Rob Lifford

The quietly brilliant, usually overlooked career of Chris Whitley continues with two new releases, one an album of new material and one a collection of songs from his first three albums treated to the stripped-down approach he took on his Dirt Floor record. Highly recommended.

Bunker wrote a post this morning linking to this NY Times article about Sony Pictures buying the rights to make a movie out of Richard Clarke’s controversial book Against All Enemies. Bunker states that:

This might be the major Democratic effort to unseat Bush in November.

I was fascinated by where this whole development could lead, and wrote a long reply. As so often happens, I spotted some typos immediately after posting it, so I’ve cleaned it up and reprinted it below, with a couple of minor additions and clarifications as well:

Even if they get this movie made and ready to market in time (not likely anyway), the GOP will find a way to tie the studio up in court to block the film’s release.

It’s a big ol’ can of worms to open up, isn’t it? Can a major corporation get away with a blatant attempt to influence an election like that, under the guise of art and mass entertainment? Is this a first amendment crisis waiting to happen? Some will argue that it’s unpatriotic or unethical to use a film, a very emotionally manipulative medium, to influence history as it’s being made. And some will contend that the is the precise purpose of the medium. (So far, I kind of think they’re both right&#8211a dangerously wishy-washy point of view, I know.)

But anyway, our politicos are practical folk, and they’ll know that the long-term implications take a back seat to the immediate need to keep that film out of theaters before November.

Unless Bunker is thinking, of course, that the studio is counting on the legal effort to block the movie, unseating the president not by making him look like he ignored a threat but by making him look like that Orwellian “older-male-sibling” character… Interesting possibility.

As an aside, I believe one of the TV networks has already (or soon will) put out a made-for-TV movie on a similar topic—insider political stuff leading up to 9/11—which I believe plays out more or less as a campaign commercial for the administration. So, it cuts both ways.

Looking forward to watching this whole mess play out.

Been away from the blog for awhile, but the past few weeks have been productive. Among other things, I’ve…

• Laid out my travel plans for CK’s wedding in Rhode Island next month;
• painted our shutters a nice burgundy color to replace the hideous baby blue that they were;
• helped the brother-in-law to move into a new place, reclaiming and reorganizing our garage in the process;
• seen a pretty good movie and a fantastic one;
• made some important under-the-hood changes to a couple of websites I maintain; and
• spent some quality time with the Corpus Christi in-laws up at our place, including a nice kickoff to my 2004 golf season with Bunker.

Now I just need to catch up on sleep, and answer all the old e-mail in my inbox, and all shall be well.

Getting close to completing a pretty solid new source-ordered 3-column layout. There’s just one little (OK, big) IE5/mac issue to iron out. If you can help with that, please do — I’m too sleepy to keep messing around with it.

Well, I’ve just got to check this out.

Never mind the title (just random spewage from a movie). Managed to go to a SXSW kickoff party at Frog Design, following a Web Standards Meetup. Met lots of influencial and ridiculously talented folks like Eric Meyer, Dave Shea, Douglas Bowman, Tantek Çelik, and more. The only other thing I could’ve asked for would’ve been a Zeldman sighting, I guess. Maybe next time.