--- But why was Leni

--- But why was Leni chosen to be the whipping girl? Damnit, I still want to know.

This guy asks all the right questions, except for the one that matters most: why was she chosen to take the fall, rather than others?

I think he drops a hint in his admiration for Triumph of Will:
"Triumph of the Will," her portrait of the 1934 National Socialist
Party Congress in Nuremberg, is, without a doubt, one of the greatest
movies ever made. It is also, just as unquestionably, a glorification
of Hitler.
From its shots of round-cheeked German children handing their Führer
flowers, to the breathtaking aerial perspectives of 100,000 massed Nazi
storm troopers, Riefenstahl's film is about elevating Hitler to
godhead. What the camera sees is the unifying power of one Germany, one
Reich, under the leadership of Hitler.
And Riefenstahl had to have seen it, too. She always argued that she
was doing a job, that she was an artist and that she couldn't do
anything other than create art out of what she saw. But when Hitler
mentions God -- and the film cuts to those massive Nazi banners,
billowed by a wind that any malleable German mind might have imagined
came from heaven itself -- there's an intellect at work that knows
exactly what it's doing. And why.
Never mind that the author drops into her mind and claims to know what
she was thinking when she cut to Nazi flags when Hitler talked about
God. Oh, yes. Cutting to the flags, with all of the rich symbolism that
they proclaimed whilst Hitler rambled on about God shows
us what she was really thinking…it’s obvious, of course. I don’t
know how I could have possibly been so stupid as to think otherwise.
Duh.. I hate to contradict the guy, but it is completely possible
that she cut to the flags because, maybe, she wanted to cut to the
flags and had completely blocked out Hitler’s ramblings by that point
in the editing process. I don’t know, but then I also don’t presume
to know, either. The author seems to presume that Triumph of Will was the singularly best bit of the whole Nazi propaganda machine. I hate to point out, however, Triumph of Will’s
technological prowess contradicts the clumsiness of Goebbels propaganda
machine entirely. Most people assume that Riefenstahl was beholden to
the propaganda machine, so of course she was a part of it, hence
deserving of blame. It’s a debatable point, and I don’t claim to
have the answer. Personally, I can’t imagine, knowing the bunch of
sexist pigs that the Nazis were, that they would trust a woman with the
delivery of their message. But the author does what everyone else is
pleased to do nowadays: throw early 21st Century hindsight onto the
problem. Goebbels’ propaganda was clever, of course, because it worked.

Rubbish.

Ever seen some of the crap Goebbels’ propaganda minions put out? Posters of
big-nosed Jewish men and women who would take everything the average
German trusted away? Translated roughly by the husband, the German text
means that the Jews were the ones who sponsored the war and who kept it
going. This is clever? Germans bought this?

I suspect the reason Riefenstahl was tagged for the job of whipping girl was that the work was too good. Triumph of Will
was precisely that: a triumph of will, with Hitler starring as the
victor and when done in such a technologically stunning way, of course,
that means---particularly when compared with such a crude poster put
out by Goebbels---of course this is the reason Hitler was successful in pulling so many into his flock.
This line of reasoning asks us to pay no mind whatsoever to the German people of the day. They were just sheep. Baaaaaaaaa. They didn’t have a brain in their heads, so of course they were malleable.
Riefenstahl, by no means is innocent in glorifying Hitler and the Nazi
party, but let’s be realistic here. She was not behind the message:
she just filmed it. There’s plenty of blame to go around here.
Hitler; Goebbels; Himmler; Heydrich and his Final Solution; Rommel for
successfully fighting a war that celebrated such garbage; there are too
many to name. But it’s important that we don’t forget the most
important culprit. We musn’t forget the average German who bought into it.
Hitler may have had all the guns in the world, but without a supporting
populace, he would have been a despot without a country: a Napoleon in
Elba.
Place the blame where it most surely lies: on the shoulders of the
average ordinary German who was content to hate people he was told to
hate; the average German who was more than happy to blame his woes on
people who had no fault in creating them in the first place; the
average German who never questioned that maybe this was wrong and who
was vicious in the perceived act of getting even…even if that act
only required keeping quiet. What more could someone ask for? Benefit
without any work? Damn, that’s a good deal. These are the same
Germans who took over houses Jews were kicked out of. The same Germans
who claimed Jewish businesses as their own and reaped the rewards, and
who, most importantly, kept silent when their neighbors were taken away
in the dead of night to be killed and sometimes subjected to a fate
worse than death in its totality and actuality. These average Germans
of the time are the ones who screamed and shouted and did everything
they could to support Hitler and his idea of who had brought them to
the wrack and ruin they were suffering through; they supported
Hitler’s notion of a state where there would be no Jews if he got his
way. They lined the streets and comprised the cheering audience at
Nuremburg. Riefenstahl just filmed it. Who is more culpable? Still
haven’t figured it out yet. Still don’t know why Riefenstahl was
marked for duty as the whipping girl. And I suspect I won’t ever
know. And that’s sad: all it tells people is that as long as the art
comes out supporting the victor, it will be considered well done and
will be supported. If art is to be taken for art’s sake and art’s
sake alone, Riefenstahl’s case shows us we are in serious trouble as
a civilization; that we haven’t progressed as much as we thought we
had. --- Alias
premiered last night.
Woo-damn-hoo. Sunday nights are worthwhile again! Theories:
1. We won’t find out where Sydney’s been until the last episode of
the season, but I’m sure that little weasel Sloane has something to
do with it. 2. Mamma’s got a brand new bag. What that is, I don’t
know, but I’m sure it’s got something to do with her usual
activities. It’s a wild guess, but it’s within the realm of
possibilities that she had something to do with Sydney’s
disappearance. Mother and daughter together again. I’m not sure that
Daddy’s going to disclose everything he learned about Mamma’s
activities while he was working with her to find Sydney. That’s just
not his style and wouldn’t we be surprised if that cat got out of the
bag, eh? Anyway, Daddy will enjoy lusting after her, I’m sure.
Although, Lena Olin is nowhere to be found on the Alias
website. Hmmmm. The husband will be crushed, I’m sure.
3. I’m a little frustrated that we’re going back to this bogus
ratcheting of the sexual tension between Sydney and Vaughan. He’s
married now, of course, so we are back at square one. Grrrrrr. Not
happy about this development. 4. Sloane’s front is bogus. And I
definitely don’t think the Rambaldi machine just put out the word peace.
Duh. It’s amazing how he puts crap out there and expects people to
buy it. Very funny that it’s a UN sponsored agency that he’s
working for. Irony, perhaps? {insert dry chuckle here}
5. If Sydney’s alive and kicking now, the questions that need to be
answered are: why doesn’t she remember any of it? Who was using her?
(I’m guessing Sloane, but that might be too easy.) And, most
importantly, is she still under their control and doesn’t know
anything about it? Hmmmmm. 6. I’m assuming Sark is still in jail, but
for how long? If Irina is nowhere to be found, and Sloane is reportedly
on the side of the angels, they need a bad guy and Sark is that guy.
Too bad, though; he’s a hottie. I have a sinking suspicion he and
Sydney will hook up in the post-Vaughan aftermath, or he’ll at least
try. I adore this show. It’s good fun. --- Oh, it’s theory time.
Feel free to skip if you’re not in the mood for a little bit of
conspiracy theory. This is the web, after all: conspiracy theories keep
the servers nice and lubricated, so I’ll throw my little bit of K-Y
out there to keep the thing running. Anyway, I’m sure someone’s
already put this out there, so it’s not going to be any big deal. I
think we’ve got a blood feud on our hands that has absolutely nothing
to do with the alleged leaking of the identity of a CIA operative by
the White House. If you want proof, go somewhere else. I have no highly
placed sources in the White House or at Langley: this is just me making
an educated guess. This is completely internal. Bush vs. Tenet: the
deathmatch. It’ll be interesting to see who wins.
You see, I have always wondered how in hell Tenet held onto his job
after 9/11. You have a massive intelligence failure and the Director of
the CIA keeps
his job? How in hell is that possible? Heads have rolled for less in
the past, yet you have the largest and most successful attack on
American soil by enemy combatants since the War of 1812, and the guy
who was supposed to be on the job gets to keep his job? It
makes absolutely no sense. I’ve never bought the argument that has
circulated that it would have been detrimental to the retaliation by
removing the man at the time. Yeah, I can understand about keeping the
coach on in a time of trouble, but if the coach hadn’t won a game the
entire time he was in charge, what’s the point? Let’s see. He was
confirmed by the Senate in 1997. The Embassy bombings in Africa
happened on his watch. The Cole was bombed on his watch. Then you have
hijackings that result in over three thousand dead and the guy gets to keep his job?
What the hell? Tenet is the singular biggest failure in the history of
the CIA and he’s still there, directing the show? How has he managed
to hang on? Why hasn’t Congress called for blood? Sure a few members
have, but there hasn’t been an overwhelming chorus screaming for his
head on a plate, and given the severity of 9/11, and the massive
failure to do anything about preventing it, you would have thought
someone would have been offered up as the sacrificial lamb. Given the
fact Robert Muller started his job as the head of the FBI just a week
before logically he couldn’t be held responsible. So, Tenet was the
obvious choice to please the public, yet nothing happened. The next
question would be why he has managed to hang on. If you go and look at
his biography
on the CIA’s website, you’ll see that he’s covered all the
branches of the government except for the judiciary rather well. He’s
got friends in high places: it would therefore logically follow that
they’re covering his ass rather well. This would be why the emphasis
of the hearings after 9/11 when Tenet testified seemed to focus more on
how underfunded the CIA was; how the failings of the bureaucratic
mindset that has pervaded the CIA workforce prevented the sharing of
intelligence between the FBI and the CIA before 9/11, etc. ad nauseam.
But, you say, Bush can fire Tenet’s ass anytime he chooses. Yes,
that’s technically true. So, why hasn’t he? Personally, I think
Tenet’s too well protected on the Hill, and with the establishment of
the Department of Homeland security, Bush knew he couldn’t really
take on numerous fights at once. He was going to establish the biggest
new bureaucracy in the history of the government, he was going to war
and he needed the money to do both, and he needed Congress to allocate
the money for both. There was no room to take on a well protected head
of the CIA. He also probably thought that a distinct benefit of the
establishment of the Dept. of Homeland Security was that it would
weaken the CIA’s stranglehold on intelligence, effectively reducing
Tenet’s power. It’s also within the realm of possibilities that
Tenet offered to resign later in the administration, perhaps before the
campaign for 2004 really got underway, so Bush could assign someone new
while he had a Republican controlled Senate and Tenet would be able to
start a life on the lecture circuit with at least a few victories under
his belt. But that was before Iraq and the resultant brouhaha over
WMDs. The African uranium connection has been a bigger deal in the UK
than it has been here. Whether that’s because American’s have
shorter spans of attention or not, I have no idea, but the essence of
the argument is that the UK shared the information that Iraq had
possibly bought uranium in Niger. The Brits thought it was true; the
White House, trusting the Brits, put it in the State of the Union; The
CIA says they vetted the speech, but that it slipped through somehow.
So, we have yet another admitted screw-up
by the CIA. A screw-up that makes the administration look particularly
bad, and if it’s as I suppose, Bush quietly told Tenet it was time
for him to get the hell out of dodge and Tenet refused.
Why haven’t we heard anything about this, if this is the case?
Because this White House is leak-proof. The only things that get leaked
are the ones they want
leaked. Everyone that works there is on the same team and it’s
obvious. They know that information is power and they use it: it’s a
much, much different administration than Clinton’s, where everyone
had their own agenda and it was obvious because of the things that
found their way to the papers. For the Bush administration, the media
is a tool to be held tightly in their hands; they don’t trust the
media, like Clinton did. Clinton may have used the media, but they used
him every day of the week and twice on Sundays, and Clinton trusted
them to do so; he believed the old mantra that there was no such thing
as bad publicity. The Bush administration will only be used if it’s
in their interest to be used. If you wanted to do a study on media
whores, I believe you’d find that the Clinton administration
mistakenly thought they had the ultimate control over the media and
that the media would be favorable to them whatever the story; the Bush
administration knows this is not the case, hence they protect
themselves by keeping tight control on the information. It’s possible
for things to happen within the current administration that the
citizenry has absolutely no knowledge about. Can you honestly say that
about Clinton’s administration? I don’t think so; everything found
its way to the media at one point in time or another. So, now we have a
leak, reportedly from a source in the White House, that the former
ambassador to Iraq’s wife was a CIA operative. If this is true, the
question would be why the White House leaked it. I suspect it’s to
make the CIA look bad. Tit for tat. To put a little more pressure on
Tenet to resign. Tenet, obviously, doesn’t want to go. So, what does
he do? He puts the DOJ on the case, and every Democratic presidential
candidate is up and arms about it Like I said, it will be interesting
to see how this plays out. If it turns out the White House was behind
the leak, well, they played their hand poorly,
at the very least. The DOJ could not have been handed a more
uncooperative reporter than Novak. Everyone knows which side of the
fence his loyalties demand he stands on. If he gives up the goods,
I’ll be most surprised. Like I said, it will be interesting to see
how it plays out. It might not go anywhere, it might go all the way.
Who knows at this stage of the game? I suspect, however, that Tenet
will still be standing at the end of the aftermath. Whether or not the
Bush administration will be is another question entirely. --- It was a
movie weekend. I will dutifully report about them tomorrow. --- Oh, and
a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Mr. H. today.