The New York Times has been tracking the donors to the “super-PACS,” the grossly-funded organizations which, thanks to our Supreme Court, usually boast more money than the candidates they choose to support.

Let’s find out who’s behind the nation’s race to oligarchy, shall we?

I’m shocked— shocked!— to discover that Wall Street seems to be backing Mitt Romney this year.    You’d almost think he was, I dunno, a rich investment banker or something.

This is a switch from 2008, when Wall Street was behind Obama.  You’d think that the fact that Obama has done little or nothing to rein in their excesses, and hasn’t prosecuted any of the rich criminals who contributed to the economic collapse— except, of course, for that notorious racketeer, Martha Stewart— would have kept Wall Street’s loyalty, but apparently they’re unwilling to forgive his signing 875 pages of meaningless regulations.  Or they just want a banker in charge.

Also supporting Romney is the vile, slime-oozing homebuilder Bob Perry, who gave us Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Bob Perry also supports American Crossroads, a PAC featuring as its chief advisor the equally slimy Karl Rove.

The energy industry, big surprise, got behind Rick Perry.  Unfortunately they forgot to script his remarks for him, so now they’ll have to buy someone else.

There are various PACs supporting Democrats, none of which (this early, anyway) seems to have a lot of money.  Prominent among the donors are the usual suspects: Hollywood commies like Katzenberg and Spielburg, unions, public service employees, and trial lawyers.  Expect most of their money to go to congressional and gubernatorial candidates, since Obama’s sitting on a war chest nearing a billion dollars and probably won’t need their assistance.

If the Democrats win this year, expect the Teamsters to recruit every illegal immigrant in the country, trial lawyers to sue us into the ground for serving hot coffee, and Katzenberg to build an 800-foot-tall statue of Stalin above the Hollywood sign.

Newt’s super-PAC seems to be supported mostly by family members of his personal billionaire.  The total in the Times does not include the $10 million donated by said billionaire since the first of the year.

PACs supporting Santorum, Herman Cain, and Ron Paul seem decidedly underfunded compared with the others, and Michelle Bachman apparently failed to gain any traction whatever among the Billionaire Boys Club.

And as for me, I’m still waiting for my billionaire.  Support me and I’ll say anything!  I’ll run for anything!  I’m ready!

After my last post about the workshops I’ll be teaching this year, I’ve been reminded that there was one workshop I failed to mention.  I had thought the membership was more restricted than it was, and so I reckoned a general audience wouldn’t be interested.

I will be teaching a workshop in structure and plotting on the Friday morning of the Nebula Weekend, May 17-20, 2012, in Arlington, VA.

The workshop is open to anyone with a membership for the weekend.  You do not have to be a SFWA member.  The cost is $60, which will also entitle you to the other workshops, tours, and panels on offer.  If you go so far as to buy a $75 banquet ticket, you also get to enjoy my suave toastmaster address, watch me (or maybe John Scalzi) present the Grand Master award to Connie Willis, hear the keynote address from astronaut Mike Fincke, and watch the Nebula winners stammer their way through their acceptance speeches.

Sounds good?  I thought you’d agree.

I was intrigued when I’d heard that George Lucas believed in this movie so much that he financed it himself.  Apparently the Hollywood studios— staffed of course by all those Hollywood liberals we hear so much about— declined to finance a war epic about black people.

I was very impressed that Lucas was so committed to this movie.  And then I remembered that the last movie he believed in this much was Howard the Duck.

Well, Red Tails is no Howard the Duck.  Unfortunately it’s not Saving Private Ryan, either.

It’s a slightly goofy, old-fashioned war epic, full of patriotism, heroics, swelling music, and good feeling.  It’s the sort of movie where an American pilot might say, “Take that, Mr. Hitler!” and a German might snarl, “Now you die, foolish American!” If it wasn’t for the massive CGI and the complexion of the cast, this could have been a movie released in 1944.

The actors are great.  The actors are having a good time with each other, and we can’t help but enjoy their enjoyment. (And they should be having a good time.  This movie is a reunion for half the cast of The Wire— and of course the director, Anthony Hemingway, was on The Wire, too.)

The air combat scenes are awesome.  It’s all CGI, but it’s so good you can see the rivets on the planes.  And Lucas is ingenious enough to have his computer-generated camera duplicate the sorts of flaws that an actual physical camera might encounter, as for example what happens when it gets pointed into the sun.

I’m not sure I’d consider the air tactics authentic.  I doubt you can actually out-turn a Me-109 with a P-40 . . . but what the hell, I’m sure that happened in movies made in 1944, and that’s the model Lucas is working from.

The problem of the movie is that Lucas is so committed to his feel-good epic that the good vibrations get in the way of any actual drama.

Our two principal heroes are Easy (Nate Parker) and Lightning (David Oyelowo, who I’m encountering for the second time this week, having just heard him doing a terrific job of reading John le Carré’s less-than-brilliant book).  Both Easy and Lightning— whose nicknames are not accidental— have some serious problems.

Easy is an alcoholic who can’t climb into his plane without slamming down half a pint of whiskey first.  But there really aren’t any consequences to his addiction— he never seems impaired, and he never makes any bad decisions.  (Though he does get blamed for a crash that wasn’t his fault.)   So his alcoholism isn’t a tragedy or even a problem, it’s just a quirk.

Lightning is the Angry Guy— didactically, he’s sort of Malcolm X to his superiors’ MLK.  And he’s also Crazy Guy— he’s the maverick who disobeys orders, brilliantly uses unorthodox tactics to shoot up the enemy, and leads his men into extreme danger only to extricate them, and himself, with genius to spare.

Except that there are no consequences to his anger, except for a couple days in the guardhouse for clocking a racist officer.  And he’s only angry when the script calls for it: the rest of the time he’s charming and mellow.  There are no consequences to his disobedience of orders, and nobody ever dies because of his reckless tactics.  Angry and Crazy are quirks, not problems.

As for the guy who crashes, he survives though severely burned.  But we never feel his pain, or his awakening to his new condition . . . he’s just quietly shipped home, and if he’s mad or angry or in pain, it happens somewhere else.

If I’d had a turn at the script, I’d have had Easy screw up while drunk, and I’d have had Lightning getting a bunch of his followers killed, and I’d have had the crashed pilot wake up to the fact that he’s going to be disfigured for the rest of his life.  But Lucas doesn’t do that, because this movie is all about feeling good, and even when characters die, they die triumphantly.

I have no beef with feel-good movies, but I have to wonder why the characters were saddled with these problems when the movie wasn’t going to deal with them.

Still, you can’t feel bad about this film.  It’s fun to watch, it’s like all those old black-and-white movies like Dawn Patrol and Flying Tigers and Flying Leathernecks on which it was obviously modeled.  The CGI is great.  The cast is obviously having a good time.

And while the box office hasn’t been spectacular, it’s likely that George Lucas will earn his money back.

During the time that Newt Gingrich has been out of office, I’ve completely forgotten what a special joy it is to listen to the guy.  He’s like the Creature from the Id.  He absolutely can’t suppress himself, and sees no reason why he should.  I’m almost as fascinated by Newt as Newt himself.

So now he wants to wage a campaign of assassination against Iran (assassination not only being an act of war, but the sort of thing we criticize when Iran does it).  He also says he’ll do this with “full deniability,” which is kinda hard to do when you announce your assassination campaign on national TV.

He also said that, if elected, he would not tolerate another four years of Castro.  (So that’s two wars.)  Initially he plans to drop thousands of satphones into Cuba in hopes of starting a Cuban Spring, and otherwise toughen up sanctions and whatnot on Cuba.  (Because, boys and girls, sanctions have worked so well in the past.)

(It’s not like the other candidates are less bellicose.  Romney pretty much agrees with Newt on Iran and Cuba, and Santorum says he’ll flat-out bomb Iran and has talked about a Jihadist Axis of Evil involving evil Iranian mullahs influencing the policies of Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, etc.  Umm, how many wars are we up to, now?)

Quick.  Name any other American presidential election where major candidates promised to go to war if elected.  Can’t name one?  I didn’t think so.

Yesterday the Newtster attacked college students as lazy, because they took too long to graduate and won’t get work-study jobs.  Surely Newt would only make such an attack from a position of strength, having worked his own way through college?

Well, no.  Newt didn’t work a single day, not from his first day in college all the way to his PhD.  Newt Wife One, along with his family,  put him through school.

I’m not sure whether he’s still attacking capitalism or not.   If so, the papers haven’t mentioned it lately.

In 2009 the Newtster supported Obama’s health care initiative, and took a lot of heat from the conservative base for it.  Now he’s against “Obamacare.”  And of course it was Romneycare before it was anything.

In 2006, Newt stated that current campaign finance rules have moved the U.S. “dangerously closer to a plutocracy where the highest bidder can buy a seat.”  Now, he’s got his personal billionaire.

In 2008 Newt appeared in a commercial with Nancy Pelosi supporting action against climate change.  Now he says that climate change isn’t caused by human action.

(I think he’s missing an opportunity here.  What he should do is admit that climate change exists and then blame the liberals for it.  “If it wasn’t for socialists and their big-government initiatives, private enterprise would have solved the climate problem years ago!”  Someone whisper this to Newt, okay?)

He used to be in favor of carbon cap-and-trade legislation.  Now he’s against it.

Okay, some of these flip-flops are necessary in order to be considered seriously as a Republican candidate.   The base will never support anyone who thinks that humans might jeopardize the environment, or who won’t promote school prayer, or that Wall Street should be regulated, or that there shouldn’t be a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay people from marrying each other.

But still, you get the impression that every day’s a new day on the Good Ship Newt.  Whatever he thinks today is what he thinks today.  If he thought something different yesterday, you should forget that, because he has, too.  And when it’s time to decide what he’s going to think tomorrow, he’ll decide that, whatever it is, without reference to anything he’s thinking now.

He’s making this stuff up as he goes along.  And it’s fascinating to watch.

2011 Toolbox grad (and computer legend) Jeff Dunteman has written a totally unsolicited (by me, anyway) description of Taos Toolbox over on Inkpunks.

Walter and Nancy are both superb teachers and are not to be missed. I was startled, though, at how much I learned from my thirteen student colleagues, not solely through their critique of my own work, but also by seeing how they themselves create and manage the many moving parts in a novel-length story . . . I might describe my colleagues as un-seasoned professionals, trying hard to master that seasoning but always as professionals. There was not a poseur in the bunch, and while we’ve been in only sparse touch since the workshop, I am proud to call them all friends.

Which brings up a point that maybe I haven’t stressed enough.  Taos Toolbox isn’t about lone writers jumping through hoops laid out by a couple of instructors— it’s about a group of writers trying to make their own, and each other’s, fiction better.  It’s about building a cadre, a karass, a posse.  A team.

We’re on the mountain for two weeks for a reason.  Because we’re on the mountain together.

I’ve always thought of John le Carré as a role model.  He writes genre for a large non-genre audience, and pleases the critics as well.  (Of course it helps that he wrote the single best book, till that time anyway, in his chosen field.)

I’ve just finished listening to David Oyelowo read the audio book version of le Carré’s 2006 novel Mission Song, a book set against the terrifying background of the present-day eastern Congo.  The book’s protagonist is an interpreter— someone who, by profession, isn’t supposed to have an opinion— who gets in over his head when he realizes he’s interpreting for various factions involved in a seamy plot.

Le Carré pulls of a minor miracle in the middle section, which consists entirely of overheard conversations.  He makes them riveting, which should not technically be possible— though I will concede the possibility that it may be that it was reader Oyelowo who actually pulled off the miracle here.

But then the book just kinda falls apart, and all because John le Carré just doesn’t grok the internet.

The book’s maguffin consists of stolen audio tapes containing vital information, which the protagonist and his girlfriend have to haul around hither and thither in a sack.  The protagonist never seriously considers copying them in some way.   (In fact, in le Carré’s universe, copying a cassette tape requires a specialist with a lot of expensive equipment.)

Le Carré doesn’t realize how easy it is to rip an audio file, and that his characters’ computers come with the software already installed.  He doesn’t realize how easy it is to hide stolen files on the internet.  He doesn’t realize how easy it is to move them anonymously from place to place.  (A file does get send in an email eventually, so the possibilities of the internet are not completely beyond his ken.)

And the sad fact is that his plot simply doesn’t work if any of his characters have any knowledge of how the internet actually works.  And the characters twist their way through one hoop after another to justify le Carré’s lack of knowledge.

(Le Carré really doesn’t get smartphones, either, and Nokia had smartphones in the 1990s.  Though maybe none of his characters actually have smartphones, okay, I can live with that.)

Le Carré was in his mid-seventies when he wrote this book, and he’s not of a generation that grew up with the internet, and maybe he’s the sort of busy, successful person who hires other people to do the internet for him.  Professionally he’s never even graduated to the typewriter— he writes everything by hand.

But still.  His characters are under thirty and computer literate, and they’d know all about how to create and move sound files.

The fact that everyone in the book is so wilfully ignorant of digital realities leaps out of the book like the big screaming flaw that it is.

(At least it leaped out at me.  I’ve checked any number of reviews of the book, and the reviewers, while divided on the book generally, seem to live in the mid-20th century along with the author.)

Lord knows, writers try to avoid these kinds of errors.  We can’t be experts on everything.  I’ve had my own share of embarrassing mistakes— and the worst ones aren’t the mistakes of ignorance, but the ones where I actually do the research, and the research either lets me down or is misleading in some significant way.

(And no, I’m not going to give you a list of my written errors.  If you haven’t noticed them, you’ve had a smoother reading experience, and that’s all to the good.  Besides, the mistakes are embarrassing.)

But so far I don’t think I’ve made a mistake because I’m the wrong generation to know how something works.  At least, so far, I’ve been saved that embarrassment.

Sympathetic as I am to the problem and to le Carré generally, it must be said that as a reader, sometimes I stumble across something, and my brains says That’s now how things work, and I can’t get past it.  And this was one of those times.

Just last week I was grousing about the exclusivity and the egregious contract connected with with Apple’s iBooks Author.

Now I hear that Atavist, better known for long-form journalism and for producing original fiction to be read on hand-held devices, is on the cusp of releasing their new software, which (they say) will do everything that iBooks Author will do, only on damn near every platform known to humankind.

Here’s the scoop, according to Atavist’s own page:

Anyone can use it: Assemble publications (books, stories, reports, newsletters, etc.), design them, add multimedia, and rapidly export these to a variety of mobile platforms. No design or programming expertise required!

Multidimensional storytelling: Periodic lets you create layers of storytelling—an audiobook, timelines, maps, video and audio clips, zoom-able images, photo galleries, and soundtracks. Just upload your media files, and the platform does the rest.

One-click publishing to multiple platforms: Periodic automatically tailors your content to the iPad, iPhone, iPod, Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Sony, and (soon) Android, and will support new devices as they come to market.

Of course I have yet to see any reviews by anyone who has used the actual product yet, so users’ mileage may vary.  The whole thing may be a buggy catastrophe for ought that I know.

But if it works, it will be a huge self-publishing tool.  Not just for books, but for other multimedia projects, including (just for an example) alternate reality games.

And it may prove a major competitor for, say, Smashwords, who do much the same thing, but who charge a wee percentage for uploading to all those sites.  The Atavist program is not free (I assume), but you’re not paying royalties forever, either.

What happens when a classical violinist is interrupted by a ringtone?

Inspiration.  If you’re lucky.

I found myself in a strange relationship with this movie.  It’s a Korean film based on the classic Chinese historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, and though I haven’t read the book, I’ve played the video game.  Koei’s classic MS-DOS-based game was one of my favorites from the 1980s, and not only have I played it multiple times, I’ve played all the characters in this movie.  Sometimes I got the feeling that Andy Lau was playing me.

(A version of the game is still available, as Dynasty Warriors: Empire.  I don’t particularly care for its blend of arcade and turn-based action, and the synth0-pop soundtrack makes me want to plunge knitting needles into my ears.)

The novel and its characters are very well-known in China— Mao supposedly identified strongly with Cao Cao, the book’s villain— and this may be problematic for the average Western viewer, who might be inclined to wonder, “Who are these Five Tiger Generals, anyway?”  I watched what I assume is the American cut— the action was very choppy, and characters (like the hero’s girlfriend) appeared meaningfully only to be promptly forgotten. Probably there’s a longer and better Chinese version out there beyond our shores.

But if you’re hip to the novel or the game or the history, or if you’re just into immense spectacle, you’ll completely groove on this.

One of the Four Heavenly Kings of Cantopop, Andy Lau (Fook Wing), plays Zhao Zilong (a historical character who is probably better known by an alternate name, Zhao Yun).  Lau is one of the great stalwarts of the age, having not only maintained his successful singing career but having acted in over 160 films, and the years have only given him a gravitas that wasn’t visible when he was a prancing young pop star.  (He and the other Hong Kong actors are dubbed into Mandarin for this film.  Not badly, but it was noticeable.)

The film opens at the beginning of the Warring States, when China had been split into three kingdoms ruled by generals.  The North is ruled by Cao Cao, whose motto is, “I would rather betray everybody than be betrayed by a single person.”  The South is ruled by General Not Appearing In This Film, a/k/a Sun Quan.  The West is ruled by the novel’s hero, Liu Bei, with the capable assistance of his sworn brothers from the Oath of the Peach-Tree Garden.

Just to make it clear who to cheer for, the good guys are all given flat helmets similar to those worn by British Tommies in the World Wars, whereas the bad guys wear the German stahlhelm.  Or maybe the filmmakers just thought of it as a Darth Vader hat.  The armor seems mostly to be Japanese, or maybe Korean.

Young Zilong joins Liu Bei’s army and makes the acquaintance of an older, wearier soldier, Luo, played by Sammo Hung (who also did the fight choreography).  Zilong’s unit is ordered to hold a fort in the desert against overwhelming odds, and Zilong distinguishes himself in a surprise night attack, killing the enemy general (though he gives the credit to his friend Luo). Zilong gets leave to go home and has a moving, unconventional romance with a lady puppeteer, who the movie promptly forgets about.

During a retreat, Zilong saves Liu Bei’s infant son, cutting his way through the whole of Cao Cao’s army and riding off with Cao Cao’s famous sword, the Quinggang.  [The historical Zilong not only did this, but rescued Liu Bei's wife as well.]  Zilong then becomes one of Liu Bei’s famous Five Tiger Generals, each of whom gets a cameo.

TWENTY YEARS OF CONSTANT WARFARE LATER, Zilong’s girlfriend has yet to make an appearance.  Liu Bei is dead and succeeded by the rather ridiculous son that Zilong rescued all those years ago.  The surviving Tiger Generals are superceded by younger men, and the kingdom decides to try one last campaign to unify China.  Except the new generals really can’t get along, no one wants to listen to Zilong, and the whole affair is a disaster.  Zilong is left to defend the same stupid desert fort that made his reputation decades before.

Cao Cao’s army is led by his granddaughter, Cao Ying (Maggie O), who I assume is fictional.  My best guess is that the filmmakers realized they’d forgotten about the film’s only female character and decided they needed another one.  Anyway, Cao Ying is a chip of the old Quinggang— she’s evil, scheming, treacherous, ingenious, ruthless, and a hell of a martial artist.  She likes to play her lyre while ordering men to their deaths.

Zilong is trying to delay the final battle in hopes that reinforcements might turn up.  Ying wants to delay the battle because, well, she’s evil, and she enjoys tormenting her helpless foe.  So there’s a good deal of sparring, verbal and otherwise, between the antagonists before Zilong orders the final, hopeless charge against the villainous army.  The relationship between the hero and the villainness is the best part of the movie.

Since this is a serious historical film set in China, there is no happy ending.  It’s simply not allowed.  [The real-life Zhao Zilong lived a long life and died in bed, rich with honors.)

The real reason to see this film is the spectacle, of which there is lots.  Also action, improbable fight scenes, and gorgeous desert scenery.  Andy Lau is very good, even if his voice is dubbed.

You might want to read the book first, just so you know what the hell is going on.

It occurs to me that yesterday’s South Carolina primary signaled a paradigm shift in American politics.  In order to run for office, you no longer have to please the electorate.  You only have to please one person.

Your personal billionaire.

Newt Gingrich, the ethically-challenged former Speaker of the House, had been written off after his fourth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary.  But then his personal billionaire, Sheldon Adelson,wrote a $5 million check to a “super-PAC” supporting Gingrich, and Gingrich was able to place $3.5 million worth of ads within the ten days or so left before the primary.  Some of that money went into airing a 28-minute film accusing Mitt Romney of being an uncaring corporate raider out to deprive Americans of their jobs.  It didn’t matter that the film was loaded with inaccuracies.  It didn’t have to please anyone but a single person.

Newt’s personal billionaire.

Newt,  he of the Tiffany’s charge account, launched a ferocious attack on Romney and indeed on capitalism itself, and indulged in some savage race-baiting while he was at it.  (Populism at its best, we can all agree.)  And of course the noted serial adulterer agreed with his fellow Republicans about the need to defend the sanctity of marriage by depriving gays of their rights, and also agreed that pregnant rape victims should be forced (at gunpoint, I presume) to bear their rapists’ children.

I can only presume that many Republicans were deeply uncomfortable hearing Newt attack capitalism and saying some of the other stuff that he was saying.  But why should Newt care?

He only needs to please his personal billionaire.

(I should point out, before the knee-jerk indignant responses swarm in, that I don’t actually care if Newt committed adultery or not.  That was between him and Mrs. Newt.  And the other Mrs. Newt.  And the other Mrs. Newt.  What I care about is that he was banging Callista in his car in the Congressional parking lot while prosecuting Bill Clinton for getting a blow job in the Oval Office, because that speaks to the sort of person he is.)

Anyway, Newt’s ad-buying and race-baiting got him a decisive 40% of the South Carolina vote.  But even if he’d lost, why should he quit?

After all, he needs only to please his personal billionaire.

So how did American politics come to this pass?  After all, we have a law that says a candidate can only receive $5000 in contributions from a single person, and a $5 million check would seem to be somewhat in excess of that.  But thanks to one of our handy 5-4 Supreme Court decisions (Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, if you want to look it up), corporations (and unions) are now allowed to spend as much as they like, so long as it doesn’t go directly to a candidate.

And why would they give money to the candidate?  I mean, why bother?  They now have an unlimited license to spend however much money they want in direct advocacy of whatever it is they want to advocate.  Did either Adelson or Gingrich note or care that the film attacking Romney was loaded with inaccuracies?

Why should they?  Buy enough ads, you control the story.   And after the ad buys, the story wasn’t “Is Mitt Romney a heartless capitalist?”, but “How much of a heartless capitalist is he?”

(I will leave the answer to that as an exercise for the reader.)

How much is $5 million to a casino tycoon like Sheldon Adelson?  Well, he’s the 8th wealthiest American, and the 16th wealthiest person in the world.  According to one report, he makes over a million dollars per day. Buying a primary is chump change.

Now if you’ve got a billionaire behind you, why would you ever quit?  Why should any billionaire’s candidate retire from the race just because he loses some elections?  As long as your personal billionaire is willing to write checks, you can keep on chugging along.

That’s going to be a game-changer.  Every candidate with a personal billionaire can keep campaigning right up to the convention.  Or even past it, what the hell.

(And meanwhile,  while Republicans slag each other, and slag capitalism, of all things, Mr. Obama is sitting on top of a campaign war chest that may approach a billion dollars.  He’s his own personal billionaire.)

Which brings me to my main point.  Where the hell is my personal billionaire?

I mean, dude, I’m ready.  If I have a billionaire looking out after me, I’ll totally go on TV and say whatever crazy shit the billionaire wants me to say.  Why should I care what people think?

Because I’ll have my own personal billionaire.