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Good piece on the role of Black children and youth in the civil rights movement: “Hidden Herstory: The Leesburg Stockade Girls” by Tulani Salahu-Din, National Museum of African American History and Culture, nmaahc.si.edu….
📽️ I am really enjoying Irene Dunne in her old comedies, most recently “Lady in a Jam,” dir. Gregory La Cava (Universal, 1942). It involves a lost fortune and a psychiatrist too sure of his professional knowledge, which he posits has a kind of mathematical accuracy. Love, however, has other ideas.
Good piece: “The history and resurgence of The Transexual Menace” by Riki Wilchins and Denise Norris, Gay City News, February 25, 2025, gaycitynews.com….🏳️⚧️🗽
Jen Psaki offers a glimmer of hope in the face of Orange & Cyberfruck’s shock and awe program. “Pushback is coming from everywhere” (not just the opposition): youtu.be….
“Theodora Goes Wild,” dir. Richard Boleslawski (Columbia Pictures, 1936) is great fun. It roasts performative morality, gossip, and small-mindedness. The main attraction, though, is Irene Dunne, who soon comes to handle it all with aplomb.
An Example of White Terror Depicted in WPA Art
“South” by Philip Reisman. “Executed for the Public Art Works Project, 1934."*
The South here is portrayed as a place of white terror: lynching, cross burning, Ku Klux Klan. Note, too, the figures on the left: men in chains working at gun point, modern-day slave labor powering industry. The prisoner whose face is visible is Black, the armed guard white. (Click to enlarge for detail.)
I’ve always avoided posting such images, but the history whitewashing of the current administration is making me think differently. This art, at least, is respectful. It depicts the humanity of the victims, unlike the grizzly souvenir postcards circulated by the terrorists.
* Source: NYPL Digital Collections, image 5179787.
A message to Putin from my car’s rear end. The same goes for his White House asset. #RussiaIsATerroristState #SupportUkraine #SupportHumanRights
“Spirituals” by Lillien Richter for the Works Progress Administration, ca. 1935–43. Print from engraving, signed by artist, via NYPL Digital Collections, image 5179325.
📺 I really enjoy the U.S. iteration of “Have I Got News For You.” Roy Wood Jr., the host, is brilliant. I was missing Amber Ruffin, a team captain on the show, after her short-lived show on Peacock. And this is my introduction to Michael Ian Black, the other team captain. Great fun.
If the FDP doesn’t make it back into the Bundestag, and if Scholz is gone, maybe this early election will have been worth it. Much will depend on how much pragmatism the CDU/CSU and the SPD can muster. The only party in the incumbent coalition not to get completely hammered are the capable Greens.
Do I dare check the election news from Germany? Lots of opportunities to chip away at support for Ukraine on the left and the right.😬🇺🇦 #RussiaIsATerroristState
“Make Ukraine Guilty Again” – short cartoon by Freeonis, youtu.be…. Turn on closed captions for English subtitles.🇺🇦
“First day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine captured in images,” AP News, February 22, 2025, apnews.com….🇺🇦 #RussiaIsATerroristState
One of my go-to mental, musical, and emotional escapes these past few years has been “The Voice of Ukraine” on YouTube. Suck it, tyrants. 📺🎵🇺🇦
From Maine: “Governor Mills’ Statement on Notice of Investigation From U.S. Department of Education,” www.maine.gov….
No President – Republican or Democrat – can withhold Federal funding authorized and appropriated by Congress and paid for by Maine taxpayers in an attempt to coerce someone into compliance with his will. It is a violation of our Constitution and of our laws, which I took an oath to uphold.
📽️ A well reviewed historical drama is streaming on Paramount+ in the United States: “Suffragette,” dir. Sarah Gavron (UK, 2015). The struggle it dramatizes was about getting the vote in order to shape the laws and policies that affected women in uniquely cruel ways.
'The Iron Curtain' (1948 Spy Film)
📽️ Tonight I watched “The Iron Curtain,” dir. William A. Wellman (Twentieth Century–Fox, 1948). The film was based on Igor Gouzenko’s memoir of his time working as a military cypher expert in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, “I Was Inside Stalin’s Spy Ring,” Hearst’s International–Cosmopolitan (February–May 1947).
Related News from 1948
The excerpt below from a news item in a trade journal uses the term “appeasement” to describe attempts to block the film’s release. And it recalls accusations “of war-mongering because of alleged anti-Nazi films” before the U.S. entry into World War Two. Disinformation campaigns by hostile governments are nothing new, it seems.
MPAA Pins Red Label on “Curtain” Protest
Reaffirming his continued resistance to any attempts to dictate what appears or does not appear on the screen, Eric A. Johnston, MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America] president, has rejected the protest of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship against release of 20th-Fox’s forthcoming “The Iron Curtain.” At the same time Johnston questioned the motives of the National Council and coneluded that “the purpose of your organization is to create in this country an atmosphere of appeasement and acceptance of Russia’s policy of aggression and expansion."…
Johnston pointed out … that the issue of free speech in relation to the screen was challenged seven years ago before a Senate committee, when the producers were accused of war-mongering because of alleged anti-Nazi films. “Producers then insisted upon and maintained their constitutional right to make films on any subject, free from dictation,” Johnston reminded. “Their position was vindicated. They stand on that right today, and I back them up."…
Source: The Film Daily February 3, 1948, p. 5.
Anyone in the current U.S. administration who thinks Ukraine will accede to their weird demands has not been paying attention.🇺🇦 #RussiaIsATerroristState #ПутінІдиНаХуй