"At This Time" -- a story from Mac

Here is the first guest column in "Past Times" history. It's a short historical fiction story, with a striking amount of truth, written by Mac.

Jim Lane didn’t quite feel like getting out of bed on this day. It was Sunday, but Lane was no longer a church going man. The Fourth of July was only a few days away, but national pride finally started dimming in importance to Lane. Mary cooked him breakfast, bacon and eggs. No matter, he was not going to be eating. The hunger had slowly died within him.

“James, you must get out of bed,” Mary shouted from the kitchen. “You have a big day ahead of you.”

But Lane had no real plans for the day. There was nothing left for him to do. Six months into his second term as a Kansas senator, Lane was finally bested. This was a man that lost at the Battle of Drywood Creek yet still undercut General Price by ransacking pro-South establishments along the border. After Governor Robinson’s blocked his bid to combine Brigadier General with his Senator title, he simply commanded the army without the official approval of the Federal government. Title or no title, the troops and the local electorate still knew who was leading the charge. From the day Lane left Lawrenceburg, Indiana to fight alongside the abolitionists in Lawrence, Kansas, Lane never accepted the possibility that he would be on the losing end. But on July 1st, 1866, he lost.

“Wake me when the carriage arrives, I’m in no mood for morning rituals and formalities,” Lane grunted.

“Fine, but I don’t know how you plan to get things done on it empty stomach. You have to be on your guard with those vultures, and that’s hard to do with your belly attackin’ worse than those quacks.”

If this advice had come from any other person he would have rolled his eyes, maybe even spit vitriol until his face swelled, cheeks reddened, and slobber fell on the wooden floorboards. His relationship with Mary invoked only the reasoned response that she was right but that fact was of no consequence. The eggs remained untouched; the bacon was tossed to the hounds that missed the former hunting trips that they shared with their master. The bed creaked as Lane gradually got to his feet. Lane saw his reflection in the mirror and combed his hair, only for it to remain unkempt.

“Did the carriage arrive? If not, then let’s stop this talk of those two-bit politicians. They may want to suckle at the teet of this fine state, but soon they will find the milk has run dry.”

Lane was not but a year removed from the disbelief of this statement that now he honestly believed to be fact. His opponents proposed that he was selfish man that would bend the law, the truth, and the Kansas River if it got him more power. Ole’ Jim surely loved his acquired stature, but his role was only as important to him as his state. To Lane, he was the senator of the best state in the Union. The man had one goal, to erect the legacy of Kansas with his bare hands. Carney saw only unchecked fraud from the most powerful and influential Kansan. If only the new Governor had the guts to meet him in the streets of Leavenworth, Lane thought. Lane would never let his rivals beat him in anything, much less a duel.

“I hear horses. James, get your things. Quickly now, you mustn’t be late. The Late Jim Lane, that’ll be what they call you, you don’t want that,” Mary prompted Jim, but received only a slight chuckle in return.

“The capital will be dead when I arrive, nobody will notice the time on the clock when Ole’ Jim arrives.”

“Dead, are you joking James? They’ll know when you arrived cuz you’ll have to push past each one of them to get in there.”

“Dead or alive, the time will be of little relevance to that crowd.”

Lane picked up his holster and quickly exited his home, completely ignoring his business suitcase. Lane found the carriage door while squinting as the sun overpowered his irritated eyes. The heat of this Kansas summer was nearly unbearable and made poor conditions for a man to think.

“With haste my good man,” Lane told the Coachman. “There is little time left.”

The carriage started to pull away. Mary noticed that he left his suitcase. She picked it up and ran outside but the horses’ hooves could no longer be heard. The dust was nearly settled back on the road. She could no longer see her husband.

“What’s your name,” Lane’s grunt had transformed into a gentle voice.

“William, William Sterling, sir.”

“Don’t call me, sir, Jim or Lane are the choices boy,” the grunt temporarily returned as Lane continued to attack arbitrary etiquette. “Now Sterling you say. I knew a Sterling back when we were fighting off those Bushwackers down in Misery. He was a good man, that wouldn’t by chance be your pappi, would it.”

“No, sir err, I mean Mr. Lane. My father was a farmer out West of Wichita. He died from a rattlesnake bite at the beginning of the war, he never served in any militia though.”

“Well no matter my mind’s already on it. Do you know what me and Sterling did.”

“You guys cut off the supplies of the Bushwackers; you saved us even before the war.”

“Good. I’m glad not all you young folks are ignorant, but how bout I tell the damn story from here.”

“Go ahead Mr. Lane.”

Lane loved to rehash the stories of his hey-day. The only Kansas politician that could win a battle and an election. Going into his second Kansas senate race, the popular phrase was that “when it came to politics, Lane was god.” As Lane relayed his every accomplishment to this youngin’, he still couldn’t believe that he was at this place. His political power was decimated because of accusations of him doing what he thought was right.

“So what about your father, a farmer you say.”

“Yes Mr. Lane, took a piece of land with the Homestead Act,” Will said, finally gaining a slight confidence to his voice. “Probably the hardest thing he did in his life, take anything for free. But the family was starving in West Virginia, wouldn’t have made it another year. He finally convinced himself right in his brain that land wasn’t worth nothin’ without him on it, so he wasn’t takin’ nothin’. Don’t think his heart ever believed it though.”

“Well I guess in matters of finance the brain has an edge o’er the heart, cuz this land wasn’t worth nothin’. Not til men like your father came, not til we sold it to those who could afford to make something of it, lend to those that could work their way into earning the land.”

“Well sir, I think so too.”

“Damn good then, when we get to the Capitol, I’ll stay in the carriage and you can get your ass in there and set those snakes right.” The grunt returned.

Jim removed his gun from its casing. His hand trembled as he thought about the welcoming party that awaited him in the Capitol, one room full of all the hypocritical politicians that bathed in the wealth he brought to the state, yet condemned him for it. Jim had only killed one man off the battlefield. Gaius Jenkins, a wealthy landowner that was a neighbor of Lane. There was a land dispute that left to the two arguing over a water well. A scuffle occurred one night when Jenkins attempted to draw from the well. Lane pulled his gun and shot the man in the gut. When tried for murder, the court found Lane innocent.

“You can plead your case can’t you, if you explain the importance of what you did, they’re bound to listen to reason.”

“Hah, reason? From them? There’s still looking for a reason to hang me in the square, don’t expect to find reason amongst them.” Jim laughed only harder than he scowled at the legitimacy of this comment.

“You know when I first had to beat ole’ Charlie’s silver spooned devil in the Senate race, I was ready to live out of a box on Kansas Avenue, now they’re ready to put me in a box and there ain’t no way I’m getting a plot closer than Elm street. But I’ll tell you this little Willy Sterling, I ain’t gonna let them put me in no box, ain’t no grave gonna hold down Jim Lane, least none by their choosing.”

By now the young coachman hadn’t put in a good word for 10 minutes so the conversation breaks as Lane’s final words enter the air. The coach keeps rolling down the road and Jim no longer feels the need to plead his case. The window view of the prairie maintains Jims stare. It was the land that he loved, the land that he sold, and the land he no longer had power over. The idea of life after losing his senatorial title filled Jim’s thoughts. There was no longer a war to fight, no battalion to command. Lane had lived to lead. He was finally out of followers.

Will turned his head around and broke the silence.

“Mr.Lane, are Kansas politicians honest and reliable?”

To this Lane looked up and smiled, whereupon Will looked down and blushed. Will started to hope that the sounds and scenes of the prairie would maintain his attention but he started to hear Jim rustling in the carriage. Will heard the clicking of metal and the animals stomping across the prairie. The door of the carriage flew open and a bird flew across the horse’s view. Will looked over his shoulder towards the cabin, but heard a large boom. Something fell down the side of the hill. Will turned his head back around and continued course to Leavenworth. Like Jim Lane, he had no real plans for the day.

THE CONSPIRATOR: Ideas Defended

“The Conspirator” is the first film released by The American Film Company, a production company that has staked its entire existence on the notion that real drama is more compelling than fictional drama. And with their maiden feature, the company has completely washed away any criticism about their film being historically inaccurate. This academic ambition will likely stay on the borderlands of Mainstream Country, as boasting historical accuracy just makes people look harder into the details, missing the story. More confounding to the creative team, historically accurate elements of the story are still brushed aside in lieu of budgetary restraints and the simple mathematics of forcing 4 months of American life into a 2-hour run time.

The film’s historical accuracy is best utilized by the vilified characterization of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (played by the endearing Kevin Kline). Historically speaking, Stanton improvised a near coup d'etat of the country when it became clear Vice-President Andrew Johnson was blindly vindictive, staggeringly drunk, frustrating illiterate, and now President of the United States. Stanton’s political position has been fortunately remodeled so there is no direct modern day equivalent, nor could they design his physical looks (crazy, old-timey beard) into a caricature of any current leader. So I guess “The Conspirator” got away with a historically accurate antagonist, but they still failed to bring him to life.

Robert Redford has previously directed “Lions for Lambs”—a film whose subtly rivaled a bowling ball to the gut—and admittedly gained some nuance for “The Conspirator.” The American Film Company provided the language, research, set dressing and costume design to make the movie accurate and Redford provided enough philosophy to make the film more than a well-produced reenactment. But then Redford keeps going. Hypotheticals, generalizations, aphorisms and nods to the future drench the script in intellectual ketchup, because, hey, why do fast food joints use such little packets if we’re going to take seven of them anyway? Fredrick Aiken (played by James “Trying oh-so Hard” McAvoy) is our idealistic young lawyer who doesn’t see the person Mary Surrat as being on trial but never sees the Constitution under the threat of a guillotine. From opening to closing credits, the film treats ideology primarily and emotions to fill in the gaps between legal jargon and scenes wherein Justin Long’s character apparently found a fake mustache, got one laugh and just never let the joke go.

There is no personality to the film, but rather a transparent desire for high school students to use the movie as a doorway into a four-page essay on Constitutional debates in American history. For a smooth two hours, the camera work is adequate, the editing inoffensive, the script acceptable and the actors remain in default. But for what the movie wants (a series of discussions) there is enough uninspired material to politicize and polarize an audience.

"Objection! The Constitution clearly states a bunch of boring stuff."

(Note: wrong movie pictured)

The prisoners are denied humane treatment, and even 1860s-level sanitation, to wallow their way into an unmentioned, though intended, look of inhumanity. The Northerners wanted the captured rebel conspirators to look frayed, dirty and deranged so that justice can be carried out as decisively as Atticus Finch sniping a mad dog. Seeing the enemy as “normal” means discussion is possible, or even expected. Having a discussion with the enemy means humanizing them. Humanizing them means questioning our own beliefs, lives and ideologies. Such questions are unacceptable to those with unquestioned power and so the powerful orchestrate, publish and push around photos of our enemies at their most unrecognizable, accentuating their "otherness."

From there though, the 9-11 allusions lose traction because the film/argument is about human nature, in which terrorism simply becomes an example--not the cause. Sure, religion is brought up, but the Catholic-bashing is so incredibly dated that only in the quietest pockets of radical Protestantism do people still attack the Pope for controlling the wealth of Europe. Simply, Mary Surrat is an American citizen and was captured immediately after the death of President Abraham Lincoln. Just barely does she demographically fit into the Union’s preconceived Southern Rebel stereotype. This all comes back to the point that the film isn’t a one-to-one conversation about modern politics any more than it is about 1942, 1993 or 2017 politics.

It’s about public perception and the dilemma of trying to convict people we “know” are guilty. In the film, Secretary Stanton picks up the microphone of the mythical Silent Majority and says scholarly idealists can shut up and wait in the freaking car while real Americans are fighting for the stability of the country. Surely the American people will go ballistic if Surrat, or any other “guilty” person, is found innocent by way of a loophole or soft-eyed lawyer. Except that losing the country to social instability is unfounded. There is neither precedent nor promise of a nation-wide social collapse given any single court ruling. Whereas if we sacrifice our ideals, we are no longer the country built on ideals but yet another nation in the long line of powerful nations in world history that forced citizens to flee for their lives.

People will say the country is going in the wrong direction as they are required to say during every election season/year/decade, but society is not collapsing. There will be a backlash to current political leaders. To President Obama’s critics and supporters, I beg all to remember he will not be president forever. In all serious likelihood, another Republican will become President in the future, as will another Democrat, and, sure, maybe even a third party member. Regardless, there will still be an America and we will still make movies are that moderately entertaining, even if the entertainment comes from conversational exercises rather than communal emotions.

The Baltimore Plot: Lincoln Gets Four More Years

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th President of the United States. With this election, several Southern states advocated for succession, including a sizable population in the state of Maryland. All of a sudden, president-elect Lincoln has to travel through hostile (and foreign?) territory just to physically get to the White House. Perhaps no single night in history could have changed the fabric, and the existence, of the United States as we know it as that night that Lincoln escaped an assassination attempt four years ahead of its time.

This should probably be a movie, right?

Oh yes. On February 11, Lincoln hugged his friends and family good-bye as he embarked on his trip to the White House like a soldier going to war—and in a way he was. Lincoln, more than anybody, knew he would not likely see his home ever again. Around this time, General Scott moved troops into the cities of Philadelphia and D.C. while other Northern/border cites (along with the federal government) employed private detectives to infiltrate rebel groups. One such detective was Allan Pinkerton, one of the craftiest and hard-nosed detectives in the country—possibly best portrayed by Robert De Niro in my dreams.

While staying historically accurate, can you add a little Hollywood seasoning?

Pinkerton was a Chicago-man himself and actually a friend of Abraham Lincoln from back in their abolitionist days.

So I was told there was a plot…

Regarding the story, Pinkerton employed several men to go undercover in Baltimore and devise a counter-plot to the assassination plot—of which nobody knew the specifics, though it was suspected that Baltimore’s Chief of Police, George P. Kane, had Southern sympathies. Lincoln’s trip to D.C. required several stops and speeches along the way, including when he’d have to not only switch trains but actually switch train stations in the city of Baltimore (a deadly risk for anyone, even nowadays).

Finally, a movie where a young Hollywood hunk doesn’t need to lose his shirt!

Well, actually…

Dammit!

Pinkerton’s best man was a young fellow who went undercover as “Howard from New Orleans.” According to Pinkerton, Howard (not his real name), “possessed a fine personal appearance, insinuating manners, and that power of adaptation to the persons whom they wish to influence”—a trait described in every self-help book though never articulated under such dire circumstances. Howard went undercover in Baltimore as a wealthy playboy and determined secessionist. Within days he was hitting all of Baltimore’s nightclubs, bars and concerts; and was immediately offered to dine with fellow Southern aristocrats. Pinkerton basically told Howard to go be a movie star and Howard did—often inserting details of his sexual exploits into his daily investigation reports back to Pinkerton.

"Dammit, Howard. We don't care if some girl gave you 'a Slippery Baltimore.' "

This Howard guy sounds hilarious!

Yeah, especially when one of Howard's new friends told him that a group of Southerners were planning a presidential assassination, to be carried out in less than a week and that they will, “if necessary, all die together.”

A group of them? What was the plan?

When Lincoln was to be walking through the first train station in Baltimore, a fight would break out, drawing the attention of several police escorts. Fortunately, there would not be many police officers because Chief of Police Kane (a conspirator) would have more men placed at the other station. Then, between 8 and 12 men would separately attack the 6’4’’ President from different angles with a variety of weapons (pistols, knives, swords, etc.)

Oh wow; that's kind of brutal.

Yeah, so Pinkerton rushed to Philadelphia and met with Lincoln, who couldn’t believe people would want to assassinate him when he hadn’t even taken office yet. Eventually, Pinkerton convinced his old friend to heed advice and sacrifice one public appearance for the sake of the nation’s future.

Please God let there be a fight scene.

In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Lincoln told a crowd of supporters that he’d die before giving up his principles and then said he needed to go to his hotel room to get some shut-eye, only to then sneak out the back of the hotel and get aboard the train to Baltimore. Before the train took off, President Abraham Lincoln was offered a pistol and knife for personal protection…

HOLY SHIT!

…but he turned away the weapons, saying no president should enter an American city armed. Allan Pinkerton himself guarded Lincoln for the trip, even presenting their tickets on the train—while Lincoln (hidden under some blankets) pretended to be asleep. The two of them arrived in Baltimore about 12 hours before the assassins/everyone else expected, ran to a horse carriage, rode across the sleeping city, got into the train and were off to Washington, D.C.

Anything visually interesting? You know, like the Warning Beacons of Gondor?

I was getting there! Within the Baltimore conspiracy, many would-be assassins proposed blowing up railroad bridges as Lincoln’s train passed so Pinkerton had a man at every bridge for the entire trip light a lantern as the train neared, as to indicate the all clear to pass. Eventually, the two old friends arrived in D.C., safe and…ready to fight in the Civil War.

But why isn’t this a famous story?

Because even though Chief of Police Kane was later arrested, it was not accepted as a success story. In fact, most newspapers lambasted the new president for cowardly traveling through the country at night—as a conspiracy to kill the president was too ridiculous to believe. Rumors ran wild that Lincoln had dressed like a woman, dressed like a Southerner and begged for mercy. The Baltimore Sun was particularly cruel, questioning the President’s manliness and character. Details of the plot, revealing the actual danger the President was in and his own reluctance to falsify his travels, were not released until years later and even then buried with Pinkerton’s near-synonymous connection with union labor-busting, bounty hunters and vigilantism.

Damn.

However, a 1951-film called “The Tall Target” is loosely based on the described event. The film became more notable years later for changing the detective protecting the President from Allan Pinkerton to some guy named John Kennedy. To this day, the movie has a bland 7.3/10 on IMDB. So there’s that.

So who has the Lincoln Logs to play the President in a modern film?

Daniel Day Lewis has actually been cast in Speilberg’s long-rumored Lincoln bio-pic, but I don’t like it. DDL—as I hear he LOVES to be called—doesn’t have the warmth that made Lincoln so appealing. However, it'd be comforting knowing that at least he won’t be “method acting” as some jerk on the film set. Then again, DDL did learn how to actually throw knives in “Gangs of New York,” so maybe that skill will come up again in this Lincoln film.

We can pray.

Indeed.

D-Day: When Teamwork (Almost) Failed

The worst kept secret during World War II was that the Allied forces would have to eventually make an amphibious invasion on the north coast of France. In the earliest years of America’s involvement, we were taking orders from the British who wanted to keep control of their colonies in Africa and Asia—by way of securing the Mediterranean Sea. This meant enduring many costly and slow moving invasions onto various islands and eventually the Italian mainland. On the mainland, Allied forces had to march up and down mountain terrains that make Stairmasters look like an escalator. In fact, WWII was over before we got into north Italy and if Hitler had been held up there, he might have seen the moon landing, it would’ve taken so long. Marching through Italy is like marching from Kansas to California; if you don’t have an elephant or two, it’s a helluva walk.

Once Americans figured out which end of the gun is the dangerous part (around 1943), General Dwight Eisenhower was put in charge of all Allied forces. He was not a particularly skilled war-planner but rather a great people-person who understood that all of his subordinates (Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, etc.) were as smart as they were independent as they were ego-maniacal—which was a butt load. Eisenhower agreed with everybody in early 1943 that the northern France route to Berlin was inevitable and put his men to task, each planning their perfect operations with a near disregard to one another. As the June 1944 deadline closed in, deception operations ran wild including, Operations Fortitude, Glimmer, Titanic, Taxable, Airbourne Cigar, Mincemeat and the whole 23rd HQ Special Troops—a thousand artists/engineers employed by the military to create a fictional 30,000-man division.

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

--Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 1943

Many Germans, to their credit, knew the invasion was coming but had enough problems of their own. Solving several of their problems, they put Erwin “Desert [that tank moved so fast it looked like a 60-ton] Fox” Rommel in charge of defending Nazi-occupied France, kind of. Really, Rommel became more of an advisor who advocated for all of Germany’s forces be placed by the coasts to stop the forthcoming Allied invasion on the beaches. “Fortunately” for the Allies, Rommel had a lot of success throughout WWII up to this point and was envied by his peers and superiors—who felt Rommel hogged the glory. Jealous to the point of not giving a snot about Rommel’s opinions, the German leadership followed Gerd von Rundstedt’s plan of concentrating German forces deep in France so that when the Allies attacked, both sides could have an equal fight and be exposed to more conventional, flanking, movements. The Germans became so distrusting of one another’s competencies that when a secret message was decoded that the Allies were going to stage the landing on June 6th, the warning was disregarded on the grounds that there had been a false alarm a month earlier--and Rommel still hadn’t attached a TPS cover sheet.

So the Allies were just going to walk into France? Seriously, at this point they could’ve built a bridge with no real problems, right? Nope. How to invade France became a catastrophic clash of ideologies. The Americans wanted a quick, direct, big and loud approach to fighting the war—with the benefit of booming our steel, rubber and chemical industries. The British wanted a slower, methodical, indirect war of attrition—with the benefit of controlling more global lands by war's end and keeping immediate body counts low. Could more lives be saved by going fast or by going slow? Frankly, there is no answer today, nor was there one then—so both countries just kind of did what they wanted.

In the last two years of the war, the thought process behind their aerial bombings seemed flipped, though. The British largely bombed German cities with the intention of destroying the public's will to fight. The Americans boasted “precision” bombs that could hit individual factories. Both of these methods proved rather, if not completely, ineffectual. The German people never lost their will to fight but were rather fueled to continue fighting after their houses got smashed. Incredibly, the British did not see this reaction coming, despite that it was the exact same reaction the British public had when getting bombed by the Germans in 1940. Similarly, the American “precision” bombs were largely inaccurate—as hitting the ground within one mile of the target was considered “a success.” To put that in perspective, many American cities now require porn shops to be at least 500 feet (or less than one-tenth of a mile) away from any schools or places of worship.

As a side note, the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were meant to demoralize the public (which still didn’t turn on its own government) and provide a clear landing route for the expected invasion through southern Japan.

Back in England, the Allied forces fought over whether to make Operation Overlord (invasion of France) a stealthy, by several nights, invasion or a balls-out, kick-in-the-front-door invasion. Eisenhower, ever one to delegate, let both sides kind of have their way, and so a few paratroopers were sent into France before the beach-storming and a few planes bombed the German defenses the night before over a million men played a role in the original “Saving Private Ryan” opening. As it turns out, the half-assed stealthy approach did little more than wake up the Germans just in time to see the Allied forces (including Canada!) pulling up to the beach honking their Winnebago novelty horns.

Like the movie “Your Highness,” Overlord became an operational disaster about ten minutes in. Also like “Your Highness,” the planners nearly called off the production to order a retreat. Soldiers fell off boats, the nearly unscratched German bunkers gunned down squad leaders and mass confusion was escalated when, reportedly, ice cream machines were mistaken as supply crates and dropped on the beaches during the assault. Staggeringly above expectations, the initial assault cost the lives of over 2,500 Allied soldiers.

The paradoxical strategy and nearly world-changing failure was averted by the troops on the ground, particularly on Omaha Beach, wherein decimated squads united with each other to create improvised teams and hierarchies. Their own lives on the line, the front line soldiers proved much more efficient than their bickering superiors. As a specific example of baffling leadership, General Omar Bradley—knowing he was sending American boys into France—made sure each soldier (along with food rations and medical kits) had some condoms.

"Remember men, the only thing more painful than syphilis is a Nazi shooting you."

--(possibly) General Omar Bradley, 1944

However, the soldiers, before liberating Moulin Rouge, found that the condoms were more useful protecting their guns from water and sand on the beach. One more example of history being too incredible/crude to be taught in high school.

Despite the devastating toll of the invasion, “D-Day” is not actually shorthand for “Doomsday.” Rather the “D” stands for the date of the military operation; and so “D+2” would be two days after the initial operation. This is used so that the operation day can change and people don’t have to all re-synchronize their calendars. And, in fact, the kickoff for Operation Overlord was pushed back a day due to bad weather.

Which was also lucky for me, because the original date (and subsequent anniversaries) would have made this blog post a day late.

Support the troops, forgive the leaders.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS: Reclaiming Some Dignity

Originally published 6/3/11 on "TheMovieWatch.com":

Who are the bad guys in history? It’s a question that can make historians squirm and laymen wonder why historians squirm. Simply put, a sentiment too often forgotten is that morality can be subjective. This is one of many points made in one of this year’s top 50 superhero movies, the surprisingly philosophical, “X-Men: First Class.”

Also it's not in 3D! Hooray!

By setting the story in 1944 and 1962, the film floats any questions about our own modern world with the grace, tapestry and costume design of the better Oscar-baiting movies. And by predominately setting the movie against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis (or “the October Crisis,” for my Russian readers), the film reaches to be something just a little bit more than a forgettable, comic book, superhero flick. “First Class” doesn’t completely escape its genre’s almost inherent shortcomings, but the strong, visceral, direction by Mathew Vaughan allows the movie to be quite accessible for non-comic book readers.

The historical element of the movie hits upon a proper series of events—most notably that America placing warheads in Turkey motivated the Russians to put some in Cuba. It’s only a modest coincidence that the distance between Turkey and Moscow is roughly the same as Cuba to Washington, D.C. However, the film disregards any actually humanity within humans and they’re own ability to plan with, trick or terrify one another, or otherwise cognitively function. Both American and Russian leaders become physical pawns, despite that many actually wanted what the film’s chief antagonist, Shaw (played by Kevin Bacon), wanted: a nuclear war. Essentially, when both sides are rendered to infant-level ability, awareness and ambition, the audience can no longer imagine the, non-baseball-playing, Reds as an appropriate villain...nor can we accept the baseball team has a bunch of bad guys now that I think about it.

While humanizing Russian soldiers (and warmongers on the Stateside) in a very light way was central in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Stranglove,” it still forces the narrative question in “X-Men” of “what is villainy?” The single most rounded character is Erik “Magneto” Lehnsherr. And as a side note, the performance was absolutely rocked by Michael Fassbender (“The British guy from ‘Inglorious Basteds’! I knew I recognized him!”). Erik is given the most horrifying prologue to the story’s events this side of “Sophie’s Choice” but remains emotional and angry--instead of just marrying Kevin Kline. He is given the audience’s complete sympathy but slowly smothers it after obtaining a piece of serenity and begins to think bigger than his own, immediate, pain. Unfortunately for every Mumbling Joe out there, Erik goes in completely the wrong direction from a raging (and mostly forgivable) animal to a calculating terrorist. I’d argue, though, that Erik is only a terrorist in thought; as he consistently has a murders-per-attempt batting average on par with Dr. Robotnik.

The failure to solidify Erik as an antagonist stems from just knowing too much about him, really. The aforementioned villain, Shaw, and all of the bad guy minions are given no history and never flash the least bit emotion or personality. They are simply inhuman in the worst possible story-telling way. It’s stunning how little information the audience needs to sympathize with anybody. Erik gets two scenes and it’s almost over-kill...I mean, over-the-top. Had there been a scene where Shaw got slapped around by his father or tried to save a puppy, he would’ve been so much more. In same vein, Holocaust victims were tattooed—as alluded to in the film—so that Nazi soldiers wouldn’t have to risk learning names or personal histories. It’s a lot easier to hate an idea than a person.

More cinematically speaking, Kevin Bacon fails to find any character traits, nuances or depth within the, brandy-swirling, character Shaw that would separate him from the blandest James Bond villains. Continuing on a more traditional review-level, I’ll note that the movie had several plot contrivances. Interestingly, they all seemed to surround Hank McCoy, whose perpetual inventiveness struck me as akin to a live-action Dr. Hubert Farnsworth. Indeed, McCoy nearly started every scene with, “Good news everybody! I’ve just invented a Whatever Machine that can do exactly whatever we need something to do!”

In fairness, the film’s best moments overshadow the film’s worst—which really does force a wide variety of intermittent cheering and groaning. Regrettably, the movie has a low, low body count among mutants and the humans that die have less emotional weight or consequence than swatting a somewhat large fly. My guess is that the filmmakers forgot that literally hundreds of mutants occupy the X-Men universe (not to mention the freedom to just create new ones), and so saving all the characters for a sequel seems just flatly unnecessary. There is also a reasonable fear that the filmmakers won’t have the patience to keep their (probable) series of films set in the past in order to play with other elements in history such as Beast having a blurry picture taken of him and mistaken for Sasquatch. Or better yet, Magneto controlling the “Magic Bullet” that kills JFK. Or Mystic impersonating the President in 1974 to erase 14 minutes from the supposed “Watergate Tapes,” wherein Prez Tricky Dick Nixon actually conferred with Magneto. Maybe this is all getting a little too Watchmen-esque but the best part of that movie was the history re-writing in the opening credits.

Also, is it just me or would the best title for the “First Class” sequel be, “X-Men: Second Class Citizens”?

Also, also--and this is very important: staying for the end of the credits will elicit nothing but groans from the audience…because there is no scene. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an audience leave a theater so angry after watching a pretty good movie. Quite the magic trick.

Thomas Riley Marshall: The Stand-Up Vice-President

Thomas Riley Marshall is a rarely remembered politician, despite (or because of) his legendarily wry sense of humor, often acting as the perfect antithesis to the icy, academician, President Woodrow Wilson. Marshall learned a lesson in American politics and while he has been forgotten, and perhaps even the lesson has been too, the influence is still evident today. During Marshall’s tenor as the nation’s Vice-President, politicians gambled (sometimes losing White House decorations), smoked (everything), drank courageous amount of alcohol (or in Roosevelt’s case, coffee). Politicians slept with mistresses, made racial slights, dodged military service, employed cronies, took bribes and in every other way acted like how politicians in pretty much any time have acted. But as Marshall flippantly discovered, nothing is more fatal in politics than a keen sense of wit.

Generally popular as a young man, Marshall was told he should go into politics, though Marshall countered such support by saying that he didn’t want to run for Congress because he was afraid that he’d get elected. Without any real effort on his part, Marshall was elected governor of Indiana and there ended up on the right side of history in almost every heated debate at the time, including child labor laws, popular election of Senators and overhauling the state’s bloated auditing agency. More stunningly, he mustered the courage to be against eugenics bills, sterilization bills and capital punishment—perhaps becoming the first governor to get disgustingly labeled by his critics as “weak on crime.” Political cartoons noted this and mocked Marshall for commuting the sentences of would-be executed criminals. True to form, Marshall got a kick of the cartoons and referenced their jokes in his own speeches.

Despite Wilson’s divergent temperament and Marshall’s own absence from the Democratic National Convention, Marshall was picked as the vice-presidential nominee, and granted a lot more time to shoot off one liners such as: “I do not talk politics between campaigns and afterward I regret what I said in them.” After winning office, Marshall reflected on the campaign noting that he couldn’t remember if he had made “169 speeches or one speech 169 times.” Shortly after taking his real oath of office, Marshall proposed a second one, vowing to “acknowledge the insignificant influence of the office, and to take it in a good-natured way.”

Most famously, during a very long and drab, laundry list, speech from Sen. Joseph Bristow (R-KS) on what the country needed in order to improve itself, VP Marshall leaned over to one of his clerks and whispered loud enough for the whole Senate chamber to hear, “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.” That several Senators laughed would prove this moment to be Marshall’s political high point in Washington.

As vice-president, Marshall mostly stayed in his office at the Senate, noting that it was not unlike “a monkey cage, except the visitors do not offer me any peanuts.” When appointed to the board of executives for the Smithsonian Museum, Marshall dryly noted the convenience of now being able to compare his “fossilized life with the fossils of all ages.” Marshall would go on to hone his self-depreciation, saying, “The only business of the vice-president is to ring the White House bell every morning and ask what is the state of health of the president.” As the years went on, Marshall’s increasingly unappreciated wit drifted to more depressing sentiments, such as, “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea, the other was elected Vice-President and nothing was ever heard from either of them again.” More depressing, while on a speaking tour, the Vice-President was given a single, local police officer as protection; which Marshall thought was outrageous, saying, “No one was ever crazy enough to shoot at a vice-president.” Apparently, Marshall was not a student of history as Aaron Burr had been in a gun duel while in office and Andrew Johnson was saved at the last moment when his would-be assassin got drunk and lost his nerve. Incredibly, Marshall had also vastly underestimated the crazies in America; as shortly after the quip, somebody was actually too crazy to shoot the vice-president, preferring instead to BLOW HIM UP.

Meet Eric Muenter. (Fair warning: this is a helluva story.) Muenter was a German-teaching, Harvard professor who, in 1906, poisoned his own wife with arsenic for unknown reasons (bad cooking?) and escaped Boston police custody by shaving his freaking beard. He moved to Texas, changed his named to Frank Holt and became a German language instructor, again. Incomprehensibly, the man was promoted several times and eventually became a professor at (I swear to God) Cornell University. There, he became frustrated with America’s commercial support of the Allied forces in the first World War. So, like any crazy person, he bought a bunch of dynamite, rigged a timer that involved dipping acid onto a cork, got into the Senate chambers late one night and put the bomb at the door of Thomas Riley Marshall as if it was a sack of poop on fire.

Not content with this display of insanity, Muenter/Holt decided to go to the house of industrialist/philanthropist J.P. Morgan, Jr.—where he planned to hold Morgan’s family hostage until America stopped selling munitions to France and England. On the train to Morgan’s house, the Senate bomb exploded before anyone had gotten close enough to be harmed, though one security guard was reportedly knocked out of his chair by the blast. When Holt broke into Morgan’s house, the multi-millionaire rushed the would-be assassin and was shot in the groin (but not killed). Hilariously, Holt had not counted on J.P. Morgan’s servants—who also rushed the intruder and subdued him until police could take him away. In prison, the Cornell professor Holt was identified as the former Harvard professor Muenter. Embarrassed, Muenter tried to kill himself with a pencil but failed. Proving he could be as determined as he was crazy, Muenter then climbed his prison cell bars and managed to dive headfirst onto the concrete floor, crushing his skull. Wit makes enemies indeed.

This all starts to come back to Marshall when people disputed who was the original target in the Senate chambers, if anybody at all. Marshall, to his end, continued to alienate colleagues, popularly noting that “wise men remain at home and discuss public questions on the end of street cars and around barber shops.” The heavily liberal Woodrow Wilson became frustrated with Marshall’s politically moderate stances and briefly tried to remove him from the reelection ticket in 1916. The only real effect then was that President Wilson was not spared Marshall’s rapier wit. For instance, when Marshall inscribed in a book to Wilson, “From your only vice.”

Get the President some Aloe Vera--because he just got burned! Ah snap!

This is not to say VP Marshall was at any point antagonistic toward the President; though it might have helped when Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919. At first, Marshall did not entertain thoughts of taking over as ‘acting President’ because he did not want to be called a usurper or otherwise potentially split the country. As Wilson’s condition worsened, Marshall still fended off his own supporters--including the Secretary of the State--saying that Wilson’s only hope for recovery was maintaining a reason to live. Moreover, Edith Wilson, essentially the ‘acting President,’ did everything in her power (and way beyond) to ensure Marshall stayed on the sidelines. During an out-of-town speaking engagement, Marshall was informed President Wilson had died and Marshall resolved to go to D.C. and assume the Presidency. However, Marshall was correctly informed at his hotel that the President had not died. Eventually Wilson (mostly) recovered and Marshall’s tenor as Vice-President was only made notable by being the first VP to serve a full eight years in almost a century.

"I have sometimes thought that great men are the bane of civilization, they are the real cause of all the bitterness and contention which amounts to anything in the world.”

--Thomas Riley Marshall (vice-president to Woodrow Wilson)