Movie review: Dead Man Walking

(less a movie review than yet another post about Peter Sarsgaard. Oh boy.) 

As intended, I got around to watching this movie earlier today. It was good and I'm kind of surprised that I hadn't been aware of it previously, until I went to looking up Peter Sarsgaard's filmography. He is certainly not the main attraction in this movie; he has a small, non-speaking (save for perhaps a gasp when he is accosted by the murderers) role as a murder victim. The movie was done in 1995 so he was quite young and youthful looking in it. It was cute. The movie had Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn in the main roles; I think they both did a good job, especially Susan Sarandon. Her appearance in this role reminded me of one of the characters in Requiem for a Dream, which I'm always up to rewatch. It would've been interesting if Peter had been cast instead of Jared Leto in that movie... 

The premise of the movie, which was based on a true story, is about a nun in Louisiana who befriends a prisoner on death row as he faces execution. I think that kind of a story is intrinsically interesting, at least for me - the topics of crime, punishment, possible innocence/guilt, the criminal justice system. There are a couple of other things dealing with similar topics that I've seen: Devil's Knot, season 3 of The Killing, The Shawshank Redemption. I know I've said I'm trying to get away from the subject matter of murder/crime in the things I watch, but it's just so interesting. I also have been trying to ponder about stuff other than journalism and all that that entails, but I just can't seem to escape it. Alas. 

The dynamic in this movie between the nun and the prisoner seemed fairly similar to what transpires between one of the detectives and a prisoner in season 3 of The Killing. 

Now is as good as a time as any to tally up the various Peter Sarsgaard things I've seen so far - it would be nice to have them in writing. 

1. Experimenter *
2. The Magnificent 7
3. Shattered Glass *
4. The Killing *
5. Lovelace
6. Dead Man Walking
7. The Man in the Iron Mask
8. Jarhead *
9. Documentary on rock climbing that he narrated
10. Black Mass
11. Documentary about drug addiction that he was involved in

(asterisks denote my favorites so far)
Not too shabby for 1 month's time. I noticed today that he was the voice of a robot in some movie, which is kind of interesting, but obviously as a robot, his voice isn't completely natural which is kind of a shame. It's still recognizable as his voice though. But in a roboticized form. Kind of like how Siri talks. Which then got me thinking/imagining if his voice were used for Siri. Wouldn't that be fun!   

I'm still at a bit of a loss for what to watch next. There are other Peter Sarsgaard movies that I haven't seen yet, but they aren't on Netflix, which is sort of inconvenient. I'm trying to find a tv show that would be to my tastes and ideally of a different subject matter than crime/murder (which rules out Broadchurch, but I think I would enjoy that show. It also rules out The Wire and Oz, neither of which are on Netflix). 

In other matters, my books shipped this evening and should be here within 1 or 2 weeks. I eagerly await their arrival. 

Changing gears

It's probably not a bad idea to insert a lighter post compared to the subject matter/content of my last few, which have been fairly heavy. Therefore a post that's a bit more mindless is in order. 

How about the wonderful subject of online dating (again), which came to mind as I dealt with an email from the online dating website that someone has messaged me. It was a perfectly reasonable, normal message, decently thought out but for some reason I still felt like giving a semi-snarky response, if I were to respond. I have pretty much given up (as I've said in the past) on finding someone who I would actually want to date on that damn website. The people are either not good enough looking or not interesting enough, or both. Boo. I think I am both at least decent looking (I made sure to choose flattering pictures for my profile) as well as an interesting person and I won't settle for less in a romantic partner. I think it's good to have standards. In light of the lack of suitable romantic partners on the online dating website, it naturally brings a certain person to mind. A certain person who I unexpectedly dreamed about the other night (and I still have not dreamed about Peter Sarsgaard. I don't get it.) and whose hair I touched in real life a bit over a year ago. I'm sure that was probably a brief, but weird experience for him. As you can tell, I still think/wonder about him and hope things are well with him, and I also wish to look at him and photograph him. I hope he becomes a model as well - he has the right look for it, I believe. Hopefully no sort of tragic accident has befallen/will occur in the future to him. 

On a somewhat unrelated topic it would be interesting to see what's new at the modern art museum, although as that involves a trip into the nation's capitol, I think it's very possible I might get distracted by thinking about politics, news/journalism and how that all fits together with regards to my life and future, not to mention the status and trajectory of the country as a whole. Nuclear war? Seems possible. (on the upside, if there's a nuclear war I won't really have to worry that much about my future...) I wonder if there are any good nuclear war/apocalypse movies out there that I'd enjoy.  

As far as movies to watch go, there's one I have in mind but just haven't felt quite in the right mood to watch it yet. I could've watched it today, but I didn't. Instead I delved into reading about the topic of disgraced journalists, among other things. I'd like to watch the movie Dead Man Walking, which is about a man convicted of murder and facing execution, although he claims to be innocent (I think). Peter Sarsgaard has a small role in this movie as a murder victim. However I am interested in this movie beyond the fact that Peter is in it. I think it was his first film role ever. Interestingly enough, about 20 years later, he goes on to play a convicted murderer facing execution who may be innocent. It might also be interesting to see some of the other Jason Bourne movies. Apparently they are supposed to have a bit more depth than James Bond (although Casino Royale and Skyfall are standouts). 

Re: tv shows, I haven't found anything yet that seems sufficiently interesting. I gave The West Wing a shot but wasn't enthralled and I'm not sure I'd enjoy other political drama shows. It would possibly be a nice idea to branch out from murder shows, which is why I tried watching The West Wing. I think if it weren't for Martin Sheen that show might be watchable. He just does not look presidential. Maybe I should give the show Mad Men a chance? Netflix says that it's a 67% match, whatever that means. Who knows how accurate that number is. As far as I'm aware, I don't think there's anything coming soon to Netflix that I'm dying to watch. If only they'd have Requiem for a Dream back on there. That was a great movie. Some other things Peter Sarsgaard has been in would be nice too. Throw in Leonardo DiCaprio for that matter as well. 

Journalistic offenses

This could fit nicely as an additional section in one of my recent posts about Stephen Glass, but I decided to give it its own post. Recently, 3 people at CNN resigned (I wonder if they felt forced into doing that) because a story had been published without the proper verification. I read a Washington Post article about the incident and delved a little bit into the comments. Some people view this situation as overblown and note that CNN did the right thing by retracting the story and apologizing, as the people responsible resigned. They also consider the dichotomy of other news organizations such as Fox News not getting criticized by the president for inaccuracies and errors in their reporting. Personally I think it's a good thing that CNN took responsibility for the error and apologized, although it's possible that the resignation of the people involved wasn't completely necessary. That may be more of an optics thing.

In googling "journalistic offenses" I came across some interesting things on Poynter.org: one which suggests that people who commit journalistic offenses shouldn't be 'excommunicated' and instead should be taken back in and rehabilitated/taught how to be a proper journalist who does not plagiarize/fabricate. The other is about which errors are enough to get a journalist fired, and the conclusion in that article is that there isn't a clear standard. Re: the first article, I think what happened with Brian Williams could be an example of the proposal in it. He lost his position as anchor of NBC's Nightly News (which I remember watching as a child) for making some things up about what happened to him when reporting in the Middle East. A few years later on, he hasn't been completely exiled. He appears on MSNBC as an occasional anchor, to my knowledge. Another disgraced journalist mentioned in this article (this looks like another rabbit hole for me to go down) is Jayson Blair, who wrote for the New York Times and in 2003 his plagiarism and fabrication were discovered. More commentary on him to come, probably. I'm curious as to how his case compares to Stephen Glass - the nature of the fabrications as well as the motivations. It looks like this guy has also written a book, so that could be an interesting read as well. 

ETA: all my thoughts about Jayson Blair's plagiarism and fabrication.
I first read through the Wikipedia article on him, which says that he fabricated being in locations that he never went to, as well as plagiarizing some things here and there. He also made up quotes from people he hadn't spoken to and other details in his stories. In the list of journalistic offenses he committed, it mentions that he also misspelled names on multiple occasions.  There was also an interesting tidbit that I wasn't aware of before - a Law and Order episode (that I refer to in my mind as 'the plagiarism one') was based on his journalistic offenses. I didn't know it had been based on a true story and that this was the true story it was inspired by. 

As to his motivations, apparently in an interview he said that he did it mainly because he was afraid he wouldn't live up to his own and others' expectations, and that it began with a small ethical misconduct which later grew to larger proportions. It doesn't look like he ever made up entire stories, unlike Stephen Glass. I'm not really sure how The New Republic compared in terms of status/prestige in the late 90s and early 2000s so it's hard to draw a comparison as to the magnitude - how large of an audience read the plagiarism and fabrications. "Blair explained that his fabrications started with what he thought was a relatively innocent infraction: using a quote from a press conference which he had missed." This is actually fairly similar to what happened with Glass - he thought an article of his was missing a good quote so he just made one up and left it in there. As far as motivations are concerned, their motivations were somewhat different - wanting to meet people's expectations (ie a fear of failure) vs wanting to be liked/to impress people (colleagues). However you could argue that those motivations have a bit in common - feelings of insecurity, or perhaps moreso inadequacy for Jayson Blair. They were both young men who wrote for well-respected publications and ended up as journalistic disgraces. In a New York Times article detailing the saga of Blair, colleagues describe him as being sloppy and careless, causing him to make mistakes which he was continually reprimanded for. They also said that he was quite involved in office politics and gossip, but charismatic. However, he continued to make mistakes and transgressions, clashing with his editors on multiple occasions. There's an interesting passage in this article that bears remarkable similarity to some things that happened with Stephen Glass: a confrontation between fabricator/plagiarist and editor - "'Look me in the eye and tell me you did what you say you did,' Mr. Roberts demanded. Mr. Blair returned his gaze and said he had." The article also describes Blair's editors demanding to see his notes because they were suspicious. It says that his friends felt betrayed by his deceitful actions, which is something I saw when reading about Stephen Glass as well. Someone quoted in the article said that it's difficult to catch people who are intentionally trying to deceive; a similar sentiment was expressed by Stephen Glass' editor. The NYT article from 2003 raises the question of how long Blair's misdeeds will be associated with the paper, which is kind of interesting to think about in the present day. I personally was unaware of both of these cases of fabrication (and in one, plagiarism) until I happened to watch a movie about one of them, which led me to read up on the matter. However these things happened/were in the news before I was old enough to register them, so someone older than me may remember both of these scandals. 

As for differences, one that seems worth noting is the apparently careless/sloppy nature of Blair's journalistic offenses/mistakes as opposed to the meticulousness that Stephen Glass went to with his fabrications. Throughout Blair's career in journalism he was being reprimanded for various mistakes. From what I've read about Glass, it doesn't look like he was considered to be careless or sloppy by his colleagues. He could also be considered to have been charismatic, although perhaps in a bit of a different way - he yearned to please/impress/be liked and was self-deprecating, criticizing his own work and constantly asking people if they were mad at him. In a 2016 interview of Blair, he says that at the time he plagiarized and fabricated, he was suffering from bipolar disorder as well as recovering from drug and alcohol addictions, but does not consider that to be an excuse for his behavior.  

In closing, I think there's some interesting summer reading on my horizon: Stephen Glass' lightly fictionalized account of his journalistic offenses (The Fabulist) as well as Jayson Blair's book (Burning Down My Master's House), which wasn't lightly fictionalized. Conveniently they can be had from Amazon at reduced prices. Hopefully they will be interesting and insightful. 
  https://www.poynter.org/2012/why-journalism-should-rehabilitate-not-excommunicate-plagiarists/185085/ 
http://www.poynter.org/2013/which-reporting-errors-will-get-one-fired-good-luck-finding-clear-standards/226805/ 

Glass articles and fake news

As I go through reading the articles written/fabricated by Stephen Glass, I'm going to comment on them here. At the moment I haven't checked to see specifically which ones were definitely fabricated in part or whole but I might get around to that.

Spring Breakdown: (PDF, 3 pages, about 2000 words - at least partly fabricated) This one is about the CPAC event of 1997 (there were some scenes in the movie Shattered Glass about this story). Interestingly enough, I'm vaguely aware of that event today - I believe eyelashes guy attended CPAC this year. Anyways, as for the article, it has a very story-like quality to it. Glass was a good writer, I'll give him that. I would say that his writing style is measured but vivid, for better or worse. I wonder how people would describe my writing style from reading this blog. I also think I'm going to try to keep any eye out for anything I read in the future by other people to see if they have a similar writing style to his - I'm pretty sure there have to be some other (ideally, true) articles written with a similar style/tone. I do see how this article could be considered to play to negative stereotypes of the Republican Party (although, especially in light of current events, it's quite hard to feel bad for having negative stereotypes about conservatives). 

This isn't a story written by Glass, but I thought it would fit nicely if the theme here is fabrications. A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine published a story that was later retracted for not being entirely true. You can read the original story although it has been removed from the Rolling Stone website. It was about a rape at the University of Virginia, and as I read it, I was actually somewhat reminded of the story above, Spring Breakdown. Both portrayed unsavory behavior by certain groups of people that painted said groups in a bad light. Although this story is also partially untrue (I haven't looked up what parts specifically were false), the writing style/voice is a bit different than how Glass wrote in his stories. I don't think it has the quite same measured-ness as the Glass articles. It's a bit less.. poetic, or something. 

Taxis and the Meaning of Work: This one is actually still on the New Republic website, which is kind of interesting - I don't think I had come across any on that website before looking at the Wikepedia links. I wonder if they still have any of his other stories up?? Anyways, this article deals with, in part, an issue that's still relevant today, 21 years later: immigrants in the workforce. The focus of this story is the taxi business in DC, as of the mid 90s. I'm curious as to how it compares now to what was portrayed (made up?) in the article. In reading his work, I keep thinking that he was good at writing, despite the fact that he made things up which led to his downfall. Things could have turned out differently for him - he had/has a talent for writing; if only it had all been true (or published as fiction). 

Monica Sells: This article was written 3 months after Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky came to light and Wikipedia links to a PDF of a syllabus that some English professor put together with reading materials (of which this article was one) and associated assignments. I perused the assignments and some of them resembled things I've had to write in past English classes, but one did not. One of the assignments was to review the film Shattered Glass with a set of criteria for what should be in the resulting essay. That would've been an interesting assignment for me to do in light of my current interests. This article is just under 1000 words and isn't markedly different in writing style to the other articles. There are also a few scenes in the movie regarding this article.  

Fake news, now and then

I woke up this morning (Wednesday) to a) having dreamed about being a political prisoner in communist China, and b) this tweet: "@realdonaldtrump The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!" which was accompanied by "The failing @nytimes writes false story after false story about me. They don't even call to verify the facts of a story. A Fake News Joke!", and "So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!" among others. So I think this post deserves a bit of discussion about the concept of fake news, as we know it today and in relation to the stories I'm commenting on here. 

Wikipedia says about fake news (an aside: some extreme conservatives consider Wikipedia to be liberal propaganda, which I read in a Wired article last night) "Fake news is a type of yellow journalism that consists of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media.^[1] Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically, often with sensationalist, exaggerated, or patently false headlines that grab attention.^[2][3] Intentionally misleading and deceptive fake news is different from obvious satire or parody. Fake news often employs eye-catching headlines or entirely fabricated news stories to increase readership, online sharing and Internet click revenue." One could consider the Glass articles to be fake news, as they were partly/entirely untrue. However I think there's a distinction to be made, seen with #7 of the following list. 

Later in the Wikipedia article, there are 7 different types of fake news mentioned: 

1. satire or parody ("no intention to cause harm but has potential to fool")
2. false connection ("when headlines, visuals of captions don't support the content")
3. misleading content ("misleading use of information to frame an issue or an individual")
4. false content ("when genuine content is shared with false contextual information")
5. imposter content ("when genuine sources are impersonated" with false, made-up sources)
6. manipulated content ("when genuine information or imagery is manipulated to deceive", as with a"doctored" photo)
7. fabricated content ("new content is 100% false, designed to deceive and do harm")

I'll give a few examples of things I think fit under the various categories. The (now defunct, alas) Colbert Report, as well as other shows like it, would be satirical news. Although as far as I'm aware it was more Stephen using actual facts to mock various figures in the news, not making things up. The Onion would also fit under "satire or parody." #3 and 4 I would say are elements of what you'd consider modern day (as in the last couple of years) fake news. #5 is what Stephen Glass did, and you could say #7 counts as well, but I don't think his main intention was "to deceive and do harm" so although it was fabricated, the motivation wasn't the same as the one mentioned here, which I do think applies to today's fake news. 

Although, if you think about it (and this is depressing), really anything can be considered fake news depending on your political inclinations: the "liberal elites" consider, say, Breitbart (as well as Donald Trump's own lies) to be a source of fake news, but Trump supporters consider the New York Times (taking a lead from Trump himself) to be fake news. To Donald Trump, news he disagrees with is fake news. The state of news has become a game of "Choose the (alternative) facts you agree with" - and the Ministry of Truth will gladly provide options. It's the news version of going to different doctors until one tells you what you want to hear. Alas. 

While freedom of the press is important, which allows fake news to be produced and spread (and hard to combat, in a way), it seems that some (many) people are unable to understand what truly is real vs fake news. Of course, those people could level the same criticism at me but I stand by my convictions that the New York Times and Washington Post are real news. If only everyone else could see that as well. I don't think it's particularly healthy for the nation as a whole to have these vastly different ideas about what is real news and what is not. This however begs the semi-rhetorical question: in the interest of being more open minded (which is probably a good thing), is one obligated to give credence to fake news? I'm looking at this from a liberal perspective, rather than from a Trump supporter perspective which would mean they would be considering reading, say, the New York Times (which they very well would probably write off as "fake news"). 

To keep this from getting any longer, I'll end this part of my post with this article, which has some good points in it. One of the quotes is sort of relevant to myself: '“Don’t shut out the smart, thoughtful Republicans from your life, from your news diet, just because you don’t agree with them,” he said." I may be doing more than some people by at least paying some attention and consideration to eyelashes guy, a tolerable conservative. Of course, the eyelashes probably help even if sometimes he says stupid things. I think eyelashes guy is enough open mindedness for me.   

As another aside, I think to be a 'real writer' (of any type - a journalist could be a writer in this sense, or a poet, or a book author, etc) it means that you have a sizeable audience and that you get paid for doing it, neither of which are true for my writing here. Alas. 

TO BE CONTINUED - more commentary on other articles to be added as I read them/have the energy to update this post. 

Additional thoughts on Shattered Glass

Today (yesterday, by the time I finished this post) I finally got around to watching this movie on the big tv. I hadn't thought of this until just earlier today, but it could have been possible that the dvd I had wasn't in good condition (scratched or otherwise damaged) and that I wouldn't be able to watch the movie. Thankfully, that was not the case. I probably should have checked in the store to make sure the dvd wasn't scratched, but it just didn't come to mind then. 

Anyways, here are some thoughts that came to mind the second time around.
Firstly, in comparison to the other two journalism movies I've seen, this one was not about journalists trying to uncover the misdeeds of others, this one had to do with internal issues at a magazine - a reporter who makes things up that end up being published as fact. So that makes this movie a bit different. 

Secondly, I (again) wonder about the motivations of the guy who made up all the things. The movie doesn't really make an attempt to explain that, and I guess the only person who can explain it completely is Stephen Glass himself. I'm not sure if he's ever done so. Apparently (this is mentioned in some screens of text at the end of the movie) he later wrote a book about a journalist who did the same things he did (presumably based on himself), so it would be interesting to read that and see if it would offer any insights. It would also be interesting to read some of the original articles that he wrote (made up) for The New Republic. 

In my search for the original fabricated articles, I did come across the original article in Forbes that exposed the fabrications. 

This is a 2014 article/interview of Glass, written by a former colleague/friend of his that mentions a couple of little details ("It was the spring of 1998 and he was still just my hapless friend Steve, who padded into my office ten times a day in white socks and was more interested in alphabetizing beer than drinking it.") seen in the film although I don't remember them being mentioned in the Vanity Fair article that the movie was based off of. There is an image of one of the pages of one of the original articles, after it had been reviewed and annotated for false information. There are also images of one of his business cards from when he worked there, and a page out of one of his notebooks, where he wrote things like (to the best of my attempts at deciphering his scribbly handwriting): "Don't do stupid things," "'What a jerk and [illegible - could be 'often'?"] had impressions to make,"You'll be a member's assistant, not the asst. member," "You need them far much more than they need you," "Don't work for the enemy - EVER!!", "Return all calls, immediately", "Don't get discouraged", and finally, "She said she knew Sen. Graham [my reading of that name may be incorrect] personally If she did why was she seeing me? Because she didn't. Bitch." That last one puzzles me, for sure. It also makes me wonder what, theoretically, people would think if they happened to get ahold of and read my personal notes to myself that I write down. I'm sure it's possible they'd find some of it puzzling to them. It would certainly be interesting to see the rest of the pages from that notebook, for that matter. The question that I have now is why didn't he just become an author? A novelist or something where he could write things regardless of how factual/made up they were. 

I also liked this quote from the article: "He was floaty back then, undetermined, as if he could levitate in those white socks."
In this article, it says that he didn't keep in touch with the people he had worked with at The New Republic after the scandal was exposed. My impression from the article is that some (all/most?) of the motivation behind his behavior was that he wanted to impress the people he worked with and he wanted them to like him. I don't perceive a particularly malicious intent behind the lies that he put into his stories. However, from what I've read, it seems that the people he worked with resented/didn't trust him in the years after the scandal. Their opinions may have changed by 2017 but from what I read, they didn't have particularly positive things to say about him. Which I somewhat understand - he manipulated, you could say, and lied to them, and I can see how that would antagonize his colleagues and be hard for them to forgive. But again, I don't think he had inherently bad motivations for the lying and fabrications. That's just my take on it; I understand how people (especially people who worked with him firsthand) could think differently. The same person who wrote the 2014 article also wrote a review entitled "Glass Houses/Remembering the fall of Stephen Glass" for Slate in 2003. 

Upon further research, I came across an LA Times article that links to a portion of a fabricated story published in Harper's Magazine about a phone service psychic. Despite the fact that the highlighted portions in that story were fake, he did have a nice writing style. In the early 2000s, after the scandal, Glass attempted to become a lawyer but he was not approved for a law license. Apparently, this year (2017) he will be able to try again. This 2011 article from CNN I think is fairly insightful into his motivations - it has a number of quotes from him. In some ways the things that he did make me think of Munchausen Syndrome, although that is about people who pretend to have illnesses in order to get attention/sympathy, so not quite the same thing. But similar, a bit. 

Also in the course of reading up about the true events/people that the movie was based on, I came across this review from Slate that describes the movie as a realistic portrayal of the whole situation, from someone who witnessed it firsthand. The review was written by the husband of the woman who wrote a review of Glass' book and, 11 years later, an interview with him reflecting on the events. In this review I also learned that one of the characters in the movie is pretty much that woman, but just with a different name. 

In 2003, he was on 60 Minutes in what I thought was also an insightful interview (video - the voice of Hayden Christensen in the movie, as Glass, is actually fairly similar to Glass' actual voice, which is kind of interesting). In this 2003 CNN interview, Glass describes the movie as his "own personal horror film." I still haven't been able to find any full versions of the fabricated articles he wrote. :( I think those would be interesting to read. Almost exactly 12 years ago, someone compiled a webpage with a list with links to the articles, but those links are broken as they are at least 12 years out of date. However, the guy who made the page looks like he has an email address, so if I were curious enough, maybe I could email him about it. I do appreciate that over a decade he compiled that list - it seems like something I would do (and in fact, I did recently do a similar thing). Oh wait, looks like I found a full version of the story that later caused his (Glass) demise. I still want to see at least some of the other ones. This article from Slate in 2003 has various suggestions by readers as to what they think Glass needed to do in order to repent for his journalistic sins (I really wanted to use that phrase somewhere in this post). The insights in this article claim that one of the reasons he was able to get away with his fabrications was that they played to the existing stereotypes that his colleagues and the magazine's readers had, which I thought was an interesting take.

ETA: I only just (a couple days after I started this post) got around to reading this article by a friend/coworker of Glass' at TNR. It's interesting and gives some opinion about the book Glass went on to write. According to this guy, Glass wasn't actually that good at writing and the only reason it seemed so in his articles is because they were heavily edited/rewritten by his coworkers. I guess it'll be interesting to read the book and see how the writing compares. 
Edit: For some reason this did not come to mind until now - the idea to check Wikepedia, as the citations part of their pages usually has links to various source materials. So I did, and found working links to a number (but not all) of Glass' original stories (under "External links" at the end of the page). Score!! Many (I don't know if it's all) of the articles can be found on this website, which I'm very grateful to have found. I haven't gone through and read all of them yet but I'll probably do that in the next couple of days. I might make a new post commenting on those after I've read them. 

Thirdly, now having seen All The President's Men, there's a famous (apparently) scene in that movie of the journalists in the Library of Congress going through papers at a table/desk, shown from above as the camera zooms out gradually. Someone else wrote an interesting little blog post of their own about it. Towards the end of Shattered Glass, after the editor has discovered Glass' fabrications, he is in the office of The New Republic looking at all the issues of the magazine displayed on a wall. He takes them down and begins to go through them in search of fabricated articles. It reminded me somewhat of the aforementioned scene in All The President's Men. 

Somehow when I was looking up a picture for the part about All The President's Men, I came across this photograph, which is supposed to be a depiction of part of the book Invisible Man, which I had to read for school and did not enjoy, but regardless, this is an interesting photograph.

Independence Day

(alternatively titled A Not So Patriotic 4th)

For reasons that should be obvious, I won't be feeling particularly patriotic this impending 4th of July (certainly not patriotic enough to go off and join the military like what happened in the movie Born on the 4th of July). The state of American politics is an embarrassment and I have been continuously asking myself "Is this really happening?" It's absurd. I do wonder how this will all play out and in what kind of timeframe. I believe that Watergate took around 2 years to finally come to a climax - Nixon's resignation. It could still hopefully be fun to see the fireworks and all, but my feelings about the country lean more towards those of dread. Maybe I ought to see the fireworks in DC proper and protest (not the fireworks themselves, but the administration). Normally (with a few exceptions) we would go to the county fairgrounds to see the fireworks. 

I haven't been paying a ton of attention to eyelashes guy's columns as of late but I haven't forgotten about him. However, there is another journalist (a Real Journalist) who has caught my attention recently. He is also on CNN occasionally but he's less of an opinion commentator than eyelashes guy. This guy is more of an actual objective journalist, I would say. He covers politics for the Washington Post (I wonder how much he enjoys that? [I also wonder about Anderson's job satisfaction] I wonder what it's like to work at the Washington Post these days, also - do they feel like current times are like a 21st century Watergate?), which gives him a good amount of credibility in my book. He also isn't particularly bad looking which is pretty much why I paid attention to him when I saw him on tv. I know I'm shallow sometimes. Anyways I'm going to try and pay particular attention to the things he says/writes about from now on. I also think he has a cool last name, for the record. It's more interesting than Anderson's or eyelashes guy's last name. This is a superficial thing to make note of, but I thought it was interesting. In looking up some stuff about this guy, I found a Reddit AMA he did about a month ago, where a commenter (not him) said this, which I found to be interesting: "The purpose of journalism isn't to cause certain things to happen, but to get the truth out."  

ETA, since I thought it would fit well with what's already in this post: I've been paying attention to the (real) news as usual since I like to be informed. On CNN, Jim Acosta, who covers the White House, makes fairly frequent appearances. He's yet another in CNN's suite of silver/white haired anchors/correspondents - Wolf, Anderson, (the other Jim, who Anderson has occasionally mis-introduced on AC360 as Jim Acosta) Jim Sciutto (although not including Sanjay Gupta, who doesn't have gray hair). If we're going to count political commentators, eyelashes guy can be on this list as well. Come to think of it, there are a lot of silver/white haired people on CNN who aren't that old (as in, 70 or something). I don't know if that's an anomaly since I don't really watch other tv news networks that much although I have been trying to branch out a little bit and watch MSNBC from time to time. I think MSNBC's Chris Hayes looks like a mix of Jim Acosta (face shape) and Leonardo DiCaprio (coloring) I feel sorry for Jim Acosta because he isn't treated well by the White House. Just recently, Sean Hannity of Fox News did a segment of his show criticizing Acosta, where he described him mockingly as "CNN's White House darling," which was... amusing. Hannity leveled accusations that Acosta was unfair and biased in his coverage of the White House. My mother likes Jim Acosta because she thinks he resembles George Clooney. As far as George Clooney goes, I have better opinions of Jim Acosta than George Clooney. 
  Also, an addition to this week's Postsecret review: these secrets were posted on @postsecret and I don't I included them in any past reviews. 
"I like shopping at Walmart. Don't tell my cool friends." They have good prices and a large selection of stuff, plus people to watch. I wouldn't be ashamed of shopping at Walmart. Pretty much all people of average/below average wealth shop there, I would assume. 
"If you were to call me, I'd answer No questions asked." This one is too vague to really be particularly interesting. I don't think there is anyone in my own life that a secret like this would apply to. I assume this secret is probably about an ex (spouse, boy/girlfriend, regular friend).  

Other actors' interviews

In light of my recent research and post about Peter Sarsgaard interviews, I thought that in the interest of variety, I should read interviews of other actors and see what they have to say in comparison to the things that I read that Peter has said in interviews. Some actors that came to mind were Johnny Depp and Dane DeHaan. 

I read this Rolling Stone interview of Johnny Depp; my impression of him from this interview is not too strongly positive. I think he comes across as sort of weird and somewhat unstable in this interview (not even considering the fact that he's a wife beater). Although there are some things that he mentions that remind me of Andy Warhol - Johnny Depp keeps a journal and also keeps lots of old stuff like Andy did. This is one of the passages that made me think that he's kind of weird and unstable/volatile: "He smokes less than he used to, going through maybe six cigarettes over the course of three and a half hours today, but it's obviously a fraught issue: With every one of his tobacco packets, he takes the trouble to grab a Sharpie and X out the grotesque you'll-get-cancer pic­ture and warning box.
"They show some guy with three and a half teeth and some sort of red, dangly bit in his mouth," he says. "So that's for the smoker to look at. OK, fine. He sets it down on the fucking table and eight kids see it. That's cool? Jesus. There's worse shit out there. I mean, what's wrong with these people? We all know it's not fucking good for you. Life's not good for you! It kills ya! Do you know what I mean? God damn! These are the same people who are so adamant about not smoking and being around smokers. No, you can't smoke on the Sunset Strip when you're eating out­side – however, you are welcome to all the diesel fumes and every bit of dirt and filth and dust and disease and everything that gets rifled up in the streets." (emphasis mine)
In this interview he also mentions that he drank a lot in the past (for weeks at a time, apparently) "to calm the circus... the festivities in the brain," which... um, okay. I'm not really sure what to say about that, you know?? Although he drank a lot, he "never considered himself an alcoholic." I guess this is open to interpretation depending on what your own personal definition of an alcoholic is. Maybe by your standards, he was an alcoholic, but by his, he didn't think so. 
I guess that's about it for my take on this interview. On to the next one. 

Here is an interesting little interview with Dane DeHaan. It's actually fairly short compared to some, but fairly informative for its length. For ease of comparison, I'm trying to find interviews of more or less similar length and style so that the main variation is the what the actors have to say. Upon reading this interview, I noticed that the Johnny Depp interview didn't have so much by way of artsy visual/physical description, whereas this one (and a few of Peter Sarsgaard) does: "DeHaan, who was dressed in dark jeans and a woolly crewneck sweater, is so boyish (although he’s 31, he looks closer to 20) and has such clear light-blue liquid eyes, that everything he says has a dreamy quality." In this interview, Dane seems to have a lighthearted, playful nature. In the beginning of the interview he talks about a play he was in as a child at summer camp. Later in the interview, it mentions that he becomes distracted by some dogs that are playing in the room where the interview is taking place. He talks about looking young and having to bring ID when he goes drinking. That was a nice little amusing part: "I ordered a nice bottle of wine in a restaurant, and they asked to see my ID! I’m happy to report that it has been about a year since I was carded at an R-rated movie. Things are looking better." 

I tried to think of some other actors whose interviews I could look up and use in this post, and James McAvoy came to mind. I'm trying to think of actors who I don't have strong opinions on so that my thoughts on their interviews can be less biased (in the case of actors that I know I like/dislike). There are two Guardian interviews with him that are fairly long and seemed suitable. My impression of him isn't changed from these interviews - he strikes me as somewhat less... buttoned up as other actors. But still decently articulate, I think, and not weird/unstable in the manner of Johnny Depp. The interviewer describes him as such: "His sweary Scottish charm from those early days still shines through, and when it comes to work, he has apparently very little filter. " which I think is accurate from reading the rest of the interview. There seems to be a decent amount of good interviews with him: here is another one I found. Speaking of Scottish actors, maybe I should look up an interview of David Tennant. 

It took me a long while to decide on which interview (of the many that I compiled for a previous post) of Peter's that I should use in comparison to the other actors' here. I finally chose this one because it seemed to be the only one in a similar style and a decent length. In this interview there are some nice descriptive parts: "He is 42 now, and – if he didn't hide behind the facial fuzz so often – quite handsome. At 5ft 11in and neither muscle-bound nor fragile-framed, it's surprising he's not had more leading-man roles. " and "Sarsgaard's voice – one so mellifluous it wraps you in cotton wool then rocks you to sleep." As far as quotes go, this interview isn't my favorite but I do like this quote from a different interview: "It doesn't sound like a normal person's voice, whatever that is. I wouldn't be chosen to sell cereal on TV." And this quote (also from a different interview): (about being offered roles of unsavory characters) "I was just skulking around the house, going from room to room, sulking, thinking about it, going 'Why do people offer me these parts? I'm not like this. I'm such a good person!'" It does make me wonder what other actors out there are sort of known for playing creepy/unsavory characters. 

With that, I think I've just about had it for the effort I'm willing to exert on this post. I'd like for it to be done now. In the process of writing this post, I got thinking about different styles of interviews, so I looked that up. At first I got results about job interviews, which wasn't what I meant, but I added "journalism" to the search query and found this article, which was interesting although it's more about broadcast journalism rather than print. I also found this, which I'm pretty much just linking here for my personal reference - I doubt that other people particularly care about the particulars of interviewing. But for me it could potentially be useful. 

Of course, in closing I would like to mention (again) that one interview of George Clooney that I just happened to read in a grocery store years ago which caused me to dislike him as a person. And I would like to apologize for the mess/variety of font styles in this post. Also, I think I have outdone myself in terms of number of posts over the span of a month. At this rate I've been cracking out over a post a day. 

The West Wing

This is a short pseudo-review. I decided to give this show a shot because I thought that I might enjoy it - it's not a more recent show and was done in the early/mid 2000s, which I thought might make it more to my taste as opposed to shows from the last 5 years. In high school, in one of my classes we watched the second episode of this show, which I don't really remember what happened in, but I remember that we watched it. That particular teacher liked this show which wasn't too surprising because she taught a class about government. 

Netflix's new rating system said that this show was a 62% match for me, which I thought was possibly a little low before I watched it. After watching the episode, I wasn't too thrilled. So I guess in this case, the match % was more or less accurate. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't exactly riveting. It seemed very fast-paced which I thought was detrimental in a first episode because it was hard to understand how all the characters fit in the show and such. The guy who created this show, Aaron Sorkin, also created another show (The Newsroom) which might be interesting and if it's ever on Netflix, I might give it a shot. I think my biggest issue with this show is that Martin Sheen, who plays the fictional president in this show, does not look presidential (neither does Donald Trump, but that's beside the point). He looks like he belongs on a farm or something. Remember him from Apocalypse Now? So, I don't really think I'll be watching more of this show. I guess at least I gave it a chance. There are a couple of other political shows on Netflix that I could try, but I'm not really sure I'm in the mood for a more recently done political show. Real life politics is enough of a (grotesque) spectacle for me. 

So at the moment, I'm at a bit of a loss for what show I should watch now. It'd be nice to find something that's sufficiently riveting. I'm not sure if I'd like the seasons of American Horror Story that I haven't seen since they're all disparate. Naturally, some kind of murder show would probably be enjoyable, but I also think that maybe it would be a good idea to branch out a little bit and watch something that's about a different topic. There are a few shows not out yet that I think would be interesting, but obviously those aren't an option right now because they haven't been made yet. I read a rumor/speculation on reddit today about a remake of Columbo with Mark Ruffalo as the eponymous character, which could actually be interesting. In that Mark Ruffalo is like a second rate (in that I don't like him as much - nothing personal) Vincent D'Onofrio and Vincent's Law and Order character was somewhat similar to Columbo. Fun, right? I wonder if Vincent and Mark have ever been in anything together. I'm not aware of anything, but that could be interesting because they're somewhat similar looking. 

Peter Sarsgaard interviews

This is a list for my personal reference but I thought that I might as well put it out there on the internet as a blog post for anyone else who might happen to come across it and find it useful. It's a collection of links to Peter Sarsgaard interviews that I found to be interesting/insightful/amusing. I've arranged them by year with a note on subject matter and length (if an interview goes particularly in-depth) where applicable. 

2016 (lotta Magnificent 7 interviews from this year) 

• March, W Magazine, re: birthdays (video, 1 min)
• September, azcentral, re: Magnificent 7 (medium)
• September, Indiewire, re: Magnificent 7 (long - goes into some interesting non-M7 stuff)
• September, LRM, re: Magnificent 7 (very much so)
• September, Uproxx, re: Magnificent 7, Green Lantern (medium - a little mention of his similarity to John Malkovich)
• November, San Diego Reader, re: Jackie as well as some about his earlier life/career (medium/long)

2015

• August, Slate (not an interview, but amusing nonetheless: a [fairly pointless, if you want to be serious] quiz about the various -gaards of Hollywood. "Hollywood is overrun with -gårds, especially of the Sars- and Skars- varieties. But with so many -gårds, how do you remember which is which? To help you puzzle through it, we’ve made this quiz.") 
• September, GQ Australia, re: Black Mass "The 44-year-old has been described online thus; 'baby face; soft, strangely ominous voice; often bizarre, unstable characters'."
• October, Vulture, re: Experimenter (long) also see this interview of Winona Ryder about the same movie; she mentions Peter a little bit
• October, AOL, re: Experimenter 
• October, Metro, re: Experimenter (medium)
• November, Hollywood Reporter
• November, NPR, re: Experimenter (text transcript and audio - 12 mins)
• November, The Fix, re: Experimenter, the death penalty, drinking (medium/long)

2014

• July, Men's Journal (there's a link to this article about the physiques of action heroes in movies, which is interesting)

2013

• January, Interview Magazine, re: Lovelace "I was just skulking around the house, going from room to room, sulking, thinking about it, going, ‘Why do people offer me these parts? I'm not like this. I'm such a good person!'"
• June, Rolling Stone, re: The Killing
• July, Entertainment Weekly, re: The Killing (medium length)
• July, Buzzfeed, re; The Killing (long, spoilery but really interesting, with the showrunner Veena Sud)
• July, Vanity Fair, re: Blue Jasmine, The Killing (medium)
• August, Independent, re: Lovelac (long and I like the writing style of the interviewer) "Sarsgaard's voice – one so mellifluous it wraps you in cotton wool then rocks you to sleep"
• August, Guardian, re: Lovelace (medium - "It doesn't sound like a normal person's voice, whatever that is. I wouldn't be chosen to sell cereal on TV.")
• August, GQ, re: Lovelace (medium, with Amanda Seyfried - amusing interview)
• August, Slant, re: Lovelace (long: "I might look like a rag doll in the film, but I permed my hair, teasing it after I permed it. We were putting crazy stuff in it. I wanted it big, my sideburns long." and "I probably feel most comfortable when I’m running. I’m a long-distance runner. In terms of style, I feel the most comfortable wearing a really short pair of running shorts and a pair of shoes and no shirt." [❕ oh boy]) 

2011
May, Mr. Porter, medium ("With his low-lidded, almond-shaped eyes, and sly, insolent manner, he often plays men honeycombed with secrets - a killer in Boys Don't Cry, an editor in Shattered Glass, a sharpshooter in Jarhead, the seducer of Ms Carey Mulligan in An Education - parts which instil in the audience a similar paranoia: what is that guy thinking? Is he thinking about us? If so, is it nice or nasty?") 
Undated, but mentions he is 37, so I'm assuming 2008. Timout, re: a play Interviewer: "You hooked up with Maggie just because she also has a double a in her last name, didn't you?"
2008
June, NYT video (5:30; very nice interview of him saying things) 
2006
video titled 'Prize Roast Beef', at an awards ceremony (2 min, the title makes sense after you watch it. "Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard joke about what Peter will say when he presents Jake with an award at the 2006 Palm Springs International Film Festival. They also joke about whom Jake should thank and what his greatest achievement is.") 
2005
video, re: Jarhead (5 min, with Jake Gyllenhaal; there's a tone reminiscent of the Cloud Atlas interviews with Ben Whishaw and James D'Arcy)

This is totally unrelated except for that it has to do with the Google doodle of the day that came up when I was googling the interviews for this post. Here's a little melody that I created. It's surprisingly nice sounding. 
It was hard to find much online by way of interviews pre-2013. I'm not sure what to attribute that to - maybe he hadn't done many interviews before then or maybe the ones that he did do were in print (magazines) and have not been put online. I'll update this post if I come across any that I think should be added. 

Postsecret review 4

This week there are a good amount of interesting secrets, so here is my review of them.

"Why oh why do we have to be cousins? What do we do now?" over a picture of two people holding hands. From Arrested Development: this

"I'm afraid I'm smoking away my future." with a drawing of a marijuana leaf. If you're worried about it, you probably are indeed smoking away your future. 

"In attempts of getting her youth back, my mom wears thongs. It grosses me out!" Well, I assume you aren't actually looking at your mother when she's just wearing thongs and no pants? So it's more the idea that grosses this person out. But you can't control other people's underwear choices, so it's probably best to just let this go. 

"I feel like a failure as a parent because I can't afford to bring my daughter to Disney. (other side) Forever stuck in Pennsylvania" I think more context is needed to accurately judge this - if the daughter has strongly expressed interest in going to Disney then it makes more sense, but if this parent just feels like taking their kid to Disney is some kind of goal they think would make them a better parent, then it's sort of silly. There are plenty of ways to be a good parent that don't involve Disney. I'm not so sure about there being particularly interesting things in Pennsylvania (Hershey Park, maybe??), but I do know that there are interesting things in Maryland and DC, which is not as far away as Disney.

"I've always wanted to find a dead body" Now this one I can get behind. I also somewhat have the desire to find a dead body. I think it could be interesting if that happened to me. Although depending on the state of the dead body it could also be some degreee of  disturbing.

"People always talk about how college was the best time of their lives but it kind of sucks." Fair enough. Especially when being 

"I've been losing things recently...... in my tiny apartment..." Maybe someone is breaking in and taking the things, or maybe it's dementia or something.

"Almost everyone in my office reminds me of someone famous. It makes me wonder who I remind them of." This one is a nice secret (although it doesn't exactly scream "secret" material - as in, this doesn't seem like something you'd necessarily need to keep secret. Maybe from the coworkers in this scenario so as not to seem possibly weird, but certainly you could tell your friends and stuff) because I also look at people sometimes and think they look like other people, which sometimes only I can see the resemblance to. 

"a fear: what if my art never means anything to anyone but myself?" I think that if a person happens to see an artwork, they can ascribe their own meaning to it. I guess not necessarily every artwork will cause someone to see meaning in it, but if you display/share your art to other people, the chance is higher that someone who sees it will decide that it means something to them. Like Andy Warhol. Imagine all the different things that people think the soup can paintings mean! And they're just ordinary soup cans!

"None of the artwork made sense, but being there with you did." I would like to think that I can at least attempt to make sense of any artwork that I see, unlike this person. Try me. 

That's it for this week's secrets, and look at me, getting this post done in a timely manner in relation to when the secrets were posted!

Documentary aggragate

I've watched a couple of ducmentaries over the last few days so here are my thoughts on those. Tomorrow I'll hope to do a new installation of my postsecret review feature; I skipped last week's because they were all Father's day related secrets which was sort of boring - no variety. Anyways, onto the documentaries.

They were about subject matters that I find particularly interesting: drug addiction and nuclear weapons. The first documentary was about nuclear weapons and it was titled Command and Control. It was about something I hadn't known about previously, which was an accident about 35 years ago (approximately; I don't remember the exact date) with a nuclear weapon. The nuclear weapon was in a facility, an error occurred, and it nearly exploded. So the documentary was about the dangers of having nuclear weapons because things can go wrong and there is a risk of them accidentally exploding where they're stored instead of being dropped on an enemy. It made me ponder about the idea of nuclear war with [take your pick of hostile nations].

The second documentary was titled Dr. Feelgood and it was about a doctor who overprescribed painkillers and was convicted basically of being a drug dealer.  He doesn't really seem to think that what he had done was particularly wrong - he wasn't worried that there were people getting pills from him which they later sold instead of using them legitimately. I think that doctors do have some responsibility to NOT recklessly prescribe painkillers because it certainly can lead to problems - addiction and all that.

I liked both of these documentaries so it's nice that they were on Netflix even though Netflix doesn't necessarily have a particularly good selection of the things I want to watch.

Children

I was having some thoughts (did I mention this in the past?? I don't remember) about the idea of having children, which is something that I don't want to do. Not now or in the future. I'm proud that I have managed to not get knocked up unintentionally, something that not everyone can say. If theoretically I were to have children, I think they would be an absolute pain and a hassle. The most having children (not the physical act of having them - conceiving, being pregnant and giving birth: no way) I think I could manage would be a situation like the kind that happens when people get divorced and end up with shared custody of the child(ren). You have the kid(s) for awhile, maybe a few days a week or something, and then back off to the ex-hubby's house they go. I think maybe, just maybe, I could deal with a situation like that. But it's not exactly accepted to marry someone, acquire a child somehow along the way, then divorce them so that you only have to deal with the child for a fraction of the time. In order to avoid me actually having to physically have children, I guess the way to acquire a child would be that the person I theoretically (in this scenario) marry already has a kid from a previous relationship, or to adopt a kid. Both of which aren't completely simple and straightforward matters. Having a kid the normal way is more straightforward but that's absolutely not something I want to do. 

I think a cat, or possibly multiple cats, is the right level of maintenance for me. They provide some companionship but are not particularly needy and can take care of themselves for the most part. A cat is nowhere near as high maintenance as an actual human child. 

Ooh, I thought of another theoretical scenario where I wouldn't have to deal too much with having a kid. It would be that I am rich and have a surrogate mother carry the baby, and then hire a nanny to raise the child most of the time. And I guess my spouse could get involved with the kid if they wanted to. But I would only have to get involved with it on my terms, because everything else the nanny would take care of. I don't necessarily condone this as a good way to raise children, but it's a theoretical scenario that I'm sure has happened with other people. 

Or yet another theoretical scenario: if I were a man, it would be much easier to have a kid but not have to deal with it that much. Plenty of men abandon their children or just aren't that involved with taking care of them. And if you're a man you don't have to be pregnant for 9 months. Or I could be in a lesbian relationship where my wife is the one who carries the pregnancy. 

Realistically, I think the most children having I'll do is possibly being an aunt, or maybe a godmother or something. That's kind of odd to think about. It's probably not going to happen anytime soon, unless [redacted]. 

Assorted topics

One thing that came to mind the other evening while I was watching a movie was the similarity between a scene in Requiem for a Dream and the poster for the movie An Education: 

Note the posing. Interesting, right? If I were to make a movie or something, it would be interesting to incorporate a pose like this as an allusion/homage to these movies/scenes. 

Also, I read a news today about a new record set by a Canadian sniper in Iraq, who shot and killed a terrorist from a distance of over 2 miles. Something else, eh? It made me think of some movies that I've seen recently that involved snipers. One was a Jason Bourne movie with Matt Damon in which a sniper is attempting to kill Bourne. Every so often there would be a scene of the sniper training his rifle on Jason Bourne. The other one was that war movie with Peter Sarsgaard, which was interesting. So, my thoughts began to go to the thought of what if I got killed by a sniper? I have no idea why that would happen, but I thought about that prospect. It made me want to close my blinds and get away from the windows so that theoretically a sniper would not be able to see me and kill me. I imagined a bullet ripping through my bedroom window and killing me as I sat/laid in bed. Eek! As of now, there is no plausible reason for a sniper to kill me, but here are some possible theoretical reasons: a) a sniper serial killer b) the democratic government of the US has been overthrown and is now a totalitarian regime, and I am a wanted political criminal. Thus, the regime decides to send a sniper to kill me. I do wonder how I come up with these ideas sometimes. Let's hope that neither of those theoretical scenarios come to pass and my experience with snipers stays relegated to watching them in movies or reading news about them. 

While we're on this topic, I guess I should mention again how it theoretically could be interesting to be a sniper. If I had to be in a war, I think I would want to be a sniper because I like the precision of it, I guess. I would not want to be a translator like the poor guy in Saving Private Ryan, even though in other situations I might not mind being a translator. Regardless, I'd rather not be in a war at all, or if I weren't a sniper, it would be interesting to be a journalist covering a war although I could still get killed doing that. Anderson has done a bit of covering wars. It's too bad he hasn't done more of that recently, I think. They've got him covering politics all the time. That's pretty much all anyone's covering these days.