Since I’ve been working and lost in the world of Dragon Age I haven’t been as much of a news junky recently -- which is probably a good thing.  So, this flap about the “black racist” at the Agricultural Department went past me with only a small blip.

Then Connie called last night and gave me some more information, and by this morning it had blown up into a huge story.  I’m washing dishes and watching the Today Show, and I’m reduced to spluttering incoherence by the coverage.

Is the media calling out that shit Breitbart, the Right Wing tool who hired a kid to dress up like a pimp and go to ACORN?  NO!  (Except he WASN’T DRESSED LIKE A PIMP at the interviews.  That was all cut in later, and they never showed the tapes where the employees at ACORN told him to get the hell out, and what he was doing was illegal.)  But I digress.  It’s that guy who posted this video of this woman talking about a white farmer that she didn’t want to help because so many black people had lost their land.

Well, guess what.  This subhuman had edited the tape, and cut out how she talked about how this happened 24 years ago, and how it was a moment of epiphany for her.  When she realized this attitude was wrong, and that it wasn’t about black and white it was about poor.  All that was left off.

So Fox picks up this garbage, and runs with it with out bothering to watch the entire video.  They really aren’t a news organization.  News men and women do their research.  For 24 hours Fox and Right Wing radio pilloried this woman.  Aside from Ms. Sherrod herself who has behaved with the greatest of grace and elegance the only other  hero in this whole sorry mess is this is the white farmer who is 87 years old, and who had the guts to call Rush Limbaugh, and Fox and try to set the record straight.  He and his wife were interviewed, and said Ms. Sherrod was a wonderful person who had saved their farm.  It takes a brave man to go up against these liars and destroyers, but he did it.  The administration panicked and also didn’t bother to watch the entire tape.  If they had Shirley Sherrod would not have been asked to resign.  I understand why they overreacted.  They’re trying to deal with the NAACP rightly, and accurately calling out obvious and in-your-face racists in the Tea Party.  And they are super sensitive to the accusation that they are playing the race card when they are led by an African/American president.  So they took what looked like the quick and easy solution -- have her resign and get the story off the front page.  It was dumb, really dumb, _but it’s not the story_.

Did the mainstream press actually find the real story?  Of course not, they made the story about “the administration’s rush to judgment” instead of coming down on Breitbart and Fox and talk radio for ruining this woman’s life by presenting a lie through creative editing.

Why did the Right Wing do this?  Well, aside from continuing with the Nixon method of dirty tricks designed to play on white anxiety, they are desperate to find a way to say, “Well, there might be some racism in the Tea Party, but it’s _worse_ with the blacks and the Democrats.  And when they couldn’t find anything, they fabricated something by editing this poor woman’s words.

If any legitimate news outlet ever takes anything from Breitbart on face value again, then the robust and free press in this country is gone.  Given what a crap job their doing on the real issue at the heart of this story, they may already be gone.

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I've seen three movies in the past three weeks.  TOY STORY: THREE, KNIGHT AND DAY, and last night DESPICABLE ME.  Conclusion -- the plotting, packing, and emotional content was far better in the two animated films then in the live action, the heart pounding excitement was more heart pounding, and the conclusion more satisfying.

I don't know if it's because it takes so long to render an animated film so there is plenty of time to work and polish the script, though on the live action side it often seems that they more they screw with a script the worse it gets, so I'm not sure that's a good explanation.

Is it because this is perceived as being "for children" so they try to make it easily comprehensible which means the plot has to make sense, and proceed logically?

Perhaps it's because the characters have explicable emotional reactions in animated films rather than relying upon the clever quip, or rim shot one liner as a substitute for actual emotion and conversation.

But to specifics.  I found the final junkyard sequence in TOY STORY to be one of the most exciting action sequences I've seen in years.  First, because I could see what was happening as opposed to the first Transformer movie where every action sequence looked like a jumble of car parts being shaken in a bottle.  Second because during the course of the film I actually cared about the characters, and I had an emotional stake in what happened.  I also found the prison break-out sequence to be a wonderful homage and send up of every great prison break movie, and I loved it.  But mostly, I loved these characters, and it didn't matter that they were just toys.

DESPICABLE ME was not as good as TOY STORY, but it was a tender story of accepting adulthood, and putting away childish things ie the super villain gives up his toys.  And I did love the toys -- they were wonderful Rube Goldberg devices.  And the script has given me a line that I now use on a regular basis to torture one of my cats.  "IT'S SO FLUFFY!!!!"  They also had the guts to do the occasional unexpected thing -- I won't say more because the film hasn't been out long, and I don't want to post a spoiler.

And finally we come to NIGHT AND DAY.  I went to see it because reviews had said the dialogue was snappy, and reminiscent of Tracy/Hepburn films, and I'm always interested in doing homework.  So to the good points.  Usually watching Cameron Diaz makes me want to rip out my eyes, she is an actress I really dislike, but they managed to make her tolerable for me.  Cruise was very charming, and despite being a really strange guy in real life, he is certainly a good actor.

No, it was the plotting of the script.  Or more to the point the lack of plotting of the script.  In this film each time our heroes found themselves in an Impossible To Escape situation one of the other would be knocked out, there would be a sequence of jumping out of airplanes,  or other confused images of escape, and then they would be safely settled on an island hideaway, or in a fancy hotel in Salzburg, etc.  By doing it three times I think the writers/director were trying to say, "look, isn't this charming?"  But it just came across as lame, and it irritated the hell out of me.  All I could think was that they had written themselves into a corner and rather than go back and fix the problem they went with the "Once out of well, our hero....." solution.

Upshot -- the animation movies take more time with careful plotting.  Which makes for a better, more coherent film.

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