SLOW TRAIN REDUX

Saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. It was unquestionably better, as a film, than most movies I've seen in the past few years, and it makes some gut-wrenching points about who pays the costs of war and who benefits. Paul Krugman's review is probably the best one that I've read -- if combined with Christopher Hitchens's considerably less friendly review (which I hesitate to link to since it is so idiosyncratic and distracting).

There is one troubling point in the movie that needs to be addressed, however. As Moore is building his case for Bush family -- Saudi family connections, he plays a clip from prince Bandar's interview with Larry King, in which Bandar says that the members of the bin Laden family are very nice or something like that. There were sniggers of laughter from the audience at that point. I found the hint of a marriage of left wing populism and xenophobia worrisome.

Worrisome, but not unprecedented. Remember the third stanza from Bob Dylan's 1979 Slow Train Coming?

All that foreign oil controlling American soil,
Look around you, it's just bound to make you embarrassed.
Sheiks walkin' around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings,
Deciding America's future from Amsterdam and to Paris
And there's a slow, slow train comin' up around the bend.