The Washington Independent » Allison Silver

Palin: Words vs. Deeds

Allison Silver — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:15:39 +0000

TWI’s Laura McGann, our temporary Anchorage bureau chief, just posted an enlightening piece about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Though the GOP vice-presidential nominee repeatedly calls herself “working class” and talks about her familiarity with its problems, her policies have been just the opposite.

Laura tracks four major issues where More...

New Look for TWI

Allison Silver — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:48:55 +0000

Today, TWI rolled out some design changes. We are trying to make the site clearer and cleaner. We know we are throwing a lot of information at you all at once, and we want to make it as easy as possible to access it. The ideas may be complicated, but the design shouldn’t be. We now also feature a masthead sun that actually looks like one. Ah, one of the many advantages that the Net offers over print!

We hope you like it. Please let us know what you think. Consider this a work in progress.

A Resonating Film

Allison Silver — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:03:53 +0000

When you see a great movie, it can stop you in your tracks. It makes your day suddenly brighter. When you see a great movie that also happens to be a huge success — I also tend to wonder, why? What about it works for so many people?

This happened when I saw ‘Wall-E” this weekend. Frank Rich wrote about “Wall-E” Sunday and, as usual, he did a masterful job in connecting popular culture to the tenor of the times.

I want to add to this discussion about the wonder, the sheer joy of this movie. The title character is a Chaplain-esqe little robot — and the children in my audience in downtown Washington seemed enraptured. I would bet double or nothing that they have never seen a Little Tramp movie. Probably many of their parents and most of the teenagers who filled the theater haven’t either. Yet, there was something beguilingly familiar in the robot’s actions. Every member of the audience seemed equally enchanted.

There is so much about “Wall-E” that grabs you. The tropes the story is built around — chases, rescues, finding love — are somehow built into our hard wiring. There is also something very American here — the notion of the promise of a better tomorrow. Which is what all the immigrants who came to America, and all those who journeyed West, were seeking. Their dream was that life can be better, more fulfilling, grander. They could reinvent themselves, re-envision themselves for the better. As the movie says, with the requisite hard work, we can pull off anything — including making the planet green and healthy again.

In addition, America is unique in being a nation built by “the wretched refuse of the teeming shore.” The cast-offs, the detritus, the junk of foreign lands, the “homeless tempest-tost,” come here to build a better life. In this brave new world, the old world’s dispossessed, its strays, could become citizens, could be equals.

Some astute critics, including A.O. Scott at The New York Times, have commented that this a movie that takes junk — which is what Wall-E spends his days gathering and compacting — and makes it into art. Which you could also say about America.

This is true even of the inner workings of this movie. “Wall-E” is based on cinematic detritus — bits and pieces of famous sci-fi movies like “2001: a Space Odyssey” and “Alien” and “E.T.” are jumbled together to make something valuable. But the most improbable thing — and something the sophisticated Pixar filmmakers surely know — is that the pivot of “Wall-E” is a decidedly junky musical comedy.

“Hello Dolly” is considered less than first-rate by musical theater cognoscenti. It is, of course, based on a lovely Thornton Wilder play, “The Matchmaker,” but the musical iteration is regarded as middling at best. And the movie version of this musical, excerpted throughout “WALL-E” as a key plot point, is notorious for being uniquely terrible. The ultimate junk.

“Hello Dolly,” the film, is regularly cited as the death knoll for the movie musical. Yet it is part of the legacy of one of the two greatest movie dancers — Gene Kelly. (The other, if you are wondering, is Fred Astaire.) Kelly directed this lumbering behemoth and tried every trick he could to breath life into it. But the film was reviled when it opened. It not only drove a stake into the heart of movie musicals, it helped to almost destroy 20th Century Fox, the studio that produced it. Fox sold off its back lot — now Century City in Los Angeles — and the studio’s executive suite paid a price as well.

Yet this is the movie that inspires Wall-E, that shows him a magical life — with a companion and music — that the little robot can only dream of. And like the garbage that Wall-E combs through, the viewer sees not the unsavory whole of “Hello Dolly,” but charming bits and pieces. In fact, the real plot of “Hello Dolly” has been ruthlessly discarded in favor of a small patch of the subplot — two store clerks in search of the promise of a better life, of love.

So the seemingly banal words of a simpering musical comedy emerge here as impossibly moving. Which is what art is all about. And, I guess, America as well.

New at TWI

Allison Silver — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:40:54 +0000

With the blog post below, TWI is delighted to welcome its newest reporter — Laura McGann. Well, sort of new, since she is the managing editor of this site and already vital to its workings. But she missed writing — and certainly has a knack for it, as we all saw with her stellar work on TPMmuckraker. So she has decided to walk the beat of money in politics — as if she already didn’t have enough to keep her occupied and off the street.

Paulson’s Non-Answer Answer

Allison Silver — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:24:42 +0000

This morning we ran a piece from our finance reporter Mary Kane on how the Bear Stearns deal struck a nerve with housing advocates who have been calling for more oversight of investment banks selling risky mortgage products. And now today Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. indicates that investment banks will have to begin providing more information if they are going to be making withdrawals from the discount window of the Federal Reserve Bank.

But as for the any idea about how long before this housing mess would start to get better — his non-answer was masterful.

As quoted in The New York Times:

Mr. Paulson said he was basically optimistic about the economy, and was convinced that the housing market would one day right itself. “I am constantly asked how much longer will this take to play out, and if this is the worst period of market stress I have experienced,” he said. “I respond that every period of prolonged turbulence seems to be the worst until it is resolved. And it always is resolved.”

Scandal Mongering

Allison Silver — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:40:47 +0000

When the subject is scandal, you think you’ve seen it all. But you haven’t. That’s one thing I’ve learned. So, beyond the basic reporting on the scandal that enveloped New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer – led by that quintessential tabloid, The New York Times – there are many ways to think about this. TWI has already noted that various American cities have their own flavor of scandal: in L.A. it’s about water (“Chinatown” is civic history), in Chicago it’s machine politics and in New York it’s always sex. In this case, the Big Apple is what the snake offered Eve.

Today we take another bite of this apple. The woman at the center of this, Kristen, nee Ashley, somehow makes this scandal into a very British affair.

Read all about it.

A ‘Declaration of Principles’

Allison Silver — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:11:02 +0000

We’re still in Beta mode here at The Washington Independent — there are a lot of kinks in our system yet to be ironed out. But it seemed time to post a more accurate "About Us" on our site. So we have. We wanted to let you know who we are and what we believe in.

This "About Us" is not quite like Charles Foster Kane’s "DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES" But it’s a start. Jounalists, it used to be said, kept their hats on indoors and put their feet on the desk, respect for authority was a trait they lacked. We hope to continue in that honorable tradition.

Check it out. And let us know what you think.

Let’s Have a Chat

Allison Silver — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 04:31:29 +0000

Hello, my name is Allison Silver. I’m the editor of The Washington Independent. I’ve been involved in analysis and commentary in journalism since my first real job in media right out of college — when I was a researcher for the political columnist Tom Wicker of The New York Times. Then I went to The Los Angeles Times Sunday "Opinion" section, a weekly section about politics and current events, and ultimately ran it for 10 years. I was also an editor at The New York Times "Week in Review" for five years. There you have it, bastions of old media.

I liked to see my job as showing people what’s behind the curtain of public life. I was jazzed by pulling academics and scholars into the public debate — to get people with expertise into the mix of public discussion. On the broad canvas of public debate, I was able to hold an empty picture frame up to focus in on a small part of it — whether the frame was offered by an economist or a historian or a constitutional scholar or a former intelligence officer.

The Internet offers an even more interesting opportunity to do this. Now the debate isn’t just broadened to include myriad perspectives: it demands room for readers. The connectivity between the contributor and the user is not just exciting to read but intoxicating to be a part of. That is why writers will host an online chat for every piece they contribute to The Washington Independent. It is the nexis between the writer and engaged readers that is what the Net is really about. These exchanges between reporters and their readers generate amazing possibilities. This is the real snap, crackle, pop of news on the Internet. And I want our site to play a big part in it.