Roger Ebert’s latest blog post, on the subject of racism and the recent events in Prescott, is well worth your time:
One day in high school study hall, a Negro girl walked in who had dyed her hair a lighter brown. Laughter spread through the room. We had never, ever, seen that done before. It was unexpected, a surprise, and our laughter was partly an expression of nervousness and uncertainty. I don’t think we wanted to be cruel. But we had our ideas about Negroes, and her hair didn’t fit.
Think of her. She wanted to try her hair a lighter brown, and perhaps her mother and sisters helped her, and she was told she looked pretty, and then she went to school and we laughed at her. I wonder if she has ever forgotten that day. God damn it, how did we make her feel? We have to make this country a place where no one needs to feel that way.
The paradox of Ebert is that, in losing his voice, he found it. I wish I was half the writer that he is.
mistermix +5
JenJen
Thanks for that, mistermix. Agree so much about Ebert’s writing too.
Have some catching up to do with you on +x. ;-)
Mary G
He is amazing. I’ve been watching him since Sneak Previews, or whatever his show on PBS was first called, and reading him on the internets since 1995. He just gets better and better.
I also recommend the Ebert Club – I joined for $4.95 but I believe it’s gone up to $5 now. You get a special newsletter every week or so.
Linda Featheringill
Lovely.
As we learn life’s lessons, perhaps we should write about them. Get them out there. Make them part of the culture.
SiubhanDuinne
“The paradox of Ebert is that, in losing his voice, he found it.” Lovely and moving words from you, mistermix. Thank you for highlighting and linking Ebert’s journal. He really is a treasure.
Tim (The Oher One)
I hope a lot of people get to read that.
Exurban Mom
Via Ta-Nehisi Coates, I found a book that made me think very differently about race and courage. It’s called Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders, by Eric Etheridge.
It turns out there was a commission down in Mississippi who collected information on the freedom riders. The files were recently opened to the public. Photographer Etheridge discovered that there were mug shots of every freedom rider in the files. He tracked down as many of them as he could, interviewed them about their experiences, and took a new portrait of each rider.
The harrowing stories they tell, almost nonchalantly given the passage of time, the beautiful portraits, the courageous grins in the mug shots–the book is really a must see/read. It’s a sordid part of our history, what happened to those freedom riders, and we should all be reading about it and educating our children about it.
Janus Daniels
When did Ebert ever not already have his voice?
“The paradox of Ebert is that, in losing his voice,” it still keeps getting better.
Thanks for linking; worth way more than the read.
Oh! Ta-Nehisi Coates and Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders by Eric Etheridge again. Also, too.
http://www.theatlantic.com/ta-nehisi-coates
Jude
I couldn’t agree with you more, Mistermix. Thanks for linking such a great post.
AxelFoley
Ebert’s wife is black, IIRC. Not that it makes a difference regarding what he said and the truth he spoke.
Lolis
Ebert is a brilliant essayist and thinker. Years ago, I read a wonderful piece from him about journalism and objectivity. I would link to it here but I have been unable to track it down. Even though I read it such a long time ago, the ideas in it have stuck with me. Roger Ebert is simply a wonderful human being.
QDC
@AxelFoley:
Indeed, and he has a lovely passage about her too.
DFS
Yeah, the guy was always a great writer. He won a Pulitzer back when that still meant something. His old movie annuals were a big influence on me when I was working out how and how not to write.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
OT, but does anyone know where that video is of the people blaring horns and countering the anti-gay protesters? It happened a few months ago.
Never mind, found it at: https://balloon-juice.com/2010/04/11/gittin-r-done/
AxelFoley
@QDC:
Thanks, QDC. I didn’t think my memory failed me.
sherifffruitfly
The notion that there’s anything particularly “hard” to “understand” about being a fucking bigot is one of the things that allows racism and other bigotry to continue existing.
As long as defenses of the form “they just don’t know any better” are allowed, they will continue to be used.
There is nothing, zero, zip, nada difficult to understand about being a fucking bigot. Each and every time someone does it, it is by choice, and the person deserves far more criticism than people (white, straight, etc.) give them.
Montysano
I like Ebert’s writing, and love the ideas and values therein. But I prefer economy in writing, and his writing does not = that.
jerry 101
I wish his blog posts would make their way into the dead-tree Sun-Times, or (better yet) get into syndication.
He’s the real heir to the throne of Mike Royko.
guy
And then professor Euclid began his lecture.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
I can’t empathize with the haters any better than Ebert can. But I suspect I can understand them.
(Out)rage is addictive. The feeling of superiority, of defiance, is intoxicating–YOU know the truth and YOU will not let the wool be pulled over your eyes. Throwing around words like “Nazi!” “Communist!” “Nigger!” (or the more cryptic but equivalent “Go back to Mexico!”) gives you a certainty that is seldom found in anything. I imagine it’s incredibly appealing when you feel threatened.
Violet
Ebert is a treasure.
psychobroad
I thought for years that Ebert was a smarmy asshole until I read his piece about not being able to eat anymore and now I seek him out. Losing his voice to find it is the perfect way to describe how he’s writing now.
Laertes
@jerry 101:
This.
I didn’t think of it until just now, but you’re right. He sounds like Royko.
Royko was part of my day, every day, for years. Because of Royko, I had the Chicago Tribune delivered to my door every morning. I’d read him on the train to work. Later, when I could afford a car, I’d read him while waiting for the car to warm up. Or if it was warm, I’d just read him before I started the car, because I never wanted to wait till lunch.
I’m not embarrassed to say I cried the day Mike Royko died. He’d been on “vacation” for a few days. I picked up the paper hoping he’d be back, and there it was on the front page. He was gone.
I dropped the Trib not long after. The guy in that spot now, he’s trying, bless him. He’s got a bit of Royko’s grumble, but he doesn’t have Royko’s heart. I don’t think a young man can. There’s something in Royko’s voice then, and Ebert’s voice now–a gentle, humble, strong and deep humanity, that maybe can only come from a heart that’s got a lot of miles on it.
Here’s Royko at his best:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1964&dat=19870825&id=sQwjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Ts4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=2054,1268684
asiangrrlMN
@Mary G: Seconded! I got in early. Thanks for posting this, mistermix. I check Ebert out from time to time (especially his prodigious tweets), and I love the elegance and eloquence of his writing. He hit the nail on the head with the fact that for the haters, it’s fear that makes them cling to their rights so desperately and attempt to deny others their own. His essays on healthcare was really well done, too. This is the one I remember best.
grimc
@sherifffruitfly:
Don’t confuse ‘understanding’ with ‘sympathy.’ You’ve got to know the enemy if you ever hope to defeat it.
Violet
@asiangrrlMN:
Fear is a prime motivation for a lot of hate. So many people are afraid of so much.
Nate Dawg
“I wish that I was half the writer that he is.”
You could start by learning the subjunctive mood.
Martin
@Violet: Maybe we shouldn’t vote into office those people that work to sew fear in the public. No, that’s too simple…
Resident Firebagger
Man, it just occurred to me to bookmark Ebert’s blog. I feel kind of foolish for not having read him regularly all along. I’ve really missed out…
handy
@Nate Dawg:
I wouldn’t go there if I were you.
asiangrrlMN
@Violet: I think most of hatred is based on fear. It would be sad, if the haters weren’t so threatening.
@Martin: Ooooh, how revolutionary! I can get behind this idea.
lucslawyer
It is all about control…white folks are terrified they are losing it…with Obama in the White House the comforting thought of the Great White Father in Washington is no longer there as a crutch…
Bettencourt
Until the last few years, I’d only really known Ebert from his TV programs and hadn’t been that impressed, mostly because his campaign against slasher films in the early 80s seemed like an ill-conceived bit at self-promotion.
However, I’ve been reading his columns on-line for the last few years, and though I often disagree with his tastes, he is one of the most thoughtful and intelligent people writing about film today.
That said, have any other Ebert readers noticed an odd tendency toward factual and comprehension errors, frequently in plot synopses? For example, two major plot points in the indie drama “The Greatest” which seemed perfectly clear to me – why the Carey Mulligan character doesn’t seek help with her pregnancy from her mother, and why the surviving son breaks up with his girlfriend — were strangely lost on Ebert.
This week, he reviewed the kids comedy Marmaduke, and pointed out that the Bill Murray-voiced Garfield movies didn’t make the aesthetic mistake of having the cat visibly talk with moving lips, but in both Garfield films, the CGI cat did indeed visibly speak
I feel churlish making these petty complaints about a talented writer who manages to still create thoughtful prose while facing medical problems that I could never conceive of coping with. Just wondering if anyone else noticed this odd tendency in his reviews.
Bill E Pilgrim
I think Roger Ebert writes some good essays, but for film criticism no one beats Stephanie Zacharek. For me she’s a taste and preference mind meld, the perfect critic-reader relationship, which means complete trust that we’ll feel the same way about any given film, so I can read her review and know if I’ll want to see the film.
This is only after testing the concept many times, mostly by seeing a film first and then going to check out what she thought of it. The number of times she had written things that I had actually said out loud almost verbatim after seeing the film was uncanny.
Except for that tennis movie with Kirsten Dunst and what’s his name. God was it awful, one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. She loved it.
Okay so near-perfect. A mind meld with leaks, sort of like this.
One thing I did enjoy was hearing Roger Ebert and someone else on the radio talking about how they had started the joke about how any film trailer voice-over could simply start with “In a world…..”, just universally, and it would fit any movie. It became so widespread as a joke that the main voice guy for those things did a video making fun of himself, saying it.
Yutsano
@Bill E Pilgrim: I can’t imagine Ebert thought he would outlive Dan La Fontaine, especially suffering from cancer. I always found I could vehemently disagree with Ebert (and I did) but still respect him profoundly. I’m glad he is finding a second resurrection after his personal tragedy. And his wife is a fucking amazing woman period.
Jager
In reference to Ebert’s high school story…when I was in High school in the 60’s we had a gay kid who was teased and taunted all day, everyday…he hung himself the evening of the day we graduated. Over the years when I’ve been asked why I am so “liberal” about gays or gay issues I bring the kid up and his story shuts most of the assholes up, some for good. Ebert is so right, how can we do it to them, when are we going to learn? My kids and grand kids are much more tolerant and open, maybe there is hope for the future.
fucen tarmal
i never much cared for ebert at the height of his movie critic days, of course that, for me would have been the 80s and i’m not sure he would have gotten to see the movies early if he had said they were all melodramatic pieces of shit where the hero is good the whole movie, and the bad guy is bad throughout the entire movie, no ambiguity allowed.
i do enjoy his essays on other topics, and am amused as hell that he wrote return to the valley of the dolls, just because well, just because….
only problem here is i think he soft pedals the effect and his awareness of racism growing up….champagne/urbana was a sundown town at that time if i do remember.
Josh
Bettencourt, Yeh, he makes factual slips; he endorses some pretty schmaltzy and condescending movies; and Terry Gilliam is over his head. But the impassioned prose and the big heart count for a lot. And damn, he can do a good dis: someone in Ta-Nehisi’s comments section linked to his cutting review of Gods and Generals.
Geeno
I always liked Ebert as a movie critic, because even though I disagreed with his taste sometimes, he so clearly loved film. A lot of critics would over intellectualize everything; all movies had to be “deep”. But Ebert wasn’t afraid to give a glowing review if it was just a good fun movie. I remember him telling Siskel once that movies didn’t HAVE to be high art to be good.
SadieSue
@Geeno:
This. I love fun movies & tend to go to ight n’ fluffy ones (mostly good ones, of course =D) to escape from the real world. After years of defending myself against friends who pooh-poohed my choices, it was marvelous to hear Roger Ebert say that! Now if I could just get him to say the same thing about genre fiction versus Quality Literature.
Persia
@Josh: That review is a thing of beauty.
DPirate
He’s a crazy old man, apparently. Make America a place where no one gets ridiculed? It’s ridiculous!
Nice sentiment and thoroughly stupid. America is set up for ridicule and it is encouraged at every step. Don’t you people get the jokes on The Daily Show?
ps I find it funny that the spell-checker alerts a lowercase A for America.