the libertine

the whip sheet of the liberal party

issue ten / 07.04.2002

zero	a message from the secretary I am still so bowled over from the marvels of Dixwell Day that I have decided to make this the shortest message from the secretary ever. What can I say in the wake of such brilliant debate, such hilarious conversations, such spectacular bourbon? Let me merely tell a joke: Did you hear the one about the man who put on a clean pair of socks every day? Yeah, at the end of the week he can’t even get his shoes on. Ha! –j.s.f.
one	goings on in the liberal party 08.04.2002 / Monday / 05.30 / Lib dinner Join us in Commons under the portrait of George H.W. Bush. 08.04.2002 / Monday / 07.30 / YPU debate The Yale Political Union hosts the third of its spate of liberals tonight. The guest speaker is Gloria Feldt, the distinguished president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She will be speaking in favor of the resolution “Abstinence-only education is irresponsible.” If, unlike me, you don’t have a housing draw to attend, then join the Libs tonight in Davies Auditorium. 09.04.2002 / Tuesday / 07.30 / Lib debate This week’s resolution is “Student activism is obsolete.” Both students and faculty on campus have begun to say that organization is dead. Are they right? Was student activism merely a passing fad? Or is it still entrenched in campus life? Has it transformed? We’ll tackle these questions tonight in the very lovely Saybrook common room. Join us. 11.04.2002 / Thursday / 07.30 / YPU debate The Yale Political Union will perhaps be hosting Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco. Assuming that all the snags are worked out, I’ll send you an update with the room and the resolution.
two	green party candidate charles pillsbury Rachel Wasser, a member of the Silliberal party and the director of the Yale Greens, has asked me to inform all of you about this opportunity: “Monday 4/8, 8 PM, WLH 114, Charlie Pillsbury - the real life inspiration for Doonesbury - is speaking on why he's running for Congress on the Green Party ticket, when he has been a life-long Democrat. This should be an interesting insight into the difference between the politics of the two parties, and if you are a CT voter or are thinking about becoming one it's a chance to get a look at one of the candidates who is running for your Congressional Representative. He will be fielding questions after his talk.”
three	artist of the left: luis buñuel, filmmaker According to Roger Ebert, no major filmmaker in the first century of film has produced as distinctive and impressive an oeuvre as Spanish-turned-Mexican maverick director Luis Buñuel, born in 1900 and a witness to most of the century. Although he famously collaborated with Salvador Dalí in the immature Un Chien Andalou (Andalusian Dog), Buñuel had his chance in 1930 to break free from Surrealist dogma while still retaining his socialism-tinged, hyper-Freudian imagery. L’Age d’Or (The Golden Age), financed by a strange benefactor called the Vicomte de Noailles, shocked the world with its scathing imagistic attack of everything sacred in bourgeois Europe: a father kills his son to save face in society; a man and his mistress roll in mud; a stuffed giraffe appears out of nowhere. An underground success at first, the film soon entered the public consciousness and was savagely attacked in the right-wing press. Fascists and anti-Semites threw ink on screens and assaulted patrons in the theatres that were exhibiting the film, and Buñuel was branded as seditious; he did not make another feature film for fifteen years. In the 1950s, though, he restarted his career in Mexico, and by the early 1960s, with Viridania and Journal d’une femme de chambre (Diary of a Chambermaid), his genius began to be understood and he became a director of the highest stature. Working with some of the greatest cinematographers, editors and writers (including Jean-Claude Carrière) of the age, Buñuel was able in the space of ten years to create his three best films—indeed, three of the best films ever made. First, in 1967, was Belle de Jour, which starred Catherine DeNeuve as a bourgeois housewife who becomes a prostitute out of boredom. Strikingly original and courageously feminist, the film was a critical and a popular knockout. In 1972 came Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), his indelible magnum opus; his skewering of a middle-class dinner party continually stopped by more and more absurd interruptions—the military invades at one point—was his most publicly successful film ever, and Buñuel himself considered it his greatest. His final film was Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire), which broke the mold for romance films, not least because the titular beloved is played by two different actresses that interchange freely. In his autobiography, co-written with Carrière, he put forth explicitly his two great enemies: “God and country are an unbeatable team. They break all records for oppression and bloodshed.”
four	a final thought Sexuality is the lyricism of the masses. —Charles Baudelaire