I was in Kosovo and largely out of touch with things happening back here in the States.  I had no Internet, limited phone connectivity, and access only to CNN.  This means that while I was gone I received nothing in the way of useful information.  So imagine my surprise at all the news when I returned home.

Maybe you were not aware of it, but apparently the United States government now pretty much owns General Motors. I’m going to say that again, because it’s nuts – especially to those of us a certain age (44) who always saw GM as pretty much the Cadillac of American capitalism. The government owns General Motors.  Let that notion roll around in your think-gourd for a few seconds. 

I’m not really clear on the technical political science term for this phenomenon, since at UC San Diego my major was Coors Light with a minor in failed relationships, but that sounds an awful lot like socialism. 

We also seemed to have jettisoned some of our most appealing political conventions while I was gone.  Now, Kosovo and the rest of the Balkans have a rather checkered history when it comes to relationships between political competitors. Basically, until recently, the relationship was that you would kill your competitor. This is not a particularly progressive custom, and it helped make the former Yugoslavia the political, social and economic wonderland it is today.

I had a chance to talk to folks there about America and our system of resolving conflicts peacefully through the rule of law, as opposed to grabbing your AK-47 from the cache in the haystack and ethnically cleansing your neighbors.  Our Kosovar friends – and they are our friends, as the average Kosovar is considerably more pro-American than the average American – listened eagerly and expressed a firm desire to build their newly independent nation along American lines and to settle future political differences through a structured political process rather than mass murder.  Yes, a majority Muslim nation strongly believes that the United States provides the best model for its future development.  And yes, I missed that story on the CBS Evening News, too. 

So, upon departing my customs colonoscopy at LAX (My final flight did originate in Amsterdam), I was a bit disturbed to find that apparently we Americans have given up on that particular feature of our political system.  Some self-righteous creep decided that the proper way to fight against the scourge of late-term abortion was to shoot America’s most notorious late-term abortionist. And some Muslim convert decided to slaughter an American soldier, Private William Long, and wound his buddy because he does not approve of the military campaigns initiated and carried on by our elected leaders.  And a white supremacist, that I have to summon up considerable charity to label as a semi-human, decided to go on a deadly shooting spree at the Holocaust Museum. 

In just nine days, did we Americans give up on our political process?  Why didn’t I get the memo?  Now, I’m no fan of Dr. Tiller, but to focus my objections on his activities – activities that whether one likes it or not, our democratic system have decided are legal – is to take the focus off the even greater threat that such political violence poses to our nation.  This is America, and if that means anything at all it means that you don’t shoot people because you don’t agree with them. 

This is a bigger problem than the murders of a liberal icon, an American soldier and a security guard, Steven Tyrone Johns, who every American should admire.  This kind of behavior is a threat to our entire system and must be ruthlessly stamped out.  Assuming guilt, Kansas needs to send killer Scott Roeder – who is a Christian like I am a particle physicist – to meet his maker.  The same goes for that cretin who gunned down the soldiers – the sooner the good folks of Arkansas dispatch Mr. Abdulhakim Muhammad to his 72 virgins, the better.  And as for that degenerate James von Brunn, my only regret is that the museum guards shot him in his brain instead of an organ he actually used.

There’s more. In popular culture, in just nine days, all sense of decency has departed from the public sphere. Now, it’s not as though before my trip our public discourse was at the level of the Algonquin Roundtable, but in my short absence it has taken a nosedive. David Letterman is now making sex jokes about Sarah Palin’s 14 year old daughter as well as calling the Governor “slutty.”  Superclassy.  Actually, I was more surprised to discover Letterman’s still on the air than to discover he was stealing bits that would embarrass the denizens of the Daily Kos comments pages.

Then there’s David Carradine.  Let me sum that up in one word:  Whattheunholyhell!?!?!

Can’t I leave you people alone even for nine days?

Kosovar kids pose for U.S. soldiers in the American sector, June 2009

As appalling as so much of our culture can be, there are bright lights out there – I’ve just visited with some of them.  Take a moment to think of the American men and women serving all over the world, and especially those keeping the peace in Kosovo.  As often as I want to bang my head against the wall in frustration at my society, our people are helping create a vibrant multi-ethnic capitalist pro-American democracy out of a failed socialist dictatorship based on ethnic divisions.

Think about that.  Even while we fritter away the glorious nation our founding fathers bequeathed us, some of us are still striving to make their promise a reality for other peoples.  And that more than makes up for all the dumb, tacky and evil things that have happened in the last nine days.

A look at Carradine’s resume is a look at an actor who loved to work, relentlessly searched out paychecks, or both. My guess is that genetics might have played a part. His old man, John Carradine, has a list of credits longer than the end titles of a Michael Bay movie.

There are stories about David Carradine. Plenty of them. And if today’s reports prove true — if he indeed did hang himself in some Bangkok hotel room, well, obviously there was some bad news, personal demons, or a toxic mixture of both. Whatever it was, I’m not interested in hearing the story or passing it along. Unless it’s in self-defense, demystifying movie stars borders on the profane in this house.

Whatever it was, I hope he’s found peace.

And I hope that in life he found some peace in knowing he had achieved artistic immortality playing Woody Guthrie in Hal Ashby’s 1976 “Bound for Glory,” one of the finest bio-pics ever produced, thanks mainly to Carradine’s Oscar-worthy performance. (He did win a Golden Globe.)

At 147 minutes, “Bound for Glory” must’ve looked awfully difficult to pull off on paper. Essentially, it’s a character study covering just a few years in the life of a complicated, difficult, and frequently unlikable man. Thanks to Ashby’s direction, the best of his career, and Haskell Wexler’s Oscar-winning cinematography, “Glory” hits in all the places an actor can’t, but this is also the kind of film where the central performance can make or break, and Carradine makes it, and then some.

Thanks to a real screen presence and a quiet, understated performance, Carradine carries the film all on his own thin, angular frame. He inhabits most every scene and quickly makes you forget all that “Grasshopper” stuff. His Woody Guthrie is mostly silent but always fascinating; conflicted by ambitions and a loathing for what it takes to fulfill them, he’s willing to risk death in order to rouse the working man to stand up for himself, but can’t summon the everyday decency to remain faithful to his own wife. And that’s Carradine singing the songs and playing the guitar, but not one note is impersonation, just pure performance.

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Though nominated for Best Picture, “Bound for Glory” got a little lost when released, probably because it was made about five years too late. This is a 1971 film, not 1976 — the year of “Rocky” — the year before everything would change with “Star Wars.” But thanks to DVD and some love on Turner Classic Movies, “Glory” has enjoyed a bit of revival these past few years, an appreciation I think will continue to grow until the film receives a wider recognition for the timeless classic it is.

Certainly it helps that Wexler’s photography created one of the five most beautiful color films of the last thirty-five years, but having first seen it only last year, I can tell you it’s Carradine’s work that lingers long after the fade. After decades of seeing him as the guy who made an odd television show in the seventies, this one performance changed my perception entirely.

David Carradine was a great actor capable of great art and an integral part of something that will be appreciated and enjoyed long after TMZ and the like have had their fun.

Preliminary reports have the death as a suicide by hanging.

The circumstances of his death, however, should not be allowed to overshadow his accomplishments as an actor.

As the son of actor John Carradine, David Carradine both benefited from his Hollywood family connection and rebelled against the industry that employed him. He appeared in a few very good movies, such as Bound for Glory and The Long Riders, and many, many very poor ones. He played a wide variety of roles, with numerous appearances as villains, some of which were quite memorable, even in some very bad films.

What he’ll be most remembered for, however, is probably the TV series Kung Fu. The show ran from 1972 through 1975, and it reflected a big change in American attitudes. Set in the Old West, Kung Fu featured Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin monk, a serene and peaceful practitioner of Eastern religion and Chinese martial arts transplanted to the United States. Kung Fu included only a couple of minutes of physical action scenes per episode, concentrating most of the time on interesting angles on personal relationships.

In that regard, however, the show was actually quite traditional. Many excellent Western TV series tended to concentrate on personal stories instead of mere action, notably classics such as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and Have Gun, Will Travel. What Carradine and the show’s writers brought to the genre was a post-Vietnam attitude of weariness toward conflict, a yearning for peace that manifested in an oddly Christian way: a simple refusal to seek revenge for wrongs done to oneself.

In this regard, Kung Fu had the blend of traditional elements and innovation that makes for good entertainment and sometimes real art. The show was serious in its presentation of Caine’s ideas and their source in Eastern thinking, including frequent flashback scenes depicting his childhood years in a Shaolin monastery in which he learned the lessons he applies in the main story lines.

Like any conventional Western hero, Caine seeks peace for himself and others, but he always must ultimately employ violence in pursuit of that elusive goal. In that way, Kung Fu still has resonance today, for the attempt to bring peace to a violent world perpetually requires the use of force, as is evident both in national defense issues and society responses to crime. Carradine’s work in Kung Fu remains a valuable contribution to that eternal debate over when and how the use of force is justified.

–S. T. Karnick, editor of The American Culture