General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsmalaise
(269,157 posts)They were raising funds for a children's group.
lastlib
(23,286 posts)Who gave him the right to tell the wealthiest banker in town that ordinary working people count for something??
thank you, George. Give 'em heck.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)How could Rahm say this while knowing that there would be no adverse consequences to him?
Isn't getting the City of Chicago a reward for all of his actions?
riverbendviewgal
(4,253 posts)Who died of brain cancer at 26 years old. It was his favorite BEFORE we found out he had the cancer. Kevin had a soft spot for the underdog and old and confused. He was very much like George Bailey.
I miss him so much. This movie, to me, is Kevin speaking again.
Whovian
(2,866 posts)So sorry for your loss. I wish he was still with us.
Cracklin Charlie
(12,904 posts)I share Kevin's soft spot. Thank you.
colorado_ufo
(5,737 posts)and we need more of them in this world. Wonderful Lives like Kevin are the antidote to the toxic greed, arrogance, and hardness of heart that we encounter daily.
Thank you for giving Kevin, and his Wonderful Life, to the world.
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)Just as relevant today as it was at the time the movie was made. And it will be relevant forever.
niyad
(113,552 posts)political operative and media type.
heaven05
(18,124 posts)great scene, good try on revealing the 'real' amerikkka. Lot of people are losing their homes and can't afford one though. Same old song amerikkka. Nothing is better, bankers and a corrupt political system STILL rules and ruins amerikkkan lives. Please, it was a movie!!!!!
Response to Whovian (Original post)
freshwest This message was self-deleted by its author.
lucca18
(1,244 posts)How lucky you were to have him as your father. The kindness and help that he gave to people throughout his life.....he was a very rich man!!
Response to lucca18 (Reply #13)
freshwest This message was self-deleted by its author.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)Barack_America
(28,876 posts)No social security, medicare, medicaid, just pure unfettered capitalism.
I often thought of this year's election as the battle between George Bailey and Mr. Potter.
chuckstevens
(1,201 posts)I wish you idiots who keep voting Republican could have seen a campaign commercial like this:
BANK RUN SCENE:
Man One: Tom did you get your social security check?
Man Two: Sure I got it, like I do every month.
Man One: Well, Mitt Romney is offering more tax cuts for millionaires, CASH!
Man Two: Tax Cuts?!? Lets go.
Everyone starts to leave, but the George Bailey character jumps over the railing to prevent them from leaving.
George Bailey Character: Now hold on everybody! Tax cuts sound great, but lets think about what we would really be voting for.
Harry: your wife and a mild stroke in 2011; do you think Paul Ryan and the House Republicans would keep Medicare going strong? They want Health Savings Accounts! Health Savings Accounts? If youre scraping by on a fixed income, how are you supposed to have a health savings account?
Bob: you were out of work for all those months. You got unemployment, but have you forgotten it was only after Mitchell McConnell and the Senate Republicans held it hostage until they got the extension of the Bush tax cuts which have added trillions to the national debt? Is that financial responsibility?
Susan: how can you vote for a party that thinks you should not be allowed to make your own reproductive choices?
The Republicans talk a good game, but theyre not looking out for average people or our futures. Face it; this is not your fathers Republican Party. We need to stick with President Obama and the Democratic Party.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)This is EXACTLY what the Dems need to do. Ever since Reagan, the Republicans seem to have cornered the market on powerful anecdotes and word pictures, while the Dems have retreated into wonkish statistics and global generalities.
Welfare Cadillac versus 47 million uninsured. Why Johnny Can't Read versus declining SAT scores.
It's the concrete, human-level stories and images that stick in people's minds and shift their thinking, not the cold numbers.
That brilliant little scene of yours could be done in about a minute, and would be absolute dynamite in its effect on the viewers.
Mitt as Scrooge.
Robber barons.
The evil banker foreclosing on the widow.
The Common Man as hero. Tom Joad.
All that stuff is there in the collective unconscious; it's time to activate it.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)are so loud and noisy, they have sunk deep into the American soul. It's going to take a good long while before people start really hearing George Bailey again.
UnrepentantLiberal
(11,700 posts)Jimmy Stewert was a republican.
lexw
(804 posts)Not sure, though. And I don't have time to look it up.
... if the Republicans of Stewart's and Capra's era would agree with (or even recognize) the Republican Party of today?
UnrepentantLiberal
(11,700 posts)Audiences flocked to see "Capraesque" movies like "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "Meet John Doe" -- parables of ordinary people forced to stand up against the greed and corruption of the rich and powerful. Those dramatic comedies, with their depictions of hardship, their "common man" heroes (usually Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper) and their celebrations of small-town virtues, gave expression to a country struggling to climb out of the Depression; they have, ever since their release, been identified with Roosevelt and the New Deal. Yet it is one of the great surprises of Joseph McBride's masterly, comprehensive and frequently surprising biography, "Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success," that the man who seemed to put the spirit of the New Deal on the screen was, in reality, a closet reactionary and a dogged Roosevelt hater.
Frank Capra managed to fool just about everyone; even his wife was unsure of his political affiliations. Longtime co-workers who were Democrats assumed he shared their political convictions. Katharine Hepburn, who starred in his 1948 picture "State of the Union," thought him "quite liberal"; others applied the term "radical" to him. And why shouldn't they have, when Variety was calling a sympathetic character in "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" "quasi-communistic" and The Saturday Evening Post was reporting that in the Soviet Union Capra was "hailed as a comrade"? But as Mr. McBride, the author of previous books on Howard Hawks, John Ford and Orson Welles, tells us, Capra was a lifelong Republican who never once voted for Roosevelt. He was an admirer of Franco and Mussolini. In later years, during the McCarthy period, he served as a secret F.B.I. informer.
In part, the misperception was due to Capra's writers, who generally ranged from New Deal Democrats to card-carrying Communists. One of Capra's great strengths as a director in the 1930's was his ability to work with anyone who had something to contribute to his pictures, even those who were far to his left. He was also enough of a popular entertainer to cater to his audiences; he understood that during the Depression the most hissable villains were grasping bankers and businessmen.
But ultimately the misunderstanding over Capra's politics seems to be a case of people seeing what they wanted to see. In his analysis of "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," Mr. McBride points out that the Gary Cooper character, far from being some sort of socialist or New Deal liberal, was, if anything, an "enlightened plutocrat" whose philosophy of voluntary giving was little different from that of Republican businessmen opposed to the New Deal; and he shrewdly notes that while Deeds got into trouble for trying to distribute most of the $20 million he inherited to desperate farmers, he was still planning to keep $2 million for himself.
edbermac
(15,947 posts)They suddenly remember Potter had the missing money, so they all go down to his office and beat the crap out of him.
Sick but funny. Dana Carvey a hoot as Jimmy Stewart.
http://www.zimbio.com/watch/cbye5xdz7dC/Wonderful+Life+Lost+Ending/Saturday+Night+Live
tclambert
(11,087 posts)Apparently he later turned into a Potter-loving conservative.
lexw
(804 posts)ieoeja
(9,748 posts)Bail outs are actually one possible implemention of Keyensian economics. We mostly think of Keyensian economics as injecting cash into the economy by building publicly owned infrastructure. Infusing cash into privately owned infrastructure can also help.
2008 flashback
When GW Bush announced the bank bailout, he had a deers-caught-in-the-headlights look as he bumbled and stumbled over his words. Conversely, when talking about killing, his English was always flawless. GW had no problem talking when he believed in what he was saying.
Watching him read his lines regarding the bailout, I remember turning to the guy next to me and saying, "he doesn't agree with a word he said."
GW seems to have been a true believer. True believers in the free market would let the banks collapse. If you ever needed proof that GW was never his own man, the bank bailout is it.
Obama supported the bailouts. McCain opposed them. And one of these two men has been doing a remarkably good job lately of proving what a complete imbecile he is.
That said, the bailout was mishandled in many ways. It made perfect sense to loan big banks money so they could, in turn, loan money to smaller banks then all banks could loan money to people and businesses keeping the entire economy moving. The big banks already had the infrastructure in place to handle a large distribution of cash in that manner. Why not take advantage of it?
Problem is, they didn't put it in writing. They were working with an entire industry which believes that greed is good, and they thought they could broker this deal with a handshake? If you ever needed a reminder that the sole requirement for a politician is the ability to win popularity contests ... here it is!
Instead of loaning to the small banks, the big banks held onto the money starving out those smaller banks then using the money we loaned them to go on an eating binge of smaller banks.
Even without the original agreement in writing, our government could have stepped in and done something about it after the fact. But they chose not to. The distraction of an election may have helped.
Other problems.
Any bank "too big to fail" is too big to exist. Had there been no failure yet, that would still be true. Because it will inevitably be a problem. And since we are still ignoring this fact ... it is going to happen again. Problem still fixable. Problem still ignored.
The entire mortgage derivative concept needs to be eliminated. Mortgages should not be split up. Nor should they be bundled. Problem still fixable. Problem still ignored.
Investment banking and commercial banking need to be re-separated. Investment bankers should not be allowed to put our savings at risk, only what we choose to risk. The Countrywide guy who broke up Glass-Steagal has admitted to making the same mistake our pols made in trusting the investment bankers. Coming from the commerical side, he viewed banks as institutions that safeguard people's savings. He was essentially booted out after the merger for opposing the huge bonuses and other excesses he encountered upon joining the investment bankers. Problem still fixable. Problem still ignored.
andym
(5,445 posts)Ironic that his films had so many populist even liberal elements. Although you would be hard pressed to find support of big government and the social safety net in them, which is consistent with his conservatism. There is a type of traditional conservatism that promotes volunteerism and individual kindness-- Herbert Hoover was a great proponent of this. But such conservatives were adamantly against equivalent government-based help.
rivegauche
(601 posts)Love that, thanks for the reminder.