2 CHICAGO READER | FEBRUARY 17, 2006 | SECTION ONE

CHICAGO READER | FEBRUARY 17, 2006 | SECTION ONE 3

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What ActorsWon’t DoI am surprised at your quicknessto irresponsibly state that all“actors don’t have the luxury ofbeing finicky about scripts”—as ifall actors will grab whatever theycan, without thought or question[The Business, February 10].Having worked as an actor inChicago for many years, I knowthat actors have more respect forthe craft than that, and moreintegrity in themselves and theirprofessionalism.

A Chicago actorPilsen

Deanna Isaacs replies:I didn’t say “all,” I said “most.”

It’s So EasyBeing GreenIn “Follow That Draft” (February3) I wrote that the city’s “green-permit” program requires appli-cants to go through a complexprocess whose flowchart takes upan 11-by-17 sheet of paper. Infact, the chart is only for largeprojects; routine projects involv-ing three or fewer units can typi-cally be approved on a fast trackwithin ten days, following aprocess that can be diagrammedon a Post-it.

Harold Henderson

This All-Too-American LifeReader editors,

I enjoyed Michael Miner’s2/3/2006 account of the ele-gies for This American Life’sputative Chicago “feel,” thoughI might be able to muster a fewmore tears for Ira Glass’sdeparture to NYC if I thoughtit surprising that fellowmourners spend their Fridayafternoons shopping atMarshall Field’s, nibblingsandwiches at the Berghoff,and sipping mai tais at TraderVic’s. Fifteen years ago I usedto rush home myself on Fridayafternoons in time to hear TheWild Room, Glass’s previousradio project. The principaldifference is that, like most ofThe Wild Room’s audience, I

was coming home from, well,work. It was only when Glassand cohost Gary Covino partedways and the show was can-celed that we learned just whohad been contributing the gen-uinely “wild,” seditious contentand who had been flatteringthe suits at NPR and its corpo-rate benefactors while anglingfor bigger things. TAL’s audi-ence might think it a merecoincidence that the programhas followed Marketplace,American Public Media’s dailyforum for edgy, hipster capital-ism, for several years now.More likely, they smirk at whatthey take to be the “ironic jux-taposition.” We’ll probablynever fully comprehend howsocial class operates in theUnited States until we can rec-ognize that there is no ironyhere, certainly not in the mindsof those who program thepolite marginalism of “public”broadcasting.

Ed TverdekAlbany Park

The Triumphof Pope-rahRe: Oprah/James Frey [HotType, January 20].

First of all, one of the otherpeople on the couch or byremote said, on the show, thatthey commended Frey for com-ing on the show, that a “PR per-son” would have told him to donothing and wait for it to blowover. I would have told him towrite the truth and then releaseit via e-mail to the media—butnot to go on Oprah, since it wasgoing to be a kangaroo court,which it was. He owes her noth-ing, she picked the book, it washer responsibility to check theintegrity/veracity of it, since shewas recommending it to herfeeding-frenzy audience. I callher “Pope-rah”—who does shethink she is? And when a friend,who is a fan, said that she has alot of power, I said, “Yes, becausepeople like you give it to her.”James Frey and Nan Taleseshould have gotten up and

walked off of the show, insteadof looking so morose—and tak-ing her crap. And of course itwas all about her—the reasonshe was so ticked off wasbecause she was getting ques-tioned by the media—it hadnothing to do with any of hislies. It’s always about her.

A Chicago publicist

In theBeginningsDear Reader,

I want to write to correct amisquote that appeared in thearticle “Bounty Hunter” byNicholas Day in your January20 edition. The nonprofitreferred to in the article asFarm Beginnings is really a program run by the nonprofitCSA Learning Center atAngelic Organics. Our farmertraining programs are taught by farmers through winter sessions and on their farms during the growing season.

I was delighted to see yourarticle on Mari Coyne and onour farmer, Farmer John, ofAngelic Organics. Please keepup the good work of highlight-ing the farming scene in theChicagoland area.

Parker ForsellFarmer development coordinator

CSA Learning Center at Angelic Organics

Nicholas Day replies:Farm Beginnings was found-

ed in 1998 in Minnesota by thenonprofit Land StewardshipProject. In the fall of 2005organizations in three otherstates began offering classesbased on that curriculum,according to Brian DeVore,media coordinator for the LSP.The Illinois Farm Beginningsprogram has two locations: central Illinois, which is affiliated with the University of Illinois and the LandConnection, and northernIllinois, which is at the CSALearning Center. Interestedwould-be farmers can check outwww.farmbeginnings.uiuc.edu.

“Most actorsdon’t have theluxury of beingfinicky aboutscripts; if theydon't have toeat live rats orset their hairon fire, they’relikely to grabany chance toshow whatthey can doonstage.” —DeannaIsaacs,February 10

Publisher Michael CrystalEditor Alison TrueManaging Editor Kiki YablonSenior Editors Michael Miner | Laura Molzahn | Kitry KrauseAssociate Editors Martha Bayne | Anaheed AlaniPhilip Montoro | Kate SchmidtAssistant Editors Jim Shapiro | Mark Athitakis | David WilcoxStaff Writers Liz Armstrong | Martha Bayne | Steve BogiraJohn Conroy | Jeffrey Felshman | Harold HendersonDeanna Isaacs | J.R. Jones | Ben Joravsky | Monica KendrickPeter Margasak | Tori Marlan | Bob Mehr | Jonathan RosenbaumMike Sula | Albert WilliamsCopy Chief Brian NemtusakEditorial Assistants Pat Graham | Renaldo Migaldi | Joel ScoreMario Kladis | Michael Marsh | Tom Porter | Jerome LudwigTamara Faulkner | Patrick Daily | Stephanie Manis | Robert CassKerry Reid | Todd Dills | Katherine Young | Ryan HubbardMiles Raymer | Tasneem PaghdiwalaTypesetters Vera Videnovich | Kabir HamidArchivist Eben English

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CHICAGO READER, INC.President Robert A. RothVice President Robert E. McCamantTreasurer Thomas K. YoderExecutive Editor Michael Lenehan

FEBRUARY 17, 2006VOL 35 | NO 21 Letters

Sell it!

The New Reader Classifiedschicagoreader.com | section 4

continued on page 26

No MoreWhere ThatCame FromDear sirs:

Michael Miner’s excellentoverview of the issues involving Great Lakes waterresources [“They Need It. We Waste It,” January 13] left out one pertinent fact: 90 percent of all the water in the five lakes is the result of runoff from receding glaciers during the time when the Ice Age ended. Thus in the intervening 10,000 years only 10 percent of the water volume of the Great Lakes is due to rainfall and inflow from rivers and streams.

The inadvisability of anylarge-scale diversion of GreatLakes water to both futurefreshwater supplies and to commercial navigation is obvious. All of us who are residents of the Great Lakesbasin, whether Canadian orAmerican, should take an active role in advocating for the passage of the Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence River BasinWater Resources Compact by contacting our respectiveelected representatives.

Chet AlexanderAlsip

PS: This is not a new issue.While vacationing in a numberof western states in 1982 and 1984 (both election years) I read and heard of anumber of candidates for public office who advocateddiverting Great Lakes water to the west. One proposal envisioned the construction of a pipeline from the westerntip of Lake Superior at Duluth,Minnesota, that would supplywater to the Dakotas, Montana,and Wyoming.

WeeklyWackadooHola,

I must tell you of my intensepleasure, which is your weeklycolumnist gone wackadoo . . .a certain Lizzy A [ChicagoAntisocial]. Is it just moi? Or is she amazing and exquisite?The latter suffices, methinks.Either way, please be assured of something: I pick up theReader every Thursday for onereason—Liz Armstrong and her stimulating and colorful take on pop/art culture.

I love that Bitch and her attitude!

Peace,

ThomPrinters Row

Letters

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26 CHICAGO READER | FEBRUARY 17, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Find it!

The New Reader Classifiedschicagoreader.com | section 4

Z

By J.R. Jones

Eugene Jarecki made a namefor himself on the art-housecircuit a few years back with

The Trials of Henry Kissinger, astinging indictment of the formersecretary of state as an architectand instrument of PresidentNixon’s rapacious foreign policy.But in talking with audiences atscreenings, Jarecki began to feelhis 2002 film had missed themark. “I was surprised how muchpeople wanted to talk aboutHenry Kissinger the man ratherthan the system he represents,” hesays in press notes for his newfilm, Why We Fight. “This time, Iwanted to make a film that wouldnot offer a simple villain, butinstead invite viewers to lookmore broadly at the system itself.”

Why We Fight makes good onthis ambition, opening withPresident Eisenhower’s prophetic1961 farewell speech, in which heidentified the military-industrialcomplex as a threat to democraticgovernance, and following thispremise through 9/11 and theIraq war. Jarecki looks at thearms industry’s cozy relationshipwith Congress and visits one ofthe neocon think tanks where theBush Doctrine was hatched. Herevisits Dick Cheney’s career withHalliburton and the administra-tion’s massaging of the facts in thecase against Saddam Hussein. Helistens respectfully to politicalcommentators both right(Richard Perle, William Kristol,John McCain) and left (GoreVidal, Charles Lewis, Dan Rather)as they review 60 years ofAmerican realpolitik and weigh inon the current conflict. But

replacing the villain at the movie’score are a half-dozen private indi-viduals Jarecki picked up alongthe way, and their very humanrelationships with America’s mili-tary machine demonstrate thedepth of the problem.

Jarecki borrowed his title fromthe series of short indoctrinationfilms Frank Capra directed for theU.S. military during World War II.For Capra the title was a state-ment, and a decidedly uncriticalone. (“This isn’t just a war,” a nar-rator announces in one short.“This is a common man’s struggleagainst those who would put himback into slavery.”) Jarecki turnsthe title into a question, posing itto nearly everyone he interviewsand providing a much-neededthrough line for his bulging narra-tive. “We fight for the principle ofself-determination,” PresidentJohnson declares in a speech aboutVietnam. “We fight because it’snecessary, and because it’s right,”says smiley Bill Kristol. But thoseare the short answers. The longone, articulated mostly by authorand CIA vet Chalmers Johnson(Blowback: The Costs and Con-sequences of American Empire), isthat we fight because our domesticeconomy has been structuredaround war since World War II.

But for some of the people draft-ed into the film, the answer toJarecki’s question lies closer tohome. Wilton Sekzer, a retiredNew York City cop, recalls ridingthe elevated train into the city fromQueens the morning of 9/11.Jarecki combines his voice-overwith footage of Sekzer on the trainitself, re-creating down to the

screech of the wheels the momentwhen the train turned a corner and Sekzer first glimpsed theWorld Trade Center belching blacksmoke. “I’m just thinking tomyself, How did my son get out ofthere? Well, I don’t know how, buthe got out of there. There’s no twoways about that. He can’t be inthere. Because anybody who’s inthere is gonna die.” After a clip ofPresident Bush’s bullhorn momentat Ground Zero, Sekzer tellsJarecki, “Somebody had to pay forthis. Somebody had to pay for 9/11.I want the enemy dead. I want tosee their bodies stacked up forwhat they did, for taking my son.”

If Sekzer’s motivated by mis-placed vengeance, 23-year-oldWilliam Solomon is simply mis-placed. His mother’s recent deathhas left him without any family,and he’s enlisted in the armybecause it’s the only way he can

support himself and go to col-lege—there’s a poignant sequencein which he packs up his cheapknickknacks, with their child-hood memories, and takes themto a storage center before ship-ping out. On-screen the recruiterwho signed Solomon up confidesthat it’s hard to win the recruits’trust. But as Jarecki revealed dur-ing a recent local appearance,cadets at a West Point screeningof Why We Fight laughed aloudat some of Solomon’s mistakenimpressions about what he’d bedoing in the army.

Fluidly edited by NancyKennedy, Why We Fight inter-weaves these personal stories notonly with history but with oneanother, yielding some choiceironies. A clip of PresidentJohnson announcing attacksagainst two American ships in theGulf of Tonkin—attacks that,

though the second was later dis-proved, were the basis for theescalation of U.S. involvement inVietnam—introduces Sekzer’smemories of serving as a helicop-ter door gunner in that war.“From the perspective of a heli-copter,” he says, “you’re up x-num-ber hundreds of feet, and you’reshooting at little dots that arerunning around. You’re not shoot-ing at somebody face-to-face. It’salmost like they’re not real humanbeings. They’re objects.” Fromhere Jarecki introduces AhnDuong, who came to the U.S. atage 15 after her family was evacu-ated from Saigon in April 1975.Her story might seem like a facilerebuke to Sekzer if not for the factthat she’s now a navy explosivesexpert, part of the team thatdeveloped the “bunker-buster”bombs heralded at the beginning

Movies

Bringing the War HomeEugene Jarecki, the director who stuck it to Henry Kissinger, puts it to the people in Why We Fight.

ReviewsMovies Theater

RATINGSssss MASTERPIECEsss A MUST SEEss WORTH SEEINGs HAS REDEEMING FACET

• WORTHLESS

WHY WE FIGHT sss

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY EUGENE JARECKI

Art

CHICAGO READER | FEBRUARY 17, 2006 | SECTION ONE 27

Why We Fight

Eugene Jarecki’s

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Why We Fight

REVIEW BY J.R. JONES

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Yutaka Sone at the Renaissance Society

REVIEW BY BERT STABLER

TimeLine Theatre Company’s

Guantanamo:Honor Bound toDefend Freedom

REVIEW BY JUSTIN HAYFORD

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