For a powerfully rendered portrait of the American character, predicament, and how remarkably at odds constructed “intelligence” is with understanding and insight, “Burn After Reading” serves up entertainment and farce whose underlying darkness lies in how well it actually represents the psychological and personality forces driving our institutions and world and how confidently oblivious we are to them.

The "adult" characters write children’s books that are really about themselves; their transactions are child-to-child or insecure-needy-child-to-adult; they need a mommy’s lap, a self-affirming get-together with other little boys in school uniforms, permission and approval from daddy. They get horribly frustrated and aggressive when others don’t meet their needs. Those transactional patterns drive careers, relationships, institutions, and nations.

These characters bounce and storm around through cityscapes, homes, and institutions like attachment-impaired, behavior-disordered preschoolers in an understaffed daycare, recognizably presenting with impairing deficits in emotional regulation, self-image, self-soothing skills (substituting compulsive exercise, alcohol, etc.), empathy, judgment, reflection, social skills, and impulse control. The consequences of their arrested emotional, moral and intellectual development ultimately play out at every level, from their insecure and failed interpersonal relationships to institutional functioning to international affairs. They are disordered children in adult clothing wreaking havoc on our world just like . . . . . . . well, anyway, how this got in this thread I don’t know but I certainly enjoyed the film.

Including at the end where CIA Head So-and-so and his underling seem to sum up what in the American experience we would term, in more clinical terms, lack of insight:

“What did we learn Palmer?

“I don’t know sir.”

“I don’t fuckin know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.”

“Yes sir.”

“I’m fucked if I know what we did.”

“Yes sir, it’s, uh, hard to say.”

including young starlets behaving in discomforting ways, rebelling against norms and their parents, it is certainly reassuring and even uplifting to learn here that at least some celebrities are entering into the Holy Matrimony.

I noticed also in related headlines elsewhere that Salon’s number one celebrity couple, the Obamas (parenthetically, another married celebrity couple, who do value and exemplify that sacred contract between a man and his wife) did dine on turkey and pork on this special day.

I wonder if Salon might consider following with some stories, inspiring profiles if you will, of celebrity couples who have decided to honor each other and their country’s values by committing to the sanctity of marriage and who occasionally might dine on National dishes such as turkey or the highly regarded and celebrated flesh of pork, especially if there are lovely offspring at the table, maybe a touching mention of Afghani children in the grace uttered by the head of the family before the meal, and perhaps even sharing with readers the strength and sheen of decency that such families accrue from regular church attendance, as America’s First Families do?

More real news stories of this type could only be reassuring and soothing for the readership.

and attempt to support the implicit interpretation and construction here, upon which the intent and utility of such polls depend, that somehow, Americans indicating a positive orientation toward a public figure can conceivably be construed as an indication of competence, integrity, investment in the common good, authentic intent, or any other positive attribute actually attributable to that figure. And how would such an interpretation hold up against a historical analysis of public figures whom Americans have indicated strong positive orientations toward?

Right.

Link at sig: shorter Chomsky – prior to the economic meltdown, the likes of Mr. McCain, Ms. Palin, Mr. Huckabee, and Mr. Romney, for fracks sake, were serious contenders to be entrusted by the American voter with roles in shaping social policy. Does that tell us something about the phenomenon we insistently attempt to construct as a “political process” ?

that among all the viewable candy and celebration of what is base and harmful that TV seems to provide, are the gems, the exceptional programs that quietly and subversively attempt the opposite – to provide insight and antidote to the rest by exploring in authentic and accurate ways human relations, inner life, strengths, and potential.

The way, for instance, that “The Office” uses humor and only slightly exaggerated character traits to (hopefully) instructively make farce of the ways that arrested development is confidently normalized and accepted in everyday life. Or the positive parameters of inner strength, emotional regulation, and self worth in “Ugly Betty”. Ms. Havrilesky provides a real public service in her tireless efforts to highlight the few valuable offerings and to helpfully skewer the rest.

About “Lost” – whatever plotline problems detract from it, the earlier episodes were interesting and potentially insightful in attempting to understand behaviors, inner working models, and personality traits of these individuals thrown together in a new environment, in terms of their early experiences in family and cultural environments, and in ways that seem by and large, psychologically accurate, a type of insight that can be quite valuable.

if there actually were such a thing - if there actually existed such entities with elements of reality or we might even say ontological status – as a “Palestinian”, “Israeli” or “Jew” or “Arab”, “Muslim” or “Christian”, or “race”, “nation”, “Germany”, “America” or “Israel”.

Existed, that is, outside of the bizarre delusional structure that we are force fed as children. Constructed from fear, swallowed whole, it sits undigested, causing sickness.

To be safe I must be with my own kind, with my tribe that has a Name, to protect me from Others, who are different, and dangerous.