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Sunday, November 26. 2006

Thanks and Rememberance

Carl Forkes — remembered
Hey brother, Wisconsin Football did well again this year.

Thanksgiving has come and gone, we’re eating leftovers — if we’re lucky. This year, There aren’t any left overs in this little condo as I didn’t do the cooking. Thanksgiving was at a close friend’s home. But I love left over turkey and stuffing. I might make some stuffing just to have it around for a week.

There was a place empty at my table this year, my dear and eldest brother Carl has passed on, his ashes safely stored at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. I spilled some mashed potatoes and gravy on my shirt, just as he so often did around the holiday table. It always brought a smile to my face to see a bit of Thanksgiving dinner faithfully preserved on his shirt … except that nice white shirt I got him for Christmas one year. After the first spill I demanded he wear a different shirt at the dinner table, one of his flannel shirts that tend to hide the stains.

But I remembered mine wasn’t the only table missing someone dear, as there are still hundreds of thousands of troops deployed around the world as we sit here, about 175,000 in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan and of course over 3,000 families will forever be without someone dear, a man or woman who has given their last full measure of devotion in Iraq and Afghanistan.

William Kristol and Juan Williams

And yet, on Fox News Sunday this morning, William Kristol was on a panel with Mara Liasson, Brit Hume, Juan Williams and moderator Chris Wallace, telling everyone, with no repudiation from the rest of the panel, the troops had failed in Iraq. I quickly hit the record button to make sure it’s preserved as Fox has a habit of editing programs when one of their own says something stupid. The transcript hasn’t been posted as of this writing, so it will be of interest to see if Kristol’s comment stands.

And then later see how Kristol tries to spin his comment, “We have failed to win the war militarily,” so it isn’t an insult to the troops on the ground.

The war rages one with no end in sight. All the newsies are saying so, whether it be Fox, MSNBC, CNN and the major network news organizations. Everyone is waiting for the Baker-Hamilton group to make its recommendations, as if the silver bullet is there, waiting in their report. Or, as was suggested on FNS, the recommendations from the Pentagon, now that Robert Gates will take the helm.

Kristol, the neocon master who first began pushing for the invasion of Iraq over ten years ago, is now a critic of the war he engineered. Like his neocon partners Ken Adelman and Richard Perle, he is distancing himself from the failure of the Bush regime, despite his integral part in the fiasco. And no one, certainly no one on that Fox News panel, questions Kristol’s flip-flop on Bush and Iraq. Who really has resorted to “cut and run”?

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Robert Altman and Garrsion Keillor

Over the years, since first introduced to it 20 years ago, on either Saturday or Sunday, I would tune into the public radio station for a listen to A Prairie Home Companion, the Garrison Keillor radio show that has now been on the air for 30 years.

To celebrate this milestone in entertainment longevity, the movie of the show was released. Many of the radio program’s favorites were in the cast and some of the bits as well, absent the most famous bit, “Lake Wobegon.” That was disappointing; how can you make a movie titled A Prairie Home Companion without the News From Lake Wobegon?

Nevertheless, it was a great movie, featuring a great cast: Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, Woody Harrelson, Virginia Madsen, Tommy Lee Jones, John C. Reilly, Lindsay Lohan, L.Q. Jones, Maya Rudolph, Marylouise Burke, Sue Scott, Tim Russell, Tom Keith, The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band and a list of others, directed by Robert Altman.

The man who made M•A•S•H and The Player, Nashville and The Long Goodbye, Dr. T and the Women (A very surprising film!) and The Company (Another surprising film written by Neve Campbell); probably the most idiosyncratic director of our time — who never won the Oscar for Best Director.

Robert Altman — A life time of art.

His 1970 hit M•A•S•H helped define the anti-war movement during the Vietnam era, The Long Goodbye (1973) was his first jab at mocking Hollywood, the industry and Nashville did the same for the music scene. Then there was The Player, the ultimate swipe at the motion picture industry and one of the five best films of the 1990’s — and probably why he didn’t win an Oscar for Best Director.

Altman died in Los Angeles November 20 and we will no longer look forward to his latest film. Altman’s focus in the film is on death or loss. One of APHC’s fictional characters dies in a dressing room, two sisters constantly speak of their departed sisters and mother, the future of APHC up in the air; it was as if Altman thought to say goodbye to his audience. I guess that’s all the reason to watch this film if you haven’t already. After reading the news of the day, I also wonder if he wasn’t making another comment on war, this one far more subtle than M*A*S*H. Something more to ponder.

Robert Altman was a veteran of World War II, a co-pilot on bombing missions over Borneo and the Dutch East Indies, this contribution to our lives always over-looked when considering the full measure of the man. And I always suspect this shaped his view of war and made him always questions the reasons for war.

The Altman family was missing someone this Thanksgiving too. He, like my brother, was a good man.

Posted by Tim Forkes in HOLIDAYS at 10:27 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

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