The measles crisis hasn’t made an appearance in the news in awhile, I wonder why that is? Rockland County, New York, ground zero for hyperbolic measles fear-mongering, recently called off its hysterical, months-long state of emergency with barely a mention, why could that be? Could it be because every single measles case there has resolved itself? Measles is a self-limiting infection, lasting less than a week. Surely the health officials there are kicking themselves for scaring everyone half to death over such a mild infection now that they see that it was all for naught. But I’m sure it boosted sales of the MMR vaccine at just the right moment, and gave irresponsible, corporate media outlets a chance to run irresponsible headlines.

So every other case of the measles in the country has either cleared up or is in the process. And all those that caught the infection are now immune from future measles infections for life. Yet this fact will not be reported by any of the outlets that fanned the flames of measles hysteria, outlets that recklessly reported measles as “deadly”. News outlets that were panting for a measles death, a death that they could then trumpet to the heavens as proof positive that the dreaded anti-vaxxers are a danger to society.

The cacophony of measles hysterics also appears to have reached its peak towards the tail end of state legislative sessions, suspiciously so. Just when state legislatures were considering vaccine mandates, a threat blamed on the lack of vaccine mandates conveniently made an appearance, and the myriad corporate outlets made sure to inflate the threat beyond all belief, thereby using a fear-induced momentum to force the mandates into law. As the legislative sessions ended, so did the measles coverage.

In the wake the fallout from the unearthed recording of a young Reagan calling Africans “monkeys”, here is a hilarious SNL skit from 1986:

I suspect that the simple-mindedness of many a politician is an elaborate ruse. Yet I doubt Reagan was anything like Hartmann’s portrayal. I imagine there were several people around him who could silver-tongue, or even blackmail, him into rubber-stamping just about anything. The odds of blackmail are greatly increased when it is revealed that a recording of Reagan making racist remarks. Was the recording ever brought up to coerce the cooperation or support of Reagan? It’s an open, but important, question. How much does the threat of blackmail factor in to the actions of our Political Class? I suspect quite a bit.  Jeffrey Epstein appears to have been a prime generator of blackmail material on powerful people. Eric Margolis, writing at Unz in his piece, The Honey Trap on E 71st, tells the story of receiving a lunch invitation from Epstein. He arrived at Epstein’s New York mansion only to be greeted by a butler who immediately asked, “would you like an intimate massage, sir, by a pretty young girl?” As an intelligence reporter, he smelled a rat and immediately declined. He probably imagined the room he was to receive the “massage”, with multiple hidden cameras and microphones.

The power behind the throne is the only power that matters. The power that stems from the ability to exercise complete control over those who hold power.

I can’t recall ever being so surprised by a film as I was upon viewing Tarantino’s latest, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. As with most of his films, each is an experience more than a film. Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, et cetera, these works of art stick with you, but he appears to have outdone himself with Hollywood. I can’t speak as a pinky-out critic of any caliber, merely someone who enjoys fun movies. And I sure-as-heck found it in this movie. Where to begin? The movie saunters through a beautiful, 1969 Los Angeles. Too beautiful, in fact. Every ad, every face, every car, every conversation, has an angelic quality. The love of films themselves is apparent is almost every shot. Margot Robbie is blindingly beautiful as the doomed Sharon Tate, and she exudes a high voltage joy in each scene. Yet the obvious, dark undercurrent weaving its way throughout is the inevitable Manson massacre that begins to feel palpable the farther you go into the film. It gets worse the more attached we get to the characters that we know won’t survive. Robbie’s Tate in particular. Her unearthly beauty and charm casts such a spell that you, audience goer, feel increasingly helpless as the film builds to the bloody climax, that you badly want to defend her from the inevitable but know that you can’t. You can’t rewrite history.

And here is were Tarantino uses the ace up his sleeve.

Ever heard a crowd of people cheer in a theater? You will if you see this movie. Perfect strangers were veritably sky-hooting in unison during the last ten minutes of the film as their secret fear did not come to pass.

So, Spoilers.

Manson’s killers descend on Cielo Drive at around midnight on August 8th, 1969, yes, but something quite unexpected occurs. All you could really say is that the catharsis of half a century, from an entire generation, was suddenly loosed in cinemas around the nation. Brad Pitt’s character, Cliff Booth, high as a kite from smoking an LSD-laced cigarette, is confronted by Rex, Susan, and Patricia. At this moment we, the audience, wholeheartedly believe that we will witness his death, along with DiCaprio’s character and that of his wife. And yet. Cliff’s lucidity returns in a flash while facing the hippie scum, and with the click of his tongue, he commands his beautiful beast of a pit bull to attack Rex. Suffice to say, Rex and one of the female killers is shredded by the dog. The third gets torched by an utterly sloshed Leonardo DiCaprio, wielding a flamethrower that had been used as a prop from a previous film. The audience laughing and cheering throughout.

It’s in this moment of revenge that the audience realizes how much they’ve despised Tate’s killers. We have always hated the pieces of human excrement that took the life of an 8-month pregnant Sharon Tate even if we didn’t realize it. And probably most of us have harbored the barbaric desire to see them get what’s coming to them. And, in this film at least, they do receive it.

There’s so much more to the film than just the build-up to the Manson murders. For instance, was Bruce Lee really as much of a jackass as he was portrayed to be in the film? Watching the film in the moment, you couldn’t care less, and the subsequent dressing-down he receives at the hands of Pitt’s character is fairly satisfying.

Was 1969 Hollywood, and its inhabits, really as beautiful as Tarantino’s portrayal?

The best parts, for me at least, are the various disembodied moments; a young Roman Polanski taking his french press coffee to a backyard table in the morning, An electric Tate taking in a matinee of one of her own films. Brad Pitt weaving in and out of traffic. The exquisite dialogue-heavy scenes that Tarantino is known for. It is the perfect summer movie.