It Was Never the 1950s

First off, the 1950s archetype that so many ultra-conservatives cling to never actually existed. Well it did, but only for certain people. Things were not so good if you were black. Things were also not so good if you were a woman. And things were definitely not so good if you were gay. In fact, things were only ‘good’ for white heterosexual men. And maybe you’re a white, heterosexual man and you’re thinking, “Well, good for me then! That’s what I want.” Okay, fine, but you have to ask yourself if your ideal world is one where everyone who isn’t the same gender, the same race, and the same sexual orientation as you is oppressed and denied rights so that you can have a better life. If that’s really the sort of person you are, there’s a word for that. And it’s not a nice one.

Religion Is Not An Excuse For Bigotry

Many religions encourage men and women to get together and have lots and lots of babies (through their insistence on not using birth control and opposing abortion under all circumstances.)There’s a reason for that. More babies means more children in the church which eventually means more adults in the church with means more money coming in on Sunday. You can argue that this is not the motive of the church but you can’t argue that it hasn’t been the result. Catholicism didn’t become big because they were right. They became big because they said having many children was your duty. So from that perspective the problem with gay couples isn’t so much the gayness, it’s the lack of making babies.

As America is supposedly a Christian nation, I’ll point out a couple of things. One is that Jesus never said one word about gay people. Not one. If gay people and gay marriages are such an abomination to God, why is it that when His Son shows up, he doesn’t mention it once during his 32 years of life? The other is that I’m not the first to notice that Christianity actually has no real reason to be against the gay community. It turns out Prof. John Boswell of Yale’s History Department found extensive evidence of gay marriages accepted by the Christian Church as far back as the 10^th and 11^th centuries. The bigotry against gay couples is not a founding principle of the Christian Church. If you are a Christian against gay marriage your religion does not protect your bigotry. It also proves that there’s no traditions being broken by accepting gay marriage as just ‘marriage’. It’s time to get with the times. Even if those times are from a thousand years ago.

Gay Marriage Is Not An Attack On Heterosexual Marriage Unless Someone In A Heterosexual Marriage Is Gay

Conservative groups have called Obama’s recent endorsement of gay marriage a ‘War On Marriage’. This makes no sense as letting other people get married does nothing to people who are already married. I’ve been married for over five years. The marital status of anyone besides my wife and I has never been a threat to my marriage and I don’t think I’m alone in that. There are people who are married and have sex with other people. There are people who get married to multiple wives or husbands at the same time. There are people of the same sex who get married. None of these things diminishes (or increases for that matter) the bond I have with my wife because they aren’t part of my marriage. The only conceivable way I can see the legalization of gay marriage impacting a heterosexual marriage is if there is a homosexual who wants out of his or her straight marriage and if that’s the case, more power to him or her.

Being Gay Is As Much A Choice As Liking Scotch Is A Choice

I love Scotch. Give me a good single malt at least twelve years old with a tiny ice cube or two in it and I’m happy. One could argue that this is due to my being Scottish. One could say it’s just my personal taste. Truthfully, I don’t know what it is and I’m me so if anyone should know, I should, right? What I’m getting at here is I can tell you dozens of reasons why I like something. But what I’m really doing is just telling you different aspects that are attractive to me. Why are they attractive? I don’t know. What I do know is that if you told me I couldn’t like Scotch or that it was my choice to like Scotch, I would tell you that you’re crazy. People who are attracted to the same sex are the same way. It’s not a choice. We like what we like and that’s what makes us us. If you don’t like that, well that’s what makes you you.

Just Because You Don’t Like Something Doesn’t Make It Unnatural

There are those who say that homosexuality is unnatural. These are the same people who would have told you 40 years ago that interracial couples are unnatural. The truth is that homosexual mating happens in hundreds of other species besides humans. There’s nothing unnatural about it. It may not be something you are into. It may not be something you want to see. I’m not a fan of large people in spandex but I don’t feel the need to act as though they’ve committed a crime against nature.

The Time Has Come

I am not old enough to remember the women’s movement or the Civil Rights movement. But I do remember when being openly gay was not considered an option. I remember when being openly gay was spoken of in the same way people speak of drug addicts and child molesters. I remember meeting openly gay couples for the first time and finding that there really wasn’t anything wrong with them at all. I remember losing my bigotry that I had developed simply because that was the culture. The culture has changed. I’m proud of this fact. I’m proud of our President for endorsing gay marriage. Just as I’m disgusted (but sadly not shocked) at statements like Rand Paul saying he didn’t think Obama “couldn’t get any gayer.”  Because apparently in Paul’s mind being gay is still an insult. Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have been clear about their opposition to gay marriage. They’ve stood up for bigots in the same way Obama has stood up for gay marriage.  The Presidential election is about a lot more than gay marriage, but when faced with the selection of a President who endorses equality or a candidate who, if not a bigot is at least courting bigoted voters, it seems like a simple answer to me. I hope it does for you too.

It’s time to grow up and get over your prejudices. Gay couples aren’t going to destroy the fabric of our society. It’s not going to lead to people marrying animals. It’s going to lead to people marrying people. Saying that accepting gay marriage is some sort of slippery slope is like saying drinking alcohol is a gateway to drinking gasoline. No one is going to think less of you if you accept the gay community. Nothing bad will happen to you. It will not suddenly make you gay. It will mean you’ve grown and changed. And change is the mark of a mature human being.

-          Jack Cameron

The Avengers is an important movie for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one to me is that it shows how successful a shared universe can be. I’m sure that the Avengers would be successful without any other movies leading up to it. With a great cast, a giant marketing campaign, and a writer/director with a huge cult following, it would be difficult for it not to be successful. However, by putting in the time to building the universe with five previous movies, Marvel Studios created something that’s never been done in movie history. And they broke all previous box office records doing it.

Unfortunately, Marvel has licensed out many of their properties such as Spider-Man and the X-Men. So you won’t see Wolverine hanging out with Iron Man any time soon. If I were Sony or Fox, I’d be talking to Marvel/Disney and seeing if I couldn’t integrate any future movies I made just a bit more. This can only help and fan boys will love it. It’s a philosophy that most companies can’t understand and won’t agree to: play nice and we all make money.

Now as for the Avengers movie itself, it’s a well-oiled machine. It’s a smart, character-driven, super-action, comic book movie. Every character gets their moment to shine. The people who just showed up for the big explosions will be just as happy as the people who showed up for snappy dialog. This is the movie Michael Bay could never make.

For Joss Whedon fans the fact that the movie works on all levels is no surprise. They’ve followed him from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Angel to Firefly to Serenity to Dr. Horrible to House in the Woods to the Avengers. Many fans of Joss will talk about the fact that he’s just as much fan boy as a big time writer/director. He is one of us. And that’s true in a lot of ways. Joss Whedon is more capable than just about any other writer/director working of giving us exactly what we want.

It’s amazing to me that he’s only just now getting big budget movies to play with because Joss Whedon while being tremendously talented to the point where I’m happy to read or watch whatever he’s writing also tends to be tremendously safe. He will make (and I’d argue has made) the ultimate summer popcorn movie. But he doesn’t often do anything that challenges expectations.

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely loved Avengers. It’s the movie I’ve wanted to see since I was twelve. There’s almost nothing wrong with it. If I were grading it, I’d give it an easy four stars. I can’t give it five though because it didn’t surprise me.

- Jack Cameron

If you’re thinking of starting up a business, chances are someone has mentioned Kickstarter to you. It’s a fantastic tool for generating money for independent projects. I’ve been tangentially involved in a handful of Kickstarter campaigns. All of them have been incredibly successful. Now that I’m preparing to publish my first novel, I’m in need of some money to get things up and running and I have no intention using Kickstarter to do this. As a marketing consultant and a guy who doesn’t like to see people fail, I think explaining my reasons why might help you decide whether or not you’re ready for Kickstarter.

First, let’s talk about why Kickstarter is a good way to fund your project. In the last three years, Kickstarter has successfully funded over 22,000 projects. They’ve generated over $200 million from over two million backers. If you’re looking for a way to quickly generate capital for your project and you’re not looking for venture capital, Kickstarter has some fabulous advantages.

For those of you unfamiliar with how Kickstarter works, it’s fairly simple. You come up with the minimum amount of money you need for your project. You estimate how long it will take for backers to fund your project. You put up a page advertising your project and depending on the amount of money backers contribute, you give them perks related to the project. If your project gets the amount of money you ask for or more, it’s funded. If not, it’s not.

Now before you throw up a Kickstarter page and start clicking ‘refresh’ every three seconds to watch the money roll in, keep in mind that 56% of all Kickstarter projects fail. That means if two of you start a Kickstarter campaign, odds are at least one won’t get funded. The reasons for failure are numerous and there’s not much reason to focus on them. Instead, I’d like to focus on the things I’ve seen that make a Kickstarter campaign work.

In order to have a successful Kickstarter campaign, you need at least three of four things:

1. A good idea
2. A clear plan
3. A proven track record
4. Good rewards for backers

You can get by with three out of the four but it’s not easy and you better knock those other things out of the park. And the thing of it is, I’m not sure why you’d want to when all four are fairly simple to accomplish.

A Good Idea

If you have a good idea, this is going to help more than anything else. Don’t just try to do a project because you love it. You’re not likely to get a lot of backers to fix your classic car. It’s good to have passion for something, but you’ve got to look at it from the backer’s point of view. Is this something they want to have or want to see? If it isn’t, then it’s probably not for Kickstarter. Who are your potential customers? Why should this project mean something to them? Why is your project important? If you can’t easily answer these questions, why would anyone back your idea?

New Pencil’s FlipSteady invention is a great example of a good idea. They saw a gap in the iPad case market and invented something to fill that gap.

A Clear Plan

A lot of people think that all it takes is a good idea. That’s understandable. Good ideas are exciting and when you have one, it seems obvious why people should fork over cash to help you out. The problem is that when people spend money, they like to know what they’re spending it on. So you need to have a plan. You need to tell them exactly what their money is going to do for you besides pay your bills. If you’re asking for $50,000 why do you need that amount of money and what exactly does that do for your project? If you’ve thought about your idea at all, you should be able to come up with a plan fairly easily.

WindowFarms.org had created a successful program for growing plants in your windows using water bottles, but when they created a more efficient and elegant prototype, they needed funding to get the molds made for mass production. You weren’t just ordering your own Window Farm, your money was going to making these things into a reality

A Proven Track Record

This leads us to the hard part. It’s the thing that people starting out don’t want to hear: you need to have a proven track record. I know you’re just starting out. I know you need money to get going and that’s the whole reason you want to use Kickstarter in the first place. And I also know that you wouldn’t give pay a guy who is sure he’d be a great mechanic if you’d just buy him some tools. You may have a great idea. You may know exactly what you’d do with the money, but who the hell are you? What have you done? If you’ve never done anything like this before, you might have some trouble.

Since this is the most difficult part of a successful Kickstarter campaign, I’ll try to help you out. This does not mean that in order to get money for your movie, you need to make a movie. What this means is that you need to show what you can do with limited resources. This will give potential backers an idea of what you might be able to accomplish with more resources. If you’re making a movie, make a short or a trailer for the movie you want to make. If you’ve invented something, make a few of them. This part is probably going to take you using some of your own money.  If you’re uncomfortable with that, then don’t get upset when other people don’t want to spend money on your project either. That line from Field of Dreams is still true, “If you build it, they will come.”

Before Dead Gentlemen Productions created their incredibly successful campaign, they created season one of JourneyQuest, a seven webisode series that had quite the cult following thanks to previous endeavors and some quality storytelling. When it came time for season two, they asked for $60,000 and got over $113,000. This wouldn’t have been possible without the work they put into season one.

Good Rewards

Lastly, you need to have good rewards. If you’ve got a good idea, a solid plan, and a proven track record, you’ll get backers, but if you really want to guarantee a successful Kickstarter campaign, you need to give back to your backers. You should take some time and think about what your ultimate fan would want. As long as these things don’t cost as much as they’re giving you, it’s worth doing.

When Jordan Weisman wanted to create a tablet version of his classic RPG Shadowrun, the top tier backers could have everything from NPC characters that look like them to a Shadowrun game developer come to your house and run a campaign for you.

Okay, so having said all that, let me explain why I won’t be using Kickstarter to fund my novel. Is the novel a good idea? Yes. It’s a thriller that combines relationships, crime, and lies in a way I’ve never seen before and it all takes place in my hometown of Tacoma. Do I have a plan? Yes. I have a step-by-step development and marketing plan. Do I have a proven track record? No. I’ve written one other book but it wasn’t a novel. It was nothing like the novel. And while it was successful in that it made a profit, it was far from a best seller. I have a successful blog with TacomaStories.com and a reasonable following, but I don’t have a track record as a crime fiction novelist so there’s no reason for your average person to think I’d be good at it. Do I have good rewards?  I wrote the novel knowing I wasn’t going to use Kickstarter so I didn’t leave characters or locations open for perks. I could offer copies of my book but really, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it from the ground up. So once my novel comes out and if it’s successful, I might use Kickstarter to fund my next novel if I feel I need to, but until then, I’m on my own. As it should be. (I suppose I should mention that I’m not saying I would refuse help funding my novel. I’m just saying it’s not a viable Kickstarter project.)

There’s a lot more that goes into the successful marketing and development of a Kickstarter campaign and there are a lot of people who know a good deal more than me about it, but this should get you started in the right direction. If you need more information, as I mentioned, I’m a marketing consultant as well as a writer and I’d be happy to help out.

-          Jack Cameron

In The Descendants, Matt King (George Clooney) has a wife who was in an accident. Now she’s in a coma and not really expected to come out of it. Matt has been a real estate lawyer all of his life and not spent much time with his two daughters who are seventeen and ten. So he’s juggling his kids who he doesn’t actually know very well with a dying wife and a gigantic real estate deal that means everything to his extended family. Oh and to top it all off, it turns out his wife was cheating on him. I would normally consider this a spoiler but since it’s the focus of just about every trailer I saw for the movie, I think the cat’s out of the bag on that one.

The movie was shot entirely in Hawaii. Early on, Clooney says something about how his friends on the mainland think he lives in paradise and then he goes on to explain how it’s just like anywhere else. While it’s true that his story is the sort that could happen anywhere, the filmmaking does little to dissuade you from the fact that Hawaii is a very beautiful place. In fact there are some of the most beautiful shots I’ve ever seen of Hawaii in The Descendants.

There’s a trick to storytelling where you get the audience to care about the characters. There’s no one thing that works to do this. If your character is nice to other people or animals, that can help. If it’s a movie, sometimes all you need is the right actor. George Clooney is one of those actors. Even when he played Seth Gecko in From Dusk Til Dawn we were with him because he has that charm and he was kind of a bad ass. In the Descendants George Clooney plays the Anti-Clooney. He has no charisma and almost no charm. He manages to do something I haven’t seen him do since he played Batman; He made me not care about his character.

As Matt King and his family go around basically dealing with and cleaning up the mess his wife made of their marriage and their lives, it just didn’t matter too much to me what happened because at the end of the day, his character was still going to be fabulously wealthy and still going to have his daughters. The rest of it just didn’t matter.

This movie also has not one but two red flags for me. One is voice-over narration. I hate narration on a level that’s probably not appropriate. Sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes it’s even good. But  most often it’s because the filmmaker is unsure how to get information across through storytelling so he just puts the exposition in the narration. It’s lazy and often insulting to the audience. The other red flag is the movie was filmed in a beautiful spot. If it’s not a big action movie, then basically the actors are getting paid to hang out in Hawaii or wherever while they film the movie. And if an actor is unsure of a script, the fact that they have to spend a month or two in the islands can usually make that decision a little easier. It also frequently results in a bad movie.

It probably sounds like I hated the movie. That’s not true. It was enjoyable enough. Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller are great as Matt King’s daughters. They’re fun to watch and feel like sisters. Nick Krause somehow channels a teenage Keanu Reeves for comedic effect as the older daughter’s boyfriend, Sid. There are also a couple of wonderful scenes with Robert Forster. So yeah, if you’ve got nothing better to do and you want to watch a movie, The Descendants isn’t a bad choice if you’ve never seen it before. But the first question I always ask myself after I finish watching a movie is if I’ll ever watch it again and when I did that with The Descendants, the answer was ‘No.’

- Jack Cameron

Of course no one knew that was going to happen in 2002 when The Bourne Identity was made. Director Doug Liman had only ever done indie movies like Go and Swingers. He’d never worked with this kind of movie or this kind of budget. In the DVD commentary he talks about casting parts by saying things like “How about we get someone like Chris Cooper?” His casting director would respond with, “Well, let’s ask Chris Cooper.”  It was entirely foreign to him that he could get or afford A-list talent.

Matt Damon was less of an unknown but no less unfamiliar with being the lead in an action movie. Like Liman, much of Damon’s career had been independent movies. He’d done some big name stuff after he put himself on the map with Good Will Hunting. He was even in Spielberg’s WWII epic, Saving Private Ryan. But this was something different.

One of the things that sets The Bourne Identity apart from other action movies is that the plot focuses on the character of Jason Bourne. Many if not most action movies consist of ‘Here are one set of guys, they want Thing A. Here’s another set of guys, they want to stop them from getting Thing A. Commence fighting for one and a half hours.’ With Bourne, you have a character who starts the movie literally not knowing who he is. As he discovers who he is, the audience discovers along with him.

The people who are after him aren’t so much bad guys as they are controllers who have lost control. It’s Apollo 13 where the spaceship is a highly trained covert operative. And it’s because of this that having people with a background in independent movies works. When you’re working in independent film, you don’t have money for a lot of big special effects. All you have that can save you is solid acting, solid production, and solid screenwriting. In other words, you have to focus on character.

While the action sequences in The Bourne Identity are top notch, the thing that makes it work is that we get to know the characters. Franka Potente’s character of Marie could easily been a one dimensional love interest. Instead, we get to know who she is and we get to care about her. When we meet a guy from her past named Eamon, we can tell from how he interacts with her that she’s always finding her way into trouble and at the same time, he can’t resist helping her.

None of this would work without Tony Gilroy’s top notch screenplay. Making a thinking man’s action movie isn’t easy and yet, Gilroy’s work is so smooth it’s almost invisible.

I’ve probably watched The Bourne Identity a dozen times and I’ll likely watch it a dozen times more. Its status as a modern classic is justified.

-          Jack Cameron

I think at this point, there needs to be a new genre called ‘Dead Parent Rom/Com’. With Garden State it was a dead mom. With Elizabethtown it was a dead dad. With Beginners it’s a dead gay dad. All of them seem to follow a fairly familiar pattern. Parent dies, adult son deals with the aftermath, meets beautiful woman, falls in love, has problems, but works it out amidst the backdrop of quirky friends and occasionally odd local customs. It should be noted that while this sounds like a formula, my understanding is that each of the movies mentioned above were labors of love for the filmmakers involved and that I don’t think any of them were ripping each other off. It should also be noted that none of this makes them bad movies.

Beginners starts after Oliver’s father has died. It then jumps back and forth through time showing the months leading up to his father’s death and occasionally flashing back to his childhood. Ewan McGregor plays Oliver with a quiet sadness that works for his character. Early on the in the film there is very little dialog and yet he manages to convey exactly how he’s feeling. This is the sort of thing good actors don’t get enough credit for. We often remember great lines but great silences are just as important.

Christopher Plummer’s Oscar winning performance as Oliver’s father, Hal is incredibly authentic. Hal stayed married for 44 years until his wife died. The entire time he knew he was gay. The curiosity with which he discovers things is fun. There’s a scene where he comes back from a gay nightclub and calls his son in the middle of the night to ask what they call the sort of music they play in places like that. Oliver says, “House music?” and Hal diligently writes it down. It’s a small scene that implies a lot and that’s really all you want in a flashback.

Mélanie Laurent plays Oliver’s new love interest, Anna. She and Oliver soon discover that they both have a history of leaving relationships. They also notice that they like each other far more than they’d each prefer. For whatever reason, I couldn’t really get into her character. I’m not sure if this was the fault of the writing or the acting, but I just found her to be there because Oliver needed a girlfriend. It’s the one part of the movie that just didn’t quite gel for me.

The most charming thing about Beginners is writer/director Mike Mills’ playful directing style. His sudden stock photo montages even when regarding things like cancer work well to lighten the mood along with Arthur the dog’s subtitles.

As Dead Parent Rom/Coms go, Beginners is a good one. I like it just fine. Though I must admit I like Elizabethtown better.

- Jack Cameron

Let’s take a look at a few things and see what conclusions we can draw from them.

We’ll start with the obvious one. A 30-year-old Georgetown student talks to the House of Representatives about the need for insurance companies to provide contraception to women. Republican, Rush Limbaugh responds by saying, “What does it say about the college co-ed Fluke who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? Makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex,”

The next day he said, “If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is: We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

Now many will and have said that Rush is a ‘shock jock’ and he been saying these kind of things for many years. When he’s not making fun of college students, he’s shaking around making fun of Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s Disease. This is true, but he’s still respected by the Republican Party and when there was an uproar about his latest comments, it didn’t come from the Republicans.

Attacking pundits for saying stupid things is fairly easy. Especially someone like Rush. So let’s move on to others.

Rick Santorum is a Republican running for President of the United States. He isn’t a pundit. He’s not some lone nut. He is someone who as of this writing has had hundreds of thousands of Republicans vote for him in the 2012 primaries.

When asked about women who become pregnant due to rape, Rick Santorum said, “I believe and I think that the right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, in a very broken way, a gift of human life, and accept what God is giving to you.”

This same man believes that you should never have sex out of wedlock and also doesn’t believe in contraception of any sort.

Much like Rush, Rick Santorum is an incredibly easy target because he says horrible things all the time. Unlike Rush, he is running for the highest office in the land. Rick Santorum is coming in first or second in just about every primary we’ve had so far. It wouldn’t be outlandish to call him the second most popular member of the Republican Party.

Let’s look at the only guy in the Republican Party who is currently beating Rick Santorum. Mitt Romney hasn’t been nearly as vocal about his anti-woman views but he does have them. When asked about his thoughts on Planned Parenthood he said he would, “Get rid of it.”  Later, when he was questioned further, he clarified by saying, “Planned Parenthood is a private organization. What I want to get rid of is the federal funding of Planned Parenthood,”

He’s not the only Republican who feels this way. They will all say that it’s because Planned Parenthood is one of the few places a pregnant woman can have an abortion. What they won’t say is that abortion covers just under 3% of what Planned Parenthood does. The vast majority of Planned Parenthood’s work involves preventative care such as cancer screenings for women. Planned Parenthood is often the only place a woman can go for such things. This is why cancer charities are also donors to Planned Parenthood. It’s not a abortion factory. It’s a women’s health facility.

I won’t spend too much time on Presidential Candidate Ron Paul because he’s more a Libertarian than a Republican, but he’s as against a woman’s right to choose as any of the rest of them. His vile Ames Straw poll speech proved that much.

Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich has been just as loud about his anti-choice views. On top of that he left his first wife while she was dying of cancer. He left his second wife to marry his mistress. Gingrich makes it abundantly clear how not important women are to him.

Okay, so we’ve covered the only four Republicans left in the Presidential Race. Not one of them has good things to say about women. Not one of them will defend a woman’s right to choose. And before you argue that a woman’s right to have an abortion isn’t a woman’s health issue, let’s get something straight. Regardless of the legality of abortions, pregnant women will still have them. We know this because it was true before abortion was legalized. And in those days many women died during the procedures because they weren’t done correctly. If you’re going to claim to be ‘pro-life’, you can’t ignore the health of the woman without being a hypocrite.

Of course the vitriol hasn’t been confined to the presidential race.

Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman introduced Senate Bill 507 that says among other things: “Section 2. 48.982 (2) (g) 4. of the statutes is amended to read:

48.982 (2) (g) 4. Disseminate information about the problems of and methods of preventing child abuse and neglect to the public and to organizations concerned with those problems. In disseminating that information, the board shall emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.”

In other words if a pregnant women has a kid and she isn’t married, she is causing a ‘contributing factor to child abuse and neglect’. Single parents have it rough enough without Republicans like Grothman claiming their very existence is a contributing factor to child abuse. This could also be seen as encouraging a woman to stay with an abusive man. I mean as long as he’s not hurting the child, according to Grothman it wouldn’t be a contributing factor to child abuse as long as they were married.

Wisconsin isn’t the only state attacking women and their freedom. In Alabama, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia Republicans have introduced bills that would force women who want to have abortions to have a transvaginal ultrasound. Now transvaginal is a word so rarely used that my spellcheck is telling me it isn’t a word. What that means inserting a device inside a woman’s vagina. What ‘forced’ means is against her will. In any  other setting, if you put something in a woman’s vagina that she didn’t want there, they would call that rape.

In Arizona, Republican Senator Terri Proud said, “”Personally I’d like to make a law that mandates a woman watch an abortion being performed prior to having a ‘surgical procedure.’”  That’s right. She wants you to watch an abortion before you have an abortion. Just like she watches cows get slaughtered every time she eats a burger.

In Tennessee Republican Rep. Matt Hill has introduced a bill that would make public the age, race, county, marital status, education level, number of children, the location of the procedure and how many times she has been pregnant of every woman who has an abortion. But don’t worry. They won’t release any names. That way you can have fun trying to hunt down who had an abortion.

Last week in San Diego, 50-year-old Michael Kobulnicky was arrested for the kidnapping and rape of a 53-year-old woman. Up until recently he was a spokesman for the San Diego branch of the Tea Party.

In Texas, firebombs were set off in the office of Wendy Davis, a prominent female Democrat Senator.

When we add this all up, we have a famous radio personality, all four Republican Presidential Candidates, Republican Senators and representatives in at least eleven states, and a Tea Party leader all doing or saying things against women. If these views do not accurately represent the people of the Republican Party, I have two questions.

1. Why do so many people in the Republican Party vote for them?
2. And exactly how many people do I have to list before you realize this is what the Republican Party is now?

You can make any argument you like, but what it comes down to is that a vote for the Republican Party at this point is a vote against women and women’s rights. If you can’t see that, it’s because you’re not paying attention or you just don’t want to see it.

I am outraged by this behavior. I can’t imagine any rational thinking man or woman looking at all of this and not being equally outraged. When I make arguments like this, I’m often accused of not having an open mind. This usually bothers me because I consider myself a very open minded individual. But then I remember that my open mind draws the line at bigotry and discrimination. When it comes to bigotry and discrimination, I am intolerant and closed minded. And I’m proud of that fact because as an American, I believe bigotry and discrimination is a terrible thing and it’s not something I want to endorse or encourage in this country.

There are a lot of reasons I’m voting for Obama in November. But the number one reason is that I love women and believe in their equality and the Republican Party doesn’t. Even if I agreed with every other thing Romney and the others want to do (and I don’t), I cannot step on the rights of women in the pursuit of the economy,  jobs, national defense, or anything else and still be proud to call myself a man.

Sources:

I think you probably get more out of Wonder Boys if you’re a writer, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Michael Douglas who typically plays super-rich and powerful characters is strangely perfect as the disheveled Grady Tripp. It’s expected that he’s a good guy having lots of bad things happen to him but as the story unfolds, you realize every one of his problems is entirely of his own making.

Before the movie even starts his wife has left him. His editor is coming in from out of town to look at his second book that is a few years late. He’s having an affair with his boss’ wife. And his best student is either going to become a best selling writer or possibly kill himself. We learn all of these things are already happening and then things start to get worse for him.

It sounds depressing but it really isn’t. It helps that his editor is a bisexual hedonist played by Robert Downey Jr. and the moody student writer is played by Tobey Maguire. In fact, the cast in this movie is one of the best I can think of. Katie Holmes plays a student tenant of Grady’s who’d like nothing more than to sleep with him. (There’s a scene where she’s laying in bed reading his manuscript that’s probably far sexier to writers than it would be to other people.) Rip Torn has a bit part as a pompous best-selling writer. He’s sort of the anti-Grady. Frances McDormand is the woman Grady is having an affair with. She’s one of those actresses who never gets enough roles. She’s a character actress who tends to disappear into her character.

The humor throughout the movie is what makes the whole thing work. It would be a dark, depressing affair without it. Instead, it’s a movie full of hilarious moments amongst all of the chaos. Also, no review of this movie would be complete without a mention of the fantastic soundtrack that includes Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and John Lennon. On a rainy morning with nothing to do, some people like to put on The Big Lebowski (a fine movie in its own right). I put on Wonder Boys.

- Jack Cameron

Game Change is an impressive movie. It would have been easy to paint the McCain/Palin campaign as a bunch of morons who made mistake after mistake and basically do the whole thing as an extended Saturday Night Live sketch. Instead, they portray an incredibly balanced narrative about a presidential campaign in trouble and the methods they used to give the campaign the shot in the arm it needed.

It’s difficult to portray real people who are still alive and in the public spotlight. Julianne Moore manages to play Sarah Palin as a real person in extraordinary circumstances and does it all without falling into cliché or caricature. Ed Harris seems to disappear into the role of John McCain. The only time you notice it’s Ed Harris is when you hear his unmistakable voice. He plays McCain as an American hero really trying to do what ‘s best for the country while also winning an election. Much like real life, these two rarely share the screen together. Woody Harrelson’s portrayal of campaign strategist Steve Schmidt is easy to overlook but shouldn’t be. In many ways, his character carries the movie and symbolizes the momentum and drive of the campaign.

Before Sarah Palin, John McCain was losing. He was too old. He wasn’t popular with women. He didn’t have the charisma that Obama had. What he had was a long distinguished career was a politician and war hero. Sarah Palin was the exact opposite. She was a charismatic, female, with almost no experience and no real knowledge. She was flash. He was substance. On paper, I can see how it looked like a good idea and Game Change makes that clear.

Game Change also makes it clear that Sarah Palin simply had no idea what she was getting herself into. This was because she was a bit naïve and a bit stupid. Her folksy charm won over millions at the Republican National Convention. We’d seen this sort of down home charm in both Bush presidencies and there’s a good portion of America who are comforted by it.

Unfortunately, there was nothing behind the Sarah’s charm. She had no grasp of international politics and had difficulty understanding even the simplest of policies. Game Change shows how McCain’s people try to teach her but it’s impossible for her to listen because the entire time she’s being told by the people how much they love her. She thinks she doesn’t need to change because people love her. Though she doesn’t say it, her actions say, “I don’t have to be smart. I’m pretty and they like me.”

Towards the end of Game Change, it becomes a bit of a monster movie in that you can tell McCain’s people are thinking, “My god! What have we created?” as Sarah Palin continues to go against campaign policies and blatantly lies about things when she doesn’t like them. Though the movie does a good job of giving us insight into the mechanics behind the failure of the McCain/Palin campaign, I still had a hard time feeling bad for the character of Sarah Palin. This may be due to my own political opinions. Then again, it may have something to do with Sarah just being the sort of person I don’t care for.

Game Change is a good movie and a cautionary tale. It would be much better if it were fictional. The idea that this actually happened is a bit disturbing. The even more disturbing part is that as the presidential race heats up again, things seem to be even crazier. I wonder what HBO will do with this in four years.

-          Jack Cameron

“This is the core principle of self-defense: Do whatever you can to avoid a physical confrontation, but the moment avoidance fails, attack explosively for the purposes of escape—not to mete out justice, or to teach a bully a lesson, or to apprehend a criminal. Your goal is to get away with minimum trauma (to you), while harming your attacker in any way that seems necessary to ensure your escape.”

This was a new concept to me. It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with it. It was that I’d never really thought of it like that before. I read a few more of his posts on his site and then decided I would read one of his books. When I get interested in an author, I like to start with his first book whenever I can. So I got The End of Faith.

The End of Faith is about faith, religion, and the incredible dangers posed in the modern world by people who believe things with no evidence. As an atheist, I was a bit concerned that I’d read the book and my only reward would be that I’d have a few more points to make when I debate someone about the existence or non-existence of God. Surprisingly Sam Harris’ book is much more than that.

One thing that struck me about Harris’ writing is that he isn’t nice. He doesn’t try to bend the reader to his way of thinking. He hacks at the weakest points of some of the longest held beliefs in history. And he’s exceptional at it. He attacks blind faith with reason, practicality, and logic.

I’m sure it’s no surprised that in this first part, I was in complete agreement with him. I also thought how this first part of the book was so brutal that many Believers probably wouldn’t read further. This is unfortunate on many levels. Sam Harris is clearly a well educated smart man and he has something important to say here. I’d like to think that anyone, regardless of their faith would be interested in what a man like him has to say about religion and faith. Ultimately, if you read it and think he’s wrong, nothing has been done to your faith. If you read it and think he’s right, then your beliefs will have changed. Either way, it’s not damaging.

After clearly explaining why religion and blind faith don’t make a lot of sense in the modern world, Harris starts talking about the consequences of religion in the modern world. He touches on everything from missionaries not passing out contraception to suicide bombers whose actions are celebrated by the faithful. The picture he paints of the horrible things that happen because of what different people think happens after we die is startling.

This isn’t a new problem. Harris goes into detail about how history is full of atrocities and tragedies that are the result of religion. He acknowledges that religion has also contributed a great many good things to our society but not one of them would have been impossible without religion. Unlike things such as the Spanish Inquisition which required faith to happen.

With technology continuing to shrink our world and weapons of mass destruction being easier and easier to produce, the existence of groups of people who believe in things that cannot be proven and want to kill people who do not believe those things make religion and faith one of the most obvious dangers to our civilization. Harris goes into details on why this is true and what we should do about it. It’s here that he almost loses me. While I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, I can find no fault in his logic. In many ways, I think that perhaps I just don’t want to agree.

After pointing out the fallacy of faith and the dangers of religion, Harris takes some time to talk about ethics. He does a reasonable job of pointing out that ethics do not need to be grounded in religion and that we don’t need a God or an old book to tell us what is right or wrong. I agree with this, but his thoughts on torture disturb me:

“Whenever we consent to drop bombs, we do so with the knowledge that some number of children will be blinded, disemboweled, paralyzed, orphaned, and killed by them. It is curious that while the torture of Osama bin Laden himself could be expected to provoke convulsions of conscience among our leaders, the unintended (thought perfectly foreseeable, and therefore accepted) slaughter of children does not.”

Personally, when it comes to torture, I’m against it in all cases. If for no other reason than it rarely produces good results. Torture to me is a failure of the interrogator. Then again, I’m not the biggest fan of bombs either. However, as he points out, regardless of the outcome of the torture, from a purely ethical standpoint, he has a good point.

Finally, Harris talks about spirituality. This was the last thing I expected on a book basically dedicated to the absurdity and horrendous consequences of religion. His thoughts here are lucid. He argues that in many cases religion gets in the way of spirituality and our objective study of it. I entirely agree with him. The most spiritual moments of my life had nothing to do with Jesus or church.

Often books like this will not have sources. They’ll read like manifestos. Harris’ book does not suffer from this. Almost a third of the entire book is full of notes about his sources and references. Clearly, he did his research.

The End of Faith is a book I’d love to share with my father and with any Believer I know. It’s challenging. It’s thought provoking. And it’s accessible. There’s not much more I ask for in a non-fiction book. I’m looking forward to reading more Sam Harris soon.

- Jack Cameron