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After seeing “The Social Network,” it’s easy to dislike Mark Zuckerberg.

Still in his 20’s, Zuckerberg is the billionaire creator of Facebook, a massively popular website that has changed how people use the Internet. “The Social Network” chronicles the creation of Facebook and the success of  Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg). Leaving aside its harsh treatment of its lead character, “Network” is still one of the best films of the year.

“The Social Network” tells the story of a young man disillusioned by rejection and unwavering in his determination to become successful. The film begins in a bar with a conversation between Zuckerberg and his then-girlfriend. After comparing dating Zuckerberg to dating a Stairmaster, she breaks up with him. He is shocked by her cold rejection and carelessly apologizes to win her back. When that proves unsuccessful, he takes his frustrations to the Internet calling her a “bitch” on his blog. As he drinks in his dorm room that night, he single-handedly creates a website where Harvard students can judge the attractiveness of school’s female population.

After his website proves successful in a matter of hours, Zuckerberg becomes well-known on campus. He then begins work on a new social website that will eventually become known as Facebook. The battle over who invented Facebook lies at the heart of “The Social Network.” (more…)

“The Social Network” wastes no time in getting started. The film opens in the fall of 2003 with future Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), a 19 year-old Harvard student, simmering with resentment over the insecurity he feels in his relationship with the pretty young co-ed sitting directly across from him in a crowded campus bar. Using a brilliant mind and monotone voice perpetually set on superior/ironic, he methodically attempts to cut her to pieces; his controlled hostility bubbling through in the form of insults wrapped in innuendo just innocent-sounding enough to allow Zuckerberg to claim any rise on her part is an overreaction – which is also part of his cruel game. The girl about to become The One Who Got Away might attend a lesser college, but she’s no dummy and breaks up with him on the spot. Angry, humiliated, but always the narcissist, Zuckerberg marches back to his dorm, pops open a few beers, and does what bitter losers do in our Internet age: humiliates her in front of the world online.

Emboldened by alcohol and a vengeance fueled by his own palpable sense of inadequacy, Zuckerberg then goes on to use his impressive computer hacking skills, and those of his more level-headed best and only friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield), to humiliate most every girl on campus through the creation of a website that ranks their attractiveness using sorority photographs. A small Harvard scandal erupts but this only ends up being the first sordid step towards what will eventually become the multi-billion dollar sensation we know today as Facebook.

Directed with skill and precision by David Fincher and impressively scripted by “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Network” is tightly told, well paced, and quite brilliantly structured with a story that unfolds through the inter-cutting of two different lawsuit depositions and flashbacks. The acting is impeccable, especially Eisenberg’s performance as the world’s youngest up and coming billionaire and Justin Timberlake as Napster founder Sean Parker, a craven party-boy genius whose unerring sense of the big picture is frequently undone by a dark nihilistic streak. His Svengali-like influence on Zuckerberg, who like himself is driven beyond reason to settle old scores, real or imagined, will prove the old adage about gaining the world at the cost of your soul. (more…)

The Great Catholic Scandal!

Hmmm … does this really have to do with child abuse or, to use the Reagan perspective, are these arrests and possibly further imprisonments of high level Catholic authorities “bargaining chips” to convince the Catholic Church that her ban on abortion should be … how shall I say … “seriously reconsidered?”

All is politics these days … and all will be used to further the political game.

However, considering the Catholic Church’s major hand in overturning the Polish Communist State, the “game” is decidedly beyond politics.

The increasingly deadly Game has been a not-so-Cold War for quite some time.

Unfortunately, it is now not only Catholics versus Communists. (more…)

Dennis Miller and I were gabbing on his talk show about the Gates-Crowley affair and a thought occurred to me: Professor Gates needs to forgive Officer Crowley and he also needs to forgive the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.

Here’s what popped into my head on the Miller Show. At the age of five, my mother told me that if my father ever left her she would kill herself, and that if I wanted to prevent that from happening, it was my job to keep him around. This is a heavy responsibility to lay on a kid of five but I accepted it without question. I adored my mother. She was beautiful, smart, sexy and funny. She was also a self-destructive drunk who had room in her heart only for my father. He was a charming sadist with room in his heart for no-one: a hot-shot liberal who helped found the New England branch of the A.C.L.U. but in private often used the word jewbastard.

Their marriage was, to say the least, tumultuous. I had been sent by Central Casting to play the small but important role of the child. After each of their frequent and alcoholic altercations, my father would storm out of the house (actually, the rented, upper half of a house in a working class neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts…Gates-Crowley country) and head off to spend a few days with one of his girlfriends. I’d be sent after him, once actually barefoot in the snow, a sobbing ten year old, to catch up and explain how much I loved and needed him and beg him to come back. “Go home,” he’d tell me. “I’ll be back in a while.” (more…)

For those of you who don’t know, I’m from Cambridge. Born and raised there. I grew up in the Jefferson Park housing projects a stone’s throw from Harvard. Never a Dull Moment in JP I can tell you! Even today. Knew lots of CPD cops like Officer Crowley too, but never in a good way. Like when a fellow punk projects friend of mine drove a stolen car through a fence and into the deep end of the local MDC kiddie pool. They wanted us real bad that night! I was guilty as sin, too. All wet, in fact. Rode shotgun the whole way. Front row seat. Yee-ha! Island Kingdom, eat your heart out.

My whole childhood was like that. A lot of crazy stuff, a lot of running from police. Was a local sport, like train-hopping. But that’s all just the gritty side of Cambridge. And even though I’m a rank Righty today, I still love Harvard University all the way, the Square especially. It’s the Crossroads of the World. I was a total Harvard Square rat growing up. Harvard is the Bright Light of Olde Cantabrigia. Harvard was also very active in the community back then, and most likely still is today. Harvard hosted field trips to the campus from schools all over Cambridge. The Agassiz Museum was my favorite. Lots of dead bugs and dinosaur bones. That was Heaven to me. Still is. (more…)

It must be great to be a Harvard professor with a bad attitude and be friend of the President. You might get a cool job in Washington D.C. You can also pop off to a cop and then expect the most powerful community organizer in the world to get your back at his next press conference. If you happen to be an African-American Harvard professor with a bad attitude, you can also scream racism and no one left of John McCain will doubt you’re wrong.

I also wonder what kind of lawyers they’re churning out at Harvard when their most well-know alumnus starts a statement with. “I don’t know all the facts.” and then doesn’t immediately follow that with, “So I have no comment.” Instead, he goes on for two or three paragraphs giving the facts as he was told them by his friend, the Harvard professor with a bad attitude, and then reaches a conclusion that the police acted “stupidly.” (more…)

Upon his return from an overseas trip Henry Louis Gates and his driver were attempting to open the front door, which was jammed shut. A passer-by noticed the men forcing the door open and phoned the police. By the time Sergeant James Crowley, the responding police officer, arrived Gates was inside his home. Crowley asked Gates to step out of his home and show some identification, which according to Crowley, the professor produced only after accusing the police of hassling him because he is a “Black man living in America” and saying something about Crowley’s mamma. The situation continued to escalate until finally Gates was arrested for creating a public disturbance.

Unfortunately, rather than using this incident as an opportunity to have an honest and substantive conversation about stereotypes and race, racialists of every stripe have high-jacked the discussion in order to continue a one-sided discussion focusing on Black victim-hood. One such racialist is our post-racial President Barack Obama.

During his Wednesday evening press conference the President claimed that Gates was the victim of racial profiling and that the Cambridge Police “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates for breaking into his own home. Alas, the president was tall on rhetoric, but short on facts, which was surprising (or perhaps not) given that the conference questions were pre-approved and he knew to expect it. Contrary to the President’s assertion- Gates was not profiled. The police were responding to a report of a possible break-in at Gates home. Nor was Gates arrested for breaking into his own home. He was arrested for disorderly conduct. (more…)

As racial theorists like to say, “it’s all about context.”  Well, here is some recent Harvard context which may be illuminating.  I will let readers debate and decide.

Two months ago, a young African American man was shot by (allegedly) another African American man in the basement of Kirkland House, a Harvard campus dorm.  Neither was a Harvard student.

Text messages sent by the victim, along with a pound of marijuana and approximately $1000 found with his body, suggest that he was a drug dealer.  The alleged shooter, up from New York, was (and possibly remains?) the long term boyfriend of a Harvard co-ed.  Meanwhile, a second female student, who was suspected to have given the shooter a Harvard access card and had past disciplinary problems, was banned from campus and denied graduation with her class.  All of which, of course, roiled the campus and inflamed racial tensions.

The second female student told the Boston Globe, “I do believe I am being singled out…  The honest answer to that is that I’m black and I’m poor and I’m from New York and I walk a certain way and I keep my clothes a certain way… It’s something that labels me as different from everyone else.” (more…)

Reverse Discrimination, according to Wikipedia, is defined as, “the practice of favoring members of a historically disadvantaged group at the expense of members of a historically advantaged group.”  Since the 1964 Civil Rights Act when the phrase came into usage, it has been practiced in many different ways.  Some examples include employment practices and college admissions.  A more euphemistic way of saying reverse discrimination would be “affirmative action.”  However you say it, it is still discrimination plain and simple.

The United States Supreme Court tackled the issue in the seminal case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 US 265 (1978).  In that case, the Court found that race could only be one of numerous factors in determining admission to a university.  It stated that the University of California policy was unconstitutional, but that the policy used by Harvard was a valid type of affirmative action.  The result was that Mr. Bakke was admitted to medical school and became a respected physician. (more…)

The question that’s been preying on my mind is who is best suited to study those strange beings known as liberals.  It strikes me that they’d be fit subjects for psychiatrists, who might be in a position to figure out why they revere the people they do — people such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Al Gore and Ted Kennedy — men who haven’t a single notable accomplishment to their name, aside from either winning elections or eliminating them altogether.  Or perhaps it would be more appropriate for biologists to delve into the left-wing organism, and determine how it is possible that creatures without brains could have survived so long in an often hostile environment.

If you don’t believe that liberalism is a serious malady, consider that Paul Krugman of the New York Times, when addressing Sonia Sotomayor’s remark about an Hispanic woman being better qualified than a white man to be a judge, said that she was merely being entertaining.  Even if Mr. Krugman is, as his comment suggests, more easily entertained than a backward three-year-old, I have a feeling that he wasn’t nearly as forgiving when Trent Lott, on the occasion of Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday in 2002, said it was a shame that the old Dixiecrat hadn’t been elected president in 1948. (more…)

“The best football movie ever!” declared one reviewer.  “It’s the ‘Hoop Dreams’ of football!”, chirped another.  Which is why, as a lifelong devotee of independent films, documentaries, and college football, I decided to see Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, a film by Kevin Rafferty about the “epic” 1968 game between the Ivy League rivals.  Like most epic football games, the 1968 Harvard-Yale game was between two teams nobody cared about, and it ended in a tie.  As if the fact that Harvard and Yale played to a tie in 1968 wasn’t enough to drag me into the theater, this film also features Tommy Lee Jones, a guard on that 1968 Harvard squad, and Yale quarterback Brian Dowling, the inspiration for “B.D.” in the comic strip Doonesbury that was so popular back when Jimmy Carter was president.  So what’s not to like?

Cut to me in one of the comfy chairs at the Screening Lounge of the Landmark Theaters at the Westside Pavilion in West L.A last night. (Which is awesome, by the way– it really is just like a screening room.)  Things got off to a slow start when some guy, seemingly not noticing the half-empty room, informed me that I was sitting in his seat.  Like most of the other patrons, this guy gave every appearance of being either a Yale or a Harvard man. Speaking of which, does Harvard only admit pompous jackasses, or is becoming a pompous jackass a requirement for graduating from Harvard?  Ah, the eternal questions.  (Actually, that’s probably not fair.  I’m sure that plenty of normal, decent, men and women of average-sized egos have graduated from Harvard University.  I’ve just never met one.)  In any case, the seating issue was resolved, the film was soon underway and I settled in for what promised to be the cinematic experience of a lifetime. (more…)