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Kareem’s Villain of the Week

via Reddit.Com

Many of you already know that I’m a huge admirer of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s intellect and writing. Today he hits the target again – and again and again.

Yep, it’s a long post. Here are just a couple of the highlights.

12m Americans believe violence is justified to restore Trump to power
(June 16, 2023)

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I’m going to start with a favorite quote from Dorothy Thompson, the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934: “Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict.” Seeking creative alternatives to violence is what intelligent, civilized, and compassionate people do.

But for some Americans—at least 12 million anyway—violence is their default setting for conflict resolution.

We have to be aware that these people probably can’t be dissuaded from their eagerness to violence. The gun is to them what a microphone is to a singer on amateur night: a way to amplify their voice to an audience they believe doesn’t hear them. To be fair, we do hear them gleefully spouting their drivel on social media, but we ignore what they have to say because, so often, it’s nonsense. Ten percent believe the government is run by Satan-worshipping pedophiles? Twenty percent believe the election was stolen? They proudly hold tight to opinions unsupported by evidence that has been repeatedly debunked. There’s no reasoning with them.

Which is exactly why the GOP pursue them so diligently. They will vote loyally no matter what you do or say, like cult members.

Suppression breeds violence. Usually, it’s those being suppressed that have no other path to freedom than to violently revolt against their oppressors. In this case, it’s the oppressors who want to resort to violence in order to maintain the status quo of being oppressors. Of minorities. Of women. Of non-Christains. Of LGBTQ+. To justify their violence fetish, they cast themselves in the role of being oppressed by a society hellbent on righting past wrongs and maturing past a morally and economically bankrupt philosophy of “Greed is good….”

LB: And, a bit further down, he gives us this:

...I’m not sure when GOP hardliners became that belligerent bozo in Westerns who whips up the drunks in a saloon to kill the sheriff and lynch the accused. I’m not sure when, but I am sure that’s who they are now….

Read it all at Kareem’s SubStack Blog

LYMI,

LaughingEagle

An Interesting Look into the Current Writers Guild Strike

(via wga.org)

I didn’t write this article, but I wish I had. I find myself agreeing with Zack Arnold (below) as much as I did with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar a few weeks ago. And that was a hell of a lot of agreement.

What do you all think?

Guest Column: If Writers Lose the Standoff With Studios, It Hurts All Filmmakers
by Zack Arnold

No matter the job title or craft, the writers strike is the inflection point for the future of how all filmmakers will make a living (or won’t) in the entertainment industry. As artists, creatives and storytellers, this is our last, best and final opportunity to refuse the way we currently do business as “normal,” because as we learned three years ago when the world shut down, “normal wasn’t working.” If we want things to change, It’s now or never.

Whether it’s the acceptance of 16-hour-plus days (and “Fraturdays,” late Friday shoots that go into early Saturday hours) as normal, rolling lunches with no actual meal breaks, wages not even remotely keeping pace with inflation, the expectation anyone working from home is available 24/7 for notes and revisions, the Uberfication of mini-rooms (a small group of writers assembled before a formal series order) that exploit writers’ time and ideas, hiding residual pay in mysterious streaming data, and the complete erosion of any boundaries between work and life — we are dangerously close to the extinction of filmmaking as a sustainable career path….

Read it all at the Hollywood Reporter

LYMI,

Laughing Eagle

Why I Love Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The Incomparable Kareem (Malcolm Garret photo via pexels.com)

…I know what most people think, but, nope, it’s not Kareem’s astounding basketball career that makes me a true believer (with apologies to certain guy named Stan Lee), it’s that Kareem is as good a writer as anyone in this day and age could ever read.

Especially his non-fiction – most easily found on his substack website – which gets right to the heart of things, demonstrating a rare combination of clear thought and warm heart.

For example:

Life in the Red Zone (May 19, 2023)
by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

 Life in My Seventies, Study: Billionaires Not that Smart, Study: Loneliness as Dangerous as Smoking, NBA Social Justice Champion Finalists, Elon Gets It Wrong (Again), Joan Baez Sings, and More

I recently turned 76, and for the past six years, I’ve been living in the Red Zone. The Red Zone is when famous people keep dying at around the same age as you are. (Last month Tim Bachman, co-founder of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, died at the age of 71. So did Lasse Wellander, the longtime guitarist for ABBA. He was 70.)

The Red Zone is like the section of a car’s gas gauge just past E that, when the needle hovers over it, you’re never sure exactly how many miles you have left before the car conks out. You’re still going strong, but you’re not sure for how long.

Of course, it’s not just famous people dying, but those are the ones I read about with their 70-something ages prominently displayed like flashing warning lights directed at me.

I don’t dwell on death. I don’t fidget over impending doom. I’m not crafting pithy last words. (I might just use Oscar Wilde’s last words: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”) Quite the opposite. Like most people over sixty, I’m actually happier than when I was younger (“Older Americans upbeat about aging, future”)….

Read it all at Life in My Seventies, Study: Billionaires Not that Smart, Study: Loneliness as Dangerous as Smoking, NBA Social Justice Champion Finalists, Elon Gets It Wrong (Again), Joan Baez Sings, and More (substack.com)

LYMI,

LB