J. Edgar and Clint Eastwood

I have seen more movies this year than in the last three combined.  Some of the movies have been disappointing (Water for Elephants), others refreshingly entertaining (The Big Year), and my latest cinematic exploration, J. Edgar, has been a thought provoking exploration of modern history.  Before I get to the point I want to make about J. Edgar it will be necessary to sweep the 500 pound gorilla out of the room.  Yes, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, John Edgar Hoover, was most likely a practicing homosexual.  Big deal.  In the words of Ethel Merman, who was both a contemporary and friend of Hoover, “Some of my best friends are homosexual.  Everybody knew about J. Edgar Hoover, but he was the best chief the FBI ever had.” 

            The real story that Director, Clint Eastwood, was trying to tell was the story of power, how power corrupts, and how there is no such thing as a benevolent dictator.  Power is a corrosive.  The more you handle it the more damage it does, possibly to others, but most certainly to you.  Hoover created an atmosphere of toxic power and it poisoned him, just as surely as hemlock.  That was Eastwood’s focus.  That is the part of the movie I find myself thinking about, talking about and writing about. 

Who would have thought that Rowdy Yates would turn out to be a closet intellectual?  For those of you not old enough for Medicare, I must tell you that Clint Eastwood has a checkered past.  He was not always the sage and sober director of sociologically significant films like Gran Torino and J. Edgar.  He started out as cowboy heart throb, Rowdy Yates, in a television series called—wait for it—Rawhide.  Now days that would be a name for a soft porn dance movie centered in Las Vegas.  But from 1959-1965 Eastwood was side kick to the lead Eric Fleming.  Eastwood, born in 1930 to a solidly middle class family in California was originally hired as, “beefcake.”  Through hard work, intelligent preparation and good instincts (what some people might call hard won talent) he worked his way up to a respected and honored member of the dramatic professions.   Eastwood is politically considered to be a Republican.  All of this seems to have created a man uniquely qualified to take on the complexities of J. Edgar Hoover. 

What makes me keep thinking about this movie is the question it raises about the use and misuse of power.  Hoover was not a bad man, and he did not have evil intent in what he did.  He saw the United States as under attack from pernicious foreign sources.  He saw himself under attack by President’s and their Attorneys General who wanted the FBI to serve political rather than judicial ends.  Hoover did a great deal of good and clearly was the catalyst that turned the FBI into the premier crime fighting agency in the world.  For all the questionable work the FBI did for Hoover, the agency has suffered its worse failures under the leadership that followed him.  Yet, we can not avoid the damning evidence of unconstitutional behavior by Mr. Hoover.  A police state shall not be allowed to exist in this country.  No man gets to create his own version of the law.  Hoover knew this, he would have fought it if it presented itself in a red wrapper; yet he became the very thing he hated.  He did so because he could.  Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  That is the real message of Eastwood’s movie.

Remember to lend power, not give it away, and keep the faith.