Sometimes the greatest service you can offer someone is to remind him of his own reality.  People are prone to losing track, often because they’re so busy creating the reality they want for themselves, they forget the reality they actually exist in.

Last night, on a big screen in a grand old theater in Philadelphia that usually hosts national touring companies of Jesus Christ Superstar, filmmaker Tigre Hill did just that for convicted cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal. In the world premiere of “Barrel of a Gun,” Hill’s documentary on the December, 1981 shooting of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner by (according to the court transcripts at least) Mumia Abu Jamal, Hill builds momentum towards an unwavering assertion that Jamal set out to assassinate a police officer in efforts to carry out the radical agenda of a group he drew inspiration from - the Black Panthers.

Sound too much like a white guy trying to prey upon white fears of black political activism? (That was Sean Hannity, remember?) You’d be giving short shrift to a Philly guy, an African-American who knows his city’s mortal sins as well as its heroes and villains. And, I’m sorry, but it’s only a Philly guy who could pull this off. You have to be from Philadelphia to feel its subterfuge underneath your fingernails and in your nostrils when you breathe. You have to know this city to understand its many contradictions. You have to have been alive, even as a child as I was, during the  late 70s and early 80s when Philadelphia was a blighted city marked by the decay of its Anglo-Quaker aristocracy and the rise of political fringe groups like MOVE.

While overtly sentimental in a couple of spots, Hill’s film is sharply focused, gripping and uncompromising in its tracing of the trajectory of a young man, politically awakened by the Black Panthers (and themselves galvanized by the revolutionary “insights” of Mao, Che, Fidel, and Frantze Fanon), and motivated to uncover truths and injustices by way of his journalistic pen. But with relevant evidence and context, Hill shows that Mumia (given name Wesley Cook) drinks too much of the Huey Newton/John Africa Kool Aid and winds up blowing his job as a reporter, driving a cab and thinking of ways to carry out the revolution – namely killing a “pig.” Hill revisits the crime and reminds us of the evidence at the scene – both material and circumstantial – that convicted Mr. Cook/Jamal.

Hill’s other critical achievement in this film is his very unsentimental look at the activities of both the Panthers and, later on, MOVE, the “back to nature” group founded by John Africa that turned portions of West Philadelphia into a bleak third world reality. (Then Wilson Goode turned it into a bombed-out third world reality). There’s no romanticizing here, and it is both astonishing and troubling to flip through the photo album of violence and bitterness wrought by or inspired by these political movements. What becomes clear during these scenes of ambushed dead cops is that an entire generation – my generation – and clearly the one right behind me, has been “Che Guevarred.” We’ve grown up with a benign regard for revolutionaries and revolutions. We fantasize about them while comfortably believing they are quaint symbols of a “freedom” that we will never have to fight for. We forget the innocent lives taken and don the Che tee shirt to arrest our bourgeois sensibilities. I always wondered who got the royalties for Che merchandise. His family? Poor people, maybe? That’s where it should really go. Digression aside, Hill rigorously researches and shows us that the Panthers were not just interested in liberating African-Americans. They were bent on overthrowing the government and destroying its imperialistic institutions, one cop at a time.

It’s difficult to hear this, to read this, to believe it. Hill’s critics, or even those far enough away from the case to treat their distance as a form of expertise, will be inclined find some kind of philosophical flaw with Tigre Hill. They’ll unfurl his political leanings like dirty laundry. They’ll give him some racially charged nickname or allude to the fact that he is nothing more than an opportunist. A couple weeks before the premiere I approached an editor here in Philadelphia who runs an art, news, and culture web magazine about a story on the film. He very nonchalantly said he knew everything about the case already and I’d be hard pressed to tell him something he didn’t already know. But, he said, I was welcome to try and maybe he’d look at it. After I wrote him back and politely called him on his pile of arrogance (“This really isn’t about you,” I said, “and what you know or don’t know”) I realized this film will be drowned out, not by protesting opinions, but by the silence of the intelligentsia. They won’t dignify it with a response. They’ll let the surrogates, the caricatures, the career protesters do that for them. Or worse, Ed Asner, who tells us in the film he will never again visit Philadelphia because of this travesty of justice.

Which brings me to the third achievement of this film – the trenchant look at Mumia’s celebrity following. Mumia received the death penalty as his sentence and, as such, his cause was absorbed by death penalty abolitionists who obscured many of the facts of his case and raised his profile as a symbol of American injustice. The parade of lawyers on the prosecutor’s side had no doubt about Mumia’s guilt. There were four eyewitnesses. Mumia himself confessed while on a stretcher at Jefferson Hospital the morning it happened. (“I shot the Motherf*&ker.”) Mumia’s brother, Billy Cook, refused to ever testify on his brother’s behalf. Yet, Mumia supporters (even those who joined the bandwagon in the last 10 years or so) miraculously seem to have known more about the case than anyone else. The film reveals an ignorance and willful blindness among Mumia supporters that is often uncomfortable and embarrassing to watch. (You begin to wonder, couldn’t they have found someone else, someone more deserving of their time, to defend and march for?) Even the defense attorneys and Hollywood actors appear flaccid and meandering in their explanation for supporting Mumia. What we are watching are people, who lost their causes years ago, in search of another revolution. Their younger counterparts seem simply to be aping the behaviors of 70s radicals and mouthing the well-rehearsed phrases of a tired cause. You almost want to point them in the direction of a more worthy cause. When Danny Glover tells a small contingent at the Philadelphia Friends Society that we need to give Mumia a chance to tell his story, you wonder, what story is he talking about? The story of that night? The story of his life? Haven’t we been bludgeoned by Mumia stories already in this case? I can think of plenty of convicted murderers who never had the proverbial bullhorn as much as Mumia. And some of them probably should have.

Again, to critics, Hill will be excoriated for not adding more context to black radicalism by calling our attention to real cases of police brutality and racism. And, it’s true; he does not get mired in racial politics beyond the extremism of the Panthers and MOVE.  But the movie isn’t about racial tensions in Philadelphia. It’s about an execution instigated by politics and the 28 years of controversy that followed. Someone else will make the movie that creates the moral equivalence between killing a policeman in cold blood and suffering at the hand of some corrupt public servant. Maybe it’s already been made. The extremely rushed pro-Mumia answer to “Barrel of a Gun” screened at the same time over at the Ritz.

In recent years, both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Pennsylvania appeals court have seen to it that Mumia Abu Jamal dies in prison. There will be no new trial.  He will remain a symbol, a martyr, a cause célèbre, a “brand,” that generates revenue for some rabbit hole of political activism. The fact that he may never be executed still bothers his enemies and the supporters of Daniel Faulkner’s tireless widow, Maureen. But that ache should be lessened by Hill who, by stripping away myth and conspiracy theories and showing the de-evolution of an aspiring revolutionary, tells the story of Mumia that Mumia will never be able to tell himself – either because he is unwilling to or simply unable to remember the truth under the stagecraft of propaganda and rhetorical flame throwing. After 28 years of the churning drama and emotionalism, the story of Officer Daniel Faulkner’s murder is a simple story with an ending that is comprehensible and conclusive.

This is a fundamental change, and it has already happened. There is no turning back on this one. And frankly, I've been waiting all my life for it. Obama's candidacy is merely the final touch on a social change which has at last been realized. As a Jamaican-born, polyglot, multiracial American with a Czech mother, mulatto grandfather, and a hindu nephew and niece who speak spanish at home, I am looking forward to voting for a half-Kenyan from Hawaii who speaks fluent Indonesian.

After watching the post-debate analysis last night, I am convinced this country is simply not ready for a female president. You can put Hannity, Olberman, Matthews, Buchanan and the rest of the blowhards in a martini glass and bruise them for all I care. They'd still make a weak cocktail.

The thought that we'd recoil at the idea of a woman in the White House is astonishing to consider, since we are told women have nearly reached the zenith of their power and influence. Little girls are outnumbering boys in college classrooms. Women run Fortune 500 companies and have babies at 50. They copulate, purchase, own, drink, and work out as robustly as men.

Then what the hell happened with Hillary Clinton? Campaign mistakes aside, the media had a large hand in her demise. Republicans who obviously did not know what they were getting into by cultivating the Obama candidacy with their embarrassing gush over his rhetorical style sought to slay her too soon. And what I see as a woman who is essentially "on to" the guy trying to get one over on her, (I mean, come one, if she doesn't know how to see through a man, who does?) the rest of the electorate sees as a frustrated post-menopausal shrew who thinks she is entitled to the presidency.

Hillary does a sardonic riff on the cult of Obama and it's considered a meltdown. She tries tell a joke or wing a zinger and it's considered "desperation." (Why is it that women are always desperate and men are always "scrappy?" Oh, and we could really use some zingers in this campaign. It's been so PC that I am starting to fall asleep. Where's Lloyd Bentsen when you need him??) I have watched every pundit from left to right excoriate her. And no one is going to tell me that in some subconscious way it isn't because she is a woman. She's a woman who did, in fact, stand by husband while he humiliated himself and the nation knowing full well that anything short of a show of unity between herself and the president would further compromise the presidency itself. And, yes, it would also compromise her own ambitions. But we see now in what appears to be one of the most tragic stories in politics that Hillary did not get justice for standing with Bill. Let this be a cautionary tale to all women. You do not get rewarded for tolerating your husband's transgressions and infidelities. Victims stay victims. More on that later.

In Latin America, female heads of state are not anomalies. Female heads of state whose husbands used to hold the same job are not anomalies either. Funny, since Latin culture is so based in the power of the masculine, the macho, even the misogynist. How can it be that Chile has a female leader? Argentina too.

And then there's Germany, ladies. Angela Merkel is a ballsy woman in a pantsuit.

In a general election aganist McCain I would not have voted for Hillary simply because, ideologically, I am not with her. She is a classic liberal - expand government, raise taxes, layer legislation upon regulation like coats of paint on an old staircase. But if she had run against another GOP candidate, like...say, Huckabee or Giuiliani, I would have given her my vote on history-making grounds. Personally I think this country needs a woman there, not because women don't start wars (they can), but because somewhere over the last 20 years, women ran from the academic definition of feminism (undertandable) and adopted some kind of consumerist idea of "liberation." (bad idea)

I rooted for Hillary this primary season because I thought that McCain would have an easier time against her (and they'd likely have very civil and informative debates that would be slightly less eclipsed by the cloud of identity politics) and if, by chance, she did win in the general, I could live with it for four years.

It appears that not many people have that same kind of pragmatism. Nor do many women realize the powerful symbolism of electing a woman to the highest office in the world. It looks like women will be passed over again for something "bigger" than us once again.