* Amp’s take on The Pursuit of Happyness basically confirm why I don’t plan to see it in the first place.
[The] effort Gardner puts forth in the movie really does seem (as Michael says) superhuman. In the movie2, Gardner had no real friends, no support network, no savings, no home, and a child to take care of. He was pretty much in the situation Hilzoy discusses here — no margin for error, no margin for bad luck.
There are thousands of Americans in that situation. What makes Gardner’s story so unusual — and a good subject for a major Hollywood movie — is that Gardner ended up a millionairre. The far more common story of people who don’t make it, isn’t the story of which major movies are made…
For me, the lesson to take away from “The Pursuit of Happyness” isn’t that anyone can make it in America. Gardner wasn’t “anyone.” He was broke, but he had a natural endowment of intelligence, charm and drive that made him one in ten thousand, or maybe one in a million.
I’s ludicrous to think that “Pursuit of Happyness” shows that anyone can make it; on the contrary, “Pursuit of Happyness” shows that for someone starting with nothing in America, it take a ludicrous amount of talent and drive to pull oneself up.
* In his continuing quest to make us all forget how he wrote two books from inside Bush’s colon, Bob Woodward says that Gerald Ford opposed the Iraq War. Silently.
The Ford interview — and a subsequent lengthy conversation in 2005 — took place for a future book project, though he said his comments could be published at any time after his death…
“Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people,” Ford said, referring to Bush’s assertion that the United States has a “duty to free people.” But the former president said he was skeptical “whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what’s in our national interest.” He added: “And I just don’t think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security.”
* Actual pro-life consistency, in the oddest place. I wonder how the neocon Vatican fans will receive this one?
* Since Kevin Tillman stole his brother from the hawks, they’ve been looking for a new poster boy. Prayers answered, I guess.
Not throwing stones at the man’s sacrifice, just at the war-porn crowd’s salivating over it.