Why no one can remake "Night of the Living Dead"

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Lots of Democrats upset that Bill Clinton is traveling the talk show circuits saying pleasant things about John McCain. I'm not certain...and I would like anyone out there with a longer political memory than mine to comment...but don't ex-Presidents try to stay above the fray in these things? I don't have a clear memory of an ex-President trashing a candidate, or campaigning for one, really. If I'm having a brain-fart here, please help.

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I'm still troubled by McCain not looking Obama in the eye during the debate. Fear? Rage? Rudeness? Whatever it was, that was hardly the behavior of a statesman. I've never seen anything like it, and find it disturbing as hell.

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If you are using a "Triangle Meditation" technique, and have been successful so far, try separating it out into three separate triangles, one at the "Belly Brain" (2nd-3rd Chakra) one at the heart, one at the forehead. In turn, visualize the body you want (and see it performing beautifully. See it cascading with pure white or golden light), the relationships you want to nurture (every morning, I visualize my sister Joyce, Jason, Nicki, and Tananarive), and the worldly success you want (find a visualization that works: a possession, an accomplishment, a flow of money, whatever). Then, if you have been successful with this, line up the three triangles in your mind, and see if you can get light flowing through all three at the same time: in other words, does your subconscious mind believe that you can have all three at the same time, that they don't conflict with each other, or your values and beliefs.

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Sometimes, concentration will help them line up. Other times, you have to relax more, and more deeply. You will have to find this for yourself, and it is in discovering your own process through such "Complex Equivilencies" that your own individual Inner World is revealed.

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Anyone who wants to know what I mean by "sex scene" or "love scene" in movies in relation to racial imagery, watch James Bond movies. Every one of them has what I would call a love scene, even the PG movies. Bond and a woman are in privacy. They kiss or embrace, and sink to a bed or otherwise engage. Fade out. Fade in, and they are lounging about with their clothing in disarray. Or they are in bed together, draped with a towel or a blanket, kissing or cuddling. That's PG or PG-13 lovemaking conventions in film. R-rated scenes are more intense: more nudity, buttocks thrusts, oral sex simulations, and so forth. Black or Asian men don't get ANY of this.

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A recent conversation with a black director indicates the way that sex is removed from films. The executives, during development, will make promises, and glad-hand the director. Slowly, during filming or writing, sexual content is subtly disapproved of (in contrast, during development of white projects, sexual content is subtly encouraged). Unless the director has the "final cut" executives and producers will actually remove the "offending" material, citing a wide range of bullshit reasons. What's the real reason? That 33-47% percent negative perception among white Americans. That 10% disconnect I keep talking about. Even black people want to believe that it's "just Hollywood." But when we talk about it, and that protective curtain falls, I've seen the fear and depression in their eyes: the idea that they might actually be surrounded by people who think them slightly sub-human (on average) is beyond depressing. Better to think it's just a few executives.

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Democrats keep wanting Obama to "hit back harder." Please. He has to be Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby. He cannot show anger or fear or any sharp emotion, and is walking a tight-rope unlike any other national politician in the history of this country, and is doing it better than I've ever seen it done. Those who are oblivious to the realities of the racial parochialism in the human psyche spout this nonsense. And people who use the "how could racism be so bad if he's doing so well" need to get together with the people who ask "why, with the administration so unpopular and the economy crashing, isn't he up by 20 points??" and split the difference.

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This is our species, people. We are magnificent, and ignorant. Courageous, and fearful. And one of the things we do is create the concept of "exceptionalism"--that is, if we are forced to accept the positive qualities of a member of a group we dislike, instead of that raising the average assessment of that group, we do the "well, this guy/gal is just different from the others." It's a version of the thing I heard from Conservatives so often: "if they were all like you, Steve, there wouldn't be a problem!" "You're more like us than you are like them..." and so forth.

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That's what we do. So people can be bigoted against blacks, or whites, and still vote for black or white people, either on the "lesser of two evils" basis, or the "this one is different" basis. I love the number of times I've heard the "why is he black? He's half-white!" argument...as if they are totally oblivious to the "One Drop" rule that white people rammed down our throats for hundreds of years. I've heard that more in the last two years than in the entire rest of my life, combined.

And ultimately, it's a good thing. We're changing. Some of my emotional parts are stuck in the 50's and 60's. Some of it still believes that the real horror of "Night of the Living Dead" wasn't the walking corpses, but the fact that a black man was calling the shots, at the same time that a civil rights upheaval was happening in America. Note that, in the end, the black man also got all the white people killed (he was wrong...they SHOULD have gone down to the basement!). The movie has been re-made about four times, and no one can come close to that original horror, because, I think the sub-text isn't understood.

How would you do it? Maybe have a gay woman take charge. Or a Muslim.