[Program Note: Our usual Friday Talking Points column is going on a one-week hiatus, so that we are able to present a special offering today, for the Independence Day weekend. So as not to cause withdrawal symptoms among our fan base, we offer up two do-it-yourself suggestions for discussion this week (which sounds way better than: "assigning summer homework"), which were so unbelievable that they deserve mention here before we get all patriotic. The first comes from Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, who just wrote possibly the most monumentally stupid column she's ever penned (which is saying a lot, for her), titled: "Obama: Our First Female President" -- bringing the art of emasculation to new lows. Secondly (and much more fun to respond to) was John Boehner's interview with a Pittsburgh newspaper, in which he described the effort to pass Wall Street reform as "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon." Democrats have begun jumping on Boehner's comments, as well they should. Feel free to write your own talking points on these subjects in the comments section. Friday Talking Points will return in its normal time slot next week.]

 

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Interviewed by the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, Frédéric Taddeï explains that, if he has invited French anti-Semitic activist Dieudonné to participate in his program, "Ce soir ou jamais" [Tonight or Never] several times, it is to demonstrate that there is no "lobby" forbidding the latter access to the media. And, carried away by the impetus of his virtuous and heroic confession, he adds, "I am the proof, and the only one, that there is no conspiracy." We read him correctly. We rub our eyes, but we read him correctly. If words have a meaning, if they were proofread and the presenter was not, as one might suppose, tricked or misrepresented, he is telling us, in a few sentences, several things.

1. The only way of combatting antisemitism (in other words, in the case in point, of combatting a theory of the «Jewish conspiracy» whose success and constancy in nourishing «the most lasting hatred» we have been aware of, at least, since Poliakov) is to give the floor to the antisemites themselves (meaning those who, not content to simply promote the said conspiracy theory, have made a regular business out of negationist provocation, the inherent casuistry of the theme of competition in victimization, and a rabid and increasingly nauseating anti-Zionism). One must admit, this is a thesis that is, to say the least, strange and risqué.

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Most documentaries about Mexico tend to focus on its embattled northern border--tales of drug wars and desperate migrants. In Circo, we're led into the belly of rural Mexico, town by town. New York director Aaron Schock offered LAFF audiences his ravishing portrait of a century-old Mexican circus dynasty as they struggle to survive their country's changes. Schock not only proves that a solitary filmmaker can prevail in terra incognita (he shot completely solo), but reveals more truth about how a family barely holds together than any reality-TV show. Most compelling are the bewitching children born into the ring, and the questions the film asks about whether they are lucky or trapped. To hear what Schock has to say about making Circo, click here:

Los Angeles Film Festival: Aaron Schock discusses his documentary, CIRCO. from Michael Kurcfeld on Vimeo.

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First, America, Happy Birthday! It's true what they say, time really does fly. 234 years young and you don't look a day over 150. I am so proud to be an American -- in fact I well up with tears if I sit and just think about the extraordinary blessing it is to be so privileged. I remember as a child getting goose bumps as I sat on my parents lap and watched the American Legion fireworks display. I would quietly witness the dusk sky melt from orange to dark blue, smell the gun-powder from the "bombs bursting in air" and listen to the sound of the emcee's booming voice proudly shouting "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"...that memory is the heart of what America means to me.

I believe that with the blessing of being an American also comes a duty for me to work to further civil liberties from which such happiness flows. Over the past month, I have been traveling around America, celebrating LGBTQA Pride Month or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning, and Allies -- those that identify as heterosexual, but act as strong advocates of the community. Our Allies sometimes get left out of the acronym, but they play a vital role in the movement towards equality. While at these Pride Month events I raised money for local charities by signing copies of the June 2010 issue of PLAYGIRL Magazine, in which I "drop my labels," both literally, and politically. The PLAYGIRL project provided a forum for me to challenge prevailing concepts of sexuality, race and ethnicity, to explore artistically, and, as a political science student at The New School in New York, just what dropping our labels might look like. As I say in the PLAYGIRL Magazine interview (yes -- there is an interview!) I believe labels further stereotype and categorize us as separate from one another, when I believe our "sameness" to one another clearly trumps our "differences."

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