Saturday, March 21, 2009

Rebuttal To Right-Wing Lone-Nutters Re: JFK Assassination

Recently I got caught up in a futile debate with a bunch of right-wing nut jobs on a neo-fascist discussion board called Haloscan. I am sharing portions of it with you here, to give you an example of how the far right makes it almost impossible to have a sensible, logical search for the truth in the murder of JFK. These fanatical ideologues cling rigidly to their positions regardless of the facts. For example, the most vulgar of the blowhards (who goes by the internet pseudonym Stogie...in homage to Limbaugh?), asserted that there were no technical facts or lucid testimony to prove the case for conspiracy. And in the 45 years since the murder, no one has come forward to expose the conspiracy. Here was my response:

It never ceases to amaze me how invested in proving there was no conspiracy to murder JFK the far right is. Why does it mean so much to you? As far as "technical facts," how do you explain the technical fact that more lead was removed from Connally (in fact, remained in Connally) than was missing from CE 399 (the magic bullet)? I suppose you'll dismiss the eyewitness accounts from Dealey Plaza which indicate shots from the knoll. And what about the Dallas Parkland doctors who saw an ENTRANCE wound in the front of the president's throat and fist-sized EXIT wound at the back of the president's head in the occipital-parietal area. And I suppose the violent backward movement of the president's head was caused by a bullet which did a U-turn in mid-air? I don't have time or space here to educate you; one of the hard facts of the American right is that it will choose to believe what it will despite reason, facts, common sense and absolute proof. Nothing will convince you that Kennedy was murdered by the military-industrial-intelligence complex, not even if Zapruder had filmed Allen Dulles firing a rifle from the grassy knoll. After all, you elected a moronic, criminal, Bible-thumping, sociopathic, daddy's boy twice, despite an abundance of evidence of who he really was. Still, I'll do what I can...Have you heard of a man named D.H. Byrd? Didn't think so. He was a Texas oil millionaire/businessman, financial supporter of LBJ and radical right-wing friend of Hunt, Murchison, Richardson, Bush, Phillips, Mallon, and the right-wing Dallas cabal. Byrd, with the help of his great friend, Curtis LeMay (Air Force chief of staff and profound Kennedy hater), formed the Civil Air Patrol. CAP members included Lee Harvey Oswald, James Bath (drug-running buddy of W), John Liggett, David Ferrie, and others, all of whom were recruited into the CIA. Byrd also owned Ling-Temco-Vought, which built fighter planes. After LBJ became president and started the Vietnam War, Ling-Temco-Vought got a huge defense contract to build fighter planes for the Air Force. Oh, and did I mention, Byrd also owned the Texas School Book Depository building (you've heard of that?). Oswald was steered to the job at the TSBD by his CIA handler, Ruth Paine, the Oswald family landlady. Ruth was married to Michael Paine, engineer at Bell Helicopter of Dallas/Fort Worth, another big Vietnam defense contractor. Bell made a fortune off its Huey helicopters. Michael's boss at Bell was one Walter Dornberger, ex-Nazi V-2 rocket engineer who should have been hanged at Nuremberg for war crimes. He was saved from the hangman's noose by Allen Dulles and the CIA (OSS at the time) in 1946 through Operation Paperclip which evacuated Nazi scientists, doctors, spies, and engineers to the US. (I'm sure you righties have no problem with this; you seem to love a neo-fascist state.) It was Dulles who placed Dornberger with Bell, under the auspices of the CIA and the military-industrial complex. Dulles's mistress, Mary Bancroft, was best friends with Michael Paine's mother. I could go on and on...but I don't know why I bother. What I'm trying to tell you is Kennedy was murdered by people who wanted not only to win the Cold War, by whatever means necessary, but also profit mightily from it. Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War. Kennedy, practically alone, stood in the way of the huge military-industrial-intelligence complex taking over America. But I'm sure you, and all other right-wing zealots, hated him for that...and so somehow it is necessary for you to prove that Oswald acted alone. By the way, who were all those people flashing Secret Service credentials in Dealey Plaza right after the shooting? The Secret Service itself admitted it had no one on the ground in the Plaza that day. And why would Dallas policeman Joe M. Smith say he smelled gun powder behind the picket fence and encountered someone flashing Secret Service credentials in that area? And why would Roger Craig say he saw Oswald getting in a Nash Rambler at 12:40 pm when Oswald was supposedly on a bus six blocks away at the time? And on and on...My god you lone nutters sure have to explain away a lot of strange circumstances and expert testimony and appearances of impropriety and incredible timing and stunning coincidences to believe what you do. How do you do it?

From Best Evidence, by David Lifton, pp.61-62: "White House transcript 1327-C makes the debate concerning what Dr. Perry said about the throat wound on November 22 academic. The matter came up three times. Each time, Perry said the throat wound was an entrance."...[Dr. Perry speaking]'There are two...one of the neck and one of the head.""QUESTION: 'Where was the entrance wound? 'DR. PERRY: 'There was an entrance wound in the neck. 'NEXT QUESTION: "Which way was the bullet coming on the neck wound? At him? 'DR.PERRY: 'It appeared to be coming at him...the wound appeared to be an entrance wound in the front of the throat...'"From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch story of Dec. 18, 1963, by Richard Dudman, "...the question that suggests itself is: How could the President have been shot in the front, from the back?...Dr. McClelland said, 'It certainly did look like an entrance wound...we are familiar with wounds, we see them everyday--sometimes several a day. This did appear to be an entrance wound.'"

From Best Evidence, pp. 14-15: "Sixty-four known witnesses indicated that shots originated from forward of the motorcade, from the grassy knoll. This amounted to approximately two-thirds of the ninety witnesses whose accounts appeared in the twenty-six volumes...who expressed an opinion as to the source of the shots."

From JFK And The Unspeakable, p. 308: "Twenty-one out of twenty-two witnesses at Parkland Hospital--most of them doctors and nurses, trained medical observers--agreed in their earliest statements that JFK's head wound was located in the right rear of his skull, demonstrating a fatal head shot from the front."

From pp. 294-298: "T.F. White was a sixty-year-old, longtime employee of Mack Pate's garage in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. While White worked on an automobile the afternoon of the assassination, he could hear police sirens screaming up and down Davis Street only a block away. He also heard radio reports describing a suspect then thought to be in Oak Cliff. The mehancic looked out the open doors of the garage. He watched as a red 1961 Falcon drove into the parking lot of the El Chico restaurant across the street. The Falcon parked in an odd position after going a few feet into the lot. The driver remained seated in the car. White said later, 'The man appeared to be hiding.'...White walked across the street to investigate. He halted about ten to fifteen yards from the car. He could see the driver was wearing a white t-shirt...[White] paused, took a scrap of paper from his coveralls pocket, and wrote down the Texas license plate number of the car: PP 4537.

"That night, while T.F. White was watching television with his wife, he recognized the Dallas Police Department's prisoner, Lee Harvey Oswald, as the man he had seen in the red Falcon." Wes Wise, a Dallas reporter, heard of White's story and, realizing that the real Oswald had already been arrested by the Dallas police at the time White saw the fake Oswald, decided to investigate. Wise asked White for the license plate number and submitted it to the FBI. The FBI reported that the license was issued to a Carl Amos Mather, 4309 Colgate Street in Dallas. "The FBI also discovered that Carl Amos Mather also did high-security communications work for Collins Radio, a major contractor with the Central Intelligence Agency. Three weeks before Kennedy's assassination, Collins Radio had been identified on the front page of the New York Times as having just deployed a CIA raider ship on an espionage and sabotage mission against Cuba. Collins also held the government contract for installing communications towers in Vietnam. In 1971, Collins Radio would merge with another giant military contractor, Rockwell International. In November 1963, Collins was at the heart of the CIA-military-contracting business for state-of-the-art communications system.

"Carl Mather had represented Collins at Andrews Air Force Base by putting special electronics equipment in Vice-President Lyndon Johnson's Air Force Two plane. Given the authority of his CIA-linked security clearance, Carl Mather refused to speak to the FBI. The FBI instead questioned his wife, Barbara Mather, who stunned them. Her husband, she said, was a good friend of J.D. Tippit. In fact, the Mathers were such close friends of Tippit and his wife that when J.D. was murdered, Marie Tippit phoned them. According to Barbara, Carl and Barbara Mather drove to the Tippit home, where they consoled Marie Tippit on the death of her husband (killed by a man identical to the one seen a few minutes later five blocks away in a car bearing the Mathers' license plate number)."

From JFK And The Unspeakable, p. 103: "Abraham Bolden joined the White House Secret Service detail in June 1961 [where] he saw increasing evidence of the president's isolation and danger from the standpoint of security. Most of the Secret Service agents seemed to hate John Kennedy. They joked among themselves that if someone shot at him, they'd get out of the way. The agents' drunken after-hours behavior carried over into lax security for the president...Abraham Bolden spoke up. He complained to his superiors about the president's poor security. They did nothing."

In TV news film footage of the motorcade leaving Love Field, Emory Roberts, Secret Service shift leader in Dallas, can be seen ordering Henry Rybka off the side of the president's car. Rybka throws his hands up in dismay and disgust.In Dealey Plaza, as the shots are fired, Roberts orders his Secret Service agents to stand down. Most could not move quickly anyway because they are hungover from a night spent drinking and carousing at a mob-connected hangout in Dallas.

From page 170 of JFK And The Unspeakable: "Ruth Hyde Paine, Michael's wife and Marina Oswald's caregiver, was the daughter of William Avery Hyde. From October 1964 to August 1967, Hyde was the AID (Agency For International Development) Regional Insurance Advisor for all of Latin America. Hyde's job description was to provide technical assistance from the US State Department to insurance cooperatives being launched in south and central America. A later AID director, former Ohio governor John Gilligan, admitted that 'AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. It was pretty well-known in the agency who they were and what they were up to...The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.'"

Ruth Hyde Paine was also the younger sister of Sylvia Hyde Hoke...[a declassified] CIA Security File memorandum...noted that Sylvia Hoke was identified as a CIA employee."

From Plausible Denial, by Mark Lane, pp. 293-4: "A Novemeber 29, 1963, memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover entitled 'Assassination of President John F. Kennedy November 22, 1963' stated that on November 23, 1963, while Oswald was in police custody and available for interrogation about his affiliation with agencies of the United States government, FBI Special Agent W.T. Forsyth and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency briefed 'Mr. George Bush of the CIA' about potential problems related to the assassination. A source with close connections to the intelligence community confirms that Bush started working for the Agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine opertions."

From pg. 705 of Best Evidence: "Dr. Jones testified to the Warren Commission that he thought Kennedy was shot from the front, with the bullet exiting the rear of the head."

George H. W. Bush still denies being with the CIA before 1976.From the introduction to Plausible Denial, p. xiii, "It has been clearly evident for years that the American public, and the people of the world, do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy...the evidence is on their side. It is the side of the truth...this truth was borne out in a courtroom on February 6, 1985, in the US District Court for the Southern District in Florida, where as lawyer for the defense in the case Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby, [Mark] Lane won a verdict from a jury of our peers that upheld, against a claim of libel, a news story that E. Howard Hunt, a long-time CIA employee, was in Dallas on the day the president was shot. The testimony at that trial gave more credibility to the notion that the CIA was involved in the assassination."From the transcript of that trial (Plausible Denial, pp. 295-297): Lane's direct questioning of witness Marita Lorenz:
Q. Did Mr. Hunt pay Mr. Sturgis sums of money for activity related to the transportation of weapons?
A. Yes
Q.Did Mr. Sturgis tell you where you would be going from Miami, Florida, during November of 1963, prior to the time that you traveled with him in the car?
A. Dallas, Texas.
Q. He told you that?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you arrive in Dallas during November of 1963?
A. Yes.
Q. After you arrived in Dallas, did you stay at any accommodations there?
A. Motel.
Q. While you were at the motel, did you meet anyone other than those who were in the party traveling with you from Miami to Dallas?
A. Yes.
Q. Who did you meet?
A. E. Howard Hunt.
Q. Was there anyone else who you saw or met other than Mr. Hunt?
A. Jack Ruby.
Q. Tell me the circumstances regarding your seeing E. Howard Hunt in Dallas in November of 1963.
A. There was a prearranged meeting that E. Howard Hunt deliver us sums of money for the so-called operation that I did not know its nature.
Q. Now, can you tell us in relationship to the day that President Kennedy was killed, when this meeting took place?
A. The day before.
Q. Is it your testimony that Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald is, to the best of your ability to identify him, the person who was in the motel in Dallas with you, E. Howard Hunt, and Frank Sturgis the night before the president was killed?
A. Yes.
Q. Is it your testimony today, that today's testimony is consistent with waht you said before the House Select Committee?
A. That's right.

From p. 320-22 of Plausible Denial: "Verdict as of February 6, 1985. We, the jury, find for the defendant, Liberty Lobby, and against the plaintiff, E. Howard Hunt."

"...The reporters gathered around [jury foreperson] Leslie Armstrong. What had caused her to vote for the defendant she was asked time and time again. Patiently she explained that at the outset she was, as were all the jurors, absolutely objective. None of them had any fixed opinion about either or the facts surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy."And why had she found against Hunt, she was asked...The evidence was clear, she said. The CIA had killed President Kennedy [and] Hunt had been a part of it..."

From the HSCA report, "Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy...the Committee believes that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy."

Dallas Police officer Joe Marshall Smith told Texas Observer reporter Ron Dugger, "I was approached by a woman who was yelling, 'They're shooting the president from the bushes.' When I reached the railroad yard, I caught the smell of gunpowder...I could tell it was in the air. I stopped a suspicious looking man in the area, but he presented Secret Service credentials, and I let him go. Later I regretted it, because it just didn't ring true. He was dressed like an auto mechanic, and he had dirty fingernails."

According to the Secret Service, there were no Secret Service agents on the ground in Dealey Plaza. From pp. 190-191 of Best Evidence, by David Lifton: "I talked to a nuerosurgeon friend of mine...I told him I had an unusual request. I wanted to read him a description of the damage to Kennedy's brain, because I had found it puzzling. I then read [Dr. James J.]Humes' testimony regarding the 'parasagittal laceration.' The doctor replied that he could see why I was puzzled, because I was not describing a gunshot injury...I was reading from a description of the brain after it was sectioned. His exact words were: 'That brain's been sectioned...cut into as part of the standard autopsy procedure, cuts are made in the brain to expose the interior and facilitate inspection.'"I assured the doctor that was not so, that what I read to him was the way the brain was before the autopsy [according to Dr. Humes]."'Just use common sense,' he replied...'how could a bullet create that kind of damage? You're telling me that something entered the skull at the rear, and then exited somewhere on the right-hand side. And none of it stayed inside the head? How could a missile which travels a path so that it exits on the right-hand side still create the practically straight-line damage you're describing to me, which goes all the way to the front of the head?' My doctor friend said emphatically that the damage sounded like it had been made with a knife."

Finally, I got so frustrated with the Haloscan nuts that I resorted to sarcasm: What follows is my word-for-word post:
"It must be comforting to you to believe in lies, misinformation and CIA propaganda, but that also means you're living a fairy tale...a sort of Pollyanna existence. And that is not very manly. I thought all you right-wingers were gun-toting, macho, bring-it-on types who prefer the wild-west vision of America, where the most ruthless and violent prevail. Well, that's what happened. The macho, flag-waving, take-it-or-leave-it types like you should be proud to lay claim to the CIA/military-industrial complex methods and bravado. After all, they won. They removed the president, and all their greedy, conscienceless, sociopathic defense contractors got rich on the blood of dead soldiers in Vietnam. Just like in Iraq. Halliburton KBR and Blackwater got their billions and the ruthless warmongers got their bloodlust fix. That's the American establishment you're so invested in defending; why not admit it? Frankly, it's a little bit sissy-ish of you to so stridently deny that the MIIC took over America in 1963. A real man, or at least the right wing's version of a real man, would take pride in such an achievement. The most violent should prevail. The most ruthless win. Greed is good. Bullies rule. Kennedy got what he deserved. He was a communist appeaser who wouldn't bomb Cuba, tried to get out of Vietnam, and refused to launch a nuclear first strike against the USSR. Why do you shy away from admitting this is what happened? You're bearing false witness to your fundamental precepts when you blame it all on silly little Oswald. You make the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Joint Chiefs look like passive pantywaists, who rolled over and took Kennedy's resistance like a bunch of little schoolgirls. Come on, be a real gunslinger; grow a pair like your right-wing brethren did in '63. Don't be a pansy. Be proud of your heritage. It was people who believed the same things you do who pulled this off."

This, of course, merely incensed them further, and they became more entrenched than ever in their misguided beliefs. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here. Those who believe Oswald acted alone are either paid disinformationists or nitwits. They spout their lies in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and they will not change their minds, even if a film of David Atlee Phillips, Edward Lansdale, Lucien Sartin, David Morales, George Joannides, and Curtis LeMay firing in unison from the grassy knoll surfaces.

Monday, March 9, 2009

The Basis for all Conservatism--Greed and Hypocrisy

My fellow blogger, Jack Jodell, posted a wonderful quote on his blog which reminded me of what conservatism (at least the modern version of it) is all about. It reads like this:

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest excuses in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith

Galbraith nailed it. This rapaciousness is at the heart of everything a right-winger holds sacred. Just listen to Republican mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh ranting about how Obama's stimulus package is ruining intitiative and punishing producers. He sees America as a place where it's every man for himself. We are not our brother's keepers (even though the Bible says we are and fundamentalist preachers pound the Bible at their congregations every week). And if businesses fail, workers get fired, families are foreclosed, people go bankrupt, and the nation falls into financial ruin...so what. It doesn't affect Rush and the other landed wealthy. They have theirs; let others fend for themselves.

Who are these people Limbaugh calls "producers"? They're not the rank-and-file workers because he hates blue collar laborers, especially unionists. They're not the middle class which nearly got legislated into oblivion by Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. They're not the richest of the rich...most have inherited their dough...or they have simply bought and sold enterprises and workers as if they were cattle; they have produced nothing.

"Producers" is just an empty phrase used by the wealthy trying to protect their own wealth. In fact, that is the central motivation of all conservative wealth--protect what I have. That's why we went to Vietnam...wealthy conservatives worried that yellow hordes were going to come and take what they had. That's why we went to Iraq...wealthy oil conservatives were afraid that Muslims were going to control all the oil. (There's an added bonus in making war...conservative defense contractors get richer.) That's why conservative wealth wants those who do not have their wealth to remain uninformed, divided, without representation, diverted by gadgetry, and sedated by religion. If there is no God, then the people will revolt for social justice, for then social justice is the only form of heaven one can attain. Therefore, conservatives must force God down our throats.

Yet in their heart of hearts, conservatives are evolutionists. They know it's a jungle out there and only the wealthy survive. It's always been dog-eat-dog and every man for himself in American conservative dogma. That's its ultimate hypocrisy. The conservatives who claim God is at the center of the American dream (and, by the way, the American dream for a conservative is merely to accumulate as much wealth as possible) are the same conservatives who practice Darwinism in their daily lives.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Top 10 Oscar Snubs

Looking back over the history of the Academy Awards, I find it astounding how many worthy films were overlooked. The most egregious snubs occurred in 1960, when three classic films were not even nominated, and in 1976 and 2008, when the worst of the five films nominated actually won the Best Picture Oscar. But nearly every year had its injustices, and, like any other industry, Hollywood often lets politics, cronyism, and grudges outweigh merit. Here are the Top 10 Best Picture snubs, starting with the least appalling and counting down to the most appalling:

10) Tennessee Williams' steamy stageplay, "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof," got a cinematic makeover in 1958, and its exploration of familial hypocrisy and sexual identity was ahead of its time. Burl Ives and Paul Newman were exceptional as Big Daddy and Brick; Elizabeth Taylor, though at times a little too breathless and emotional, made Maggie's sexual hunger palpable. Such memorable scenes as Big Daddy's recollection of his hobo father and Brick's trashing of his father's "worthless" valuables were ignored by the Academy, which inexplicably voted for "Gigi."

9) Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" lost to "My Fair Lady" in 1964. While I admit that "Lady" was one of the best musicals ever made, no film before or since is comparable to "Strangelove." Kubrick infused his masterpiece with exquisite black-and-white photography, black humor, timely Cold War commentary, and unforgettable performances. Peter Sellers' three characters are as distinct and original as if they'd each been played by separate actors, and the other actors--George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, and Slim Pickens--are devilishly funny. The story shatters American military mythology and presages disasters such as Vietnam and Iraq. 45 years later, the film is still relevant.

8) 1951--"An American in Paris" beat out "A Streetcar Named Desire." Sure, Gene Kelly's dance number is a classic, but "American" has not much use for plot or narrative thrust. It is an average film elevated by Kelly and his athleticism. Hollywood must have owed him one. Meanwhile, Kazan and Brando created a landmark in American cinema. Actors and directors today still refer to this movie as a kind of watershed moment in the evolution of film in this country.

7) 1963--"Tom Jones," a British film directed by Tony Richardson, was ground-breaking in many respects (the quick cuts and the liberated sexual attitude), but it beat out a superior film--"Hud." This is possibly Paul Newman's best job on screeen, and James Wong Howe's cinematography has never left me. Newman plays a compelling Texas heel as if he was born to the part. Howe's depiction of the vast barrenness of the Texas landscape is as appealing as Hud's exterior and as desolate as his soul.

6) 1952--"High Noon" lost to "The Greatest Show On Earth." Think about that for a minute. A circus movie beat out one of the all-time greats. Cecil B. DeMille directed "Greatest Show," and maybe this was Hollywood's way of giving him a Lifetime Achievement Award. But Fred Zinneman's western is more than just a shoot-em-up. It was a metaphor for personal integrity in a time when congress was on a witch hunt, persecuting individuals for their personal politics. It took bravery to stand for one's principles when everyone else was running for cover.

5) 1971--"The French Connection" won the Oscar instead of "Last Picture Show." I know I'll get arguments about this one. I admit that "Connection" was highly entertaining, and Friedkin's hard-bitten direction and thrilling car chase stand out. But I prefer the elegant, black-and-white existentialism of Bogdanovich's film. The acting was first-rate, especially Ben Johnson's subdued, sad portrayal of Old Sam. The story of a dying era, embodied in a remote, dusty Texas town, evoked that greatest of all American themes--lost innocence.

4) 2008--"Slumdog Millionnaire" won despite being the worst of the five films nominated. Readers of this blog know my disdain for this movie (see previous posts), so I won't elaborate here...except to say, it lacked the epic, heartfelt sweep of "Benjamin Button," the righteous indignation of "Milk," the credible fiction of "The Reader," and the surprising suspense of "Frost/Nixon."

3) 1939--In a strong year, "Gone With The Wind" beats out "The Wizard of Oz," "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington," "Wuthering Heights," "Of Mice and Men," "Stagecoach," and "Good-Bye Mr. Chips." Any one of the losers should have beaten the winner. See my thoughts on GWTW in a previous post.

2) 1960--Before I researched the winners and losers in the Academy archives, I made educated guesses as to the winning film in each year. "The Apartment," 1960's best film, never came to mind. A long-forgotten Billy Wilder/Jack Lemmon film, it contains plenty of overacting, contrived circumstances, and forced humor...just like the Wilder/Lemmon collaboration the year prior--"Some Like It Hot" (maybe the most overrated comedy of all time). Many believed Wilder's Oscar made up for the "Hot" snub in 1959. Also nominated in 1960 was John Wayne's "The Alamo," a bloated, heavy-handed movie that did not deserve the honor. Wayne bullied the Academy into nominating "Alamo" by taking out trade ads claiming it would be un-American to snub "Alamo." But 1960 is most notable for the classics which were not nominated--"Psycho," "Inherit The Wind," and "Spartacus."

1) 1976--The cloyingly heart-warming "Rocky" beats out four worthier films--"Taxi Driver," Martin Scorsese's brilliant exploration of alienation and violence in urban America; "Network," written by one of the great screenwriters of all time, Paddy Chayefsky; "All The President's Men," a timeless and engaging political drama; and "Bound For Glory," the underrated biopic of Woody Guthrie. Rocky's tale of the underdog making good is as old as film itself, but it does not compare with the artistry of the losers.