Word: moralizers
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...Putting aside broader moral considerations, pragmatism would advise against the targeted killing of political agitators. However effective Yassin was at exhorting his followers to action, a desire to revenge his death will be even more effective. A single voice, though as diabolical as Yassin’s, simply cannot provoke the same rage that the memory of a dead leader can. Yassin’s death could well bring a new generation of recruits into Hamas’ ranks and motivate its fanatics for years to come. And in the end, what has this man’s death gained...
...confined to the "Sunni Triangle" that has nurtured the insurgency against the U.S. and its allies. Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the single most influential leader in Iraq, called on Muslims to unite against Israel, while the more militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr offered the Palestinians "moral and physical support." In an already tense transition process, the extent to which the U.S. is viewed as complicit in an Israeli action that has outraged Iraqis will not make the task of U.S. soldiers and officials there any easier...
...this finger wagging, this easy moral superiority. So every news channel, editorial writer and sports columnist spent a lot of last week excoriating Todd Bertuzzi, who plays hockey for the Vancouver Canucks. All Bertuzzi did was sneak up behind Colorado Avalanche centerman Steve Moore toward the end of a 9-2 game last week and punch that member of the winning team in the side of the head. Then slam Moore's face into the ice until his neck broke and the blood pooled. Bertuzzi was rearing back for another shot when other players intervened. Some fans at Vancouver...
...bigger question. There have been other dark and complicated takes on the western--Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove--but they, like westerns themselves in recent years, have been as occasional as tumbleweeds. We still associate the genre with the moral simplicity and cliche of its heyday: straight-shooting, black and white hats. (When President Bush said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," he wasn't going for relativism.) Are we ready for the genre of John Wayne and Shane to get the gray-hatted HBO treatment...
Deadwood HBO-izes this material, though, not just in its profanity but in its moral ambiguity and social criticism. The show is like McCabe for more reasons than that it involves whorehouses and business conflicts. Like the '70s movies of Altman, Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, Francis Ford Coppola and others, HBO's dramas rework popcorny genre formats (the cop drama, the Mob flick) with dark, even cynical themes: that institutions are corrupt, that people and systems and families will screw you over, that heroes are never entirely heroic or villains alone in their villainy. Deadwood wants to show not just...