The Nation

Not too long ago I saw, for the first time, the 1962 version of the film Cape Fear, directed by J. Lee Thompson. (You may know the 1991 Martin Scorsese remake.) It starred two men whose casting alone would have alerted early ’60s moviegoers about where their sympathies were supposed to lie. Robert Mitchum, famous for depicting characters of pure wickedness even at the risk of his status as a leading man (think 1955’s Night of the Hunter), plays an ex-con just out of prison. He’s convinced that one man is responsible for his incarceration: a lawyer played by Gregory Peck who saw him commit the brutal murder for which he went to prison. Peck played to type, too: a heroic, sweet, selfless lawyer, tough but fair, who would never cut a corner, even to restore order to a fallen world—just like the character he played in To Kill a Mockingbird, also from 1962.

I saw Cape Fear back when we were all discussing the meaning and ethics of Zero Dark Thirty. Remember that big old debate? Some, most prominently three senators in a position to know, argued the picture was “grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the location of Osama bin Laden”—and was, thus, objectively pro-torture. Others, like Michael Moore, said the interrogation scenes were so off-putting that no one could but to conclude from them, Moore wrote, that “torture is wrong.” Others pointed out that the full plot, in its byzantine complexities, suggests that the tidbit of information that broke the case came investigators’ way before those interrogations happened—so the movie could not be read as objectively pro-torture. I disagree with both those latter two arguments. The reason is simple: ZDT is a genre piece, a police procedural, in which convention dictates that sweating the suspect—good cop, bad cop, and all that; an unpleasant job but somebody has to do it—is but one of the required stations of the cross to move the plot along to resolution, and justice.

Each day that Congress delays passing comprehensive immigration reform, an estimated 1,100 undocumented immigrants are deported, leaving spouses, siblings and even children behind. These families are torn apart despite the fact that, if the “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill or similar legislation passes, many of them could be eligible for legal status and a path to citizenship. Although President Obama has been a vocal advocate of immigration reform, his administration has deported a record 1.5 million people.

TO DO

Anorexia is the deadliest of mental illnesses. (Courtesy of Flickr, CC 2.0.)

Ever heard of thinspiration? Google it—actually, on second thought, don't, unless you want to fall down a rabbit hole into the deeply disturbing world of explicitly pro-anorexia, pro-bulimia blogs and websites.

Max Baucus talks with reporters on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Montana Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat who frequently clashed with his party’s economic populists as the Wall Street–friendly chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, will step down at the end of his current term.