Cinemaphiles on the Nobel speech

Maybe a little ofF topic for this forum, but what do other cinema fans think of Obama’s Nobel speech? Especially interested in opinions from outside US.
My 2 cents: Speech is Orwellian- war is peace etc… “just” war concept. To apply it to film, watched Triumph of the Will recently and You Know Who says something to effect: we must strive for peace yet at same time remain iron hard and as strong as stone, an army for peace. The idea that you have a warrior ethic applied to peace, only using your overwhelming force when absolutely necessary and maintaining this absolute military power because rest of the world is so corrupt—except for your country which is exceptional b/c culture,history,experience etc.. This would mean that any war is just in your perspective.

President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

I am still waiting for Paul Thomas to direct a film based entirely on ‘the men behind the curtains’.

Also I think The Limits Of Control referred to American exceptionalism as noted in Obama’s speech in the repeated saying something like “all those who think they are greater than the rest must go to the graveyard. There they will discover what life is, just a handful of dust”. This is about the inevitable decline of any empire, I think.

Does Alexander mean Paul Thomas Anderson or plain old Paul Thomas ?

Whoever you think would direct the better film

What is the men behind curtain genre?

>watched Triumph of the Will recently

No, I don’t think that TOTW applies – not at all.

But I do think that Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State & Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies (along with some other of their films) form a great double-feature/précis of American exceptionalism; technophilia (we have cameras everywhere; we can draw a precise bead on any target, and call down a precise strike on anything on this earth); military jargon mongering, and a fetish for military efficiency as a whole; and supreme arrogance with regard to what we see as the “old” and superannuated cultures of the world.

President Obama is not himself an ignoramus, a xenophobe, a religious zealot, or a fetishist in military action. He’s versed in our history. But his speech – however high-flown & prospective it was meant to be – was pockmarked with oft-told fables which have been used to justify every lowdown brutal act of American military aggression for the last hundred years.

Both Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have given this speech favorable ratings, which should be enough to send us all rushing back to the text to give it a much much closer reading.

Fwiw, during the campaign Obama expressed his admiration for the theologian and activist Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr becomes important for Obama as he constructs his moral framework for war. It’s also interesting that Niebuhr is often cited as influential by people across the political spectrum: Liberal hawks, neo-cons, anti-war activists. He speaks to all of them. Depending upon how one looks at this, it might further muddy the justification of an already muddied war-effort.

Jim Henson should make a new character..Obamaman..you should earn your costume…

I’m still scratching my head on how on gods green earth he was even given this award.

Obama is my guy in Washington. When I voted for him, I said: I trust you

Is he saying you have to do bad in order to achieve good?
Is he saying violence can be redemptive?
Is he saying morality is relative?

Yes and I trust him.

>I’m still scratching my head on how on gods green earth he was even given this award.

Bush 43 was the worst POTUS the nation has ever seen. That the U.S. was rising precipitously up from that nadir to elect a patently intelligent man made the Nobel Committee and much of the world somewhat dizzy. The election of the first black POTUS was also of course a dizzy-making innovation—even though racial (and gender) discrimination and oppression is still thriving, and is like mother’s milk to the Republic…

The Nobel Committee thought they could full a fast one and dictate US policy by giving Obama the prize before he’s accomplished anything. As Obama said in his speech, a President doesn’t have the luxury of being idealistic. He’s got to put the security of his country front and center.

There is only one thing more important than insuring the continuing comfort and well-being of Wall St. bankers, and that is maintaining and defending the security of this nation. You can botch the bank bail-out, be seen to muck-up healthcare reform, but on national security you get no do-overs. It is an absolute. If you want that second term…

i love Peabody’s irony (if it is an actual irony per se)

>on national security you get no do-overs. It is an absolute. If you want that second term…

And the defense industry is largely domestic, to boot—and they’ve got $$$ to spread around…

I voted for RON PAUL and will again if he runs in 2010.

“I voted for RON PAUL and will again if he runs in 2010.”

Obama only gets 2 years? See, as soon as a brother gets in…:)

The nobel prize, regardless of who has received it in the past is as silly as all prizes. As dumb as it is to rank who is the best writer or physicist, it’s twice as dumb to award someone for being peaceful working for peace, therefore it may as well go to the man who is still our best hope for slightly improving the travesties of the past. I assume all those who deserved it more will still continue to work for peace and not quit in a huff because they didn’t get a fucking trophy or whatever.

This is the substance of the Obama myth: he is a highly moral, noble and pure man, who does nothing in haste. He acts only after great deliberation, and if he should join with empire, there must be only two reasons why this is so: (1) empire is the correct path; in due course Obama will prove this to us; or (2) this path is chosen as a slippery ruse in Obama’s multidimensional chess game, the strategies for which are beyond the comprehension of mere rubes like us. In due course Obama will unleash his brilliant counter-strategy which will expose the counter-productive folly of empire. These myths persist.

>>The Nobel Committee thought they could full a fast one and dictate US policy<<
Oh, please. The Nobel Committee is not the Illuminati …