Sublime to Ridiculous

July 24, 2015

The 11th Traverse City Film Festival is upon us. This is a good thing.

It’s an especially good thing if you enjoy movies you would not otherwise have a chance to see. And if you enjoy talking movies with people you wouldn’t otherwise meet.

A Big festival is one of the things Traverse City does exceptionally well. In addition to the literally thousands of volunteers who help with the Cherry Festival and the Film Festival, plenty of city employees, from the top down, must work on the logistics, security and safety of the events. It ain’t easy.

Their efforts allow the rest of us to enjoy without much worry. This week it’s movies.

There are comedies, romantic comedies, kid’s movies, tween movies, American movies, foreign movies, dramas, mysteries, thrillers, avant garde movies, really avant garde movies, documentaries, short movies... lots of movies.

There have already been movies in Honor, Elk Rapids, Frankfort, Suttons Bay and Manistee. There are movies on a boat, seven venues in Traverse City showing movies patrons pay to see plus free movies every night at the Open Space and free movies all day every day at The Buzz inside the Inside Out Gallery.

There are movies with directors or producers from Italy, South Korea, Tunisia, Sweden, France, Norway, Iceland, Mexico, Denmark, England, Israel, Canada, Estonia, Spain, Argentina, Belgium, England, Switzerland, China, New Zealand, Japan, Iran, Russia, Brazil, Netherlands, Austria, Taiwan, Kazakhstan plus the United States.

The wild variety is part of what makes the Film Festival fun; everybody should be able to find something unexpected, enjoyable and enlightening in one of the 200-plus films.

Some refuse to attend because of long lines or they don’t like Michael Moore’s politics. There are lines but they provide the opportunity for conversations about movies you’ll have no place else.

Some of the films do reflect Mr. Moore’s politics and many do not. It’s unlikely the directors of the romantic comedy from Iceland or the South Korean mystery, for example, ever considered any such thing when they made their films.

The Film Festival is a non-profit charitable and educational organization; nobody’s pockets are being lined. Overtly political flicks can be easily avoided.

And you just might stumble upon something sublime.

Then we travel across the nation to Washington for the ridiculous.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi is still creeping along. We all remember the murderous attack in 2012 that killed J. Christopher Stevens, our Ambassador to Libya, and Foreign Service Information Office Manager Sean Smith in addition to two security specialists.

We’ve heard GOP-fueled rumors that security had been pulled from the consulate (false), that air support was intentionally delayed (false, and it was hours away), that the State Department intentionally lied in their initial explanation (false, they repeated what the CIA told them), and that State refused to call for help that was only a mile away (false).

For those thinking it’s about time someone got to the bottom of this mess, it’s not as if Republicans haven’t been trying.

So far, the tragedy in Benghazi has been investigated by the Senate Intelligence Committee, House Intelligence Committee, Senate Armed Services Committee, House Armed Services Committee, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, and House Committee on Foreign Affairs (plus an independent investigation by the State Department Accountability Review Board). All at a growing cost of millions of taxpayer dollars.

What the GOP is looking for is proof that it was then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s fault.

They’ve found no such thing. The location wasn’t an embassy, it was a CIA operation, and was intentionally kept low key and low visibility because of risk. No question, in hindsight, there should have been additional security. Too bad Congress reduced funding for just such security.

The oft-mentioned air support was hundreds of miles and hours away. A rapid response rescue team about a mile away was delayed on orders from the CIA station chief.

No Clinton smoking gun, criminality or dereliction of duty has been uncovered. We could have prevented the murderous rampage only by making sure the victims had not been there in the first place.

Having been left with nothing, the Select Committee has embarked on a Quixotic quest for e-mails that no longer exist on a computer that likely no longer exists and a server to which they will never be offered unfettered access. And, what a coincidence, they plan to keep having hearings directed at the Democratic presidential front-runner all the way into 2016.

By then, it will have dragged on longer than the Watergate probes, and even longer than the post 9/11 investigations. It will have become the longest-running Congressional investigation in history, searching desperately for the imaginary smoking gun.

And Congress wonders why it is so wildly unpopular.