Small Surprise, Big Surprise

You get used to the political beliefs of certain writers, and so are rarely surprised when reading them. (Except for the writers on this blog, whose posts are filled with delightful unpredictability.) Rarely.

Dahlia Lithwick is a fine reporter on the Supreme Court at Slate, but knowing her politics, I must admit I was surprised by her coverage of the debate over the Solomon Amendment. This is a law that requires colleges to give military recruiters open access to their campuses or lose government funding. I don't support the law, but do find it constitutional--after decades of denying funds to colleges for not dotting every i and crossing every t of anti-discrimination law (with the full-throated support of the same law schools who now oppose the Solomon Amendment), it's hard to claim the government doesn't have the same power in this situation.

The Amendment was struck down by the Third Circuit Court Of Appeals. Lithwick recognizes the Supreme Court has taken the case to put the Third Circuit in its place. What surprised me, though, was how even Lithwick admits, after reviewing the argument, "the law schools have no case."

A much bigger surprise is Andew Sarris in the New York Observer. Love him or hate him, there's no denying Sarris is one of the most influential film critics of the past half-century. Far less important are his New York cosmopolitan politics. They're not that relevant to his aesthetic, but occasionally surface in a side-comment here and there.

Still, his review of Stephen Gaghan's Syriana knocked me out. Gaghan and company pride themselves on how important and complex their film is, when it's the opposite--silly and simplistic. (Mind you, it's not the politics that ultimately disappointed me, it's that the film is all set-up and no punchline.)

Most critics have been bowing in Gaghan's direction, but Sarris calls him on it! Now remember, it's nothing for Sarris to condemn Bush and his policies, but get how he ends his review:

If anything, Syriana tends to oversimplify a mind-bogglingly multifaceted problem that cannot so easily be resolved by a diatribe against the supposedly all-powerful “Americans.” I happen to be an American too, and I believe what Walter Huston (in John Huston’s 1949 film, Treasure of the Sierra Madre) told a querulous Humphrey Bogart, who was worried about someone stealing his gold if he took it to town with him from the mining camp: “If you’re unlucky enough to run into bandits, they’ll kill you for the shoes on your feet.” The world is too full of people who’d kill us for the shoes on our feet.

You could have knocked me over with a feather.