First Lady Michelle Obama to Embark on National Tour Celebrating Third Anniversary of Let’s Move!

The White House

Office of the First Lady

February 27-28th, First Lady to make stops in Clinton, MS; Chicago, IL; Springfield, MO

WASHINGTON, DC – On February 27, 2013, First Lady Michelle Obama will kick off a two day nation-wide tour celebrating the third anniversary of Let’s Move!, her initiative to ensure that all our children grow up healthy and reach their full potential. The tour will showcase progress and announce new ways the country is coming together around the health of our children. Mrs. Obama will also travel to New York City this week to talk about the third anniversary of Let’s Move! on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Good Morning America and The Dr. Oz Show.

On Twitter, follow @FLOTUS and @LetsMove for live updates from the national tour and join the conversation using the hashtag #LetsMoveTour.

Mrs. Obama launched Let’s Move! on February 9, 2010 to unite the country around our kids’ health and create real support for families to live healthier lives.  Since then parents, business leaders, educators, elected officials, military leaders, chefs, physicians, athletes, childcare providers, community and faith leaders and kids themselves have stepped up to improve the health of our nation’s children.

Thanks to these efforts, families now have access to more information to make healthier decisions for their children. Young people now have more opportunities for physical activity in their communities. Food in schools has been dramatically improved.  More Americans now have access to healthy, affordable food closer to home. And the national childhood obesity rate has leveled off, and even declined in some cities and states.

More information on three years of healthy changes can be found here: http://www.letsmove.gov/blog/2013/02/08/lets-move-three-years-working-towards-healthier-generation-children

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2013

New York, NY

Mrs. Obama will be in New York City to talk about the third anniversary of Let’s Move! with several national TV outlets. Mrs. Obama will appear on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, to air the evening of Friday, February 22. The First Lady previously appeared on the show in a special comedy sketch facing off with Fallon in a lively fitness challenge taped at the White House for the second anniversary of Let’s Move!.

Mrs. Obama will also film a segment with Robin Roberts about the anniversary and a new Let’s Move! partnership that makes finding healthy, reliable recipes easy for busy parents. The interview will air on Good Morning America on Tuesday, February 26.

The First Lady, joined by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, will also tape an episode of The Dr. Oz Show to talk about how physical activity affects both children’s health and academic achievement. This episode will air on Thursday, February 28, the day Mrs. Obama and Secretary Duncan will make a major announcement about bringing physical activity back to schools.

The First Lady’s Let’s Move! national tour schedule is below:

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2013

Clinton, MS * 2:00 PM CT /3:00 PM ET * Change is Happening

First Lady Michelle Obama will join TV personality and child nutrition advocate Rachael Ray to highlight the new healthy school lunches that are now being served across the nation. Thanks to the bi-partisan Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, championed by Mrs. Obama and Ray, and signed into law by the President in 2010, the 32 million students who eat lunch provided by their school are now seeing more fruits, vegetables, low-fat or fat-free milk varieties, and whole grains; less saturated fat, trans fat, and sodium; and proper portion size on their lunch trays. Mrs. Obama and Rachael Ray will host a cooking competition between school chefs to highlight the new healthier school lunches. This portion of the visit will be pooled press and will also air on The Rachael Ray Show on March 11.

Mrs. Obama and Rachael Ray chose to highlight school lunches in Mississippi, which was rated the most obese state in the nation for several years, because the state’s childhood obesity rates have declined by 13% among elementary school students in recent years.  Mississippi is  one of several states and cities to show decreases in childhood obesity.  The Clinton Public School District in Mississippi, where the First Lady will be visiting, mobilized the entire community to make their schools healthier to support their children’s physical wellness and academic achievement. With leadership from the Superintendent, Board of Education, parents, students and community leaders, Clinton made healthy schools a top priority and implemented district-wide changes to bring physical activity and nutritious choices to students – all with no additional funding. 

Mrs. Obama and Mississippi leaders will deliver remarks to highlight the changes happening in Mississippi and across the nation. These remarks will be open press, members of the media can RSVP HERE by Friday, February 22 at 5:00 PM ET.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2013

Chicago, IL * 11:00 AM CT / 12:00 PM ET * Bringing Physical Activity Back to Schools

First Lady Michelle Obama will return to her hometown of Chicago to make a major announcement to bring physical activity back to schools. The First Lady will be joined by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, NIKE, Inc. President & CEO Mark Parker, Dominique Dawes, Gabby Douglas, Allyson Felix, Bob Harper, Bo Jackson, Colin Kaepernick, Sarah Reinertsen, Paul Rodriguez, Serena Williams, a surprise musical guest and thousands of Chicago area teachers and students at the event hosted by the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.

Studies show that kids need at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day to stay healthy, but they’re spending an average of 7 or more hours a day in front of a screen, and only 1 in 3 kids is active daily. In addition to the health benefits of an active lifestyle, research indicates that regular physical activity can improve test scores, classroom behavior and attendance. Yet, only 4% of elementary schools, 8% of middle schools and 2% of high schools currently offer daily P.E. and only 9 states require recess in elementary schools. Kids spend about half their time in schools, and the First Lady will call on leaders to work together to support schools’ efforts to ensure that all kids get the physical activity they need to stay healthy and succeed in school.

This event will be open press, members of the media can RSVP HERE by Monday, February 25 at 5:00 PM ET.

Springfield, MO * 2:25 PM CT/3:25 ET * Healthy Families, Thriving Businesses

First Lady Michelle Obama will travel to Springfield, Missouri to see changes Walmart has made to reduce sodium and added sugars from packaged food items, to make healthier food more affordable, and to include a simple front-of-package seal for identifying healthier food choices. The Walmart store Mrs. Obama will visit was built as part of the company’s commitment to Let’s Move! to open or expand up to 300 stores in communities with limited access to healthy, affordable food. This store tour will be pooled press.

Walmart is one of many businesses across the country that is making healthy changes to support their customers, because they recognize that what’s good for their customer’s health is also good for their business. Following the tour, Mrs. Obama will deliver remarks about how supporting the health of American families is also good for business, and remind consumers that it’s up to them to continue demanding healthier options.  These remarks will be open press, and members of the media can RSVP HERE by Monday, February 25 at 5:00 PM ET.

MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2013

Washington, DC * 11:10 ET * First Lady Michelle Obama Joins a Google+ Hangout

Following the national tour, First Lady Michelle Obama will continue the dialogue about healthy families online through her first Google+ Hangout. Continuing a series of “Fireside Hangouts” from the White House, Mrs. Obama will participate in a completely virtual conversation with parents and kids from around the country, moderated by Kelly Ripa, Emmy Award-winning co-host of daytime talk show LIVE with Kelly and Michael.

For a chance to join the Google+ Hangout with First Lady Michelle Obama, Google+ is inviting families to share their thoughts and questions on how we could raise healthier families and communities on the Let's Move YouTube channel. Entries must be submitted by Thursday, February 28, 2013 on the Let’s Move! YouTube page at http://www.youtube.com/letsmove.

The First Lady’s Fireside Hangout will be streamed live on LetsMove.gov, the Let’s Move! YouTube Channel and the White House Google+ Page at 11:10 a.m. ET on March 4th, 2013.

WEDNESDAY, March 6, 2013

Washington, DC * First Lady Michelle Obama Answers Questions on Twitter

First Lady Michelle Obama will answer questions about her Let’s Move! initiaive using her office’s @FLOTUS twitter account. Additional details will be released closer to the event.

For live updates from the national Let’s Move! tour, follow @FLOTUS and @LetsMove. Use the hashtag #LetsMoveTour to join the conversation.

President Obama has already reduced the deficit by over $2.5 trillion, cutting spending by over $1.4 trillion, bringing domestic discretionary spending to its lowest level as a share of the economy since the Eisenhower era.

February 21, 2013 12:53 PM EST

Enter today for a chance to join President Obama and the First Family on the South Lawn for a day of singing, dancing and egg rolling.

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States Worry About Rate Shock During Shift To New Health Law

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announce conditional federal approval of the state's plan for a health insurance exchange under the new healthcare law. Even states that back the law are worried about an initial rate jump in some premiums. (Scott Olson / Getty Images / February 18, 2013)

WASHINGTON — Less than a year before Americans will be required to have insurance under President Obama's healthcare law, many of its backers are growing increasingly anxious that premiums could jump, driven up by the legislation itself.

Higher premiums could undermine a core promise of the Affordable Care Act: to make basic health protections available to all Americans for the first time. Major rate increases also threaten to cause a backlash just as the law is supposed to deliver many key benefits Obama promised when he signed it in 2010.

"The single biggest issue we face now is affordability," said Jill Zorn, senior program officer at the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, a consumer advocacy group that championed the new law.

Administration officials have consistently downplayed the specter of rate increases and other disruptions as millions of Americans move into overhauled insurance markets in 2014. They cite provisions in the law that they say will hold down premiums, including new competitive markets they believe will make insurers offer competitive rates.

Exactly how high the premiums may go won't be known until later this year. But already, officials in states that support the law have sounded warnings that some people — mostly those who are young and do not receive coverage through their work — may see considerably higher prices than expected.

That is because of new requirements in the law aimed at making insurance more comprehensive and more affordable for older, sicker consumers.

Insurance regulators in California, which has enthusiastically embraced the law, cautioned the Obama administration in a recent letter about "rate and market disruption."

Oregon's insurance commissioner, another supporter of the law, said new regulations could push up premiums for young customers by as much as 30% next year. He urged administration officials to slow enactment of the new rules.

A leading advocate for consumers in their 20s, Young Invincibles, sounded a similar caution, suggesting in a letter to administration officials that additional steps may be needed to protect young people from rising premiums. Young Invincibles mobilized in 2010 to help pass the healthcare law.

And regulators in Massachusetts, which was the model for Obama's law, recently warned that although many residents and small businesses in the state "will see premium decreases next year, a significant number will see extreme premium increases."

The law does include many new protections for consumers. Even those now sounding alarms emphasize the importance of those provisions, including guaranteed coverage for Americans with preexisting medical conditions.

"For most people, this will be a dramatic improvement," Zorn said.

The new law also is designed to make insurance more affordable for many consumers. Millions of Americans who make less than four times the federal poverty level — or about $92,000 for a family of four — will qualify for federal subsidies to offset the cost of their premiums if they don't get insurance through employers.

But these new protections and benefits — largely intended for Americans who do not get health coverage through their employers — also threaten to drive up costs.

Next year, there will be new limits on how much insurers can charge older consumers. Insurers will be banned from charging more to women or people with illnesses.

The industry will have to offer plans that cover a new basic set of benefits, including prescription drugs, mental health, pediatric dental care and other services. And insurers will be prohibited from placing annual or lifetime limits on coverage.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that insurance premiums for those who buy coverage on their own probably will be 10% to 13% higher in 2016, in large part because health plans will be much more comprehensive. Many consumers will probably pay less, however, because of the subsidies available in the law.

The healthcare law also includes a new tax and new fees on insurance companies that the industry says it will pass on to consumers.

The provision that will prevent insurance companies from charging older consumers more than three times what they charge young consumers has generated particular concern among regulators. In many states, insurers now can charge five times as much or more to people in their 50s and 60s.

The requirement was a top priority of the influential AARP. It is designed to make insurance more affordable to a group that often most needs insurance. But as rates come down for older people, they may increase for consumers in their 20s, regulators worry.

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Latest Polling Finds Strong Support For Clean Energy And Stricter Carbon Pollution Standards

Evidence of a striking shift in public opinion has begun to crystalize over the last few months: Poll after poll is finding staunch majorities of Americans view global warming as a “serious problem” and that human activity is a major driving cause.

In defiance of received Beltway wisdom, voters even told a recent Yale poll that a candidate’s views on global warming will affect their vote, and that the issue should be a top priority for the President and the Congress. Majorities have even stated that when it comes to deficit reduction, they prefer a tax on carbon emissions to cuts in education, Social Security, Medicare, or environmental protection.

Yesterday, Pew Research released new poll research that re-confirms the trend. When asked to choose between developing “alternative sources such as wind, solar and hydrogen” and expanding “exploration and production of oil, coal and natural” gas as their preferred priority for addressing America’s energy needs, 54 percent of Americans went with alternative energy. Only 34 percent chose continued prioritization of fossil fuels. That’s a drop from the 63 percent high in 2011, but an uptick over the 52 percent response last year.

Furthermore, Independents and Democrats were largely in concert, preferring alternative energy sources by 64 and 59 percent, respectively. Only 33 percent of Republicans went with solar and wind, in contrast to the 54 percent who preferred expanded fossil fuel use. But the distance between the two positions within the Republican group was smaller than the distance in the other two collections of voters.

And that wasn’t all. 62 percent of overall voters favored “setting stricter emission limits on power plants to address climate change,” with Democrats once again taking that position by a wide margin of 72 percent, and Independents coming in at a lower-but-still-impressive 64 percent. Republicans opposed the stricter standards by a 48 percent majority, but were again much more evenly split — the minority of GOP voters who favored the emissions limits close at the majority’s heels with 42 percent.

The age divide also stood out: Voters 18 to 29 supported alternative energy by a whopping 71 percent, and it wasn’t until voters crossed the age 65 that majorities flipped in favor of coal, oil and natural gas expansion.

And if the recent behavior and pronouncements of top lawmakers are any indication, this shift in the national mood is being felt. Newly minted Secretary of State John Kerry, who will shortly decide the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline, declared in his first big speech since his confirmation that, “We as a nation must have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren: an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.” President Obama came out swinging on the issue of climate change in both his Second Inaugural address and the State of the Union speech calling for new renewable electricity and energy efficiency targets, and warming that “if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations [from climate change] I will.”

The latest signs from the White House are that Obama may very well use his executive authority to limit the carbon existing power plants may emit, on top of the regulations the Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing for new power plants.

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NJ hospitals pioneer cost-cutting model

PRINCETON, N.J. -- When a patient was moved from the intensive care unit to a regular hospital bed, it used to be routine for Dr. Anthony Granato to order 24 hours of heart monitoring, just in case.

A few years ago, his thinking changed: If the patient was in good enough condition to be out of the ICU, he would not need the extra monitoring at a cost of more than $1,000 per day.

The main reason for the shift for Granato, a pulmonary critical care doctor, is a program introduced in a dozen New Jersey hospital in 2009. It pays doctors when they save money for the hospitals as they treat patients covered by Medicare.

"We never before looked at what our costs were in the hospitals," Granato said. "Some things we always do because we always just do them."

The New Jersey program is getting a bigger test this year as part of the federal health insurance overhaul. It's one of four new payment models hospitals can try to trim their costs. While the best-known aspects of the 2010 law are its insurance provisions, the law also aims to control the cost of care. Across the U.S. economy, about $1 of every $6 spent is for health care, for an annual total approaching $3 trillion.

Private insurers have also tried new ways to compensate doctors and hospitals to encourage efficiency.

The New Jersey program launched in 2009, known as gainsharing, seems to have helped lower costs.

After three years, hospitals were saving an average of 8 to 10 percent compared with 2007, said Sean Hopkins, the senior vice president of health economics at the New Jersey Hospital Association. At Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, where Granato often treats patients, the savings were even bigger.

The average cost of caring for an admitted Medicare patient last year was $9,381 there, said Dr. Robert Coates, chief medical officer. He said that if the hospital had the same mix of patients and diagnoses using its 2007 methods, the cost would have been $12,138 per patient, or nearly one-third more.

Coates said the average stay also dropped to under 5.2 days, compared with 5.9 days using the old standards.

He said it's impossible to tell just how much of the savings could be attributed to gainsharing, but he said he believes it's been a major factor in the lower costs.

Part of the trial program involves measuring the quality of care at the participating hospitals to make sure patients' health was not sacrificed. Coates said that Hunterdon's mortality rate was stable and fewer patients were brought back within either seven or 30 days of leaving the hospital since gainsharing was put into place.

The program, still a small pilot, seeks to address a fundamental contradiction in how care is paid for under Medicare, the national health insurance system for senior citizens and people with disabilities.

In places like New Jersey, where most Medicare patients are enrolled in health management organizations, or HMOs, hospitals are paid a certain amount for each diagnosis, giving them an incentive to treat patients efficiently. By contrast, doctors are paid by the treatment and get a daily rate for each day a patient is hospitalized.

Under gainsharing, doctors are given bonuses for saving the hospital money. At Hunterdon about three-fourths of the eligible doctors joined in 2009. Collectively, they received bonuses totaling $160,000 to $200,000 every six months, Coates said. Payments averaged $3,000 to $4,000.

"It's not enough to send your child to college," Hopkins said. The amounts offset some of the payments physicians may sacrifice by using lower-cost methods _ particularly shortening stays.

Coates said that at Hunterdon, some doctors practiced as they normally did and were happy to get modest checks. But the ones who received the biggest amounts _ some got more than $10,000 _ had both high volumes of admitted patients and made concerted efforts to keep costs down.

Granato said that besides cutting back on monitoring where it was not needed, he started giving oral antibiotics instead of intravenous versions and became more conscious of length of patients' stays.

Dr. Alan Pope, the chief medical officer at Lourdes Health System, based in Camden, said his hospital is not continuing with gainsharing because it's trying another new model allowed by Medicare that pays hospitals for care of patients both during and after their hospital stays.

But he said he expects that the major shifts from having the program _ having doctors become aware of the cost of treatments and adopt more standard practices _ will continue even as the incentive goes away.

The New Jersey pilot program was allowed under 2007 Medicare rules.

In the new national iteration, participating hospitals will also see small cuts in their payments from Medicare so it's not just the doctors sharing in the savings, but also the Medicare system.

Of the 32 hospitals chosen for the national program, 29 are in New Jersey. Two of the others are in San Bernardino, Calif.

"We have one foot in the managed care world," said Steven Barron, the senior vice president of operations at Dignity Health, the company that runs the two California hospitals in the program, "and one foot in the old world." The pilot to align incentives should help bridge the gap, he said.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plan to announce in coming weeks another window for additional facilities to apply.

___

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Secretive Donors Trust Pumps Far More Money Into Climate Denial And Inaction Than Kochs And Exxon Mobil Combined

A secretive funding organization called Donors Trust spent the last decade funneling vast sums of money to an array of think tanks and activist groups, all dedicated to undermining the science of climate change and heading off the progress of climate policy. That’s according to reporting last week by The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg and a recent analysis by Greenpeace.

Working in concert with its sister organization, Donors Capital Fund, Donors Trust provided critical funding to some of the leading lights in the climate denial campaign: From 2002 to 2010, Americans for Prosperity received $11 million from Donors Trust, the Heartland Institute received $13.5 million, and the American Enterprise Institute received more than $17 million.

In 2010 alone, Donors Trust dedicated $30 million — 46 percent of all its grants to conservative causes — to climate denial groups, 12 of which owe from 30 to 70 percent of their 2010 funding to the organization. Indeed, some may not have even existed absent the largess; the Donors Fund boosted the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow from a $600,000 operation to $3 million over the years, to cite just one example.

According to Goldenberg, the total contributions of Donors Trust from 2002 to 2010 dwarfs the amounts given by Exxon Mobil or even the Koch Foundation:

By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 think tanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.

Throw in Greenpeace’s numbers for 2011, and the total contributions rise to $146 million.

Donors Trust is a form of organization called donor-advised funds, which are apparently not uncommon in America. According to Goldenberg, donor-advised funds offer wealthy donors a good deal of advantages: “They are convenient, cheaper to run than a private foundation, offer tax breaks and are lawful.” They also allow contributors an unusual level of control over where their money ends up going, an advantage that helps combat the tendency for foundation money to “drift left,” as Whitney Ball, the president and CEO of Donors Trust, put it. Finally, in the case of Donors Trust at least, there is complete anonymity for contributors:

“The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It’s also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing,” said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records.

“These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable. There is no transparency, no accountability for the money. There is no way to tell who is funding them,” Davies said.

Ball told The Guardian that while the organization’s wealthy donors run the gamut of conservative ideologies, from libertarian to social conservative, Donors Trust has allowed them to find common ground in opposing action on climate change and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. “We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,” she told The Guardian in an interview. The money “won’t be going to liberals.”

Recently, Donors Trust has been dedicating more of its resources to the relatively young Franklin Centre for Government and Public Integrity, marking a strategic shift away from activism centered in Washington, D.C., and towards efforts to scrap climate policy at the individual state level.

Here’s Goldenberg discussing her reporting with Democracy Now! and here’s an in-depth look at the Donors Trust money trail by the Center for Public Integrity, including more details on its state-level operations and a pretty slick interactive infographic.

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White House says it makes effort to grant press access to Obama

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday he is sympathetic to growing concerns about press access to President Obama.

“Having been where you are, I understand,” said Carney, a former reporter for Time magazine.

While he said he also understood why “there was a desire” to have a photo of Obama hitting the links with golf pro Tiger Woods, he explained, “The president had some down time. He was playing golf.”

Carney's comments come after the White House press corps fumed when it was denied access to Obama’s golf game with Woods on Sunday.

Carney said the White House is “making an effort to provide access” and that no one received more favorable treatment with the Obama-Woods golf outing.

Carney came to the briefing armed with statistics. He said Obama has had 35 press conferences while former President George W. Bush had only 19 press conferences at this point in his presidency.

The White House spokesman also added that Obama has done 591 interviews since taking office, including 104 with major television networks.

Asked what Obama thinks of access issues, Carney replied, “He deputizes me to have that reaction.”

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Motion Picture Association of America CEO Christopher Dodd On Why Movies Matter

On Friday, Motion Picture Association of America president and CEO Christopher Dodd took the stage at the National Press Club to talk about his first several years on the job. It was an interesting talk less because of policy issues that Dodd focused on, or that he discussed during the question-and-answer period, but because of the way he talked about movies, and what they’ve come to mean to him as art during his almost two years at the association. In arguing for movies’ unifying role in a politically divided country, and movies and television as key tools of cultural diplomacy, Dodd’s talk raised some fascinating questions for me about how we approach and analyze movies, and what levels of responsibility we want to assign an art form that claims that potential impact.

Dodd admitted that before coming to the MPAA, “As a father of two very young children, 7, now almost 8, and 11, my movie selections were limited.” But as he’s reconnected with the product that his member companies produce, Dodd made an argument that both serves to burnish the reputation of those companies, and potentially exposes them to higher standards than your average producer of widgets.

“They tell stories, stories that help us make sense of our world and ourselves…Consider the focus on racism in To Kill A Mockingbird or Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” Dodd said. “The best movies ground us in common values and ideals. America’s a big place, as we all know, with red states and blue states…But gathered together in a darkened theater, regardless of our differences, we become, in spite of our differences, one place.”

The ability of movies to achieve that unity or provoke that kind of thought doesn’t mean that all movies have to meet that aspirational standard. But it does suggest that movies that do aim to tackle big ideas deserve to be taken seriously, which means being examined critically. Often, debates over accuracy get dismissed as nit-picking, which if the only question at stake is whether a movie is a literal translation of historical events or not, is potentially fair. But the questions of why and when movies choose to diverge from the historical record is can be rich ones, particularly when those questions happen in the realm of character interpretation, as in the presentation of President Lincoln’s attitudes toward black Americans in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. As a critic who writes about the politics of entertainment, it’s been exciting to see academics, policy reporters, and political commentators enter the debates around Lincoln, Argo, Django Unchained, and Zero Dark Thirty because their desire to play on this turf is a reaffirmation of the idea that gives life to my career, even if I’m not always thrilled about how these arguments have functioned. The battles over how to interpret Zero Dark Thirty , for example, seem to me to have narrowed down to debates about whether the film is an accurate transcription of a murky historical record, rather than exploring the more revealing questions of how the script and directing choices shape the movie’s message about the immorality of torture, and why Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow felt compelled to portray the movie as an unbiased piece of reportage in the first place. That latter choice in particular says as much about the state of our debate about the use of torture as the movie itself.

If we’re going to take film seriously on the grounds that it has a unique power to influence audiences, we need to examine how well it does at getting audiences to do interpretive work—and leaving them space in which to do it—to open themselves up to new ideas, and to inhabit new perspectives. The blunt statements of opinion writing or cable news appearances, or the clear conclusion-drawing of long-form journalism aren’t necessarily the things that serve those goals well in film, where an indirect approach may lead otherwise-resistant audiences to a point they might not have accepted when presented bluntly, and manifestos can make characters seem like strawmen, rather than flesh-and-blood humans.

The prospect of using those tools abroad also invites consideration not just of movies’ content when they’re initially written and shot, but what sort of adjustments might be necessary and acceptable in order to get American movies distributed abroad. Asked about China, both a major emerging market for American movies—10 new movie screens come on line every day there—and a place with an extremely restrictive state-run approval board for film, Dodd emphasized the importance of getting American films there even if it means filmmakers have to participate in a less than democratic process that the voluntary ratings system in the United States was designed to avoid. “The idea that we can show and demonstrate who we are in a place like China, I think should be welcomed,” he said. “They deserve to see what we’re making.” The issue then becomes what they’re seeing, whether it’s a depiction of the democratic process in Lincoln, or simply what emerges as viable product in a capitalist market for movies. And while I don’t expect the basic project of seeking expanded access to the Chinese market will go away, I do imagine that the debate over the terms on which that access seems acceptable will only become sharper and more public as different versions of films show up in different markets, and streaming, licit or otherwise, makes it easier for audiences to see how what they’re getting varies from what’s available to other audiences.

And in discussing Life of Pi, Ang Lee’s Academy Award-nominated adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel, Dodd made what I think is an interesting point about the use of special effects, with potentially further-reaching implications than he intended. “Creating scenes of a boy and a live, man-eating Bengal tiger on a lifeboat would be awkward, to say the least,” Dodd said. “Twelve years ago, technology had not yet caught up with his vision. Last year, it did.” Now, it’s true that special effects have always been used to conjure to life scenarios that couldn’t possibly come to pass, whether it’s an army of Orcs or spaceships running a blockade. But often, those special effects have been used to take us away from our own world, to galaxies a long time ago and far, far away, rather than to create situations using ingredients from our own world in improbable juxtaposition. Special effects work doesn’t always have to be about something grand. They can be turned to intimate purposes, too—something Lee in particular has always been quite good at—and it’s worth remembering the small things you can do with any particular artistic tool, not just the biggest, most baroque applications.

Dodd, and other advocates for the industry, are trying to convince audiences in an age of streaming that movies must be seen on the big screen precisely because they’re spectacular. But based on his remarks at the Press Club, I wonder if Dodd might have an even better pitch in the call for communal experience. As television starts to behave more like the movies, with viewers watching shows entirely at their own pace, whether they’re streaming a show the day after it airs on Hulu, watching an episode in the week that follows off their DVR, or marathoning a program after it’s off the air on Netflix—or all at once when it’s released as an entire season—the movies could pitch themselves as the thing you have to see, if not all together, at least on their opening weekend, to be able to participate in the debate that follows. And if movies are among the most powerful pop-cultural tools that allow us to debate who we are and what we stand for, here and abroad, Dodd and his counterparts should be able to sell a particular urgency, at least to some viewers. Whether you’re off to see Daniel Day-Lewis conjure Abraham Lincoln from the grave, or gape at the spectacle of American capitalism that The Avengers represents, that vision of being together in a darkened room is just as important as the size of the screen or the scale of the spectacle projected on it.

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