J. E. Smyth Mary C. McCall Jr. The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Most Powerful Screenwriter Columbia University Press, September 2024.
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
J.E. Smyth has written a detailed, dense and illuminating account of Mary C. McCall’s life as a feminist, novelist, screen writer, labor leader, activist on behalf of screen writers, first leader of the Screenwriters’ Union and her continuing role there. At the same time, the information about other screen writers and activists, the studios and business of producing films is massive.
Sometimes this amount of detail makes the book a difficult read. However, Mary McCall is an immense and motivating figure in the landscape of film production, unionisation, and studio politics, so that together with the explanation and exposure of Hollywood figures and the general history of political change this an engaging read. The content is so interesting that it is worth being enticed back to the book on repeat occasions so as to ingest the story that, while revolving around McCall, is a wide-ranging political exposure of sexism, anti-unionism, blacklisting and power. See Books: Reviews for the complete review.
Articles to come: Bill Shorten; American Politics – Bob McMullan; American Politics – Republicans vote for Democrat; Women in Revolt art exhibition- The Conversation; The Agatha Christie Newsletter; Brilliant and Bold comment.
Bill Shorten to retire from Parliament – welcome to Canberra, Bill.
American Politics – Bob McMullan
US Election Review as at 8 September 2024
There has been a lot of campaign activity over the last week. But not much has changed in terms of polling and assessments of win probability.
The problem is, such change as there has been seems to represent a slight drift back towards Donald Trump.
This trend appears in the polling aggregates from Real Clear Politics but is clearer in Nate Silver’s figures when he makes a comparison with the situation over a slightly longer period.
It is important to note that Silver’s numbers in the battleground states would still be sufficient for Harris to win the Electoral College but the trend is generally slightly away from her.
The related question is the impact of the electoral college. Silver’s numbers suggest that Harris is improving at the national level (by 0.7% over the relevant period) but slipping slightly in the battleground states (by from 0.1% to 2.8% across six of the seven battleground states.) Should this trend continue it will worsen the Electoral College bias in favour of the Republican Party.
There are however countervailing trends. Recent data has shown increased enthusiasm and intensity amongst Democrats. This is not particularly significant in Australian elections. You don’t get extra votes for being enthusiastic. In voluntary voting systems it can be very important. What recent history shows is that increased intensity coincides with increased propensity to vote. The most interesting data is the surge in Democratic enrolments particularly among young women. The surge was first noticed after the Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v Wade. This has been considered a significant factor in the surprisingly good results for Democrats in the 2022 mid-term elections. A similar surge in enrolments is being seen in the aftermath of Kamala Harris becoming the presidential nominee for the Democrats. Not surprisingly, there is a very strong correlation between recent enrolments and voter turnout.
It seems most likely that Kamala Harris will get the most votes, perhaps by a long way.
The outstanding question is, how far in front will she have to be to overcome the Republican bias in the electoral College?
James Carville, a very experienced and wily Democratic strategist suggests that 3% is roughly the lead that a Democrat will require.
Nate Silver, the probability analyst who founded and then sold 538 has made a more scientific assessment which comes up with a similar result.
Analysing the national and state-by state data for this election he suggests the EC bias is slightly less than previously. Based on polling today he assesses that the bias is 2.4 to 2.5%. It is still a big handicap to overcome, which is why the election looks close at the moment. Silver’s assessment is the Harris/Walz ticket will need a 4% lead to be “safe”.
The various polling averages all show Harris with enough Electoral College votes to win. 538 has Harris ahead by 3.1% nationally and leading in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This would give her 292 or 293* Electoral College votes. Real Clear Politics has Harris ahead by only 1.8% but leading in the same five states and tied in North Carolina. Nate Silver’s average has Harris/Walz ahead by 3.0% and leading in the same five states.
(* the variation is due to the possibility that Harris could win a second vote in Maine which allocates some of its EC votes by individual congressional districts.)
Two things to look forward to in the next week or so. On September 10th (11th in Australia) there will be the Presidential debate. The following week the Federal Reserve will make its decision about interest rates. I predict they will cut rates and this should be good for Harris and enrage Trump.
It is still interesting and appears likely to remain close until the end. But the fascinating thing is, we don’t know and won’t know until November.
American Politics: Some Republicans to vote Democrat
“There was never a doubt that the courageous Liz Cheney would endorse Vice President Harris,” conservative judge J. Michael Luttig wrote, “because Liz Cheney stands for America. She is the very embodiment of country over party and country over self. And she fears no one—least of all the former president.”
John McCain’s son slams Trump’s Arlington cemetery visit: ‘It’s not about you there’.
Former US VP Dick Cheney endorses Kamala Harris
Mead Gruver – AP Sat 7 September 2024 at 10:41 am AEST·3-min read
Former US vice president resident Dick Cheney, a lifelong Republican, will vote for Kamala Harris for president.
Liz Cheney, who herself endorsed Harris on Wednesday, announced her father’s endorsement on Friday when asked by Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic magazine during an onstage interview at The Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
“Wow,” Leibovich replied as the audience cheered…
CNN — By Jamie Gangel and Gregory Krieg, CNN 4 minute read Updated 9:43 PM EDT, Mon August 19, 2024
Exclusive: Conservative Republican endorses Harris, calls Trump a threat to democracy
Retired federal appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative legal scholar put on the bench by President George H.W. Bush, is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump, whose candidacy he describes as an existential threat to American democracy.
It will be the first time Luttig, a veteran of two Republican administrations, has voted for a Democrat.
“In the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law,” Luttig wrote in a statement obtained exclusively by CNN. “As a result, I will unhesitatingly vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Presidency of the United States, Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris.”
Luttig played a now famous role in persuading then-Vice President Mike Pence to defy Trump and certify the 2020 presidential election. In a series of tweets drafted at the request of Pence’s attorney, Luttig spelled out in stark terms the legal rationale for Pence to reject the former president’s attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
Since then, Luttig has emerged as a preeminent constitutional critic of Trump. In endorsing Harris, Luttig argues that partisan distinctions must, in this election, be set aside in order to prevent the “singularly unfit” Trump from returning to the White House.
“In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own,” Luttig writes, “but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”
Michael Luttig, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (ret.), speaking at the Principles First Summit at the Conrad Hotel in Washington, D.C, on Feb 25, 2024. Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA/AP
Luttig’s scathing rebuke of Trump and endorsement of Harris underscores the depths of divisions between Reagan-and Bush-era Republicans and the modern, Trump-dominated GOP. The former judge is just as unsparing a critic of the Republican party as he is of Trump, whom together he says have launched “the war on America’s Democracy.”
The corrosive effects, he adds, will echo through generations.
“Because of the former president’s continued, knowingly false claims that he won the 2020 election, millions of Americans no longer have faith and confidence in our national elections, and many never will again,” Luttig writes. “Many Americans – especially young Americans, tragically – have even begun to question whether constitutional democracy is the best form of self-government for America.”
The stakes, Luttig argues, are as high now as in the late 18th century, when the country’s founders and authors of the US Constitution – including Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, typically political foes – joined together to voice concern over the potential emergence of an authoritarian demagogue.
“The time for America’s choosing has come,” Luttig writes. “It is time for all Americans to stand and affirm whether they believe in American Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, and want for America the same – or whether they do not.”
Though this will be Luttig’s first time pulling the lever for a Democrat in any election, he has, in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, come out in support of some decisions by the Biden administration. He wholeheartedly endorsed the 2022 nomination of now-Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the high court, even calling out Republicans who said they would not vote to confirm her.
“The President knew at the time that there were any number of highly qualified black women on the lower federal courts from among whom he could choose – including Judge Jackson – and Republicans should have known that the President would nominate one of those supremely qualified black women to succeed Justice Breyer,” he wrote at the time.
Luttig now joins a number of high-profile Republicans endorsing Harris, including former members of Congress Joe Walsh, Barbara Comstock and Adam Kinzinger.
Kinzinger, now a CNN contributor, will have a high-profile speaking slot this week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, also a CNN contributor, endorsed Harris at the end of July in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed.
Her campaign, he wrote, was “the best vehicle toward preventing another stained Trump presidency.”
Speaking to CNN, Luttig said his decision to publicly back Harris was a matter of knowing “right from wrong” – and acting in accordance.
“In my faith, we believe that we will one day answer for our wrongs. I have always tried to live my life in anticipation of that day. Imperfectly, to be sure. But I have tried,” an emotional Luttig said. “My endorsement of the Vice President was the right thing to do. It would have been wrong for me to stay silent, and I believe I would have one day had to answer for that silence.
“It’s really that simple.”
Julie Howden
Women in Revolt! Exhibition showcases the feminist activist artists who used art to change lives
Published: September 6, 2024 2.15am AEST
Author Katarzyna Kosmala Chair in Culture Media and Visual Arts, University of the West of Scotland
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In the early 1970s, women in the UK were second-class citizens who had few rights. A woman could not buy or own a property without a male guarantor. There was no equal pay, no maternity rights nor any kind of protections against sex discrimination.
There were no domestic violence shelters, no rape crisis centres and no childcare. And if they were ethnic minority or working class, women suffered even greater inequalities. Unsurprisingly in this climate, women artists – either contemporary or historical – were rarely seen in art galleries and cultural institutions.
It is against this backdrop that Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990 explores two decades of women’s art as activism, protest and fury at the societal dice that was were loaded against them. The touring Tate Britain exhibition, now at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, takes as its starting point the 1970 National Women’s Liberation Conference. This was an initiative designed to bring together feminist activists with the intention of developing a shared political outlook.
The exhibition brings together legions of courageous women who made political works of art about their lives, to tell the story of the feminist movements of the 1970s and the 1980s.
A crashing wave that swept up women artists, writers and academics – urging them to change the art world into something more socially responsible and inclusive – this feminist movement demanded equal opportunities, visibility of women artists and equal pay.
Set out chronologically, the show examines the social and political backdrop to the art that women were making in the 1970s and 1980s. More than 100 artists are showcased, reflecting the diverse range of voices that sought to challenge the status quo in art and society at the time. There are installation works as well as film, photography, painting, drawing, textiles, printmaking and sculpture, all created during a period of significant social and political upheaval.
The irreconcilable social and economic pressures of being a mother and a worker are explored in the installation Who’s Holding The Baby (1978-1980). This series of prints, by photography collective the Hackney Flashers, highlights the issues caused by the lack of governmental support for childcare.
Wandering around the Modern Two gallery feels like being a part of the protest. Art becomes activism and activism merges into art with black and white photographic documentation, and posters on the walls punctuated with striking paintings and slogans.
A founding member of the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent, Stella Dadzie’s watercolour Motherland (1984), depicts an estranged immigrant woman dressed in vivid colours. The painting was used as the cover for her book Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain, which won the 1985 Martin Luther King Award for Literature. This important book examines the lives of black British women faced with socioeconomic challenges, sexual inequality and institutional racism.
Elsewhere, analogue video and installation works are arranged amid the display cases, crammed with photographs, pamphlets, journals and zines documenting the wide-ranging networks between groups of women.
The archival material meticulously chronicles a series of 1970s national women’s liberation conferences that demanded social change based on equality, reproductive rights and equal pay. This also branched out to include the Gay Liberation Front, Brixton Black Women’s Group (1973-1985), the British Black Artists movement of the 1980s, Greenham Common women, anti-nuclear war protest and environmental campaigning.
Changing times, changing art
The installation Women and Work, by Margaret Harrison, Kay Hunt and Mary Kelly (1973-75), documents the division of labour in industry. It incorporates photography and audio accounts of women’s experience of the workplace and Equal Pay Act. These issues are mostly unresolved today.
What has visibly changed is women taking their place in galleries as artists, in academia, engineering and science. But inequality is intersectional – meaning characteristics such as race, class, gender, sexuality, age and ability can overlap to intensify oppression or disadvantage – and thrives more than ever.
The screaming coming from Gina Birch’s looped Super 8 film, 3 Minute Scream (1977), projected on a gallery wall is a disturbing aural statement on defiance. It articulates a common feeling of the rage and frustration felt by many women at the time – and now.
Two decades of art activism, provocation, campaigning and progress are surveyed, acknowledging the collective commitment to changing art in terms of accepted historical tropes and media stereotypes – the idealised passive nude, the selfless mother, the loving housewife.
Sutapa Biswas’ oil painting self-portrait as the four-armed Hindu Goddess Kali in Housewives with Steak Knives (1985) comments on the prevailing art history canon and the Eurocentric nature of the female model. Jo Spence’s black and white print challenges the Madonna-like mother figure by nursing an adult male in Remodelling Photo History: Revisualisation (1981-82).
Helen Chadwick’s In the Kitchen photographic series (1977) which presents woman’s bodily and domestic space as sites of oppression is also part of Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood This currently touring show, curated by Hetti Judah, examines representation of motherhood in art history and now.
In Women in Revolt!, the private is political, everyday life is political, and the art of women’s struggle is political. Whether you want to reflect on art and politics, the history of women’s protest, the construction of gendered roles, or women’s fight for democratic rights and freedoms, it is a thought-provoking exhibition that simultaneously reveals how far women have come, and how little things have changed for many.
The Agatha Christie Newsletter
I enjoy receiving The Agatha Christie Newsletter <generalenquiries@agathachristie.com.
This week it advertises the play based on one of her most intriguing novels, And Then There Were None which will be staged in Melbourne and Sydney.
| The World of Agatha Christie: 1940s and 50s The latest edition of our decades magazine has arrived, taking you right into the heart of the World War Two era. This issue explores the intricacies of life both during and in the aftermath of the war, through novel extracts, interactive puzzles, and a killer recipe. Download now. Missed one of our previous magazines? You can find the whole series on our website. Explore here Watch the mystery unfold on stage The timeless masterpiece And Then There Were None is coming to Australia. This classic story will take to the stage first in Melbourne in February 2025 before heading to Sydney in May. Brace yourselves for a captivating night of drama and intrigue. Book your tickets See the remainder of this newsletter at Television,Film and Popular Culture: Comments |
Brilliant & Bold
Climate Change, Biodiversity and The Environment – Different for Women and Girls?
I joined this global discussion with Dr Susan Buckingham and Monica E. Maghani on Sunday 8 September at 11am UK time – a reasonable time here in Australia while we have daylight saving. It is more of an effort when our 8.00 pm becomes 10.00pm. However, it is worth the late hour, and leaving early is not a problem, the discussion is always animated and although it is a pity to miss it, everyone understands timing can be difficult. Brilliant & Bold is Jocelynne Scutt’s Facebook feed. The following are the dates on which Brilliant and bold will be held for the remainder of 2024, and in 2025.
Oct 13, 2024 11:00 AM (updated)
Nov 10, 2024 11:00 AM (updated)
Jan 12, 2025 11:00 AM (updated)
Feb 9, 2025 11:00 AM (updated)
Mar 9, 2025 11:00 AM (updated)
Apr 13, 2025 11:00 AM (updated)
May 11, 2025 11:00 AM (updated)
Jun 8, 2025 11:00 AM (updated)
Jul 13, 2025 11:00 AM (updated)
The flyer for this week’s presentation provides an example of what you can expect from this series:
BRILLIANT & BOLD – BOLD & BRILLIANT CONVERSATIONS WITH ‘ORDINARY’ & ‘EXTRAORDINARY’ WOMEN
Climate Change, Biodiversity and The Environment – Different for Women and Girls?
A series on women’s rights, challenges, perspectives, hopes and empowerment
‘UP FROM UNDER – REACHING THE MOUNTAIN TOP – AND CLAIMING THE SKIES!’
Climate change is real. Around the world, biodiversity and climate change emergencies are declared by local government authorities, by national governments, and by community organisations and political parties.
Where do we stand, as women? How do we see the impact of floods and fires, increased heat and cold, extremes of weather in their impact on the world around us? We know that countries and people suffer differentially by reason of poverty or proximity to industries that harm the environment, or their low-lying land mass or island nation status. Evidence is that women and girls are impacted differentially, too. A simple action such as teaching women and girls to swim can at least enable them to save themselves if and when the tsunami sweeps them into the sea. Ensuring that they do not fall prey to traffickers when their homes disappear under the rising oceans is essential. Yet steps to lessen climate change must be at the forefront.
Listening, learning and sharing ideas is vital. Brilliant & Bold! brings to the discussion Dr Susan Buckingham and Lawyer Monica E. Maghami to share their knowledge, expertise, experience, and ideas for working toward a positive future for women and girls.
Robin's Room 