Film review: The Duke (2022)

I recently watched this nice little comedy set in 1961 that stars Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren in which Broadbent plays a working class character who keeps losing his job and getting into trouble because of his efforts to fight for those whom he sees as being unfairly treated, such as old pensioners and disabled veterans of wars, trying to get the government to waive for them the licensing fees that the owners of every television must pay the government and which goes towards funding the BBC.

This film is based on the life of a real person Kempton Bunton and the theft of a painting of the Duke of Wellington that was stolen from the National Gallery, and the trial of Bunton for stealing it. (The link has spoilers for the film.) It is a film that gets its laughs from the behavior of the characters, not from jokes, and Broadbent and Mirren, two excellent actors, have the skills to make the most of their roles.

Here’s the trailer.

One thing I was curious about was how Bunton was able to get a high-powered barrister to represent him at his trial since he clearly would not have been able to afford one. Since this theft really happened, I looked Bunton up and found a link to the lawyer Jeremy Hutchinson who had a privileged background with an elite education that led to an illustrious career and was married at the time to the already-famous actress Peggy Ashcroft.

I do not know the British legal aid system and how this came to be. Maybe because Bunton’s case gained a great deal of notoriety at the time and he became something of a folk hero, a Robin Hood type fighting the establishment, Hutchinson provided his services pro bono.

Vivek Ramaswamy creates a new facet of the model minority myth

As an immigrant from South Asia I am of course familiar with the model minority myth that surrounds that community, that we are high achievers in many areas (other than sports), from mathematics to science to business to spelling. But Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has created a new frontier, that we can also be world-class assholes.

Desi Lydic of The Daily Show has a nice compilation showing how Ramaswamy tries to be everything to everyone, to ingratiate himself with diverse groups of people while at the same time having a repellent personality.

I do not normally use words like ‘asshole’ but frankly, I could not find a better descriptor for him. The word ‘jerk’ simply does not do justice to how disgustingly smug, arrogant, and annoying he is. My ire may be also greater because he and I share the same ethnicity of being Tamils, although he is from India and I from Sri Lanka. I would hate for people to think that he and I are alike in other ways too, which is what ethnic stereotyping tends to do.

The latest bonkers Republican debate

The debate on Wednesday debate involving the four remaining candidates for the Republican presidential nomination other than serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), saw most of them trying hard to claim the title of the main challenger to SSAT. This article summarized the main points.

The explosive fourth Republican presidential debate Wednesday night made plain why former President Donald Trump has so far skipped the 2024 primary debate circuit.

The four contenders onstage — former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — spent most of the two-hour debate hammering each other, overshadowing efforts to focus attention on the frontrunner in the race.

With the smallest debate field so far and with Iowa’s caucuses less than six weeks away, the candidates were better able to showcase their policy beliefs and explore major differences, but they followed the pattern of previous debates with a series of memorable personal shots.

Ramaswamy referred to Haley as “lipstick on a Dick Cheney.” Christie mocked Ramaswamy’s “smartass mouth.” DeSantis said Haley “caves every time the left comes after her.”

An AP article noted this interesting point: “By the end, moderators asked candidates which previous president inspired them. No one named Trump.” SSAT will not be pleased,

Will Saletan describes himself as a political moderate who now does not have a home because the Republican party is bonkers. He summarizes some of the evidence for this that he heard during the debate.

I’M A MODERATE. In 2018, I voted for Larry Hogan, Maryland’s Republican governor. Four years later, when Republicans nominated an election denier to replace him, I voted for the Democratic nominee, Wes Moore. Give me a sensible conservative party, and I’ll consider it. But that’s not what I’m seeing in Congress or in this year’s Republican presidential debates.
…

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S INSANITY leaves a big hole in this country. When progressives jerk their knees on one issue or another—deriding religious parents, overdoing COVID restrictions, calling every border-control policy racist—I’d like to hear alternative ideas from a sane conservative party. Instead, what we have is an extremist, authoritarian party in which—as Kelly essentially acknowledged—the one presidential candidate who tells the truth and adheres to principle has no chance of being nominated.

On The Daily Show, this week’s guest host Charlamagne Tha God highlighted some of the points raised, focussing on the most bonkers of the four, Vivek Ramaswamy, who endorsed a whole list of wacky conspiracy theories.

Kissinger gets the send-off he deserves

Once again, we need a comedy show (The Daily Show‘s Michelle Wolf, Ronny Chieng, and Michael Kosta) to give us the unvarnished truth about this monster who just died, and other US war criminals.

The late Anthony Bourdain, the much traveled chef, also had the right take on Kissinger way back in 2001.

Jonathan Pie on David Cameron’s return to the British government

I had missed this earlier clip from Pie about the British prime minister’s surprise move to bring the former prime minster back into the cabinet as foreign secretary. But better late than never.

Cameron came from a highly privileged background and was a member of the infamous and highly exclusive Bullingdon Club at Oxford University, “known for its wealthy members, grand banquets, and bad behaviour, including vandalism of restaurants and students’ rooms.” Boris Johnson was also a member, as are other members of the British political establishment.

There are rumors that initiates had to go through a pretty disgusting ritual to be allowed in, that was cruel to pigs. While that may or may not be true, what is known is also pretty disgusting, that members of the club would trash restaurants where they ate and then threw money at the wait staff to cover the costs. They also reportedly burned £50 bank notes in front of homeless people.

You would already have to be an awful human being to even want to be a member of such a club.

The problem with Dollar stores

In the US, so-called ‘Dollar stores’ are ubiquitous. There are two very close to where I live. These stores offer all manner of items, food and household goods, priced at around a dollar, so that makes it cheap to shop. As far as I can tell, their model is to buy large stocks of items that manufacturers want to offload at hugely discounted prices for whatever reason and then resell them. This means that what you find in the stores is highly variable from day to day, depending on what items manufacturers were clearing out. You just have to try your luck.

In the latest episode of his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver says that the business model of these companies is to make profits by understaffing its stores and underpaying its employees. While these stores are sometimes the only retail outlets in poorer neighborhoods and thus seem to serve a need, another problem (that Oliver did not address) is that by using their size to get huge quantities of stuff at low prices, they often drive existing mom-and-pop stores in those neighborhoods out of business. Thus the need they are serving is one that they helped create.

Joe Biden’s age and popularity

Yesterday, Joe Biden turned 81 and it was yet another occasion for the media to fixate on his age. Ir has become a staple of the news to say that voters are concerned about his age. Why is that news? If any pollster asked me if I was concerned about his age, of course I would say yes. But that does not mean I think he is unable to be president. It becomes news only if there are signs that his age is affecting his ability to serve as president. And as far as I can see, he seems to be able to do so. I may not agree with some of the things he does – I am furious about his support of Israeli atrocities in Gaza – but there is no sign that he does not know what he is doing.

And yet, serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) is 78, just three years younger than Biden, who says the most outlandish things and showing signs of cognitive decline and yet there is hardly any focus on that.
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The myth about the GOP before Trump

There is a belief pushed by the mainstream media that there was a GOP before serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) took over the party and a very different GOP after SSAT. In this view, before SSAT, the GOP had a mix of so-called moderates and extremists but the extremists were a minority and the party establishment consisted of moderates who could keep them in check and fob them off with small favors. But that is simply not true.

To find that old GOP, one has to go way back, as far back as the Eisenhower days and even then we had the anti-Communist hysteria led by Joe McCarthy loonies who had considerable influence. But it was with Richard Nixon that the GOP started its rapid slide to the far right and in its racist attacks on the poor and minorities, disguised as the war on crime. Over time, that mask of moderate dominance began to peel away steadily with people like Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and the Tea Party becoming ascendant and the demonizing of government going into full swing. Sarah Palin’s ascendancy to becoming the vice-presidential nominee and her appeals to the ugliest sentiments of the electorate revealed the true face of the party. SSAT is the person who has finally and openly gloried in what the party has become. He is the word become flesh, to use a biblical metaphor.
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New speaker’s cynicism already on full display

The new speaker Mike Johnson has wasted no time in showing that he is as much a cynical politician as any in the GOP. Given the enthusiasm with which his election was received by the party, we should have expected no less, but it is still noteworthy.

The Biden administration had asked Congress for $104 billion for aid to Ukraine, Israel, and other causes. Spending bills have to originate in the House of Representatives and Johnson has decided to show his cleverness by passing a bill that would provide just the $14.3 billion for Israel, but require that this spending be offset by cutting the same amount from that dedicated to the IRS to hire new tax auditors in the Inflation Reduction Act passed earlier.

Johnson argues that this proves that the GOP are fiscal conservatives, a blatant lie since they have bloated the deficit repeatedly when they controlled Congress and the White House, by providing massive massive tax cuts for the rich. The Congressional Budget Office says that in reality, this bill would actually increase the deficit since the ‘saving’ of $14.3 billion on IRS agents will actually result in more than $26.8 billion of lost revenue due to inadequate auditing of wealthy people.

This bill is so obviously unserious that it will not even be brought up in the senate and president Biden has said he will veto it anyway. Johnson is trying to make the claim that Democrats prioritize hiring IRS agents over aiding Israel when the reality is that it is the GOP that is prioritizing helping the wealthy over aiding Israel. The devotion of the GOP to preserving and increasing the wealth of the already filthy rich is a marvel to behold.

Meanwhile, while he pursues these stunts, the budget deadline of November 17th is less than two weeks away.

This cartoon perfectly captures Johnson’s logic.