I went to see the new Iraq war documentary No End In Sight the other night, and the whole thing depressed me. Not the movie--despite the ecstatic reviews, it was mostly a tedious jog down well-trod paths. Anyone paying any attention already knows the facts laid out here (Paul Bremer is a douchebag? I'm shocked!), and a far more interesting film would have concentrated not on the well-known failings of Rummy & Company, but on the Democratic enablers who passively sat by while the Bushinistas did whatever the hell they wanted.
No, the depression came from the actual screening itself. No End In Sight's brief Des Moines run was at the Varsity, an old neighborhood theater transformed several decades into an art house, albeit an art house specializing mostly in solidly middlebrow fare. My mom hated going to movies there because of what she called "the Varsity audience"--moneyed, well-educated people who make a point of reacting to any psuedo-brainy reference in a movie to show they get it. So if, for instance, there's a line about Kierkeguaard in a Woddy Allen movie, the audience will laugh smugly, not because it's a funny gag, but just because, hey, they've read (or, more likely, scanned) Kierkeguaard.
And so, during No End In Sight, we'd get clips of Rummy's sneering press conferences, or photos of Bush in front of the Mission Accomplished banner, always accompanied by derisive chuckles from the Varsity's Peanut Gallery.
To what point? Everyone's seen these clips a million times--they can't have any impact anymore. And in any event, the proper reaction to seeing this parade of horrors isn't condescending laughter, it should be disgust, or outrage.
Ah, but disgust or outrage might lead to action, and an audience like this isn't likely to take any action more daring than patting themselves on the back for towing the liberal line. These are the type of people who cluelessly throw their support behind Hillary Clinton, not knowing or caring that she supported Bush's actions in Iraq every step of the way, until public opinion turned, and it was actually safe to oppose the war.
