FIXED. Interesting coverage by The Consumerist of a Senate hearing on credit card rates:

9:37: Levin is most incensed by the retroactive nature of rate increases. Take a consumer whose debt jumps from 15% to 27%. That new rate applies not to new debts, but to all incurred debts.

9:41: Bonnie Rushing has two Bank of America cards. One is associated with AAA. Both cards had an 8% rate. BoA bumped the AAA rate from 8% to 23% because Bonnie's FICO score fell. It didn't matter that her payment history was perfect. Bonnie isn't sure why her FICO score dropped, but she thinks it may be because she opened a store-branded card at Macy's to receive an immediate 10% discount on a purchase, unaware that it would affect her FICO score.

9:43: When Bonnie received the rate-increase notice, she opted-out and closed her account. BoA tried to pressure her to keep the new, higher rate, but after she complained to state and federal authorities, BoA let her close her account. BoA's president will testify today.

9:44: Capital One raises rates by looking for accounts that haven't been bumped in three years—but they don't use FICO scores.

9:44: One consumer was hit by three rate increases in three months. Oftentimes the rates doubled or tripled. The consumer was able to reduce her rates by calling and fighting the credit card companies.

9:46: Levin: "If you shop with a credit card, as most consumers do, dangers lurk."

9:46: Most people don't realize that their FICO score drops even if they approach—not exceed, approach—their credit limit.

9:47: The Committee asked who determines a FICO score, who determines when a rate jumps because of a FICO score. The answer: computers.

9:47: Issuers don't know why a FICO score drops. They have four "reason codes," generic statements like: "balance grew too fast compared to credit limit," or "balance on bank cards is too low"...

I think we should regulate the credit card industry into next Sunday, but I eagerly await rebuttal from Megan McArdle, who will probably think I just want to keep poor people from having credit.

THEY GOT WORK TO DO AND THEY DO IT. ONLY THEY HAPPEN TO BE THE BEST IN THE BUSINESS! Rupert Murdoch, patron of the Page Three* Girls and "Temptation Island," has bought Beliefnet. Rushing with open arms to greet him is Beliefnet's Rod Dreher:

This is good for Beliefnet, trust me. Murdoch is an Internet visionary, and his deep pockets will only allow this website to diversity and improve its content. I have absolutely no fear at all that Team Rupert will in any way dictate content. Murdoch's core ideology is capitalism -- for better and for worse.

Shortly thereafter, Brother Rod returns to railing at our godless "commercial culture" and expressing horror that some people hope "Muslims will be vanquished by ingesting the same degrading toxins that have so weakened the West."

To add to the hilarity, Dreher elsewhere hears a story about someone who "was prone to be stubborn and enthusiastic, take a stand, and revel in the battle," and observes, "Boy, can I see that in myself. I am prone to mysticism, ritual and aesthetics, as well as moral rigor."

If there is one person on the face of God's green earth who is the anti-Christ of Crunchy Conservatism, it's Rupert Murdoch. His commercial endeavors are a perfect synthesis of the values of what Dreher himself called "the Party of Lust" and "the Party of Greed." Yet Dreher calls him "Uncle Rupert." It's enough to shake one's faith in modish rightwing movements. Next we'll be hearing that metrocon thing was all bullshit.

Like Dreher, I look forward to Murdoch's improvements of Beliefnet content: the "Who Would Jesus Do?" photo-features, and examinations of the theologies of Jack Bauer and Peter Griffin, etc. With any luck Dreher will be commissioned to write them.

*UPDATE I haven't seen the Sun in ages and forgot where they put the topless women. Thanks, readers, for the correx. Comprehensive BBC story about the phenomenon here.

UPDATE 2. Both Dreher and Andrew Sullivan protest that Murdoch never tells them what to write. I don't see why he'd feel the need, but I am in some sympathy with their argument, having labored for people who didn't share my views many times. (There was, for example, the restaurant manager who thought I should wash my shirt, or at least the cuffs, more often because I was serving food. What an asshole!) On the other hand, Dreher affects to believe that we're in the grip of an epochal struggle with sexed-up capitalism. Were he serious about that, I would expect him to revile Murdoch, relocate to a cave, and send his messages via grainy videos filled with scriptural commentary and threats to resume film criticism if his demands are not met. As I don't expect a new Great Awakening anytime soon, maybe I'll live to see him take his beliefs to their natural conclusion.

APOCALYPSE NOW. Today, The Anchoress:

I really don’t mean to keep writing about Hillary Clinton - I really want to start thinking about Advent more...

I would use the Anchoress' "Our Hillary" tag to guide you to the treasure trove of Clintophobia at her site, but to her everything is Hillary. For example, here's a post that started out with the Big Bang Theory:

More funny money situations for Hillary, but of course, they don’t matter. The press is incurious and disinterested in these matters. they do not seem to care that the Clintons seemingly have a really interesting relationship with CNN, and Hillary, afterall, has a D after her name, which means only good news rules.

Can you imagine how different her life would be if she had an R after her name, Like Condi Rice? No magazine covers and glory, then, babe, sorry. And no money bundling problems tolerated, and hushed up, I’m sure. Yes, it is pretty tiresome. And staggeringly scandalous, if you think about it, which no one seems to want to. There is a willing suspension of disbelief, or something....

The tags on this are "Serving up hot links" and "America." It's when you start hiding bottles that you know you have a problem.

Of course, should The Anchoress and all other similarly afflicted souls decide to avail a support group, there wouldn't be a church basement in all the land big enough to hold them.

Like a surprising number of evil traitors, I don't much care for Hillary Clinton myself. A Presidential race between her and Rudolph Giuliani would be a good reason to flee the country. Yet if such a nightmare befell us, in the likely event that I am still trapped in this godforsaken hellhole, I will, with the demented glee of Christopher Walken blowing his brains out in The Deer Hunter, pull the Democratic lever. Because, with our Republic on the verge of certain extinction, there will be nothing but vengeance on my mind. I know that, before Queen Clinton 44 sends us all to concentration camps, there will be many prominent Republican suicides -- I don't see, for example, how Paul Weyrich could stand to draw breath in such a world -- and that many more such will perish in the doomed resistance of the Red Dawn Militias to the occupying forces of the United Nations. It will be some comfort to remember, as I lay dying of malnutrition in some lice-infested barracks, the look on the Ole Perfesser's face when the Blue Helmets burst into his McMansion, and his final "Heh? Indeed?"

Alternatively, we could nominate and elect some other Democrat, and spare ourselves all this drama. But, being Godless and all, I will take what I can get.

UPDATE. Commenter monkey dave: "She's not much of an anchoress if she's got a big screen TV with Fox News blaring in her hovel. What gets done is what you spend time doing, and it's her own decision to spend her time thinking about Hillary Clinton. Is there a conservative anywhere who actually takes responsibility for his or her own actions?"

JUNGLE FEVER. Ed Driscoll punctuates one of his War on Christmas ravings with this apparent non-sequitur:

(Don't miss this comment by one of Jules [Crittenden's] readers, which puts the Cold Civil War and its northern front into sharp perspective.)

And if you click over you see this:

Let me see if I understand all of this correctly. We are supposed to remain silent about a predominately black culture that romanticizes treating all women as “hos,” advocates murder, especially of police officers...

There's nothing in the Driscoll post that obviously relates to the "predominately black culture." But he lunges for it anyway, as if he can't help himself.

In my experience, this is how it usually goes with conservatives and racial matters: they'll be going on about something else, say Truman Capote and the death penalty, and suddenly, out of nowhere come the jungle drums:

Could it have something to do with who Perry killed? He killed a father, a mother, a son, and a daughter. Your basic social building block. Well, we got spares. If he’s shotgunned four Black women, would we have so much sympathy, so much abiding interest in the possibility of love between the killer and his literary confidante? No. Well, you could argue, that would be a racist act, a hate crime; killing the Clutters had no ideological component. I suppose not, although enough has been made of Perry’s own horrible family life to imagine that he might have been filled with rage at people who’d gotten it right. I'm not stupid enough to suggest that "Capote" and "Infamous" are dismissive of the Clutters because they were white and represented the social norm lib'rul Hollywood hates and wants to replace with pagan vegan polygamists - please. No. But...

...but what if they'd been black, huh? Then you liberals would get mad because you love black people.

Where does this stuff come from? The depths, friends. Many of these guys just don't have any significant contact with black people. I'm not sure that Lileks has ever seen a black person except on TV. But they know liberals love 'em, which makes black people (like France, lattes, Chardonnay, and deodorant) a thing to abjure.

Of course, they can only go so far with this. They are prevented from using racial epithets outright (that is, to the extent that they do refrain) by the etiquette of the time (and, to be fair, by whatever vestigal wisps of soul they may possess). Like all "political correctness," this bugs the shit out of them, but they can't break loose from it lest they be Lotted. So it festers deep in their souls until one day they're talking about something else and suddenly -- Jumanji!

And they go on as if nothing happened, probably remembering nothing and hoping it wasn't too bad.

Of course some of them can't let it alone. We call them "pro-science conservatives." We need not bother about them, as they inhabit their own island far, far from the mainland.

UPDATE. Brian C.B. in comments: "And, how is it that when I went to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans to help out homeowners in the Holy Cross district, and when I work with homeowners of modest means in my own town in an effort to fix up historic properties, and these folks happen to be African-American, they turn out to be grateful, polite, hard-working, well-mannered, devoted to their families, church, and community, while also being pretty sure that they deserve exactly the same treatment as what us white folk get, no more or less? Has the GOP so completely alienated itself from people of color that they construct a whole demonic culture from iTunes?"

NOT THAT AGAIN. Billy Hollis at QandO thinks Congressional term limits is a good issue to revive. It sure made a big impression in 1994 when Newt Gingrich got Congressional Republicans to commit to it. But in later years many of the Congressmen who Contracted with America to create a term-limited "citizen legislature" decided they would just as soon stay in Congress beyond the 12-year window.

I know my fellow citizens have short memories, but I can't imagine they would greet new term-limit pledges with enthusiasm. They might instead wonder what kind of suckers the pledging candidates take them for.

I keep hearing bold ideas meant to rescue the Republicans, like Douthat's and Salam's "Sam's Club Republicans" scheme ("Above all, [the Republican party] needs to think as much about meeting the concerns of working- and middle-class Americans..."). The main problem with these programs is that you have to keep people from snorting in derision when they hear about them. In this regard the Republican candidates are currently at a great disadvantage, which is why they keep going on about immigrants and Islamofascists rather than proposing Contracts with/Morning in America. (Giuliani does offer such a contract mostly comprised of mush -- e.g., "I will increase adoptions, decrease abortions, and protect the quality of life for our children" -- but without Bernie Kerik to lean on people to sign, I doubt it will have many takers.)

Destroying Americans' faith in government worked wonders for the Republicans for a long time, but it has left them without much standing to inspire us. That's why they can't shake Ron Paul: He's the only one of them who seems to believe in something besides his own electability.

Well, actually, Huckabee seems to believe in Jesus. Maybe they'll nominate him.

BLOGGING THE ATROCITIES. More crime scene reporting from Ann Althouse:

Is that what you want in a President? Someone who feels extra confusion because she's a mother?

But I don't believe that for one minute. I think that was just what was considered a good script. I don't happen to think it is a good script, because I don't want a President to roil into a mommyesque ball of emotion when a few people are in danger. Yet that's not Hillary. The only question is why she thought a statement like that was a good one. She probably wanted to make sure not to confirm the widely held belief that she's unemotional, and, while she was at it, delight all the ladies out there who lap up emotional drivel.

Apparently Althouse thinks she's watching a TV show called "America's Next Top Democratic Candidate." If Clinton gets shot, she'll tell us it's a ploy to bring some of the old Kennedy magic to her campaign.

I've been hanging around this echo chamber a long time. I wonder what normal people think when they stumble upon this sort of madness? Say Joe or Jane Six-Pack mistypes an URL and comes across Ann Winebox (or even Roy 40-oz). What do they imagine they're looking at? Maybe they have to read a whole issue of People to get back to normal.

And we wonder why no one is interested in politics.

SHORTER ROD DREHER: See how introspective this nice Chinese millionaire is! Why can't our Negroes be like that?

(Number umpteen in a series. )

AMERICA'S LOVE OF CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM DOOMS DEMOCRAT. Tom Maguire follows the hostage drama at a Clinton campaign office:

Setting aside the human toll, my instant guess is that the political impact of this will be bad for Hillary in a way that would not be true for another candidate. This may all change when we get the perpetrator's story but right now Ms. Clinton carries the heavy baggage of a huge favorable rating and this incident will remind people that she is the candidate that enrages a sizable slice of the public.

More pathetic and politically inert details come in. Maguire's take:

It's bad for Hillary.

Interesting colloquy in the comments:

It's bad for Hillary.

I'm not sure I agree with this. I don't think it matters one bit. It looks as if this is just a poor soul and has no effect on Hillary. At least it doesn't change my view of Hillary either way.

I guess I just don't see it.
...

You don't see because you don't want to see.

Hillary is bad and therefore everything that involves -- or doesn't involve -- Hillary is bad. Bad for Hillary.

Hillary drove that man to drink and caused his life to become meaningless.

Tom understands.

I'm glad someone else has a sense of humor about this; I was beginning to think the world had gone mad, again.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: ADDENDUM. Sometimes I worry that my film reviews may not be up to snuff, so thank God Jonah Goldberg occasionally steps up to make me look like Manny Farber:

For example, I'm kind of surprised that the movie left no lasting impression on Steve Sailer. First and foremost it made me want to read the novel.

High praise indeed. I wonder if Goldberg has ever read Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask.

But more importantly, I think you can find some very rich commentary on the American character and predicament in the movie (as Ross suggests in his review in the magazine but, I think, doesn't explore enough). The fatalism, determinism (philosophically speaking), the rejection of cant and the waving away of nostalgia, were all powerful ingredients of the film, at least for me.

Determinism, philosophically speaking! No Country For Old Men is an excellent chase film with twangy talk about the persistence of evil inserted at puzzling intervals. Something that's more like what Goldberg is imagining is John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. Everyone in it speaks a mannered pulp argot, which gives them enough rhetorical headroom to comment in high style on their own "predicament" whether at rest or in action. This keeps the highflown thoughts wedded to character and threaded into the plot.

In No Country, Chighur's conversations are a little in that vein, but the pronouncements of Sheriff Bell and Ellis are closer to the tedious lecture Commissioner Hardy gives the reporters near the end of The Asphalt Jungle: an insertion that is supposed to radiate meaning onto the action from the outside. In Jungle this comes off as a quick gloss or a way of getting around the Hays Office, and is followed by a more appropriate, though downbeat, spurt of narrative; in No Country the Hardys just hang around the periphery being premonitory until near the end, when they surge to subsume and kill the story. This is the real "dismal tide": geezers talking about good and evil (and what do they say, exactly, besides good sure is good and evil sure is evil?) till their chatter drowns out a perfectly good action picture.

Of course Goldberg ends with his own dismal tide:

Anyway we can revisit later. But one last quick point: I've been surprised more people haven't compared it — favorably or unfavorably — to A Simple Plan which I've long argued was one of the most conservative movies made in recent times. The plot alone is remarkably similar (though hardly identical).

Like anything that made Goldberg forget his popcorn for a moment, it has something to do with his politics. I wonder why he goes to the movies at all: doesn't he have a "Star Trek" boxed set and a microwave?

UPDATE. Today's No-Prize goes to Scott C.: "For Goldberg I believe [ars gratia artis] translates literally to farts for farts' sake."

With respect to the Coens, I must say it is rather cheap of me to associate cosmic readings of No Country with Goldberg. For a much worthier essay, see Glenn Kenny.

BACK IN MY DAY... James Poulos on some new movie where a shrink convinces several young stars to get it on:

What’s a blogger to say? Forget gay marriage, frazzled Christian soldiers. This is the door to doom. The pathetic and preposterous conceit of having therapeutic authority set this ‘plot’ into motion is, of course, unnecessary, as many of the LA Times’ own readers must know... Now the authority of monstrosity has been replaced by an authority vacuum. Our orgies today are lame attempts to patch up the cracks in the psyches of damaged little emotional orphans by collective ‘friend incest’. The latchkey aesthetic reaches its nadir...

I admit I am so confused by this passage that I had to check three times to make sure it wasn't written by Reihan Salam. I can say with some certainty, though, that Poulos has never heard of The Harrad Experiment. But doesn't he even remember the porno film Travis took Betsy to see in Taxi Driver ("My parents were very strict...")? The therapy-driven sex romp seems to have endured as a cinematic form. Aren't conservatives supposed to revere tradition? God bless America, I say, and bring on the nubiles!

UPDATE. In comments, ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© wins Spot the Reference. I go hot and cold on the Stranglers. Here's my favorite, via a video in which Cornwell kind of looks like Hugh Laurie:



.

THE NEW FRONT. Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette:

This is not to say that Iraq is a safe place - just that it is fast becoming one. But make no mistake about it, if the troops were brought home tomorrow all hell would break lose, in a manner as yet unseen even in this part of the world.

So that's what victory looks like! He goes on:

The next crucial step in creating the world where many of those troops can come home is exactly this - a steady inflow of folks with skillsets other than combat arms who can help create an environment where fewer guns are needed. We are at the entry point of an upward spiral; increased security sets the stage for improved quality of life for Iraqis which means less need for security forces to maintain that quality of life; without despair people have less incentive to sow chaos.

Guess what specific "skillset other than combat arms" he's talking about in this post? Diplomacy.

I admit that when I first heard the stories (recounted by many of my fellow milbloggers, in fact) of [Foreign Service Officers] wetting their pants at the thought of serving in Iraq I was deeply concerned - but one thing I reminded myself at the time is the ability of journalists to find exactly the one quote from some maladjusted member that isn't representative of the majority of the group to which he can only pretend to belong and trumpet said quote as exactly that which it isn't. After all, they do it to the military all the time.

Actions from folks like Brian Heath confirm my impression, and give me renewed hope that we can and will make that charge.

First, it is strange to hear Greyhawk admit that his "fellow milbloggers" are as credulous as other journalists when it comes to the treasonous meme of the Wet-Pantsed Diplomat. Second, I look forward to the exiting combat troops and the entering diplo corps reenacting the final scene of Battleground, with added dialogue:

"Awright, you diplomugs, we done our part -- now it's up to you!"

"Agreed in principle; we'll draft a preliminary resolution. Where's the tennis court?"

NO THIRD WAY. I've been too busy to climb ladders and must content myself with low-hanging fruit. Gates of Vienna is always easy pickings. Here's a review of Robert Spencer's Religion of Peace? What Christianity Is and What Islam Isn't, which review, before it gets to the attacks on Islam any fan of the blog may expect, takes a good deal of time to dispense with some unfortunate myths about Christianity. The reviewer repeats the Goldbergian story that the Church was actually very nice to Galileo all things considered. Our Gater can't let bad enough alone, and goes on to say that the Spanish Inquisition was also pretty mellow:

The Inquisition wasn’t a proud chapter in Christian history, but it should be remembered that its number of victims has been wildly exaggerated, and pales in comparison to the evils of modern totalitarian movements...

One thing you have to understand about these guys is that they don't even really like Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- because, notwithstanding her frank condemnations of Islamic fundamentalism, she's an atheist with an understandable aversion to all religious schooling, including the Christian variety. One of the Gatesians has even gone so far as to say that Ali be denied Dutch protection from local Islamic thugs, ostensibly on the grounds that her cooperation with Theo van Gogh's Submission invited such thuggery ("Actions have consequences, and this one is hers").

That defenders of the satirical Mohammed cartoons would abandon Ali to lynching seems odd until you consider that the Gaters really do think we're in a "clash of civilizations." But it's not about the West vs. the East. In their view the combatants are Islam and Christianity, period, and they expect the unchurched to either take up the cross or go down with the other heathens. No wonder they're working on a new spin for the Inquisition.

UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT. Ken McCracken says the fact that John Ashcroft was willing to be waterboarded proves that the practice doesn't constitute torture because "no one ever volunteers to undergo real torture."

I assume he believes being nailed to a Volkswagen or having one's hand roasted isn't torture either. And that suicide proves there's no such thing as murder.

Why do these people have such difficulty with the concept of consent?

ANOTHER SUCH VICTORY AND I AM UNDONE. The new idea is that the War in Iraq has been won. Actually that war was won in May of 2003. The subsequent occupation has been a dicier proposition. This too is supposed to be going much better, but we can see the problem in one of the victory declarations:

Do the Iraqi’s like us? Hard to say, but so long as they’re not killing us, let’s be thankful for these small victories and let's pray that the trend continues.

The emphasis, here and elsewhere, on the Iraqi citizens' turn toward the U.S. Armed Forces for protection from militants does not suggest a state of democratic equilibrium, but a Mexican standoff.

It is certainly good news that fewer people are being killed. But Petraeus wants to withdraw the surge troops by July 1. We are still down for a lengthy and (thus far) slow reconstruction, and Administration supporters are downplaying the role of democracy in keeping the lid on. How is that supposed to work?

The aforementioned author says: hearts and minds, and let's take it to Afghanistan (where, we are informed, things ain't going so hot). It seems strange to put such faith in propaganda when the only demonstrable positive effect so far has been achieved by increased force of arms, especially as we are preparing to reduce them.

The Vietnam echoes that Bush resurrected when he announced the surge persist. No one wants a helicopter rooftop scene, so we adjust troop levels, first higher, then lower, in hopes of finding a Goldilocks mean. Conservatives are enraged by the Archbishop of Canterbury's assertion that the U.S. just isn't very good at imperialism. There's a backhanded compliment in there, but I'm afraid the fiddlers of our occupation don't know how to take it.

IN PLAY. Hillary Clinton isn't my favorite candidate but Jeez. Even the nice rightwing college boys are going for the lesbian laughs. The Perfesser plays the angle shot, per usual. Further down the evolutionary scale, the bare notion of celebrity girl-on-girl stirs wistful contemplation of female sexuality among the Acettes:

Do women bother doing that? I never thought of women as having much use for paid escorts.
...

Yes, powerful, driven women have their lusts -- and better sex toys. I would bet Hillary gets off as much as we do at the thought of having someone beautiful pleasuring her.
...

I was in Kenya in 1984 and there were plenty of older German women running around with young men. Strapping young men...

As an aside, that's when I found out that topless beaches are not always that great. Sure, there were some hotties, but there was also Cellulite Woman and a lot of grandmothers who.....

I'll stop there.

M-m-m-me too. Forget "Are we ready for a woman President?" or even "Are we ready for a lesbian President?" The real question is: can we establish some Federal standards for sex education? Because I know a bunch of guys who could benefit from being "taught to the test," as it were.

UPDATE. The barrel has no bottom:

You read it at Atlas first here back on Halloween. Drudge has it now. I am not reporting it because it is a lesbian thang, I am concerned and distressed that a Muslim raised in Saudi Arabia would have such intimate access to a would be President.

Can't they extend the submission deadline for the Republican YouTube debate? As entertaining as the expected question about whether black people are as smart as white people will be, a question about what, as President, the candidates would do about Islamosapphic terrorism might just get people interested in politics again.

ROSEBUD. I keep trying to tell you kids what it was like back in The Day. Here's a little nugget from the pre-Giuliani era: Da Willys at what I believe is the old Crystal Palace on the Bowery. You could buy Night Train over the bar, and put it in a bag and take it outside. On the other hand, we didn't have as many condominiums or cops as we do now. You tell me which Apple you prefer.

MONGOLOID, HE WAS A MONGOLOID, ONE CHROMOSOME TOO MANY. Chuckling observes the state of creationist play:

Today’s New York Times Magazine has an interesting article about a new breed of scientists who firmly believe that the earth is eight thousand years (or so) old. They believe this because they have read the bible and added up the lives of the biblical characters. It’s not as easy as it sounds since some of those ancients lived as long as 900 years. You see? Honest scientists may disagree. The planet could be 7990 years old. It could be 8010. More research is needed. All reasonable people agree.

According to the Times, this new breed of scientists are a heroic bunch. Like cowboys, “laconic but certain” and “deeply committed.” these intellectual outlaws, outlaws in a good outlaw kinda way of course, are “taking on the central tenets of the field” by “resisting mainstream science.“ Beyond that, they are hung like Harvard: “a gathering of elites, with an impressive wall of diplomas... master’s or Ph.D.’s in the sciences from respectable universities.”

You know the type. Total dumbasses.

Indeed I do, which is why I am adding Pharyngula to my blogroll, and about goddamned time.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. For about two-thirds of the movie, I was completely on board with all the critical acclaim. It manages to preserve tension despite a glacially slow pace; dread slips under the viewer's skin, and even the occasional laugh (a Coen trademark in such situations) exacerbates rather than relieves it. Every set piece -- the bright-lights pursuit of Moss in the desert, the coin-toss in the gas station, and especially Moss' first confrontation with Chighur -- is up there with Hitchcock's. Even the gnomic utterances of Sheriff Bell seem to but gently slacken the strings in preparation for further tightening. I thought the Coens had outdone themselves.

[warning: spoilers]

But the last third is a disaster. Instead of paying off the tension, the Coens opted to pay off the bullshit moral commentary. Not only do they let Bell ramble on, they undercut the narrative drive, and when those strings are let loose everything falls apart. They kill two major characters offscreen; Bell's showdown at the motel is impossible to follow; even Deputy Wendell, a brilliant minor character in the first part, becomes tic-ridden and dramatically incoherent. The more people drawl about good 'n' evil 'n' right 'n' wrong, the sloppier and less convincing the film becomes. I haven't read the book, but it looks like the Coens tried to cram a bunch of philosophical literary stuff into the final passage, as if the painful, protracted hunt were not itself the best carrier of the grim vision. Chighur's escape (I told you there would be spoilers!) is typical. The car crash is dramatically sound -- live by the coin toss, die by it too, an unexpected but just resolution. To have him stumble off into the suburbs as the Undying Embodiment of Evil is unsatisfying even if you're not looking for a Hollywood ending: to avoid resolution is not the same thing as removing its necessity.

I can't not recommend it. It's got too much good stuff in it. All the craftwork is first-rate. The Coens ought to write cinematographer Roger Deakins into their wills: every shade from the corpse-blistering sun to the shot-shattered night is exquisitely rendered. And the acting is downright noble. Josh Brolin is quietly amazing, a good-enough man in a bad place, pursuing his mission to the full extent of his capabilities and the bitter end, never accepting the full cost of his foolhardy gamble. Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones and Deputy Garret Dillahut are Texas true 'til the Coens cut them off at the knees. Woody Harrelson and Stephen Root keep the second story alive despite all difficulties; Kelly Macdonald finds the dignity in a dishrag character.

And if Javier Bardem had not made his monster Karloff-scale believable we wouldn't even be having this conversation. This is the greatest kind of acting -- the kind that suggests its own backstory. I can see him as a hollow-eyed, beaten boy, silently absorbing evil and taking all his lessons from it, growing into a creature that cannot be stopped or swayed, but still must have his little games to prove, in the face of uncomprehending fear (his or theirs?), that he has been right all along. Bardem's performance is eternal in a movie that could have been.

UPDATE. Glenn Kenny of Premiere has a very good demurrer. I encourage any interested party to read it all, but herewith the money shot:

The first is the emphasis on the idea of Chigurh as an actual supernatural figure. By the time the killer, so fantastically incarnated by Javier Bardem, strides into the office of Stephen Root—whose character is merely billed as “Man Who Hires Wells”—with that enormous gun at his side, even a filmgoer who’s not one of “The Plausibles” (as Hitchcock derisiviely referred to plot nitpickers) might well ask “How did he get past reception?” But the ugly galvanic action kicks in before the question can finish, and then there’s the exchange with the fellow from Accounting, who finally asks, “Are you going to shoot me?” To which Chigurh replies, “That depends. Do you see me?”

A little later, after the motel massacre, discussing Chigurh with “local law enforcement,” Bell muses, “Sometimes I think he’s just pretty much a ghost.” In the book, Bell summons local law when he thinks he’s got Chigurh locked down at the motel...which he figures by watching the cars in the lot. The film places him in much closer physical proximity to Chigurh, to much more mysterious effect.

Bell goes back to the motel, through the crime-scene tape; he looks at the door and sees the blown-out lock. In a subsequent shot, we see Chigurh himself inside the room; the hole in the door is the only source of light, and Chigurh’s gazing at it, expectantly. We still can’t place him in the room...

You get it. The movie has swung around to where it began, as Sheriff Ed's story, for which the plot is just the major piece of information, not necessarily real, that motivates his abdication. Chigurh is a symbol, the embodiment of all the stuff Ed can't figure, which finally turns him away from crime-fighting.

In answer I would cite two films. Arthur Penn's Alice's Restaurant has a literally dizzying ending: the camera turns completely around Alice, fixing her in a time and place, removing her from everything that's gone before. But the whole movie has been about dislocation: Arlo's, the communards', everybody's. The ending is extraordinary but expected. Though it hits you hard emotionally when it happens, you sort of knew all along it was coming to something like this.

And there's the shift at the end of If.... I recall (though I can't find the source) that Harold Pinter objected to the moment when Mr. Kemp is withdrawn from a bureau drawer to shake hands with the rebels. Pinter or no, it's a palpable shock to audiences with whom I have shared it, and thereafter the film decisively changes tone: there's no more patty-fingers, no more public-school metaphor, only bloody insurrection.

I am always very careful about saying that anything that is not easy to explain in a work of art is false. But this is, after all, a movie we're talking about, and one in which the full power of traditional narrative cinema has been employed by very sophisticated filmmakers to make the Moss-Chighur battle as vivid and visceral as it can possibly be. If you want to turn it around and say that it's effectively all in somebody's head, you have to answer for the painstaking verisimilitude that came before. Frankly, despite all the signifiers Kenny has turned up (I am especially impressed by his reading of the motel conversation, particularly in view of its weird blackout ending), I don't see it. And without making extravagant claims for my own perception, I think that the Coens had the means to bring me up to speed if that was their intention. Sometimes a work of art fails not because it is difficult, but because it is a failure.

THREE FOR THE FUNNY. Politics, ugh, so discouraging. I want to do something fun. Not in real life -- on my stupid blog! So here's the mission: name three unjustly neglected film comedies. And by "comedies" I mean funny, not necessarily life-affirming goatsongs or anything like that.

I propose:

Slither. This caper film is sort of the comedy version of those 70s paranoid thrillers. Riddles wrapped in engimas. Ominous black vans. Nerve-jangling musical stings. Except they all end in laffs. James Caan's Dick Kanipsia, who walks out of prison into a poorly managed big-money scheme, is a ridiculously diffident hero -- maybe stupid is a better word -- whose journey, artistically speaking, is to figure out that he's finally had enough of this shit. The pace is shambling, with lots of ridiculous digressions (e.g., discussions of the family connections of the various Polish characters). And the climax is one of the all-time great cinematic non-sequiturs. Nothing meta about it -- just a good time on the film company's dime. Slither was indie before there was indie.

A Guide for the Married Man. I take a very strong position on 60s sex comedies, the best of which are so intoxicated by the sexual promise of the era that they achieve delirium. There are cases to be made for the deranged misogyny of How to Murder Your Wife, the SoCal surrealism of Lord Love a Duck, and of course the all-around strangeness of the films of Rock Hudson, Doris Day, and Tony Randall, the Mercury Players of the Priapean Age. Guide covers all the bases and then some as it follows Walter Matthau's attempt, goaded by a Mephistophelean Bobby Morse, to cheat on Inger Stevens. The dramatic stakes are purposefully reduced to Topic A essentials: Matthau's motivation is absurdly slight -- no bitterness, no discomfort even, just a craving to get with what he's convinced everyone else is getting. He's so charmed by Morse's apparent authority that he's oblivious to his more sinister agenda ("And you know how I feel about Ruth"). Morse's lessons, conveyed in celebrity blackout sketches ("That reminds me of a guy...") are the 60s Hollywood equivalent of Godard's alienation devices. I think they're much cleverer than Godard's. What Matthau takes as helpful hints, the viewer will see as rancid jokes on the American way of sex-life. As in all these movies, equilibrium is restored, but with a little more bite than usual: Matthau learns nothing but fear and compliance with old social norms. Guide will remain the capstone of the genre until some genius makes the Lockhorns movie.

A New Leaf. Here's Walter Matthau again (I love Walter Matthau), this time in a spectacularly bad wig, an aging playboy who has run out of money and has to find a rich wife. Though without funds, Matthau retains a high opinion of himself, and is oblivious to most external realities -- as the scene in which his accountant tries to convince him of his bankruptcy ("Just what are you trying to say?") demonstrates. When the fact finally penetrates his thick skull, he drives past Manhattan's palaces of plenty, mournfully crying "Goodbye!" Then he finds his chance: a botanist flush with cash but completely lacking in social graces, or even skills, played with adenoidal vigor by our auteur, Elaine May. Matthau, who is at first utterly uncharmed by May ("She has to be vacuumed every time she eats"), plans to marry, then murder her, but May is a holy klutz and cannot be killed. Eventually this wears Matthau down, and they reach an accommodation that may be something like love. The rich-boy humor is much better than that found in Arthur: the world of wealth is not, as in that film, a nest of vipers from which the hero insulates himself with drink, but a silly if stylish counter-reality that he cannot bear to leave, something more like the fantasies of old screwball films than the vulgar villainy seen in our present social comedies. You could say that about A New Leaf in general: it has a lot of that 30s sparkle, with just a spritz of 70s cynicism for body. The public has never developed a taste for it. It's for connoisseurs.

UPDATE. Speaking of connoisseurs, our commenters bring some exciting dishes to the potluck, some known to and even reviewed by me, some surprising (Ishtar, really? Conventional wisdom sucks). I am happy to see a groundswell for Albert Brooks, and would add Modern Romance, a comedy of solipsism that makes "Seinfeld" look like "Friends," and Defending Your Life, the first and most successful of the later, positivist Brooks films.

Premiere's Glenn Kenny schools us that Godard got his schtick from American comedy rather than the other way around. Julia of Sisyphus Shrugged nicely encapsulates the moral of A New Leaf. And SamFromUtah clues us to the Lockhorns trailer, which gives me hope for the American cinema.

AS YE SOW... Using the word "scream" for words on paper is usually a conservative trope, but I think we can fairly characterize this New York Post headline as a real screamer:

'BLAME U.S. FOR 9/11' IDIOTS IN MAJORITY
'PLOTS' THICKEN IN SHOCKING POLL
By ANDY SOLTIS

November 24, 2007 -- Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found.

"Blame U.S. For 9/11"? Seen from a less hysterical angle, the poll result seems like a merely uncharitable reading of the findings of the 9/11 Commission ("'the system was blinking red' during the summer of 2001...")

"Ignore" is a strong word for the government's inaction. Maybe the poll respondents were insensitive to the difference between mishandling and ignoring. If so, this may be attributed to a growing lack of faith in the government -- as we have seen elsewhere.

Government isn't the only institution that's rapidly losing credibility, as the Scripps-Howard summary suggests:

At a time when the price of crude oil has neared $100 per barrel, 81 percent of Americans also said it was "somewhat likely" or "very likely" that oil companies conspire to keep the price of gasoline high.

"It shows that the oil companies are not trusted by a lot of people," said Tyson Slocum, director of the Energy Program of Public Citizen, the consumer watchdog organization founded by Ralph Nader.

Record-breaking quarterly profits stir the pot, too.

"People look at the huge profits and put two and two together," he said. "'Those high prices I'm paying are fueling those profits.'"

Why the decline in benefit-of-the-doubt? It's interesting to look at Scripps-Howard's 2006 summary of a poll that foreshadowed these trends:

The survey also found that people who regularly use the Internet but who do not regularly use so-called "mainstream" media are significantly more likely to believe in 9/11 conspiracies. People who regularly read daily newspapers or listen to radio newscasts were especially unlikely to believe in the conspiracies.

It is suggested that these malcontents are affected by truther websites. But that hardly explains the high oil, Kennedy assassination, and UFO conspiracy credulousness.

Of course, if you want to read about what rascals lead us, and how everything they tell us is bullshit, there are plenty of other popular web outlets that do the job.

I am usually unconvinced by triumphalist claims that online alternative media will trounce the MSM dinosaurs. But I am beginning to suspect these stupid things are at least having an effect -- that the daily internet hammering of institutions has in fact helped poison the outlook of many ordinary citizens who have heeded the call and unmoored themselves from the consensus wisdom of the Main Stream Media. But the Scripps-Howard poll suggests that this effect isn't taking the shape that the blogosphere's rightwing cheerleaders like to predict -- unless their purposes are even more sinister than my black little heart can conceive.

Of course you can look at it the other way, and say our institutions are so thoroughly rotten that bad faith is the only possible response.

Not for the first time I am reminded of the Journal-Affiche.