1 post tagged “movies”
This documentary seems like it might be really good. The NY Times Magazine interview definitely draws you in, anyway.
Q: Your grandfather, Barry Goldwater, was both adored and vilified during his lifetime as the rightest of the right-wing senators. Yet your new documentary, which will be shown on HBO starting Sept. 18, rehabilitates him as a kind of liberal compared with today’s conservatives.
That was part of the reason I thought a film could be done about him.
He emerges as a complex figure — a half-Jewish cowboy from Phoenix who believed the government should stay out of our hair. He thought gays should be allowed in the military and was also pro-choice.
My mom had an abortion in the mid-50’s, before she had me. She was in college, and she wanted to finish and get a degree and not have a child then. Barry felt it was a woman’s right to make that choice.
On the other hand, what does it say about the current state of American politics if Barry Goldwater is held up as a model of social enlightenment? Many people considered him a bigot because he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
That was a wart on his career, and he knew it. He was the furthest thing from a bigot there was.
Perhaps.
