Politics & Rule
'Nothing but the Truth' (Sony Pictures, 2008)
I recently watched “Nothing but the Truth” and found it to be engaging because of how rooted it is in its time, even as the issues it treats are much more broadly relevant. At its heart is the freedom of the press versus the federal government’s powers of coercion in ostensible national security matters. Womanhood and especially motherhood are also important to the story, with mainstream gender norms employed to help viewers relate to (or feel no sympathy for) the woman who the government attempts to coerce. The film is a work of fiction, but its author, Rod Lurie, draws on real events for its initial premise.
During the movie’s first ten or twenty minutes, I got nostalgic vibes because there is a news-making national newspaper in DC that hasn’t been corrupted by a billionaire, a newspaper whose print distribution still matters. There is an FBI that follows the law, and reporters who think that officials lying is newsworthy, even if short attention spans run counter to this belief. The DC location, regardless of where it was actually filmed, was also familiar because of the occasional overlap between work life and home life, even if the filmmakers restricted that overlap to the two main women characters, a journalist and an outed spy.
As the film went on, I was reminded of how out-of-control the federal government can get when pursuing an administration’s aims because the judiciary typically defers to the executive branch on national security matters. The movie shows the U.S. government trying to coerce a reporter to give up her source: it jails her for contempt during a grand jury investigation. Her loss of liberty lasts for nearly a year before there is even a court decision on the specific issues involved. Images of the reporter being transported in leg chains still resonate today. The CIA adds a further low by threatening its own outed agent, reminding her about her upcoming custody hearing.
Since the journalist and the outed spy are both moms, the film connects the two on a personal level by situating their daughters in the same school. The women both volunteer in the school, but don’t know each other personally in the beginning, although the journalist knows the other woman’s child because of her particular volunteer duties. (If any fathers volunteer, it doesn’t come up.) Why is motherhood relevant to the plot? The jailed and then imprisoned journalist pays a high personal cost, being unable to see her young son and probably losing her husband. At the same time, this personal cost can be interpreted by some viewers as her putting a principle ahead of her duty as a mother.
At the very end of the movie, we see that the journalist’s initial unintentional source (before she began her actual reporting) had been her son’s classmate, the daughter of the outed CIA agent. This makes her principled stand for freedom of the press also about protecting a child. Perhaps, for some people, this lets her off the hook for leaving her own son without a mother for so long. Unfortunately, it also almost overshadows the constitutional issues behind her refusal to be coerced by the U.S. government. Or is that the point? Is this another example of the personal manifesting as political?
Congress was once the proud equal of the executive and judicial branches of our government. Now it stands drained of both power and respect, partly through abdication of its responsibilities and partly through the eager gathering of power by a burgeoning presidency. That phenomenon started with Franklin Roosevelt, and every President since has been unable to resist taking more decision-making responsibility on himself. The power to make war and to decide how our money is spent is no longer the unquestioned province of Congress …
– “Fresh Blood for a Sick Congress,” Life, November 17, 1972, p. 42.
📽️ The last time I saw “Three Days of the Condor,” dir. Sydney Pollack (Paramount, 1975), was long enough ago that I didn’t get as much out of its mid-seventies paranoia about the CIA as I did this time around. Or maybe it just didn’t gnaw away at me like it’s doing now. I grew up in a small rural town, but the grit in that movie pervaded a lot of popular television culture. I also heard my fair share of conspiracy-theory talk during my teens. Besides, the CIA was in the news.
I’m still not sure what to make of the mentality expressed in this film. It’s interesting, in any case, to speculate about how anti-establishment images and paranoia from the period have mapped onto both ends of our political spectrum.
"Maybe there's another CIA inside the CIA."
"Oil fields."
"We have games. That's all. We play games. What if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime? That's what we're paid to do."
"How do you know they'll print it?"
I forgot how many things can be on a NH town and school election ballot. Still more boning up to do, and not a deep enough media scene to lean on endorsements.
Local clergy and faith leaders posted A Call to Justice, Mercy, and Peace (PDF) in our local newspaper yesterday. Its themes have been prominent in the sermons at my mother’s church this year.
This is the kind of messaging that I, an otherwise nonobservant, unbelieving Christian can get behind. I sometimes think that I should get over my own church issues and seek out community there. We certainly share many of the same values and concerns.
Protest
My sign is hiding a lot of the crowd. I haven't heard an official number, but preliminary counts suggest at least 500 for my small town.
💰 I’m old enough to have experienced both stagflation and recession, but never depression. I guess that 🤬🍊💩 is going to give me the opportunity to experience that too. 📉
If Congress doesn’t resurrect itself as a coequal, independent branch of government that doesn’t delegate crucial decisions to the presidency and the judiciary, there will always be another demagogue to tear it all down. This is not a time for legislators who are easily intimidated.
Congress needs to revoke Trump’s tariff authorities NOW.