From tonight’s Daily Show interview with Lara Logan, chief foreign correspondent for CBS News (and an amazing woman in every sense of the word):

Jon Stewart: I mean, there were 51 people killed today in a Shia neighborhood in Iraq.  Are we just numb?  Have we lost our humanity with this entire situation?

Lara Logan: Yeah, we have.  You know, I was asked once, “Do you feel responsible for the American public having a bad view, a negative view, of the war in Iraq?”  And I looked at the reporter and I said, “Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier — What does that look like?”  Who in America knows what that looks like? — Because I know what that looks like, and I feel responsible for the fact that no one else does, you know? That’s what I feel responsible for, that nobody really understands.

And the soldiers do feel forgotten, they do, no doubt, from Afghanistan to Iraq, they absolutely feel — you know, it hasn’t — We may be tired of hearing about this five years later; they still have to go out and do the same job.  I was in Sadr City when it was just going absolutely hell for — I mean, Sadr City was like Armageddon, and there were soldiers there who had been in the country nine months, had never seen combat like that, just thrown into it — didn’t, you know — You’re talking about convoys ambushed with five, six armor piercing bombs, rocket propelled grenades, everything — nine, ten, fifteen-hour battles, I mean …

JS: And it’s something that we might get just a brief glimpse of, on the news, or just a mention, and that kind of thing …

LL: And more soldiers died in Afghanistan last month than Iraq — who’s paying attention to that?  Thirty-three thousand, highest troop levels since the war began — seven years after we defeated the Taliban.

JS: Well, it’s certainly, you know — it’s funny, we criticize the government a lot, but I guess we have a responsibliity that we haven’t lived up to as people either — to keep ourselves up on it.  So we appreciate everything you’re doing, and thanks for coming on and seeing us.

LL: Thank you.

Over four hours long, it’ll be premiering at Cannes next week before its public, two-part release. Since I’ve been reading Jon Lee Anderson’s excellent excellent bio, I’m pretty jazzed about seeing it. Regardless of whether you think he’s a hero or a cold-blooded killer, he was indisputably one of the most convicted, forceful personalities of the 20th century. I really hope Soderbergh’s work is a dense, well-sketched portrait of a man who was a lot more complex than many people make him out to be. Walter Salles’ Motorcycle Diaries was a great movie overall, but to me its flaw was that it did little to illustrate the forces that informed Che’s worldview — from beginning to end of the movie, we knew he was a compassionate guy, and that his indignation for poor people grew as he traveled South America. But we didn’t really know why. Hopefully this new film will attempt to color in those details.

Also looking forward to The Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale look, as usual, on top of their game — and what is this performance by Heath Ledger out of left field? I don’t recall seeing a lot of his other movies, but his turn as the Joker looks absolutely phenomenal. Looks like he went out on a high note.

There will be blood. And by the end of the final scene, it is unmistakably clear what the film’s title was setting you up for. As you can probably guess, blood is one of this movie’s central themes, flowing like a stream of crude oil through the dark soul of our villain-protagonist, Daniel Plainview. Indeed, the finale scene invites you to draw parallels to scenes throughout the movie in which Plainview hacks voraciously at the earth to draw out the precious liquid. Like a drug addict, he needs his fixes of anything — oil or blood — to satisfy a compulsive thirst for victory.

Victory isn’t just limited to claiming supremacy as the keenest or wealthiest oil man. Plainview needs the moral victory too. Any obstacles are met with his full fury. Thus when a Standard Oil representative offers to buy him out, Plainview comes down on him with a threat to personally cut his throat in the middle of the night (freaking the bejezus out of him). He also completely circumvents Standard Oil and its railroad monopoly by (impractically) building a pipeline to the sea. There’s also the pesky little problem of Eli, the town’s charismatic teenage miracle preacher, who purports to hold moral sway over the town. In one darkly hilarious sequence, Eli publicly berates Plainview to confess himself a sinner until he does so, humiliatingly. Well, such a moment won’t be forgotten by our main man before the story ends.

In light of this guy’s depressingly sordid characteristics, is there any hope for him? P.T. Anderson has always been interested in exploring the redemptive power of blood relations, particularly father-son bonds. In this movie, Daniel Plainview comes close to showing worthy human qualities towards people he considers family — only to be enraged to find out his brother isn’t really his brother, or his adopted son wants to go off and start his own business. Perhaps this movie isn’t a story of moral absolution. Instead of through blood relations, Plainview’s ultimate redemption comes through bloody victory.

Other Thought: Leaving the theater after the movie, you have that sorta-unsettled feeling you get when you’ve just seen something disturbing. I think that disturbing thing in this case is Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance. Meaning the reason this movie felt so visceral had a lot to do with the fact that he was in it, and he essentially made the character of Daniel Plainview what it was — like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. So all that talk that’s going on about him and the Best Actor Oscar — no question, totally deserved. I know I pretty much didn’t talk about any of the other characters at all, but that’s not to their discredit. He was just clearly the heart and soul of it all.

In this world of ours today, we’ve learned that the only way to really figure out a political candidate is to approach his record, his platform, and his proposals and break them all down in order to get at his true motivations, his character, his convictions.

Until now. Never before in my lifetime do I remember a politician able to convey such a consistent, forceful moral vision without needing to go through the tired and cynical procedure. The more his critics and opponents try to undermine him in this way, the more it seems to backfire. As a jaded idealist, I was ready to throw up my hands and surrender to politics-as-usual, but this fascinating man’s relentless optimism is becoming a completely unexpected, radical affront to our prevailing paradigm of national division.  Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, black, white … who would’ve thunk it, but we have a legitimate contender who finds these labels irrelevant.

GO OBAMA!

(I’ve been swept off my feet …)

Total, utter ix-nay on that “Snoozer Bowl” prediction. WHAT a game. For just one minute, my Eli hatred goes out the window — that was a superb defensive outing for the Giants and a downright gutsy, dare I say Patriot-ic final drive for their offense. TD pass to Plaxico? Ecstasy. The earlier, crucial Manning-to-Tyree pass? Simply legendary.

And finally, the discussion for once will be centered around how well the Pats’ opponents won by executing their whole game, not how the Pats’ few key plays in a game kept them on “the road to destiny” (often in spite of themselves).

The locker-room interview with Belichick at the end was a bit awkward. You would think a coach whose team had won 18 in a row would say something along the lines of, “We tried but came up short, Giants played a great game … still we had a great year and I’m proud of my boys, blah blah blah.” Instead, it looked like someone has just stabbed his mother.

In all, it was an interesting postseason. A wild-card beat two 13-win teams, and then succeeded in shutting down the greatest offense in NFL history. Nonetheless, I really do still despise Eli. I just needed his team to play garbage man against New England this year.

Just watched Half Nelson. Great movie.

To tell you the truth, the very premise of this movie involving a relationship between a teacher and his middle-school student struck me as a recipe for creepiness, but it turned out to be an utterly appropriate and highly believable one. I’ve gotta give the writers credit for being able to pull off the delicate balance without weirding anyone out.

The story begins with a young inner-city school history teacher and girls’ basketball coach named Dan Dunne, played by Ryan Gosling, who is a crack addict. He has almost nothing going for him — on top of his addiction, his love life is a mess and he’s being scolded by the principal for not following the prescribed school curriculum. The only things that keep him going appear to be his bright passion for teaching history to his kids (as he acknowledges) and his less laudable dependency on drugs.

One of his students and basketball girls, Dray (marvelously acted by Shareeka Epps), is a tomboyish thirteen-year-old who doesn’t seem to have too many friends her age and comes home to a single mom who loves her but is overworked and stressed about the household finances. Dray’s older brother Mike is locked up, but his old dealer crew is helping to support Dray and her mother in return for Mike’s cooperative silence.

One fateful evening after basketball, Dray encounters her coach in the bathroom, where he’s been taking hits, thinking the bathroom was empty. After a brief period of awkwardness, their friendship strengthens as Dunne frequently gives Dray rides home after basketball. There seems to be a mutual acceptance between them; he of her lonely teenage angst, she of his lonely dilemma as both role model and personal wreck.

Eventually both their troubles catch up with their friendship. Dunne loses his girlfriend and, upon colleagues’ suspicions of his hidden activity, his job. Meanwhile Dray is increasingly taken under the wing of her brother’s friend Frank, especially as she realizes that Dunne will never be more than her teacher and coach (at least twice the movie montages scenes of Dunne and Dray simultaneously doing different things — one montage has Dunne at a personal high, making love to his girlfriend while Dray, in a moment of identity crisis, tries on makeup and unravels her weave).

The plot comes to a head in one beautifully devastating scene when Dray, now fully involved as a runner with Frank, arrives at a motel room party to collect money and runs into her former teacher while he’s on a trip. Eye contact is made — Dunne even smiles faintly — but no words are spoken as he hands her the money. Later that night, a single tear runs down Dray’s cheek. This mirrors an earlier moment with Dunne tearing up while driving back from a get-together with his family; he has just lost his job, and his brother and girlfriend are very happy together. Both the teacher and student have hit new lows in their lonely lives.

The ending is cheerier and hopeful, which seems to be the obligatory high point on which to conclude the movie, but it doesn’t seem artificial, a commendable aspect of the film as a whole. Where the movie could have been gumdrop-sweet or achingly dramatic, the writers have opted instead for authentic dialogue and left it to the delivery of some very capable actors. The use of handheld cameras is another way the film breaks inner-city-teacher-movie conventions — this is no Dangerous Minds or Freedom Writers. It’s a drama that will slowly get you by the heart as you look at two characters entirely different by identity and circumstance, yet entirely similar in their need to be understood.

This will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, but it appears Bush lied about Iraq. OK, more specifically, he and his cabal of schemers made 935 false statements about Iraq over a period of two years preceding the war, according to a study by two nonprofit journalism organizations. Well, we can sit back and take this as the latest in a series of after-the-fact revelations about the mistakes made by our top officials going into the war, but am I the only one wondering why there hasn’t been any serious discussion in Washington of how this whole affair appears more and more to reek of criminality? Scandal even? Much more so than possible perjury about a past President’s sexual relationship?

I know at this point, the country’s already trying to recover from the trauma of the Bush years and investing its energy in an exciting election cycle focused on “change.” But I have a feeling our kids will read about the first decade of the 21st century in their history books, find out that the President and his top guys were total thugs, and ask us how they got away with so much with so few consequences. What are we gonna say? I’m just gonna point them to YouTube:

“We make a big blast crater out of the fucking Middle East, for all I care.” It scares me that this guy probably has children. Miss Teen South Carolina perhaps?

Haha, I’m watching The — er — A Daily Show right now, and Jon Stewart makes a great point, commenting on how the Dow dropped 105 points in the hour after Bush announced his “economic stimulus package” on Friday: “It’s as if we’re no longer confident in this man!” Totally sublime. Jon Stewart can deliver zingers like no one else’s business.

In old news, a certain unmentionable team beat the Bolts in the AFC Championship and looks well on its way to going 19-0. All I can say about last Sunday is that I’m not bitter (anymore), that NE managed to pull out the win in spite of itself once again (3 INT’s …………), and that another new lesson for us is that offenses aren’t going to be commended for playing conference title games by scoring all points off their kicker. On the other hand, props go to Philip Rivers for secretly going the entire game without an ACL. Here’s to a speedy recovery to both him and LT, and another run for the title next season. Meanwhile, for the umpteenth year in a row, I’m ready for another Snoozer Bowl.

Oh, and Heath Ledger died today. Twenty-eight is too young for anybody.

Wow, three posts in one day — this is more productive than I’ve been in over a month! Anyhoo … word has come down from on high (that is, espn.com) — our Golden boy DeSean is officially gonna try out his luck in the NFL. No surprise here, despite the suggestion he threw out after the Armed Forces Bowl that a QB change might tempt him to stay. Of course, this would have made very little sense for him to actually do, since he’s already considered a likely first-round pick and is, as far as I know, not an idiot.

But still, a sad day for Bear Territory as our most charismatic and recognizable face departs us and we’re left to dream of what could have been. Thanks for the memories DeSean. In the meantime, I hope we’ll have a receiving corps to complement Riley’s passing game. Oh please Tedford, let it be Riley.

And the race is back on in Sub-Notebook World. Steve Jobs unveiled a beauty that maxes out at less than 2 cm thick and 3 lb in weight … once again demonstrating that in one fell swoop, he is capable of both topping himself in product-launch style points — Who else would unveil the Next Cool Thing by using a manila envelope? — and resurrecting the inferiority complexes of technophiles everywhere, whose 2.75-cm, 5-lb “classic” MacBooks now feel like glorified paperweights (myself included).

Specs include an 80 GB hard drive with the option of a 64 GB solid-state drive upgrade, 13.3″ widescreen with LED backlighting, anodized aluminum casing, backlit keyboard, ambient light sensor, and multi-touch trackpad a la iPhone. It’s also supposed to turn on instantly upon opening, eliminating any boot time. Altogether priced at $1,799 starting. A beautiful machine, surely, though the Intel Core 2 Duo chip is a 1.6 GHz, upgradeable to a 1.8 GHz — kind of a step down from the 2.2 to 2.6′s available on the previous MBs and MB Pros.

Emphasis is on “Air” — the lack of an optical drive means a heavy reliance on wirelessness. Hence the other big announcement, streaming movie rentals. Again, as I previously mentioned, not so hot on that one. Interesting, though, that the proposed solution to having no CD/DVD access is to install software on a neighboring computer that allows the neighbor to wirelessly communicate data to the MB Air. I wonder if this means you can load a DVD into said neighbor and then beam the entire movie onto your tiny-Mac.

Thoughts of this wanna-be techno-geek: Despite any perceivable flaws on paper, I’m a man and they say men are visually oriented. MBA is just too sexy; I have a feeling Jobs could’ve fucked up the innards of this computer and still sold me based solely on outer looks.

Drool … need to make field trip to Apple Store.