Bernie Bashing and More Really Bad Ideas

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The top of my latest really bad ideas roundup goes to Democrats looking for a scapegoat. I've had it with the constant carping that Senator Sanders cost Hillary Clinton the election. The brain-dead Democratic Establishment has managed to brainwash loyalists into treating Sanders like he was a sexist third-party spoiler. What nonsense! He ran against Clinton as a Democrat in the primaries and supported her in the general election.  I wonder why Clintonians think we have primaries in the first place. The nomination wasn't Clinton's by birthright, for heaven's sake. Odd that those Clinton loyalists didn't accuse her of racism for contesting the 2004 primaries won by Barack Obama.

Enough with Democratic alternative facts!  Here are some real ones based on polling data:

·      8% of Democratic voters switched to Trump

·      8% of Republican voters went for Clinton

·      Just 1.1% voted for Jill Stein and the Green Party

·      3.3% voted Libertarian, most of whom were likely disaffected Republicans

·      43% of Democratic voters thought Clinton to be "untrustworthy"

·      35% of registered Democrats stayed home, but so did 32% of those registered with the GOP and 33% of independents

·      Independents now make up 43% of the electorate and vastly outnumber those registered as Democrats (29%) or Republican (26%)

·      Clinton lost the independent vote by a devastating 11%

·      Clinton won the overall women's vote, but 52% of women never attending college went for Trump

·      Clinton won the college-educated vote by 9% but…

·      Just one-third of Americans have a college degree

The data is clear: As Forbes observed, non-voters decided the election. In the critical state of Wisconsin, for example, Trump polled no more votes than Romney four years earlier, but Clinton polled 230,000 fewer votes than Obama. Add to this the fact that Democrats have indeed become a party of elites; they poll very badly with independents, non-professionals, and those with lower educational attainment.

Clinton lost. She was a poor candidate. Turn the page. All the carping, whining, and scapegoating serves only to make Democrats look like the party of acrimony, delusion, atrophy, and the past. Unless that perception changes, Democrats are doomed to be the Federalists of the 21^st century—a regional party confined to the Northeast and West Coast. 

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It really irks me when high-tech complicates simple things. The Chinese firm Shoulian Zhineng has taken this to hitherto unknown lows. It seems that some businesses are plagued by restroom-users stealing toilet paper. The solution? Dispensers using facial recognition software. Inconvenience meets creepiness. A machine reads faces and then dispenses a single two-foot-long stream of toilet tissue. Don't even try for more. Not surprisingly, some of these $700 machines have been sabotaged—and rightly so. Yes, you read that right–$700 to prevent people from lifting a 70-cent roll of toilet paper. As bad ideas go, this one stinks to high heaven. If toilet paper theft  has really reached  epidemic proportions in China, isn't the real solution to improve economic conditions so that people don't have to debase themselves this way?

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Flying simply isn't much fun these days. Name a beloved American airline. Yeah—I give up as well. That said, it's a really, really bad idea to fly on either Frontier or Spirit. Normally I don't get excited about Internet customer reviews; they are the forums of either the disgruntled or shills, and a larger sample size is needed for them to be remotely scientific. Still, it's hard to ignore reviews when no one has anything good to say about these two carriers. Each reinterprets the word "discount" as "you don't count." No-frills doesn't even begin to get it. Water will cost you $4 a pop on Frontier, which also offers you a whopping 24 inches of seat space with a 4 inch clearance from the passenger in front of you—assuming that patron doesn't recline. Check a bag and it's more than $60. Want to arrive on time? Hah, hah—that's a good one! A Boston Globe reporter wanted to try Frontier to see if it was as bad as billed. His verdict was that it was worse! Moreover, he "saved" just $60 after paying for several "frills." I recall an old slogan about the Yugo, considered by many to be the worst car ever sold: "If you can only afford a Yugo, you can't afford to drive." You see where I'm going with this?

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Pizza Hut hired an Israeli ad agency and posted its handiwork: an imprisoned Palestinian hunger striker secretly snacking on—you guessed it!—a slice of P-Hut 'za. Wow! That is soooo funny. Are you freaking kidding me? Pizza Hut apologized. Oh swell. That's what idiots do these days when their idiocy goes public. Who thought this was amusing? Fire them. Fire also the head of the ad agency that either green-lighted the ad or was asleep at the wheel. Now let's turn to Pizza Hut. It boggles the mind that anyone associated with the company could have allowed this to go forward—even in an age in which it seems to be okay to insult the weak. Sounds like the Democratic Party isn't the only entity that needs a top-to-bottom makeover. How about a new ad: "Pizza Hut: Awful food for Awful People."

The Sleepwalker a Thrilling Mystery

THE SLEEPWALKER (2017)

Chris Bohjalian

Doubleday, 284 pages

★★★★

The tenor of Chris Bohjalian’s new novel is established by the Sylvia Plath epigraph that opens the book: “I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.” It is, exactly as billed, a story in which a major character, Annalee Ahlberg, sleepwalks.

Annalee is in her late forties, but still strikingly beautiful and the mother of two precious daughters: Lianna, a senior at Amherst College; and twelve-year-old Paige, precocious beyond her years. Annalee is an architect and her husband, Warren, a professor at Middlebury College. They live the life of the privileged upper middle class—complete with a sprawling Victorian home in the nearby village of Bartlett—except for two complicating factors: Annalee has had multiple miscarriages and she’s prone to sleepwalking. Hers isn’t the kind in which she cluelessly raids the fridge at 3 am; she roams in ways that put her in danger. Lianna once found her naked on the bridge railing high above the Gale River; one slip and she surely would have died.

Bohjalian is a masterful storyteller who knows how to build suspense. He also does his homework. Annalee is a major character, but in absence. One night, when her husband is at an academic conference, Annalee disappears. What became of her? That’s the heart of this novel and, along the way, you will learn a lot about sleepwalking. Perhaps you find this thin material from which to construct a mystery. I assure you that you’re wrong. What happened to Annalee becomes the consuming passion of Warren, his daughters, and Detective Gavin Rickert, who knows a few things about sleepwalking as he too has been treated for that disorder. Coincidentally, Annalee was in his support group. Or was that merely a coincidence?

Bohjalian probes lots of things, including how sleepwalking is treated and how families deal with unresolved grief. Lianna is the functional adult in the story—the one who deals with the prosaic details over which her flighty father stumbles, provides emotional support for her sister, serves as the mom substitute who takes Paige to swim meets, and is the reliable link between the investigation and the investigators. All anyone has to go on is a small piece of fabric from Annalee’s nightgown discovered near the river. Is Annalee in the river? How does one deal with the uncertainty? As the main adult in the room, Lianna unearths things about her parents that children don’t usually want to know, all of which raise questions. Who are the self-identified close friends Lianna only saw as casual acquaintances? Did her mother have a lover? What does her sleepwalking counselor know about her condition? Why did it reappear after many years? Is the condition heritable?

The Sleepwalker is a taut mystery. Parts of it will creep you out; other sections will make your skin crawl as well—but for reasons that are different from what you first imagined. It’s a credit to Bohjalian that he can make us feel such things and keep us unbalanced and uncertain in the process. To be fair, some may find contrived detail, and I can imagine that some readers will be perturbed by they feel is as an inappropriate relationship. Like all mystery novels, of course, the lead detective spends more time on Annalee’s disappearance than would ever happen in real life.

No matter. This book is the epitome of a page-turner. As an added bonus, Bohjalian frequently sets his novels in recognizable Vermont locations. There is no Bartlett and the actual Gale River is in New Hampshire, but there is a Bartlett Falls on the New Haven River near Bristol, Vermont, which is probably the model for Bohjalian’s village and stream. He uses actual places when scenes shift to Burlington. All of this is to say that The Sleepwalker has an added layer of enjoyment for those who know the Middlebury-Bristol-Burlington area. But you will devour this book even if you’ve never set foot in the Green Mountain State.

Rob Weir

Being Canadian Mockumentary is Cheap but Hysterical

BEING CANADIAN (2016)

Directed by Robert Cohen

Grainey Pictures, 89 minutes, Not rated

★★★ ½

Premise: People in the United States know nothing about Canada. Concept: Make a comic film that riffs off their ignorance and Canadians' confusion over their own identity. Rob Cohen was the right man for the job. If the name doesn't ring immediate bells, check out the writing credits for some of your favorite TV comedies such as The Ben Stiller Show, Big Bang Theory, and The Simpsons. These are just a handful of the shows for which he has contributed his wit.

The humor in Being Canadian is broad and cheap, but it's also wickedly funny. Early in the film actor Russell Peters complains that Canadians are so invisible that Americans are shocked when one of "their" cultural icons identifies as Canuck. Cohen aims his camera at an effusion of Canadian-born celebrities, including: Will Arnett, Dan Aykroyd, The Barenaked Ladies, Michael J. Fox, Eugene Levy, Howie Mandel, Alanis Morrissette, Mike Myers, Catherine O' Hara, Seth Rogen, Rush, Paul Shaffer, William Shatner, and Alex Trebek.

The film opens with an animated quiz designed to prove that outsiders don't know anything about Canada. I actually knew the answer for all of the questions, but I'm hardly typical south of the border stock in this regard. Cohen punctuates the film with interviews with non-Canadians and I sincerely hope the American bubbleheads in the film were plants, or the US of A is in deep polar bear doo-doo. Cohen's thin-as-a-Vegas G-string plot is a road trip from Nova Scotia to British Columbia in nine days, timing his arrival to partake of Canada Day festivities in Vancouver. Along the way he hopes to uncover the Canadian identity. That's actually a joke within a joke given the rivers of ink depleted by Canadian writers on the very subject. Cohen's tone is absurdist and insouciant. For example, his journey across Quebec treads gently on separatist sentiment, but goes long on an unsolved heist of $18 million worth of maple syrup from a provincial warehouse. The entire journey is Michael Moore by way of Saturday Night Live: a series of set-up questions followed by mock interviews, a few serious remarks, some shtick, and Cohen chewing up screen time. Among the questions he poses are explorations of why Canadians are so nice, why they have an inferiority complex, and why their comedians are funnier than those born in the States.

There is great hilarity in explorations of the lameness of Canadian TV, with The Beachcombers serving as corroborating evidence. "It's our Gunsmoke," notes Jason Priestly, in the midst of a parade of commentators expressing incredulity that anything that woeful could have aired for twenty years. I've never seen it, but the clips made Petticoat Junction look like Shakespeare. Cohen also pokes fun at Canadian food, concluding there's no such thing, and marvels that Canada's national sport, curling, is even lamer than The Beachcombers. There's also the delicious insight that "nice" Canadians are obsessed by ice hockey, a sport in which grown men pummel each other. Niceness is again lampooned when Cohen visits a charm specialist and asks her how she'd question a mistaken $300 hotel surcharge for porno movies and booze. Predictably, it begins with, "I'm sorry, but could you please…." In another segment, Howie Mandel goes faux nuclear on toques.

There are numerous cheesy segments, not the least of which is the ongoing gag of Cohen and Dave Foley lying side-by-side in bed—seemingly naked—and musing on all things Canadian. Once was funny, but really…. Of course, Cohen didn't actually make the trip in nine days—unless you believe there was a massive July 1 snowstorm/freeze in Ottawa that roused skaters and skiers from their summer dens. This is, of course, a riff on outsider views that all of Canada is a frozen wasteland. The cartoon apparition of Wayne Gretzky certainly won't make Terry Gilliam quake in competitive fear and the film's "discovery" at the end is saccharine and foreordained. Cohen is almost misty-eyed upon passing through his native Calgary, but he also implies that "passing through" is necessary for an aspirational Canadian. Cohen leaves unexamined the fact that he now lives in LA and that most of the celebs he interviews are longtime friends and fellow exiles. 

But then, again, maybe I'm taking this too seriously. Being Canadian is really a mockumentary posing as a documentary. Much of it is laugh-out-loud funny. Does that fuel the stereotype of self-deprecating Canadians? Perhaps, but I'm happy to have Canada as my neighbor and am puce with envy of the civility and rationality of daily life there. And, yeah, most Canadian comedians are funnier than those in the States. The beer and folk music are better as well.  

Rob Weir

Exhibitions at the Eric Carle Museum and at Mt. Holyoke

Western Mass Art: Catch it Now!

It's Me Eloise: The Voice of Kay Thompson and the Art of Hilary Knight

Eric Carle Museum (Amherst)

Through June 4, 2017

140 Unlimited

Mount Holyoke College Museum of Art (South Hadley)

Through May 28, 2018 (and beyond) 

 

I did not grow up with Eloise, the slightly naughty, slightly precocious, and the exceedingly privileged little girl who lived in the Plaza Hotel with rich parents that mostly fobbed her off on her nanny. I intend no sexism when I say that Eloise books weren't exactly normal fare for little boys back in the days when I was one. All of what I know about the franchise is secondhand via my wife and it was of the variety that nearly made me opt out of a visit to the Eric Carle Museum. I'm glad I didn't.

The current exhibit is a totally charming display of book graphics, story mockups, magazine covers, and spinoffs covering the years 1947 to the present. The first date surprised me, as the first Eloise book didn't appear until 1954. I was unaware that Thompson was already a radio star before she began authoring children's books devoted to her diminutive heroine. Nor did I know that the Eloise books evolved from a radio persona she assumed in 1947. Think something akin to Lily Tomlin's Edith Ann character. The Eric Carle Museum has several headphones stations where we can hear Thompson portraying Eloise on the air, as well as a middle-of-the-room section devoted to Eloise on radio, records, and stage.

The outside walls of the gallery are devoted to photos, text panels, and artwork. We learn first about Thompson, who lived in the Plaza for much of starlet days and had a stubborn streak of her own. I simply had no idea of her days as a singer on Bing Crosby radio shows in the 1930s, or of her Broadway and movie work. We also learn of Hilary Knight to whom I had previously paid so little attention that I failed to note the single L in the first name and assumed to be a woman. But Eloise is the star of the exhibit—in all of her various franchise turns—books, recordings, TV shows, musicals, toys, games, and assorted paraphernalia—that outlived her creators. Yes, she is a snooty little toff, but her spunk and insouciance are enough to melt the class barriers of a Maoist. So too are the hilarious predicaments in which she embroils herself. It's easy to understand her appeal to spirited little girls. Take one with you if you can but if not, go anyhow. All you need is a young attitude; It's Me Eloise is for kids young and old. 

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Addario, Two Burqas

The Mount Holyoke College Museum of Art (MHCMA) recently celebrated its 140^th birthday. Years before that event, college curators had the inspired idea to collect 140 new objects to display during the birthday bash. The MHCMA, though not a pauper, lacks the sizable endowments that periodically refresh the galleries of Smith, Yale, Harvard, or Amherst. In practical terms this meant the MHCMA had to collect smart, cultivate donors, and work closely with faculty to discuss topics such as inclusiveness, worthiness, and usefulness of items as future teaching tools. Try doing all of that on a limited budget. The result is quite impressive.

One way to keep costs in line is to buy photographs. I'm not wild about the minor Joel Meyerowitz offerings, but there are stunning shots by others, especially work done by shutterbugs such as Lynsey Addario and Pieter Hugo in Africa, and by Livia Corona in Mexico. Check out the story behind Addario's shot titled "Two Burqas;" it's too good for a spoiler.    

Andy Warhol

The rest of the objects are a delicious Mulligan stew that includes works from Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, a mesmerizing Mannerist painting of Judith and Holofernes by Benton Spurance, and known and lesser-known Old Masters. There also objects ranging from Classical antiquities and African masks to an Asian Buddha and Pueblo ceramics. The overall effect is more like sorting through the backroom of an art auction house than the stiff formalism of a museum.

As an integrated group this exhibit closes in a few short weeks, but the MHCMA now owns these items and many are sure to become longtime favorites.

Rob Weir

Benton Spurance

Chuck Close

Pueblo Ceramic

Kent State : A Survivor's Insightful Analysis

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Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties. By Thomas M. Grace. University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. 273 pages + appendices, notes, index.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming/We’re finally on our own/This summer I hear the drumming/Four dead in Ohio.

 

Those lines from Neil Young’s “Ohio” were inescapable by the summer of 1970, with Young’s pained voice and blistering guitar presaging those of punk and grunge. Anger was already in the air, but the May 4, 1970 shooting of thirteen Kent State University students brought home that rage for multitudes of Americans. By summer’s end, Kent State had become the symbol of divisiveness that roils American society to the present day. Those on the left seized upon Kent as further confirmation that the American Establishment was controlled by duplicitous liars with murderous intent—those willing to expand an immoral war (Vietnam) into neighboring Cambodia and also ready to mow down anyone, including college students, with the audacity to challenge their authority. To those on the right, Kent State was a long overdue crackdown on lawless degenerates who sought to rent the very fabric of American society.

If the two camps shared anything in common, it was their surprise that matters came to a head at Kent State. Until May 4, most Americans had no idea where Kent State was even located. Those such as this reviewer who are old enough to remember the 1970 shootings at Kent (and also Jackson State, Mississippi) recall that most coverage presented Kent State as something of a backwater—the term “small second-tier state school” was often used. Why there? Kent, the media asserted, had not been an epicenter of campus dissent like UCal Berkeley, the University of Michigan, Columbia, San Francisco State, or the University of Wisconsin. 

This was because too few were paying attention. So says Thomas Grace and he would know—he was at Kent and was among the nine students wounded on May 4.  Kent, Ohio was a small city of just over 28,000 in 1970, but it was no backwater—it was/is an outlying section of Akron and part of the Greater Cleveland metropolitan region. In one of the book’s many remarkable features, Grace has meticulously researched the backgrounds of Kent students and can definitively say that though the university had grown like Topsy—from 6,000 students in 1955 to over 21,000 at the time of the shootings—its undergraduates were not the sons and daughters of farmers; they were the children of blue-collar workers. Many were first-generation college attendees and some were students of color whose entrance into higher education was uneasy. 

Grace deftly employs the concept of the Long Sixties to prove that the events of 1970 were neither unique nor unpredictable. Ohio—as election observers know—has long been a divided state. In 1970, conservative Republican James Rhodes was governor, but Kent’s students hailed mostly from parts of the state where labor unions had fought and won hard battles. In 1966, the largely black Hough section of Cleveland exploded into six days of rioting that destroyed millions of dollars worth of property. Four (ahem!) people died and fifty were wounded. Those who landed on the Kent campus during the 1960s were neither naïve nor quiescent. The campus saw its first major protest in 1961 and by the mid-Sixties Kent was a spider web of Old and New Left organizations: socialists, Trotskyites, civil rights advocates, SDS members, black nationalists, antiwar activists…. Moreover, ten percent of Kent students were Vietnam veterans, many of whom were outraged by Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia. Though several of those shot at Kent were not actively protesting, most of those chanting for the National Guard’s exit from their campus knew why they were protesting and were experienced at doing so. As Grace says of himself, “I was not a victim; I was a casualty.”

Grace’s book is so filled with individual stories that one is sometimes lost in the welter of unfamiliar names, but some clear villains emerge: Governor Rhodes, parts of the KSU administration, Ohioans applauding the suppression of civil liberties, the Ohio National Guard, and court systems that literally allowed the Guard to get away with murder. But Grace leaves us with some of his namesake vibes. In a final sweep, his appendix traces the post-May 4 lives of protestors. They did not slink away, as those hoping to teach them a lesson had hoped. Most were activists before 1970 and remained so afterward. Grace, who hails from Buffalo, returned to campus after a long rehab to show he belonged. Until retirement, he was a social worker, union organizer, and part of the May 4 Memorial task force. Then he got a Ph.D. and is now a history instructor at Erie Community College. He insists there is nothing special about his story—his prerogative, but his book is extraordinary.

What if you knew her/And found her dead on the ground/How could you run when you know?

Rob Weir  

Note: This review originally appeared on" http://nepca.wordpress.com 
 

Has the U.S. Reckoned with Vietnam?

American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity. By Christian G. Appy, Penguin, 2016, 335 pp. plus notes, bibliography, index. 

Note: Saigon fell to advancing South Vietnamese troops 42 years ago yesterday. This review originally appeared at: https://nepca.blog/ 

Nations seldom exit wars as they entered them. In an important new book, University of Massachusetts Amherst professor Chris Appy argues that, though the Vietnam War ended thirty-two years ago, the United States continues to struggle with its results. He even asserts that with "the possible exception of the Civil War, no event in U.S. history has demanded more soul-searching than the war in Vietnam," a conflict that "provoked a profound national identity crisis, an American reckoning" (x). A short list of its impact includes the shattering of "the central tenet of American national identity–the broad faith that the United States is a unique force for good in the world, superior not only in its military and economic power, but in the quality of its government and institutions, the character and morality of its people, and its way of life" (xi-xii).  

Few scholars have a better grasp of Vietnam and the workings of the military-industrial complex than Appy. He mines an array of primary sources in this study, but he also understands that popular culture frequently embodies a better understanding of how Americans see their past. Hence, Appy also draws upon movies, advertisements, novels, music, and other such sources in a book that begins with the question, "Who Are We?" and ends with observations of "Who We Are." The book is divided into three sections: "Why Are We In Vietnam?", "America at War," and "What Have We Become?".  An example of Appy's unorthodox but deeply enlightening approach comes in a chapter titled "Saving Vietnam." It builds upon Deliver Us From Evil, a 1956 best-selling book from Thomas A. Dooley, which Appy uses to show the deep roots of U.S. misunderstanding of Vietnam, and to place under the microscope Americans' self-deceptions. This journey takes Apply into the geopolitics of post-World War II, as well as into the sermons of Fulton Sheen, Cecil B. DeMille's rants on "godless communism," the exceptionalist pronouncements of Henry Luce, and the naïveté of films like South Pacific.

Students of the war won't find much new in what Appy relates about the illogic of American reasons for entering Vietnam or the inappropriateness of how the war was conducted. His revelations lie in his innovative narrative and in the depth of how various missteps continue to impact society. For example, in his look at American soldiers ("Our Boys") he sets the stage for understanding the gap between admiration for U.S. warriors and rejection of their cause. It's hard to find common ground between —on one hand, the film The Green Berets, Barry Sadler's hyper-patriotic ballad of that title, and Merle Haggard's middle finger to the counterculture and — on the other hand —revelations of My Lai, the rise of the antiwar movement, former Green Beret Donald Duncan's excoriation of the American way of war, and the spate of songs and movies critical of the conflict and those who conducted it.

In his final section, Appy turns his capacious mind to Vietnam's impact. Among its effects is the "Victim Nation" (221-49), a simultaneous sense that American ideals have always been under attack, "willful amnesia" (224) concerning Vietnam, a loss of faith in American institutions, a reconfiguration of GIs as "the primary victims" of the war (241), and a contradictory go-it-alone attitude as seen in films such as Rambo.

Conservatives from Ronald Reagan on have fanned post-Vietnam disillusionment and disunity to argue for a reinvigoration of American supremacy. Indeed, though Appy's book went to press before the 2016 election, it's easy to cast Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan in this light. But Appy incisively captures the problem facing the sloganeering of both right and left in his chapter "No More Vietnams." As he captures it in vignettes, such bromides can justify both the 1983 mass force invasion of Grenada and the antiwar activism of Brian Willson four years later.  

Appy ends his book with bleak notes and a clarion call. He sees Vietnam in the war in Iraq, noting that it took President Obama three years "to find an exit" for a "war that began in March 2003 with 'shock and awe' [and] ended almost nine years later in head-shaking silence" (305). 9/11 brought back American exceptionalism, even support for the idea of empire. These took their place aside new contradictions: the national security state and attempts to manage the news versus leaked revelations of misconduct such as that of David Petraeus and troops at Abu Ghraib; the valorization of Pat Tillman versus a lack of public support for the mission in Iraq; and belief in "global hegemony" versus critiques on the right and left that see it as "expensive, destructive, and antithetical to republican institutions" (319). By 2009, a scant 24% of Americans saw any value in the Iraqi conflict. Shades of Vietnam indeed! But how does one reconcile this with a 2010 poll in which 80% affirmed that the USA has a responsibility to lead the world? You don't. In Appy's words, "As long as we continue to be seduced by the myth of American exceptionalism, we will too easily acquiesce to the misuse of power…." Our best hope is to "seek a fuller reckoning of our role in the world that the Vietnam War so powerfully awakened…. It is our record; it is who we are" (335).

Rob Weir

Elvis and Nixon A Stinker Supreme

ELVIS and NIXON (2106)

Directed by Liza Johnson

Amazon Studios, 86 minutes, R (for language and insipidness)

Zero stars

Have you ever done something so stupid that you were aware of your own idiocy as you were doing it? That was my experience in watching Elvis and Nixon. I'm embarrassed that I actually viewed the entire thing. It is simply one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It is miscast, misdirected, and as broad as a mid-70s Elvis double-knit jump suit.

It depicts an event so inherently bizarre that it beggars the imagination that it actually took place. On December 21, 1970, Elvis showed up at White House gate and requested a meeting with President Nixon. He told startled guards to call him Jon Burrows because he was "working undercover," and that his reason for wanting to see the president was so he could obtain a Bureau of Narcotics badge to give him "credibility" in fighting the war on drugs. If that strikes you as weird, what does it say about the Nixon administration that his request was granted? Picture it—Elvis enters the White House in sunglasses, a purple cape, a gold belt the WWF would have deemed too garish, and bearing a gift of a commemorative Colt-45 for the president. You read it right: Elvis brought a gun to the White House. Yet he got to spend QT with Nixon, hugged the president, and got his badge. That makes Nixon nuttier than a Payday.

Elvis probably had some big holes in his own marbles bag by then. He possessed an arsenal of guns, a growing collection of badges he cadged from various local law enforcement agencies, and harbored the delusion that he personally could wean Woodstock Nation from its use of controlled substances. His marriage to Priscilla was strained and was about to go on the rocks, and let's not forget the Jon Burrows thing. Did Elvis actually imagine that he could simply change his name and that he'd be able to go undercover? As if.

He was also incredibly vain by then. Elvis was insanely jealous of the popularity of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones because they were more popular with young people. Those same teens and young adults increasingly viewed Elvis as a nostalgia act. Worse still, this meant that Elvis' audience was increasingly double wide middle aged women seeking to relive the 1950s. Despite recent comeback tours, Elvis wasn't growing as an artist, which is the slippery slope to Gabor-Kardashian Syndrome—being famous for being famous. Elvis was just a few years removed from being a cheesy, bloated Vegas spectacle. In a tragically ironic twist, Special Agent Burrows would also spiral downward from drug use.

You've probably noticed I've not said much about the film. It doesn't warrant saying much, but here goes. When you have material as juicy as this, you could do one of two things: direct a searing psychological drama or go for camp. Director Liza Johnson veers toward the latter but doesn't have the skill to make a film bad enough to become a cult classic. The end result is directorial slop that makes Ed Wood look like an auteur.

Michael Shannon as Elvis is the worst case of miscasting since Marlon Brando played a Mexican in Viva Zapata! I sat in jaw-dropping stupor from Shannon's embarrassing ineptitude. He sported, for starters, the most obvious bad toupee I've ever seen. Second, Shannon neither looks nor sounds like Elvis and his affected mannerisms were so forced that were you to see such a clod at a bar lounge you'd exclaim, "Worst Elvis impersonator ever!" I'm surprised Shannon got work after this misadventure. Kevin Spacey doesn't look much like Nixon either, but he's such a pro that he inhabits his character. He's the only thing worth watching. The rest of the cast manages to make it through without drooling, but they're just playing 1970s dress-up.

In Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl, the character Elliot Garfield described his acting effort as "Capital P, capital U, capital TRID." I can think of no better way to describe Elvis and Nixon. What was I thinking?

Rob Weir