HBO’s Recount Premieres in Dallas
Last night the World Affairs Council hosted the Dallas premiere of Recount, the HBO movie about hanging chad (The plural of chad is “chad,” you’ll learn more fun facts like this if you watch the movie.) and what a political mess Florida was during the days after the 2000 presidential election. Notes on the film and highlights from the discussion with Mitchell Berger, Gore/Lieberman’s senior adviser, and Ben Ginsberg, Bush/Cheney’s national counsel, after the jump.
— Recount is a movie, not a documentary. Gore and his people are the scrappy underdogs, and you’re supposed to be sad when (spoiler alert!) they lose.
— Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris: tragic. It’s a wonder she survived it. But Laura Dern’s portrayal of the overdone and under-informed Harris was the strongest supporting performance I’ve seen in a long time. When asked whether the depiction of Harris was fair, Mitchell Berger, the Gore adviser, said: “‘Someone get someone to go help that woman’ was pretty accurate.”
— The Florida mess was even worse than you remembered. No one followed the rules, both sides acted like asses, and it ended with thousands of votes uncounted. (Cue ending credits and wide shot of all those votes sitting in boxes on shelves in a gigantic warehouse.)
— Either you’ll hate the way Bush’s team was portrayed in the film, or you’ll hate that Gore didn’t get the presidency in real life. You’ll watch the film and be pissed, one way or another. Although during the movie I couldn’t help but think about Gore’s Oscar and Nobel Prize—wouldn’t have predicted that eight years ago.
— Ben Ginsberg, the national counsel for Bush in 2000, didn’t seem thrilled with the film, or with the election process. “What recounts show you is how messed up the system is,” he said after the screening. “County clerks and county officials are of varying levels of competence.”
— But Ginsberg really got going when he said this about former Secretary of State James Baker: “On behalf of all the lawyers who are here, he’s what we want to be when we grow up.” According to the law-practicing lady in front of me, “Not really!”
— Berger’s take on the Florida recount: He received more than 90 death threats, “which shows how fragile the process is.” Berger later said, “As Americans, the good news here is, we went to our lawyers, not our generals.”
Here’s hoping there are no hanging chad or dimpled ballots in the 2008 presidential election.
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6 comments
Now THAT is one scary looking woman.
Dude look like a lady.
Wow.
I hope the movie gets big play and everyone talks about it for a long time.
You see the other day I had a conversation with a good man. I’m talking a salt of the earth native Texan, the kind that generally makes us who took awhile getting here proud to be Texan.
He had noticed the Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on my welding machine and asked who I was for this election. I’m Obama all the way and said so.
He then explained in great detail why he couldn’t vote for an African American for President. It seems from his perspective even when a good African American rises to the top they bring with them other African Americans who are incompetent at best to criminal at worst for appointees.
I listened politely as he pointed out how bad Houston has suffered from African Americans in power. He also mentioned Dallas, Detroit, etc and so on. Invariably it seems incompetence flourishes under their reign of power.
I didn’t say much even though I saw his logic as pure racism. You see I’ve found out that the best way to respond to such accusations is to point out comparable problems in non-African American involved situations.
This movie might provide us with that logic a perfect example of how whites also bring imcompetence and criminals into the public arena and for the same reasons. It’s not about race. It’s about power.
I’ll take your word that your acquaintance was a “good man,” Harvey, but I’m having a hard time understanding why he made you “proud to be Texan.” Sounds like the worst kind of Texan stereotype — a retrograde Southern bigot.
Daniel whatcha want me to do? Live in a world without friends?
Seriously, somewhere sometime I read something about the only person honorable enough to point out the flaws of others is the person without flaws. I think they were talking about rock throwing, but same concept.
Besides that, what is the difference between me refusing to have anything to do with someone who distrusts blacks in positions of power and someone refusing to have anything to do with blacks period? Isn’t it really the same thing? Me not liking them because of one aspect of their person and them not liking another person, again for one aspect of their person?
I’m sure you’re familiar with D-Day, June 6th 1944. I’m also confident you’re familiar with the Battle of the Bulge later that year. I know some men who were there.
Probably the most interesting thing about these men I know who were there was their company commander. He inspired such a bond with his men that fifty plus years later they would come together to celebrate the bond. The bond was so strong that the widows of the men who were there and had passed on continued to attend the get togethers. The bond literally passed from husband to wife.
I went to five or six of these get togethers over the years even though my closest tie to them was through my wife’s step-dad being one of them. We had a rapport because veterans of War share a bond just being a veteran of a War.
Needless to say I was totally blown away by the bond these men shared. It was also obvious that the bond revolved around one heckuva man, pillar of the community, thirty third degree Mason, man amongst men, literally. It would not be a stretch to suggest he represented best about what is best about America.
One of the things about War stories told amongst vets is they aren’t what non-vets are interested in. The stories aren’t about life and death unless there’s some black humor to be found. No the stories always involve the weather, food, and dumb bosses.
At one of these bull sessions I told about the bravest man I’d personally known. I’d met him in a military hospital in Japan. I was reconvering from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, back of truck with ten other guys when the driver rolled it. He was there because he had about four AK 47 round type punctures. I mentioned he was black and his wounds were the result of placing his body between the enemy fire and his white squad leader.
The captain went ballistic about the immorality of blacks serving with whites in the military. It was as shocking a display of racism as I’ve ever personally experienced.
That experience initiated an maturing experience for me. I had to balance out that good people can have bad sides and vice versa. It’s not unlike good things can happen to bad people and bad things can happen to the good.
Let me tell you what I’m going to do about my friend with the racist perspective about blacks in positions in power. I’m going to enlighten him about his racism without offending him. He’s a good man and he’ll come around.
The right moment will come and I will be on it like a hen on a June bug. I’ll point out that if corruption and incompetence only happened with blacks then we could see where the color of skin might have something to do with it. But we know that there are tons of corrupt and incompetent white people are in places of power too. So there has to be something more to it than the color of skin.
Easy, Harvey, I wasn’t attackin’ ya. Or your friend, per se. “IJS”