In the winter of despair, it was a day of the vile and a night of the obscene In the winter of despair, it was a day of the vile and a night of the obscene I t was the worst of times and then even worse; it was the age of lies and then more lies; it was an epoch of preening and cowardice. In the winter of despair, it was a day of the vile and a night of the obscene. It was a tale of two films, one featuring the stark killing of a protester on a cold Minneapolis street and the other starring