KILL BILL: AN UNINTENDED APPRAISAL OF THE CLINTON YEARS?

THE REYKJAVÍK GRAPEVINE ^ | 5.28.04 | Valur Gunnarsson

[Mia T]

  THE REYKJAVÍK GRAPEVINE

KILL BILL: AN UNINTENDED APPRAISAL OF THE CLINTON YEARS?

by

Valur Gunnarsson

Published in:

Issue 1 on Friday, May 28, 2004

History has passed Quentin Tarantino by. In the 90s, a decade he helped to define, the prevalent mood was that all morality was abstract and nothing really mattered much. Both philosophy and art turned inwards, their energy spent exploring themselves rather than the outside world. In this atmosphere, movie buff Quentin reigned supreme. He patented a style wherein all his characters coolly discuss pop culture, particularly movies, with a knowing nod to the audience that this was after all just a film. His gangsters were not metaphors for communists as in the McCarthy era or corrupt politicians as in the Watergate era; they were movie gangsters pure and simple.

At the dawn of a new decade and a new century, history returned with a vengeance. People are again fighting and dying for one cause or another, world leaders routinely use phrases such as good and evil in their speeches, and everyone has to make up their mind which is which. Tarantino - whose frame of reference seems limited to the movie theatre, the comics store and the record store - seems increasingly irrelevant in such a world. He might be the king of cool, but that is no longer all that matters. He is, however, still a master craftsman, and the Kill Bill films show his sheer artistry with the camera, dancing between genres like the virtuouso he is, master of style if not substance. Perhaps one of the most impressive things about Kill Bill Vols. 1 and 2 is how different they really are from each other. Vol. 1 was an over-the-top splatter fest, a one woman army slaughtering an endless succession of weak-willed men and strong-willed women. It is perhaps indicative that Tarantino, child of the 90s, chooses a feminine hero, as he came of age in a decade where men, not belonging to any minority with its own cause and culture, found it increasingly difficult to find an identity. Now they have again, for good and for bad, found causes to fight for.

The second film shows us a different, more vulnerable side to the heroine. She no longer tackles whole armies; one adversary at a time is more than enough. And one has rarely seen the main character in a film in such dire straits as when the bride is buried alive, in one of the most suspenseful scenes in recent memory.

The plot is as simple as can be: the heroine horribly wronged, which justifies her subsequent killing spree. Tarantino´s morality is, as always, vague. He seems to glorify man´s killer instinct, those who don´t possess it in sufficient quantities being barely worth killing. In the films clumsiest scene, he equates murderers with Superman and the rest of us with Clark Kent, the scenes weakness not so much lying in its message (which is, of course, kinda cool), but in the fact that we wouldn´t believe that particular character would actually read comic books. This is too much Tarantino´s own voice we´re hearing, comic book villains quoting comic books fail to be believable, even as comic book villains.

Kill Bill 2 is probably better than its predecessor, which in turn was better than Jackie Brown, which brings us close to Tarantino in top form. This is great cinema. But perhaps the "who gives a fuck" stance of his generation is partly to blame for the world deteriorating to the state it's in today. The generation growing up under Bush will no longer find the outside world as easy to ignore.

FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU! FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME! 

 

'KILL BILL'
THE CLINTON-FOLEY NEXUS: A THEORY

by Mia T, 10.05.06

 

he timing of the Foley revelations is a bit odd. If the intended beneficiary of the political dirty trick was the Democrats, surely the perpetrators would have sprung it closer to Election Day. A month is an eternity in politics (irrespective of the fact that it is the pundit class' favorite hedge).

TEMPUS ACTUM

If not the Democrats then who? Who benefits from the odd timing? And who has the means, the motive, the opportunity--and the m.o.-- ^{1, 2} to pull off this dirty trick?

WHO BENEFITS?

The clintons had been hemorrhaging ever since the first week in September when the husband, by attempting to quash the ABC movie, "The Path to 9/11," managed to accomplish in mere days what his opponents failed for years to effectuate, namely, to focus the electorate simultaneously on the clinton jackboot ^{3, 4} and on the clinton failure to confront terrorism. ⁵

If the story had legs, continued clinton stupidity and arrogance made them sprint. And as if dispatching the tired clinton scold, the tired clinton spinners and the tired clinton playbook weren't enough to keep story on page one of The New York Times above the fold, clinton brought his tired clinton shtick to FoxNews Sunday.

'KILL BILL'

What the country finally learned--fittingly on the fifth anniversary of 9/11--was that clinton didn't simply fail to kill bin Laden.

Clinton refused to kill or even capture bin Laden.

Clinton refused to kill or even capture bin Laden even as he pretended to go after bin Laden.

Clinton refused to kill or even capture bin Laden even as he pretended to go after bin Laden because killing or even capturing bin Laden would have denied clinton the Nobel Peace Prize and he couldn't let us know he valued the prize more than keeping this country safe. ^{6, 7}

VIRTUAL SURREALITY

A virtual kill of bin Laden seems apt. One should never expect more of bill clinton. And there is a certain symmetry, a perfect parry for clinton's 'virtual obsession.' ⁹

Hypocrisy abounds in this Age of clinton, a Postmodern Oz rife with constitutional deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual surreality polymarked by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case of Jefferson, posthumously misappropriated.

The Other Nixon
Mia T

With everyone beginning to understand the dynamics of the clinton failure to fight terrorism, ⁸ prospects appeared even bleaker for the quondam shoo-in and for her husband's legacy, to which said prospects are inextricably bound.

As long as the voters believe the clintons willfully failed to kill or even capture bin Laden--and worse, that they did so for reasons of self-aggrandizement--there can be no scenario in which they recapture the White House.

Hence, bill clinton's 'virtual kill' on Fox Sunday morning.

Although "kill him" must have polled really, really well, the interview didn't help the clintons; the story remained on page one... and the hemorrhaging continued...

That is, until the Foley scandal hit the fan....

VIRTUAL KILL
THE CHRIS WALLACE-BILL CLINTON INTERVIEW DECONSTRUCTED

by Mia T, 9.27.06

 

"Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in '91 and he went to the Sudan.

We'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. They released him [bin Laden].

At the time, '96, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.

So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have; but they thought it was a hot potato. They didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan."

bill clinton
Sunday, Aug. 11, 2002
Clinton Reveals on Secret Audio:
I Nixed Bin Laden Extradition Offer

"I remember exactly what happened. Bruce Lindsey said to me on the phone, 'My God, a second plane has hit the tower.' And I said, 'Bin Laden did this.' that's the first thing I said. He said, 'How can you be sure?' I said 'Because only bin Laden and the Iranians could set up the network to do this and they [the Iranians] wouldn't do it because they have a country in targets. Bin Laden did it.'

I thought that my virtual obsession ² with him was well placed and I was full of regret that I didn't get him."

bill clinton
Sunday, Sept 3, 2002
Larry King Live

"You know... the job which we should have done ¹... which should have been our primary focus, to find [you know] bin Laden and eliminate al Qaeda."

hillary clinton
Saturday, Jan. 28, 2006
Chitchat with Jane Pauley
San Francisco, CA

"In this interdependent world, we should still have a preference for peace over war....

But sometimes we would have these debates where people would say, if I didn't take some military action this very day, people would look down their nose at America and think we were weak.  And I always thought of Senator Fulbright.... ⁶

So anytime somebody said in my presence, 'Hey, if you don't do this, people will think you're weak,' I always asked the same question for eight years, 'Can we kill 'em tomorrow?' 

I don't think we can bring 'em back tomorrow, but can we kill 'em tomorrow?  If we can kill them tomorrow, then we're not weak.... ¹

I learned that as a 20-year-old kid watching Bill Fulbright.  Listening."

bill clinton
Fulbright Prize address
April 12, 2006

The president seems to be able, the former president seems to be able to deny facts with impunity. Bin Laden is alive today because Mr. Clinton, Mr. Sandy Berger, and Mr. Richard Clarke refused to kill him. That's the bottom line. And every time he says what he said to Chris Wallace on Fox, he defames the CIA especially, and the men and women who risk their lives to give his administration repeated chances to kill bin Laden."

... [T]he fact of the matter is that the Bush Administration had one chance that they botched, and the Clinton Administration had eight to ten chances that they refused to try. At least at Tora Bora our forces were on the ground. We didn't push the point. But it's just, it's an incredible kind of situation for the American people over the weekend to hear their former president mislead them."

Michael Scheuer
CBS Terror Expert, Iraq War Critic
former CIA head for hunting Bin Laden
Monday CBS Early Show

 

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

G. K. Chesterton

 

... While America appears not to be ready for a female president under any circumstances, the post-9/11 realities pose special problems for a female presidential candidate. Add to these the problems unique to missus clinton. The reviews make the mistake of focusing on the problems of the generic female presidential candidate running during ordinary times.

These are not ordinary times. America is waging the global War on Terror; the uncharted territory of asymmetric netherworlds is the battlefield; the enemy is brutal, subhuman; the threat of global conflagration is real.

Defeating the enemy isn't sufficient. For America to prevail, she must also defeat a retrograde, misogynous mindset. To successfully prosecute the War on Terror, it is essential that the collective patriarchal islamic culture perceives America as politically and militarily strong. Condi Rice excepted, this requirement presents an insurmountable hurdle for any female presidential candidate, and especially missus clinton, historically antimilitary--(an image, incidentally, that is only enhanced today by her clumsy, termagant parody of Thatcher), forever the pitiful victim, and, according to Dick Morris, "the biggest dove in the clinton administration."

It is ironic that had the clintons not failed utterly to fight terrorism... not failed to take bin Laden from Sudan... not failed repeatedly to decapitate a nascent, still stoppable al Qaeda... the generic female president as a construct would still be viable... missus clinton's obstacles would be limited largely to standard-issue clintonisms: corruption, abuse, malpractice, malfeasance, megalomania, rape and treason... and, in spite of Juanita Broaddrick, or perhaps because of her, Rod Lurie would be reduced to perversely hawking the "First Gentleman" instead of the "Commander-in-Chief."

Mia T, 10.02.05
HILLARY'S COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF PROBLEM
(see descriptor morphs)

December 7, 1941+64

AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRO

RE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton

Dear Concerned Americans,

Hillary Clinton's revisionist tome notwithstanding, 'living history' begets a certain symmetry. It is in that light that I make this not-so-modest proposal on this day, exactly 64 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The context of our concern today--regardless of political affiliation--is Iraq and The War on Terror, but the larger fear is that our democracy may not survive.

We have the requisite machines, power and know-how to defeat the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere, but do we have the will?

In particular, do we have the will to identify and defeat the enemy in our midst?

Answerable to no one, heir apparent in her own mind, self-serving in the extreme, Hillary Clinton incarnates this insidious new threat to our survival.

What we decide to do about Missus Clinton will tell us much about what awaits us in these perilous new times.

COMPLETE LETTER

December 7, 1941+64
Mia T
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRO
RE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton


COPYRIGHT MIA T 2005

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COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006

[Mia T]

ping

[Mia T]

ping

[Mia T]

ping

[Wolverine]

bump

[escapefromboston]

Hey I liked Jackie Brown!! I thought it was better than kill bill.

[johnny7]

Put an eye-patch on Susan Estrich... and you got a screeching, stone-ugly version of Ellie Driver.

[E.G.C.]

Mia T. Bump

[Mia T]

thx :)

[PGalt]

Real Bill Kill and his real-life heroine, Janet Reno, were very effective with the terrorists at Waco with the backdrop of pop-culture music blaring.

Real Bill Kill as opposed to "virtual obsession".

Real Bill Kill "disproportionate use of force", (like raping 2 female members of his family as opposed to 1).

[Mia T]

thx:)

[Mia T]

;)

[Mia T]

thank you, FrPR :)

[malia]

"Clinton refused to kill or even capture bin Laden even as he pretended to go after bin Laden because killing or even capturing bin Laden would have denied clinton the Nobel Peace Prize and he couldn't let us know he valued the prize more than keeping this country safe".

clinton let bin Laden go ... clinton ignored Saddam .... clinton gave North Korea nuclear power ...

[AZLiberty]

clinton let bin Laden go ... clinton ignored Saddam .... clinton gave North Korea nuclear power ...

Don't forget he was aided and abetted by Jimmy Carter. Carter unleashed Islamofascism on the world, and then "negotiated" our security away to North Korean tyrants. With those two lusting after it, the U.S. should have passed a Constitutional Amendment against a U.S. citizen accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.

[Mia T]

The clinton years were about a legacy that was incidentally a presidency, a fact that, in the end demonstrates how really dumb the clintons are: They could not have done more (read 'less') to ensure that they will be consigned to history's dustbin.

That we didn't find the clintons offensive enough to boot them out forthwith -- worse, that we are actually seriously contemplating putting them back in the White House, especially now when their fatal failures and betrayals are manifest and many and coming home to roost...... says something terrible about us.

 

Someone once said that every form of government has one characteristic peculiar to it and if that characteristic is lost, the government will fall. In a monarchy, it is affection and respect for the royal family. If that is lost the monarch is lost. In a dictatorship, it is fear. If the people stop fearing the dictator he'll lose power. In a representative government such as ours, it is virtue. If virtue goes, the government fails. Are we choosing paths that are politically expedient and morally questionable? Are we in truth losing our virtue? . . . If so, we may be nearer the dustbin of history than we realize.

--Ronald Reagan