essential to the nation's health. Some might even claim it helps in the war on terror. The question is whether the federal government should be doing most of it. Why is the Republican Party, the party of "fiscal discipline," which has seriously fallen off the spending wagon, getting in bed with the "tax-and-spend Democrats" they used to criticize?

Boehner's concluding line might have worked better in 1994 when hopes were high that a Republican majority would mean smaller government and less spending: "Reversing the culture in Washington that believes the solution to every problem involves more government and more spending is not easy." It's easier if you haven't spent your principles and care more about staying in office than doing what you promised, but have refused to do.

Biased reporting
By Thomas Sowell

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

The same newspapers and television news programs that are constantly reminding us that some people under indictment "are innocent until proven guilty" are nevertheless hyping the story of American troops accused of rape in Iraq, day in and day out, even though these troops have yet to be proven guilty of anything.

What about all the civilian rapes that are charged -- and even proven -- in the United States? None of them gets this 24/7 coverage in the mainstream media.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example of media hype of unproven charges against American troops. While military action was still raging in the early days of the Iraq war, there was media condemnation of our troops for not adequately protecting an Iraqi museum from which various items were missing.

When the smoke of battle cleared, it turned out that members of the museum staff had hidden these items for safekeeping during the fighting.

Then there was the incident when a Marine shot a terrorist who was pretending to be asleep and the media turned that into a big scandal until an investigation revealed how these and other tricks used by terrorists had cost the lives of American troops in Iraq.

None of the brutal beheadings of innocent hostages taken by terrorists in Iraq -- and videotaped for distribution throughout the Middle East -- has aroused half the outrage in the mainstream media as unsubstantiated charges made by terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo.

Nor have most of the media become any more skeptical about charges made by these cutthroats in Guantanamo after the claim that copies of the Koran had been flushed down the toilet at that prison turned out to be a lie.

The idea of trying to flush any book down a toilet ought to have raised suspicions but much of the media treats statements by terrorists and their supporters as true and any denials of wrongdoing by American troops as false and "a coverup."

These are the same liberal media people who claim to be "honoring our troops" when they hype every casualty and make a big production of each landmark death, such as the 1000th American killed in Iraq and then the 2000th.

The multiple-page spread in the New York Times and similarly elaborate coverage of these landmark deaths on liberal television programs show that they had been preparing for these particular deaths for some time.

They may well be disappointed if we don't reach the 3000th American death, since the terrorists have shifted their attacks and now target primarily Iraqi civilians.

We all need to understand the fraudulence of the claim that these media liberals who have been against the military for decades and who have missed no opportunity to smear the military in Iraq are now in the forefront of "honoring" our troops by rubbing our noses in their deaths, day in and day out.

Troops who have won medals for bravery in battle -- including one soldier who won a Congressional Medal of Honor at the cost of his life -- go unmentioned in most of the mainstream media that is focused on our troops as casualties that they can exploit.

A recent study by the Media Research Center found that the three big broadcast news networks -- CBS, ABC, and NBC -- ran 99 stories in 3 and 1/2 hours about the investigation of charges against Marines in the death of Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November.

These remain unproven charges in a country where people on the side of the terrorists include civilian women and children who set off bombs to kill American troops and who can set off lies to discredit those that they do not kill.

But the same networks that lavished 3 and 1/2 hours of coverage of these unproven charges gave less than one hour of coverage of all the American troops who have won medals for bravery under fire.

Every newspaper and every television commentator has a right to criticize any aspect of the war in Iraq or anywhere else. But when they claim to be reporting the news, that does not mean filtering out whatever goes against their editorial views and hyping unsubstantiated claims that discredit the troops.

Those troops deserve the presumption of innocence at least as much as anyone else.

From All Music Guide:

Review: Enough Rope by Chris Knight
by Megan Frye

Chris Knight's Enough Rope is a tribute to blue-collar America, to the simple life and to the desperate hardships and the unmatched joys that people who aren't part of it will never know. It's blatantly honest, often empathetic and frequently beautiful.

The album never dips from its high level of songwriting skill, energy, and passion, though some songs are more touching and standout than others. Enough Rope is a great mix of uptempo highway driving songs and sentimental, nostalgic ballads. "Up from the Hill" is a rollicking Southern rocker and "Bridle on a Bull" is country-tinged blues at its finest with distorted slide guitar delivering a howling solo: "If your mule don't want to plow/Talk to him with a two-by-four/And if he still don't want to plow/Talk to him just a little bit more/And if he just don't want to listen/Haul him off to the dog food store."

The best aspect about Enough Rope is the stories Knight tells. The most touching song on the album is the medium-tempo "Old Man": "Don't wanna die till I've lived too long/They'll sell this place, whenever I'm gone/I miss my sweetheart so, and the way she used to smile/I miss them kids of mine, running wild/When the daylight fades in late afternoon/About all I know is it was gone too soon." "William's Son" is a tale of a maverick youth who grew up tough after escaping from his abusive father: "I'm kinda glad my dad got blown away/I know he grew up hard and he grew up mean/But me and my sister was not to blame."

The album comes to a close with the perfect song: "Enough Rope" is a heartland rock ballad, reminiscent of a John Mellencamp tune (Knight's voice is a little grittier, but similar). It's slow, reflective, and simple, with acoustic guitar and violin -- a tribute to hard-working people who never got to achieve their biggest dreams. "Well, I work for the city, in the town where I grew up/Some days I run the backhoe, some days I run the dump/If I had other plans on my graduation day/Then several years ago, I guess I hauled 'em all away/She told me she was pregnant on the day I turned 18/And I did what you're supposed to do, I bought her a ring."

Knight's music is the perfect blend of Americana and country-rock; it's clean at times, but it's far too soulful to be considered only contemporary country. His sound and style change little from album to album, but there's no need for change. Knight has discovered his niche as a songwriter, and Enough Rope is just another testament to his talent.

‘The Lost City'
By Michael Wilmington

Chicago Tribune movie critic

Throbbing with music, seething with anger and romance, "The Lost City" is a film that breaks your heart, bewilders, alienates and ravishes you by turns.

Director-actor Andy Garcia's movie about Cuba, revolution and exile in the late '50s centers on a Humphrey Bogart-like hero (played by Garcia) whose family is torn apart and who is eventually driven from Castro's Cuba to America. The movie isn't a complete success. It's overlong, sprawling, and it tries to dance to too many beats. But this movie, made with sometimes overwhelming passion and ambition, affects you anyway.

Heavily influenced by the "Godfather" films, "Cabaret" and Federico Fellini, it's a rich cinematic portrayal of the cataclysms, social and personal, that overtook Cuba when dictator Fulgencio Batista (played as a slightly epicene sport by Juan Fernandez) was driven from power, and the rebel regime of Fidel Castro (Gonzalo Menendez) took over.

That fall eventually commenced a flood of exiles that included both Garcia (as a child, with his family) and his "Lost City" scriptwriter, the late novelist G. (Guillermo) Cabrera Infante, author of the modern classic "Three Trapped Tigers." Garcia and Infante, anti-Castro idealists, create a vision of the paradise that unfortunately trades one evil--and one dictator--for another. "The Lost City" (which refers, of course, to Havana) doesn't romanticize the revolution or its rebels the way "The Motorcycle Diaries" partly did. It romanticizes the people they drove out.

We see the events from the vantage of a prominent liberal bourgeois clan, the Felloves: professor/patriarch Federico (Tomas Milian) and wife Cecilia (Millie Perkins), pleasure-loving U ncle Donoso (Richard Bradford) and Federico's three sons, Fico (Garcia), Luis (Nestor Carbonell) and Ricardo (Enrique Murciano).

Luis and Ricardo are revolutionaries. Fico is a cabaret owner (of the Tropicana-like El Tropico), like Bogart's Rick in "Casablanca." And, like Rick, he falls in love with an idealist's wife: his brother Luis' angelically beautiful spouse Aurora (Ines Sastre), who becomes a widow of the revolution after Luis is killed in a raid on Batista's palace.

With all this romance and family turbulence at its center--and the revolution, Castro and Che Guevara (played by amazing look-alike Jsu Garcia) on the edges--"Lost City" tries to re-create the era and enfold it in a dream of hot music and theatricality. If that's too complex and daunting a task, at least it's a brave one.

The film is highly artificial and very movie-conscious. (Ex-movie critic Infante wrote the screenplay for the archetypal 1971 U.S. car-chase thriller "Vanishing Point" as "Guillermo Cain.") It's filled with music and re-creations of the great pop star acts of the period, such as Beny More's--and, for a while there's a "Cabaret"-like master of ceremonies (Tony Plana). There are also some surprising "guest stars." Dustin Hoffman pops up as legendary gangster Meyer Lansky, who wants to bring Fico to Las Vegas. And Bill Murray, in shorts and smirk, is an unnamed, wisecracking American writer, "a standup [comic] who prefers to remain seated," inspired in part by Infante himself.

That love of theatricality, movie stars and music is key to "Lost City's" theme of art over oppression, and Garcia's brooding, hotheaded Fico is the theme's emissary. Fico's cheek is astounding; at one point, he pulls Aurora away from a randy Che at a party also attended by Fidel. Yet he never winds up in the torture chamber; he winds up, of course, on stage.

It has been suggested by a number of critics that "The Lost City" might be a better film at a shorter length--and maybe it would. But one has to admire Garcia's long loyalty to his own ambition and to the words of Infante, who died in February 2005. For better or worse, this exile's dream of art, politics and revolution will not be lost or forgotten.


'The Lost City'

Directed by Andy Garcia; written by G. Cabrera Infante; photographed by Emmanuel Kadosh; edited by Christopher Cibelli; production designed by Waldemar Kalinowski; music by Garcia; produced by Frank Mancuso, Jr., Garcia. A Magnolia Pictures release; opens Friday. Running time: 2:28. MPAA rating: R (for violence).

Fico Fellove - Andy Garcia

Aurora Fellove - Ines Sastre

Don Federico Fellove - Tomas Milian

The w riter - Bill Murray

Meyer Lansky - Dustin Hoffman

Luis Fellove - Nestor Carbonell

Ricardo Fellove - Enrique Murciano

From New York Daily News:

Hitting back at hip-hop hustlers
By Stanley Crouch

Having grown up in the midst of many intelligent, down-home and courageous black women, I was appalled for 20 years by the silence of the women who were being demeaned and turned into sex toys so consistently in the worst hip-hop imagery. Where were the descendants of those black women who gave so much of the heat to the civil rights movement and made so many sacrifices for it?

Why didn't anyone have the moxie, in the spirit of Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer, to take on the $1.5 billion rap industry? Perhaps because, in our culture at this time, cowardice is more common than the common cold.

Yet when, in 2005, Essence started its "Take Back the Music" campaign to question this hate-filled and decadent material, 1 million hits came to its Web site in the first month. Yes, the campaign festered for awhile because of a lack of funding - but at a recent music festival in Atlanta, it began wobbling back to its feet. Eight thousand people in attendance seemed ready for war against dehumanizing images.

Well, time will tell (perhaps literally). Essence is, after all, owned by Time Warner, which makes more than a few pennies from hip-hop material.

But even if this campaign should peter out, the day is far from lost. Warming up in another corner is Yvonne Bynoe, author and lecturer. Having had more than enough, Bynoe wrote a remarkably intelligent defense of Oprah Winfrey on Davey D's Hip Hop Daily News (Daveyd.com) last month. Go there, I urge you, and read it yourself. With the letter, titled "Do Blacks Really Need Oprah to Be Down with Hip Hop?," Bynoe earns a place as a Thomas Paine in the movement against female degradation.

In reaction to the rappers like Ludacris who complain that Winfrey - the American Queen of Goodwill - has disrespected them or failed to support their careers, her rebuttal is so well thought out, so articulate and so full of righteous anger that I am sure that 50 Cent and Ice Cube suffered skin burns if they read it. Or could read it.

The young lady knows their work well, sees the illogic of their assertions and lays them out in a row like dead fish in the market. Unlike so many critics who tiptoe into such territory, Bynoe shows no inclination to be silenced by a flag of false ethnic solidarity. With confidence, she slaps aside all the manipulative ploys that rappers use against any who dare question their insipid material.

Of the attacks on Winfrey, Bynoe writes, "The underlining sentiment is that if she is unwilling to set aside her values and opinions, then she can't be down for black people. This position assumes that what is good for black entertainers is good for black folks, and that notion is arguable. There are many media outlets that expose U.S. rap artists to the global marketplace. However, Oprah is virtually alone in her ability, through her selection of guests, to provide the world with a broader view of black Americans and their achievements. For most of us, particularly black women, who are frequently equated with the images of half-naked, gyrating females found in the rap music videos, a countervailing portrayal is welcomed." Uh-oh.

Beware, you gold-and-diamond-toothed dogs, they are coming for you. They are young, educated, good-looking and fiery, meaning that they cannot be dismissed as old, out-of-touch, frustrated hags.

The dogcatchers are on the way.

From Fox News:

First Look at Oliver Stone's 'World Trade Center'
By Roger Friedman

Six weeks ago, I told readers of this column about seeing the first half hour of Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" at the Cannes Film Festival. It was a sneak peek, but I predicted that Stone had made an excellent movie about the Sept. 11 tragedies based on what we saw that night.

Last night, a handful of others and I got another preview — this time at the full film. It was shown to us on high-definition videotape, with temporary music and not all of it has been color corrected. As Stone himself said to us in a statement that was read aloud before the screening: There wasn't a bit of actual film in what we watched. The final cut is slated to hit theaters Aug. 9.

Even so, I can still tell you from this screening that Stone has made an elegant, powerful, moving and genuinely personal document about the horrors that happened inside and outside of the World Trade Center.

Because of its scope, "World Trade Center" is grander than "United 93" and perhaps has some loftier cinematic aspirations. And as much as it's all about the real men and women whose acts of courage nearly got them killed that day, "World Trade Center" is nonetheless an Oliver Stone film through and through.

What Stone has done is base his movie on the stories of two Port Authority policemen who went into Tower 2 of the World Trade Center too late and with little information. The building collapsed on them, burying them and their colleagues. Only 20 people were pulled from the rubble alive. John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno — played respectively by Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena — were numbers 18 and 19.

We have to think of "World Trade Center" as a movie first — and in that Stone has done an excellent job. The three best-known actors are Cage, Maria Bello as McLoughlin's wife and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Jimeno's wife. From then, on, however, the casting of this film is really terrific.

There are lots of small parts, and you'll see Donna Murphy, Patti D'Arbanville, Steven Dorff, William Mapother, Dorothy Lyman, Frank Whaley and Nicholas Turturro, among others. The underused Viola Davis has a beautiful turn toward the end as a woman Bello's character meets in a waiting room. It's like a who's who of character actors.

Andrea Berloff's script gently weaves together the stories of the McLoughlin and Jimeno families, never going for ethnic stereotypes. The screenplay feels streamlined and clean, wasting no time to tell the story of how the men became trapped and what was done to save them.

Much of the performances of Cage and Pena turn in rely on close-ups of their faces in the dark, and often just their voices to get them through scenes. That these are incredibly effective says as much about the actors as it does the director.

And don't think that because we know the end of the story there aren't some surprises. In particular, there is one moment underneath the collapsed skyscrapers between the trapped policemen that will leave you shaken — it's so unexpected.

The movie also makes a hero of Dave Karnes, the retired Marine who discovered where McLoughlin and Jimeno were hidden. Karnes, played by Michael Shannon, was in his Wilton, Conn., office when he saw the towers fall. He got a haircut, changed into fatigues and drove to Ground Zero.

Karnes's story is really one of serendipity and fate, although Stone — and it wouldn't be one of his films otherwise — tries to paint him as an almost mythic, sort of unknown American soldier-hero. We'll let him have that.

What Stone has done, though, is make a real war movie with the World Trade Center as a battlefield. In that way, it almost resembles his best film, "Platoon," as the Port Authority cops are instantly turned into soldiers who know they may not be coming home.

Cage comes across as a kind of John Wayne figure, with Pena as his loyal student. You feel Stone straining toward emulating John Ford, and I think a few times he actually achieves that, especially in the scenes with Cage and Pena underground. But mostly Oliver Stone has made a wrenching, accurate account of a terrible tragedy seem personal and immediate. There's nothing exploitative here, just good, well-wrought drama.