Daily Mail raps Welles in anti-Occupy Wall Street piece

[RayKelly]

Putting aside politics, left or right, this concludes with a cheap dig at Welles

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/46575

“We are living in Orson Welles world”
November 20, 2011 by Don Surber

I have long suspected that the OccupyWallStreet site is a parody. This post does not dissuade me, “Forum Post: Goodbye life and freedom. License to kill is here. James Bond and Darth Vader is in your neighborhood.” It begins: “The army and police and government will not care and think one second about shooting or killing babies or children. Army and police are only holding back the killings because they do not want the mess and the cleanup job. Secondly they believe a killing spree might make people revolt and in such a case the army and police will really have to start the killings and believe it is a little too early for the people to accept this. But in about 15 to 20 years from now it will be common to see the police and army kill at random. They will kill anyone and especially people revolting. They will kill and send in a special force cleaning team and kill anyone trying to collect evidence.”

As far as I know, all 7 Occupy deaths were self-inflicted overdoses and suicides. But what really got me was this bit: “We are living in Orson Welles world and it is even worse. In 20 years time it will be so bad that your so-called freedom is a thing of the past. Every single movement you make will be controlled and if you do something out of the dictated you will be killed or perhaps just have all your resources plugged out like debit-figures in the bank and your smartphone key will be blocked to get inside your work and essentially you will be on a no man’s land mission and you will dies from starvation eventually.”

Now usually, people complain about an Orwellian world, reflecting the oligarchical dictatorship depicted in George Orwell’s 1949 novel, “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

But Orson Welles may be more fitting. He was L’enfant terrible on the radio when he unleashed his adaptation of “The War of the Worlds” on “Mercury Theater on the Air,” and when he made his first movie, “Citizen Kane,” a rebuke of capitalism and conservative media. Occupy Mercury. Occupy RKO.

That was his peak. “Citizen Kane” lost money as did his next two films (one of them subsidized by the central government) and his studio dumped him. He then flopped on the radio. He tried to stage a lavish production on Broadway. Flop. He basically made masterpieces that audiences did not want to see. People in his craft liked them. Given the president we produced and this generation of slackers with $50,000 degrees, I would say we are well on our way to an Orson Welles world of self-adulation.

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks Ray, I think Orson Welles would have applauded Occupy Wall Street, with it's groping attempt on the part of the people to get some kind of grassroots organization going to combat all the greed and corruption rotting our economic system. That doesn't sound like self-adulation to me.

Interesting how George Orwell and Orson Welles sometimes get confused. It's even been suggested that Eric Blair may have taken his pen name as a shortened version of George Orson Welles. Blair started using "George Orwell" in 1932, several years before Orson Welles became famous in America, but a year after the 16-year-old had made something of a splash on the Irish stage. I doubt it, but who knows?

More interesting is the fact that Orwell put Welles on a HUAC-style hitlist in 1949 for the British government, as cited in this American Prospect article called "The Wintry Orwell":

"Orwell's 1949 pinpointing for the Labour government 35 writers and artists whom he considered "crypto-Communists, fellow-travellers or inclined that way." That list--which included Charlie Chaplin, Michael Redgrave, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, and George Bernard Shaw--has caused a recent furor among leftist pundits. Some see it as a betrayal; others interpret it as a sensible, practical Cold War measure, a straightforward favor for his good friend Celia Paget, who was working for the Information Research Department at the time and who visited Orwell at a sanatorium in Cranham.

"(Orwell biographer Jeffrey) Meyers comes down on the side of the apologists, arguing feebly that "[t]hese people, whose Communist sympathies were well known, would not lose their jobs or be harmed in any way. They would, quite simply, not be asked to write anti-Soviet propaganda for the British government."

"...But to say that the betrayal is understandable or atypical does not make it excusable. Of all people, Orwell--who had a particular lifelong antipathy toward rats of the rodent and human varieties--should have known that names named, however offhandedly and no matter how narrow the context, can ricochet in ruinous ways."

*************************************************

'The root of all economic evil is private ownership of land, along with the privilege of manipulating it's value to the detriment of the economic structure.'

- Henry George, 1897 (found in Orson Welles's political files at Lilly)

**************************************************

'In our profit system, maybe there's no such thing as having too much money, but there's certainly such a thing as having too much power. We'll have to wait until everybody has enough power before we decide whether it's all right for some of us to have a great deal more then plenty. It probably is.'

'The common man, who Mr. Pegler (Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler) calls with a shudder, "that faceless thing", has enough to get along, and his widest hopes are for a bit more, so the rich man shouldn't be afraid of him. It's the men with nothing at all who want to tear the rich out of their gilded palaces and divvy up the gold. Wallace wants to prevent the common man from being gobbled up for breakfast so the rich don't get hung on lampposts by the extreme poor, and the bankers don't have their blood flow in the gutters.

'(Henry) Wallace and his friend, the little fellow, don't want to let the rich pile up their yachts, their country houses, and their superbank accounts into glittering heaps. But they also know that if you chopped up all the luxuries and doled out all the money equally, there still wouldn't be enough to go around. They realize that what's wrong with accumulated wealth is not the wealth, but the accumulation. We can have a prosperous world, they keep saying, without it costing the rich anything but special privilege.'

- Orson Welles, 1947

************************************************************************

"You had better be siding with the people enough that the people don't get so angry they take you apart, because in the end in this country, if you are deviant enough from the people, they will take you apart, and in the end, that's where the power ultimately lies."

That statement sounds like something that would come out of the mouth of an Occupy Wall Street protester. In fact, it was made by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Feb. 21, 2002… He also said he thinks corporations have too much power, which is another complaint frequently heard at the Occupy protests.

"I'm very happy to get corporations out of politics," he said… But Gingrich is now a strong supporter of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened the door to increased corporate power in elections.

- From "Newt Gingrich Started Occupy Wall Street", by Jess Dweck, Comedy Central

“The Occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything. They take over a public park they didn’t pay for, they use nearby bathrooms they didn’t pay for to obstruct those who are going to work to pay for the taxes to sustain the bathroom to sustain the park so they can self righteously explain that they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything,...That is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them, ‘go get a job right after you take a bath,”

- Newt Gingrich, November 2011

******************

TOSOTW SCREENPLAY EXCERPT:


ZIMMER: He's turning sour, Matt...He's going bad.


PISTER'S VOICE(reading): "...he (Hitler) could have fumigated the whole world, and there'd still be the other ones--the hippies and beatniks--the bums...Call 'em what you want to, they slack and slouch around on the floor because they LIKE it down there. Talk about a return to the womb? How about the return to the CAVE?"



JAKE'S VOICE: Uncle, we have to know about EVERYBODY--The creeps and freaks too...With something that sets our teeth on edge, we do the chic and manly thing, Matthew--We don't sulk and turn away. No. We bend over and take a good hard sniff.


PAT'S VOICE: You don't have to bend over to smell a hippie. He's like a polecat; he meets you more then half way.


PAT laughs in appreciation of his own recorded remark.


PAT: Like the gypsies, huh, Zimmie?


PISTER: Gypsies?

(bringing forth a sheet of paper):
Here we are--"Gypsies"--transcribed from my OWN tapes...(reading) "Hitler tried to get rid of THEM, too..."

*********************************************

GLENN BECK GUESTING ON THE BILL O'REILLY SHOW:

“You overestimated the number of people.” O’Reilly continued.  “There aren’t that many of these loons; they’re hardcore…”

“I didn’t give a number Bill.  I said that there would be global revolution,” Beck objected.

“No, no, you said this was going to catch fire.  And I don’t believe it is.  I think it’s receding now.  I think [Americans] are so fed up with these people,” O’Reilly replied, arguing alternative media had countered overly sympathetic coverage from mainstream news organizations.

“This movement has just begun,” the radio host insisted.

“I don’t think so.  I think it’s on the decline if you look at the polls,” O’Reilly rejoined. “I’ll bet you another steak dinner in New York.”

“I think I paid for the last steak dinner, and it wasn’t even a bet!” Beck quipped.


***************************************************

"For the working classes, a much better approach would be to attack the proximate sources of inequality: tax laws that privilege the rich and labor laws that restrict the rights of unions and set the minimum wage below a decent living standard. “Given the political will,” he writes, “whether through redistributive tax rates, massive public works projects, a living wage law, or a renaissance of labor unions, we could decrease poverty and inequality tomorrow regardless of … the number of educated and uneducated workers.”

- "The Educational Lottery" by Steven Brint

[Glenn Anders]

While all the criticism of this article is justified, I think it fair to emphasize that the ignorant remarks of the piece (and even more ignorant comments elicited from the original readers) don't come from the London Daily Mail, as rumored elsewhere, but from the Charleston (South Carolina) Daily Mail. British gutter press, the News of the World debacle to the contrary, would not stoop to such foolishness. And most British commentators would spell Welles name correctly and know that he never married Ava Gardner (though he might have liked to). Etc.

As Mike suggests with his citations, Columnist Surber may not prove we inhabit an Orwellian World quite yet, but we may be living in an ironic Orwellesian one.

Meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Glenn

[Le Chiffre]

Sounds like South Carolina still hasn't forgiven Welles for the Isaac Woodard broadcasts.

"Anyone who makes a fortune in America owes that fortune to those he makes it from. One's moral right to have more then enough is nullified when there are those that have less then enough"
- Orson Welles


FROM DAVID FROST INTERVIEW 1969:

David Frost: You once said that if you were young in America you could demand anything. Do you think young people demand too much?

Orson Welles: No, certainly not. There isn't a specific virtue in being young. What is right about them is that they're demanding what we should have had a long time ago. And the hopeful thing is maybe a generation as alert and alive, with all the mistakes they may be making, which are mistakes of tactics and strategy not of human feelings, maybe with this new thing we're going to see some changes. We better see 'em quick or things are gonna get worse than they are now.

[Glenn Anders]

WHAT BRILLIANT OBSERVATIONS!

And I agree, Ray and Mike, they apply as much to our time as they did in 1969 or earlier. Your recent addition, Mike, echoes the Occupy Wall Street prediction which set the [Charleston, South Carolina] Daily Mail off. Mr. Suber quoted OccupyWS:

'The army and police and government will not care and think one second about shooting or killing babies or children. Army and police are only holding back the killings because they do not want the mess and the cleanup job. Secondly they believe a killing spree might make people revolt and in such a case the army and police will really have to start the killings and believe it is a little too early for the people to accept this. But in about 15 to 20 years from now it will be common to see the police and army kill at random. They will kill anyone and especially people revolting. They will kill and send in a special force cleaning team and kill anyone trying to collect evidence.'

After our announced "Defeat of Fascism" in 1945, Orson Welles must have been heartsick to see a decorated Naval hero systematically blinded by a South Carolina Sheriff for asking to use the restroom at a bus stop. That incident suggested fascism was alive and well in America. Welles sacrificed his radio career in the fruitless crusade to achieve justice for Isaac Woodward. And he soon left America, never to be the influence on his homeland he had been previously.

An Orwellian nightmare is a symbolic subtext for a number of Welles' later works: THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, MR ARKADIN, TOUCH OF EVIL, THE TRIAL, and as we may one day see, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.

And you point out, Mike, Orson Welles the Seer observed, late in life: '. . . the hopeful thing is maybe a generation as alert and alive, with all the mistakes they may be making, which are mistakes of tactics and strategy not of human feelings, maybe with this new thing we're going to see some changes. We better see 'em quick or things are gonna get worse than they are now.'

My own view is that, after the pepper spray, after the odd injury, the occasional death, the sops thrown to us by the 1% will not rise to a reaffirmation of the Social Contract. And the Occupy Movement will continue, to be met by means which even now seem hyperbolic in the apocalyptic vision of OWS.

It is up to all of us who believe in true Democracy to remain peacefully disobedient and focused. To remain true to the memory of Orson Welles.

Glenn

[Le Chiffre]

The OWS nightmare scenario you mentioned Glenn, at first blush makes you want to think it's too farfetched to ever happen here in America, but then you think back to something like Kent State and realize that it HAS happened here.

"America has no intellectual class and is rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship soon, on the basis nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being overeducated. He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is.”
- Gore Vidal, 2010

"Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street — financial institutions generally — has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world). And should also know that it has been doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power in the economy has radically increased, and with it their political power. That has set in motion a vicious cycle that has concentrated immense wealth, and with it political power, in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of 1%, while the rest increasingly become what is sometimes called “a precariat” — seeking to survive in a precarious existence. They also carry out these ugly activities with almost complete impunity — not only too big to fail, but also “too big to jail.'
"The courageous and honorable protests underway in Wall Street should serve to bring this calamity to public attention, and to lead to dedicated efforts to overcome it and set the society on a more healthy course."
- Noam Chomsky

[Glenn Anders]

Precisely, Mike: I wonder what Orson Welles must have thought of the Ohio Kent State slayings in May 1970. The sight of young middle class Americans being shot down for expressing their First Amendment Rights (albeit, boisterously, in a some cases) must have weighed on Welles' heart for the few years left him. The Right Wing has recently taken an interest in the massacre, too:

http://ronbosoldier.blogspot.com/2010/1 ... oting.html

The article does not seriously consider the fact that one Terry Norman was indeed not only a local police but a (lowly) FBI agent, carrying a .38 revolver that day. Mr. Norman has never been convicted of anything, so far as I know, except for a later embezzlement rap, but the pattern of his life, especially if he were involved, as seems to be the case, in subsequent work as an "undercover op" may suggest that he has had a long career as a government provocateur; or that someone or, indeed, different agencies have been stepping in for unknown reasons to protect him at strategic moments in his life. This speculation has been heightened by newly revealed evidence in the last year that there were audio tapes of pistol shots just before the tragic volley which killed four students and injured nearly a dozen others at Kent. Finally, in just the last couple of months, a video has been uncovered which shows Mr. Norman actually handing his revolver to his Kent Police mentor, after which he was taken into protective custody. Mr. Norman lives today in seclusion and gives no interviews (which is his right), in the mountains of North Carolina.

Here is [almost] literally "the smoking gun," (about a minute or so in) when Norman hands the gun off to those who became his protectors and handlers:

http://www.infowars.com/new-kent-state- ... cateuring/

Most people of my generation did not believe that our Government could be so devious; we were convinced that if such a horrible thing had been provoked, it was an aberration. Only "the kids" believed in "conspiracy theories," and officials and prestigious media commentators piled on to reinforce such a view. [Only a few of my generation, such as my fellow Macedonean colleagues, Marine Hero William T. Metts, Award Winning Poet Paul Zimmer, "Participatory Democracy" SDS Leader Carl Oglesby, and distinguished Kent Faculty Members William and Ann Hildebrand,, etc, saw through the sinister bureaucratic subterfuge.) We knew that Wall Street was heartless, but usually most of us did not see an apparently abstract conflict between us 99% against the 1% as anything but accidental. The occasional "financial panic" was explained to us (and to me, personally, in my Economics classes) as "an economic law." To believe otherwise was to be . . . "a Communist"! Vidal and Chomsky are a bit snobbish in their putting down of ordinary Americans. After all, we have been bombarded with official commercial and political propaganda, up to sixteen hours a day in the media, most of our lives. Many of those who matured in the last thirty years or so, those who "did everything right," who "went shopping and took airplane journeys" after 9/11, have seen much of their loyal, hard won property and savings wiped out in two years time. The majority have not taken to the streets yet, to be sure, but they "have not seen nothing yet." And when they do, I'm afraid that the same "black ops" units who traveled the country in the 1970's "will be out in force." Not only will heads be broken (as was very nearly the case of American Poet Laureate Robert Hass and his wife recently at Berkeley), but heads will be blown off, as they were at Kent State University.

Orson Welles would indeed weep.

Glenn Anders

[Le Chiffre]

Amazing that no one has ever done any prison time for that tragedy. But then, 1970 was perhaps the height of the revolutionary branch of the anti-war movement and the backlash it provoked. As rocker Dave Crosby said at the time, the Federal Government can out-escalate you all the way up to nuclear weapons.

The recent New Yorker piece on Occupy Wall Street indicates that it was started by the founder of Adbusters Magazine, a Canadian monthly dedicated to 'depicting the developed world as a nightmare of environmental collapse and spiritual hollowness, driven to the brink of destruction by its consumer appetites'.

 I was not aware that today, in addition to being 'Black Friday', was also 'Buy Nothing Day', where protestors do things like dressing up as zombies (a 'la DAWN OF THE DEAD) and roam the shopping centers, trying to get shoppers to stop spending. Buy Nothing Day seems somewhat reminiscent of Orson Welles trying to get his Lear Show listeners to boycott all spending as a way to protest the demise of of the OPA (Office of Price  Adminstration), which paved the way for the profiteers to hide their earnings from the tax collectors.

Vidal can be a bit snobbish at times, yes, but that's part of his venomous charm, I think. His anti-American rhetoric can be overheated too, but I guess that goes with the territory of gaining and holding people's attention. An interesting bit of info from another website: Michelle Bachmann, says she started out as a Jimmy Carter liberal, but was inspired to switch to republicanism after reading Gore Vidal's BURR, which she says made a mockery of the founding fathers.