Marx Brothers and More
I started off the new year with a number of comedies and got back to work on the Marx Brothers retrospective series that was started in November. Three films came by way of the library and the other two aired as part of a Marx Brothers marathon on Monday night. There was a very brief interruption this week as I watched Casino for Thelma Schoonmaker's birthday, marking the third time in four years that I watched a Martin Scorsese film.
The plan was to begin on George Clooney's directorial filmography on Thursday night but writing reviews can take some time. Laundry, too, for that matter and I owe films my undivided attention in watching and writing about them, even if all of these films are repeat viewings. Anyway, I ended Thursday night by watching Dr. Strangelove again. I've now seen the film five times with my first viewing coming all the way back in 2008. Three viewings have come after picking up the film in 4K UHD when the Columbia Classics 4K UHD Collection: Volume 1 was released in 2020. Interestingly enough, I went all of 2022-23 without watching the Stanley Kubrick satire.
In baseball news, I made sure to submit my IBWAA Hall of Fame ballot before 2023 came to an end. You can view my selections on Dugout Dirt. Dugout Dirt is remaining on Substack for now.
The new year came with the news that Claudine Gay was resigning as Harvard President. I have thoughts about this. I posted them on Facebook on Tuesday but will include those comments here because there are multiple conversations going on within the Jewish community and outside of the Jewish community. The conversation within the Jewish community, for the most part, is acknowledging how the plagiarism scandal is the result of right-wing attacks. But outside of the Jewish community, it's a different story as it's become about race and being attacked for her race with nothing to say about her comments during the congressional hearings on campus antisemitism.
One can say that Claudine Gay had a terrible response during the antisemitism hearing on campus while also acknowledging that there was a right-wing plagiarism smear against her. I'm seeing a lot of mixed feelings amongst Jewish friends. I know more about the former than the latter, which I imagine is what pushed her towards resignation.
Calling out antisemitism shouldn't require any context to determine whether or not it is bullying or harassment. We should be able to at least agree about that. Jew-hatred is Jew-hatred no matter the context. That Elise Stefanik seized on this despite giving a free pass to right wing Jew-hatred isn't right either. It's on both sides. I would know because I've lost several friends that I thought were friends after they turned out to be bigoted against Jews.
I know I'm probably sounding like a broken record at this point but one of things that has upset me a lot over the past 3 months is the Jew-hatred coming from people that I once considered to be my friends. That it took a war that started when Hamas invaded Israel and took hostages for them to show their true colors is all the more shocking. These were people that I trusted and they betrayed my trust. The worst part is that it's all coming from the left and from people that I knew from LGBTQ spaces. The Jew-hatred is making me rethink who I can trust with my life.
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