Bless me Father, for I have sinned

Confession for the sake of confession seems a little hypocritical. For a person formerly in a public position, it makes sense to share facts and thought processes tha were a part of history..Otherwise, it may be sheer self indulgence unless it helps someone. Deep inner remorse has to be accompanied by a determination to make amends in some form, like King Ashoka of India after the carnage of the Kalinga war in BC times. A thief cannot be said to be genuinely sorry while clutchin' the stolen money.

I, too, was fascinated by The Fog Of War, and have reflected often on what Robert McNamara "really" felt. Such is the nature of cinema: It is NOT reality, and should not be taken as such. My ability to know his true emotions is as limited and unreliable as his own memory. That said, he did not strike me as, per your quote above about a Bergman picture, "a sanctimonial sadist". A faltering, weepy attempt at contrition would fall flat, and sell only to Dr. Phil's demographic.

My hopeful side wishes Mr. McNamara knew this, and deliberately and honestly bared out his testament, hoping to preserve our shared past in celluloid amber for the benefit of following generations. Einstein, repeating the same actions, insanity, etc.

"Magnolia" comes to mind: The repeated mantra "We may be through with the past, but the past isn't necessarily through with us". I think Mr. McNamara took it even further, recognizing the reality with more accuity: "The past exists only in our memory. It is we who are not through with it." And damned if we repeat it. Over and over again.

Ebert: "Magnolia" is also very much about confession.

I feel guilty when I accidentally run over a rabbit; to have had the deaths of over 100,000 people on his conscience must have been excruciating, no matter the justification. Mr. McNamara's confessions and expositions in "The Fog of War" were so stunning in their honesty and scope. All of his influence was pretty much exhausted by the time of my birth in the early 1980's, but the effects of the decisions made in his time are still felt today. The audio tape of JFK being advised (and agreeing) to pull out of Vietnam, and of LBJ deciding to stay in sent chills down my spine.

There is an ancient curse: "may you live in interesting times.". At least, I think there is. Long story short, Robert McNamara was an interesting man, who lived during interesting times, and didn't do anything by rote. In that conversation with Errol Morris, he not only got a chance to soothe his soul, but also to take a look behind two of the most painful curtains of 20'th century American policy. I don't know that it makes him heroic, but it shows me that he was a far better man than most, possibly even himself, thought. The JFK tape alone proves that he wasn't the thoughtless Whiz-Kid more interested in testing gadgets than human lives.

it saddened me to learn that so many people were happy that Robert McNamara died. Although I, too, was passionately against the Vietnamese War and there could be no justification for what he did, that sentiment felt sanctimonious to me.
"The Fog Of War" presented a man with a brilliant mind (he remembered the first world war...how old was he when it ended? Two?)who seemed to regret so much of what he did (though he famously did not apologize.)
In the end, "every man's death diminishes me..." even Robert McNamara's.

It's very interesting how different burdens are carried by different people, and how society expects people to carry these burdens. Watching Fog of War, one could tell McNamara grappled with some emotions he necessarily didn't want to deal with about the war, but I could never tell if he felt apologetic or just resentful. I wonder how much of my expectations skewed what I witnessed in the interview.

Same goes for John Edwards and other politicians and celebrities. When they get in trouble, is it necessarily them who feels the great moral weight or is it just a bad move on their part? And for the normal man, is it that he feels his soul is in trouble when he confesses or that he instead made an error with the church and must make it right? It just seems like in most of those situations it's not about finding and fixing the issues with oneself (which is needed) but fixing the way others perceive us (which makes us feel better or helps us out). And it's so easy to confuse the two, which I think is partly the point of "Silent Light".

Is the first picture Montgomery Clift in "I Confess?"
I really feel old for recognizing that.

Ebert: You got it.

I watched the documentary 'The Fog of War' as an American History high school student earlier this year. I truly was amazed by the power of what McNamara was saying, and I even found myself wishing that he was in charge of the current war in some way. What a strange thing to think about a man who fed the fires of a conflict that far overshadows our current involvement in Iraq! Yet, even so, I really found myself empathizing with McNamara, and the film left me with an uplifting sensation. I can describe it only as a hope for the human race. While I certainly didn't agree with all of his decisions, and some of his 'lessons' caused me to feel slightly uneasy, I got the sense that he honestly strove to find the truth in the muddy mess of life, and that he did not let himself take any of his own actions lightly.

Of course, I have to assume we often underestimate how much our leaders care- perhaps even Dick Cheney sometimes stays up late pondering the balance of good and evil in war. Still, I believe, perhaps naively, that if there were more people who thought like McNamara, the world would be a much better place. Of all the recent celebrity deaths, his was the only one that truly shook me, which is saying something considering I would not have known who he was before last May. I am glad that he got his 'confession', and I hope it gave him some comfort in his death.

What invaluable annotations on the soul.

On the commentary track of "Standard Operating Procedure", director Errol Morris speculated about personal responsibly as a citizen whose government condoned torture. It's clear how his guilt motivated the making of that film.

Steering towards fictional accounts, thank goodness Mason Devereaux made the most of AA.

Ebert: Not many people mention Mason Devereaux these days.

Thanks for the comments about public confession. I agree with your observations about twelve step programs. External confessions while still retaining an internal denial constitutes the seeds of another fall from grace. Those who publicly confess in this way are merely relieving pressure, not accepting the additional harm they may do to others. True amends are made without hurting the wronged persons or others. Redemption is hard work and painful but true peace is the reward.

I was watching 'Fog of War' with my wife. I was absorbing the movie as a history geek. My wife however was disgusted with McNamara after she sees him with tears in his eyes remembering events around President Kennedy's death. For her this guy in the previous scene was coldly in a matter of fact manner describing the Japanese bombing that resulted in thousands of deaths and a few minutes later in the movie cry over a death of just one person.

Of all the deaths remembered and referred to in the movie he cried only for Kennedy the one of the few in the movie he (I hope) was not responsible for.

You are aware that Oprah is actually responsible for Dr. Phil, right? He only has a show and a career thanks to her and her backing. She might not embarrass addicts and others to the extent that he does but she does seem to endorse his methods.

There's a blog you should check out called PostSecret, where strangers send a Maryland artist a secret they have never revealed to anyone before. Fascinating stuff and highly entertaining- but I highly doubt all the secrets are authentic. Some seem way too well made, way too melodramatic and too well written and designed to be the actual confessions of actual child molestation victims, rape victims, former addicts, child abusers, battered women, former criminals, people with double lives, closeted homosexuals, etc. There are a number that smell like hoaxes and a good number that sound as if someone is exaggerating or making up elements of their own story.

Ebert: Yes, know Oprah gave Dr. Phil his start. But the apple fell far from the tree.

I've been thinking a lot about "The Fog of War" lately as well, in the wake of McNamara's death. What struck me about it when I first watched it was that this was a man who was uniquely aware of the mistakes he'd made in his life. "The Fog of War" was clearly to me, in part, an attempt to make those in power learn from that history. They didn't and were doomed to repeat it. I wonder what those who were in power during the second Iraq war will think about their actions in 20 years.

I can't help but feel respect for the man. He was brilliant and uniquely American, and the great tragedy of his life came about through the relatively noble act of serving his country. If he'd stayed in the private sector, he might have been remembered as a great American business figure. But I suspect my removal from the generation shaped by Vietnam allows me to view McNamara in a more philosophical (and kinder) light. My father came of age in the 1960s, was involved in the anti-war movement and was drafted at the tail end of Vietnam (after Nixon inherited and continued the war). He's still angry at McNamara for pushing Vietnam, and running the war that sent thousands of men his age to their death. I can't really blame him.

I've read a few articles on the evolutionary function of guilt. I've read theological papers that point out guilt as a necessary element of being moral. I've experienced both the "cleansing" feeling associated with true confession, and the false inflation of one's self through false confession. I have had long, intense debates and merry philosophical afternoons on the subject of guilt and the power of confession (to God, to a priest, to a shrink, to a friend, to a stranger). I have several friends who worked as phone sex operators, and they encountered, just as often as the usual clientele, a slew of lonely men who just wanted to tell their sins to someone.

Your musings would have helped in these aforementioned arguments. I may not know the purpose or evolutionary origins of guilt, and I don't claim to hold an serious theological answers, but you have gotten the wheels spinning again.

Oh, boy... I mean that confessionally. I just got out of bed for some reason. Before I'd gone to bed, I looked at a proposal from an individual who claimed to have been a baby-sitter to movie stars. Naturally, a "non-disclosure agreement" had been signed in each case. But these stars are all over the covers of the trash mags -- so, I'd know what to do about that, this person wrote.

"What to do is honor the non-disclosure agreement," I replied, signed without closing platitude, Tom. Money money money. Greedy greedy greedy.

"Fog of war" was troubling for me. McNamara apparently went to his deathbed with some secrets the public should probably yet know -- so he hinted in the interview. Lots of the commenters on news sites about his death hate, hate, hate him still.

I knew a fella who was on the U.S.S. Ticonderoga during the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident, August '64. He said what really happened was that the sonar man had heard the sound of the ship's own propellors and didn't recognize them. He panicked, the report was sent out, the correction a few minutes later, and LBJ apparently preferred not to pay attention to the correction. There was no gunboat at all, but there was a stepped-up war to be had.

We had a collective conscience to deal with then, and now, where the present warmongering is concerned. Whatever madman stands at the helm of state, killing sensibly or insensibly so far as the "lumpen masses" are concerned, he is outnumbered one by one by the many millions of people who are plainly aware of what he is doing.

How many among the millions who gave lip-service opposing the rape of Iraq quietly assented to the idea that "we need that oil," and so, protested too little?

And how many who protested sincerely felt their cause was hopeless against "the powers that be," and so, did less than they may have?

I think a conscience is something that one either lets lead the way, or drags behind him. Just one of these choices is a responsible one. We're a nation, and probably a world, of people whose consciences are in muddy disrepair.

Years ago I moved to Calaveras County, California. We happened to pick nice digs in the woods that happened to have been around the corner from the famous bunker where Leonard Lake and Charles Ng plied their murderous perversions. They tortured people to death, took videos, and sold them.

It was ten years later but the events were still fresh in every resident's mind. I heard a deputy describe a video of a man whose flesh Lake and Ng had stripped off, beating heart visible, man screaming, and those two taunting him. I heard other stories you'd rather not -- from a court transcriber. Little reason to doubt they were exaggerated.

A whole vault of torture videos were confiscated, I heard, and they eventually disappeared from the police evidence room. Money, money, money.

Lake and Ng attended the local church, local barbecues, and Wednesday night poker game. Only two of the locals to whom I spoke during my 5 years there ever said they didn't trust those two.

But as time went on it grew apparent to me that those who "didn't know" would have found it inconvenient to know. The 95 year old woman who lived near enough to that bunker to hear screams in the night and said so might have been taken seriously. Those two sitting every week at the local post office with a cornucopia of expensive odds and ends for sale could have at least aroused a little suspicion.

I finally left the area with much less respect for my neighbors than I brought with me when I moved there. Here were more consciences in muddy disrepair. This was as evident in neighborly peccadilloes as it was with the "minding their own business" attitude that meant pretend to detect no wrongdoing in their midst.

But neither conscience nor morality can be legislated.

Going back to bed.

Ebert: Sleep soundly.

You mention that Bergman treated women wrongly and made a movie about it to repent. Hitchcock did much the same with "Vertigo".

I wonder why so many male directors have issues with women? For that matter, how come so many male writers? No all, of course, but it seems more than enough do.

Ebert: Are you sure he was repenting with "Vertigo?" Perhaps he was only confessing the way he manipulated women, especially blondes, to do his will.

A lovely and thoughtful post, one of your best I think. However, surely this phrase discussing Bergman and Liv Ullman:

"Bergman's behavior with women, including Ullmann himself, was sometimes morally questionable"

should read "Ullman herself" in regard to the luminous Liv Ullman. I have always found the confessional scene of Winter Light intense to the point of uncomfort, likewise those of Persona.

Ebert: Corrected. Sometimes my fingers have a way of typing all on their own.

That is the template for Alcoholics Anonymous, the source of all modern recovery systems, and explains why they work so much better than alternatives like psychoanalysis, drug replacement therapy, religious vows or legal punishments.

Are you sure? Alcoholics Anonymous likes to make grand, vague remarks about how many people they help, but they are awfully shamefaced when it comes to actually publishing any specific information about their success rates. Surveys conducted by the AA itself in the '70s, '80s, and '90s showed extremely high dropout rates, and even those members who stayed typically experienced repeated relapses. And that's based on their own publicized (and now out-of-date) surveys; as far as I know, outside expert scrutiny has been minimal. There seems to me no reason at all to suppose that AA members do any better than anyone else at overcoming addiction.

Recovering alcoholics are advised to remain anonymous not because of shame but because of pride. All too many of the newly clean or sober are quick to announce their new status, with dangerous results. By taking credit for their sobriety, they think they have in some way conquered their addiction, and are not really admitting defeat.

I think this feature of the system highlights the essentially religious structure of twelve-step programs. The quest for sobriety is structured just like the Christian pilgrim's quest for grace: it is an orientation towards perfection by a being who is radically, woefully imperfect. The first error of the humble monk is to take pride in his own humility. The steep and thorny ways to heaven and sobriety alike both require an attitude of utter self-abasement: the alcoholic is a miserable sinner, helpless, requiring God's grace to see him through. God can never fail; you can only fail God. Similarly, the AA system can never fail; you can only fail to live up to it. But as long as you are willing to fall down on your knees for yet one more round of mortification, then you can go on failing as much as you want. As you are fond of saying, "I know I done wrong, but, oh, Father, what else was I gonna do?"

Your reference to Oprah is telling. She often speaks out for highly admirable causes, but she is also quite happy to promote bogus self-help gurus, diet books, transparently fraudulent "psychics," and no end of pseudoscientific medical quackery. The massive diet and self-help industry that she so tirelessly supports depends upon repeated failure: people fail at their diets, fail at their foolproof self-help schemes, fail to magically assemble the broken pieces of their lives into the perfect whole that they are always assured is just around the corner. (Remember Unbreakable: "All I need is your credit card number"). But hey, don't sweat the failures, because Oprah is all about giving second chances - and third, fourth, fifth, sixth chances. We can announce our failures as loudly as we like (preferrably on television) and we can cheer up because the next big thing (the new diet, or the guardian spirit, or the empowering mantra, or whatever) will finally be the one that does the trick.

All this sound and fury is, like twelve-step programs, just the latest, trendiest iteration of what it used to be the fashion to call the dark night of the soul. It is a basic narrative of sin-punishment-redeption, and I am deeply suspicious of it, whether it takes the form of a medieval theological treatise, Alcoholics Anonymous, or the latest diet fad.

Ebert: The problem with such specifics is that it is difficult to monitor an anonymous population. That AA survives with a voluntary membership is significant. It differs from most alternatives in that it is free.

I found this article that considers pros and cons:

http://www.spiritualriver.com/what-is-the-success-rate-of-recovery-in-aa/

Roger, I think everyone needs to know the truth on Bernie Madoff. He only turned himself in when he couldn't get away with his lies any longer. The only people he helped are people that were involved with his Ponzi scheme, which were his family and his feeder fund friends.

We're talking about a truly despicable person here, not someone that should be given any praise(no matter how slight), for all the lives he's ruined.

Not being Catholic or even Christian, I was not brought up in the tradition of confession. In many cases, I think some traditions are just the opposite, asking that some suffer in silence.

I wonder sometimes if confession, particularly public confession is not just a way of absolving oneself but also a way of getting negative attention. In public figures, such as the case of Robert McNamara, reflection, which, of course, can be different from confession, can be enlightening. Did his views change? What advice would he have for those who face similar decisions in the future? What was his guiding principles?

Perhaps part of the problem of the human being as a social animal, is we want approval. We want to be understood, we want to be supported and we want to believe what we did was right. Yet doesn't this in turn prevent some people from doing the right thing? They do not do what would be the moral thing because of fear of being wrong, fear that others will not approve and fear that we will be shunned for having done a certain act?

And part of caring for a person or a principle is saying hurtful things that may be true and yet deciding what is better left unsaid. And when we are wrong, the hardest thing may be to say we are sorry for it may be too late or we may be too proud. The hardest thing for individuals is to reflect upon what one has done, if it was right or wrong, if it hurt someone and how we could have done better. To do all this without rationalizing and allowing ourselves off a shrug.

The best films and play make us think, make us see another person's point of view. Yet even if people sympathize with what some have called a liberal's guilt, the danger is to absolve oneself by saying, I have done nothing as bad as that so I am better than that person or that character. Perhaps the better way of seeing it is: I have in small ways been like that and that could have been me.

Few of us will be architects for wars or military actions, but many of us have made judgments based on fear of things like communism or prejudice toward another race or because we felt that might was right. If we confess these faults, these flaws in ourselves to ourselves, we can learn something from people like McNamara and makes ourselves better and in a small way, make the world better.

I say this, thinking of some recent ironies I experienced last weekend. I confess that it gave me some satisfaction that I could write about it (petty revenge), and perhaps I can learn something from it and more constructively, perhaps what I write will make people think.

Ebert: Are you referring to your blog essay about the woman who cut ahead of you in line? What got me was that in the process she took your pen.

I agree 100% with the article. To me, confessing your wrong doings is nothing compared to the lessons you learn from them. If you take those lessons and apply them you're better off. I've seen it time and time again where a person does something wrong, admits it and then does something strikingly similar.

I think that all too many people hide behind the veil of "it's in my nature." People are intelligent and even the dumbest of us recognize when we are doing something we shouldn't be doing. The best of us tend not to get ourselves in situations that might tempt us to do something in poor judgment. That being said, we all have our shortcomings and I am no exception.

(on a different note: I'm looking into film making and was wondering if you had any suggestions of schools for that field.)

I'm not quite sure that seeking forgiveness should be an integral part of the absolution process. I thought the AA way was making amends and not seeking forgiveness.

Being forgiven doesn't improve one's self nor does it clean up the damage one has caused. Also, unlike everything else on your absolution checklist, being forgiven is ultimately out of your control. Being forgiven should be incidental to the ritual; an unexpected reward for making amends and no longer causing wreckage like one once did.

Of course, you didn't say be forgiven, you said seek forgiveness. But even then, I don't see how seeking forgiveness contributes to the goal of redemption: no longer being a karmic sinkhole.

There are people in my life that I wish would forgive me, some of whom I'm sure never will. On my better days, I can picture approaching those I've harmed and in a mixed tone of detachment and remorse ask, "What actions can I take to correct what I've done." I honestly don't believe I could go through this process if any part of my redemption was up to them. I have too much guilt or shame and not enough self-esteem to expect to go up to the people I've harmed (or even the people who have a low opinion of me because of the people I harmed) and ask for forgiveness. I'd prefer to go back to killing myself.

Ebert: Perhaps the most meaningful thing would be to make amends to yourself.

Into paths of wearied time
I walk silently with my burdens
Weighted by the pains I have conceived
Ever mindful of the means of their conception
Either seeking absolution or distraction
I will glance every so often
Into darkened two-way mirrors that line
The otherwise vacant and sterile scarps
At once seeing my pale reflection
Floating gently in the black
That lies beyond its shadowy outline
I envy my reflection then
Wishing to join it in oblivion
The desperate want of escape from
the throes of guilt birthing yet another
Pain that I will grudgingly carry
And resigned will I walk ever onward

I dunno. It's, like, 3:30am and this is the only way I could think to respond to this post. Not really much of a writer myself except in short forms.

Ciao Roger,

first of all a warm thank you from Milan, Italy. I saw that you have been making some sort of geo-locating exercise about your readers/commenters, and I just wanted to make sure you'd put a flag on Italy too.

As far as this entry of yours is concerned, as usual it is interesting and captivating. What strikes - and worries - me is the subject itself, and the reason it might be buzzing around in your brain. I'd just like to say, Roger, that given the fact that you have touched way more people than you know personally, your moral balance statement includes more items than an average person. I can't talk for the people who know you; but for us, your readers, I think the worst thing you could do is to start thinking seriously about certain subjects, as if they were a prelude to something you're expecting.

Therefore, I hope your next blog entry about your thoughts and reflection will be about subjects more related to strength, endurance, and similia.

I know what i just wrote probably sounds ridiculous to most. I hope though that you will understand why I wrote it, regardless. Sometimes the most banal thing is the most effective.

Un abbraccio virtuale,
your greatest italian fan
Gabe

Ebert: If you're referring to death, and I believe you are, I'm certainly expecting to die, but no sooner than anyone else my age. I have misbehaved in my life, but no great burdensome sin or guilt weighs upon me. It's more that McNamara's death started me thinking about that film.

"The Fog of War" is my favorite documentary of all time. Robert McNamara was so open and honest in admitting to mistakes in judgement and policy decisions. It took an very courageous man to negatively reflect on his historical legacy, and perhaps in doing so, he may have helped repair it.

I believe that there is no universal moral law, or universal moral policeman, and that ethics and justice are cultural inventions. Human beings are animals designed to procreate, and society is a tissue of polite convention. There is no God or spiritural force to prevent a strong country from plundering the resources of a weaker country. Karma will not strike the strong country down. The strong country will not be punished in the afterlife for what it has done, and the same is true on a human scale. The rapists and killers in Darfur and Nigeria and the Congo and all across the world will grow old and die with with the knowledge that they killed and murdered and raped, and they will shrug it off just as solicitors and IT support workers shrug off the drunken fights they get into on Friday night. We are squeamish in the West about killing and weapons because we are not used to them; other cultures love death and spend lots of money to create it. We are not better than them. We are different.

The twentieth century saw dictators and tyrants who killed millions for personal gain, and who themselves died happy, of old age, in luxurious splendor. A tiny minority of these tyrants were killed or thwarted or brought to justice, but most got away. Justice does not exist unless people invent it, and it will not work against people who are not frightened of it. That is why there has been such a fuss about international law over the past few decades; people and politicians have finally realised that there is no heaven and no God, and that justice only exists if it is invented and enforced, here on Earth, and it can only be enforced with force or the threat of force.

The only people who win the game are people who die happy, and if people die happy after spending a lifetime pillaging and raping and killing then they die happy all the same. Squeamishness is naïve and childish. Human society is a swarm of ants fighting each other on a giant pyramid of ant corpses, and when millions of ants have died for imaginary Gods and meaningless forgotten Kings an anteater comes along and swallows us up, and it does not matter who was right or wrong, or just or ethical. Politeness means nothing in the belly of an animal.

Ebert: I have spells when I fear you are right. But your blog supports beautiful images, so there is hope for us both.

Thanks you for this meditation. The idea of confession is deeply tied to the universal value of "responsibility" as you mention. It is also deeply tied, I believe, to grief, or losing something. That is why it happens so often late in life, as in the case of McNamara, or after losing trust in a marriage as with adultery, or even after losing innocence in life as in AA, whose members must acknowledge that there is a price to be paid for innocent fun. When we lose anything, we begin to grieve for our part in it. When a loved one dies, we grieve for them, but we also grieved for what we did not say--for our shortcomings.

If we think deeply enough, we all confront this. Perhaps that is why, among relatively recent films, "Atonement" stands out as the most powerful expression of this. I was profoundly moved by Atonement, and the ultimate twist of the knife in that film left me gasping for air. As in that film, some of us carry burdens all our lives, and their release is cathartic, purifying in some sense, and therefore deeply spiritual.

A lot to digest here, but a quick comment on the "Prosperity Gospel". Christians to a large extent have been taught that in this case, as in many others, the "literal truth" of the Bible is maintained if we redefine the meaning of the actual words. Hence, the "eye of the needle" is not actually the eye of a needle, but the gates to the city. The logic is that a wealthy man's camel wouldn't fit through the arched gate due to the burden of riches it carries, thus making it difficult. Why the wealthy man wouldn't buy a wagon, I don't know. Or, the camel is in fact not a camel, but a thick thread or cord.

Of course both of these interpretations (and there are others) defy logic and common sense in the context of the New Testament parable and render it meaningless.

Ebert: If the eye of the needle is not to be taken at its literal meaning, why is Genesis?

I recall once reading that a key to the Catholic sacrament is that the penitent is seeking absolution from a priest who has "been there" himself. The priest is one who also needs and seeks forgiveness, just like the penitent. And once the priest forgives the penitent, both are forgiven, and will (one hopes) be forgiving of others thereon.

Ebert: I think technically the priest is just the instrument of God's forgiveness, and does not himself do the forgiving.

Ebert: If the eye of the needle is not to be taken at its literal meaning, why is Genesis?

But "the eye" is literal, if you redefine it as a metaphor. I realize this is intelectually dishonest, and I hate to paint a broad stroke across much of Christianity, but if we took the New Testament too literally we might be uncomfortable with the TV preachers in $1,000 suits teaching the Gospel from their $10 million "Crystal Cathedrals."

In dealing with my family, I'm often reminded of one of my favorite movie quotes:

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride.

Your use of Alcoholics Anonymous as a successful treatment program is curious to me, because they haven't been able to show their efficacy publicly. They say they're more successful, but evidence suggests they're no better than straight abstinence.

The discontinuity lies in citing AA's usefulness as a function of their confessional nature. The problem with their version of confession is that it is designed to go along a specific path. Humans each have their own reasons for substance abuse, but AA and similar programs pretend it to be of a single root cause, with a single cure. You realize, or fake, a higher power and become subordinate to it, always aware that you are weak and helpless, setting you up for further failure should you believe this but then stray from the path laid out for you, or stray from the group you're supposed to belong to. It may work for some, but people treat it like a panacea and it is decidedly not.

There are sobriety networks in the US and elsewhere which don't buy into this method, and they work too. They're just not as popular, they're not a brand name, they're not a big industry. They often use confession an openness, too, as a method of bringing one's flawed self out of one's shell. And despite the anonymous aspect of AA, it's really facing inward that gets the job done, not concern with how you will be perceived, or the potential benefit you get from your confession.

True confession is a solitary act. You don't need a group to do it. And one of the most important people to receive any confession is your self, as you say. I know many people, psychopaths used to be the professional term for them, who use even confession as a means of gaining approval and dodging what is considered worse punishment. The court system in the West has ingrained in it a tendency toward relative leniency when someone admits they were guilty in a crime, even if they weren't, and this can be abused. People in the public eye who admit to extra-marital affairs often want to just get it out of the way, allowing THEM to be the one who puts the official stamp on the story before muckrakers will add details that they'd rather not come out. It seems more a defensive measure a lot of the time. Any meaningful confessions happened behind closed doors, though as you point out, a confession often winds up being more self-serving release than a meaningful return to decent behavior.

Society itself CRAVES the confession. We love to see the wrongdoer admit their crime. Yet this societal tendency can be manipulated as above, and it can be manipulative to the potential confessor. Admit you're wrong, and you'll receive a lighter sentence.

You believe the system is corrupt, that despite your innocence you will be found guilty, so at least if you confess you will be reducing your burden. Many people buckle under this pressure, and we're only now beginning to untangle messes that were left behind decades ago through DNA evidence and yet more confessions of those guilty parties who finally break down.

For those who do have something to hide, self-righteous behavior is often a great way to avoid the ugliness in yourself, the protesting too much that moderates like to cite as a form of crypto-confession, where someone proclaims the evil of a deed because they're too busy running from the evil in their own mind, or in the minds of their allies, whatever form it happened to take.

Confession can be a beautiful thing; the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa comes to mind as a measure of grace that I can't quite wrap my head around. Confession can also be ugly and duplicitous.

I'd argue that the value in confessing has more to do with the self, with trying to reconcile the different parts of yourself that have been held in dissonance. You think you're a good person, but yet you did this awful thing. These two often don't come out, even to yourself, until you finally put it into words, and keep talking about it until the parted waters in your head meet again, hopefully eliminating the tension, even if the crime isn't washed away.

The brain is strange that way, demanding information be properly packaged for delivery before it can even be understood by the person doing the wrapping. But it's this organization in one's own head by pushing this ugliness out the door that allows for meaningful change. Most of us are social animals enough to need to be able to bounce our ideas off of others; perhaps that's a key to the mystery of the true confession, but in many way confession can still be considered a selfish act.

Great topic, thank you.

I also wanted to share a quote that I love, if I may, that is related to the subject of "confession" even though it doesn't really contribute to your thoughts. I just think it is funny in a clever way, though, so here it is:

"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me."
- Emo Philips

ciao again,
Gabe

We classify in literal terms all too often. I've pictured myself on a ladder half-way between the best of us and the worst of us. Jesus & St. Francis are at the top looking down and Hitler & Caligula share the bottom. Maybe confession puts us a couple rungs up the ladder.

I also think it depends on your perspective. I'm sure there are still thousands who consider Truman a horrible war criminal who's choice to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki condemned him to hell for all eternity.

Edwin Van Dyke, my paternal grandfather, was a Sea Bee in Okinawa in 1945. If Henry Wallace had been FDR's VP instead of Harry Truman, my father (and by extension, Yours Truly) might have never existed. Harry Truman is heralded in The Van Dyke household.

Our own current embodiment of evil, Osama bin Laden, is heralded as a hero within some parts of the world.

Roger,

Forgive me (no pun intended) if I spend some time on several of the matters you illustrated in particular that are of interest to me. My most recent issue of research in working on a paper has been in this area of the intersection of theology and economic matters: an ethics of financial systems. Yesterday I read a fascinating and illuminating essay from Karl Barth. You are very right in pointing out that most people feel protected by civil and religious law from sins of money, as he points out, "in our penal code, property enjoys far greater protection than, for example, a good reputation or morality. What's mine is mine and no one can change that! Not only have Christians got used to this notion, because temporarily perhaps it could not be otherwise, but even act as if it were a divine law." While there may not be an explicit manifestation of the guilt of excess ownership you can see the penance laid all over the place. Even the most stodgy stranger will tell any stranger how much he has been working that week. "how have you been doing", "busy, very busy", is a typical answer. So long as we have been "working" in some form or fashion, the property is justified... Yet underneath it all, we probably know, that those who work the most all over are the least accommodated. I could easily go on and on, but i'll save that for my intended format...

But I take issue with your statement that theologians deny the necessity to do evil when doing good. Even as a perhaps more "conservative" theologian I would say that actually it's mostly impossible to do good without doing evil. Globalization more than ever, I feel, makes it so that all of our hands our now dirty. I just watched "Grave of the Fireflies" this weekend. Good gracious. I mean as a subject matter, how can we watch that and justify the actions of war 100%. it would be simply an absurdity. Yet, the soldiers are most certainly not to blame. The veterans of WWII, in any arena, are heroes and should be honored as such. Yet, who do we blame? The government, the government that WE elected, or are the product therefrom. Do we believe that we've purified ourselves by now from doing evil in explicit or implicit ways?

On another note, I applaud this article as a whole, primarily for its theological content. I believe you have raised some profound questions about life before the face of God, while not particularly believing exactly in God yourself. If I were to teach a class on sin and guilt for a college aged or college aged maturity level group of people I would not be far off in letting everyone read this article and discuss the issues that are raised. Whatever the answer is to the situation as a whole, we all certainly need to make ourselves aware of the situation in which we are in as a result of the guilt which we all carry around. Though to be a bit on the "evangelical" side here, I do have to say that it makes a lot of sense for all of us to realize our personal and corporate guilt so that forgiving one another becomes a bit easier to do.

When McNamara came to the World Bank in '71, Lending to pre-industrial nations was about 1 billion dollars per year. When he left in the mid 80s, that number had increased to over 11 bil. The man kept entire nations from starving. I think thats penance enough.
To a large degree, that film helped me articulate my own feelings about War and the American Military Industrial complex. It touched and moved me, shocked and scared me...and ultimately made me a better person. For that I owe RSM my gratitude.

For me, though, the ultimate deathbed confession belongs to Lee Atwater. From the Feb '91 issue of Life:

"My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul."

There are those that say this was Atwater's last and greatest "spin." I call those people cynics of the highest order. However, the truth is that it makes me feel better to think that this venomous, treacherous little man DID see the light in the end of his days.

I hope...

I have watched Fog of War several times. And will watch several times more.

The single most frightening part of that documentary is his admission that we flat out "Lucked Out" when it came to avoiding nuclear war with the Soviet Union over Cuba. Absolutely chilling.

Imagine, say, if the Cold War indeed ended with a nuclear war, killing millions of civilians and plunging the world into its darkest period. We would spend a lot of time bemoaning the decisions which lead to such a catastrophe, and wondering how it could have been stopped. Suppose a time traveler named Robert McNamara said, I can go back and time and prevent this--although, as a side effect, we're going to get involved in some messy land wars which will result in many deaths--though not nearly as many as died in the great nuclear wars. What would the response from his fellow nuclear winter survivors be? Almost certainly, it would be: yes, please, God, do that!

Is that a satisfying explanation for McNamara's judgment? Almost certainly not. We have specific instances where we can see that his attitude prevented a lucid analysis of the situation at the top levels of government. Many of the decisions made were based on presumptions so ill-informed, if they did prevent nuclear war, they were only right in a broken clock kind of way.

Still, I imagine that's what McNamara was telling himself up until his death. And who knows, maybe other decisions he made did keep America safe from catastrophe. Imagine if the post-1992 Dick Cheney were in his spot.

Ebert: I think technically the priest is just the instrument of God's forgiveness, and does not himself do the forgiving.

True. Catholics believe it is Christ who forgives, baptizes, confirms, etc. in the sacraments. I would add that in reconciliation the priest represents not only God but the community, as well. Centuries ago, public confession was part of the sacrament. Nowadays the priest represents God and (thankfully) the community. Also, relating to DJs post, priests have spiritual directors and confessors, as well. Even the pope.

As a person in recovery (soon entering my second year, God willing), I had the unique experience of combining my fourth and fifth steps (making a moral inventory, admitting to God and another exact nature of wrongs) with a powerful celebration of the sacrament of reconciliation. My recovery center was located 100 yards from a Benedictine college and abbey!

Not surprising that the Lord's prayer contains some "contractual language" on this topic. We seek forgiveness AS we forgive others.

We are all Marley's ghosts. No amount of confession will free us.

When Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official state religion—300 years after the death of Jesus—he really had no choice. The Roman people, finally and utterly revulsed by a culture that gloried in blood, death, and corruption, had already made it for him. It was as if an entire people had repented, and Constantine had nothing but to yield to their will.

Vox populi, vox Dei...

For us, here, now——surely, surely, a Second Coming is at hand...

Chuck Seidel

I just watched "Scenes From A Marriage" a month or so ago and was somewhat conflicted with the confessional speeches given by the spouses. You believe that they speak "openly and honestly, in a spirit of mutual acceptance". I think that they do, but only in the finale. Only in the middle of the night in a dark house somewhere in the world can they find that unity of spirit.

It's enchanting to watch, really, because of how baring it seems. And how different in tone from the rest of the film. The first acts involve a lot of feinting and attacking and probing of each other's psychology. Only lovers can expose the harshest weaknesses, and at times, they go straight for the neck, don't they? I think of Johan's "confession" (which is more of an full-frontal assault) to Marianne about his new lover, Paula. You're right, when you say how much more it hurts to somehow rationalize the affair, to justify it. We see Marienne's tortured face in utter agony after Johan leaves. His confession to her breaks her spirit and grinds her down.

I also think of "Revolutionary Road" when Frank admits to April that he is having an affair, but wants to stop for the sake of the family. She catches his bluff, completely, doesn't she? She looks at him and simply says, "Why did you tell me? To hurt me?"

What are we looking for in confession? To conclude the damage, or to further it?

Ebert: "Revolutionary Road" is an undervalued film.

From The Brothers Karamazov; Markel's death:

"Mama ... do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we don’t want to realize it, and if we did care to realize it, paradise would be established in all the world tomorrow." ... "Dear mother, ... you must learn that of a truth each of us is guilty before all for everyone and everything. I do not know how to explain this to you, but I feel that it is so, to the point of torment. And how could we have lived all this time being angry with one another and knowing nothing of this?" ... "Yes," he said, "all around me there has been such divine glory: birds, trees, meadows, sky, and I alone have lived in disgrace, I alone have dishonored it all, completely ignoring its beauty and glory." "You take too many sins upon yourself," dear mother would say, weeping. "But dear mother, joy of my life. I am crying from joy, and not from grief; why, I myself want to be guilty before them, only I cannot explain it to you, for I do not know how to love them. Let me be culpable before all, and then all will forgive me, and that will be paradise. Am I not in paradise now?"

I know it doesn't makes as much sense as Ashely Pomeroy's comment--"The only people who win the game are people who die happy, and if people die happy after spending a lifetime pillaging and raping and killing then they die happy all the same. Squeamishness is naïve and childish. Human society is a swarm of ants fighting each other on a giant pyramid of ant corpses, and when millions of ants have died for imaginary Gods and meaningless forgotten Kings an anteater comes along and swallows us up, and it does not matter who was right or wrong, or just or ethical. Politeness means nothing in the belly of an animal"--but I have spells when I hope Dostoevsky is right.

You are misinterpreting the whole Madoff situation. I don't think he was compelled to confess because he felt so badly, which seems implied by your post. The man is 70 years old and had been pulling off this scam for 20 years and reportedly by himself.

Truth be told, I think if he never comes forward, there is allot more pressure than there currently is on the rest of his family for their role in said scheme and he knew it (all news stories indicate he was very family- oriented).

His confession I think is the crown jewel in the cap of an extraordinarily egotistical, narcissistic man. One thing that cannot be said is Bernie Madoff is not stupid - he knew the scheme could not continue ad infinitum. He scammed anyone and everyone whereas I think most people have a natural instinct to protect those around them. For that, I think, he should be admired.

Not long ago, I was in a bad state because of feelings of guilt about something. The exact thing is not material; the guilt is, because that was the one thing that wouldn't go away.

The one thing that I found worked better than anything else was to just turn to a friend and listen to them about their problems, and to not think about what was in my head for a little bit. This accomplished two things: it allowed me to believe the world was bigger than what was swirling around inside my own head, and it allowed me to help someone else through their own tough moments.

People walk around carrying guilt that makes them feel worthless or devalued. It is grievously damaging to believe you are bad, or are a person who has done bad things, if only to yourself. I think you have to heal by confessing to yourself, and then to another person you deeply respect (whether also to God is a matter of personal belief). You have to try to do that so as not to cause unnecessary pain. You cannot do it simply to get yourself off the hook, but to accept the responsibility, pay the price and make what amends are possible. You will feel better after you do.

This is profoundly moving to me, if only because I understand it too well. Thank you for writing this.

Oh if only we could get Dick Cheney to sit down with Errol Morris. Having Darth Vader use the Interrotron would make for one of the scariest films of all time.

It's interesting how the causing of pain and death, and the way society views that action, seem to have an inverse proportion. One person gets killed and that perpetrator is seen as a monster. Kill more than that and the person becomes a Serial Killer; a monster for sure, but one worthy of our fascination and exploitation. But to be an agent of hundreds or thousands of deaths...well that gets lost in the fog of war.

I am an agnostic which I acknowledge is really just a chickens**t atheist. But I wonder about the role religion plays in driving these confessions. Without the fear of God, and the fear of the afterlife, would people be less likely to confess? I wonder.

I was a kid during the Vietnam War, and all my knowledge of it comes from historical perspective. So I simply do not understand the widespread hatred for McNamara. Can someone tell me why there is such a yearning, a hunger, for McNamara to appear as though he was about to burst into tears and have a breakdown when discussing Vietnam and the Japanese firebombings? The explanations in "The Fog of War" speak for McNamara's true feelings of sorrow on those events. He was tasked with winning two wars, and by extension with inflicting the most damage to the opponent with the least amount of damage absorbed by his compatriots. A somber task, to be sure. But did he do it with the glee of a psychopath who loved his grim duty? Hardly. Hindsight has proven his strategy in Vietnam wrong. And you know what? He admitted as much! He even shared the wisdom he gleaned from his mistakes with us. What more do we want? Would wearing the hairshirt for the rest of his days have made his mistakes more palatable? The man confessed his errors more than well enough for my satisfaction.

The main preaching of Jesus, I believe, as far as social stuff goes, was against greed and money-making. And for the support of the poor.

There's like, 5 Christians in America. If that. Real ones.

Good post, an NPR program called onpoint which I try to listen to atleast a little everyday, recently, featured a hour about online secret sharing. Far from what you think much of it was actually quite funny though after listening to it I was far more convinced of the entertainment value of online confessions than the psychological value. However, I think the guests did make as good of case for the psychological value of online confessions as could have been made. Here`s link if you want to take a listen.

http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/06/secret-sharers

I once read that the origin of the word "scapegoat" comes from the Jewish tradition during Yom Kippur where people would symbolically give their sins to a goat and then send the animal out into the wilderness, thus ridding themselves of the guilt and shame of their actions. Absolution by bovid.

The confessional (public or otherwise) seems to share some similar qualities, in that by telling someone else (or everyone else) about your wrongdoings, you somehow wash yourself of your turpitude, take the weight from your conscience. That your actions were products of your choice and perhaps reflective of your character seems inconsequential in wake of (public) airing.

As someone without religion, I cannot say I find this practice comforting. That my own character is reflected by my actions is not a comfortable idea when I fail or hurt someone else, and the guilt I feel for causing pain is not something I can shed easily. The idea that I could rid myself of shame by confessing to another seems simplistic and rather beyond the point. For me, confession of a wrongdoing has nothing to do with what caused it (the flaw in my character) or me making up for it.

As a previous post alluded to, I don't believe there is anyone or anything keeping score, and if I want to be a person of character, a moral person, it's up to me to do it and not a supernatural referee to tell me what my tally is.

I'm not sure if Mr. McNamara felt that way. If I had to guess, I'd say he was closer to my belief system than to the one advocating the power of scapegoats or confessions. And everything else being equal, I'd rather that those with the kind of power Mr. McNamara had be someone who didn't count on the ritual of confession to rid them of their sins. It seems far to easy to be evil if all you have to do to get over it is tell someone about it.

Ebert: I'm not sure that's all you have to do.

On a very related subject, I am amazed by the outpouring of love for Michael Jackson after his death and the only way I can explain it is that most people spent years mocking him for his weird ways and thus, at the unexpected death of someone they heard so much from and for so long, feel overwhelmed by guilt for having done so.
On my part, I'm suprised how little it has affected me and the only way I can explain it is that to me it feels like his death is just another one of his pranks. I know this may sound stupid but it's the only way I can understand it.

"I wonder why so many male directors have issues with women? For that matter, how come so many male writers? No all, of course, but it seems more than enough do."

Obviously, filmmaking itself can be a form of confession. Maybe the profession of directing attracts a certain type of personality that has so much guilt that he feels the need to confess, not just to one person, but to the whole world.

I believe Bernie Madoff when he claimed that he wanted to stop the scheme, but realized at that point that stopping the scheme would give the whole thing away.

What he did was terrible, but it's fairly disturbing to me that our society labels the man himself as evil. I see sadism as a requirement of evil. This was a case of greed, and then selfish self preservation.

As for McNamara, I didn't live through Vietnam, so I can't really weigh in. My father calls him "our Speer" though, and he doesn't really buy into his "penance."

Movies, morality,mortality and McNamara in the same post. Lucid, economical and heartfelt. This is why we pay you the big bucks.

I love Postsecret and go there once a week to see the new secrets. I disagree with Agatha that the majority are fake--if I was confessing a burden in this particular forum, I would make an effort to illustrate it in a way that conveyed what I was trying to get across in an artistic and illuminating way (I'm sure some are faked, for the simple reason that if you create a confessional forum you're going to get punked some of the time).

One secret that has haunted me for months now was a postcard where the sender confessed he had X amount of days left on his internal countdown, after which he was going to leave his wife. What was even more disturbing to me was several emails left on the site with other readers saying how many days are left on their own marital monitors.

Why did this man tell the whole world (anonymously, of course) about the lie his marriage has become, a lie his wife apparently still believes to be the basis of her everyday reality? Did it make him feel better? Did it give him courage? Of course we don't know the rest of the story--she's an alcoholic, she beats the kids, they hate each other, she's a gold digger, whatever--that may alter this confession's dimensions. But hearing a confession like that, you change. You eyeball your spouse, your parents, your freinds, wondering. You have a new perspective on your life that wasn't there before. Is that a good thing? It can be, but is it?

Very interesting, Roger. I'm thinking, aren't most films, really, about confession? If not so literally, then I'm talking films which deal with characters who must learn about themselves to succeed. Is this a form of confession? I think it is. Maybe nobody is actually hearing it - "I confess!" - but characters are forced to realise mistakes, unveal their potentials, and come to terms with things they might've known all along but never had the guts to say it.

Issac Davis (Woody Allen) realises at the end of "Manhattan" that Tracy was right all along. An inner confession? He never says it, but his final wry smile is as equal as shouting, "OK, I confess!" In my opinion, anyway.

I'm surprised that there hasn't yet been an "it's all the fault of religion" posting in a discussion on guilt and confession. Surely there will have been by the time I refresh this browser. Much of our guilt and atonement originates in religion, even among the most stolid atheists, but these are reflections of human nature to begin with, or of Nature in humanity, discerned through local cultural expediencies and maintained beyond need through literal-mindedness.

Sometimes it's useful to look up the origins of a word; it's like wiping the encrustations off an ancient artifact to see it more clearly. "Guilt" is olde English for "offense" ("Work" is olde English for "pain," I see; "gylt" and "weorc").

We are outwardly guilty when we offend someone, or their "sensibilities," however foolish those may seem to us. We are inwardly guilty when we offend our own better sensations, if not our private ideals as learnedone way or another. We feel offense when we have not met our expectations of ourselves, and so we are guilty. Sometimes expectations taken on are unrealistic, but we feel guilty anyway, and our limbic system responds obediently.

Guilt involves both psychological and physical pain. Punishments range from familial ostracism to war with a great deal of bare-toothed chatter in between, not to mention slappings and fistfights. The intent is to see that the offense doesn't happen again. While history shows this doesn't work well at all, we keep doing it. "Insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results."

But in what parts of our daily tapestry is guilt not interwoven? Why do we not just put the bowl to our lips and shovel the food into our mouths, like the Chinese do? Who will love us less for showing up at an awards dinner in our underwear, and why? How often a day do we tell somebody what we're really thinking? Only our closest, closest friends. Also in electronic letters, using the anonymity of the internet, calling out for love unknown.

Which movies aren't about guilt? Even Transformers 2. Good robots vs. bad robots. We engage in fascination with guilt all day long, but generally, public forums on it show up only when it blowed up real good, either in a movie or with Robert McNamara and the like. When our noses aren't buried in private dramas, we create prosthetic tensions through art, for the feeling of catharsis... no differently than the Greeks who invented the word. We hope art dramas help keep us sane, and offer tips.

People make themselves ill through guilt. Repeated contradictory thoughts create a constant tension that strains something. I hate my job but I must keep it. Honesty could get me fired. I'll get sick and have time off. I myself haven't had the "flu" since 1977 -- when it dawned on me that all those depressing thoughts about not being of good cheer and having money for Xmas gifts were doing it, not some random virus that seems to like cold weather. It worked. No rocket science involved.

There are big loud self-help types who preach the total elimination of guilt, with the same hubris a president will vow to "rid the world of evil" or repair ungainly complex national problems with the stroke of a pen. Enjoy a guilt-free life in 327 easy steps! Sign up today! We'll blow that guilt up REAL good! Be a SuperiorPerson(TM)!

This works about as well as preparing for war to prevent it, which Einstein noticed didn't work, either. Incidentally, before the A bomb proved to work and blew the skins off 100,000 men women and children in Hiroshima, Einstein wrote Roosevelt recommending that Germany be wiped out entirely with that thing, as he could see no other way to eliminate a bad idea but by eradicating the people who were carrying it. He saw better. Smart man.

We still roll merrily along at large, battering ourselves and each other with guilt for not having the right ideas. It starts at home and eventually blossoms into the White House, the Kremlin, the Imperial Palace of the Glorious President-for-Life of Kachunga-bunga.

Animals feel guilt (even my 6 horses, who are adorable to watch for it), but hardly in such voluminous detail, and nowhere near leading to the disasters we create from our man-made versions of it. Once they encounter an offense that to them is a guilty thing, they never do it again. We, however, must be overly fascinated with the fact that committing the same offenses again and again produce the same results. What part of the brain is guilty of that?

Roger,
This seems the best time to ask this question of you: Are you still going to Catholic Mass? Confession? Has your illness shifted you either way in your church-going?
Sorry if you have answered this before...I just started reading your blog (but I've watched your show since the EARLY Gene Siskel days...)

One of the jewish rituals of the Yom kippur that preceded that of the scapegoat is called Vidui. It is more or less a confession, even though it does not guarantee absolution. It is still done today. The talmud has elaborated on this ritual, explaining the underlying reasoning: it is very difficult for a person to admit his wrongdoings - and the divine absolution on Yom Kippur can only come after that of one's fellow humans, to whom he/she's required to apologize until forgiveness is given by them (the rules become complicated on this aspect, so we'll skip them); the wrongdoings therefore include those committed against a fellow human - in saying. It is easy to think about them, it goes on explaining, but there is a built in restrain in our mind as far as proclaiming them loudly (or at least audibly) is concerned. Once the words have come out, the wrongdoing becomes real in his mind and in his environment: a first step toward a real understanding and feeling about what he/she has done. If they remain inside, instead, they will be more easily managed by the mind's defense systems, such as repression or self-justification.

The power of the ritual resides in its psychological basis, and not on any retroactive effect. We live in a universe in which the past is sealed and time goes only forward. But for a moral character to change, thus minimizing the chance of the same error to be repeated, this mental barrier has to be overcome.

Many psychological studies have proven that a person put in the context of a chain of command has a tendency to relinquish more easily his/hers moral compass; furthermore, when someone is inserted in an organization, a lot of elements insert themselves in the thought/moral process of the person by his/hers identification with the institution, stopping him/her, to some degree, to think as an individual.

There are many ways to try to understand what McNamara went through, and how some of his mistakes have come into being.

They do not justify him at all: they just might help understand how they happened.

But his role in a chain of command, and in a public institution, surely had to do with it.

So i feel that regardless of any religion view, or belief, his public confession is a strong gesture. In human terms, not metaphysical. Thinking about the reasoning behind the Vidui, i would certainly think that he has done something that is very powerful - and difficult - to do. Publicly: to the largest audience possible. The same audience that have him the power to make the mistakes.

That might not change the past, as it can not be changed as said before: surely, though, he's done something that comes close to the max he could do by himself. In human terms, again, not religious ones.
We all probably wish for more: unfortunately though, we are just humans and nothing more can be done without the intervention of higher powers. since nobody expects such miracles as the reversal of time to happen, i guess that will have to do.

Just my two cents in reply to M.'s thoughts.

Everyone always talks about sin, guilt, redemption, and the like, regarding morality. What about this issue in regard to intelligence?

Like most people, I have had my share of mild misbehavior regarding moral actions, but nothing too terrible. Overall, I sleep well at night and consider myself a fairly moral person. If there's any sense of sin and guilt that haunts me, it is with matters intellectual. I'm a college drop out. I'm not an expert in any one possible academic field. I don't spend hardly any of my free time reading books. I know that I should, kind of like how I know I should probably eat healthier than I do. With moral transgression, our guilt is precipitated by the harm we caused others, and it is for that that we should seek redemption and atonement. With intellectual failure (not 'transgression'), any harm caused is mostly just to ourselves. I have felt repentance over missed opportunities and failed endeavors to use my intelligence and be a smarter person. I see the contrast between myself and many of my peers who did in fact move on to graduate college and make something of themselves. Instead, in the recent past I have pursued recreation and activites that are not, it should be said, intellectually fulfilling. Part of the reason, at least on the reading books part, is that I truly have little interest in literature or poetry. I know you will find that disdainful, however I have read several books throughout my life on my own free will (not out of force by schooling, etc.) that were non-fiction. I am a fan of non-fiction books. Some of my favorites are "The Hot Zone," "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," and Schopenhauer's "Essays and Aphorisms." I just have not taken the time to read any books for a while, and have allowed my interests to be invested in other not-very-smart things.

Fortunately, redemption here should be rather easy, unlike moral failures. All I would have to do is enroll in college again, or begin reading books regularly again. Then I would be pulled back up from the slide into stupidity. However, I think I am already partially accomplishing this. I may not be currently reading books, but I am *reading.* I spend at least a full hour each day reading The New York Times. That counts for something, shouldn't it? To at least try reamining an informed citizen. And not to mention indulging in your robust film criticism each week.

And whether any of this should be taken serious or not, anyone who proclaims that "Transformers 2" is a better film than say "Casablanca" should be subject to some hard intellectual penance.

Ebert: On the curve, I'd say you are on an upper slope.

But if we took the New Testament too literally we might be uncomfortable with the TV preachers in $1,000 suits teaching the Gospel from their $10 million "Crystal Cathedrals."

And maybe we should be (and by "we," I speak of any other Christians in the room).

On Oprah and Dr. Phil: When I read your remark about the apple and the tree, I can't help but think of the cruel lines spoken by Jack Nicholson's character in the mediocre horror film "Wolf." Something about how you could make that western culture was in decline because "Art is dead, replaced with women who have been raped by their dentists are 'confiding' in Oprah." I'm not entirely convinced the apple fell very far from the tree at all when it came to Oprah and Dr. Phil. If I were forced to remember Oprah, rather than recall anything on her show (anything that she's known for), I'd rather remember her thoughtful, informed appearance on Henry Louis Gates's documentary on PBS when he traced the Southern histories of various Black celebrities and other Black people of prominence.

On McNamara: I haven't seen "The Fog of War." But I heard an NPR piece both with him, and with the guy who made that film. And from what I could tell, he seemed to be making an odd, if justifiable, distinction between being sorry for the war itself and being sorry for misreading the situation badly enough to get us involved there, in the way were involved.

"It was the right call based on what I knew, but damn did I screw up on what information to pay attention to, and how I read it at the time." That's what I got out of it.

Here's the show I heard, so you can see if you get out of it the same thing:

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=07-6-2009&view=storyview

On Confessions in General: I have little to say. The things I've done that some would consider Evil that I do not, I feel I have no reason to confess. (I don't "confess" that I liked "Dirty Dancing" despite your one-star review, or hated "Entrapment" despite your 3-star review, for example...I "state" those things.) The things I've done that I and others consider Evil, I have mostly confessed because with regard to pretty much all of them there's been some good reason to think that confessing will help with undoing or repairing the damage. One or two things, my Confession would do not a lick of good, so it's best to keep quiet and ruminate, so that I will learn to not repeat my Evil. Ditto, I suppose, for the things I've done that I consider Evil and others don't.

-Nighthawk

Greetings Roger and Fellow Readers!

As someone who has been professionally involved in frontline politics and journalism, I am very empathic towards those who have made decisions with which they later come to regret.

This does not stop me from believing that Henry Kissinger should be brought to trial for war crimes committed against humanity.

I had recent occasion to view the very powerful 2000 film “The Contender,” featuring riveting performances by Joan Allen, Gary Oldman, and Jeff Bridges, among others. At the heart of the story is the crucial decision by Allen’s character to abide by her internal moral compass, come what may.

This is very illustrative of the dilemmas that confront people of conscience who are in politics.

Chris Alders
Nova Scotia, Canada

From Paul:

"The main preaching of Jesus, I believe, as far as social stuff goes, was against greed and money-making. And for the support of the poor.

There's like, 5 Christians in America. If that. Real ones."

THANK YOU, PAUL! Well said! My mother is one of those 5 real Christians in America. And I'm so sick of the phony ones! And they really believe they are Christians--how sad. And I don't think one of them ever feels one pang of guilt. Anyway, not any of the ones I know. So I guess they don't need to confess.

Thank God I'm an agnostic.

A person burned himself alive outside of McNamara's office. If that's not something to have nightmares about, I don't know what would be. I believe footage of it was used by Ingmar Bergman in "The Passion of Anna".

Have another drink Roger and three cheers for "boats guns dogs and horses", a series of images that describe my coming of age (carnally speaking) so beautifully revealed in my yet to be sold or published autobiographical work
- "Old and Yeller, the story of a boy on the road to manhood and the drunken loud mouthed alley tramp who became his guide, shortly before she was hit by a tractor trailer rig while stumbling across the Dallas-Fort Worth turnpike on her way to buy some salt and a pack of Lucky Strikes."

We live in a Fog of Life much less war. We connect and struggle and stumble blindly on or not so blindly, we choose to stumble because sometimes we just like a good roll in the mud. Mea culpa if I spattered you. Are you hurt? Those spots won't come out. Forgive me, Says I
"Let's check the marquee and see what's playing today. Oh look!
The story of Me starring Spencer Tracy. You see it was a good day.
Yesterday it was also the Story of Me, but the role was taken by Huntz Hall. Tomorrow it's the same title, same knuckleheaded Huntz God love him, wandering lost in the Bowery of his heart. I hear there's a restored version, they added back the scenes with the guy in the gorilla suit.
Forgive me fathers...mothers..for we have sinned your sins. Or To quote Hyacinth, "Nothing is lost but it changes, out of the old sac new wine.."

I remember hearing a documentary filmmmaker a few years ago (sorry, I don't remember his name), who said that the people he was filming only truly opened up and started talking when the camera was turned on. When it was turned off, they weren't as forthcoming. That says something, perhaps, about the confessional power of film or video.

As usual, another fascinating read Mr. E. Although, I was anxiously waiting to see if you were going to make a shocking confession of your own. Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man. It's the romantic in me.

Or perhaps you secretly love the new Transformers sequel and your scathing review was merely a charade to cover your intense self-loathing. Of course, if you exposed this guilty pleasure to god, country and everyone who reads your blog on their lunch hour, your forlorn wife would have to stand beside you stone-faced, stoic and wearing a well-tailored suit, all the while fantasizing about bludgeoning you with your John Ford box-set for having publicly humiliated her.

On the bright side, she’d get the opportunity to write a tell-all book about your poorly-scripted-summer-blockbuster-loving ways and go on Larry King. You, sadly, with your career in tatters, would be relegated to an appearance on celebrity rehab with Dr. Drew where you’d attempt to re-ignite an appreciation for the finer points of Billy Wilder films during group therapy sessions with actors who, ironically, appeared in pictures for which you wrote scathing reviews.

Alas, you’d eventually be bumped from the headlines when some little-known politician holds an impromptu press conference to confess his guilt over a tawdry affair he had with his underage, illegal-alien, transgender housekeeper. His wife stands beside him stone-faced, stoic and wearing a well-tailored suit, all the while fantasizing about watching the Transformers sequel…and deciding that would just add insult to injury.

A confessional indeed, considering Morris' use of the "interrotron". haha.

But McNamara's interview in FoW was less about repentance and more about redemption. There was a gusto from the man, an intellectual fervor boiling at the chance to bestow great boons; to teach others about life, history, and a hopeful future wherein we can learn from our past.

Of course his ideas sprouted from the darker regions of his conscience, as these areas are often the birth place of mankind's greatest accomplishments. But McNamara's FoW is like those Anti-Drug talks where ex-abusers unveil their darkest secrets in order to enlighten high schoolers. It's more about doing good, than taking away the bad.

This is deep and empathetic writing that you've done, Mr. Ebert. It requires measured and thoughtful response, after having been read, and read again. And I shall do so before long.

In the meanwhile, I might add that of all the blog threads that I've followed and commented on, none have ever begged for a soundtrack until now. Below, find a link to John Williams' awesome setting of Gloria in Excelsis Deo, from a long-forgotten film called Monsignor. It, too, deals with confessions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9pCYRurmMY

@ Dave Van Dyke on July 15, 2009 8:57 AM,

You assume that the American nuclear attack on Japanese civilians brought a close to the war. That was the official and preferred version of history. The since revisionist view makes quite a strong case that the Japanese generals capitulated not due to loss of civilian lives (Hiroshima and Nagasaki were considered examples of conventional bombing by both sides, and actually created far fewer immediate casualties than fire-bombing) but by the irrevocable fact that the Russians were going to invade Japan, the success of which would spell the end of the Emperor - and by extension, the end of Japan - under communist rule.

Exceptional article (as usual) and wonderful discussion. As a retired teacher I wish I could be back in the classroon using film to get students to meaningfully discuss real life issues. Your blog would be required reading.

Despite being a teenager in the 60's I had never heard of Phil Ochs, the political folk-singing 'journalist' and contemporary of Dylan. I found out about him through a wonderful radio documentary on the CBC called "Rebel Angels of Song" and immediately had to find and listen to all his songs and read biographies on him. He left some amazing songs and his patter between songs was always very controversial and thought-provoking. His life was a lonely and tragic one and worthy of a re-telling on film (Just don't let Ron Howard do it). Sean Penn was at one point trying to get the film made but that fell through. One of the major reasons for Och's eventual mental breakdown and suicide was that he could not come to grips that the America he loved could often be so morally corrupt.

His songs contain so many wonderful lines, such as:

It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the sabre and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all" (from I Ain't Marching Anymore).

So keep right on a-talkin' and tell us what to do
If nobody listens my apologies to you
And I know that you were younger once 'cause you sure are older now
And when I've got something to say, sir, I'm gonna say it now
(from I'm Gonna Say It Now)

They'll rob you of your innocence
They will put you up for sale
The more that you will find success
The more that you will fail
I been around, I've had my share
And I really can't complain
But I wonder who I left behind
The other side of fame
(from Chords of Fame)

and from the last song on his last album - perhaps, in a small way, a part of his last confession.

Hello, hello, hello
Is there anybody home?
I've only called to say
I'm sorry.
The drums are in the dawn,
and all the voices gone.
And it seems that there are no more songs.
(from No More Songs)

Potpourri from the posts:

As to guilt being a matter of intelligence: I once took a lie detector test to work at a jewelry company. The interviewer was an old ex-FBI man; he told me that it was much easier for simpler people to fool the machine than for people of high intelligence. They don't feel as guilty about lying, he concluded, so their nerves don't jump when they do. I couldn't fool the machine but I passed.

Do we pay Roger "the big bucks," by the way? I haven't seen a bill. Should I feel guilty?

I lived in Anaheim in the early days of the new Crystal Cathedral; one day I flipped on the TV and heard Robert Schuller declaiming that he had a story that he wanted to "share" with us.

This was the first time I'd heard that figurative abuse of the word; the guilty implication popped out at me, in all innocence: he wouldn't TELL us a story, which might bore us, but "share" it; so valuable was this tale that he could only offer you half of it, like the only candy bar he had. Slick talk. It was boring.

The ancient Egyptians didn't let you into the afterlife until after your every action had been weighed on a scale. Much of Judeo-Christianity and Islam stems from that elder religion. Christianity proclaimed that "every penny will be accounted for" on that Day of Judgment. Hindus make you come back time after time until you work out all the bad things you've done.

"Down to the penny" of behavior sounds pretty severe. Many a puritan household has been scrubbed into sterile futility for it.

What guilt was to an Egyptian can be found in the recital in the Book of the Dead. It was detailed, but it wasn't petty.

Brandon, one of my brothers was 13 when he read THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE and Michener's HAWAII and other tomes. His reading teacher battered him with guilt for that. He wasn't "normal." It wasn't "good." She insisted he read crap like baseball stories. This set up a little hell on earth for him, where he quit school and ran away from home at age 15. He's okay now, but it took him over a decade to realize he wasn't "stupid." He's a PhD these days and has won poetry awards to boot, but he moved to France to live his now successful life. He never forgave America for making him feel so bad for not being a blockheaded ignoramus.

I was cleverer. I never let my teachers know what I was reading. Even back then, it was "obedience school" more than education. Do the "right" things and you'll get a swell job, raise a family, not make waves, then die. This is all a matter of a blindsided psychology of guilt. Sounds like you protest your innocence too much about not reading. I'd have absolved you for not reading Sagan's bloviating. "The Ancient Greek works of art, all meaningless," indeed. I haven't trusted Sagan since he pulled the shit-smear job on Velikovsky. What I read is no imaginary social-respectability contest for me.

The term "psychology" is relatively new, but why should it be obscure that religious organizations were formed around psychological principles? Ancient priests and priestesses did not have the highest occupational suicide rate, as I read modern psychologists still do, and 26% of their populations weren't pronounced crazy, as ours lately is. To "sin" was to err, not to need pills -- of which they had plenty in their own fashion.

Had the psychology of the various religions not been highly effective, how would we otherwise have seen the rise of civilizations? Despite our cynicisms, much of them earned, whole peoples weren't gathered together by mere manipulation and fear. That tends to fragment countries, as happened in World War Two.

I think the main teaching of Jesus was "you'd better believe what you say you believe." Then you'd be in a position to see if what you say you believe really has ever done you any good.

"If a fool would but persist in his folly, he would become wise," as Blake put it.

Otherwise, the simplicity of Christianity compared with its hundreds of pagan forbears served to unite the West.

The United States was founded not on "Christianity," although a diverse bickering Protestantism comprised those concerned with founding a government. It had a new psychology: that an individual was fundamentally innocent until proven guilty by his deeds. This impelled a tolerance and co-operation among citizens unprecedented in Western History, despite its flaws. There was a much freer exchange of valuable ideas and practicalities.

Under biblical Christianity, we are born guilty. This makes us manipulatable by the supposed "saved" in the pulpits, by those who "enjoy greetings in the marketplace and high places at the feast," as Jesus joked. Our guilt makes us gullible and prone to rigid thinking -- and thus, the streak of anti-intellectualism in this country. Don't know too much, it's dangerous.

"Christianity, n. An admirable set of precepts by which one's neighbor must live." Quote remembered from The Devil's Dictionary, nailing the guilt by which we operate just about daily.

Indeed, these would be among the "false Christians" mentioned above, millions of 'em. Some even think they gave up religion. They've merely cast off the husk. Such was the power of Christian psychology. They've dangled many right ideas, but made you feel unworthy to follow them.

We don't recognize that our present psychologies and sciences tend to follow the same suit: we are born flawed, easily victimized by "nature," subject to improvements by those particular sacerdotes at the feast.

Who here said there's a Second Coming in the works? I concur, but not "by the book," not as the dispensationalist cultists yearn for, although we've clearly set ourselves up for plenty of unnecessary disaster. There are new Christs practicing all over Africa and India and elsewhere. Just recently, somebody wrote me that there's even a new messiah in Macedonia.

Yes there are plenty of money-grubbing holy clowns. But we're also in a position where Freud's remark "if god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" isn't all that cynical. Some are rising to the occasion. Psychologically, we follow examples; this is a stronger impetus than acting on guilt, "doing good and not evil" according to some very faulty lists and very noisy alpha-respectables.

Let's see what everybody else has to say. I have it on good authority that Robert McNamara isn't paying any attention to this discussion at all.

Robert McNamara on Charlie Rose

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt32Q0vVwUQ

I've been renting a number of Ingmar Bergman films lately, and noticed the same thing about his confessional moments. Every film I recall has a series of these soliloquies. In fact, as I think about it, the scenes themselves take on a confessional air. The camera moved in close, suggesting a certain intimacy. The words were spoken in a quiet voice. The rooms were dark, the edges of the frame almost black. The whole thing suggesting a whispered secret was being shared "psst, I need to tell you something".

Two films that come to mind are The Seventh Seal and Hour of the Wolf.

Seventh Seal is a wonderful film, the most interesting scene is when the Knight is in the church 'confessing' to what he thinks is a priest. Our brave Knight, bewildered by life, confessing his fear of death, to death himself. I think Bergman, more than any other director I've seen, examines himself on screen. He's asking His questions, searching for His answers but never quite getting there. The Knight in Seventh Seal didn't fear death because it meant he would no longer exist. He feared running out of time before he could figure it all out. It's very easy to believe that Bergman had the same sort of fears.

Hour of the Wolf was also interesting. Of course a great deal of it is coming right out of the diary of the main character. We are catching a glimpse of his confessions to himself as he becomes more and more insane. Layered on top of that we have that wonderful scene in the cabin, where Von Sydow's character tells his wife about a certain incident in his childhood when he was punished severely by his parents. How he was locked in a closet and told to beware the creatures inside that would be nibbling at his toes. A wonderful bit of acting from Von Sydow as he conveys the near panic of that child, trying to scramble upwards in the dark. He is, in a way, confessing to his wife that he has always lived in a state of fear. Later, I found out that this is an incident from Bergman's own childhood and here he is confessing it to an audience, I wonder if it was for the same reason.

Ebert: Yes, he frequently told that sory about his childhood.

Madoff doesn't look sorry to me.

Several respondents expressed the sentiment that perhaps McNamara was intending the leaders of the present to learn from the mistakes of his past, but unfortunately they have failed to do so. I could not disagree more.
Concerning our current involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prosecution of the conflict, and the current status quo, are precisely what was intended. No mistakes of great consequence were made and it went off perfectly, from the point of view of those idealogues who wanted to: steal the oil; replace the leadership; set up permanent military bases; isolate Iran; drive a pipeline through Afghanistan; steal billions from the treasury, etc. If you assume this was their intent then they are well satisfied with their work, they have gone unpunished, and no confession or apology will be forthcoming. Concern for the welfare of the innocent has never figured in their calculations.

I'm probably going to sound like a crank when I say this, but rumor has it that nanotechnology is going to put cameras in the very air we breathe by the year 2030. Not only might that render confession moot, if everyone was privy to every recorded thing anywhere, but it is bound to change behavior--just how, and how much, is beyond my prognosticatability.

Go, and sin no more, appears to be the best advice in History . . .

Ebert: Would not the findings of such cameras be far beyond our capacity to store or review?

Part of the reason I think so many writers use literature as a form of public confessional is because the circumstances of their lives leave them with the feeling that they have or had no real choice, or that the consequences of doing the right thing would be too severe. Tim O'Brien's "On Rainy River" presents an extraordinary statement about a soldier who is drafted into Vietnam, knows that the war is wrong, but cannot bear to be seen as a draft-dodger or a coward. So in the end he goes. A lot of the fiction and memoirs to come out of Vietnam seem to carry a similar sentiment, though some of it might be hindsight. Isaac Babel's works are similar in that Babel, who served as an actual Cossack in pre-Soviet Russia, creates some amazing stories that seem to be his confessions for the sins he committed as part of the Cossack way of life.

If you remember one of the lines from "Quiz Show," one of the chairmen tells Van Doren, "I'm happy that you've made the statement. But I cannot agree with most of my colleagues. See, I don't think an adult of your intellegence should be commended for simply, at long last, telling the truth."

This is pretty harsh moralizing on the chairman's part, but when you first watch the movie I think you tend to agree that Van Doren should have known better. Maybe there is some cowardice involved in using literature or art as a confessional. But then maybe confession has always been about allowing the sinner to forgive himself, rather than seeking the forgiveness of others.

"I believe Bernie Madoff, on the other hand, really and truly felt badly about what he had done to people who trusted him. He finally seemed compelled to confess, and went almost willingly to prison."

Interesting.

Personally, I've been thinking there must be more to the Madoff story than has been reported. Most con artists prey on the naive, but Madoff preyed on the business-savvy rich. It's hard to believe he could get away with a ponzi scheme for so long, without some of his more clever clients noticing. And so much money! Where did it go?

Has anyone ever seriously considered the possibility that Madoff might have been the fall-guy for a larger money-laundering operation? This would certainly explain his resignation in his final hours.

Roger

I'm sure you will recognize this-

Father forgive us for what me must do
You forgive us and we'll forgive you
We'll forgive each other 'till we both turn blue
And we'll whistle and go fishing in heaven.
-----J. Prine

emk

Seeking absolution at the twilight of one's life. This puts me in mind of Chaucer and The Pardoner's Tale that we read as seniors in high school. More or less.

But Chaucer was nothing if not cheeky. Relics!!!

Wow, after reading this post on and off all day about Robert McNamara and The Fog of War, last night I watched "Johnny Got His Gun" on AMC. All this discussion about McNamara and his reflections on the Vietnam War have brought the memories rushing back. And then that movie (JGHG).

I grew up during the Vietnam War thinking that it had always gone on and would go on forever. As far back as I can remember, the evening news was solid Vietnam coverage. I was a girl, and I had two younger brothers. Would the war still be going on when they were old enough to be drafted? I had cousins in that war; they all came back, but they came back very different. They went on to be wonderful family men and made their mark in the world, but every time I see them to this day their eyes seem haunted. They never talk about what happened, but they have said that those experiences have colored every part of their lives since.

I guess this personal history is why every Vietnam movie had me flinching in my theater seat and preying on my thoughts for weeks. That war has colored all my feelings about any war, perhaps because I grew up with it. I remember exactly where I was when I heard we had started the first Gulf War. And when we went to Afghanistan. And then when we went to Iraq again. It gets harder as I get older. Now I see young men with buzz cuts around my town (Albuquerque, NM) with arms and legs missing. Do we never learn?

I have not yet watched The Fog of War. I just don't think I can ever understand or forgive the powers that be that orchestrated the Vietnam War or any since. And I'm just an onlooker. I can't fathom how veterans feel.

As a youngster, I remember the somber atmosphere on my small town street in Texas--there were many young men of draft age among the families. I remember when our next door neighbor's son was declared "4F". They had a block party. And this was a patriotic, red-neck town. Patriotism and duty are hard to swallow however, when the boy is your own and there is no choice involved. Anyone that has never lived in the time of the draft has no idea what that is like.

Regarding "Johnny Got His Gun", Jason Robards says that democracy involves every man being willing to give his only begotten son. When his young boy asked why the old men don't go to war, Robards states that its their job to "keep the home fires burning". The son says he would rather stay and keep the home fires burning, but Robards says that part of democracy is "young men killing each other". Donald Trumbo wrote the movie in 1939. It was made in 1971. It wasn't released until the Vietnam War became unpopular; I remember it only being shown at outdoor drive-ins in Texas along with other so-called "shocker" movies. Luis Bunuel is connected to the movie somehow, I don't remember exactly. Donald Trumbo's views were always very powerful; he was blacklisted for over 10 years in the McCarthey era, and I believe did prison time.

All this war stuff comes in waves. I remember being in art school the first time around when the Persian Gulf War started. My anti-war pieces were greeted in class critiques with a kind of uncomfortable embarrassment. I remember being dressed down when I said we shouldn't go to Iraq after 9/11. Anyone who was against the war was accused of being un-American. Now many look back and realize what a mistake it was. History keeps repeating itself because we are so short-sighted--we NEVER learn. There has to be another way to resolve conflict besides throwing our youngest, best, and brightest into a meat grinder. The old men orchestrate the wars and send our youth to fight them. I often wonder if things would go differently if women were in power. I think they might; I hope so.

I do understand that sometimes countries are attacked and thrust into war. America's involvement in World War II was a part of the free world attempting to thwart an unspeakable menace that threatened the human race. I just believe that ever since that war, every conflict we've been involved in has been so politically motivated, so petty and tragic.

Anyway, I finally saw "Johnny Got His Gun" after all these years. It was definitely a "70's" movie, but what a powerful statement on the human cost of war. It also makes very striking observations on medicine, religion, the right to die, compassion, and the power of the mind. Also some incredible performances by Donald Sutherland and Jason Robards.

Will I see The Fog of War? Not yet. I just can't feel understanding or compassion for Robert McNamara. He was one of many, but he still bears responsibility for the deaths of many. I guess I will have to see the movie eventually, because I try very hard to be fair and I need to hear his side of the matter. It doesn't matter what I think anyway; he is dead now, and his battle is over. And I believe that when you're dead, that's it. I personally think confession is something we do in order to make ourselves feel better and try to heal.

Thanks, Roger, for another wonderful article and blog.

Ebert: Would not the findings of such cameras be far beyond our capacity to store or review?

My guess is it would be easy as pie, if the cameras are time- and GPS-stamped. It just depends on how much the superpower(s) and/or megacorporation(s) want to spend, for how much resolution, and how hackable it would be by the brilliant kids in the basements. My guess-again: since Knowledge is Power, they'll spend plenty.

I think Michael Crichton's PREY addressed the issue of getting coherent imagery from such. The anology is the many-faceted insect eye; get enough of them to "fly" in Eye Formation, and you're there.

Ebert: And information occupies no space?

Mr. Ebert-

As a member of a AA (hence the lack of name on my post) I commend you on your understanding of the simple tenents of the program and the utility behind them. Often times the 12 steps and their supporting traditions are misunderstood or not understood at all when being discussed in the media (as you appropriately point out in this entry). The release found in the 12 steps could benefit anyone, alcoholic or not.

Confession is but one part, taking accountability yet another, forgiveness...well there in lies the rub. It is simple to be forgiven by others, but how do we forgive ourselves? AA has provided a template for me and many others, but it is a daily process and temporary reprieve. That's why we keep comin back.

Great entry. Thank you as always for your thoughts and insights.

You're proving to us something you might have finally confirmed in your Scorsese book: Catholics make the best subjects and the best filmmakers because they experience guilt in different ways than the rest of the world's people. And even if the act of confessing, or the confessional, is used by other religions it is primarily associated with the Roman Catholic Church. I'm not a Catholic so my understanding on the phenomenon you describe in part here and in detail in your Scorsese book is fuzzy, but I think it's brave for someone to tackle a subject like that head on. Most people avoid that kind of debate and the entanglement it could cause, but you've been mighty vocal, as has Martin Scorsese.

Ashley Pomeroy --

Breakfast is a cultural invention, ethics is a cultural breakthrough. Science and art round out the Big Three -- The Good, The True, and The Beautiful. Don't you find it heartening that humanity has steered itself down these three roads? Or have you formed a callus to such things?

If I indulge the logic of one of your statements a questionable formula emerges. If "bad things allowed to happen" equals no God then what does "good things allowed to happen" equal?

And what do you mean by God? It sounds like you mean Helper in the sky? This is a childish and naive view of God.

No spiritual force either? Geez, Ash, you're bumming me out here. For me, spiritual force is the world rightly seen. All of it's majesty and mystery rightly seen. My own consciousness and breath rightly seen. Yes, there are inequities in the world. And it's the task of any human being who gives a shit to temper these inequities as much as possible. There are myriad ways, big and small, to go about this.

Your reductionist view of human beings frightens me a little. Animals and ants and what not. I can only hope this is not some dreary projection of self.

Dying happy doesn't mean you won the game. It only means you died happy. This should not be confused with a game well played.

Don't you think that dying happy is too much to ask for? I'd much rather die at peace.

Hello, sir. Congratulations on another poignant essay. It is indeed very human "to confess and seek redemption, or to justify and seek understanding". Even for the monsters, those you say commit evil with a clear conscience. Of course, their motivation is pride and not guilt.

Would that mean confession is more important to human beings than remorse?

Hello, again. I wanted to point out some weird spelling and grammar in the confession piece.

"[...]there are sp many justifications for behavior relating to money." I think you meant "so".

"Press agents who check [...] should be drummed out of the Hollywood." Why "the" Hollywood? I'm sure you're not speaking of Hollywood, FL.

The last one is just a curiosity of mine. You wrote: "'I have no regrets,' Edith Piaf sang. It is clear that she does." Is it clear that she does have no regrets? Is it allowed to refer to a negative statement with a positive sentence as long as the negative term isn't directly affecting the verb?

Thank you.

Hi Roger,

I was wondering if you had seen that Saudi Arabia has outlawed public cinemas. I'd be very interested in hearing any thought you might have on the subject.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1246443832401

Cheers.
~Brian

Ebert: A quote: "One of the main problems for Saudis is having mixed theaters," Saadi explained. "We have mixed restaurants in Saudi, but at a cinema you have men and women entering a dark room and hanging out together."

Thank you for your comment on the "Prosperity Gospel" which has infuriated me for years! And if anyone wants to argue that the Master and Talents parable/illustration of Jesus had anything to do with material wealth, please read the context and understand that it dealt with the spriritual assets and resources that he was giving his apostles, and how they needed to be spread and the Master's pleasure at this growth.

By Julian D. on July 15, 2009 8:14 PM

It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the sabre and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all (from [Phil Ochs'] "I Ain't Marching Anymore").

I'll see your Ochs and raise you a Dylan, Julian:

Come you masters of war

You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

"Masters of War," Bob Dylan

By ArtDog on July 16, 2009 10:51 AM

Donald Trumbo wrote the movie in 1939.

That's Dalton Trumbo, ArtDog. :)

Sorry for this being a bit off-topic, but I thought the punctuation in the title of "(500)Days of Summer" had pathos. I suppose it may seem a little gimmicky and seem like another one of those bad low budget movies, but 500 Days of Summer without it, such as here, evokes a kind of feeling of romance--and anyone who perhaps sees the poster of the movie won't know that Summer is the name of the female lead in the movie--, but with the parenthesis there is a bit of an ironic twist that I think is meant to convey a more confused finality of the evocation alluded to. In other words, the clever gimmick actually works.

Ebert: And information occupies no space?

It's utterly astonishing how much information, in how little space, may be stored on protein strands.

For Max Weber the famous Calvinist work ethic emerges out of the desperate anxiety that accompanies not being able to confess or be absolved. I think it is a particularly awful thing to live in a cosmos with no place of grace. We need grace and I think in its absence we become frenetically busy so that we will not have to confront our cupidity and cowardice. This is why Ikiru is so powerful--because, there IS nothing more dangerous than a petty bureaucrat.

Hi Roger.

What a beautifully written and profound article. It was a privilege reading this. There is a lot here to think about - especially about the pride of confession.

I was thinking today, after reading this, of counseling sessions that I have experienced in the past. I recall distinctly walking out of a session of baring my soul, feeling relieved, and then wondering how much trauma I just inflicted on the counselor. How does he expunge it from his psyche on the way home to his family that day? What a burden to be the confessor.

On McNamara, since I have not seen "the Fog of War", a question:

Was his sin in the Vietnam war fighting the war too hard, not hard enough, or fighting it at all?

I was around in the sixties, but too young to be engaged in that question.

I have only my Air Force education to go by. The gist of which was that we didn't fight it hard enough, if we were going to be in it, to win it. Rolling Thunder bombing campaigns (Air Force) under Nixon were proving effective at bring the war to a conclusion, but were deemed too severe by some and were stopped. True? Maybe. Everyone has a perspective on that.

So, what was McNamara's sin? An honest question.

Randy

i just want to acknowledge that AA is mentioned and paid attention to as an accepted positive lifestyle for "alcoholics" (a subjective term) but is very contingent on quasi religious approaches and a requirement of an "alcoholic" to participate in cultish group think (with creeds) and de-humanization while accepting cigarettes and caffeine as perfectly normal to consume in excess as well as anything else as long as it isn't alcohol or drugs-as they-define-them, as well as an alliance to pathologies of the psychiatric profession which are again, subjective.

Ebert: What drunk is going to be interested in stopping booze, smoking and coffee at the same time? What approach to sobriety works better?

"Present effects are due to karmic causes from the past. However, future effects arise from the causes we make in the present. It is always the present that counts. It is what we do in the present moment that decides our future; our past causes do not govern our future as well. Nichiren Buddhism emphasizes that no matter what kind of karmic causes we have made in the past, through the causes we make in the present we can achieve a brilliant future.".....Daisaku Ikeda

Ebert: S. M. Rama, is that you? We miss you.

But of course information occupies space, because it requires a medium, whether it's a piece of paper, a disk drive, some lines in the sand, or a human brain.

And sometimes people forget that the Internet is a very physical thing, too, that allows the abstraction of cyberspace to exist (if I may use a rather dated term).

Buh. Time for work.

Ebert: Just what I was thinking. But it requires very little space. Consider the gene. The information of life, on a speck.

Ebert: I think technically the priest is just the instrument of God's forgiveness, and does not himself do the forgiving.

Yes, and he is also an instrument of God's grace, in that through Confession a person obtains the grace necessary to him/her in order to struggle against his/her own sins and faults, his/her particular tendencies. This is why spiritual writers recommend frequent Confession (once a month or so); not because people should wallow in scrupulosity, but just so they get the graces they need and increase in self-knowledge.

I don't know if a person can ever really forgive him/herself (how can you forgive *yourself* for the harm you did to *someone else*? It seems to me the forgiveness has to come, if not from the person who was hurt-- this isn't always possible for all kinds of reasons-- then from God) but I've found, as a practising Catholic, that getting to know my own faults and tendencies and relying more and more on the Grace of God in order to do better ultimately prevents discouragement with my own many shortcomings and makes it easier to get back on the track if I've fallen off.

Perhaps the psychological effects here are the same as those people are referring to when they talk about "self-forgiveness".

Roger, I love reading this journal of yours-- thanks for writing it. So long from Canada,
Michelle

By Ron Barth, Jr. on July 16, 2009 7:20 PM

By ArtDog on July 16, 2009 10:51 AM

Donald Trumbo wrote the movie in 1939.

That's Dalton Trumbo, ArtDog. :)

Thank you Ron! Still learning at 53. ;)

From Gary in Phoenix, "and how hackable it would be by the brilliant kids in the basements."

There are perfectly brilliant kids (and hackers) that live on the surface. Your original comment was not crank-ish, but this comment certainly was.

It can also be said that information creates space. That will not be said by those who insist that a thing that can't be measured in physical terms can't exist. Then again, we have "massless particles" and such.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to let somebody stick wires into my brain to root around for where a city I've imagined, or some grand historical event, is supposedly stored. They're in the "akashic records" or kept by "the Recording Angel," or various other ancient religious concepts of psychological or nonphysical structures.

A friend of mine was a Nicheren Buddhist. He was diagnosed with malignant lymphoma 3 times. That's incurable, they say, and you've got very little time to live once it starts.

He put himself on a Nichiren Buddhist program. This included gathering a group of "confessors," that is, friends willing to listen as he searched himself thoughtfully. The cancer disappeared in time, and he told me his doctor was actually angry about it. Tests showed no trace of it.

In a couple of years it returned and he was given 3 days to live. He alerted his friends and tried the same procedure. In six months, once again, tests showed no trace of malignant lymphoma.

A couple of years later it returned with a vengeance. This time a roomful of chanters, carrot juice, et al, didn't work and he died.

I had moved away and wasn't around to do my part. The one difference between his first two successful cures and the last was that in the first two, he had also thrown himself into creative projects that he'd always wanted to do -- learn to make music, and write a book. It seemed to me that this missing ingredient was an important one. He had beat one of medical science's most sure-fire death sentences for 7 years.

His name was Robin Azi, aka Bill Robinson; if you google that you may yet find a nice eulogy for him written by Barnett Kellman, a fairly successful TV and occasional movie producer. They were friends. Shortly before Robin died, Barnett located his old college friend, about whom he'd been long thinking of making a movie for his heroics back at Colgate. Robin died shortly after sending Barnett his manuscript. Barnett tossed Robin's manuscript away.

I found Barnett's eulogy 7 years later, thinking about Robin one day and checking to see if the website he left behind might still be up. I contacted Barnett with the rest of the story, which he didn't know. Barnett once again thought of developing a movie about Robin and asked for my help. I still had Robin's manuscript. After 3 months of work on it, Barnett again declined.

Too bad. Coincidentally, "Pursuit of Happyness," which hit the theaters shortly after that episode, didn't hold a candle to Robin's true-life story, which was similar. Robin had written his book hoping to leave a legacy that might make money for the 2 young sons he'd left behind.

Ralph Goonan, I think the reason there is such animosity toward McNamara is that he confessed long after his confession could have done anyone but himself any good. He went on TV night after night talking body counts and progress in the war long after he knew the war was a lost cause. Had he resigned and come out publicly with his belief that the war couldn't be won, tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives could have been saved.

Whether it be helped along significantly with nano or not (and my take on your post, Roger, was strongly influenced by my recent perusal of NANOTECHNOLOGY FOR DUMMIES), universal surveillance IS coming (he said, sounding even more like a crank?)--and from DUNN'S CONUNDRUM by Stan Lee (NOT the comic book guru) to "I See You" by Damon Knight to "The Dead Past" by Isaac Asimov, plus undoubtedly newer/better examples I haven't yet encountered, prescient imagineers have faced the possibility. The trend is undeniable: think how many times one is photoed or videoed in one's perfectly ordinary modern endeavors. It is cheaper than ever to surveil, and sneakiness technology, even in the stuff "They" let us know about, is amazing.

So--some time ago, with resignation and despair, I decided that the best thing to do is to act as if someone is always watching. This didn't change my behavior all that much; the inertia of behavior is overwhelming. But I feel more ready for that inevitable time when fancy becomes fact, and confession is moot.

Ebert: What drunk is going to be interested in stopping booze, smoking and coffee at the same time?

Not me!

(Oh, sorry, I thought you were doing a survey of your readers.)

This article was engrossing, thought-provoking and highly valuable to me, not the least of which because someone FINALLY called out Dr. Phil in it. I remember when he first started appearing on Oprah (not that I'm a regular viewer; my co-workers would have her on TV in the breakroom). It seemed like he would always hijack her show, berating her guests as he does in his inimitable style, and Oprah would just sit frozen in her chair. I used to wonder what does this guy have on her that she would allow him to do that.

Actually, in general, a good rule of thumb of mine is anyone using the doctor moniker immediately followed by their first name (Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, Dr. Drew) should pretty much be avoided like the plague. I mean, what's up with that? Do they think we all never really advanced much beyond Romper Room!?

Many of the folks who posted here refer to movies (of course), literature, poetry, art and music (lyrics) to support their particular view.

It seems obvious, at least to me, that many artists, and this includes all those souls responsible for the above mentioned mediums, have a unique ability to excorsize their personal demons through whatever medium they choose. Sometimes it takes many attempts to alleviate the guilt of transgressions. Sometimes it is impossible. Hence, many similar themes will prevail in their art throughout their career.

I have written many lyrics immediately after an event as a means of getting it out of my system, making sense out of what seemed senseless or just to feel better.

Additionally, most artists continue to pursue their "art" because they have to. There is no choice. For the true artist it is impossible to stop doing what they do. Fortunately, it becomes an outlet to vent frustration, tell a personal story, alleviate guilt, ask for forgiveness, find redemption, be humorous, etc.

Sometimes an idea flows through the artist as if coming from an otherwise unknown source. We've all heard the phrase "it just wrote itself". It has happened to me so I know it to be true. Songs have literally written themselves. I was merely the instrument through which it was written.

Where does this inspiration come from? Many interpret this as coming from a higher power, deity or God Himself. This can be both revealing and dangerous depending on the message being presented and the belief system of both the artist and the individual experiencing the artist's medium.

Roger, as a writer, I would bet my paycheck (it's not as big as yours) that this has happened in your lifetime. Have words flowed from your instrument and it is all you can do to keep up? It is a very exciting phenomenom and very fulfilling.

Finally, have you ever felt the ease of conscious after writing something that allowed you to "get it off your chest"?

Seeking redemption through confession has always struck me as a hollow gesture. If McNamara really felt repentant, he should have turned himself over to an international war crimes tribunal and stood trial for his crimes. That would have been the only way I might have felt some respect for a man who abetted the deaths of thousands of soldiers and civilians. As it is, his mincing answers in Fog of War just serve to underscore the main problem I have with American politics all the way up to the present- a sad lack of accountability.

If you don't feel you have to answer to anyone for your actions, then the only limit on your behaviour is your ability and personal morality. If there is no consequence when you break the law, and you are not constrained by a personal moral code, then you will keep breaking the law, because why not?

So you can have CIA-orchestrated massacres of civilians in Central America, drug dealing government agents addicting whole generations of ghettoized youths, systematic prison torture, gross negligence causing needless deaths in New Orleans, a government that spies illegally on its people- I can go on and on. And because no one in power has to answer for their actions, the lesson we learn is that the law is only for people from a lower income bracket. The rich and powerful can commit war crimes, and then get to go on a speaking tour.

While having immensely enjoyed the songs of Bob Dylan throughout my life, I must say, that reading the lyrics to Masters of War painfully reconfirms a longstanding opinion of mine - that song contains some awfully weak writing. The imagery is weak, the building to tension/climax is non-existent. It sputters along with unlikely scenarios. And what is most poignant and obvious is the lack of conviction. The *resounding* conclusion of `him` ''stand(ing) over your grave `til I`m sure that you`re dead''... uh, come again? How, in the lyrics leading up, does one arrive at that conclusion.

One of Roger's best posts has engendered one of the best ratios of excellent replies, especially Tom Dark's.( But Tom, I didn't mean money). The seven deadly sins: great summer reading.
Was Hitchcock a greater manipulator of women than Bergman(on the screen; we can never really know about real life, but then Bergman did have quite a reputation)? I remember John Simon and Bergman sniping kind of smugly about their view of Hitchcock's feelings about women, based primarily on Psycho. But Gosh!
Just in Cries and Whispers alone, what Bergman shows women doing to themselves and each other goes way beyond anything Hitchcock ever put on the screen. And remember, to Hitchcock it was only a movie(allegedly).I say this as one who thinks Bergman is the greatest, and Cries and Whispers possibly his best, both the cries and the whispers.Directors do manipulate. And Bresson!
I have finally caught up with Kieslowski. It's nice to be able to keep discovering . I haven't made up my mind about Blue, but after being quite alarmed at the zipping phone lines beginning of Red( this has to be a hommage or reference, but I can't put my finger on it),I was, well, enchanted. Enchantment isn't a word I've read concerning Kieslowski, but I think it's there. Veronique next in the queue. Irene Jacob in Red is what Andrew Sarris was talking about when he said he goes to the movies for the girls. Among many other things, Red feels like one possible mirror image of Vertigo, like Trintignant's character almost wills what he reads in the newspaper ( and sees) at the end.
Jim Hoagland wrote a good column about McNamara in Tne Washington Post.
It takes a huge ego to accept responsibility for the outcome of complex historical events. Even so, with the example of Vietnam so fresh, destroying Iraq in order to save it, even if successful, seems hard to justify morally.
Acceptance of my own misfeasance, malfeasance, and negligence( lots and lots of opportunities), and a corresponding daily attempt to see them in a continuity with others and to try to act compassionately and positively, helps. It's my good fortune that I'm in a compassion profession( if not a compassionate business),and need the money, so opportunities come to me.
A wise man once wrote," True love doesn't just happen. You team up with somebody and build it from the ground up" I think, I hope, that at some point, if we try hard and have luck,incompletely and imperfectly, but still, being and becoming fuse, and doing the loving thing isn't only something we do.

Where is the line between sin and error?

A great deal of commentary about Robert McNamara, including by people who themselves have spent lifetimes engaged in matters of high policy, has dwelt on the matter of his "confession," an act traditionally associated with sin. With respect to Vietnam in particular, commentators who long ago concluded that the war was wrong see McNamara as having finally admitted they were right.

But did he do this? Not really. Most of the Vietnam War's American critics have written off the other side, believing that nothing the Communists were capable of justified our trying to keep them from overrunning Indochina. McNamara didn't hold to this view while in office, nor does he ever seem to have held to it later. And in fact that eventual Communist victory was a catastrophe for the people of the South and of Laos, and worse than a catastrophe for the people of Cambodia. The enemy in Vietnam showed himself to be one worthy of being opposed -- but the fact remains that the choice to oppose him, and the way it was done, led to an American disaster costing us dearly in blood and treasure while failing to attain its objective.

McNamara was largely responsible both for the choice and for the way it was implemented. He plainly felt deeply the consequences of the disaster in Vietnam. He seems to have known that he erred, severely and more than once. Did he, in "The Fog of War" or elsewhere, confess sin? It does not appear so. Opinions may differ as to whether he should have, and there is really only one opinion on this subject that matters anyway. The point is that to someone in his position, what may matter most is not his personal state of grace but the consequences of his actions.

"I have always regretted," wrote one of the two American generals responsible for the greatest effusion of American blood, "that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made." One battle out out of dozens in Ulysses Grant's career, one of many even in the spring of 1864 by itself, a few hundred dead Union soldiers out of many thousands who died under his command -- but the battle Grant remembered with sorrow in his last year of life was that one, a product of decisions he made that caused death without purpose, suffering without meaning. What beside such a thing are questions of one's intentions, or even the state of one's soul?

We are used to reading these days about politicians who cop to "mistakes" and "poor judgement" when they are convicted of breaking laws or taking bribes. They haven't confessed anything, we think with some frustration. The case of someone like Robert McNamara is different. His mistakes we may judge; we must, actually, otherwise we can learn nothing from them. Of his sins, God may judge; we must not, lest we who will never bear his burdens take false comfort in the thought that only bad men -- the other kind, not people like us -- can create disasters, and live with the knowledge of them thereafter.

Nice writing as usual.

While reading your thoughts on McNamara and confession, I returned to my own thoughts on 'The Fog of War', and how his decisions impacted my life.

I personally think he was (for the most part) a benevolent sociopath. George Will noted that his mindset was 'you can control anything you can quantify, and you can quantify anything.' As far as I can tell, he lived to analyze problems and solve them.

Sometimes his problem solving was wonderful for mankind (developing seat belts), others were terrible (improving kill percentages with bombing runs). I'm not convinced that he ever really understood the impact of his actions, and while there may be some reflection during the Fog of War, I don't know if there is remorse. I suppose you could say he was a Vulcan.

How his mind impacted me: my father was an 'advisor' in Vietnam during the early sixties, and based on the very few adult conversations I've had with him, he said that he still goes to bed every night thinking he is a war criminal because of the actions ordered by McNamara (and Kennedy).

After the war, my father had three failed marriages, four children he didn't know (including me), and nightmares for the rest of his life. But throughout the documentary, McNamara didn't talk about the impact to the soldiers lives in any real sense. Some vague statements about generals having to live with their mistakes, putting losses into proportion, but it seemed to me he was most interested in placing the blame on Johnson (perhaps rightly so) than confessing his sins.

I dunno, I watched the film, and as I scientist admired him for his analytical ability and his general candor. But I don't know if an article on confession really applies to him.

Steven M: There are perfectly brilliant kids (and hackers) that live on the surface. Your original comment was not crank-ish, but this comment certainly was.

No offense meant to non-basement-dwelling hackers and/or kids. I've got a Brilliant Kid myself, though we have no basement. Perhaps I ought have said "et al." But since Kevin Smith has no problem perpetuating the cliche (see LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD) I'm going to feel on less crankish ground--Steven, I was just using get-to-the-point phrase shorthand.

Today marks the passing of a man who changed the world. May the breeze be in Walter Cronkite's sails.

Ebert: There will be many articles. Do not miss this one:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/1672043,remembering-walter-cronkite-feder-071709.article

Films, even documentary films, are experienced subjectively, and in some cases, witnessed. The extraordinary thing about "Fog of War" was McNamara's acceptance of mistakes being made. He not only learned from his errors, he was made a better person by them — but only because he chose to reflect. The redemptive value of reflection as a learning tool is pretty rare. For McNamara, hindsight was not only 20/20, it was Technicolor … mostly in deep blue.
And for some reason, I'm thinking of George W. Bush wanting to construct his presidential library collection around the pistol seized from Saddam Hussein.

I wonder if a measure of Herzog's "ekstatic truth" might be found in Morris's project in The Fog of War-- to crack through that facade of public life to reach some sort of reality or humanity beyond it, a truth to counter the hall of mirrors that is contemporary culture.

The other, more disturbing pole is embodied in "Mea Culpa," a song created by Brian Eno and David Byrne at the start of the Reagan era, on their brilliant collaboration "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts," one of the first records to prominently feature the then-new sampling technology. In it, a sample of someone confessing guilt and apologizing is looped over and over again. It becomes not just a hollow sentiment but the epitome of a mechanical, inhuman, dead unit, infinitely repeatable.

A link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3mcR8hrRXQ

I hope Anonymous reads this:

While the Russians were going to invade Japan, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war much sooner than it would have ended had it not been dropped.

Whether Truman made the decision to drop the bomb because he wanted to show the Soviets we meant business, to punish the Japanese, or just to do it to save GIs made very little difference to the scared kids on those islands.

I've heard that Margaret Truman was approached all her life by people who said her father had saved their lives. The Venona project revealed that Wallace really was communicating with the Soviets at one point in his life. It seems reasonable to me that he might have waffled, causing more casualities.

Its all in one's perspective.

I've been rewatching Lord Kenneth Clark's classic series "Civilisation" (subtitled, in grandiosely modest fashion, "A Personal View") lately. It holds up amazingly for something released in 1969--I suppose when you're talking about a couple thousand years of history as seen through art in 13 hour-long episodes, 40 years isn't going to change much. It's comforting to reflect that almost everything Clark visits is still there, unmoved by half a century of upheavals--and some of it has even been restored since then, with censorious fig leaves removed in the interim.

So when you ruminated about McNamara, I instantly connected the dots to Martin Luther. Clark mentions the wave of destruction Martin Luther set off--an angle we seldom focus on in basic history classes, which highlight his role as a reformer in bringing a "more personal" Christianity to the masses. But he encouraged the destruction of many of Western civilization's greatest artistic achievements, encouraged mobs to loot and destroy, and ultimately to torture and murder and oppress. His reforms unleashed a pent-up brutishness among the masses which the Catholic Church had managed to largely control and channel for 5 centuries. Religious wars and barbarism flared up everywhere. And yet, it was necessary. A static civilization is a dying civilization, and the masses will not stay silent forever. And in the end, his actions proved beneficial to our civilization in the long run.

McNamara is perhaps a political rather than religious Martin Luther, only he'll never be hailed as a reformer and have his deeds whitewashed by history. I think though that what he started was a necessary release of pent-up cultural tension which has allowed our civilization to move forward much further and faster than it could have otherwise. With no Vietnam, no lynchpin to focus liberal and progressive forces and consequently focus conservative regressive forces against them, wouldn't we still be living in a society much less progressive and free than the one we enjoy now? Would we have a black president? Would women enjoy as much equality, within both the workforce and the family? Would gay rights have made these great leaps forward? I think we owe most of today's progressive advances to the clarifying light our involvement in Vietnam reflected back on ourselves. In a sense, then, we owe them to McNamara and his ilk. I can hardly imagine the Watchman-esque world we would live in today, if the hawks hadn't dragged us into Vietnam. One step forward for the forces of regression ultimately led to a near-sudden quantum leap in the progressiveness of our civilization. Who knows--maybe like Martin Luther, a much-hated figure among many in his own day, we owe McNamara a lot.

"And tell God there's two things that really 'grind my gears': a) McNamara insists his pitchfork technique is better than mine and b) Ebert's 'New Yorker' blog won't accept submissions."

Ebert: Won't accept submissions? Don't understand.

Roger, a nice piece but you are way off base with your analysis of AA or any twelve step program as an effective treatment for addiction. There are few, if any, scientific studies that demonstrate that AA/NA is any more effective than having no treatment administered. Google "AA Success Rates" and similar search terms and you'll see what I mean. Dr. Michael Shermer, the leader of the Skeptic Society, has also researched this topic and concluded that the emperor has no clothes.

The sad truth is that these programs are often sanctioned by the local courts as alternative treatments (and paid for by tax dollars) and provide a lucrative entry into the counseling and treatment market without the expense or requirement to have any medical training. Instead of treating addictions as a health problem they are "counseled" by non-medically trained staff with a religious veneer atop the mumbo jumbo of a 12 step program.

12 step programs are to addiction therapy as chiropractors are to heart surgery.

Ebert: Court-ordered attendance is meaningless.

Ebert: Won't accept submissions? Don't understand.

If you hit either "Preview" or "Submit", you're taken back to the original entry.

I suspect some people thought their comments were posted, but so far, only 2.

Ebert: So that explains it. I simply feared almost no one wanted to comment!
I'll file a complaint.

Found the post & comments here really thought-provoking. But have to say: much as I admire Hemingway's writing, I'd feel a bit queasy turning to him as a font of wisdom on this. From what I've read, he was not especially kind to people in his life. (I may be wrong, but didn't he also say "you know you killed your mother" to his own son?)

We may "feel good after"[wards] in the long run; but it seems to me that "what is moral" can also be uncomfortable in the short run. If it weren't, human beings would not provide so much material for the likes of Morris and Bergman.

Re: McNamara, there's a lot to be said for nuance over caricature. I know I've seen some interesting articles on his nuclear disarmament efforts. Still, I thought Bob Herbert's take on this [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/opinion/ 07herbert.html] underscored the truth that some expressions of contrition can only pale beside the damage done.

p.s.

@ "Jen S." above:

Um. I mean no disrespect-- and to be honest, I didn't entirely follow what you were talking about-- but as someone who shares your gender (and, apparently, your name), I would suggest that the situation b/t that postcard dude and his wife is not your problem. Whatever the virtues of confession generally, it doesn't sound like there's anything productive happening at that anonymous online secret outpost -- however "illuminating" or "artistic" (*coughs*) it might seem.

Ebert: Court-ordered attendance is meaningless.

Yeah, it is. Done that.

David L.,

I think of AA as a kind of subset (if that's the right word) of Catholicism's treatment, which is a treatment of the mind--and one that has been successful for centuries. So, I disagree.

Ebert: What drunk is going to be interested in stopping booze, smoking and coffee at the same time? What approach to sobriety works better?

If we legalized drugs, chewing cocoa leaves or cocoa chewing gum are much better replacements for cigarettes and caffeine, and as I mentioned kind of recently in the Free Range blog that it might have the potential to keep hard drug users away from drugs like heroin, for instance, replacing methadone, which replacing shooting one thing in your arm for another. Chewing cocoa leaves puts the drug in your system much slower, which means less harmful and tolerant and thus less addictive, in addition to having health benefits such as lowering blood sugar level and helping digestive problems. Some drugs do have a sound medical side. And the ones that don't, have sound ways of taking them, which is by having the drug slowly put into your system, and then taking months or year-long breaks away from the drugs, which makes it easier when you do so--having alternatives to shooting or snorting or smoking, medicinally as well as recreationally. But legalizing drugs should probably be the last thing to do aside from drug classes with role models of acceptable behavior doing the teaching, and with that education should come with the medical side of the drug so as to not take sides. But the medical side should probably reflect it: instead of prescribing marijuana to be smoked, have a marijuana pill; instead of cocaine seeming like "cocaine!", prescribe the chewing cocoa leaves because cocaine in its original form unextracted has medical benefits. Then once the drug is legalized, smarter less harmful ways of doing the drug recreationally will be more on the radar of users. For instance, something many marijuana smokers know is that the healthiest way to smoking it is through a vaporizer, which is also the most powerful. Education is win-win for both sides.

By ArtDog on July 17, 2009 9:12 AM

By Ron Barth, Jr. on July 16, 2009 7:20 PM

By ArtDog on July 16, 2009 10:51 AM

Donald Trumbo wrote the movie in 1939.

That's Dalton Trumbo, ArtDog. :)

Thank you Ron! Still learning at 53. ;)

Next up, ArtDog: HTML tags. :p

And, same here, still learning at 45...

Ebert: The "New Yorker" entry has been repaired and is now accepting comments.

Testing. My last post somehow came out double and my apology and the "New Yorker" thread didn't post either. Anyway, I didn't mean it to come out twice in the same post, and I hope that isn't what Rodge meant about it being "one hell of a letter." 'nite all.

Ebert: Software has stopped acting up.

And it was one hell of a letter.

(Reposted here, in atonement for the one that mysteriously appeared twice in the same post. -- Tom)

Well, Michael Felong, I blush with pride at your compliment, and forgive you for the proposed celebrity babysitting expose. Who cares where Tom Cruise's love-child fwowed up anyhow? Besides, you're egging me on.

To rebut those doubtful about the value of confession. I mean real confession, not communist cluster self-criticism, Richard Nixon's "I'm sorry" blasting from all the headlines, or McNamara's on-film dissembling (there was that dissembling at a critical point).

There's a relationship between guilt and health, as I contended somewhere upwards. Someone else here also mentioned that. Holding it in creates chronic stress. One is constantly blocking his conscience. As Sam Johnson said, the effort required in keeping the details of a lie consistent for others is not worth the trouble.

The phrase "getting it off your chest" is literal. The tension can squeeze your heartbeat and lung rhythm, for starters. Some serious overachievers, guilty about a perceived lack of accomplishment, can have chronic panic attacks. She's a great performer, but I'd better not give her a plug, she doesn't want people to know.

How guilty and why is relative to the "sinner." I'm sure politicians are sincere about admitting "making a mistake." Relative to the behavior of their peers, that's what it usually is, even mass murder for a noble cause, with throngs gone blockheaded cheering them on.

Above I related (not "shared") a bit of a story about my one-time client and friend Robin Azi, who beat terminal malignant lymphoma twice, using his belief in Nichiren Buddhism, fresh creative pursuits, and a small group of confessors. Orthodox allopathic doctors may differ with me, but others in the profession won't, and the orthodox won't try it in the first place. (They may gloat over the seeming failures, those guilty orthodoxers.)

For Robin, life at age 47 already seemed impossible. There's nothing anyone can say he did "wrong." He was a Colgate scholarship and honors graduate working for $8/hr when I met him. All he'd ever found were jobs like selling encyclopedias door to door. He never spoke bitterly of it. For just one comparison, his old college pal had shot up in the world, a successful TV producer ("Murphy Brown," etc.). His Colgate friends, as alumni of high-falutin' schools usually do, all got successful in conventional ways. (Several of mine did.)

Robin was a near-pure idealist. There was a radiant humility about him, even something saintly, devoted to his ideals as he was. He was stubborn for them. That and black skin in a white society colluded, however. The Colgate honors graduate bore the piddling jobs with dignity and patience. He'd accepted life as it was, turned down for better work as he generally had been. He was morally exhausted and in a constant sense of crisis for it. His highly worthy ideals never seemed to provide for him and his family. He had to post-date $5 checks to me.

Confessing to his friends -- that is, simply searching himself aloud, one-on-one with somebody who cared -- did indeed get a load off his chest. It gave him the breathing space to heal, completely, from a disease the full authority of medical science said would kill him in this-many-days.

I say it did on my own cognizance. I've been a natural confessor since my ma used to sit me down and bitch about my dad back in teenhood. What you do is shut up and listen. You don't lecture, just listen and reply honestly. They feel one hell of a lot better bouncing it off somebody who actually cares. Real confession works. I've talked more than one person out of suicide that way, as a friend.

More guilt: I hired a proofreader once who told me a painful story. She caught her 14 year old son smoking. She blew up at him, trying to make him feel guilty enough never to do that again. Then she went to a movie. When she returned, she found him dead on the living room floor, next to a note that said "I'm sorry I made you so angry."

Her therapist, a protestant religious certified counselor, seduced her using her confessions to manipulate her. She sued him and the church and finally won.

She spent all her savings buying an elaborate gravestone of two dolphins for her only son's grave, as he'd hoped to be an oceanographer one day. Someone stole it. I called a TV station, who reported it that night. The guilty parties returned the dolphins statue. She'd triggered a mass guilt drama and catharsis.

Now to artificial guilt and artificial confession. Ashley Pomeroy, above, deliberates that morality is meaningless after all (that's a longtime byproduct of evolutionary thought, Roger). It's what you get for believing in granfalloonery, as Kurt Vonnegut put it. McNamara may not be rotting in hell after all, but merely in certain imaginations, and those protesteth too heartily.

H. Man's post and I concur. In assessing someone who is only a news item to us, we're dealing with ceremonial or ritualized behavior. It may as well be "only a movie," except we make up the moral of the story ourselves, even if it's manipulated for predictable reactions. We pepper our imaginations with nuances of how the news subject should be guilty or innocent. (I thought O.J. Simpson was "not guilty," by the way, just like the jury did. I watched the whole trial. Few did.) Whatever he was to himself, McNamara remains a hero to some and a villain to others, and the Washington Post staff, in a show of objectivity, tried to guess which of them would buy more newspapers.

It's a clown show, all the news fit to sell. We still can't tell whether Lizzie Borden was guilty. Many of you actually believe O.J. Simpson took two wiggling, struggling people in hand at once and cut their throats from ear to ear (I got the scoop from a man on the investigation team, and HE can't get anybody to listen to him either). Maybe it's too fascinating to fear and hate people you don't know, or maybe it's an addiction. That's how war usually starts. "As ye judge, so shall ye be judged."

Here is one of my childhood artificial confessions:

"Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been four weeks since my last confession. I disobeyed my mother once. I disobeyed my father once. I thought impure thoughts 10 times. I associated with bad company [my brother Bobby, Gerhardt and Dooley] 4 times. I stole twice [a banana and several Oreo cookies]. That is all I can remember, Father.

No questions asked. "For your penance, say 5 Our Fathers and 10 Hail Maries (not you, Marie). Now make a good act of confession.

"O my God, I am heartily sorry, for having offended Thee. And I detest all my sins, because of thy just punishment; but most of all, because they offend Thee, my God,Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin. Amen.

There you are, verbatim. I didn't think the BB gun fights, throwing rocks at cars and not consulting my parents on my own business were sins, as they didn't specify specifically.

Maybe that's how McNamara got where he did; the specific wrong acts were not specified specifically enough. And anyhow the Constitution specifies a president isn't to start wars, but who pays any attention to that detail even now? So, anything goes! Besides, all his friends were doing it, and a lot of the public wanted him to.

The concept of genuine confession has always been quite irreal in most public events. Anybody watch Jimmy Swaggart's famous public confession? Ashley, did you find it convincing? Did he?

I felt guilty about throwing a cat down the stairs as a little boy, even if I was only half awake, and I still do. Also, I ran over a gorgeous 4' pink snake the other day and tho' I swerved to avoid it, I still feel guilty -- even tho' I saved it. I don't feel guilty about swatting flies, though, which I'm doing this moment. There's a real confession for you, and I'm sticking to it. My others are off-topic.

I am sorry this letter is so long, but I haven't time to make it shorter, as Paschal said. Besides, guilt makes people talk a lot.

Ebert: The earlier double-post has been deleted. To that one I appended:

That is one hell of a message.

Yes, filmmakers like Bergman and Robert Bresson indeed reached stages in their careers in which they were constantly making films about confession and redemption... perhaps Bresson moreso, since he is often recognized as the most "Christian" of filmmakers. I've got another one for you: John Ford.

In the 1960's, Ford seemed to be spending his last decade making films that "apologized" for the sins of his past. In "Sergeant Rutledge" (1960), Woody Strode plays a heroic Buffalo Soldier. Strode himself wrote, "You never seen a Negro come off a mountain like John Wayne before. I had the greatest Glory Hallelujah ride across the Pecos River that any black man ever had on the screen. And I did it myself. I carried the whole black race across that river."

In regards to Ford's other two films of the decade, "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964) is a tribute to the Native Americans of Monument Valley; and "7 Women" (1966) is headed by a cast of females playing heroic missionaries fighting Mongolian bandits.

I wonder: does Ford make good on his apparent promise to atone for the past stereotypical portrayals in his career? Not that I mind those stereotypes, but it's still interesting how somebody as brittle as Ford turned soft. Yet none of these three films have received any sort of noteworthy acclaim. Perhaps, as an unfortunate result, they are all hard to find. I haven't seen any of them. Are they any good?

"There is an ancient curse: 'may you live in interesting times.'. At least, I think there is"

There isn't. See here. The first use of it that can be found was in 1936.

Roger might find it interesting that one of the ways it appears to have become best known was in the April issue in 1950 of Astounding Science Fiction,in a story written by Eric Frank Russell under the name Duncan H. Munro.

It became truly best known to the world when Robert F. Kennedy used it in a speech in 1966. As Wikipedia says, there's absolutely no support for the idea that it was ever a Chinese saying.

It's the same sort of urban legend as claiming that if you boil a frog in water slowly, it won't leap out. That's a pack of nonsense, too. (It's a useful metaphor, but has no relationship to any actual behavior of frogs.)

On McNamara, I'd feel a great deal more favorably towards him if he'd gone public once he'd ceased being Secretary of Defense about his belief that the Vietnam War had no military solution, rather than waiting another thirty years, when the only good it served was to relieve his personal conscience, insofar as it did. He could have actually served the public greatly by actually serving the public with the truth while the war was still ongoing, but he chose to serve Lyndon Johnson, instead. (At the very least, he could have made the truth known once Johnson left office.)

Waiting until decades after the war was over was not the correct moral choice. He had it in his hands to do what he could to save more lives, Vietnamese, American, and the lives of others involved in our war, with the truth he knew, the truth that Lyndon Johnson at the time did not want to hear, although LBJ himself came to understand it not too many years later.

And Robert McNamara failed that moral test.

And every film fan, and American, should learn at least a little about Dalton Trumbo, and his history.

Incidentally, Roger, I was glad to finally get to know a bit more about those bloodthirsty Nazi zombies. Vampire romance novels and movies are such a rage with the kids these days, it just seems a shame there aren't more teen zombie romances, doesn't it? Rank anti-zombie discrimination, if you ask me. They ought to form a Zombie Rights group.

Dear Mr. Ebert:

Yes, the essay I wrote was about cutting in line. My husband, who was also there and standing behind me, thinks it was more a matter of age than race. I don't flatter myself to think I look like a teenager any more and the woman wasn't so fragile as to require assistance climbing into her bright yellow hummer before she drove away.

Snatching the pen (which was a special one and not one of those cheap ones you get at work) was very clever because it prevented me from speaking up immediately (from surprise) and made me unprepared to ask for an autograph and after I recovered, I did not want to cause a scene. The playwright was kind enough to make sure the pen was returned to me.

I doubt that the person in question or the persons I refer to in my essay who decided I should wait (both customers and sales people), probably did not confess such sins because they would not view such acts as transgressions. Having someone cut in front of you or telling you to let someone ahead of you is quite minor. And, I could not help but think of Emmett Till, since his name has been in the news and he is buried in the Chicago area. His murderers never expressed remorse. If people cannot feel remorse after committing such a gruesome murder, one can hardly expect remorse for relatively minor acts of privilege.

As for Harry Truman, the A-Bomb, sin and hell, I don't think Buddhist really have the same concept of sin as Christians and Catholics, but consider if one could expect justice on an international level when racism was actively practiced in the countries and territories of all the Allied Nations. There is a concept called victors' justice and a book about the Tokyo Trials with that name ("Victors' Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial")

This is more on topic because the view of what is justice, what is a war crime and what is a good war and a good president are. Vietnam and Japan are both cases of America misjudging Asians in Asia as they were pretty much misjudging Asian Americans in America. It's sort of hard to win the hearts and minds of people when you don't treat them as equals. If people still believe that in order to do good, you have to do dabble in a little evil, then I can see why it is hard to win the hearts and minds of the people you are fighting for and/or against.

I've had my own rather troubling experiences with Vietnam vets, including one who was very angry at all Asian faces and in some areas, the Vietnam War is still a divisive issue in ethnic communities.

Ebert: She drove a bright yellow Hummer. Of course she did.

Tom,
That was a really fascinating entry. The worst things I've ever done occurred when I worked at Child Protective Services. I was fresh out of college, middle class, naive. I thought I knew everything. I removed some kids from homes that probably didn't have to be removed. I just didn't know what I was doing. It still amazes me that the state grants such power to someone as stupid as I was at that time.

I could relate horror stories from kids whose monsters are real. I think about those screaming kids all the time.

When we thought we would lose our own son three years ago, I thought God was giving me my pennance. I've thought that confessing the specifics to someone would make it an easier cross to bear. There was a minister in the peds intensive care unit. I told her what I had done and she told me I just had to go to my God with it. I gave up then. I give lip service to religious people now. It is very hard for me to accept an omnipotent creator who allows his children to suffer so much.

Damn, Tom! You've done it again!
If you're going to keep this up,no mere mortal can resist the temptation to keep on egging.
Stephen Jay Gould wrote well about his own highly unlikely survival of peritoneal mesothelioma, but he actually received allopathic therapy.He made the essential point, which I make with every one of my patients, that they are a person and not a statistic. but very few of us see a miracle like that. William Buckley wrote of his visit to Lourdes that the most moving thing about what happens there is the people who come to minister, physically, mentally and spiritually, to the thousands upon thousands of pilgrims who are not physically healed.
Is your friend Robin at least letting Sloan-Kettering or somebody get a look at his immune function? His DNA? Can they image his aura?Or at least quantitate the rhythms of his neurotransmitters? I don't doubt that he healed himself. Even finding an epiphenomenon would be wonderful. Is there a mute, inglorious Kieslowsli around to make the movie?
There are probably good reasons why we may never get the real scoop about alleged real events concerning real people allegedly accused of an alleged terrible crime, but can you give us a fictional story about a legendary ex-athlete charged with murder?
There aren't any good baby-sitter websites.

In Greg Egan's science fiction novel Permutation City, a German billionaire had his brain scanned into a computer shortly before his death. Afterward, as a "copy", he is still running his real-world financial empire and living a subjective life of amazing freedom, but he is still haunted by a terrible act he committed at twenty, one that has been hanging over him all his life (and beyond) and which he never revealed to anyone. Being software, he can now make whatever modifications he likes to his own memory and personality, he can delete the event or simply stop feeling bad about it... but he realizes he can't. His act and his guilt have been the core of his thoughts for seventy years; if he removes them he'll be happier, but he won't be himself any more. He must keep carrying them forever.

Later in the book, as enormous resources become available to him, he quite inadvertently creates a private hell for himself, and suffers there for a long, long time. The climax of the book is difficult to explain, but might be summed up thus: there are no gods, but the rules of mathematics win out in the end, and a mind torturing itself (or a universe made for torture) is just inconsistent and will eventually set itself right.

I've owned "Fog of War" on DVD since it came out. I've never watched it, even though I keep saying that it would a good movie to watch.

I guess I don't want to hear McNamara's excuses or something.

As far as confession, a good lie is worth all the confessions in the world. Not that I ever lie or anything like THAT!!!!!

Point the first: As usual, Shakespeare gets it right, this time in the person of Claudius, Hamlet's stepfather and the murderer of the old king:

"But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
That cannot be, since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain th' offense?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offense's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But 'tis not so above.
There is no shuffling; there the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it when one cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees, and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well."

Repentance is not easy, no matter how many talk shows make it seem so.

Point the second: I note that a reader mentioned the scapegoat. It's not generally known unless you attend Yom Kippur services, but in ancient Judaism there was not one goat at the service, but two. One was offered as a sacrifice on the holy altar in the Temple. The other was brought to the High Priest, who laid his hands on it, confessed the sins of the nation and sent it into the wilderness. Repentance, as you implied, thus requires not just confession, but sacrifice. God in the Torah tells us that what He wants is not simply words, nor the blood of animals, but that which words and blood can at times provoke in us: a broken and contrite heart. And that shows itself in action.

In other words, if Bernie Madoff were to find himself in a position to sin again (which isn't likely, of course) and did not do so, then we would see whether his confession was genuine. Failing that, only God knows. We, according to Torah, are required to give him the benefit of the doubt. And that may be an overlooked value of confession - not for the sinner, but for us who hear the sinner and have the opportunity to forgive.

Ebert: There are a few saintly people willing to give the benefit of the doubt. None of them are currently appearing on cable news.

Random Facebook exchange between a friend and I, for your appreciation.

Status Message for all "friends" to see:
Scott: Is very happy about the rain: rain so sexy.

Comment Wall:
Etienne: Rain is an amazing thing, this storm in pa rticular makes me love the film "fog of war," but hey it is a amazing film.

Scott: Yeah, I watched that my 3rd year at UCSB - definitely volatile material. In the Bickle sense of the word, the rain needs to wash away all the s**t and filth.

*** I apologize for Etienne's grammar errors (probably intentional)- I must protect his artistic integrity.

Dear Roger,

Can you mention some more movies that are essentially about confession?

Omer M

Ebert: Not easily. Anybody else?

Omer M. Mozaffar: "Can you mention some more movies that are essentially about confession?"

"Young Adam"
"The Machinist"
"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"

I'll also mention "A Prayer for the Dying", in which confession is an essential plot device but not really the heart of the movie.

Dear Roger,

After asking my question, I wondered about possible "confession" movies. Would you consider the following to be confession movies? They have confession scenes, but I'm wondering if they would be movies about confession, in the way some of the above-mentioned films are.

1- Courage Under Fire

2- Dead Man Walking

3- Godfather III

I hope all is well.

Omer M

By Clarinetsaxist (Scott) on July 20, 2009 8:49 PM

Scott: Yeah, I watched that my 3rd year at UCSB...

UCSB? Ever seen a concert at the Bowl? I love that place, having driven down from Vegas three times now: Cure, Radiohead, and Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction. Even got to meet Tom Morello (his new band opened) and an ex-Cubs pitcher at the last one, and planning to see CSN there in September.

Thanks Dave, Thanks Michael, and thanks for the blog imprimatur, Cardinal Ebert ("When him whom many praise, praises me, that is praise indeed"). I think it's important that people realize the difference between true confessions and TRUE CONFESSIONS.

Oh boy, child protective services. What a mess. They have indeed seriously screwed up some innocent lives, I know. I know also that some are still serving as pedophile rings. That's a subject I tried to broach publicly years ago, and was amazed at the roaring silence it raised. On the other hand, Michael, maybe you SHOULD tell a monster story or two here.

I don't know why the question "If God is so good, why does He allow so much suffering in the world" troubles so many. One day in LAX airport with a former nun (lesbianism is rampant in convents, she told me, and she showed me the results of self-flagellation for it on her leg), we saw a priest, and I felt mischievous. What should we ask him? Ask him that question, Sister Carla said. We did, and true to her prediction, he couldn't answer and got flustered. Carla said the whole thing gave her a stomache-ache, a guilty one.

A few years ago at a University library canteen I noticed an old priest sitting alone, eating lunch. I sat down and said "Bless me Father for I have sinned, it has been 40 years since my last confession."

"Ooooh, don't do this to me," he replied, getting the joke, but pained anyhow. Then it was I who heard his confession. He was hopping mad at the Vatican and had been for years. "The only reason I still wear this collar," Father Phil told me, "is because it's between me and the Man I made the vow to." The granfalloonery of the Catholic Church is destroying it. The granfalloonery of any profession where confessions are part of the routine makes them worth little too. Your church-lady sounded both lazy and officious, Michael.

I couldn't make trite replies about someone whose child nearly died, Michael, although there are many trite replies for the question, "why does God allow suffering?" -- or cause it, as in the story of Job (which was taken from an older Egyptian tale). Nor should "suffering is good for the soul" be taken as an answer.

Every tragedy or unfortunate event I've encountered, ever since I accepted Darwin as my Lord and Personal Savior (I AM joking!!!! But it's no less artificial than the chant made by certain Christians I know), has had its psychological intents and causes and creations, from trivial annoyances to diseases and accidents and suicides. There is either a reason for everything, or there is no reason in existence at all. It's an ancient question, and reason usually wins.

Pain is a multidimensional thing, and it has its reasons from simple to highly complex. Its purpose is to abate. It won't abate until what's causing it is discovered and dealt with. We know the old saying "stop banging your head against the wall," but we do not consider often enough that our expecations in life may be faulty to begin with. Situations are brought up, almost like magic, to correct them. To give only a possible hint about your past situation, knowing nothing about it, I'd suggest that children are acutely aware of the feelings of their parents long before they can speak. It's only later in life that a child learns to disguise the feelings that he knows make him ill. I did that myself as a child, and despite the doctors and hospital, I knew I was doing it. I'd never have told them. Nor did they confess to my parents that they almost killed me on the operating table.

Dave, Robin Azi died in 1998 in his third bout after 7 years of successfully beating malignant lymphoma as I described. I related that way up there in the thread somewhere. It then involved guilt, artificial or otherwise, having to do with a fairly famous TV producer who knew him. I seriously thought of sending the story to Jet Magazine. It still would have made a gut-wrenching film, but that old college friend and producer would have been the only man who could do it.

Not joking about having talked more than one friend out of suicide. My best pal committed suicide at age 19, swallowing the whole bottle of prescription pills his shrink gave him. So, we have a psychological science that kills people. Decided not to go into psychology after all. I learned a big lesson. Nobody dies on my watch ever again. So far, so good. But you have to listen, and you can't be selfish about it.

Fiction about the ex-athlete accused of a simultaneous double murder? I thought it WAS fiction. When the first media reports came out, knowing nothing else but what I'd heard, I thought "Othello." It sounded like the writers were depicting "Othello" to us, not reality. Meanwhile, a joke went around the Oakland Police locker rooms about making a T-shirt that said "the bitch deserved it." (this from a cop client back then).

Time wore on, and there never was any "ski mask." And the "bwoody gwove," as Tom Bwokaw kept mesmerizing watchers with that pronouncement, didn't fit. I had my own leather "gwoves" 20 years old and caked with occasional chicken blood (had a little farm) and they fit just fine even after not wearing them for years at a time. They were talking crap about "shrinkage" because Othello had to be Othello to keep the fantasy lucrative.

The man on the L.A. Investigation team whom I met much later laid out a group of undeniable facts and findings. He also documented various facts such as the involvement of a psychotic lawyer and cocaine dealer attached to the family that sounded a whole lot more like motive, intent, and "necklacing" style murder.

Nobody wanted to hear the facts. Believe me, it was my job to try. The public prefers a fascination with the fiction. The most salient fact in this public drama of artificial guilt was, O.J. Simpson was an uppity NI -- you get the picture. And you know how jealous they are about white women! (I'm a WASP, btb, and nowhere near a "love me, love me liberal," as Phil Ochs sang it).

As to confession, Simpson was reported to have told a friend on a movie site that he dreamed he'd killed his wife. This, the overambitious prosecuting female-on-wheels insisted to reporters, was clear evidence that he did it. Hurrah, went the maddened throngs. Ka-ching, went the sponsors' cash registers.

Maybe once upon a time confessions worked, in the context of priesthood. Maybe for some few of the faithful they still do, and maybe on a few psychologist's couches too. But it is an utterly personal thing.

A contributor above outlined the ancient Jewish concept of "scapegoat." The errors of the tribe were magically projected on an animal, which were burned away on the animal's pyre.

Jesus "cast the demons" of an unusually demon-possessed man into a herd of swine. In those days, demonologies were what medical science is now, as demons were said to be the cause of physical ailments. His fame was well-earned, owing to the beliefs of all the tribes around, not only the local Jews.

Public hangings were just as magical a ceremony. The "evil" rooted out from among them and destroyed in a public catharsis. The "evil of Jewry" was "plucked out" by the Nazis, like "the eye that offends thee" in the New Testament whereas many Jews saw in the Holocaust the hand of a punishing God, leaving them to the Pharoahs.

We engage in no less "magical thinking" now than our ancestors did, and just as unneccessarily. We have many electronically-transmitted scapegoats, whose true subjective guilt or innocence bear little or no resemblance to the media dramas too many of us simply swallow like a routine pill. I've even heard things about Jack Abramoff that made me like him (part of his deal with the Feds, tho', is that he not be allowed to speak to anyone, or deeper into prison he goes).

Rodge, I can't think of a raft of movies offhand that are plotted with literal confessions, tho' there are many, comedies too, but does not even "Public Enemy" involve guilt-and-catharsis? We do root for the guilty parties for awhile, but their ends are variously inevitable. What movies aren't that way? Maybe "Babe"?

I should feel guilty about not getting back to work. I can blame Michael Felong. But alas, that would be artificial. And now, to atone for it. It's just the next computer over anyhow.

Dear Mr. Ebert,

Speaking of social conscience and its opposing cousin, nihilism, I wonder what you thought of the character King in the 1965 film 'King Rat'. He is played by George Segal and the movie is based on a novel of the same name by James Clavell.

Why was he so morose when he left the Changi camp? What was motivating him all the while? Why did he refuse to acknowledge his friendship with Marlowe at the end of the film? And why does it somehow make sense to the viewer that he would fade would into anonymity when he returns to America?

Richard

P.S. The film is often overlooked; apologies if you've never come across it.

No list of movies with confession scenes is complete without BOONDOCK SAINTS, which has the WEIRDEST confession scene I've ever seen . . .

I sympathize with Mr. Macnamara's angst over American lives lost to JFKs ill-conceived plan to bail out the D*mn French mess in SE Asia.
But once we became involved in Vietnam perhaps it was our duty to protect those in S. Vietnam who did not want to live under the communist thumb. IMHO The spirits of the thousands of Vietmanese who were killed and tortured in VietCong re-education camps or drowned as boat people should haunt the dreams of every 60's war protester here in the US. Not to mention the 1.2 million Cambodians murdered in Pol Pot's Killing Fields. But then, most of these are the same people who think of the murdering thug Che Guevarra as a hero.

What a marvelous piece of writing from Roger Ebert. It is interesting the many misconceptions of AA in the comments here. The purpose of the 12 step program is for the suffering alkie to clear away the wreckage of his past as best as possible in order to be able to live life without fear of drinking again and using that as the foundation of a spiritually-based design for living. Forgiveness would be nice, but surely is not necessary, because many of those harmed are just unwilling or unable to do so. But the drunk must strive to be able to honestly believe that he would repair everything if he could. Oddly, it's a selfish program that works by way of the destruction of self-centeredness.

At long last, I've finally seen "The Fog of War."

It was one of those films I never got around to seeing in a theater, and afterward, forgot to rent; Roger's journal serving to remind me of that fact which then sent me off to the library as they had it on DVD. Seems I wasn't the only one who wanted it though - there was que and ergo why I'm late to the party; I had to wait my turn.

When I say I've seen the film, I mean that quite literally; I just now finished watching it. And this is what it left me with:

Lesson No. 11: "You can't change human nature."

I wish to God as I am so weary of hearing it, that men would stop speaking for women when they acknowledge their gender's historic faults and failings.

When power is shared 50/50 and on a global scale and involving all aspects of life - then, and only then will we, the entire human race, know what can't be changed about us.

Until then, to the extent the world looks the way it does, is a reflection of who's been primarily in charge of it for the past 2,000 years and making most of the decisions.

It hasn't been women.

Thank you, all, for the suggestions on "confession" movies.

Omer M

It's not exactly about confession, but the ending of Places in the Heart always moves me with its vision of repentance and shared communion. No spoilers here, because if you've never watched, it's worth a viewing. Love the first 10 minutes, love the last three minutes.

I'm guilted out. Know what hasn't been covered here yet? Last words.

Thoreau's last words were "Moose. Indian."

Marx's were "Go away. Last words are for fools who haven't already said enough."

Ambrose Bierce wrote: "To die in a revolution, ah, that is euthanasia indeed. Pray for me -- real loud."

Tolstoi's were a whole bunch of prophetic statements still true, such as, the young would seek their religious experiences in music and the arts.

Cornish McBeaver, or whatever that kid's name was whose bust beams from the University of Arizona sports hall, said to his coach from the hospital bed in 1922, "Tell them... tell the team to bear down."

I tend to think that's baloney. But it's on the inscription and they made a marching song out of it.

What else?

Ebert: Henry James:

"Here it is at last, the Distinguished Thing."

Thanks for the thoughtful essay. I just finished reading Tim O'Brien's masterful "The Things They Carried," in which he discusses the way soldiers, as a coping mechanism, dehumanized their victims in Vietnam -- calling a dead child a "crispy critter," for example. Likewise, Calley, the only soldier convicted in the Mai Lai Massacre, reportedly did not consider the women and children he gunned down in that ditch actual human beings, and he was just following orders...Anthony de Mello, the late Jesuit condemned by the Church for his Eastern leanings, would say they were unaware. We're all unaware when we hurt others, and I'd tend to agree with de Mello that we need more awareness and fewer confessions and rituals of penance. Would McNamara have had more peace in his final days if he'd spent the years after Vietnam cultivating awareness -- which naturally leads to compassion, good works, etc. -- rather than wallowing in guilt and confessing to a filmmaker?

Marie Haws: "You can't change human nature." I wish to God as I am so weary of hearing it, that men would stop speaking for women when they acknowledge their gender's historic faults and failings. When power is shared 50/50 and on a global scale and involving all aspects of life - then, and only then will we, the entire human race, know what can't be changed about us. Until then [the state of the world] is a reflection of who's been primarily in charge of it for the past 2,000 years and making most of the decisions. It hasn't been women.

I was raised not to contradict women in such arguments (girls won't like you if you talk back), but what the heck, here goes.

If you conclude that men are warlike, you must also conclude that women are passive. In the US women have had the vote for almost a hundred years, and lo and behold the wars keep happening. Historically in the unusual case when a woman rises to supreme power she tends to be an unusually strong and resourceful leader (hardly surprising, considering the entrance barrier) but not an unusually humane one; Victoria was the most powerful monarch the world has ever seen, the most powerful leader until the twentieth-century military dictators, but her reign was one of war after war, British soldiers spilling blood all over the globe. At lower levels when women gain power (or are granted power, if you like) they prove just as greedy, cruel, bloodthirsty and foolish as their male colleagues.

And if men are culpable for most of the bad, then they're also praiseworthy for most the good, so how about thanking them for law, medicine, science, art and civilization? (Think carefully before you claim that women would have done all that anyway if men had done nothing-- not that it isn't true, but think of what else it implies.)

One can talk about human nature and history. One can compare male and female. But if one does so with a lot of special pleading then one is just making meaningless noise.

I've got it, Rodge! Got another dime? We can have a McNamara's Last Words contest!

Here's my entry: "Uh... well... uh... er.... aaaaahhhhhh..."

It's good to get silly after too many mouthsfull of serious. Ain't it?

I think what Fog of War's goal, more than providing a testament for Robert McNamara, was challenging us to see the world as he saw it. Morris does a great job in trying to best illustrate McNamara's perspective on the dark alleys where perceived humanitarian actions lead men. The same mind that saved so many lives working for the Ford Motor company could apply identical reasoning to the firebombing Japan and Vietnam with the lens of statistical logic guiding the way for all of these actions. This is what engaging in evil actually looked like to those in the Johnson Administration who felt that when they escalated operations in Southeast Asia they were averting a greater catastrophe.

That's why McNamara had never apologized, he somehow felt it was more instructive for people to understand him; never quite realizing the moral twilight he encouraged by separating personal responsibility from professional subjectivity, in effect neglecting the path of righteousness he started on in the first place. Apologizing, in his estimation ignored the lessons of Vietnam when, in actuality, it would have given his role a deeper and more complex gravity that was more educational.

Greater, than the impulse to elicit an apology from him, its a film designed to challenge our own sense of reality and purpose. Whether or not we should cling so tightly to our delicately negotiated principles without realizing that we're only drawing from our own experiences. McNamara's tragedy was that he could only see his own fog, and not those of others.

It's interesting for me to see the responses, all related to McNamara's death. It reminded me of a comment that I believe you might have made when Forest Gump came out, and people saw it over and over. I think you said that you thought people might have been seeking a healing over Vietnam. Perhaps it takes some distance at times to visit these wounds, whatever they are, whether national, global, or personal. I have personally seen the power that a caring human being can have on another, whether that is through therapy, church, friendship, a book, or yes a movie. Some imperfect movies that seem to touch on the power of another caring, loving person (which seems to me to be the heart of change) are Ulee's Gold,
Local Hero, Once Upon a Time...When We Were Colored, etc.

Ben Thompson,

"I was raised not to contradict women in such arguments (girls won't like you if you talk back), but what the heck, here goes."

This is not directly related to that, but I have a code for the blog world:

1. Don't attack anyone.

2. Don't imply that you are attacking anyone.

3. If you must make fun--as I sometimes must--make fun of the mindset, not the person. I let myself go with this one in the Ben Stein entry months ago, but I'm back to sticking with number 1 and 2.

I do this because I feel that problems should be solved with someone, if you have a problem with them or they you, that it has to be done privately and one-on-one, and the blogworld is a public place. So, to me it is impossible to solve a problem with someone and it should be ignored, or go to the old "if you can't say something nice, don't say it all" code. I try not to ignore as a response sometimes, because sometimes ignoring is a response or just as bad as fighting with them in public or a blog, so if I feel a response is called for I try to say something nice. (Usually what I ignore comes from number 2, when someone is implying an attack, so basically it's not even directed directly at me, so there's no need anyway.)

All of which was a long-winded way of saying, "I finally got to hear McNamara admit he was wrong. Now I can die happy."

Well, good for you.

By Ron Barth, Jr. on July 21, 2009 10:46 AM
"By Clarinetsaxist (Scott) on July 20, 2009 8:49 PM
Scott: Yeah, I watched that my 3rd year at UCSB...

UCSB? Ever seen a concert at the Bowl? I love that place, having driven down from Vegas three times now:"

******************************

If you are referring to the Santa Barbara County Bowl Ron, it is the greatest place to see a live performance anywhere! I have seen countless entertainers there as I once worked for KIST Radio back in the 70s/80s as always had comp tickets from the promoters.

The most memorable? Robin Williams. I was in the second row when he pulled a whiffle ball out of his box of props. I yelled "throw it here!" He did. Then said "now you have my herpes!" It brought the house down.

To Tom Dark: My vote for McNamara's last word: "Kaboom."

Rest In Peace, Robert McNamara. Who am I to judge you?

To "Absolutely Sweet" Marie Haws: Sure you want to go down that "it's all the men's fault" road? You will have to factor in these names:

Imelda Marcos
Nancy Reagan
Golda Meir
Catherine II of Russia
María Eva Duarte de Perón
Hillary Clinton

I'll put a "Top 100" list together if you like . . .

What's all this man vs woman stuff seeping through Roger's blogs lately? I haven't been following his superb essays long enough to see if he's written on this already. If he has, it's splashing out like that chase scene in "Blazing Saddles."

I have here an observation from Nature, if you think pet horses can be construed as Nature (if not my observation).

We've got 6 retired racehorses -- they're young by horse standards, but not by Santa Anita's. We tried an experiment last year and have since let them run free as a little herd around the property, no more corrals or stalls. They'll stick their heads into the windows and even hooves into the doors hoping to cadge a treat. They wake us up when we sleep out under the stars, which is all summer, nubbling on us and the bed for the same reason. Otherwise, they wander off in a herd, sometimes race for fun, sometimes roll around in one of the arroyos... just endlessly entertaining. The more natural they get, the more adorable they are.

They established their herd in their first weeks of free-roaming. The two mares picked two of the boys and have stuck with them ever since, always paired up. The remaining two boys don't want a thing to do with the mares, not ever, although they stay in the group. "I'd prefer a new edition of the Spanish Inquisition than to ever have a woman in my life" are Sammy's and Harley's attitudes. They've been overtured, but they're not falling for it.

Here is the thing worthy of considering which of our sexes is more to blame for this world as it is. Those two mares herd their mates around. They are always positioned at the boys' sides, juuuust behind them, so that if necessary, they can bite them if they don't do their bidding.

I am often the object of this bidding, since I'm known to carry treats in my pockets, or carrots in my arms. Both the boys often find themselves herded toward me. Any other horses also headed for me and these treats are nipped out of the way with lowered ears by whichever of the girls has herded her mate to me first.

But I am a fair man. Everybody gets a treat or a carrot. It takes a little jockeying to do that, but everybody gets a treat.

With that experience, out here bare-chested and sandal-footed among these Free Beasts of Nature, I suggest that the problem of Male and Female won't be solved by the dominance or faux-dominance of either, but by a higher intelligence.

With treats.

Ebert: Marie! That's it! The dominant partner is the Giver of Carrots!

Sorry if someone has expressed similar sentiments above, but there are a lot of posts.

The overarching 'lesson' I took from The Fog of War is of the ultimate pointlessness of attributing responsibility for a catastrophe such as Viet Nam to individuals. It is apparent that McNamara deeply regretted his part in the war, however I think he also understood that if it had not been him, then someone else would have called in the Air Strikes and that if it had not been Viet Nam, then some other tiny nation would have been obliterated by America as a proxy for China or Russia. The actions of individuals were a product of the prevailing ideological, political and societal dynamics.

McNamara understood that he had merely been one of Khrushchev's blind moles.
For him to apologise and seek absolution would be a cop out. It would imply that he was the boogeyman, and so long as we avoid the boogeyman we can all sleep safe tonight. For as long as humanity fixates on villains rather than dealing with and redefining some of our collective values, we are doomed to repeat Viet Nam every other generation.

That said, Pol Pot and Hitler really were the boogeymen.

To Gary in Phoenix:

Is this the best you can do?!?

Imelda Marcos
Nancy Reagan
Golda Meir
Catherine II of Russia
María Eva Duarte de Perón
Hillary Clinton

My God, I still can't believe people are arguing about this. Men are more culpable for the most bad ...and the most good for the last 10 millenia or so. But that's solely because men held the power to do both.

The power structure in the world is (and has been) held by men. Period.

Consider the fact that more than 1/2 of your examples were the wives or powerful men, and held no official power themselves.

Or consider a recent example: The woman in New Hampshire who asked John McCain, "What do we do about the bitch?" (Meaning Hillary Clinton.) The Senator (by all accounts a decent man) laughed it off. What would have happened if the woman had inserted a racial slur? Would McCain have acted differently? You betcha. Strong women are "bitches" and strong men are powerful.

To Marie--naw, that's not the best I can do, by a long shot--I offered the list of 100, remember? "The wives of powerful men" are often what PRODUCE powerful men--you think Ronnie would have gotten Presidential without Nancy-thrashing?

Isabella. Elizabeth I. America was generated and sculpted (warped? mutated?) by two powerful women. WITHOUT those two women, what would the world be like now?

Lady Macbeth is fictional, but representative of a dynamic you are ignoring, sweet Marie. Often it not only Takes Two to Tango, but Two to Subvert. See also Robert Heinlein's "Alice Douglas" (a slam on Scribner's editer Alice Dalgliesh, if you ask me) in STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. Heinlein was a consummate political scientist. "Alice Douglas" predated Nancy Reagan at her manipulative worst by more than ten years.

Can't believe I misspelled Editor. The shame!

More World-Beatresses:

Beatrice, thrasher of Dante
Madame Nhu
Jiang Qing
Trần Lệ Xuân
Elizabeth Taylor
Sarah Palin
Gertrude Stein

"LeMay observed to him that if America had lost, they would have been tried as war criminals."

Given their track record I do not think Imperial Japan would have waisted much time on trials. Nor would her "justice" have been confined to the US military, she had a habit of making sushi out of millions of civilians in her occupied territory.

Hallooooooooooo! Anybody there? (echoechoechoecho)

Funny thing, Roger, I tend to keep your blogs up and look at them between things, back-and-forward paging. I just this moment backpaged to this one. It's like looking at the remains of a thought-party from a long time ago, now forgotten.

Well... as long as it's probably just you reading this, I'll tell you the Secret Of Life everybody's so eager to know. Not that many people should know it. What a population problem that would make. I turned 12,316 years old last June, for instance.

But it's really very simple. All you have to do is -- just a sec, there's the phone...

To Tom Dark: Maybe Roger ought conduct these entries like ebay auctions, with a deadline and closure. I admire his willing accessibility, but fear it will eat him alive.

I have a loose end: I forgot to include Julia Phillips amongst the abusively powerful on the distaff side, and given her cinama relevance, that was a serious omission. Quoth Wikipedia: In 1991 Phillips wrote the no-holds-barred autobiography You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again about her experiences in Hollywood. The book topped the New York Times bestseller list but its revelations about high-profile film personalities and Hollywood's drug/film production culture, casting couch mentality made her one of the most despised people in the film industry.

Great, great job Ricky, across the board. Hey Juan, I don't hear you talking much about Jerry Owens anymore! Was it me who said that Quentin should absolutely start over him? I think it was! You owe me an apology for being so pathetically clueless.

"OBP for Thome & Koney doesn't mean much because they can't get from 1st to 3rd on a hit."

Seriously? Did you seriously just write that? I almost died.

And Ricky, great breakdown on Gavin Floyd. He's been getting insanely lucky and probably can't keep this up unless his peripherals catch up to his performance. More strikeouts, more grounders, less walks. One of those three things is needed.