The Reasons Jamaal Bowman Lost, Part 2: Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush Came To Power Differently But Their Stylistic Similariites Led To Their Primary Defeats

 

 

Like Jamaal Bowman Cori Bush, who represented Missouri’s 1^st District is a member of ‘The Squad.” Like Bowman Bush was elected to the House in 2020. And like Bowman, Bush lost in her primary to challenger Wesley Bell. The margin was not as dramatic as in the case of Bowman’s defeat – Bush lost by six percentage points to Bowman’s double-digit margin – but the fact remains Bush is the second member of ‘The Squad’ to lose to a primary challenger this cycle.

There are critical differences between Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. The most critical one is that unlike Bowman, and indeed the rest of the Squad who all have their districts in heavily blue states, Bush represents Missouri, a heavily red state. It has not been carried by the Democrats in a Presidential election this century and it remains highly unlikely that it will for the foreseeable future. The Governor and Senators of the state are both Republican and in 2018, not even the huge voter turnout was able to save three-term incumbent Claire McAskill to losing to Josh Hawley. And of the eight congressional seats Missouri has, only two are held by Democrats of which only Bush and Emanuel Cleaver are the sole Democratic representatives. Bush’s district, which covers St. Louis, is heavily Democratic.

Unlike Bowman Bush attempted to run for Congress previously. In 2018, she described herself as ‘an insurgent candidate’ and was endorsed by the Justice Democrats. Her campaign was featured in the Documentary Knock Down The House which center on four Justice Democrats running. Her campaign against Lacy Clay, the current representative of the District, went badly. Clay beat her by nearly twenty points. She had also run for Democratic primary in the Senate two year’s earlier and finished a distant second to Jason Kander.

The third time was the charm – by a hair. She ran against Clay again, and this time she was endorsed by almost everybody in the progressive circle including Bowman. She managed to beat Lacy Clay, who’d represented the district for ten terms and whose family had been St. Louis politics for more than half a century. Her margin was just over three percent and in one of the most heavily Democratic districts in the country won with 78 percent of the vote.

Despite her and Bowman’s victories the 2020 election had a clear sign that the left – and honestly all of America – missed in hindsight. The 2020 election was clearly more of a mandate against Trump and his handling of Covid then it was one for the Democrats and certainly the Progressives. At a Congressional level the Democrats underperformed Biden, running more than two  million and a half votes behind him nationwide while the Republicans gained fourteen seats in the House of Representatives. It was the first time since 2004 the GOP had made gains in the House during a Presidential election year. No Republican incumbent was defeated for reelection and thirteen incumbent Democrats lost. This led to the smallest Democratic majority since 1942. They also underperformed in the Senate, failing to flip several seats that were considered competitive and only getting a majority due to the Georgia run-off elections two months later. The Democrats had underperformed  incredibly at a Congressional level, nearly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

So given that  the Democrats narrow majorities in both houses of Congress and her own controversies throughout her own career, the prudent course for Bush would have been to exercise caution. But immediately after she was sworn in she posted a photo on Twitter of herself with the six current members of the Squad and the caption ‘SQUAD UP’

Then hours after January 6^th, Bush introduced a resolution to remove every Republican who supported attempts to overturn the 2020 election from the House. This resolution, to be very clear, had absolutely no chance of being passed in Congress or carried out if it was. It wasn’t clear how ‘removal’ would work: impeachment or expelling and either was a long, drawn out process for a single Congressman or Senator much less all of them and in either case, it would require two-thirds of either House which would no doubt mean in many cases the ‘conspirators’ would have to vote to remove themselves. It was a purely performative gesture – which is exactly why Bush made it. Performative gestures are what the Squad contribute to the dialogue. They are there to move fast and break things, which is not how democracy is supposed to function.

In November Bush, along with Bowman,  was one of six House Democrats to break with their party and vote against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act because it was not accompanied by the Build Back Better Act. As I mentioned before the main reason for this argument was because Biden had committed the cardinal sin of ‘compromising’ with Joe Manchin. Progressives as we know are the only people who think half a loaf is worse than nothing which is the only logic by which Bell and Bowman voted against the bill.

Yet even that paled to what by then had become a glaring hypocrisy in regard to Bush’s own background. For her career as an activist Bush had been one of the biggest advocates for the ‘defund the police’ movement. But by August of her first year in Congress she was already spending tens of thousands of dollars on personal security for herself. When she was challenged by this on August 5^th, her reaction was simple – and mind-boggling: “I get to be here to do the work, so suck it up – and defunding the police has to happen.”  By 2021 calls to defund the police had become unpopular and some cities who shifted funding away from law enforcement reversed course. Bush stuck with her position, despite the challenges to public safety in her district and a federal investigation into the money she was spending on private security – that her husband was providing.

All of this just led to the perfect storm that began after October 7^th. Like Bowman, the Jewish community locally had viewed her with skepticism along with her associations with people with anti-Semitic views. But rather than engage with Jewish community leaders, Bush ignored them, meeting with them only once after four years in office. Numerous organizations made requests for her time  and Bush’s response was glib “my trick to dealing with groups with whom (I) disagree is to simply ignore their calls.” Even after Bell emerged as a challenger against her, Bush continued to double down on her rhetoric, equating the Middle East to her own actions as an activist.

Political talent, as a Missouri columnist wrote in the aftermath of Bush’s defeat last night is rooted in dexterity: “to appeal to a wide variety of constituencies without significant internal contradictions…Candidates with dexterity are not only able to expand their base, but in some cases can neutralize or even convert key individuals and groups who once constituted significant obstacles…It doesn’t mean you lack convictions…it means you have the ability to frame those convictions in different settings, to emphasize certain issues in certain venues; to adopt a demeanor suitable for the group, yet without seeming like a chameleon.”

This behavior, natural to the long term survival of the elected politician, is anathema to extremists on both sides of the political aisle and historically, progressives have had less ability to do so than conservatives. As I’ve repeatedly written and will continue to write, the left believes that it is not their job to change their views but the rest of the world to change theirs to meet them. This is certainly true in the case of Bush, who chose to hug tighter base rather than court those who might have voted for her. As with Bowman, that was a huge part of why she lost yesterday.

Bush spent much of the days leading up to the campaign insisted that her opponent was trying to buy her seat, insisting that if voters were still in line when the polls were closed to stay in line. Bowman was one of those who made fundraising calls for her referring to her as a ‘powerful truth teller’.

There were no signs in Bush’s ‘concession speech’ that she was humbled by her loss. “One thing I don’t do is go away,” she said. She was the only Democratic incumbent who faced a primary challenge who lost last night but I have little doubt that, like with so many defeated progressives, her reaction will be to put the blame anywhere but themselves. Like Bowman, she did as much to bring about her primary defeat as anyone else. I’m certain Bowman never told her that when he signed on to help her.

ER & Grey's Anatomy Comparison & Analysis, Part 2: Cook County General Was A Poorer Hospital Than Seattle Grace But Its Physicians Had A Higher Standard of Care

 

In my introduction to this series I made it clear that ER was always medical drama and Grey’s Anatomy is a soap opera set in a hospital.  I was being too generous to Grey’s Anatomy on that score. Grey’s Anatomy is a soap opera set among the surgeons  who work at a hospital.

Now again I do acknowledge that I stopped watching Grey’s Anatomy on a regular basis at the end of Season 5 and only watched it sporadically until the end of the eighth season. So I may not entirely be accurate when it comes to making generalizations. So I’ll ask any of you who still watch Grey’s Anatomy who might prove me wrong: in the twenty seasons Grey’s has been on the air has their ever been a regular in the cast (by which I mean in the credits) who is not a surgeon? Who isn’t a surgical resident, studying surgery or doesn’t have experience in the OR?

Because for all the diversity we may see on Grey’s when it comes to racial, gender and sexual barriers being broken during the eight seasons I watched the show in a critical sense the cast was the most homogenous of any hospital drama I remember seeing, perhaps in TV history. I don’t remember ever seeing a single cast member who wasn’t either a surgeon or studying to be one.

Now I’ll grant you that Grey’s Anatomy does follow surgeons extensively. But there’s extensively and single mindedly. To explain, let me use ER as the key example.

From the pilot to the final episode ER never forgot that it was set in a hospital and that while the ER may have been the center of the action, it was not just a single set of doctors who made it tick. We saw ER attendings, starting with Mark Greene, ER residents, starting with Susan Lewis pediatricians, most famously Doug Ross, med students (John Carter) nurses, starting with Carol Hathaway, and surgeons, starting with Peter Benton. And as anyone who watched ER knows, those were merely the first cast. The cast members who lasting the entire series were nurses, male and female, orderlies and clerks. (The most famous was Jerry, played by Abraham Benrubi for the first five seasons and then on a recurring basis starting in Season Eight.)

We also saw that at Cook County there always going to be specialists called in and we saw quite a number of them almost from the start: psychiatrists, ob-gyns (Amy Aquino played the role throughout the series) cardiac surgeons and so on. Benton was a resident at the time so we constantly saw him interact most frequently with his surgical attendings, played most frequently in the early seasons by David Morgenstern (William H. Macy) and Angela Hicks (CCH Pounder). Morgenstern was the head of the ER for the first four seasons, in Season 3 Donald Anspaugh (the late John Aylward) took over as chief of staff. (I’m going to get back to both of these characters later on.) Later on, we met Jeannie Boulet (Gloria Reuben) who took on the ER position of physician assistant. We also met other members of the staff including oncologists, neurosurgeons and pathologists and there was frequently a vast array of social workers. We’d met some version of all of these characters by the time Season 1 of ER was finished and while we kept meeting new characters, we would also meet the occasional pharmaceutical rep, research specialists, virologists and other specialties.

By contrast over the first five seasons of Grey’s Anatomy you could have been forgiven for thinking the only people who had anything to do at Seattle Grace were surgeons, surgical residents, surgical teams and the chief of surgery. I’ll admit we would occasionally meet a nurse who stayed around for a few season, maybe an anesthesiologist or two, but they only seemed to be there either as love interests for the central characters (famously George developed syphilis in Season 1 from a nurse he’d been dating – who’d also been sleeping with Alex) or there for a brief storyline. Occasionally you’d get a guest star as a paramedic (Christina Ricci famously played one in Season 2) but as far as Shonda Rhimes was concerned, all of the surgeons and surgical residents were essentially doing all the work as Seattle Grace.

For all the times surgeons were called to the ER, I never remember seeing a single ER attending calling them, certainly none that was a character of note. Because there are apparently no physicians at Seattle Grace, they have no need for physician’s assistants, there are neonatal surgeons who apparently do all the work of ob-gyns, there are pediatric surgeons but no pediatricians, all the med students and interns are solely devoted to surgery and no other specialties, research entirely has to deal with surgery…well, I think I’ve made my point.

I don’t know if Rhimes or any of her fellow writers have made this as a deliberate choice over the years. Rhimes is certainly aware that there are other kinds of doctors besides surgeons; she made that very clear in the spinoff Private Practice and we saw a different contingent play out in Station 19. A large part of it seems to be the egotistical single-mindedness that surrounds every surgical resident I saw at the start of the show: it has been clear from the start that as far as Meredith Grey and her colleagues concerned, there is surgery and nothing else matters. But that doesn’t track either: three years earlier Scrubs debuted and from the start to the finish, it was clear that DJ and Turk knew very well that they couldn’t do their jobs without the other and as we all saw Turk famously married and had a family with Carla one of the nurses at Sacred Heart.

There’s also the unbridled arrogance we see among so many of the surgical interns from the start of their career that seems utterly unmerited based on the fact they admit their cluelessness at the start. It compares horribly with the story of Carter who spent much of the first season struggling to pick a specialty, decided to become a surgeon because of his bond with his resident Peter Benton but at the end of his first year he realizes he is not cut out for surgery and decides to go back to the ER. This is the hardest decision of his career and Benton needs a lot of time to forgive him for it. At the start of Season 4 the two are not speaking and Benton finally expresses his anger. He says he spent so much time with Carter – something he clearly hasn’t done with any med student in a long time – and he’s angry because Carter, when he was struggling with the decision, went to Anspaugh and not him. “I thought you’d talk me out of it,” Carter admits. “I wish I’d been given the chance,” Benton concedes.

None of the residents in Grey’s Anatomy – not the first five, not any that came after – ever had a scintilla of doubt that surgery was their calling. Even Christina’s period in the wilderness during Season 7 she considered leaving medicine if she couldn’t be a surgeon. And I have little doubt that had any of them had decided to shift their focus – as Stevens or O’Malley very well could have – Yang or Karev would have had no problem freezing them out for not being able to cut it.

We see this scorn throughout their residency: Meredith and Christina openly mock other specialties such as psych and dermatology as jokes and can barely be seen talking to anyone who isn’t a surgeon. And this goes all the way to the top; for all Miranda Bailey’s willingness to be human at the times, I never saw her interact with anyone in the hospital who isn’t connected to surgery and Richard Weber famously is willing to put surgeon’s salaries ahead of the nurse’s demands, which leads to a picket line. And Weber can only see making a hospital better through surgery: when Seattle Grace drops from 2^nd to 12^th in the medical rankings, he goes through a series of ‘improvements’ – but we only see them in surgery. That same episode the hospital floods when he spends that season ignoring the warnings from his staff, he purchases a new medical animatronic device for surgery, only to spend its first use making fun of O’Malley and he focuses so much energy on the first solo surgery he ignores the fact that the current set of interns have started operating on themselves – until one of them tries to remove their own appendix.

Cook County, it’s worth noting, is always underfunded, scrambling to deal with budget cuts and is always dealing with its share of bigger problems – power outages, contaminant leaks, custodial strikes and the endless chaos that just seems to come with being in an ER. But throughout the series run, you kept seeing all of these doctors as never being arrogant, always being compassionate and always trying to adapt because the people in this ER depended on it. Seattle Grace was one of the richest and best hospitals in the country -  and for so many of the residents and attendings, the only reason they were there was to perform surgery. If they saved lives, that was almost incidental.

Let me share a particular storyline from the sixth season of ER. We’ve been introduced earlier that season to ‘Doctor Dave’ Malucci (Erik Palladino). In just the space of two episode he’s already become one of the most unlikable characters on the show, always interested more in exciting traumas than patient care. He will only get worse as the season progresses, constantly bellyaching about the lame procedures, trading ‘dull’ cases for exciting ones, and eventually revealing his incompetence. By the end of the season he is told in no uncertain terms he doesn’t have what it takes.

We get the first real sense of that in ‘Sins of the Father’. A teenager has come in with an attempting hanging. “Looks like a bad case of rope burn,” Dave says cheerfully, a term so tone-deaf the paramedic stops her briefing to say: “Excuse me?” Malucci badgers Greene to let him insert a G-tube, a procedure he hasn’t done yet.

While this is going on Dr. Gabriel Lawrence (Alan Alda in a role that would earn him an Emmy nomination) comforts the girlfriend and goes to check on the trauma. He asks how things are going and Dr.  Dave cheerfully says “Great’ because of how well his procedure went. Lawrence turns to Greene and asks for an update. Mark says the prognosis is hard to tell and Malucci again dismissed it because of the oxygen deprivation. “We’re probably look at veggie-burger here.”  At that moment the girlfriend has entered and hears this. She runs off in tears.

Lawrence has been relatively mild in his disposition. He turns to Malucci:

Lawrence: “You’re a resident right.” Before Dave can finish his yes:

“Well, one thing you still have to learn is that every patient is somebody’s boyfriend. Girlfriend. Brother. Sister. Mother. Father. They don’t exist simply for you to learn new and more interesting procedures.”

Dave weakly says he didn’t see her.

Lawrence: “Yeah, well maybe next time open your eyes before you open your mouth.”

Now Greene has little patience for Lawrence, who was hired without his consent. He’s also generally mild with his criticism compared to everyone else.

Malucci: “What’s with the new guy, right?”

With scorn we almost never hear from the mild-mannered attending:

Greene: “Which new guy would that be? Dr. Lawrence or you?”

He snaps off his gloves and walks out.

It’s worth noting that for the two seasons he is on the series Dave never truly picks up either the nuances or tones of being a doctor and when he is finally fired at the start of Season 8, though the circumstances are dicey few could argue he’d be missed.  The hospital had given him every opportunity to improve and every chance he dropped the ball.

Now consider some of the things that the five interns who start Grey’s Anatomy do in their first year of residency (which encapsulates the first three seasons). Both Meredith and Christina sleep with their attendings and begin affairs with them, despite the fact that is against the rules. It’s eventually cleared by the hospital but only after it becomes obvious for both. Both residents use their attendings as a push for favoritism throughout the first year and after some pushback, no one objects that much from the chief of staff.

When Preston Burke is shot and suffers tremors, rather than tell the Chief Christina assigns herself all of his surgeries and performs them rather than him. She keeps it a secret out of fear of Burke’s career but doesn’t seem to mind that she’s performing surgeries that the attendings should be, which might be considered a liability issue for the hospital. (She also shows no guilt about it; in a later season she actually says her illegal work should be a reason she’s allowed more responsibility in this hospital.)

Alex Karev has multiple affairs with almost every female on the staff, and at one point begins an emotional affair with a trauma victim from a crash who has amnesia and needs facial reconstruction surgery. While Denny’s emotional affair with Izzie was going on, he was dating her and knew how wrong it was but sees no problem with it – even when he later learns his patient is married.

All of the attendings, as I mentioned in the first article, are guilty of some form of conspiracy involving Denny Duquette’s case that eventually leads to his death. None of them display much in the way of bedside manner (they periodically have lunch in the coma ward) and almost none have any real connection with their patients or feel they even have to talk to them. All of them view them as ‘new and interesting procedures’ – at best.

None of them receive so much as a reprimand during this period or it should be mentioned well past their third year of residency, even though all of them have engaged in behavior that is at best incompetent and as worst malpractice. I’d say the residents get away with murder were that not copyrighted by a different Shondaland show. It’s one thing that they’re bad people  - that’s basically de facto what all Shondaland characters are – but they’re not even good doctors.

Now to be fair, throughout ER’s run we see over and over that the surgical residents and surgeons  have the same arrogance to the point of obliviousness. The most hated character on the series Dr. Romano famously isolated everyone during his rise to the top and showed no compassion even when he was injured. His identity was wrapped in being a surgeon and he seemed fine showing a lack of compassion to everyone – including the people who might offer sympathy to him.

But Romano serves as a contrast to most of the surgeons we meet at ER who do have a better work-life balance. Famously when Eriq LaSalle left the show in Season 8, the arc that led to Benton leaving the show involved his having to take custody of his son Reese who he’d fathered out of wedlock back in Season 4. When his mother dies in a car wreck Benton soon becomes involved in a custody fight with Reese’s husband Roger (played by Vondie Curtis-Hall in the arc). In the custody dispute, it becomes clear that Reese is not Peter’s biological son and that for most of Reese’s life, Peter has shafted custody duties on Carla and the rest of his family to pursue his career. As Roger points out “Reese has spent more time in our house than Peter’s.”

In order to accommodate this Peter gives up his full-time residency for a less-demanding job at the hospital where his girlfriend Cleo Finch (Michael Michele) now works. Romano refuses to accommodate his demands and when Peter resigns, he is enraged: “You’re going to quit to play Mr. Mom?” he shouts as Peter leaves his office. But it is clearly a big decision for a man who spent his entire life built on his surgical career. It’s telling that Meredith Grey never considers a similar option even after giving birth  - and refuses to consider moving to DC when Derek gets a job offer there.

And its worth noting that Dr. Morgenstern, after suffering a heart attack in the Season 4 premiere, after coming back in the middle of the season, eventually chooses to resign because “I just don’t feel like I belong here.”  When the series begins Weber is contemplating named a successor for which Derek and Burke are the prime contenders. No matter how much his marriage is on the verge of first failing, or when his wife first develops Alzheimer’s and then dies has Richard ever contemplating leaving Seattle Grace for good and he seems no closer to doing so after twenty seasons.

In what would be their last exchange as Mark Greene leaves the ER for the last time, Kerri Weaver turns to him and asks: “How many shifts should I sign you up for next month?” She knows Mark is dying of cancer but she cares for him so much that she thinks by letting him keep working is a sign of their trust and bond. Mark, who has just decided to die on his own terms, turns to the woman who has been rival and frenemy for seven seasons. “Never let your work become your life,” he says sincerely. “Live a little, Kerri.”

No one in 20 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy has seemed capable of understanding the simple truth of that statement. For one of the longest running shows on TV work is life. In the real world, where so many people are coming to question whether they spend too much time at work as a rule, this message seems remarkably tone-deaf. On a show where all of the doctor’s personal life, happiness, marriages and friendships have been sacrificed in the name of this job,  it seems insane.

Now I do realize that this argument would seem to booster my claim that Grey’s Anatomy is just a soap opera set in a hospital. But the message that work is supposed to provide you with more fulfillment then your personal happiness is a very toxic message for a TV show to provide. And what makes it all the more galling is that over and over on ER we saw far better that love stories could happen at work – and you could have it all.

In the next part of this series, I’ll explain why ER showed romantic love far better than the supposed greatest love story of this century – Derek and McDreamy – ever did on multiple occasions.

A Look Back At V Forty Years Later, Part 1: How I Found The Cult Series And Why It Was More Groundbreaking Then You'd Think

 

 

When I was a teenager in the 1990s one of the greatest gifts of cable TV  - something that streaming has yet to fully realize  - was how it made available reruns of some of the greatest series in history. And not just the obvious classics of the 1970s and 1980s, such as MASH or L.A. Law or The Twilight Zone but so many series that had all too brief runs on television but cable gave new life too.

Many specialty networks were superb at this: Lifetime introduced me to China Beach and The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, I would never have learned of Wiseguy’s potential without Court TV and before it became the home of every reality show known to man Bravo was where I fell in love with – and recorded every episode – of Twin Peaks. But as you might expect the best source for cult series was the Sci-Fi channel (as it was called during the decade).

During that period I was introduced to so many of the best cult series in history. These included such syndicated gems as Tales from the Darkside and Forever Knight;  the  brilliant Max Headroom and the intriguing She-Wolf of London, and several late 1990s gems including Dark Skies and Now and Again, two series which even more than twenty years after their cancellations have a fanbase that mourns their departure. But the one I’d like to discuss is a true unicorn: not only the kind of sci-fi cult series that actually was ahead of its time when it debuted but unlike all but a precious few series from that era actually got a remake in the 21^st century.

When I was sixteen years old the Sci-Fi Channel began to rerun first the groundbreaking miniseries V, followed by its sequel and finally the sole season of the show. I was just beginning to cut my teeth as a TV critic and I knew nothing about any of this. So its possible that my opinions of both the two miniseries and the series that followed are, like those of so many teenagers who were in love with cult series in the past, based more on nostalgia than actual quality.  And I haven’t seen either in twenty years so I could be wrong on that score. But what I do know, on reflection, is that there were immensely revolutionary things, particularly in the Johnson series not just by the standards of 1980s science fiction but any television that was airing during that decade. In a sense what V was doing was so outside the scope of what the network viewer was used (and indeed might not be used to until well into the next century) that there might have been more reasons that the simple problems of bad ratings for the show’s cancellation. So in this article I intend to briefly discuss V, the two mini-series Johnson created, the one-season show that aired and what I thought of the remake that debuted on ABC in 2009.

Note: The limited series is streaming on Amazon and the original series are streaming on Amazon.

Over two nights in May of 1983, the mini-series V aired on television. It deals with the arrival of a group of alien spaceships which appear all over the globe simultaneously. Eventually the two leaders – John, played by Richard Herd and Diana, played by Jane Badler – appeared and tell the world their mission in peaceful. Initially this is accepted by the masses, but Abraham, a Holocaust survivor (played by the veteran character actor Leonard Cimino) doubts their intentions from the start.

Scientists raise doubts but they quickly reverse them. However, a keen-eyed cameraman nots disturbing differences between doubt and acceptance: they’ve all started signing documents with their left-hand when they were previously right-handed. Juliet (Faye Grant) is similarly disturbed but the most openly doubtful layman is cameraman Mike Donovan (Marc Singer).

As the visitors begin to quickly infiltrate every aspect of our society, they begin to recruit humans as their security forces. Several of them, including a young man named Daniel take it to so well it reveals them being bullies. Eventually Mike learns that they are hiding many things – including that despite their humanoid appearance, their not human at all.

A resistance begins to be formed, taking on scientists and ever street toughs. One is the criminal brother of a scientist who is killed. Eventually we learn that there is a faction within the aliens who knows that their intentions are not honorable (they are known as the Fifth Column) and they begin to ally. Abraham realizes the danger quicker than most and is killed but before he is taken away, he shows a young tough who is spray-painting anti-Visitor graffiti the right one. He sprays a bright red V. “You understand?” he tells the young child. “For victory.” He quickly becomes a martyr for the resistance.

It's clear looking at the two part series that Johnson, who wrote it, may have been trying to get a pilot from the start: unlike most mini-series at the time, there is not even an attempt to bring events in V to anything resembling a conclusion. The series essentially ends on notes that the resistance is beginning – and the most troubling that the daughter of one of the scientists, who had an affair with a visitor might be pregnant. In any case the ratings were high, so a sequel limited series was greenlit and in May 1984, V: The Final Battle.

It takes place four months after their arrival and the resistance is still trying to find its way. By now most of society has fully accepted that the Visitors intentions are fully good and the few who doubt are suppressed violently. The resistance is joined by Ham Tyler (Michael Ironside) a former CIA black ops man who tells the resistance on their first meeting what a horrible job their doing. He tries to supersede authority from Juliet, who chafes at the idea and there are struggles over an attempt at a nightly attack. The biggest concern however is Robin’s pregnancy which has terrified her to the point that she has tried to terminate it – and finds that she can’t. In a scene that was incredibly controversial then and would be impossible to film on network TV now, the scientists decide to perform an abortion. But to their horror they find the alien is aware enough to protect its existence and that there is no way to kill it without killing the mother.

Members of the Fifth Column are now legion within the Visitors. (One of the most prominent is a young man named Willie who is there more for comic relief initially. Willie is played by a very young Robert Englund in a role that most people who know him as Freddy Krueger would be stunned by his innocence and humanity.)

The three episodes follow a battle that goes on from within and without, both against the alien ships and the human collaborators. I won’t reveal how it plays out but eventually the resistance finds a way to strike against the Visitors so daringly that they end up outsmarting themselves and their attempts to destroy the planet in rebellion work against them.

The end of the mini-series does seem like a kind of conclusion. But by this point the two series had been so successful that CBS greenlit a network series and Johnson wrote a new one.

V: The Series takes place a year after what is called Liberation Day. Because of the bacteria that is now in the Earth’s atmosphere, the aliens are either prisoners or those that are loyal are taking a drug that gives them protection from it. The chief manufacturer of this drug is a pharmaceutical king named Nathan Bates (Lane Smith) Bates has a complicated relationship with his sun Kyle.

Early in the first episode it becomes clear that the Visitors have resumed an attack and some are now resistant to the virus. However it is not permanent: in warm climates they are constantly in victory but in the cold they are defeated. A new war is about to begin – but this time the entire planet is aware of what they are facing.

What’s particularly remarkable in hindsight is just how ambitious Johnson was in V. In an era where characters just weren’t killed off in regular series Johnson was willing to be relentlessly, even merciless cutthroat. In the first two episodes he kills two characters who survived both mini-series and were loved by the fans at that point and he continues to do so throughout the nineteen episode run of the show. Two regulars introduced in the pilot don’t make it to the end of the series (Elias, who was around since the start is killed near the end of the season) and many other characters who have been around throughout the show end up leaving at different times. (Ironside’s character disappears in the middle of the season.) This simply wasn’t done in network television in the mid eighties and not even David Chase was willing to be this cutthroat with his regular characters until the second season of The Sopranos. This must have been off-putting to the extreme for people that shows like Dallas and Dynasty were the cutting edge of entertainment.

And for a sci-fi series Johnson was willing to take the show to new lengths. The real-life news anchor Howard K. Smith appeared in the openings of many of the episodes where he gave reports of the resistances to the viewing public, playing himself. There were no attempts at parody, nothing resembling an in-joke: Smith reported the stories of massacres across the globe and heroes from the warfront as if he were Edward R. Murrow giving reports from the Blitz (which I imagine many thought he was.) It would be nearly thirty years before another show of any type made this a recurring feature and in the case of House of Cards, that series embraced Washington.

And in one of the more daring storylines halfway through the season it became clear that many of the Visitors could impersonate humans. During both mini-series all the Visitors with a perceptible audio distortion to their voices, no doubt to symbolize their alien nature. By the time of The Last Battle that had become slightly less perceptive and by the time of the series it was completely gone. Johnson never explained this -maybe the Visitors after their time on Earth had developed an accent or perhaps they’d been trying so all the time for this very purpose. Whatever the reason, by the middle of the season the resistance had been infiltrated by a Visitor pretending to be human. This foreshadows what we will see on shows such as The X-Files and the remake of Battlestar Galactica in decades to come. Variations of this had been tried before – most notably on the late 1960s sci-fi series The Invaders  - but it worked very well here. (It turned out this was a continuity error but it still worked.)

V worked remarkably well for an adaptation of a limited series. The overall impression was good and the stories were remarkably well-plotted out. But because the ratings no doubt were not high enough V was cancelled at the end of the 1984-1985 season. Johnson was planning a second season (he admitted as much) so the series ended on a cliff-hanger.

Overall, this was a decently acted, well written and very well done show, particularly in an era when sci-fi was considered a dead-letter on network television. The cast was mostly made of B-movie actors (Singer and Grant in particular) as well as some very gifted character actors (Ironside, Smith and Wright have never lacked for work over the last forty years, either in live-action or animation.) And the show did leave an impression. When TV Guide did a ranking of the 25 greatest sci-fi legends Diana ranked number 5. Now I’ll grant you that was 2004 and Lost, Battlestar Galactica and Fring among others hadn’t even debuted yet, but still that does speak to the fact that it meant something and not just to genre fans. Johnson did continue the series in novels over the 1990s and there was sometimes talk of a new version but it never came to anything.

And indeed for much of the 1990s, it would have been a pipe dream. Then as now network television only wanted to reboot former hit shows rather than ones than were one-season wonders. Not even new networks like the UPN or WB were willing to touch failed franchises: UPN put on two new Star Trek franchises and had The Twilight Zone return with Forest Whitaker as a narrator but none of them were willing to reboot, say, The Time Tunnel. I seriously doubt anyone would have even considered doing it had Sci-Fi not rebooted Battlestar Galactica to great critical acclaim and relatively good ratings starting in 2004. And I seriously doubt that it’s a coincidence that within months of the final episode of Galactica airing in 2009 that  a new version of V was greenlit by ABC.

In the conclusion of this article I will deal with the reimaging of V that debuted in the fall of 2009, what it got wrong and what it got right and why even it’s failed vision remains something for other reboots to aspire too.

 

Lost Rewatch On VHS: The Last Recruit

 

VHS NOTES: We see ads for The Losers, the flawed but occasionally brilliant graphic novel adaptation starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Idris Elba and the horrible Ridley Scott adaptation of Robin Hood with Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett. As the season finales draw near, we also see end of season ads for Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, Desperate Housewives and a preview for Happy Town.

 

The more I have watched and rewatched Lost over the years, the more I think I know what it’s really about. All of the larger themes, all of the characters, all of the stories come down to two basic concepts: do you lead or do you follow?

The title itself suggests as much. Lindelof and Cuse told us while the series was still on the air that all of the characters were not just physically lost but emotionally so. And in either case once you realize that you have two choice. You can either wait for someone to tell you what you’re next steps are – in other words, you can follow – or you can take it upon yourself to figure out how to find a way through -  or lead.

Once we understand that the conflicts at the center of the major stories on the series make more sense. This is true of every character and I’ll briefly touch on it here but its always been true of Jack and Locke. One of the many ironies of these two men who were at loggerheads on everything over the series was how alike they were and that’s true of a fundamental concept: neither of them were suited for leadership but neither could follow.

Recall their first major conversation in White Rabbit where Jack is following what he thinks is the ghost of his father into the jungle (we now know what that is) Jack is convinced that he’s being led by something impossible and Locke famously tells him: “What if it is?” When Jack says it isn’t, Locke replies: “Even if it is, let’s say that it’s not.”

Locke is urging Jack the only way he can become a leader is if he follows this path to its end.  The irony isn’t that Jack nearly died doing so but he had gotten lost in the first place. Once Jack finds his father’s coffin in the caves he smashes it, perhaps thinking that symbolically it will rid him of his baggage. (It didn’t, obviously.) After that Jack made his famous speech which ended: “live together, die alone.” This made him the official leader of the group for the rest of the time he was on the island.

But while Jack acted as the leader, he lacked the skills he needed to survive in the wild. Every time he went on a trip into the jungle, he was supposedly the leader but he was always relying on someone else to guide him: Locke, then Kate when they chased Ethan, Rousseau when they went to the Black Rock and then to the radio tower, Michael when they went to save Walt, the sat phones when they went into the jungle. Jack was always in charge but he was always at the mercy of someone else to find where he was going and you get the feeling that was at the heart of so much of his belligerence. Even when he was leading, he was following.

The irony of Locke being the one to tell Jack to lead is because he never followed him. Even in the early seasons when they were more in tune, Locke knew he had the advantage of being a hunter and Jack never liked that. Even the fact that he believed in destiny is somewhat ironic when we consider his catchphrase: “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!”  Locke believed he was on a path, that everything was happening for a reason. But his personality was such that as much as he believed in following a path, he personally rejected the idea of not being able to make his own way. Locke wasn’t suited to lead others because he was following the island but because he couldn’t understand why he was doing it; he was constantly angry at having to make these choices.

Though much of the series was centered on these two styles of leadership, there have been constant examples of other characters who might have been better suited to it. Sayid was able to take steps towards leadership even before Jack was, and there’s an argument his history in the military would have provided him with a better set of skills to survive then a doctor with no supplies. Sawyer famously told Jack about their contrasting styles of leadership: Sawyer thought things through and Jack reacted. It’s just as true for Sayid: he was always more pragmatic and clear-headed than Jack during their time on the island, never letting emotion cloud his judgment, always compartmentalizing the irrational to get them through the present crisis. But because of the prejudices that still existed on the island as much as the real world, people chose to follow Jack. Sayid’s training as a soldier made him more suited to be the ideal follower.

Kate, like Locke, had many of the same abilities to survive in the wild and was probably as qualified to lead. But just as racism caused people to pick Jack over Sayid, sexism caused everyone to pick any of the men over Kate. That suited Kate just fine, I should mention, and she was a good follower – literally. When it came to following orders, particularly from Jack, she never listened and ended up following him into the jungle. This ended up costing the survivors and Jack more then we could count. That sexism, I should add, was also an external issue. When Kate started challenging the leaders in the 1970s – such as when she decided to save a thirteen year old Ben after Sayid had shot him  and told Jack that his plan to drop an atomic bomb in a pocket of electromagnetism was crazy -  the fanbase of Lost got angry because she wasn’t following these men and letting them do these horrible things.

Sawyer was the odd man out on the island for much of the run of the series, never following Jack, always being unpleasant. There’s an argument much of it was a front: when the chips were down Sawyer was willing to follow in order to save other people’s lives or do what he could to help people. When the island started blooping through time, Sawyer took charge in a way he never had before and became a genuine leader in the Dharma Initiative. But by the time the Oceanics came back, he was basically using his leadership in order to follow the Dharma dream even though it ended in a pit of bodies.

There’s an argument from the start that Hurley always had the skills to be the leader he is as we approach the end: while he might not have been the smartest when it came to education, he had a good head on his shoulders and he always wanted to help people. Even though he was scared most of the time, he was always willing to follow Jack and his friends through the dangerous jungle because he wanted to help them and he thought if he was funny, they wouldn’t be scared. In short because Hurley was always a good follower – always putting everyone else’s wellbeing ahead of his own – he was the best suited for leadership, which is where he finally is.

The rest of the survivors who made it this far have never been so much group leaders but following for their loved ones. Claire followed everyone for the first three seasons because she was pregnant and because she was a mother. Once she lost Aaron, she lost her way and has not had anyone to follow all this time. Sun and Jin have always needed each other, more so since they came on the island. Jin once said: “Where Sun goes, I go” and that’s been true throughout the series. Sun has gotten on a plane and risked not seeing her daughter because she wants to find Jin. Jin has been following Sawyer, then Jack because he wants to find his wife.

This conflict has applied in a sense to Ben Linus as well. He has been a leader on the island for years but he was just as much a follower. Like everyone else on the island before the crash Ben has been leading in Jacob’s name but he has been following a man he never saw. Everyone we’ve met seems to have been following Jacob for years – and in Richard’s case that’s a very long time – but they never knew what his plan was and most never even saw him. Ben was manipulated by the Man in Black to killing Jacob but his genuine frustration at having to follow him for thirty years without ever meeting him was the most real thing about him to that point.

Ben has been Widmore’s nemesis for nearly thirty years and Widmore has been a leader for nearly as long. Widmore, like Locke, was not a good leader because he was never a good follower. Based on what the writers told us Widmore spent decades on the island and he was never a good follower from the time he was a young man to the point he was forced into exile by Ben. It would seem that he has amassed all his money so he would have the power that people would follow him willingly and in Season 3 he got a freighter to go to the island with the sole purpose of getting Ben off the island so he could have it again. Because he was a bad leader he gave everyone who got on the freighter conflicting information, it was never clear who was in charge and perhaps its not a huge shock that as a result almost everyone on it ended up dead. Now Widmore’s led another group of people to the island and while he seems to have realized he had to come himself this time to give the orders, his followers are ju6t as incompetent and idiotic as before. This doesn’t say much for Widmore’s leadership skills.

Which brings us to Jacob and the Man in Black. We learn about Jacob entirely through flashbacks and in Ab Aeterno it’s clear that while he may be the god of the island his leadership style has been that of the Old Testament type. Jacob commands absolute loyalty but its clear that its basically for a larger purpose. He convinced Richard that he had a plan, a plan which he would explain at a certain time but he never did. Ilana, who was his most loyal follower, came to the island based on her loyalty to Jacob who told her Richard would know what to do and Jacob hadn’t told him anything. As Richard made clear: “Jacob never tells us what to do!” And that must be extremely frustrating for all the people who have spent all this time following him.

The Man In Black, in Locke’s form, told the Others at the start of Season 6: “I’m very disappointed. In all of you.”  It’s possible, given his contempt for Jacob, that he’s upset that they have followed a man blindly for so long without question. Throughout Season 6, he’s been taking on the marker of leadership to all those left behind, offering all of these lost souls  - including those who are still around the crash – a chance to leave the island. In a way he’s offering them a chance to be found. None of the people who are following him trust him but based on what they have since learned – that Jacob has been guiding them all their lives, forcing them to follow him without them knowing it, and leading them to the island – they are reluctantly following him. Many of them have wanted someone to tell them what to do and, ironically using the form of a man who didn’t want to be told what he couldn’t do, they are now altogether again.

When Jack asks The Man In Black why he’s in Locke’s form, the Man In Black is as dismissive at the start of the season of Locke: “Because he was stupid enough to believe he was brought here for a reason, because he pursued that belief until it got him killed, and because you were nice enough to bring back his body in a wooden box.” He is similarly dismissive about Locke being the only person who never wanted to leave the island: “John Locke was not a believer. He was a sucker.”

The Man In Black has never been trustworthy in anything, and its safe to say he’s lying about why he needed everybody together to leave the island. But the thing is, everything he says about Locke is absolutely true. Yes Locke was right about the island bringing them there for a reason and he did pursue that belief until it got him killed – in fact, he thought his death was the only way he could save everybody and all it has done is put everybody on the island in more danger than they’ve ever been. And Locke was both a believer and a sucker: Ben Linus proved it over and over and he certainly was manipulated by the Man In Black. Locke spent his entire time following the island with no idea as to why and for all intents and purposes, he was just a pawn all his life. The Man in Black isn’t entirely wrong to treat Locke with such scorn; the fact that he was right about so many things doesn’t discount the fact that most of the time he did everything the wrong way.

Now Jack, face to face with the man he spent his entire life opposed to and who has finally come to belief Locke was right about the island, isn’t sure what to do next. But it’s clear something has changed about him. A cynic could argue that when Jack decides near the end of the episode to stay on the island, he’s doing so because UnLocke wants to leave so badly: as we all know Jack and Locke never agreed on anything when they were alive. But it’s worth noting that when Jack makes the decision to stay, he’s staring out at the water the way that Locke did so frequently, the way Jacob said you sometimes had do. He knows that there has to be more than one reason why UnLocke wants them all to leave so badly and until he figures out what that reason is, he thinks the best thing he can do is stay.

However, you can’t exactly blame Sawyer for telling Jack to get the hell of his boat. Sawyer’s been through as much of a ringer in the last two weeks that Jack has been in the last three years. He knows that UnLocke can’t be trusted and he clearly doesn’t trust Widmore either. He’s fine with leaving the island, he just wants to go with his friends. Sawyer is clearly taking more of the live together, die alone approach at this point and Jack’s position – to go back into danger – is hardly the most logical one.

That doesn’t mean he’s not reacting instead of thinking things through. When he tells Kate that Claire isn’t coming back with them, he has clearly gone a step too far. The only reason Kate got on the plane in the first place was to bring Claire back to Aaron (something she told Sawyer just a few days ago) and for Sawyer to take the decision out of her hands shows hold broken a part of him is.

Both Evangeline Lilly and Emilie De Ravin do some of their best work in this episode. Claire has seemed more like her pre-feral self in the last couple of episodes, particularly around Jack at the opening. It’s clear she’s broken in quite a few ways but that’s to be expected. The scene where she tells Jack the reason she’s with UnLocke  - “because he’s the only one who hasn’t left me” is incredibly sad, made all the more so by the fact immediately afterwards Jack seems completely willing to do it again.

And after two seasons of the fans having issues with Kate (for reasons which as I said were misogynistic) the scene where she tells Claire that the only reason she came back was to bring her back to her son – while at gunpoint – is one of the most selfless things she done in the entire series. Of course not long after that Jack jumps off the boat and she immediately wants to go back. But Sawyer makes it very clear that the time to go back is over.

It's been heartbreaking watching Sayid ever since the events at the Temple. Naveen Andrews’s does some remarkable work throughout these episodes as he plays a man who really has lost everything. The man who used to walk through the island with purpose just walks by motor control; there’s no emotion in anything he says anymore.; he doesn’t even seem to care what happens around him. If Sayid has been claimed by the smoke monster, it’s not the same kind of claim that was with Claire. Claire’s emotions are clearly still present, even if driven to insanity; Sayid doesn’t seem capable of caring about anything.

So when he goes to the well to kill Desmond, we don’t think anything will stop it. Desmond is still calm but there’s a sadness to it when Sayid points a gun at him. For the first time in half a season Sayid shows emotion when he tells Desmond that he’s been promised to see the woman he loves again. When Sayid tells him that he’s been brought back from the dead, we see the first hint of desperate hope in his eyes for we don’t know how long. But when Desmond confronts Sayid with something he doesn’t want to face, there’s a sign of conflict. We don’t know yet if Sayid is lying to UnLocke when he tells him why he took so long but when he tells UnLocke “You can check if you like”, it’s the first sign of the old Sayid we’ve seen all season. UnLocke looks at Sayid for a long time, but he can’t read his lack of emotions.

And of course at the end of the episode we get something we’ve been waiting for since the end of Season 4: Sun and Jin finally, finally reunite. That they both are able to speak in English to each other for the first time is one of the most profoundly moving moments we’ve ever seen on Lost – and it’s immediately undercut by the fact that Sawyer has been double-crossed.

In the sideways world the passengers lives begin to collide. Locke ends up at the same hospital needed surgery at the same time Sun and Jin arrive there. We’re hardly surprised that its Jack’s hospital they both end up at or that Locke is the one who goes into surgery. Jack is already reeling from the fact that’s he just met Claire, who was in his father’s will and has found out that she’s his half-sister – something he never found out until after he left the island.

Meanwhile Sawyer, having finished booking Kate, is called by Miles to investigate the murders that happened at the restaurant. And Sawyer manages to snare Sayid and no doubt bring him back to the very same station.

Some of the characters are recognizing each other more easily then before, though its increasingly obvious. Kate calls out Sawyer for not arresting her at the airport (there’s an irony) and Sawyer actually laughs it off. When Sun sees Locke she starts shouting out: “It’s him!” in Korean, but we’re not sure why she’s so upset. (There may be an explanation at the end of the next episode that works in conjunction with the ending.) But the most important part comes when Jack enters the surgery, looks down and sees Locke and says: “I think I know him.”

Jack knew Locke better than almost any of the other survivors before Locke died. And that is in large part because they disagreed so virulently about everything. The reason that Jack is having a harder time dealing with the Man In Black being in Locke’s guise – perhaps more than any of the other survivors – is because he did know Locke better than anyone else on the island. He might not have known how he got in the wheelchair or his family life, but he know how Locke saw the world and what he believed and that is the most important thing.  He knows that Locke had a serenity about him on the island that Jack has never known in his entire life, even though he couldn’t tell why. He knew that Locke had faith in him to be the leader before he did – even though Locke never chose to follow him and challenged him every step of the way. And he insisted that they were brought to the island for a reason – and Jack has just learned in no uncertain terms that Jacob did bring them to the island. Locke never knew the reason why and Jack doesn’t know it now.

But when Jack tells Sawyer that the last time he left the island he felt like ‘a part of him was missing’, that’s a huge deal for the man who spent all of their time on the island trying to get them off it. Jack is admitting to Sawyer that his leadership was wrong and has always been wrong.  And though he doesn’t know yet what UnLocke is up to, he knows that the only way that he can figure it out is to do the hardest thing in his life: follow him.

 

IF YOU BELIEVE THE ENDING: I actually don’t have much of an issue with the problems with the timelines as we can see how horribly skewed they are. The biggest problem I have is the presence of Ilana.

Now I can understand why she might be here if it was an alternate universe and it would make more sense: with the island no longer in her life, Ilana seems truly at ease and happy in a way she never seem when she was working for Jacob. But the fact that she seems to be there in the presence of Claire and Desmond makes no sense because when she was alive she didn’t know either of them. She did know Jack slightly, so there is logic there in an alternate universe: here she is reuniting a family. But it seems like fan-service for the sake of fan service, Ilana was never important to any of the major characters on the island and this just seems as pointless as showing Ethan being a physician given the context of the ending.

How Steven Spielberg Used Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln To Make Points About Politics Today

 Introduction: In real life Lincoln was fond of using simple stories to illustrate complex points to his audiences. I’ve come to realize that’s a solid approach to take when you’re dealing with polarizing issues.

One of my favorite films of all time – one I’ve written about before in a different article – is Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, widely considered one of the most historically accurate movies ever made. One of the central characters in that film is Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the so-called Radical Republicans a group that has recently become widely celebrated in certain circles.

I’ve expressed some of my issues with the Radical Republicans in some of my earlier historical pieces and have gotten reviled in some circles for it. In a completely unrelated article, I now intend to talk about two critical scenes in Lincoln in which Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones, that speak much as to how Spielberg and his screenwriter Tony Kushner, accurately show how so many of the establishment thought of Stevens and how his approach in one of my favorite scenes in recent years, shows a clear different between idealism and pragmatism. Should you see any parallels between these scenes and any political movement, living or historical, well everything’s open to interpretation.

So here we go.

 

Lincoln deals with the 16^th President’s efforts in January of 1865 to get the 13^th Amendment, which would permanent ban slavery, through the House of Representatives. Many in his cabinet and prominent party leaders believe its impossible but Lincoln is determined to do so despite resistance.

He spends much of the first third of the film marshalling his forces. He sends his Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) to work behind the scenes with several prominent ‘fixers’ (John Hawkes and James Spader are the most prominent) to maneuver lame duck Democrats to vote for the amendment exchange for ‘jobs’. He goes to see Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook) the founder of the Republican Party to pressure the Republicans to vote as a bloc in favor of the amendment. Blair is the only man with the power to do so, but in exchange he insists that he make a trip to Richmond to make overtures for a Confederate peace, even though knowledge of it in Washington could scuttle any hope of the amendment’s passage. He visits critical members of the legislative team in the House, including the majority leader James Ashley (David Costabile). And he convinced his belligerent wife to constantly show her face in the House of Representatives to indicate the White House’s presence when the President’s would be seen as tipping the scales.

And he invites Thaddeus Stevens to the White House for a private discussion. A little historical context: Stevens, representing the Radical Republicans, had been as much a thorn in the side of the administration from its start with Stevens constantly complaining to Lincoln in private – and on the House floor – that he was managing the war and everyone else incorrectly. Lincoln was a radical thinker by the terms of the 19^th century but Stevens was far more ahead of it. The difference was, of course, Lincoln was in charge of the entire country and the Republican Party and Stevens was part of a small bloc of Northern Congressmen.

Lincoln as we hear in an earlier scene before the cabinet, is fully aware of the difficulties the country will be facing if the war comes to an end and the issue of slavery is not resolved for good. He is also concerned with a post-Civil War America, what it will look like for the South when they’ve lost and ‘the Negro’ when they are free.

Stevens has little concern of this: he makes clear his views on Reconstruction and they have nothing to do with Lincoln’s who gently says: “That’s the unvarnished Reconstruction.” Lincoln has a modest view about how to proceed:

Lincoln: When the people disagree, bringing them together requires going slow until they’re ready too…”

Stevens interrupts the President. I should mention that interrupting the President and treating him with disdain in the White House is an unwritten violation of etiquette. Stevens makes it very clear he doesn’t care about that:

 

Stevens: Shit on the people and what they want and what they’re ready for. I don’t give a goddamn about the people and what they want. This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the ‘good’ of the people without caring much for any of ‘em. The people elected me to represent them, to lead them, and I lead. You ought to try it.”

 

In this speech Stevens makes it very clear that he believes his judgment – and those of the Radical Republicans – is superior to that of all people, even the ones he doesn’t represent. Stevens’s is lecturing the President – who will be called Abraham Africanus on the House floor during the film – that a man who has lived his life in the North knows more than a man who was born in the South and has to look at an interest larger than that.

Lincoln is diplomatic in his response – both Kushner’s words and Daniel Day-Lewis’s deliver are no different than anything else – but in comparison to almost all the speeches he will give in the movie, we see he is sticking the knife in Stevens’s and his approach in a way he hasn’t before:

Lincoln: I admire your zeal, Mr. Stevens, and I have tried to profit from the example of it. But if I’d listened to you, I’d have declared every slave free the minute the first shell struck Fort Sumter. Then the border states would’ve gone over to the Confederacy, the war would’ve been lost and the Union along with it, and instead of abolishing slavery, as we hope to do in two weeks, we’d be watching helpless as infants as it spread from the American South to South America.”

Lincoln is telling Stevens, in no uncertain terms, that the path he suggested would have led to ruin for the nation and for the causes he fought for all his life. Stevens doesn’t acknowledge his flaws but in fact doubles down:

Stevens: Oh, how you have longed to say that to me. You claim you trust them, but you know what the people are. You know that the inner compass that should direct the soul towards justice has ossified in white men and women, North and South, unto utter uselessness through tolerating the evil of slavery. White people cannot bear the thought of sharing this country’s infinite abundance with Negroes.

Stevens is essentially telling Lincoln that even if he is right on everything he said politically, he is still morally wrong and therefore all the way wrong. Lincoln continues to take a diplomatic tone:

Lincoln: A compass, I learned when I was surveying, it’ll…point you true north from where you’re standing, but it’s got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles and achieve nothing more than to sink into a swamp…what’s the point of knowing true north?

Lincoln is making a very clear point to Stevens about the different between idealistic politics, which Stevens and the Radical Republicans believed in, and the pragmatism of real politics. It is telling that while we see countless people involved in persuading swing Congressman to vote for the 13^th Amendment, Stevens is only seen doing so once, to a Pennsylvania Congressman who he goes out of his way to humiliate, degrade and bully in to voting for the amendment.

Much of Stevens fighting for the amendment is on the House floor where we see the combat persuade. It is there the second and more important scene occurs. The Democrats, led by George Pendleton, are trying to arrange the amendment’s defeat. Pendleton thinks the best way to do so is to use Stevens, a boogeyman for radical causes across the country, as a straw man. He tells his second in command Fernando Wood (Lee Pace) that he will arrange for the national press to be there. Wood’s job is to bring Stevens to full froth. “You excel at that.” In that rage he will make clear his views on racial equality become known to the national news and that will shift public opinion against it.

When the day comes Ashley notes the press and realizes the game. He admonishes Stevens: “Say only you believe equality under the law. Not equality for all races. Compromise, or you risk it all.”

We hear Wood demand of Stevens: “Do you know believe that the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, applies literally? Is that not the true purpose of the amendment?”

Stevens begins to rage. “The true purpose of the amendment, Mr. Wood, you perfectly named obstructive object…” The laughter begins and Ashley starts. When Wood repeats the question, its clear Stevens is about to say his beliefs but then he looks at the galleries.

In a quiet, almost humble tone he says: “I don’t believe in equality in all things. Only equality before the law. Only that and nothing more.”

Wood is clearly thrown by this. “That’s not so. You’ve said so countless times before.” Pendleton cries out: “For shame. For shame! Stop prevaricating!”

Stevens repeats it. Ashley with a look of disbelief says: “He’s answered your question. This amendment’s not to do with race equality.”

Pendleton takes matters into his own hands. “Your behavior is unworthy of a representative. It is in fact unworthy of a white man.”

In one of my favorite monologues of all time, Stevens snaps:

Stevens: “How can I hold that all men are created equal when here before me stands, stinking, the moral carcass of the gentleman from Ohio? Proof that some men ARE inferior, endowed by their maker with dim wits, impermeable to reason, with cold, pallid slime in their veins instead of hot, red blood. YOU are more reptile than man, George, so low and flat that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you.”

He says this to applause while Pendleton adds: “How dare you!”

Stevens: Yet even YOU, Pendleton – who should have been gibbeted for treason long before today – even worthless, unworthy you ought to be treated equally before the law! And so again, sir, and again and again, I say, I do not hold with equality in all things, only with equality before the law! Nothing more.

The press leaves the floor, disappointed and Ashley practically weeps in relief.

But there are two separate sets of reactions. The first comes from Mary Todd Lincoln, no fan of Stevens, who gives him a backhanded compliment. But “Who’d thought that old reprobate capable of such restraint? He might make a politician someday.” But Elizabeth, the wife of a former slave and a fan of Stevens, is struck silent and tells the first lady: “I have to go” before rushing out of the room.

Then Asa Vintner Litton, a colleague of Stevens who doesn’t trust Lincoln and worshipped Stevens admonishes Stevens for showing restraint. According to Litton by not giving into the will of the Democrats and doing exactly what they wanted him too, he has failed the cause.

Litton: “Have you lost very soul, Mr. Stevens? Is there nothing you won’t say?”

Stevens is angry but quietly so.

I’m sorry you’re nauseous Asa. That must be unpleasant. I want the amendment to pass, so that the constitution’s first and only mention of slavery is its absolute prohibition. For this amendment, for which I have worked all my life and for which countless colored men and women have fought and died and now hundreds of thousands of soldiers…No, sir, no, it seems there’s very nearly nothing I won’t say.”

It's worth noting Litton has lost his seat in Congress and has no stake in what comes next. Stevens does. Stevens is trying to think of the future. This scene and the conversation Litton has with Stevens after it is over show the difference between pragmatism and ideology better than almost any scene I’ve seen involving politics in a film. To Stevens it is more important to lose a rhetorical battle if its means winning the war. To Litton, many Radicals and countless abolitionists, rhetoric and moral bluster mattered more than actual winning the war they’d fought for.

It’s worth noting in Lincoln’s last cabinet meeting before he goes to Ford’ Theater Lincoln is discussing an equally controversial subject:

Lincoln: “I did say some colored men, the intelligent, the educated, and veterans, I qualified it.

Ashley: Mr. Stevens is furious. He wants to know why you qualified it.

The Speaker of the House: “No one heard the ‘intelligent’ or the ‘educated’ part. All they heard was the first time any president has ever made mention of Negro voting.”

Lincoln: “Still, I wish I mentioned it in a better speech.”

Ashley: “Mr. Stevens also wants to know why you didn’t make a better speech.”

The assembled all chuckle. They know that the fight they just waged, however difficult and messy it was, has done nothing to change Stevens’s fundamental view on the administration, the President, or the people. However the next battle is waged Lincoln knows Stevens will be as much an obstacle to it as he a proponent of it. For him and his Radicals, pragmatism is not something for leaders and even the occupants of the White House have to keep proving they will follow true north even if they sink into a swamp in its pursuit