Kevin Drum (1958–2025)

Blogger and journalist Kevin Drum died earlier this month at the age of 66 after a long battle with cancer. His most recent website, where his wife Marian announced the sad news, was self-named, but with a fun URL that included "jabberwocking." You can read tributes and obituaries from Digby, Josh Marshall, Paul Glastris at Washington Monthly where Kevin blogged, Mother Jones where he blogged, Matthew Yglesias, The New Republic staff (who include a catblogging tribute), David Dayen and The American Prospect staff (who also do a catblogging tribute), Mark Evanier, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times.

Kevin was one of the early bloggers and a welcome resource during the Bush years. He did some fine, in-depth pieces, as covered in the tributes above. He also started "Friday cat blogging," a nice tradition of more relaxed posting that inspired similar efforts from other political bloggers. Notably, at Mother Jones, he also asked that instead of him getting raises each year that those funds be used to support younger writers.

I didn't know Kevin that well, but I met him once when he hosted a book party for Rick Perlstein, who was promoting Nixonland at the time (a event also mentioned by Digby). Kevin and his wife Marian were gracious hosts, and that night they welcomed many Southern California liberal bloggers into their home, many of whom I met in person for the first time. It was nice talking to everyone, and I enjoyed seeing all the film posters and books on classic films, with several prominent ones related to the great Danish director Carl Dreyer. (Kevin's father had been a professor of speech and film history, and as some of the pieces above cover, Kevin's father started writing a book on Dreyer but died before he could finish it; Kevin's mother completed it.)

I'm sorry Kevin didn't have more time, and condolences to his family and close friends. His best work was very good indeed, and he'll be remembered for his thoroughness and kindness.

The Oscars for the Films of 2024

The Oscars for the films of 2024 were a fun affair. Host Conan O'Brien was in fine form, with sharp writing and some clever ad-libbing, and plenty of the goofy silliness of his most enjoyable work. I rarely see movies in the theaters anymore since the closing of the much missed Arclight Cinemas in Los Angeles and elsewhere. The Arclight theaters didn't run ads, prized good projection and sound systems, and encouraged respectful audiences. The remaining venues run tons of ads and it's sadly common for people to be on their phones at full brightness throughout a movie. So this year, rather than rooting for specific films, I mainly used the Oscars to add films to my viewing list, which includes Flow, Anora, The Brutalist, Conclave, Sing Sing, I'm Still Here, A Complete Unknown, Nickel Boys, No Other Land, and of course Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

Conan O'Brien started with a funny riff on The Substance, seeming to crawl out Demi Moore's collapsed body and then dive back in to get his lost shoe. It was an amusing bit, but O'Brien wanted to do a more extensive parody of the nominees similar to some of Billy Crystal's segments at past ceremonies. Alas, the Academy vetoed that and other good ideas ('Oscar cannot be horizontal and cannot be clothed'), so credit to O'Brien and his writers for coming up with good material despite the silly restrictions against fun.

Out here in Los Angeles, the two most welcome moments were O'Brien thanking the below-the-line crew, and the salute to Los Angeles area firefighters for their heroic work earlier this year in battling multiple huge, devastating fires.

On the international front, it was neat to see Latvia win its first Oscar for its animated feature Flow, Iranian filmmakers Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani manage to just barely get to the Oscars in time to accept Best Animated Short for In the Shadow of the Cypress, and veteran Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles win Best International Feature Film for I'm Still Here. They all gave heartfelt speeches, as did the Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers accepting the Best Documentary Feature award for No Other Land, speaking against bigotry and for peace.

The Latvian win allowed Conan to ad-lib, "Your move, Estonia," which he repeated nonsensically later in the broadcast in the best silly Conan O'Brien tradition. My favorite lead-in was him introducing Amy Poehler presenting the screenwriting awards, by saying something like, 'She plays Joy in Inside Out, and she's here to present Joy's opposite – screenwriting.' (As usual Poehler was sharp, dryly quipping, "I believe it was William Shakespeare who said, writing is a bitch.") My favorite visual gag, though, was the Dune sandworm playing the piano and later the harp, a costume designed by O'Brien's longtime collaborator Scott Cronick. It was vintage Conan, reminiscent of his NBC show recycling a bizarre beige costume at least half a dozen times, as everything from Jabba the Hut to a croissant.

The ceremony featured individual tributes to costume design and cinematography nominees, an approach that in the past has been limited to the acting categories. I'm not a big fan of the approach in general, because it slows down the ceremony, dreadfully so the first time it was done, but more smoothly since. On the positive side, it does give all the nominees and not just the eventual winner more recognition. And if the Academy is going to stick with that approach, it's nice if some non-actors get some love. (I presume different non-acting categories will get the special treatment next year, if the Academy sticks with the format.)

Ben Stiller continued his tradition of funny presentations. In the past, he's appeared in a green screen suit for visual effects and as a Na'vi from Avatar (although he can milk the gags too long). This time, he struggled with a stage lift that kept going up and down, and the bit worked well.

The montage of death was much better than in some recent years, with the producers wisely opting for classical music (Mozart's haunting Requiem) instead of dancers or a solo singer. Although it's never possible to include everyone, Alain Delon was a notable omission, and it would have been nice to include Tony Todd as well. (The annual TCM Remembers segment is always worth watching.)

Sean Baker cleaned up as a writer, editor, director, and producer (Best Picture) for Anora, a remarkable feat, all the more so because he said the film cost only about 6 million dollars. That does come with a significant caveat, however; some industry groups reported that Sean Baker fought against the crew unionizing, which affected their eligibility for important health care benefits. (The story was later picked up by The Hollywood Reporter.) It also would be nice to see more films give "points" or deferred wages to the crew, so that if a lower-budget project does become a big success, the crew and not just the above-the-line players could get a small piece of the profits.

I like Adrien Brody as an actor, and his speech started out well, with him remarking that "acting is a very fragile profession" and urging that we "not let hate go unchallenged." But Brody's speech became long, halting, and very self-indulgent. Oscar winners are given 45 seconds, although especially for the bigger awards, they're almost always given leeway. At four minutes into Brody's speech, the conductor started playing the exit music, and Brody asked him to stop, claiming he would be brief. He was not. Instead of wrapping up, he rambled on for another minute and thirty-seven seconds. (Just prepare a speech, dude, time it, and try to stick roughly to it.) I did not see Emilia Pérez, which originally received a fair amount of acclaim and then much backlash, mostly when past bigoted comments surfaced from star Karla Sofía Gascón. But Zoe Saldaña was electric in the clips I saw, so I was happy to see her emotional win. The Academy should crack down on abuse of the supporting role nominations, though. Kieran Culkin won Best Supporting Actor and gave a funny speech, but he's one of the two leads in A Real Pain, not a supporting actor. Likewise, Daniel Kaluuya won Best Supporting Actor for the 2021 film Judas and the Black Messiah despite being one of the two leads and the title character. The same criticism may apply to Saldaña, who's second on the billing for Emilia Pérez, but I haven't seen it yet.

Anyway, here's to cinema, catching up on some good 2024 releases, and may 2025 be a good year for film.

Bigotry, Hatred, Authoritarianism and War

Monday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a date chosen based on the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camps. It's an appropriate time to reflect on bigotry, hatred, authoritarianism and also war. This year, I find myself thinking about Donald Trump, conservatives, and the Republican Party; Elon Musk and oligarchs; and the Israel-Hamas war.

Against all wisdom, Donald Trump was reelected as president in 2024. He started his campaign for the 2016 election based on bigotry, and has consistently made hateful, ignorant, bigoted statements since, including language echoing Hitler and other fascists. For the 2024 election, Trump once again put fear and hated of immigrants and racial minorities at the center of his campaign, and also targeted LGBT people, being particularly vicious toward transgender people (and spending a ton of money to do so).

Since taking office, Trump has issued a slew of executive orders targeting those groups. His actions against immigrants include an attempt to repeal birthright citizenship, which is his administration pretending it can overturn the 14th Amendment of the Constitution by decree rather than the actual process. Detaining people suspected of being undocumented immigrants has already begun, and has included people with no criminal record. Predictably, these edicts encourage racial profiling and other harassment. Trump has likewise issued orders attacking transgender people and their rights. (At least he hasn't proposed that they be forced to wear pink triangles yet.) The cruelty is a feature, not a bug.

Elon Musk, one of Trump's most prominent supporters and certainly the richest, has received widespread criticism for making two Nazi salutes at a Trump inauguration event on 1/20/25. Musk predictably has had his defenders, claiming he was misunderstood. But Musk has received notable criticism from Germans and historians of fascism, who judged it as a Nazi salute. Neo-Nazis and other white supremacist and hard right groups also thought it was a Nazi salute, and celebrated it. Rather than apologizing, Musk tweeted a joking post of Nazi puns. Musk's most notable defender was probably the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization founded to combat antisemitism, but Jewish outlet Forward questioned the ADL's "bizarre and baseless rush" to exonerate Musk rather than "calling balls and strikes" as it claims to do, and for not asking Musk about the incident first rather than leaping to his defense.

More importantly, Musk, who helped Trump get reelected, has also supported the hard right German political group Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), and on 1/26/25, Musk appeared on video at an AfD rally, gaining applause as he told the party members, "I think you really are the best hope for Germany," and that there was "frankly too much of a focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that." Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk responded, "The words we heard from the main actors of the AfD rally about 'Great Germany' and 'the need to forget German guilt for Nazi crimes' sounded all too familiar and ominous. Especially only hours before the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz." (Meanwhile, Musk has also attacked transgender rights for years, possibly because he has an estranged transgender daughter, who incidentally wrote a sarcastic post mocking the defenses of Elon Musk's Nazi salute.)

It's almost impossible to keep up with everything the Trump administration, the Republican Party and conservatives are doing to hurt the United States, but for a few lowlights: like a petty dictator, Trump has been abusing his power for personal vendettas against people who put the U.S. ahead of personal loyalty to him. He canceled Dr. Anthony Fauci's much-needed security detail. Trump also removed the security detail for former Joint Chiefs Chairman, retired General Mark Milley, and is even trying to get him demoted in his retirement to hurt his pension. The Trump administration fired career lawyers at the Justice Department simply because they were doing their jobs when they worked on special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into Trump. Most importantly, the Trump administration has illegally fired about 17 inspectors general at government agencies without the required 30-day notice. Like many other civil servants but more prominently and explicitly, inspectors general are tasked with performing oversight and fighting corruption and abuses of power.

The Trump administration has also tried to halt federal funding approved by Congress, actions that are completely illegal. (The Trump administration received considerable pushback and has been stopped for now, thankfully.) Federal employees have also received odd, threatening emails from the Office of Personnel Management pressuring them to accept buyouts to resign. These maneuvers have been linked to Elon Musk and his DOGE commission, who have also "gained access to sensitive Treasury data including Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems, according to two people familiar with the situation." Besides the massive privacy issues, as Senator Ron Wyden, Democratic member of the Senate Finance Committee said in a letter to the Treasury Department, "officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs." All these actions are illegal, anti-democratic and authoritarian, and could fairly be called another coup attempt by Trump and his allies. (Meanwhile, Trump pardoned over 1,500 people charged and convicted for one of his previous coup attempts, the January 6th, 2021, insurrection. The pardon included violent criminals.)

Joe Biden's farewell address warned the American people that "Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy. Our basic rights and freedoms. And a fair shot for everyone to get ahead." The Trump administration predictably seek to renew $4 trillion in expiring tax cuts heavily skewed toward the rich and to gut the social safety net. U.S. conservatives and the Republican Party have been fighting to make America increasingly oligarchic for decades now, unfortunately with some success. Those actions are extremely harmful if not new. The Trump administration's authoritarianism isn't entirely new, either; the Nixon and George W. Bush administrations made similar moves. Regardless, authoritarian takeovers do take time and need to be fought every step of the way.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, the Israel-Hamas war has a welcome ceasefire as of this writing. The war itself started with Hamas and allied groups attacking Israel on 10/7/23, although the conflict has decades, centuries and even millennia of history. The attacks killed about 1,200 people and Hamas took about 250 hostages. Hamas also committed sexual assaults and other atrocities, although some false stories also made the rounds – Haaretz reported, "Most [accounts of atrocities] are supported by extensive evidence, but a few have been proved untrue, providing ammunition to deniers of the historic massacre."

In response to the attack, the Israeli coalition government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu of the hard-right Likud Party, extensively bombed Gaza and forced its population to flee south. By December 2024, the death toll in Gaza was reported as more than 45,000. But a study published in The Lancet in January 2025 puts the death toll at 64,260. Several organizations called the Netanyahu administration's actions a genocide and urged investigations. Many buildings in Gaza are mere rubble now, including hospitals and schools; the Associated Press has called Gaza "an apocalyptic landscape of devastation." The 200,000 or so Palestinians now walking home to northern Gaza mostly have no houses to go back to.

Back on 11/12/23, John Oliver provided a useful primer on the war, among other things explaining why both Hamas on the one hand and the Likud Party and Netanyahu administration on the other are awful. Whatever their other differences, they both oppose a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, both have a history of bigotry, and both are not actually helping the people they claim to serve. The people don't necessarily approve of them, either; Palestinians in Gaza have not had an election since 2007, when Hamas took power. Meanwhile, since the October 2023 attacks, Netanyahu faced increasing criticism from Israelis over his decisions, especially his failure to free the hostages (. . . although his approval numbers have been improving since autumn 2024).

Israel is home to many of the last remaining Holocaust survivors, and many Israelis have family history connecting them to the Holocaust, be those living survivors, survivors who have since passed away, or family members murdered during the Holocaust. That genocide remains within living memory. Antisemitism continues to be a problem in the Middle East and the entire world. Meanwhile, some Israelis protested the war in Gaza. In the U.S., most visibly on college campuses, Palestinian and Jewish-led groups likewise protested the war and spoke out against antisemitism, but also against bigotry toward Arabs, Muslims and Persians. Several U.S. Jewish groups oppose the idea of Israeli settlements in Gaza.

The situations in the United States, the Middle East and much of the rest of the world aren't rosy by any means. But some people are working to make them better, by opposing bigotry, hatred, authoritarianism and war.