Caught Frost/Nixon yesterday. It's the most entertaining film about the making of an interview that you're likely to see.* Yes, the interview is important, but director Ron Howard made the issues around funding, preparation and distribution as close to a suspense-filled story as is reasonably possible.
The key moment of the 1977 interview, and the key to this film, is Nixon's response to questions about Watergate. The only time he answered direct questions about Watergate, Nixon stated that he made mistakes, likely broke laws, tarnished the office of the President specifically and our system of democracy generally, but still believed that anything a President does to serve his country is legal.
I'm interested in seeing how the movie's portrayal stacks up to the real interviews, released on DVD earlier this month. I also want to check out Charlie Rose's interviews about the movie with Ron Howard and Frank Langella, the actor portraying Nixon in the dramatization.
Having just returned from watching the movie, I opened my Wind and pointed Chrome to the NY Times. One of their top stories discussed the exit interviews being given by President Bush and Vice President Cheney. While Bush at least admits that he was unprepared for war, Cheney is completely unapologetic.
Mr. Cheney, by contrast, is unbowed, defiant to the end. He called the Supreme Court “wrong” for overturning Bush policies on detainees at Guantánamo Bay; criticized his successor, Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.; and defended the harsh interrogation technique called waterboarding, considered by many legal authorities to be torture.
“I feel very good about what we did,” the vice president told The Washington Times, adding, “If I was faced with those circumstances again, I’d do exactly the same thing.”
It's been said many times before, but Cheney believes that the President is above the law when serving his country. I think Cheney would say that the executive must be unfettered by the law when protecting America... but the result is the same either way. In fact, it's clear that Cheney believes Nixon didn't go far enough, that he never should have felt guilty or admitted to anything.
Today, Cheney, the most powerful Vice President in U.S. history, says he has no advice for VP-elect Biden, and clearly states that he authorized torture (or, as is the official term, "enhanced interrogation") of "terror suspects." He characterizes his decision as making the hard choice, and asks us to take it on faith that his action has made America safer.
Assuming that Cheney's statement is correct, even Nixon would ask: what point is there in acting to protect America if that act undercuts the very tenents upon which the country has been built and claims to hold high for the world as its banner ideals?
* If you saw and enjoyed Frost/Nixon, you'll also enjoy Fog of War, the brilliant film by Errol Morris centering around his interviews with Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy.
[Image via If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats.]
Before entering law school, my Class was told that while my school didn't yet support Mac users and didn't allow the use of Apple laptops for exams, the administration expected that policy to change soon. When our IT department refused to revisit the subject after a year and a half, I decided to conduct my own survey of law schools in California and across the country. The result? 2/3 supported Macs, and more were opening up to the idea of supporting Apple laptops every day.
I passed my report on to our administration who, following the support and guidance of our new IT manager, changed their policy. In the Fall of my 3L year, I took my first law school exam on a Mac. It felt fantastic.
In the meantime, our SBA President asked me to start a formal Mac User Group, which I did. Though I graduate in May, two other students have agreed to take over leadership of the group, so it will live on after I'm gone.
One problem remained. The Bar Exam. And the CA Bar Association wouldn't budge. Nor would they allow correspondence via email or fax. Only mailed letters. So over Spring Break this year, I put together a summary of my prior survey, responses thus far from the exam software provider and from the CA Bar, along with reasons the Bar should change its policy.
I finished the packet on a Monday. At that time, the Bar hadn't changed its policy. On Tuesday I put the packet in the mail. On Wednesday a friend emailed to say that the Bar, on its own, had changed its policy [pdf]. We'd be able to take the Bar Exam on a Mac this summer! I didn't think the Bar would change its policy so soon, but I'm glad they did.
Now I have a new "problem." You need to boot into Windows via Boot Camp for the Bar Exam, and therefore need an Intel Mac. As I'm a loving owner of the last model PPC PowerBook, I'll either need to get a cheap Windows laptop or a new Mac.
I'm strongly considering the oh so pretty MacBook Air. I played around with one at MacWorld this year, and the machine is gorgeous, thin, light, zippy, elegantly engineered, sturdily crafted. The early reviews are all favorable, and Charlie Rose even took a face plant to ensure the safety of his baby. But even Charlie Rose's mishap pales in comparison to what happened to this guy. If I get one and fall in love with it, how will I keep track of it?
From Newsweek:
If my Air was stolen, I don't expect to see it again. The people at Apple (one of them couldn't stop laughing) do say that if the thief tried to repair it, Apple would identify the unit by its serial number. (By the way, NEWSWEEK is going to pony up the $1,800 for the loss.) Fortunately, because I had never bothered to wirelessly move all my data to the laptop, my personal exposure is limited. As a precaution, I did change the password on my Gmail, and de-authorized my iTunes account. Thus the thief, if there was a thief, cannot watch the two copy-protected episodes of "The Closer" I had downloaded. But I don't think it was stolen: as I noted, the power cord was in my living room, indicating that I'd used it sometime that weekend. It was safe at home—before it disappeared. So what happened? In lieu of the presence of a poltergeist with techno-lust, I have developed a theory that I first viewed as remote, but now believe explains the fate of my Air.
On Sundays in my apartment, the coffee table where the Air sat becomes the final resting place for the bulky New York Times. It is not unusual for other magazines, and newspapers from previous days, to accumulate there as well. My wife, whose clutter tolerance is well below my own, sometimes will swoop in and hastily gather the pulp in a huge stack, going directly to the trash-compactor room just down the hall from our apartment, dumping the pile into a plastic recycling bin. Sometimes the whole mess gets so nasty that I even perform this task myself. Could it be that somewhere in the stack was a Macintosh computer so thin that its manufacturer brags it could fit inside an envelope? I believe so. (For the record, my wife does not subscribe to this theory.)
My MacBook. I've lost my laptop! I've abandoned my Aiiiiiiiiiiiiir! I've lost my MacBook. I've abandoned my Air!
