Max Power

Mostly, Gringcorp approves of David Aaronovitch, the columnist who was nicked by the Guardian/Observer from the Independent a few years back, and has rapidly become better than Will Hutton. But we try and catch the comment every Monday, and love most of their columnists. There is the occasional slip, such as Peter Preston this week noting that Terror attacks make George Bush more popular, and trying to suggest that maybe, just maybe, Osama was a Republican (we seem to remember one extremist newsletter making a similar point, saying that George Bush was so insensitive that he was bound to hasten an apocalyptic clash of cultures, while Kerry was obviously too sly. But Google has not summoned it for us.).

But we digress, so back to Mr. A, who posits that Spiderman 2, to which his child had dragged him (he wanted to watch the Door In The Floor, we bet), was a useful way to put forward the thesis that the powerful could not stand by in the face of danger, therefore PROVING the Iraq war right. Two complaints there, the first of which is that there have been infinitely better ways of exploring this "how can the powerful react when confronted by evil?" question, of which one is Serpico, which we serendipitously caught at the Film Forum Sunday(you saying this post is contrived, child?). Serpico, which had more moments of comedy than we remember, and a few stretches of silly dialogue to which the 80s were not kind, asks what you do with a message (there was widespread corruption in the 1970's New York Police department. Like, Duh), when the messenger (Al Pacino, looking more like a pirate than a hippie), is not to the liking of higher-ups. Bury it, then arrange for him to be shot in the face, in that order, apparently.

The second main objection to the Spiderman 2 theory is that, contrary to what Aaronovitch asserts, Superman has indeed been there in his second installment. Superman II also featured General Zod. Kneel before General Zod!
(Aug 10 - Oooops - www.generalzod.net just got taken down)
Also in the Observer, Jack Straw, UK foreign secretary, and the man who believes he is the equal of Colin Powell, tells the BBC to f*** off. True fact.