Different Ways of Remembering D-Day

All the eloquence about World War II comes from Americans too young to have experienced it--Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation," Steven Spielberg'a "Saving Private Ryan"--and now Barack Obama is memorializing D-Day along with Nicolas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown et al.

The survivors are in their eighties now, but age alone does not explain how inarticulate we all are about the transformative experience of our lives. As usual, reporters are interviewing veterans, but the quotes are the same as they have been for more than half a century--less the vivid impressions of participants than the dazed wonder of witnesses, whose bodies were doing what they were told but whose minds and hearts were watching from afar.

President Obama, born decades later, sees it as "the story of America...that always gives us hope" and finds a lesson for today:

"For as we face down the hardships and struggles of our time, and arrive at that hour for which we were born, we cannot help but draw strength from those moments in history when the best among us were somehow able to swallow their fears and secure a beachhead on an unforgiving shore."

Tom Brokaw, of the generation between Obama and us, puts it even more strongly: "Their sacrifices at home and on the frontlines make our current difficulties look like a walk on the beach in comparison."

"Hardships," "struggles" and "sacrifices" put a rhetorical glaze over a nightmare of blood and body parts in which those who were there had little control over whether they lived or died.

Heroism was a matter of staying and doing what had to be done. That's a high enough bar to set for today's generations without glorifying their parents and grandparents who set that example in a time when doing anything else was unthinkable.

A Heavenly Sign for McCain?

The "Close Encounters" crowd must be beside itself as a sign from outer space appears over Arizona the night before its Senator is blessed by the results of the Pennsylvania primary.

Unexplained red lights that formed a square and then a triangle were seen floating over Phoenix late Monday.

Local Air Force Base officials denied that the UFOs were part of any of their activities as civilian airport employees reported that the lights, approximately four miles south and visible for 13 minutes, were rising as they watched.

A portent for John McCain, the former flyer who benefited greatly from Hillary Clinton's victory yesterday? The mystically inclined will have to tell us what it means, but Steven Spielberg should be standing by.

A Large-Hearted Woman

Hollywood activists are easy targets, often earnestly silly and self-congratulating, but a shining exception is Mia Farrow and her work to stop the genocide in Darfur. This week, her efforts provoked two world powers-—the People’s Republic of China and Steven Spielberg.

During the YouTube debate, Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, hemmed and hawed about diplomacy to stop the killing, clearly uneasy about a complex humanitarian crisis in far-off Africa (only Joe Biden was an angry exception) and exuded helplessness.

Not Mia Farrow. For three years, the 62-year-old waif-like actress has been devoting herself to traveling in Darfur, Chad and the Sudan, photographing and writing about the atrocities, running a web site about them and pressuring for activism to relieve the suffering.

One of her targets, Steven Spielberg, who is artistic director for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has now threatened to quit unless China, the Sudan’s largest oil customer, joins in the effort to stop the slaughter.

In the Wall Street Journal, Farrow and her son had written: "Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur's genocide?"

A diminutive woman, Farrow is an emotional powerhouse. Married to Frank Sinatra at 21, then to composer Andre Previn and after that in an all-but-married relationship with Woody Allen for almost two decades, she has fifteen children, eleven of them adopted.

She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, drawing attention to the fight to eradicate polio, which she survived as a child, and the plight of suffering children everywhere.

If there is any such person as the mythical Earth Mother, Mia Farrow is that and more.

Cancel the California Primary

Steven Spielberg has spoken. The Hillary Clinton campaign announced today that he “has chosen to endorse Clinton because of her experience and strength.”

Earlier this year, Spielberg flirted with Barack Obama as his Dreamworks partners, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, raised funds for him and Geffen raised the roof by calling the Clintons world-class liars.

But Spielberg’s long friendship with the Clintons has kept him in the fold. His emphasis on Hillary’s “strength” comes from someone whose first assignment as a fledgling director was to work with the toughest diva of them all, Joan Crawford, with whom he became lifelong friends.

Anybody who could charm “Mommie Dearest” knows a strong woman when he sees one.