NBN is a little embarrassed to admit this: We once loved the movie “Platoon.” If we stumbled upon a Platoon YouTube, regardless of the matter at hand, we dropped what we were doing and watched. Particularly the scene where sergeants Barnes and Alias argue over the night ambush. We admired the deliberate sense of duty in that life and death decision-making. And then, a few scenes later, Sgt. Barnes’ completely heartless eulogy over the lifeless body of Pvt. Gardner was awe inspiring. “Out here assholes, you keep your shit wired tight at all times.”

Lately, our awe is more like annoyance as the strength portrayed in this movie increasingly seems more like weakness. Not the weakness, or cowardice if you prefer, of questioning the need for unquestioned acceptance of authority in war. That’s the whole point of the movie: “Remember ain’t no such thing as a coward out here, don’t mean nothin.”No, the weakness we refer to is not in the characters, but the audience for so easily allowing Hollywood script writers to sway our emotions and convictions in favor of a pointless war that cost the lives of 3 million.

While aiming to provide an unflinching look at how the US’s first deeply unpopular war played out for those fighting it, Oliver Stone’s epic ends up as just another war movie with better writing and more believable explosions. Ultimately the violins rise as the movie fades to black with a wounded Pvt. Taylor fist-pumping and smiling from the evacuation helicopter as his platoon-mates on the ground carry on fighting and following orders. The bodies, bad decision and bulldozers are forgotten while the nobility of fighting for one’s country lingers in the minds of impressionable 18-year-olds and nostalgic baby-boomer voters.

Let’s take another movie that activates our ADHA like a light switch whenever we’re rummaging through YouTube. In “The Big Short” the ultimate victory of mental mavericks Michael Burry and Marc Baum over Big Banks stirs primeval sentiments that harken back to David and Goliath. Yet, those mavericks we admire are just doing what the big banks do: profiting grotesquely at the expense of people’s homes, jobs, retirement savings, and pensions, as Brad Pitt’s character Ben Rickert says.

Like “Platoon,” the high-minded purpose in “The Big Short” is to illustrate the virtues of creativity and independent thinking but the payoff is still the same as that which drives those without. Traditions we are meant to question through these heroic characters end up being reaffirmed by script writers who know what sells at the box office. In Hollywood you make money telling people what they want to hear, not moralizing. The screen adaptation of Dalton Trumbo’s brilliant but disturbing book “Johnny Got His Gun” sold about three tickets because it dared to be what Platoon was not: a truly unflinching look at the stupidity, waste and otherwise unacceptable costs of war.

Before we paint the entire industry with this sinister brush, not all script-writers looking to make a buck cheat their audiences so wantonly. The classics “Do the Right Thing,” and “Fiddler on the Roof,” illustrate brilliantly the conflicts and compromises required to be human and humane. Still, we suspect Spike Lee’s moralizing masterpiece was profitable as much for its superb depiction of 1980s black Bed-Sty life and less for the hardships of folks actually living it. We also suspect the unparalleled song-writing and violin in Fiddler upstage the timeless pain, sadness and uncertainty of abandoning centuries of life-defining tradition in the face of present-day realities.

The underlying message in these movies does not run counter to the characters delivering it as in Platoon and The Big Short, but it certainly yields to them. So what’s wrong with using theatrics and manipulating emotions to make a buck? Everyone does it, right? We have “pastors” buying private jets from the proceeds of providing reassurance to old, poor people terrified of dying. We have politicians abandoning their constitutional oaths to move in on the priests’ action by promising the frightened protection from the less pious threatening the moral fabric of the country.

We’re sure that The Devil has a seat in Hell for the politicians and priests in our triumvirate of evil, but if there is a god the holier-than-thou in Hollywood are getting the front row because they have much more powerful, enduring pulpits. In countless 1950s WWII movies, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Jimmy Stewart et al. soothed the souls of hundreds of thousands who may have thought otherwise about serving in Korea and Vietnam. And how many millions of baby-boomer smokers died decades early of lung cancer after watching Bogie and Bacall light-up in Casa Blanca? Let’s face it. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions it most certainly runs through Hollywood and The Duke  will be meeting you at the gate. In the meantime sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Pass the popcorn, pilgrim.

Winter 2019-20: Our Musings

In the good ‘ol USA we’re freedom loving capitalists and damn proud of it. You wanna smoke cigarettes, knock yourself out. Wanna drink pancreas pummeling, liver lesioning levels of sugar and/or alcohol every day? Hey, it’s a free country. Wanna be all that you can be? Join the army and possibly sacrifice all you’ll ever be, fighting someone else’s war. Wanna live forever? Send us some money and we’ll put in a good word with God. NBN believes firmly in our inalienable rights to do stupid stuff. What we question is the right of others to deceive you into doing so in order to profit grotesquely in the process. That’s not capitalism, that’s cheating.

Hollywood Cigarettes are Kool Again

What’s not to love with the entirely 21st century phenomenon of binge-watching really pricey productions of subscription TV programs like “Stranger Things,” “MadMen,” “Peaky Blinders” and “House of Cards.” No commercials, amazing costumes, decent script writing, 21st century special effects and lots and lots of cigarettes. Watching for hours a day people we admire smoking cigarettes? Haven’t we seen this movie? Tobacco use in entertainment  “bottomed out” in the 1980s and is now back to 1960s levels. Back then cigarettes were everywhere, most notably in movies. Lung cancer went from a rare cancer to the most common. Why? Was it to make the story characters we’re watching on film more believable or heroic? Or was it to make money for those underwriting the production by addicting to their products those simply looking for a happy ending? Tobacco companies say they aren’t financing the sudden popularity of cigarettes in binge-watch entertainment today. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of simply trusting those willing to kill customers to make a profit, the entertainment industry was compelled to reveal who their underwriters are? Then again, if we can’t get our public officials to reveal who they owe money to, Hollywood certainly won’t?

Pancreas Pummeling Profits

Nothing is more American than Coca Cola and Pepsi. At least that’s what Coke and Pepsi have spent 120 years and something north of $1 trillion getting you to believe. Thanks to their hard work and sacrifice average Americans today annually drink 44 gallons of soda containing 10 pounds of addictive sweeteners that fast-tract diabetes. Here’s the cool part. Diabetes has increased 3-fold since 1990. That was about the time 7-11 and Coca Cola teamed up to introduced half-gallon, to-go soda cups and self-serve fountains. Slumping sales for both businesses got a sudden jolt as did the nation’s five-to-15 age group and a variety of peripheral businesses. An entire diabetes publishing industry was born while sales of diabetes products and services skyrocketed, mostly notably to people receiving public healthcare assistance. So, who can blame these businesses for freaking out when NY City Mayor Mike Bloomberg proposed banning sales of these portable cisterns of soda. Hey Mike, get with the program. Restricting commerce in lethal products reverberates throughout the economy. It’s bad for business and that’s anti-American.

Rouge Religions Railroading the Right

How is it possible untold millions of believers in the world’s most widely practiced religion are following leaders preaching precepts antithetical to its namesake. How is it possible a handful of bloodthirsty fanatics have rebranded the second most popular religion on earth, one whose very name means peace and submission, as a force determined to kill, conquer or enslave nonbelievers? How is it possible a tiny, ancient religion which provided the ideological underpinnings for the other two is now goading them into an Armageddon it forecast while surreptitiously gobbling up lands all three lay claim to? NBN has a theory: Science. Today we have credible science seriously studying the prospect of eternal life, the very same promise these and other religions made to billions before us who lived and died according to their dictates in hopes of same. Talk about disruptive technology. The sad part is there are millions of us alive today who clearly won’t see science deliver on its prospects, so we cling to the age-old promises made by these religions. Sadder still is these once-wonderful philosophies, which rested firmly on foundations of common sense and kindness which got us to the amazing time in human history, are being devoured by greedy, power-crazed individuals taking advantage of an aging population of increasingly desperate inhabitants.  

Big Lies or Bending Truths

Cheating sounds like such a little thing. Much like telling a little white lie. Not when that cheating and those lies wheedle their way into dearly defended freedoms like self-defense, family, religion, racism, and making a living, to name a few. That’s where cheating and lying get personal, profitable and potentially apocalyptic. Those kinds of lies and that kind of cheating are not little or white. They have another name: “The Big Lie.” Telling The Big Lie on just one of these hot button issues got a sociopath elected chancellor of a down-trodden, war-torn country 80 years ago, killing 60 million in the process. Imagine telling The Big Lie on all these issues to the world’s wealthiest and most powerful populace. We don’t have to imagine, it’s happening. NBN is quite pleased with penning some 2,500 words with just this one mention of Trump, but he is the inspiration behind ever one of them. Our president is now taking cheating and lying to a level unseen in American history by wiping out the very concept of history. Why think about yesterday and tomorrow? Right now, is all that matters. And maybe he’s right. Discerning cheating from bending the rules, and truth from lying, is like searching for black and white in the grayness of degrees of honesty. The last guy to try that lived in a clay jar a few thousand years ago. So why bother? To which NBN says: Why not?