Passages

[Matt]

Mollie Sugden

[cdnchris]

Ugh!! (to both) This has been the worst couple of weeks I can think of for passages.

[souvenir]

Harve Presnell

[kinjitsu]

That tears it!

[swo17]

Seriously, why hasn't this thread been locked already?

[cdnchris]

Again: Worst. Week. Ever.

[knives]

Again: Worst. Month. Ever.

Fixed

[kaujot]

Karl Malden is second favorite thing about Patton.

[kinjitsu]

Harve Presnell, second best thing about Fargo.

[James]

When I met Harve Presnell in a hotel just days after moving from Washington State to California (I had to stay at a hotel, because the house was still not ready), he was very nice to me and my family. We saw him walking around in the hall; he was staying there for a few weeks while filming a television show if I remember correctly. Anyway, I wasn't very excited to be living in California and I just didn't like it. Meeting him though and realizing he was indeed the actor in one of my favorite movies ever, Fargo, put a little joy in my life at that time. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, living in California, but seeing him in the hallway, a few rooms down from me, walking with his dogs and his wife is a moment I will probably never forget. He reenacted a line from Fargo for me and my family right then and there: the one about how kids aren't going to McDonalds' just for the milkshakes, or something along those lines. Rest in peace, Mr. Presnell.

[flyonthewall2983]

Remember when a music video was an event and could pre-empt primetime TV? He was the last of his kind.

The only of his kind, really. Don't mean to flog a you-know-what, but should be pointed out.

[dx23]

Continuing the celebrity deaths, Steve McNair, former NFL Quaterback, shot to death in Tennessee.

[jesus the mexican boi]

Allen Klein

[Antares]

Robert McNamara

[skuhn8]

Robert McNamara

93 years old! Such a full life, a full career, so many achievements...
From the bottom of my heart: B.I.H* Robert McNamara


*Burn In Hell

[colinr0380]

Sounds like a double bill of Thirteen Days and The Fog of War is in order!

[kaujot]

I can understand the McNamara hate, but as one who was born in the 80s and has no connection whatsoever to Vietnam other than watching movies about it, I find it very difficult to hate the man.

Regardless, Errol Morris did an interview with The Huffington Post about McNamara.

[HerrSchreck]

Hey Barmy, where's your

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

, now that it's aprofriggingpos?

[souvenir]

The fact that he lived to 93 is only further proof that god as a benign or even indifferent force cannot possibly exist.

But if God does exist, don't you think he has a remarkable sense of humor? Michael Jackson is obsessed over and celebrated while a certain circle demonizes him and the media's coverage, but McNamara, dealer of death and destruction that he was, is allowed to pass by hardly encumbered. I read an internet comment wishing MJ to join Hitler and Saddam in Hell but you just know the greater public has absolutely no interest in McNamara either way. You have to chuckle at that.

[fiddlesticks]

McNamara's not dead so long as Dick Cheney lives.

[knives]

I thought that Cheney was dead, but they are keeping his body moving through electric shocks and bacon?

[kaujot]

HE was incarnately evil and a true War Criminal, like Henry Kissinger. The fact that he lived to 93 is only further proof that god as a benign or even indifferent force cannot possibly exist.
For starters read this irresistible quote from Joseph Galloway which Tag Gallagher sent me in the mail this morning:

Reading an Obit With Great Pleasure
by: Joseph L. Galloway

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell.

McNamara was the original bean-counter - a man who knew the cost of everything but the worth of nothing.

Back in 1990 I had a series of strange phone conversations with McMamara while doing research for my book We Were Soldiers Once And Young. McNamara prefaced every conversation with this: "I do not want to comment on the record for fear that I might distort history in the process." Then he would proceed to talk for an hour, doing precisely that with answers that were disingenuous in the extreme - when they were not bald-faced lies.

Upon hanging up I would call Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam and run McNamara's comments past them for deconstruction and the addition of the truth.

The only disagreement i ever had with Dave Halberstam was over the question of which of us hated him the most. In retrospect, it was Halberstam.

When McNamara published his first book - filled with those distortions of history - Halberstam, at his own expense, set out on a journey following McNamara on his book tour around America as a one-man truth squad.

McNamara abandoned the tour.

The most bizarre incident involving McNamara occurred when he was president of the World Bank and, off on his summer holiday, he caught the Martha's Vineyard ferry. It was a night crossing in bad weather. McNamara was in the salon, drink in hand, schmoozing with fellow passengers. On the deck outside a vineyard local, a hippie artist, glanced through the window and did a double-take. The artist was outraged to see McNamara, whom he viewed as a war criminal, so enjoying himself.

He immediately opened the door and told McNamara there was a radiophone call for him on the bridge. McNamara set down his drink and stepped outside. The artist immediately grabbed him, wrestled him to the railing and pushed him over the side. McNamara managed to get his fingers through the holes in the metal plate that ran from the top of the railing to the scuppers.

McNamara was screaming bloody murder; the artist was prying his fingers loose one at a time. Someone heard the racket and raced out and pulled the artist off.

By the time the ferry docked in the vineyard McNamara had decided against filing charges against the artist, and he was freed and walked away.

I read that obituary earlier today and found it somewhat distasteful. Did a great many people die due to some (many?) of McNamara's decisions? Yes, they did. Unquestionably. But the man also worked towards nuclear disarmament and solving poverty in third world countries. There are a great many shades of grey to the man. Really, I need to read his books and books others have written about him, but, as I said in my earlier post, my connection with the Vietnam War is purely a cinematic one, and I after The Fog of War (one of the most interesting and powerful documentaries I've ever seen), I feel pity more than anything for him.

[skuhn8]

I understand that there can often be a natural good-willed aversion to speaking poorly of the dead. Nonetheless, we should give the devil his due and do our duty by him: the truly shitty should be shat upon without restraint even more so while funeral arrangements are being made. It's a dirty job but we owe it to society to divide and point at them--'You should never have been let back in amongst us!' do not bury him in hallowed ground; set him off in a potters field populated with despots. He should have been mocked to an early grave, humiliated, his books ridiculed within display windows if not reedited with extreme prejudice. And thanks for pulling Cheney into this because he's another piece of pure evil that should be kicked in the balls every single day upon rising in a specially devised Salo; less body count but same selfish if not nefarious intent.

Kudos to the artist for acting on instinct.

[kaujot]

Well, as I said, I don't consider him to be truly shitty at all. The differences between him and Cheney are vast.

[skuhn8]

Well, as I said, I don't consider him to be truly shitty at all. The differences between him and Cheney are vast.

McNamara was a major cog in the mechanism that claimed approx one million lives and blighted the notion of America being a Force of Good both home and abroad. The damage he inflicted is irreparable. I'd say that Cheney needs another decade of opportunity to catch up--and I believe his Career in Evil is on the skids. He's got little more than gadfly pestering 'pon the podium these days.

I understand that there really isn't much at stake in arguing about this, but am confounded how a guy like McNamara can fail to qualify as 'truly shitty'. But perhaps some of us enjoy a much higher population in the seventh circle of hell than others. I know mine is very dense indeed--I like to keep it that way so they can be spitted and rotated for embers easier .