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Culture The Little Auteurist  From an early age, I’ve interpreted movies as mysterious manifestations of one person’s consciousness. Dear readers of TAC: Does anyone else remember the VHS cassette tape of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial that was accented with a horizontal green strip across its top? That I can distinctly recall it confirms both my aged status as a child of the Reagan era—some Googling reveals that the E.T. tape in question seems to have been released in October 1988, when I would have been five years old—and, more significantly, the decades-long presence in my imagination of the movie’s director, Steven Spielberg.  I do not intend to present myself as a prodigy, but I can say with some certainty that I would have known, even as a lad, the name “Steven Spielberg.” I am guessing I had turned six when I saw E.T., and by then, I absolutely understood the opening credits in a movie as consisting of the names of the people who made the movie. I am equally confident that I grasped, even then, that one man in particular—the fellow whose name fell beneath the words “Directed By”—had the most to do with that making. Could I comprehend the particulars of what a director did? Of course not. But I did know that movies were not real life, that someone had to make them. Otherwise, how would I have known that I wanted to make them myself? That I would have had an awareness, even a vague one, of Steven Spielberg at that age is really not so surprising. I certainly would have been able to identify the authors or illustrators of favorite children’s books. And before doubting my whiz kid status, do not discount the fact that I had a movie-mad mother who oversaw my early cinematic education. This is the mother who made her well-worn VHS tape of Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest a staple of my early childhood viewing, thus assuring my near-lifelong familiarity with the perils of Mount Rushmore and the music of Bernard Herrmann (whom I would not have been able to name but whose opening theme to North by Northwest is imprinted on my mind).   What is my point in this reminiscence? Well, I was thinking about that tape of E.T. with the release this weekend of Spielberg’s new alien epic, Disclosure Day. But my early identification of E.T. with its director anticipated my eventual vocation of film critic and the critical school to which I have stubbornly aligned myself since adolescence, auteurism—which nominates the director as the figure whose vision permeates a movie. I was a teenager when I began reading the expositors of auteurism—Andrew Sarris and Francois Truffaut and the like—but I was prepared, subconsciously, for their arguments because of my youthful viewing of the collected works of Steven Spielberg. In the years after I first saw E.T., I absolutely understood his other films to be his other films: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom—these were Spielberg productions. I was eight when I rented Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and I distinctly recall comparing and contrasting it with E.T.: themes and variations on interstellar travel. And I was probably nine when I went to the library to check out a book about Spielberg’s movies, which must have given me my first glimpses of such lesser known Spielberg films as Duel and The Sugarland Express and 1941. But having already purchased a copy of the book The Art of Alfred Hitchcock—see, my mother’s influence proved lasting—I was familiar with the concept of books that offered descriptions of, and (tantalizingly) stills from, a director’s various movies. And it seemed utterly logical to me to organize any set of movies according to their director. I may not have known of any directors besides Spielberg or Hitchcock or possibly Ron Howard (because, when not making movies, he was on reruns on TV), but what can I say? It was a start. In fact, I am thoroughly persuaded that the way I came to experience movies proves how intuitive auteurism is. To understand movies as “collaborations,” as the cliché goes, requires a great deal more brain power than to perceive them as mysterious manifestations of one person’s consciousness. Growing up, I did not know how Hitchcock made Psycho Hitchcockian—I just knew that it was. This remains my credo as I search, as a working film critic, for signs of authorial presence in films by the likes of W.S. Van Dyke, Gordon Douglas, and, in these very pages, Richard Fleischer. You might say I never grew up. Or you could also say I grew up very, very quickly. I was an auteurist at six. The post The Little Auteurist appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Massie Recognizes USS Liberty Attack. Here’s Why That Matters Nearly 60 years ago, Israel attacked the U.S. Navy ship. Finally, a congressman has paid tribute to the victims and survivors. On June 8, 1967, the American Navy’s ship the USS Liberty was attacked by Israel, killing 34 and wounding at least 171.  On June 8, 2026, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said, on the House floor,  It’s my great honor, maybe one of the biggest honors of my lifetime, to stand here on the floor and do something that’s 59 years overdue, to recognize the survivors and those who gave their lives on the USS Liberty 59 years ago today, when they were viciously attacked by IDF [Israel Defense Force] jets and also after that by torpedo boats. Massie continued, “I’m going to tell you a little bit of their story,” and he did tell their harrowing tale in the five minutes allotted to him. “And by the way, there’s at least a dozen of them here today with us. I just met with them in my office and they related this story to me,” Massie signaled to the USS Liberty survivors who were in the House chamber when he made his speech. A member of Congress paying tribute to American servicemembers isn’t exactly unusual. Still, habitually hawkish Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw of Texas took issue with Massie doing this, writing on X, “I’ve always had respect for Massie. He was always—in my opinion—wrong about his approach but he was standing on heartfelt principles and had intellectual backing. He’s a nice guy.” “But comments like this make me question his authenticity,” Crenshaw wrote, referring to Massie’s original announcement that he would honor the USS Liberty servicemen. “The USS Liberty incident is a tragic one, but it’s an incident with a clear conclusion if one uses any objective analysis of the facts. I thought Massie was capable of objective analysis.” That “clear conclusion” that Crenshaw referenced arrived at by “objective analysis” is that Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty was simply a case of mistaken identity. This is what Israel has always claimed, what it paid restitution for, and what, presumably, the U.S. also must believe. Who is Thomas Massie to believe any different? For Crenshaw, and the political establishment, particularly the foreign policy establishment, Israel can do no wrong, except perhaps by accident, and such mishaps shouldn’t be spoken of. For the U.S. political establishment, there is no genocide currently happening in Gaza at the hands of the Israel’s government even though the United Nations says there is. For the Trump administration, if Benjamin Netanyahu says Iran is about to have a nuclear weapon then that must be true, despite U.S. intelligence saying otherwise. Similarly, Israel supposedly mistakenly attacking the USS Liberty 59 years ago is a dead issue that deserves no acknowledgment whatsoever, and how dare Massie attempt to cast any light on the matter? On the House floor, Massie spoke of what the Liberty survivors told him,  The USS Liberty was one of the most technologically sophisticated ships in the Navy, but it was virtually unarmed, and it was sent to observe the Six-Day War going on in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbors. The survivors told him the day was clear and the visibility was unlimited on June 8, 1967, and thus that the American flag flying onboard could easily be seen. Massie said that, eventually, fighter jets “showed up and for 25 minutes strafed and attacked the USS Liberty. They shot rockets. They shot 30-millimeter cannons into the hull and into the ship.” “They even dropped napalm on the bridge of the ship,” he added. “This was an effort to kill everybody on board. There was no intention of taking prisoners.” Massie would add, “According to eyewitness accounts, the Israelis machine gunned the lifeboats that they put down. They machine gunned the firefighters who were on the deck.” This is a lot of information to process, but Massie was likely just scratching the surface. He would add that U.S. rescue planes originally sent to help the USS Liberty were ordered to go back. “And something happened that’s never happened before. A ship under attack, the planes were recalled,” Massie said. “This has never happened before.” “And they sat there for 17 hours. 34 dead, 174 wounded,” he noted. “Out of 294 crew members, that’s over 70 percent casualty rate, unheard of.” This was not new information. The survivors have long had many questions based on their experience, and have sought some kind of recognition and an investigation of what truly happened. On the 55th anniversary of the attack in 2022, USS Liberty Veterans Association President Larry L. Bowen said at a memorial service at Arlington Cemetery, according to Military.com, “For 55 years, we’ve tried to honor the crew, with little to no support from our government, just like the lack of support we received when we were under attack.” “Our government has tried to cover the entire attack up as a mere accident,” Bowen said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Journalist Michelle Kinnucan has brought a case on behalf of the survivors under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), seeking records that could shed light on what the U.S. government knew about the 1967 attack. In an email, Ms. Kinnucan told The American Conservative that “Rep. Massie’s decision to remember the Liberty and her gallant crew on the anniversary of Israel’s deadly combined air-naval assault was an all-too-rare act of political courage.” Kinnucan added, “His speech also underscores the need for the U.S. government to declassify all the records on the attack.” After Massie lost his recent Kentucky Republican primary due in large part to his opponent being bankrolled by powerful pro-Israel billionaires and AIPAC, he was asked about the timing of speaking out for the Liberty survivors now. Massie told the reporter, “Honestly, there’s so many things to do. I probably should have done this 14 years ago, but I didn’t know about it until I met [Liberty survivor] Phil Tourney here, who’s, I don’t know if he’s kind of the ex officio ringleader on the Capitol, at least. And he’s been relentless in talking to members of Congress and getting the story out.” “And he finally got through to me,” Massie explained. “And I was sitting over at the Capitol Hill Club last week and I told my friend, I said, ‘I would like to do something for these guys on the anniversary.’ And I didn’t know what month of the year this had happened, and he said, ‘well, you better get on it because it’s June when this happened.” “So I looked it up and it was June 8,” he noted. Massie emphasized that telling the story of the Liberty was also something of a now-or-never situation. “We’ve got over a dozen members of the crew of the USS Liberty today,” he said. “I stood on the floor of the House and honored them for the first time. They deserve this recognition. They also deserve closure. They’re not going to be with us forever.” “Think about it,” Massie said. “If in 1967 you were 21 years old, you don’t need to do the math. They’re 80 now, right?” One veteran said he was 81-years-old. Another said he was 86. Massie continued, “Some of these guys have dozens, at least one of them has dozens of pieces of shrapnel still in him. Caused a little problem at the metal detectors. But, you know, these are brave individuals. They deserve the truth. They deserve the recognition.” “The ones who have already passed deserve recognition as well,” he added. “The ones who died 59 years ago today.” General Mike Flynn shared a clip of Massie talking to the press with the survivors present and wrote, “This is no mistake. The crew of the USS Liberty. Thank you Thomas Massie for keeping this story alive.” Is Flynn not using the correct “objective analysis” cited by Crenshaw to arrive at the “clear conclusion” that this incident was simply a mistake by Israel all those years ago? Or perhaps Flynn has the credentials to know what he’s talking about. As have other high-profile government, military, and intelligence officials over the years who have challenged the official narrative. Massie listed them, “You know, the official reports say that it was a case of mistaken identity. But if you listen to Dean Rusk, former secretary of state, Richard Helms, CIA director, Bobby Ray Inman, head of the NSA, Captain Ward Boston, who was the chief counsel of the Court of Inquiry. If you listen to Admiral Moorer, who served in Pearl Harbor, commanded both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleet, and was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, none of these distinguished men think this was an accident.” One example Massie listed, Dean Rusk, who was President Lyndon Johnson’s secretary of state at the time of the attack, would say later, I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. Their sustained attack to disable and sink Liberty precluded an assault by accident or some trigger-happy local commander. Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their explanations. I didn’t believe them then, and I don’t believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous. A reporter asked the survivors standing with Massie, “What does it mean to have your story told at the Capitol? How long have you waited for this?” “59 years,” one exclaimed. “59 years,” another repeated. “We’ve been lobbying Congress for 59 years, but no member of Congress will give us the time of day.” Massie gave the time of day to these survivors, who have been desperate to be heard for a very long time but have only met with silence. Where Crenshaw and the political establishment see an absolutely closed case, these veterans actually lived it, and are obviously eager to have someone show them a smidgen of respect and to hear them. Hopefully they will be heard more now. A crack has been made in their ability to question the one foreign government that so many in the U.S. government insist you can’t. Even, apparently, if it’s in the interest and desires of a certain generation of American veterans, who should be a national priority. When Dan Crenshaw shared his X post directed at the Kentucky congressman’s post, questioning his authenticity and motives, Thomas Massie simply replied, “These men deserve to be thanked and remembered. Which part of my post do you find objectionable?” He never answered back. The post Massie Recognizes USS Liberty Attack. Here’s Why That Matters appeared first on The American Conservative.