Just a coincidence that I’m featuring The Damned on Ash Wednesday. It does remind me of the 1969 Visconti movie The Damned, which I first watched with astonishment on late night network TV not too long after it came out. A sinister character named Aschenbach, an arch-Nazi SS officer who cheerfully quotes Hegel throughout the film as it hellish incidents unfold, helped keep me firmly in the Kant camp during college philosophy courses.
Here are some far less complex midday news/views treats:
* The cast of characters Jeb Bush is crediting as his foreign policy advisers overlaps pretty heavily with the jokers who lied us into an Iraq war and occupation.
* Initial reaction to Jeb’s Great Big Foreign Policy Speech in Chicago not so good.
* Obama publishes op-ed explaining his “violent extremism” summit.
* 450 Norwegian Muslims forming “peace ring” around Oslo synagogue to express solidarity with Jews after killings in Denmark.
* As many as 6 million workers could be affected by administration’s imminent new overtime pay rules.
And in non-political news:
* Long slide in TV viewership among millennials is gaining a very rapid pace.
As we break for lunch, here’s The Damned with their first hit: “New Rose,” from 1976.
