“Quinlan:
Come on, read my future for me.
Tanya:
You haven’t got any.
Quinlan:
Hmm? What do you mean?
Tanya:
Your future’s all used up.”
From “Touch of Evil”
I plan on attending the screening of “Touch of Evil”
(1958), directed by Orson Welles, at VU’s Brauer Museum on April 21. Previous “Thursday Night Noir” films in this,
the second season of the series, hosted by IUN professor Peter Aglinskas, have
included “Phantom Lady” (1944), “Dead Reckoning” (1947), and “Kiss Me Deadly”
(1955). In “Touch of Evil” Welles also
plays corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan pitted against Charlton Heston as
Mike Vargas, whose new bride (Janet Leigh) comes under danger. On YouTube I watched the opening scene, known
as the “crane shot”: a car blows up not far from the Mexican border, near where
Vargas is kissing his wife. There are
amazing cameos by Dennis Weaver as a sexually obsessed motel clerk, Zsa Zsa
Gabor as a strip-club owner and Marlene Dietrich as the madam Tanya, who
delivers the famous last line about Quinlan’s future being all used up. Critic Roger Ebert wrote: “Her words have a sad resonance because
Welles was never again to direct in Hollywood after making this dark,
atmospheric story of crime and corruption.”
Ebert added:
Much of Welles' work was autobiographical, and the
characters he chose to play (Kane, Macbeth, Othello) were giants destroyed by
hubris. Now consider Quinlan, who nurses old hurts and tries to orchestrate
this scenario like a director, assigning dialogue and roles. There is a sense
in which Quinlan wants final cut in the plot of this movie, and doesn't get it.
He's running down after years of indulgence and self-abuse, and his ego leads
him into trouble.
I watched Ivy Meeropol’s 2004 HBO documentary “Heir to
an Execution: A Granddaughter’s Story” about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, wrongly
convicted during the Red Scare of passing on vital atomic secrets to the Soviet
Union. While Julius certainly was a spy
who provided certain information to the Russians, such as specifications of an
airplane propeller, mostly during World War II when the two countries were
allies, his purloined intelligence played no role of significance in our Cold
War adversary developing an atomic bomb.
It is also clear that Ethel’s transgressions, if any, were
negligible. She was tried and convicted
in the hope that Julius would confess and “name
names” in order to save her from the electric chair. Through interviews with old CP members, one learns
that the Rosenbergs were motivated by idealism and misguided faith in the
Soviet Union as a model for a just society. For example, Miriam Moskowitz tells Ivy, “You had to be dead from the neck up not to
be radical.” The government coerced
Ethel’s brother into giving false testimony by threatening to implicate his
wife, who actually typed the document he falsely accused Ethel of copying. As Sam Roberts of the New York Times put it:
The government framed a
guilty man. It also cynically prosecuted Ethel on flimsy evidence to bludgeon
the couple into confessing and implicating other Soviet agents. To justify the
death penalty, not as punishment but as the ultimate weapon to win their
cooperation, the government grossly exaggerated their offense - claiming the
couple had stolen the secret to the atomic bomb.
Julius Rosenberg was executed first. When Ethel entered the chamber, she turned to
shake hands with matron Helen Evans and then hugged and kissed her. After three shocks, attendants removed the
straps and equipment only to discover that her heart was still beating. After
two more shocks, smoke began rising from her head. Barbaric!
Over 10,000 people showed up at Wellwood Cemetery in Pinelawn, New York
for the burial. From her cellblock in
Crown Point jail political prisoner Kathryn Hyndman wrote in her secret diary:
Only those who
have been imprisoned can understand the anguish, loneliness, and deadly
monotony. The Rosenbergs are with me every waking moment, but there is no one
to share my sorrow. It hurts to see
others so unaffected by this monstrous act.
The others realize innocent people do die for crimes they did not
commit, but they weren’t touched by the Rosenberg case.
Katy Perry in "Part of Me"
Choice
magazine asked me to review “Hearts and Mines: The US Empire’s Culture
Industry” by Tanner Mirrlees. On its
back cover is this blurb:
From Katy Perry
training alongside US Marines in a music video, to the global box office
mastery of the US military-supported Transformers
franchise, to the explosion of war games such as Call of Duty, it’s clear that the US security state is a dominant
force in media culture. But is the
ubiquity of cultural products that glorify the security state a new
phenomenon? Or have Uncle Sam and
Hollywood been friends for a long time?
I already know the answer. “Hearts and Mines” appears to be overly
theory-driven, but maybe I’ll learn something about digital gaming. The title is a take-off on the slogan
“Winning Hearts and Minds” – referring to the South Vietnamese people – easier
said than done.
Some Indiana 58 law school professors have urged Senator Dan
Coats to reconsider his opposition to confirmation hearings for Supreme
Court nominee Merrick Garland. VU Law
School grad and former Lake County sheriff Roy Dominguez wrote”
We really don't
deserve a Senator who doesn't exercise independent judgment. I understand being
a good Party member but there are times when gridlock requires statesmanship,
not partisanship.
This issue of affording Chief Judge, District of Columbia,
Court of Appeals, Merrick Garland a fair confirmation hearing is an important opportunity
to excise statesmanship. I totally agree with our Indiana law professors' call
on Senator Coats not to abdicate his constitutional duty.
This would be an
opportunity to show he is in the same league with our former distinguished
Senators Dick Lugar and Evan Bayh.
In a NWI Times
guest commentary entitled “Online learning is virtual success” IUN Chancellor William
Lowe stated that over 750,000 Hoosiers have attended college but failed to
graduate and therefore might benefit from the flexibility and accessibility
that distance education offers. I have
been a critic of the proliferation of online college courses but am pleased
that my university is committed to ensuring that its offerings are of high
quality and instructors trained properly.
Touting the CISTL program directed by Chris Young, Lowe wrote: “Through IU Northwest’s Center for Innovation and Scholarship in
Teaching and Learning faculty are trained with proven principles of effective
online instruction. Courses developed through CISTL are peer-reviewed and
closely evaluated to ensure quality instruction.” The most promising are so-called
fusion courses that include face-to-face interaction with the instructor and
fellow students.
Anne Balay reports: “It's official: I will teach at Haverford/Bryn Mawr next year, and live
here in Philly while finishing the trucker book.” Anne hopes to be in Gary part of the summer,
resuming daily walks along the beach.
Jim Spicer passed on this joke in reference to Viagra
TV ads:
On Easter Sunday the
priest had already preached to the adults in the congregation. Next, he was
presenting a children's sermon. He asked the children if they knew what the
Resurrection was? A little boy raised his hand and said, "I know that if you have a resurrection that lasts more than four
hours you're supposed to call the doctor."
Someone I admire greatly is considering quitting law
school after one very hard year. My first reaction was to discourage her and to
reiterate that the first year is about survival and that law school gets easier
after that. At times she feels like she can’t cut the mustard. I told
her, “You are one of the most intelligent
people I know.” On the other hand,
fifty years ago, I was at Virginia Law School on a full scholarship but left to
pursue an advanced degree in history. It was one of the best decisions I
ever made. She has a similar alternate plan more akin to her longtime
passion. I told her to follow her dreams. The nation already has plenty of excellent lawyers.
Being the only one in a 50-person pool to have
picked Villanova to win the NCAA tournament, I stayed up for what proved to be
the most exciting and satisfying finish to a spectacular down-to-the-wire
contest. With 5.7 seconds left, North
Carolina’s Marcus Paige hit an off-balance trey to tie the score. Then Kris Jenkins inbounded to Ryan
Arcidiacono, who dribbled into the forecourt and passed to Jenkins, who nailed
a long shot from way beyond the arc less than a second before the buzzer
sounded. With no clear favorite going
into the tournament, I picked number 2 seed Villanova to win because they had a
veteran team with an excellent point guard plus for sentimental reasons: they
were from Philadelphia near my hometown, and I grew up rooting for area Big
Five teams, LaSalle, St. Joseph’s, Temple, Penn, and the Wildcats.
The bastards at GEO are still seeking to open a prison
for undocumented immigrants near the Gary airport. Samuel A. Love joined demonstrators at a City
Hall council meeting and reported that members “argued procedure and hurled personal cripes for two and a half hours
until activists checked them and put GEO on the agenda.”
Jonathyne Briggs had a lively Sexology class on
the research findings of IU professor Alfred Kinsey. When he mentioned that Kinsey’s
questionnaires of some 70 years ago revealed startling information regarding
masturbation, same-sex encounters, prepubescent sexual pleasure, premarital and
extramarital relations, and women’s multiple orgasms, I added Kinsey’s claim that
17 percent of males had partaken in carnal relations with farm animals. When students expressed shock, Briggs asked
rhetorically, what is worse, bestiality or killing animals for food?
Arriving at Calumet College in Whiting to speak
on my research about steelworkers in Gary and East Chicago, I noticed that the
school newspaper was called “The Shavings.” The current issue contained articles about
Black Lives Matter, the Pullman National Monument, and an upcoming Humanities
festival that will include a screening of “American Arab,” about the lives of
two Arab Americans in the aftermath of 9-11.
Calumet Revisited forum coordinator Michael Boos greeted me warmly and
had with him Steel Shavings issues on
the 1980s and the history of Gary. I
gave him a copy of volume 45, telling him it was hot off the press. He was pleased to find himself on a page with
labor historian Staughton Lynd and folklorist Richard Dorson.
Boos said to expect about 15 people, but almost
twice that many showed up, including Mike Olszanski, chair of Local 1010’s
environmental committee during the 1970s, whom I had enlisted for moral support
and to supplement my remarks. Oz knew
Boos from the 1977 USW election when area district director Eddie Sadlowski
challenged International president Lloyd McBride. My talk touched on the history of Inland’s
Local 1010, once known as the “Red Local,” and stressed the continuing need for
rank-and-file militancy as a counterforce to management cupidity. I mentioned several labor radicals who spoke
at Staughton Lynd’s Labor History Workshop (held in a Glen Park storefront near
IUN) during the early 1970s, including John Sargeant and Kathryn Hyndman. I brought up Inland
Steel union stalwart Bill Young, whose father had been beaten during the 1919
strike. He himself was clubbed on the
head while picketing at Republic Steel during the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre,
when Chicago police killed ten demonstrators.
Young recalled: “They beat me
pretty good, but I was on the picket line the next day.” Bill Gailes said of Young, “He was a hell of a guy. If somebody came to him with a grievance,
he’d pick up the phone, call the foreman, and threaten to do this and
that. He kicked tail.” Ruth Needleman in “Black Freedom Fighters in
Steel: The Struggle for Democratic Unionism” (2003), wrote:
Bill Young
was the only African American subpoenaed to appear before the House UnAmerican
Activities Committee hearings in Gary in 1958.
He was never called to testify because of an incident that occurred
within earshot of the committee. When
Joe LeFleur, the government’s star witness, completed his testimony, Bill Young
walked up to him with an outstretched arm, as if to shake his hand. Young was a very large, very unforgettable
man. LeFleur, flustered, asked, “Do I know you?” Young responded, “No you don’t but you named me anyway.”
I persuaded ten audience members to read excerpts
from oral interviews, including Oz himself.
A woman gave a fantastic recital of Women’s Caucus leader Valerie
Denney’s description of handling harassment.
Here is part of what Denney recalled:
With the guys, the most outspoken leaders try you
out and determine your mettle and then it’s fine. With a woman every single person has to try
you out. That’s part of the reason it
takes so long to get comfortable because you’ve got to run through everybody’s
game. Everybody runs a game on you. For
example, one guy’s game consisted of first talking dirty and then putting up a Playboy pin-up. I thought, “Should I make a big deal about this? Is it just going to encourage him?” I waited until he was out in the bullpen and
took it down and threw it away. He never
put up another one. He probably knew I
took it down but wasn’t faced with it directly and forced to respond. Then he started reading dirty books out
loud. I wasn’t morally offended but
realized that it was some kind of attack on me to make me uncomfortable. So I said the first thing that came to mind:
I didn’t even mean it but it worked. I
said, “Sometimes I get the idea that you guys are all homosexuals.” He stopped and never did it again.
Former IUN History major John Wolter read longtime
Inland Steel griever Joe Gutierrez’s testimony:
In 1961 at age 20 I went
to the galvanized department, which was a world of its own, even though it was
near the 24-inch bar mill, the weld shop, the machine shop, the 100-inch plate
mill, and the spike shop. There was not
much sense of unity. You identified with
your department. They were islands unto
themselves except for a common canteen.
I got drafted in 1963, went into the army and came back to that
department. I never expected to stay
past the summer.
My first union meeting,
it seemed like a closed set of people and that they wanted to keep it that
way. It looked like the Mafia sitting up
in front. I was totally turned off. I
did not have the historical background in terms of knowing what the unions had
done. That wasn’t taught in school. The
only union people you ever heard of was John L. Lewis. Unless his father was a steelworker, the
average kid didn’t know anything. The
union was like, “that place over there.” The company had taken advantage of the
workers for so long because of poor union leadership. Most grievers eventually became foremen. People would be one-time grievers. It was a steppingstone.
