Movies that lots of people love that I detest/don’t care for/am left completely cold by:

• A Beautiful Mind has been mentioned several times, but it’s a very good pick. The worst moment in the movie, among many, was the fabricated Nobel acceptance speech in which he nattered on about the schlock-romance we’d just spent the movie watching. Nash’s actual acceptance speech was about math. In general, this movie needed less love and more math.

• Kids. Pointless wallowing in depravity and despair, with no redeeming virtues whatsoever.

Movies I love that other people hate on:

• Bamboozled. A lot of people seemed to get pissed off at the movie because they expected a straight comedy but the movie had other plans. Well, they were wrong and the movie was right.

Movies I probably won’t ever bother to see:

• Napoleon Dynamite

• Crash

• Pulp Fiction, Resevoir Dogs, blah blah blah

Oh. I can’t believe I forgot the following for the I-hated-it—but-others-loved-it list:

• Fight Club. Oh good God what trash.

Actually I don’t get why it would have been hard at all to portray a wall-sized screen in the film if they’d wanted to. Why not just paint a wall blue, and then project whatever you want onto it? It’s not like traveling mattes were something unheard-of in 1966…

Come on Max, everyone knows that what strapped government schools in low-income areas need is standardized tests. Piles and piles of standardized tests, day in and day out. Nothing inspires a love of learning like endless scantron paperwork.

In all seriousness, I think this is a great idea, both for high schools and for colleges. High school students get systematically exposed to a much richer set of options and experience a certain amount of the freedom and responsibility that comes with a college setting. Colleges, hopefully, get the joy of fewer students showing up at the age of 18, allegedly for full-time college work, while still needing a couple semesters’ worth of remedial training in basic English composition skills. (Of course, they would have to deal with 14-16 year olds showing up while still needing a couple of semesters’ worth of basic English composition skills, but that means less time wasted on the stupid stuff when they’re actually settling in to make college their full-time gig.)

Tim S. said that Democrats should: “Blame yourselves, and blame your party for ignoring how most of working class america feels about moral and domestic issues.”

But Tim, “working class America” didn’t vote for George Bush; it voted for John Kerry.

If only people making under $50,000 per year had voted, John Kerry would have beaten George Bush 55%-44%. (In fact, John Kerry would have even won Dixie, 50%-49%.)

In fact, if only people making under $100,000 per year had voted, John Kerry still would have beaten George Bush by a margin of 50%-49% nation-wide.

Kerry won every single income bracket from under $15,000/year to $30-$50,000/year. It’s professionals making more than $50,000/year who voted for George Bush, and the richest 18% (people making $100,000/year or more) who put him over the top.

(Source: CNN Election 2004 national exit polls, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html and Southern regional exit polls, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.3.html)

Working-class people don’t elect Republicans. Middle managers, CEOs, and trust-fund babies do. If the Democratic Party wants to win more in the future, then obfuscation about who their electoral base actually is certainly won’t do.

Rivers, I live in Michigan at the moment, but I lived in Auburn for ten years (junior high, high school, and University). I’m well aware of why you think poor people in Alabama are the problem—I thought the same thing for many years. The problem is that it just ain’t true. Here’s the exit polls for Alabama specifically:

TOTAL VOTE: BUSH: 63% KERRY: 37%

VOTE BY YEARLY INCOME:

Under $15,000 (10%) BUSH: 42% KERRY: 58%

$15-30,000 (23%) BUSH: 52%
KERRY: 47%

$30-50,000 (30%) BUSH: 52%
KERRY: 46%

$50-75,000 (21%) BUSH: 78%
KERRY: 22%

$75-$100,000 (8%) BUSH: 78%
KERRY: 22%

No statistically significant data was available for people with incomes above $100,000. However, since the overall Bush vote for people with incomes below $100,000 (59%) came out below the overall Bush vote (63%), you can pretty reliably predict that the trend got even worse with richer Alabamians.

Once again, poor people don’t elect Republicans. Rich people do. Even in Alabama.

“Despite the fact that Republican politicians ARE elitists that support only themselves and the friends that they bought, for whatever reason, they’re able to appeal to farmers and people who went from high school straight into the workforce with their holier than thou art righteous bullsh-t attitudes. They make these people feel like a vote that isn’t for their guy is a vote against God. Just do a little bit of research, people. It’s not that hard.”

The CNN Election 2004 exit polls (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html) tells us the following about economic class and the Presidential vote:

Yearly Income Under $15,000 (8%): BUSH: 36%
KERRY: 63%

Yearly Income $15-30,000 (15%): BUSH: 42% KERRY: 57%

Yearly Income $30-50,000 (22%): BUSH: 49%
KERRY: 50%

Yearly Income $50-75,000 (23%): BUSH: 56%
KERRY: 43%

Yearly Income $75-100,000 (14%) BUSH: 55%
KERRY: 45%

Yearly Income $100-150,000 (11%) BUSH: 57%
KERRY: 42%

Yearly Income $150-200,000 (4%) BUSH: 58%
KERRY: 42%

Yearly Income $200,000 or More (3%) BUSH: 63%
KERRY: 35%

Poor people don’t elect Republicans. Rich people do. If you want to look at who is being hornswoggled into giving Bush his narrow win, the people to worry about are white men living comfortably in the suburbs. Why aren’t they doing their research? Well, judging from the policies of the Bush administration over the past 4 years, perhaps they have done it. People tend to know where their bread is buttered and vote accordingly; the pressing issues right now are disenfranchisement and suppressed turnout among people who don’t get the pay-off from the Republican machine.

As for sources, there’s always PEN (Public Education Network), which puts out a hefty “Weekly Newsblast” … see: http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast-current.asp and http://www.publiceducation.org/cgi-bin/newsblastsubscribe/subscribe.asp

Too bad the weblog name has already been taken: if only I’d been there earlier with the obvious choice! But, alas, I guess that “Re-neducation” was just not meant to be…

Max asks: “And as much as it makes me hurt to think about it, I have a feeling it won’t be smooth or over by the 3rd. When did voting get so complicated? Why haven’t we spent the last 4 years trying to work and make sure we don’t have a repeat of 2000?”

Well. Ask yourself two questions: (1) who most directly benefited from the electoral mess in 2000? and (2) who is in power to put forward or obstruct serious electoral reform now? And there’s the answer to your questions as well.

Cynical? Sure, I’ll cop to that—but cynicism pays when folks like these are running the show.