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US Army Lessons Learned - battle of Mosul Iraq 2004
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- March 16, 2008
Important US Army Lessons Learned report on operations in Mosul between 22 September - 19 October 2004 involving the Stryker Brigade Combat Team. The report is 120 pages, written at the For Official Use Only level and dated 21 Dec 2004. Verified privately by Wikileaks editorial staff.
Example content:
- This Initial Impression Report (IIR) provides a summary of key emerging insights, observations and Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTP) from the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, Stryker Brigade Combat Team's (SBCT) operational deployment, OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF). Between 22 September - 19 October 2004, the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) formed, trained, and deployed a nine (9) person Collection and Analysis Team (CAAT) to Mosul, Iraq.
- Observation: The brigade has developed some excellent examples of detainee holding facilities, however some are inadequate. Discussion: Each subordinate battalion task force, of the brigade, was responsible for establishing a detainee holding facility within their respective forward operating base (FOB). The 2nd Battalion, 3rd Brigade FOB had a large holding facility with separate holding areas, a separate interrogation room, and space for interrogators to confer and develop interrogations, an entrance way to the facility equipped with flood lights, and a location that offered cover and concealment. The battalion designed, contracted for, and supervised the completion of its own holding facility. Conversely, 1st Battalion, 14th Cavalry Squadron's FOB holding facility was established on an existing structure, approximately twenty feet from the perimeter. This structure had no cover or concealment from the Baghdad highway. In addition there was a large abandoned school just two hundred meters away, and overlooking, the selected structure. This facility consisted of a single room approximately twenty by forty feet in diameter with no room to conduct detainee screening or keep detainees separated. This configuration limited interrogation techniques, and jeopardized the discovery of the detainees' identities.
- Discussion: The Joint Psychological Operations Task Force (JPOTF), previously, retained approval authority for PSYOP products. This process unnecessarily delayed the responsiveness and timeliness of products and prevented regional focus and legitimacy. With approval authority at the task force level products could be produced locally and shipped to the subordinate battalions within a week to two weeks. PSYOP was centralized at the brigade level, while Civil Affairs (CA) was decentralized and pushed down to the battalion level. The brigade ensured that CA process was equitable across the brigade battle space. CA projects however, did not appear to be used effectively as tools to leverage the information operations (IO) objectives and utilized an approval process not linked with the formal targeting process. Non-lethal effects were integrated into cordon and search operations. Specifically, tactical commanders found it very useful for loud speaker teams to accompany the inter cordon as a method for informing the local population of what was going on and how to comply. Once the operation was completed the media was alerted and moved to the location to provide coverage of the event. Soldiers also used combat camera to document damages occurring during the raid to provide a method for reimbursement, if no detentions were made. The documentation and media access were executed as defensive counter-propaganda operations.
- Observation: Infantry battalions were not trained nor particularly suited to conduct contracting functions during support operations and stability operations. Discussion: Battalions had limited or no contracting training prior to deploying. In one battalion, on any given day, there was in excess of $100,000 in cash for local contracts. A lieutenant or sergeant first class drew, secured, and disbursed the money to support approved contracted projects. The battalion had no training, or any dedicated office support, pertaining to the specific ways and means for letting contracts.
- Discussion: Several units expressed concern about the contracting they were required to initiate, at the battalion level, without any prior training. They were also concerned about the amount and legality of the contracting preformed. The battalions, spent on average, about four and one half million dollars, during the year they were in country, on civil affairs projects, construction projects for the Iraqi National Guard (ING) and force protection improvements. A majority of that funding was handled through the contracting office either at brigade or at the task force level. In one case the battalion commander initiated a contract for up armoring his canvas High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV). After looking at several vendors he selected the vendor with the most experience, the material (that had been tested to do the job), and the workforce to accomplish the job. The commander submitted a sole source contract request to protect his Soldiers as quickly as possible. The contracting office rejected the sole source requested, and has competed the contracts resulting in an additional thirty days to process the request ultimately selecting the same vendor the commander had requested earlier. This process unnecessarily exposed Soldiers, to direct harm, for an additional thirty days. In other cases staff members complained about the constant changing of standards required for contracts, turn-over of contracting officers, and the fact that the process did not support the commander's timeline. Commanders felt that they need more flexibility to fund projects quickly to support their objectives and to show immediate good will toward target Iraqi audiences. Another serious deficiency is in writing contracts to ensure that applicable assessment is applied to contractor selection as well as quality control once the job has started. Many individuals claimed to be contractors to get American money.
- Topic M: Media Support to the Fight (ART 7.10.2 Facilitate Media Operations)
- Observation: No issues, with embedded media, were identified.
- Discussion: The brigade did not specify any major issues with embedded media but did emphasize the importance of developing a good media plan as detailed by the following actual event. An embedded media representative was staying with elements of the brigade and had been granted access to an event where school supplies were to be handed out to needy students. The unit took the reporter to a school which they had recently built. When they arrived they were surprised to find that no children were present and that an Iraqi family was homesteading in the building. The Iraqi police were unwilling to remove the family and no school supplies to be issued. Fortunately the reporter elected not to cover the event, which could have made us look bad, since we didn'tt know what was going on with the school after we funded its construction. The Iraqi police were unwilling or unable to support us and the supplies that we purchased were never distributed to the children. The reporter understood what had happened and had other good coverage to use and rather than airing any of this event.
- Insights/Lessons Learned:
- Make sure you have a good media plan for embedded media so they can cover the types of articles they are interested in and have appropriate access to Soldier and events.
- It is wise to have a plan in advance and events for the media to choose from. Assisting the media in getting the type of coverage they want will ultimately enhance the opportunity for more favorable coverage.
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May 23, 2013
To the Editor:
Many citizens in the Central Whidbey community have voiced distress from the type of planes using Outlying Field (OLF) Coupeville. We have heard from long time residents, small businesses and farmers who support the Navy's mission, but are experiencing a level of impact with the transition to the E-18 Growler planes. Out of respect for these citizen concerns we began discussions last year with Naval Air Station Whidbey Island's (NAS-WI) leadership.
We have encouraged the Base to improve its communication with the community. As a result the Base has begun issuing public notices of its practice flight schedule at OLF as well as summer dates when there will be no flights due to field repairs. They agreed to create a fact sheet about flight patterns and other operational information. For us, this was just a first step.
On Wednesday, May 15th we attended a meeting of local, state and federal representatives with NAS-WI Base Commander Captain Nortier and Rear Admiral Rich, Commander Navy Region Northwest. The OLF flights were discussed and Rear Admiral Rich spoke to his awareness of the noise impacts to Central Whidbey and his willingness to explore strategies to address the needs of the community.
Other elected officials have been helpful in these efforts. Congressman Rick Larsen's office has contacted the head of Naval Aviation at the Department of the Navy to discuss technical solutions to reduce noise effects from the E-18 Growler. These may include equipment modifications, flight pattern alternatives or changes to take-off profiles.
Communication between the community and NAS-WI is vital in finding a way to meet the needs of our local residents and businesses as well as support the Navy's need to train pilots being deployed to defend our country. By increasing the dialogue we can come together to reduce the negative impacts of base operations on our community. Please join us for an OLF community forum with elected officials at the Coupeville Rec Hall, Wednesday June 19, 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Mayor Nancy Conard
Commissioner Helen Price Johnson

subset: commoncrawl


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A.D. after God had spoken to the Pope in a dream - in the dream it was snowing on one of the hills of Rome and God told him to build a church there and the city would be rid of the plague that had ravaged it. For this reason the church is also known as Mary of the Snows.
This, the last of the main basilicas, is also one of the seven pilgrim churches. For nearly 700 years this was the seat of the latin patriarch of Antioch - up until 1953 when the last one died and no new one was appointed.
Moving on outside the walls - to San Paolo fuori le Mura (St. Paul's Without the Walls) - the last of the Pilgrimage Churches - we prayed for the Pope's intentions and then went on looking around. This church (picture 3) is absolutely huge and built on the location where St. Paul was buried, his sarcophagus partially displayed in the crypt (picture 4 - and yes, that is a bit of yours truly in the bottom left hand corner there). The church was first built in 386 A.D. but burnt down in 1823 A.D. and has hence been reconstructed and only parts of the antique basilica remain.
In connections to this church is also a monastery which is, I'm sure, lovely to visit - despite repeated visits to the church I still haven't managed it - there is so much to see here! So after praying, visiting the crypt, carefully examining the wall with the Pope portraits and discussing which ones were sodalists and photographing a group of nuns when they were looking the other way we took a break in the cafeteria - a very good one, by the way, a great place to relax before going on to the next stop. In St. Paul's there's also a very nice gift shop where they sell, apart from the usual rosary beads and little statuettes, soaps, candy and oils (oh - and liqueur, too!) made by the monks.
After this visit it was time for what would end up being my
favourite part of the pilgrimage (even though San Sebastiano comes close, too). The church of St. Agnes without the walls (OK, I might be slightly biased my own name being Agnes...). Yes, it is a bit away from the city center - and a bit of a walk from the nearest bus stop - but just opening the doors to this masterpiece of a church made it all feel worth it. After entering the doors you need to the descend a long flight of stairs with beautifully ornamented walls and ceilings (picture 5).
The church that's on the site today was built in the 7th century but there's been a church here longer than that. It is in this church that two lambs are blessed by the Pope on St. Agnes' Feast Day (Jan 21 for those of you who don't keep track), their wool later woven into pallia - the ceremonial white neck-stoles sent to newly elevated Metropolitan archbishops, the church is also another place where you can visit the catacombs of Rome.
After this visit we could go home happy.


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text: Hydration is an important aspect of both triathlon training and triathlon racing. If you don't maintain your hydration you won't have the endurance you need to complete your race. Triathlete Sports has a variety of hydration products to quench your thirst on your bike, during your run and to and from your race venue. We carry water bottles, hydration belts, hydration vests, water bottle cages and aerodynamic cycling hydration systems. Our water bottle selection ranges from traditional squeeze bottles to rigid BPA free bottles that are durable and great for pre/post-race hydration.


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A failure to invest in science and engineering education could have dire consequences in today's global economy, said corporate leaders from Xerox Corp. and Amazon.com in separate April addresses at Princeton.
Anne Mulcahy, chairman and chief executive officer of Xerox, and Amazon senior vice president Jeffrey Wilke '88 shared insights from their careers in the final two events in the "Leadership in a Technological World" lecture series, sponsored by Princeton's Center for Innovation in Engineering Education.
"We prepare students to lead by providing exposure to real-life leaders-leaders who understand technology, great leaders, experienced leaders, leaders with courage and integrity," said Dean of Engineering H. Vincent Poor.
In her April 5 talk, Mulcahy reflected on lessons she learned "on the firing line" after she assumed the helm of Xerox in the midst of a corporate crisis, and the practices she used to lead the remarkable turnaround of the multibillion-dollar corporation.
"If there is a line between failure and success, it is certainly about the quality of your people and the innovation they bring to the market," Mulcahy said, drawing a parallel between Xerox's corporate crisis and the national shortage in the production of great engineers and scientists.
The growing technological prowess of other countries, especially China and India, can be viewed as good news for a competitive economy, according to Mulcahy. But the failure of the United States to nurture its own technological infrastructure will cause significant problems, she said, noting that federal funding for mathematics, science and engineering has declined by one-third since 1970.
Business, government and the educational system must collaborate to counter this trend, she said, in part by making the talent base more inclusive. Mulcahy praised Princeton for its focus on diversity, innovation and education, and said she looked forward to partnerships between Xerox and the University.
In an April 18 talk that focused on the importance of making decisions for the long run, Wilke said a lack of foresight can be blamed, in part, for the frequent decisions by corporate leaders to move operations overseas and for the current crisis in the nation's production and retention of talented scientists and engineers. "The aggregate of these choices is a long-run outcome that should make Americans very nervous," he said.
Echoing Mulcahy's sentiments, Wilke called for a commitment from current and future leaders in industry, government and academia to support education in mathematics, science and engineering.
The lecture series, which will continue next year, was supported by the William Pierson Field lectureship fund. The series also included addresses by former Lockheed Martin Co. chairman and CEO Norman Augustine '57 *59 and David Crane '81, CEO and president of NRG Energy.


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Too Precious to Ride?
Some people wonder whether special bikes can be too precious to ride. They ask me about my bikes: "Aren't you afraid that it will get scratched?" or "What if you crash it?" or "What if it gets stolen while you lock it up on the street?"
Those things do happen. I was bringing a mailing of Bicycle Quarterly to the post office, and arrived just seconds before closing. In a rush, I leaned my Urban Bike (below) against a concrete retaining wall. As I took the mailbags off the front rack, the bike scraped against the concrete, causing a big scratch in the seatstay. Ouch! On the way home, I was upset for while, but then my attention drifted to the lovely ride in the evening light and the vibrant autumn colors. I still need to touch up the scratch with paint. I have waxed the bike with car wax, like I do for all of my bikes, so no rust has formed in the two years since the bike got scratched. I got used to the scratch, and no longer notice it.
My new René Herse had been completed just before Paris-Brest-Paris last year. Sixty kilometers into the ride, another rider ran into my front wheel, wedged his seatpost-mounted rack underneath my handlebar bag, and we went down. As I was flying through the air, I was far more concerned about injuries to myself than about damage to my bike. All of us were lucky: The damage was limited to a few scrapes (on both the bikes and the riders). The next ride on the new Herse was a trip across the center of France in the rain and mud (below). I enjoyed riding the bike so much that even if I had known that those things would happen, I still would have taken the new Herse on these rides.
Both bikes are developing patina, and I actually prefer that over a shiny brand-new bike. I also find that high-quality products usually develop nicer patina than inexpensive ones. Plastics and powdercoats don't age as well as aluminum, leather and paint…
What if it gets stolen? I have been lucky so far. But if it does happen, renter's or homeowner's insurance will cover your bike. There is a deductible, which means that your out-of-pocket expense is the same whether your bike costs $ 500 or $ 5000. Of course, replacing a custom-made bicycle is not as easy as going to a bike shop and getting a new one. After a theft, I might have to ride something else for a while. On the other hand, if I were overly protective of my nice bike, I'd be riding "something else" all the time!
Some truly rare classic bikes are more precious, and I take more precautions. There are different opinions, but I believe that even with irreplaceable classics, riding them keeps the intent of the builder alive. An unridden bike is like a painting kept in a safe: it no longer serves its purpose. I really appreciate when collectors let me ride their priceless machines, such as a twin-chain built by Vélocio, a Retro-Directe, the Schulz, and the only surviving René Herse from the Technical Trials. This generosity has enabled me to share first-hand experiences of these machines in the pages of Bicycle Quarterly.
I also felt that riding a 1946 René Herse tandem in Paris-Brest-Paris went a long way toward proving – to myself and others – that wide tires, 650B wheels and low-trail geometries were great alternatives to the then-current conventional wisdom of how to make a superb bike. It was great fun, and it brought wonderful memories to the older spectators, many of whom remembered these machines in their prime!
I recommend not worrying about your nice bike. Just go out and ride it! You don't want to miss out on the fun!


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Organ trafficking is still a protected crime
Organ trafficking and illicit transplant surgeries have infiltrated global medical practice. But despite the evidence of widespread criminal networks and several limited prosecutions in countries including India, Kosovo, Turkey, Israel, South Africa and the US, it is still not treated with the seriousness it demands.
Since the first report into the matter in 1990, there has been an alarming number of post-operative deaths of "transplant tour" recipients from botched surgeries, mismatched organs and high rates of fatal infections, including HIV and Hepatitis C contracted from sellers' organs. Living kidney sellers suffer from post-operative infections, weakness, depression, and some die from suicide, wasting, and kidney failure. Organs Watch documented five deaths among 38 kidney sellers recruited from small villages in Moldova.
Distressing stories lurk in the murky background of today's business of commercialised organ transplantation, conducted in a competitive global field that involves some 50 nations. The World Health Organisation estimates 10,000 black market operations happen each year.
The organ trade network
As I wrote in Living Donor Organ Transplants, the sites of illicit transplant have expanded from Asia to the Middle East, Eastern Europe, South Africa, Central Asia, Latin America and the US. All are facilitated by local criminal networks but those run by organised global criminal syndicates are the most dangerous, mobile, and widespread. They are also the most difficult to trace and to interrupt.
The trade involves a network of human traffickers including mobile surgeons, brokers, patients, and sellers who meet for clandestine surgeries involving cut-throat deals that are enforced with violence, if needed. Many of the "kidney hunters" are former sellers, recruited by crime bosses into the tight web of transplant trafficking schemes.
Sellers include poor nationals, new immigrants, global guest workers, or political and economic refugees recruited from abroad to serve the needs of transplant tourists in countries that tolerate or actively facilitate the illegal transplant trade.
Until recently this all went unnoticed. There is considerable resistance among transplant professionals who see trafficking as relatively rare and which only takes place in third world countries. They were loathe to recognise the involvement of transplant trafficking schemes in the US as well as in South African hospitals – not to mention transplant tourism packages.
Bioethicists argue endlessly about the "ethics" of what is actually a crime and a medical human rights abuse.
Turning up the heat
In 2008, the climate of denial began to change when The Transplantation Society) and the International Society of Nephrology), held a major summit which acknowledged organ trafficking as a reality. Moral pressure was then put on countries actively involved in organised and disorganised international schemes to recruit paid, living donors.
Despite this, criminal networks of brokers and transplant trafficking schemes are still robust, exceedingly mobile, resilient, and generally one step ahead of the game. Meanwhile, one economic or political crisis after another has also supplied the market with countless refugees that fall like ripe fruit into the hands of organ traffickers. The desperate, displaced and dispossessed can be found and recruited to sell a spare kidney in almost any nation.
Who gets what?
Human trafficking for organs is still generally seen as a victimless crime that benefits some very sick people at the expense of other, more invisible – or at least dispensable – people. And some prosecutors and judges treat it as such.
In 2009, New Jersey federal agents arrested kidney trafficker Levy Izhak Rosenbaum as part of a larger police sting of corrupt politicians. Rosenbaum, a self-styled "matchmaker" as he described himself in taped conversations, was caught trying to arrange the private sale of a kidney from a donor in Israel to an undercover FBI agent for $160,000 (£100,000).
The hospitals where the Rosenbaum operations were arranged were prestigious and despite it being illegal to trade organs in the US since 1984, many don't ask enough questions. Indeed, Rosenbaum claimed he was easily able to concoct cover stories. It's a lucrative business.
Federal prosecutors couldn't believe that the trafficked organ sellers had been deceived or coerced into selling. Two years later Rosenbaum pleaded guilty to just three incidents of brokering kidneys for payment despite admitting to having been in the business for over a decade. At his trial, Rosenbaum had a powerful show of support from transplant patients who arrived to praise the trafficker, and beg for his mercy.
Only one victim of kidney selling testified – a young black Israeli, Elahn Quick – who was recruited by traffickers to travel to a hospital in Minnesota to sell his kidney to a 70-year-old man. Quick testified that he agreed to the donation because he had been unemployed, alienated from his community, and hoped a meritorious act would improve his social standing. However, just before he was anaesthetised he asked his "minder" if he could get out of the deal. The operation went ahead.
The judge, perhaps moved by Rosenbaum's supporters, concluded that deep down he was a good man, and that Quick had not been defrauded; he was paid what he was promised. "Everyone", she said, "got something out of this deal".
Combating criminal networks
Illegal, clandestine kidney transplants depend on criminal networks of human traffickers preying on the bodies of both the desperately sick and poor. Prosecutions of traffickers and their associates — brokers, kidney hunters, and enforcers — is inefficient. Brokers are the most visible players but easily replaceable. Arresting and prosecuting a few of them, as has been the case, won't deter others from taking their place.
While culpable, kidney sellers and transplant tour recipients are also victims of recruitment, deception and varying degrees of coercion. They can provide information, but should be treated as victims unless, as happens in some cases, they go on to also become part of the trade.
Legislation and prosecution must instead focus on transplant professionals — the surgeons, hospitals, and insurance companies – that claim immunity by saying either that they can't police the trade, or that they are not responsible for monitoring what goes on behind the scenes, or that they've been deceived.
Transplant professionals were implicated in the Netcare scandal in South Africa after the company entered into a plea bargain and accepted a $1.1m fine. The charges were related to 109 kidney transplants carried out between 2001-3. There were false declarations that donors were related and five operations in which the donors were minors, all against the company's own internal policy. One kidney specialist, Jeffrey Kallmeyer, accepted payments direct to his bank but later struck a plea bargain to avoid extradition from Canada.
Organs Watch has many copies of letters that show how organised traffickers can be, how they keep schemes quiet and how they coach kidney sellers and transfer illicit payments. Professional medical sanctions against transplant surgeons who work with criminal organs trafficking networks are non existent but could be very effective. They should lose their license to practice medicine and be prohibited from participating in transplant conferences.
Regulation cannot come solely from within the transplant profession. Different laws and different jurisdictions make prosecutions of crimes that span international boundaries very difficult. The UN Global Initiative to Combat Human Trafficking must pay more specific attention to organ trafficking, while other initiatives, such as those in the European Union, are to be applauded if we are to beat this illegal trade once and for all.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes is Director of Organs Watch, an organisation dedicated to researching and tracking global organ trafficking. This article was originally published at The Conversation and is republished with permission. Read the original article.
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Fri, 17 Apr
Judaism For Dummies
Who says that Judaism is complicated? Join us to learn the most important rules and customs of the Jewish world. Everyone is welcome!
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The classes are accessible to anyone regardless of their knowledge of the Jewish faith and will answer questions about Jewish practice you were always wondering about. Please feel welcome to invite your friends and family to this unmissable course.
The classes are free but all donations are appreciated.
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Laws, Regulations and Annotations
Business Taxes Law Guide—Revision 2024
Alcoholic Beverage Tax Law
Revenue and Taxation Code
Division 2. Other Taxes
Part 14. Alcoholic Beverage Tax
Chapter 9. Administration
Article 2. The California Taxpayers' Bill of Rights1
Section 32468
32468. Procedures relating to protest hearings. Procedures of the board, relating to appeals staff review conferences before a staff attorney or supervising tax auditor independent of the assessing department, shall include all of the following:
(a) Any conference shall be held at a reasonable time at a board office that is convenient to the taxpayer.
(b) The conference may be recorded only if prior notice is given to the taxpayer and the taxpayer is entitled to receive a copy of the recording.
(c) The taxpayer shall be informed prior to any conference that he or she has a right to have present at the conference his or her attorney, accountant, or other designated agent.
1Article 2 was added by Stats. 1992, Ch. 438, in effect January 1, 1993.


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Republican Jewish Coalition
Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) was described in 2005 as "a big money pro-Israel lobby group[1] linking Jewish-American neoconservatives to the Christian Right and Israel's Likud government."[2]
Koch Wiki |
The Koch brothers -- David and Charles -- are the right-wing billionaire co-owners of Koch Industries. As two of the richest people in the world, they are key funders of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). In SourceWatch, key articles on the Kochs include: Koch Brothers, Koch Industries, Americans for Prosperity, American Encore, and Freedom Partners. |
The Republican Jewish Coalition founded in 1985 as the National Jewish Coalition "to be a permanent Jewish presence in the Republican community and a credible Republican presence in the Jewish community," its website states. The RJC is "the sole voice of Jewish Republicans to Republican decision makers and the Jewish community ... committed to building a strong, effective and respected Jewish Republican voice in Washington and across the country."[3]
Bush White House connections
The following members of the Republican Jewish Coalition board of directors are connected with President George W. Bush and the Bush administration.
- Wayne L. Berman, Bush Ranger 2000 and Bush Pioneer 2004, member of the Libby Defense Trust Advisory Committee, and husband of Bush White House social secretary Lea Berman.
- Matt Brooks, executive director of both the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Jewish Policy Center think tank, "served as the national field director for Victory '88 Jewish Campaign Committee, designing and implementing campaign strategy on behalf of the Bush-Quayle '88 campaign."[4]
- Lewis M. Eisenberg, finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, member of the Libby Defense Trust Advisory Committee, former chairman (1995-2001) of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, owner of the World Trade Center.[5]
- David M. Flaum, RJC National Chairman, member of the Libby Defense Trust Advisory Committee, and Bush Pioneer 2004.
- Richard J. Fox, Freedom's Watch funder, long-term Republican activist, and chairman of the Jewish Policy Center, who served as Pennsylvania state chairman for the Reagan/Bush campaign in 1980 and finance chairman in 1988 of Jack Kemp's presidential campaign.
- David Frum, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush for economic speechwriting and credited with helping coin the phrase "Axis of Evil", who is now with the American Enterprise Institute.
- Sheldon Kamins, former executive committee member of Finance Committee of George W. Bush for president and Libby Defense Trust Advisory Committee.[5]
- Ken Mehlman, former chair of the Republican National Committee.
- Mel Sembler, Freedom's Watch funder, appointed Ambassador to Italy (2001-2005) by President George W. Bush and Ambassador to Australia and Nauru by President George H.W. Bush.
- Ned L. Siegel, who was involved in the 2000 Florida recount and a Bush Pioneer 2000 and Bush Ranger 2004.
- Walter P. Stern, board chairman of the Hudson Institute.[6][7]
- Ronald Weiser, Bush Pioneer 2000 and Ambassador to Slovakia (2001-2004).[8]
- Fred Zeidman, a "longtime friend" of President George W. Bush and convicted felon Jack Abramoff's "immediate successor at the lobbying firm of Greenberg Traurig.[9]
- No longer listed as directors are:
- Sam Fox,[10] the Republican fundraiser from Missouri who was named in an April 2007 recess appointment as Ambassador to Belgium by President George W. Bush. Fox's 2004 funding of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth prevented his Senate confirmation earlier. Fox is also a member of the Libby Defense Trust Advisory Committee.
- Howard Leach, Freedom's Watch funder, served as Ambassador to France until 2005, Bush Pioneer, funder to Bush 2000 Florida recount, major donor to Republican candidates, and member of the Libby Defense Trust Advisory Committee.[5]
- Kevin Moley, Freedom's Watch funder, served as U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations (2001-2006), as well as a Senior Advisor to Cheney for Bush-Cheney 2000.
Likud agenda
The RJC has consistently backed positions which are on the far right of the Israeli political spectrum, and the RJC has pushed a Likud-line[citation needed]. In December 2011, Brooks removed Ron Paul from the RJC forum because he questioned the continued unconditional US aid to Israel.[11]
Freedom's Watch
Took George W. Bush to Israel
The Republican Jewish Coalition took George W. Bush on his first trip to Israel in 1998.[2]
Smeared Howard Dean
In February 2005, the RJC "began running full-page ads in major Jewish newspapers across the country featuring a large photo of militants strapped with explosives coddling a young Palestinian boy. Above that arresting image is a quote by Dean: 'It's not our place to take sides.' Below the photo are quotes by Democrats critical of Dean. The ad effectively equates Dean's election with the appeasement of suicide bombers."[2]
Slandered Jewish Democrats
During the month of September 2006, the Republican Jewish Coalition "deliberately distort[ed] the facts" and "placed ads in Jewish newspapers across the country making the outrageous and ridiculous assertion that Democrats are 'turning their backs on Israel.' At the same time, the accusation [was] made by individuals who ... sent out thousands of e-mails to all those in their inboxes."[12]
Questioned loyalty of Jewish Democrats
In October 2006, on the eve of the 2006 Congressional elections, the RJC "call[ed] into question the loyalty of Jewish Democrats, and their party's attitude toward Israel" by running ads which "focused on supposedly 'anti-Israel comments' made by prominent Democrats, and the declining support for Israel amongst grassroots Democrats ... in nearly 30 Jewish weekly newspapers nationwide", with plans to expand into "additional publications."[13]
"RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said, 'The party of Harry Truman and Scoop Jackson has become the party of Jimmy Carter, Al Sharpton, and Cindy Sheehan. Jewish Democrats should take a fresh look and see if they are still comfortable with the growing influence of the anti-Israel radical Left within the Democratic Party.' The Republican party has been winning over more Jewish votes with every election - going from 11 percent in 1992, to 25 percent in 2004."[13]
The following are listed among RJC's leadership.[14]
- Leonard Abramson, Director[15]
- Sheldon G. Adelson, Director
- Jeffrey Altman, General Counsel
- Wayne L. Berman, Director
- Kenneth Bialkin, Director[16]
- Ronald H. Bloom, Director
- Elliott Broidy, Director
- Matthew Brooks, Executive Director
- Bradley Cohen, Director
- Charles M. Diker, Director
- Stephen Distler, Director
- Lewis M. Eisenberg, Director[17]
- Michael David Epstein, Director
- David M. Flaum, National Chairman/Director[18]
- Ari Fleischer, Director
- Richard J. Fox, Former Chairman, Board of Directors
- David Frum, Director
- Joel Geiderman, Director
- Tony Gelbart, Director
- Marc Goldman, Director
- Cheryl Halpern, Former Chairman, Board of Directors
- Joel Hoppenstein, Director
- Howard Jonas, Director
- Sheldon Kamins (Shelly Kamins), Director
- George Klein, Former Chairman, Board of Directors
- Suzanne Kurtz, Press Secretary
- Eliot Lauer, Director
- Laurence Carroll Leeds, Director
- Larry Levine, Director
- Mark Lezell, Director
- Marc Lipschultz, Director
- Earle I. Mack, Director
- Bernard Marcus, Director
- Jeffrey Marcus, Director
- Ken Mehlman, Director
- Larry A. Mizel, Director
- Morris Offit, Director
- Ronald Plotkin, Director
- Marvin Pomerantz, Director
- J. Philip Rosen, Director
- Lindsay Rosenwald, Director
- Alan Sager, Director
- Richard Sambol, Director
- Leonard Sands, Director
- Fred Sands, Director
- Jay Schottenstein, Director
- Martin Selig, Director
- Mel Sembler, Director
- Florence Shapiro, Director
- Mark Siegel, Director
- Ned L. Siegel, Director[19]
- Walter P. Stern, Director
- Myles Tanenbaum, Director[20]
- Allen Tessler, Director[21]
- James S. Tisch, Director[22]
- Ronald Weiser, Director[23]
- Fred Zeidman, Director
In January 2009, Republican Senator Norm Coleman joined RJC as a consultant, pending the outcome of his contested re-election bid against Al Franken. [24]
Contact information
Republican Jewish Coalition
50 F Street, N.W.
Suite 100
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202 638-6688
Fax: 202 638-6694
Email: rjc @ rjchq.org
URL: http://www.rjchq.org/
Related SourceWatch articles
- Americans for Victory Over Terrorism
- Freedom's Watch
- Howard Leach
- Jewish political organizations
- Norman Coleman[25]
- Sam Fox
- ↑ Lobbying Disclosure: Republican Jewish Coalition, Registrant ID: 32870, U.S. House of Representatives.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Ari Berman, "Here They Go Again," The Nation, February 16, 2005.
- ↑ About the RJC, RJCHQ.org.
- ↑ "Rosner's Guest: Matt Brooks," Haaretz, October 1, 2007.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Libby legal defense trust's advisory committee," Dogspot, April 5, 2007.
- ↑ Walter Stern, NNDB.com.
- ↑ Advisory Council, CFA Institute/CFA Centre.
- ↑ Ronald Weiser, NNDB.com.
- ↑ Muriel Kane, "Fred Zeidman and the Republican Jewish Coalition," at-Largely Blog, April 14, 2007.
- ↑ Republican Jewish Coalition, NNDB.com.
- ↑ Chris McGreal, Ron Paul excluded from Republican Jewish Coalition forum, Guardian, 5 December 2011.
- ↑ "GOP Slanders Dems With 'Anti-Israel' Ads," The Jewish Daily Forward, September 29, 2006.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Manila Ryce, "Republican Jewish Coalition to Expand Political Ad Campaign," The Largest Minority Blog, October 18, 2006. Source: Matthew Brooks, "RJC to Expand Highly-Successful Ad Campaign," RJCHQ.org, October 12, 2006.
- ↑ Biography/biographies for RJC leadership, RJCHQ.org.
- ↑ Leonard Abramson, NNDB.com.
- ↑ Kenneth Bialkin, NNDB.com.
- ↑ Lewis M. Eisenberg, NNDB.com.
- ↑ David Flaum, NNDB.com.
- ↑ Ned L. Siegel, NNDB.com.
- ↑ Myles Tanenbaum, NNDB.com.
- ↑ Allen Tessler, NNDB.com.
- ↑ James S. Tisch, NNDB.com.
- ↑ Ronald Weiser, NNDB.com.
- ↑ Michael O'Brien, "Coleman gets job, will still continue reelection bid," The Hill, January 22, 2009.
- ↑ "Privately-Sponsored Travel by Senator Coleman. Republican Jewish Coalition – various," Office of Sen. Norman Coleman, undated.
External articles
- Jake Tapper, "Jews for a day. All six GOP presidential hopefuls schlep their pandering points to the Republican Jewish Coalition's candidates forum," Salon, December 3, 1999.
- Dick Polman, "Jews for Bush? Prez could pick up sizeable Jewish vote — and if so, score a re-election, analysts observe," Jewish World Review, June 15, 2004.
- Ciro Scotti, "Jewish Voters: Bush's Secret Weapon? His strong Israel tilt has won him surprising support from a small but significant bloc. It could even be the margin in Florida," BusinessWeek, August 30, 2004.
- Sharon Kehnemui Liss, "AIPAC Draws Out Republican Jews," Fox News, August 30, 2004.
- Tom Curry, "DeLay makes intense appeal for Jewish voters. Vowing staunch backing for Israel, GOP leaders seek historic party realignment," MSNBC, September 1, 2004.
- Rachel Donadio and Lizzy Ratner, "In Historic Shift, Jewish Support Plotzes On Bush," The New York Observer, September 5, 2004.
- "THE JEWISH VOTE 2004: Election forums in synagogues lead to claims of partisanship," The Jewish News Weekly, October 29, 2004.
- "President's Remarks at Republican Jewish Coalition 20th Anniversary, Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Washington, D.C., Office of the White House Press Secretary, September 21, 2005.
- Debbie Schlussel, "Jewish Republicans Host Islamic Terror Supporter," DebbieSchlussel.com, September 23, 2005.
- Staff, "Bush Says Iraq War Is Good for Israel," The Jewish Daily Forward, December 16, 2005.
- Thomas B. Edsall, "Post-9/11 Drive by Republicans To Attract Jewish Voters Stalls," Washington Post, March 6, 2006.
- Steve Clemons, "White House pushes Jewish groups to embrace John Bolton confirmation," The Huffington Post, July 21, 2006.
- "Lieberman, Lamont And The Republican Jewish Coalition," Hotline On Call Blog/National Journal, August 17, 2006.
- Marc Ballon, "GOP Sees Israel as Way to Woo Democratic Jews," JewishJournal.com, September 1, 2006.
- "Misguided, presumptuous," Washington Jewish Week, September 13, 2006.
- Jennifer Siegel, "Carter Book Slaps Israel With 'Apartheid' Tag, Provides Ammo to GOP," The Jewish Daily Forward, October 17, 2006.
- "The Deceptive Tenacity Of The Republican Jewish Coalition," The Town Crier Blogspot, November 6, 2006.
- "It's Time to Stop Making Israel a Wedge Issue in American Politics," Jewish Social Policy Action Network, November 10, 2006.
- Dr. Daniel E. Loeb, "Bad Math. The RJC's results for its ad campaign just don't add up," The Philadelphia Jewish Voice, December 2006.
- Jennifer Siegel, "David Flaum To Head Republican Jewish Coalition," The Jewish Daily Forward, December 7, 2006.
- News Release: "RJC Names New National Chairman," RJCHQ.org, December 8, 2006.
- Justin Rood, "Jewish Group Calls on Goode to 'Rethink' Muslim Comments," TPMmuckraker, December 22, 2006.
- Bridget Johnson, "The Jewish Vote and the GOP," The Politico, January 31, 2007.
- Ray McGovern, "Helping Israel Die," TomPaine.com, February 9, 2007.
- "Vice President's Remarks to the Republican Jewish Coalition Leadership, Manalaplan, Florida," Office of the White House Press Secretary, March 24, 2007.
- "Cheney: Democrats Are Undermining Our Troops," Associated Press (Fox News), March 25, 2007.
- Joel Gelman, "Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Run TV Ad on Pelosi Visit to Syria," Neocon Express Blogspot, April 9, 2007.
- Randian, "Libby supporters in Republican Jewish Coalition attack Pelosi," The Daily Kos, April 11, 2007.
- Muriel Kane, "Fred Zeidman and the Republican Jewish Coalition," at-Largely Blog, April 14, 2007.
- News Release: "Lieberman Address to Republican Jewish Coalition. 'Now is the time for choosing'," Office of Sen. Joe Lieberman, May 16, 2007.
- Michael Roston, "GOP Candidates Flock To Jewish Forum After Snubbing Latinos, Blacks," The Huffington Post, September 26, 2007.
- Don Van Natta Jr., "Big Coffers and a Rising Voice Lift a New Conservative Group," New York Times (Seattle Times), September 30, 2007.
- B Merryfield, "Freedom's Watch (i.e. Republican Jewish Coalition) backs Vets for Freedom," The Daily Kos, October 2, 2007.
External resources
- Republican Jewish Coalition, NNDB.com.
- Republican Jewish Coalition, Wikipedia.
- Profile: Lawrence Kadish, Right Web.
- Republican Jewish Coalition Political Action Committee: Federal Election Commission (FEC) Committee ID: C00345132.
- Steve Henn, "Power Trips," American Radio Works/PublicRadio.org.


text:
– Sheldon Pearce, Editor, NPR Music
For many years, the Black Thought solo album felt like an imaginary object: long rumored yet never revealed. It went by several names — "Masterpiece Theatre," "The Talented Mr. Trotter" — and had many soft launches.
The Philly rapper born Tariq Trotter had of course already displayed his otherworldly dexterity as frontman and co-founder of The Roots, and, beginning in 2018, emerged as a willing and capable soloist with a series of freewheeling mini-releases. But for most rappers, a proper debut album is a statement of artistic purpose. For a rapper in a group, it is also a chance to establish a fully independent identity. Even as Black Thought the solo artist steadily took shape, his album — the album — remained elusive.
"Cheat Codes," Trotter's new collaboration with the producer Danger Mouse, is that quintessential Black Thought album, the one long awaited by diehards, the first of his recent projects to transcend his supreme skill as a rhymer and define his music beyond his intense technique.
As a soloist, Trotter has tended to write like a world traveler, making offhand references to the chupacabra or Bach, Amon-Ra or the hajj, his raps crowded but fluid as if he were sloshing on foot through a quagmire. Here, he finally locates himself within his songs: as a hometown hero who brought rap game theory to national TV yet remains cognizant of the Black struggle, who is trying to reconcile the world he's entered with the one he's from.
If there are two Americas, Trotter has straddled both, and "Cheat Codes" shares lessons learned during his travels, with a clear frame of mind that is new ground even for one of rap's peerless performers.
As the voice of the legendary Roots crew, Trotter is both representative and accessory. The group is built around his indelible lyricism, but he has always been deferential to the collective, its ideas and organization. The Roots is also a live band, and moving through those arrangements requires a specific potency and stamina.
Books on rapping have lauded his gifts as a performer: In "How to Rap," Kool G Rap champions Trotter's breath control and execution in a Roots staging of his song "Men at Work." Watching the clip, you are immediately struck by the physicality of his recitation, how forcefully and consistently he rattles off phrases, like a boxer working a speed bag.
Yet that asset can also be a strange kind of liability in hip-hop. "Sometimes MCs' flows can so dominate their styles that they overshadow other elements of craft," Adam Bradley wrote of Trotter in "Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop ." "Set within the complex soundscapes offered up by the rest of the group, Black Thought's liquid flow at times nearly washes away his meaning."
The Roots released their last album in 2014 and followed Jimmy Fallon to "The Tonight Show" the same year, and a sense emerged that rapping might have become a secondary concern for Black Thought, admittedly a less ferocious presence at the head of a late-night house band.
When Funk Flex invited him to participate in his ongoing freestyle series on Hot 97 in 2017, the rapper seemed to take the opportunity as a challenge — a way to reassert himself as not only an ambassador of the culture but a lethal technician. The performance was a viral moment that renewed conversations about barring out, and within the epic polemic were hints of a coming return: "Them brothers said, 'Don't go from written bars filled with rage / To primetime television and your gilded cage / Then forget there's people in the world still enslaved.'"
Six months later came "Streams of Thought Vol. 1," the first of a trio of single-producer collections that diverge sharply from The Roots' live instrumentation and conceptual arcs. As far back as 2001, Trotter seemed to already understand how he wanted his solo work to function: "The difference between a Black Thought album and a Roots album is the texture," he told MTV News, promising that his eventual debut would stick to samples.
"Streams of Thought" delivered that vision via esteemed beatmakers 9th Wonder, Salaam Remi and Sean C, but mainly as a sparring exercise: Trotter's presence on them is raw and loose, and they're better understood as small monuments to his talent than for their substance.
There is immediately a greater focus and intent to "Cheat Codes," beginning with the production. The flips are simple and elegant, the drums understated. There is enough space within the loops for Trotter's voice to probe through. Where Sean C compared the beats he made for "Streams of Thought, Vol. 3" to the '70s feel of Jay-Z's "American Gangster," "Cheat Codes" curates soul, psych rock and funk samples from the same era into a weirder, more warped palette.
Danger Mouse constructed these beats with Black Thought and his skill set specifically in mind, and the rapper moves through them deliberately, without compromising what are some of his most writerly verses. Together, the two cohere around a mission to build a classicist album fit for the form's elder statesmen.
Relentless motion is clearly in Trotter's DNA, a trait he traces back to childhood: "My birthplace taught me not to stop / I'm more advanced than my classmates / I came into the game on a fast break," he raps on "No Gold Teeth." Many songs on "Cheat Codes" are built around a single extended verse, though compared to his knotty Hot 97 filibuster they're compact and restrained, there to be not merely heeded but understood.
Take the wavy " Identical Deaths," in which Black Thought is interviewed by God and keeps his cool, making gentle swoops from bar to bar as if trying to carefully pen a letter in cursive. On the title track, he works through the mindset of the "young gunners" running stickups in Philly, only to zoom out at the end and account for the larger systems that created them, using the mic like a bullhorn.
Virtuosity is too often presented as a shorthand for lyricism, and though some rappers have earned notoriety from the former, beneath the surface their verses are often empty. Trotter isn't immune to using technical hyper-proficiency to mask bombast, but even his most ill-defined rhymes carry a certain gravitas in their momentum, the deeply alliterative wordplay generating its own mystique.
However, none of his previous releases have matched this novelistic charm with attentive storytelling the way "Cheat Codes" does. With " Because," he paints a vivid picture of the limited options that lead many into the carceral system. The winding verses of " Sometimes" and " Violas & Lupitas" are packed with little vignettes, and sometimes a bar will contain an entire scene: "Juke joint party lights lit the Harlem nights / Peas and rice made a Judas out of Garveyites."
There is still plenty of rapping about how great he is at rapping, but the verses more often turn on nuggets of personal discovery ("Richard Wright, 'Black Boy' that grew into a Blacker man") and accumulated wisdom. Where Vol. 3 of "Streams of Thought" often felt aimlessly political, a concept record without a real agenda, the perspective here is tighter and more self-affirming.
On " The Darkest Part," he mulls injustice, freedom, and the weight of the soul ("I came to take back that other two-fifths of a man"). Later, on "Saltwater," he distinguishes himself as a seasoned OG, not a lecturer; his rapping is surly but not disillusioned, observant but not sanctimonious.
Even the songs that do fixate on the rap game as a sporting arena do so astutely: In the elongated verse of "Close to Famous," he measures the extent of his influence, and the skill and experience gap between him as a veteran and rap's overnight sensations. Much of his case, like the album overall, is constructed around the idea that he can read any room and speak its language.
Trotter is not our only rapper-scholar, but his position in the culture is close to unique. "Bring the Cambridge, the Websters, the Oxfords ... Product of the Last Poets and the Watts Prophets," he raps on " Belize," presenting his career as a bridge between street intellectuals and academic authorities, rap as cipher and rap as literature.
The notion of a full-length collaboration between Black Thought and Danger Mouse long predates his years on network television or the dynamic if arguably vain showcase of "Streams of Thought," but the results are nonetheless a culmination of that history. Listening now, it can feel like all those years the album went unmade are what made it possible.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


text:
True Detective, Season 1: "Seeing Things"
The foreign object at the center of HBO's True Detective
By Anne Helen Petersen, Phillip MaciakJanuary 23, 2014
This week on Dear Television:
- "Heavenly Creatures," from Phillip Maciak
- "The McConnaissance: An Alternate Reading," from Anne Helen Petersen
Heavenly Creatures
By Phillip Maciak
January 23, 2014
Dear television,
THE OPENING CREDITS sequence of HBO's new Louisiana noir series True Detective is structured around a procession of beautiful, menacing, sepia-toned silhouettes. Over these are superimposed images or slow-motion scenes from the show itself. Many of these silhouettes are of Matthew McConaughey's head (or, given our recent proclivities for portmanteaus, Matthew McConaughead). It's a striking sequence and an appropriate visual, not just because the show is interested in haunting and consciousness — it is — but because there is a Matthew McConaughey-shaped hole in every scene from which this actor is absent. Whenever co-star Woody Harrelson is conducting an affair with a buxom court reporter or arguing with his wife (played by the underused Michelle Monaghan), all I can see is that silhouette of McConaughey settling over the action like a shadow. McConaughey is this show, but not in the way we might initially imagine.
This is not to say that True Detective is a crummy work of art with a stellar central performance. Sure, the dialogue dramatically alternates between purple pronouncements and flat-footed bon mots, so it's walking on a tightrope so far, but the acting, production design, cinematography, and soundtrack are strong enough to carry the script through some wobbles. (As Sarah Bunting said on this past week's Extra Hot Great podcast, the dialogue shouldn't work, but it unaccountably does.) Instead, this is to say that, so far, the most compelling reading I can figure for this somewhat inscrutable show is that it is only masquerading as a two-hander, gritty buddy cop series. McConaughey's Rust Cohle is an engine, and everything and everybody this show can find is being scooped up and thrown into the furnace.
Given AHP's archive of McConaugheyan magnetism, it would be easy to imagine that he's just hijacking the show with gravitas — a perhaps unfortunate but not altogether unwelcome event. But that's not quite it (in fact, one of the most striking and aberrant things about his performance is how profoundly un-showy it is, how little it leans on the actor's deep well of charm). One could also imagine that creator and showrunner Nic Pizzolatto is just better at writing McConaughey's Rust Cohle than he is at writing the other characters. That's probably true to some extent, but it's also insufficient as an explanation. I'm choosing to read generously and suggest that this is a fully-imagined show, a built world, with a foreign object at its center.
Let's take, as an example, one of many scenes between Cohle and Harrelson's Marty Hart on a long drive through rural Louisiana. After witnessing a particularly gnarly crime scene, Hart probes his new-ish partner to find out more about him. Diving directly into questions about his passenger's religious beliefs — Hart has obviously read his Emily Post on conversation etiquette — Hart prods a little until Cohle begins a short trippy monologue about his pessimistic master narrative of humankind. "I think human consciousness was a tragic misstep in evolution," Cohle reports, glassily gazing out the car window, gesticulating in the manner of an Oxford (England, not Mississippi) Don. "Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law." (This is what I mean by purple.)
At this point, a strange dissonance enters the conversation. Hart furrows his brow and responds, "I wouldn't go around spouting that shit, if I were you. People around here don't think that way! I don't think that way!" (The theme of rural Louisiana's religious fervor is always present and never overplayed, though it seems like that culture will play a larger, more complicated role in the coming weeks.) After a rueful moment, he says, "My luck, I pick today to get to know you." Floodgates already open, Cohle makes another opaque remark about how he can "smell the psychosphere," and Hart loses his patience: "Let's make the car a place of silent reflection from now on, okay?" This dynamic is a familiar one: mismatched partners start out as antagonists but grow from there, etc. We know from the present-day interviews that Hart eventually grows to trust and deeply respect Cohle, but that's somewhat beside the point here.
In this car ride, it strikes me that we not only have two points of view but two different types of "creature," as Cohle might say. The purple vs. flat-footed dialogue issue I mentioned is right on the surface here and is very instructive in terms of how we understand what's going on. These two cops are almost literally speaking different languages, both improbably. Cohle is spouting amateur philosophy like Morpheus from The Matrix, and Hart ("My luck I picked today to get to know you"; "Fuck off, Cohle"; "Let's make the car a place of silent reflection") is one I'm-getting-too-old-for-this-shit away from being a cookie-cutter cop cliché. (For what it's worth, these lines that should play as laugh lines just don't, contextually.) And this extends to the rest of his life as well. From the way he flirts with the receptionist at the police station every morning, to a mind-bogglingly boring adulterous sex scene (Really? Handcuffs?), to the Fight-By-Numbers argument he has with his wife about bringing-his-work-home, to the high school football ring on his right hand, Hart is a character from a much more conventional cop show who's found himself on this arty, apocalyptic dirge of a series. He imagines himself to be the protagonist — and the show gives him the requisite scenes for this to be true — but he is not.
In other words, True Detective sets up a traditional protagonist and then frustrates our attempts to identify with him. This is, in part, the brilliance of having McConaughey play the heavy. Whenever Cohle speaks, even if it sounds like hot nonsense, everything that is said in its wake seems drowned out by a kind of dull buzzing. Cohle is ignored — even kind of bullied? — by his colleagues in the police station, but at the bunny ranch, at the truck stop, even in Hart's own home, his voice rings out, resonates, in a way that Hart's never does. (To be clear, this is not a criticism of Harrelson's excellent performance — a lesser actor might have been afraid of playing Hart this dull.)
I mentioned above that I think this is a show with a foreign object at its center. But I also think it's an open question as to who that foreign object is — one of these fellows is that creature who should not exist by natural law. Is Cohle an alien visitor, a secular prophet in the midst of fools? Is he an aberration of the same kind as the serial killer he tracks? In the present day interviews, Cohle seems loosened, broken by this world whereas Hart seems roughly the same. Very little about Hart's present-day state would be surprising to someone who knew him in 1995 — balding, divorced, making money in the private sector. But Cohle is different. He does not seem well-met by this world.
On the other hand, what if Hart is the foreign object? Cohle sees things in the natural environment — the bird swirls are lovely, if a little reminiscent of Take Shelter — he understands things, and the show dangles a fair possibility that the world of True Detective is exactly as impersonal, cruel, and profoundly wrong as he says it is. Even from a visual standpoint, the 1995 sequences — with their ominous fields, empty storefronts, decaying churches — are more allied to Cohle's vision of the terrifying sublime than they are to Hart's. (And the present-day scenes betray nothing, shot as they are in the controlled, objective, fluorescent, digital palate of the police station.) It's possible True Detective is a portrait of self-preserving delusion in the form of Hart. Hart's seamless integration with the classical incompetence of his police station turns a well-worn critique of law enforcement's bureaucracy into an abstract critique of the idea that human laws can be enforced at all. Hart and the police are living a dream. In the first episode, standing in the middle of what looks like a boarded-up strip mall in patchwork colors, Cohle says, "This place is like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory's fading." Hart, as he always does, tells Cohle to, "Stop saying shit like that." Notably, he doesn't argue with him, doesn't suggest that he's wrong. Hart just doesn't want to hear it.
Especially in the second episode, we start to see a shocking violence latent in Cohle — perhaps an urge as tenuously controlled as his alcoholism — as he pulls information from some mechanics and calmly threatens to break Hart's wrists. To me, the guiding question of this show moving forward is whether that violence is excessive or proportionate to Cohle's environment. Is this gothic Louisiana a place that rejects or necessitates that kind of force? A number of critics have rightly pointed out that the case at the center of the show's plot is by no means its central mystery. Rather, Cohle and Hart's transformation is the most compelling case. Another way of stating that, I think, is this question about the environment of the show, its large-scale or even global perspective. True Detective needn't ultimately land on Team Good or Team Evil by the end. Indeed its invocation of this dialectic is sufficiently blurry and ambivalent that a clear statement either way would seem bizarre. Maybe it's hackneyed to describe this show as an existential crime thriller — I'm certain that's how it was pitched. But it's also a study in the power of screen acting to produce that existential crisis, to so unsettle us from our expectations of genre, convention, even celebrity that Cohle is the one who makes sense to us. Matthew McConaughey is a magnet, it seems fair to say, and he's pulling us someplace. The mystery is in figuring out where.
Smelling the psychosphere,
The McConnaissance: An Alternate Reading
By Anne Helen Petersen
January 21, 2014
Dear Television,
IN EPISODE TWO of HBO's stunning new series True Detective, the laconic Rust Cohle, played by Matthew McConaughey, spends a significant amount of car time with his partner, Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson), trading quips and offering the audience veiled truths about themselves. It's a trope of the procedural: cops, even female ones, are aspiring always towards a masculine ideal of laconicism. The only time it's safe to talk about feelings, therefore, is within the bounds of the car, heads faced forward, and even then, those feelings are hidden beneath a heavy layer of insult.
But in True Detective, the trope gets revised: you have one traditional cop who doesn't like asking or answering personal questions and another who not only speaks freely about himself, but the area, the universe, our fates as mankind, etc. etc. He's like a one-man Cormac McCarthy novel, dropping poetic, sparse observations the way most of us talk about the traffic or the weather. It's a hypnotic performance, and anything Rust Cohle lacks in realism he makes up for in gravitas.
During one of these drives, Cohle meanders about some of his history, eventually arriving at the quiet declaration that "I know who I am. And after all these years, there's victory in that." That self-knowledge, and lack of shame concerning it, is part of what makes Cohle so compelling. But it's a statement that we could easily be applied to McConaughey himself, who is currently taking what can only be described as a magnificent victory lap around Hollywood.
As Chris Ryan termed it in a recent Grantland podcast, we're living through a veritable McConnaissance: nearly twenty years after McConaughey first made his indelible mark in Dazed and Confused, he's being trumpeted as a serious and important actor — maybe even one of the best of his generation.
For those who haven't followed McConaughey's career, this isn't just a case of a decent actor proving his chops, or a teen heartthrob taking a Method role. McConaughey went through the late 20th/early 21st century version of the studio system and emerged a vanilla shell of his original charismatic self, and his actorly "rebirth" is not just a reflection of a maturing star, but the broken state of the star system and, by extension, the film industry at large. Without a system that misjudged, exploited, and ultimately rejected him, there would be no McConnaissance.
Let's go back to the beginning. McConaughey grew up in Central and Eastern midsize-town Texas, which is another way of saying he is legit Texas, especially when coupled with a degree from UT. That legit Texasness would be the root of his early, pre-Hollywood image, as would the generalized lechery and good-time-ness (alright, alright, alright) of his turn as Wooderson in Dazed and Confused.
In the mid-90s, the image continued: he was a handsome no-gooder in Trisha Yearwood's video for "Walkaway Joe," co-starred with an equally unknown Renée Zellweger in a straight to video sequel to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and made a distinct impression as Chris Cooper's father in Lone Star. So far, so Texas.
Which is part of why McConaughey was cast in the filmic adaptation of John Grisham's A Time to Kill. It was supposed to be his ticket to Hollywood stardom: The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and The Client had all made big money, but by the time A Time to Kill hit theaters, Grisham fatigue had begun to set-in, exacerbated by the grim details of the story. People loved the procedural and caper elements of previous Grisham films, but A Time to Kill was, in contrast, heavy shit. It grossed over $150 million worldwide, but that was nothing compared to the $270 million of The Firm. McConaughey's Southernness fit the film, but the film's high seriousness didn't precisely fit what he had roughly established as an onscreen image.
No matter, however, because McConaughey had been fast-tracked to stardom: he was cast in Spielberg's equally self-serious Amistad, which should be a reminder to never cast him in anything before, say, 1950, and played a very earnest, sexless scientist opposite Jodie Foster in Contact. It was like they'd taken all the handsomeness and forgotten what to do with his charisma. He had become a name actor, but the discourse was mostly just about his face and his drawl.
They tried to make him an action star (U-571), a likable Ron Howard star (EDtv), and a sci-fi dragon slayer (Reign of Fire). All three of those films, I'm sure, were mapped as blockbusters: they're all high concept, and he was the star name that could make it work. Only he wasn't really a star: a star is someone with an established image that means something mixed in with irresistible charisma, and before McConaughey's image could mean anything about masculinity or Southernness or sex appeal, it was whitewashed by the blockbuster apparatus. Put differently, he never had a legit star turn — the way Cruise had Risky Business or Julia Roberts had Pretty Woman — to give his image the sort of foundation that other blockbuster films could then build upon. Instead, these films built upon the vast blankness, and proved blank in return.
A similar affliction has plagued a seemingly endless stream of recent would-be stars: Ryan Reynolds, Chris Pine, Sam Worthington, Taylor Kitsch. But before you say that Kitsch had an established image, you have to remember that Friday Night Lights is a television show with an extremely limited viewership — he might have been Tim Riggins to the type of people who read this piece, but for the world at large, he was a blank slate whose bland pictures kept him that way.
But you know what Hollywood can do with handsome dudes without much of an image? Make them the foil to established female stars in rom-coms. Thus: The Wedding Planner, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch, Fool's Gold, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Some of these films are tolerable (I have a soft spot for The Wedding Planner) but some, like Fool's Gold, are egregiously bad.
It was during this fallow period that McConaughey became a caricature of himself. Dazed and Confused had always had a sleeper fandom, and McConaughey's off-screen actions reactivated the memory of Wooderson. Only instead of hanging out at the Poodle Dog pool hall in Austin, this 21st century iteration of Wooderson spent his time running shirtless on the beach, playing bongos naked, and living out of an Airstream.
It all made sense, really: the "real" McConaughey was just living the life of all his rom-com characters before they got reformed by their shrill female counterparts. He was People's "Sexiest Man Alive" in 2005, which coincided with the release of Sahara, a film that Viacom intended to become a massive franchise based on the Dirk Pitt series of novels, with a budget and marketing campaign to fit. Sahara opened at number one and grossed $120 million worldwide, yet due to its massive budget, still managed to become one of the most notable flops of the year.
It's was a nice metaphor for McConaughey's career: looks okay if you look at it in isolation, but the more perspective you gain, especially when considering the promise of his early roles, the more disappointing and empty it becomes.
But stars can be kept alive by their gossip, even when their films falter and disappear entirely: just ask Angelina Jolie. McConaughey's textual persona had dwindled to something flat and ridiculous, but there was something about his extratextual persona that, for all of its ridiculousness, people loved. His girlfriend, a former supermodel from Brazil, gave birth to their first child in 2008, and McConaughey seemed like the perfect chill dad with the perfect chill family, just hanging out in their trailer where, in the words of Wooderson, they "just kept livin'." It's as if the star machine tried to make him into a clean-cut, almost Tom Hanks-ian hero, but the Texas drawl, the Wooderson roots, just kept emerging from the white-washing.
And amidst the flops and rom-coms, it's as if this Wooderson side of McConaughey finally began taking some roles: We Are Marshall was saccharine but played up the Southern football fandom for which McConaughey had become known, and The Lincoln Lawyer was crackling L.A. noir, the bright, bleached out surface of Los Angeles hiding something dingy and broken below.
Which, in truth, is a perfect way to describe the tone of the McConaissance. And it's no accident: McConaughey spent two years off-screen between Ghost of Girlfriends Past (2009) and The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), and it's easy to believe that he spent that time not only getting married and having two more kids, but redirecting his course.
An April 2011 Esquire cover story seemed to declare as much: sure, "men forgot the men he played" and those women had "whittled their expectations as he tripped from one gorgeous, spoiled, obtuse version of a man to another," but this was a new McConaughey, with his handful of weird, non-rom-com, non-Blockbuster, totally Texas projects; these days, "it's perfectly okay to root for the guy again."
It was publicity spin, clearly trying to make amends for a decade of Hollywood disasters. And while McConaughey certainly signed off on those roles, it's difficult to blame him for what was, in essence, the work of the contemporary star machine, with its imperative to find charisma, cast it in a blockbuster, flatten it out, and relegate it to B-pictures when the concept, not the star, fails to catch hold. McConaughey was never a bad actor: he was just a bad Hollywood actor.
He was bad, in other words, at playing the annoying manchild who "grows up" to be a bourgeois provider, bad at playing supporting actor to a CGI franchise, and bad at being a palatable white guy who stands in for the audience. Think back to Dazed and Confused: McConaughey isn't either of the main dudes who earn our identification. He's the weirdo in the peach-colored jeans hanging outside by himself and giving no fucks.
That's what McConaughey is good at, and that's what these last five years have found for him: beautiful, complicated perversions of mainstream roles. Bernie was the sort of Texas black comedy that Linklater should be making full-time; everyone talked about Jack Black's role, but McConaughey's befuddled cop underlines just how good a comedic actor he can be when it's not at the service of limp, vaguely misogynist rom-com laughs.
If The Lincoln Lawyer was a darker turn, then Killer Joe was pitch black. Directed by William Friedkin (best known for The Exorcist), it's an intensely problematic and broken film that clearly anticipates the bleakness of True Detective. And Mud plays like a rom-com gone wrong, which is why the casting of Reese Witherspoon is so perfect. Importantly, all three of these films were Texan and/or Southern, and McConaughey plays nothing that could even approximate a hero. Sympathetic, briefly, and magnetic, always, but not a hero.
Some thought he was settling into a lifetime of supporting roles, a career like Woody Harrelson's or Michael Shannon's. It certainly seemed the case with Magic Mike: ten years ago, he'd have taken Channing Tatum's role. But the beauty of his turn as the perfectly bronzed Dallas is that it, like the rest of his recent celebrated roles, just seems like one of many paths that Wooderson may have taken at some point in the 1980s. It's the McConaughey image through a glass darkly, with an accompanying honesty about the hubris and negligence necessary to maintain the image, and the lifestyle, at that level.
When people talked about a possible Oscar nomination for McConaughey, it was jokingly, like could you believe we'd give this dude an award for being himself? But Tom Cruise plays "himself" all the time, so does Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington and Will Smith; so did Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper. But none of these actors play/played themselves so much as play their images, which is just another way of saying that they've managed, through early roles and subsequent publicity, to come to mean something legible and likable, and subsequent roles reflect that meaning. But no one would say that Cruise or Grant are bad actors. They'd say they're movie stars. The problem with McConaughey "acting himself" in Magic Mike isn't that it's not good acting — it's that that's not the image we want of our movie stars.
Which brings us to the one-two punch of Dallas Buyers Club and True Detective. Buyer's Club is a textbook Oscar turn: actor loses/gains an extreme amount of weight; actor takes the role of a real person; actor's role involves triumphing over personal and/or systemic adversity. But like the McConaughey's other films of the last three years, Buyer's Club is still clearly tethered to Texas and what I'll now go ahead and call Wooderson masculinity, only compromised. Here's a man laid low by the work of his penis — and one who has to accept alternate ways of being in the world in order to survive.
It's a feel-good story, complete with rom-com alumnus Jennifer Garner, in a way that these other recent films aren't, but I think that McConaughey understood precisely what this role could and would do for him: it's in the same vein of this other recent work, only with a Hollywood ending. Enough, in other words, to make him a leading man again, only this time the image his roles would be magnifying and distorting wouldn't be one of blank handsomeness, but the chronically troubled interior life of the man behind the perfectly-cheekboned face.
Which is precisely what he is in True Detective. I don't know what they're doing in the make-up department, but the Rust of the early 1990s looks as dewey and fresh-faced as McConaughey did in Contact. He's gained back a bit of the weight after Buyer's Club but not all; if before he had a little bit of the jock bloat, now, he's at a fighting weight that makes him look like a triathlete, even as it gives his face the certain hollowness I associate with old, worn, lifelong smokers. The performance feels like the next in a series of life choices from the last three years of parts, as if Rust has been a killer-for-hire and a love-sick convict hanging out on a muddy island and a male stripper and a HIV-positive bullfighter, and that's why his files from Texas are sealed and he says things like "other times I thought I was mainlining the secret truth of the universe."
The McConaughey of True Detective — the McConaughey that just won a SAG Award for Best Actor and is now a favorite to win the Academy Award for Best Actor — shouldn't be a surprise. It's the culmination of a half dozen carefully curated performances which, in hindsight, seem to be ramping up to this year and its accolades. What bothers me, then, is the assertion that a shit actor magically got good, or the overarching disbelief that a man with a career like his could choose such surprising and elegant projects.
The road from Hollywood is littered with the corpses of handsome men, and the speed with which the current franchise-driven model disposes of its stars is part of the reason it hasn't a new superstar in nearly a decade. But unlike other Hollywood stars with a glorious second act, McConaughey didn't burn out (Downey Jr.) or start directing (Clooney). Instead, he figured out what would've made him a movie star — the core of his image, the essence — and then he decided to use it not to be one. And as for me, I'll watch these sullied Wooderson iterations until he stops making them.
There's a victory in that,
LARB Contributors
Anne Helen Petersen is a Ph.D. from the University of Texas – Austin in the Department of Radio-Television-Film. She currently teaches film and media studies at Whitman College.
Phillip Maciak (@pjmaciak) is the TV editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. His essays have appeared in Slate, The New Republic, and other venues, and he's co-founder of the Dear Television column. He's the author of The Disappearing Christ: Secularism in the Silent Era (Columbia University Press, 2019) and Avidly Reads Screen Time (New York University Press, 2023). He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
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