Keep meaning to tell you about this bit of propaganda that I enjoyed…
Some anti-union group sent out a release a week or two ago, with the headline "Johnny Sack in the Voting Booth?" and a link to the above video.
My reaction was, what business is it of New York’s how I vote? Maybe when Carmine was around, yeah (not little Carmine, but old Carmine), but not any more. Johnny Sack doesn’t command that kind of respect.
Now if Tony wants to know how I vote, OK, maybe…
Sex sells; we know this. At least, it did back in MY day. (Back then, dagnabbit, there were hot, naked women in whipped cream everywhere we looked, and we liked it!) There are certain biological imperatives that dictate this. Some of us will see this as arising from God’s plan, others will see it as evidence of the power of evolutionary forces, and some of us will see it as both. There is no doubt that this beautiful, natural thing has been exploited in the service of a lot of tawdry, even perverse products and causes (Herb Alpert and Noxzema Medicated Comfort Shave not included), but the fact is pretty much undeniable.
Here’s what gets me, though — "stupid," "plastic" and "pointless" seem to be deemed just as useful in selling as sex. And this does get on my nerves.
For instance, every day I have this irritating window that pops up on my laptop (I haven’t figured out how to stop it from doing this; nor have I spent time trying) to promote the "Real Message Center," and every day it gives me a less-than-flattering picture of current popular culture. Here were the headlines today:
PHOTO GALLERY
Today’s rising stars honored at Young Hollywood Awards.CELEBS
Where in the world will Brangelina have baby number two?REALITY TV
Pressure builds as American Idol gets down to the final five.
And I find myself wondering, every time I see such an insipid come-on: Who wants to know these things? What’s your target audience? And I fear the answer is that said audience is vast, and it really, really interested in this stuff. For the purposes of writing this post, I clicked on all three above, and I have three questions:
OK, so that was more than three questions, but you get my point.
Sometimes these come-ons simply appeal to sex, offering photo galleries of certain hot, hot starlets (which is lost on me since I’ve never heard of most of them). By contrast, those items seem relatively healthy. And I did find ONE pretty cool picture on one that I DID click on. I even ended up saving the image — it was Jennifer Lopez depicted in the style of Boris Vallejo. And if I can find it, I’ll share it.
We all waste time in one way or another. Look at me — I blog. But if I’m not blogging, or rating movies on Netflix, I at least feel the call of that shelf-and-a-half of good books I’ve received as gifts and that I really MUST get to. Don’t we get enough of celebrities who are famous for being famous by osmosis at the grocery checkout line? Who would go in pursuit of more of it?
And again, I’m afraid the answer is, "Lots of people."
Robert and I were just brainstorming about his cartoon for tomorrow, and we were looking for parallel phrases, different ways of describing the same thing — specifically, the pandering proposal by John McCain (and now Hillary Clinton) to lift the federal gasoline tax for the summer.
One way of saying it was "Cheap tricks," and we were looking for another, and for some reason my brain kept going "Cheap tricks and other delights." I knew this wasn’t right, but it seemed like it was close to some phrase I half-remembered from the ’60s, and I was having a hard time coming up with the precise wording, which is unusual for me. I kept thinking, "Big Brother and the Holding Company," but I knew I didn’t have it right. So I went to Google to try to figure out the correct wording for what I was thinking of.
Turns out I not only had the "cheap tricks" part wrong, I was confusing it with another, very different, album.
Of course, the Big Brother et al. album was "Cheap Thrills," with the classic R. Crumb cover. But I kept searching the illustration for the other part, the "cheap thrills and…" But there was no "and."
So I searched again, for "and other delights." Of course. Herb Alpert. Since I was in junior high at the time, this cover was burned pretty deeply into my subconscious. In fact, now that I realize it’s that cover, I realize that the image is all tied up in my mind with the image of the "Take it off; take it all off" Noxzema girl (see video below).
But it’s kind of weird that I couldn’t conjure it up correctly without looking it up.
There was an intriguing piece today in the WSJ applying the principles of The Wisdom of Crowds to predicting the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. The logic of it was persuasive when it invoked Wikipedia, which I find to be far more useful and reliable than detractors claim (when people say it’s inaccurate, I want to know, Compared to what source of such breadth and depth?)
It was less persuasive in the preceding sentence, when it said,
This collective intelligence also accounts for why Google results,
determined by an algorithm reflecting the popularity of Web results
matching a search, are so relevant….
Today, wearing my vice president hat, I heard a presentation on new vistas of user-specific smart online advertising that the presenter described more than once in “Big Brother” terms — not as a bad thing, but in terms of Big Brother’s storied effectiveness and, I suppose, intrusiveness into private thinking patterns.
But you know what? So far, I’ve been hugely unimpressed by the effectiveness of software that is supposed to get to know me well enough that it can predict what I want. Take Netflix, for instance. I have freely given Netflix more than its share of info on my preferences. I have, for instance — and I’m embarrassed to admit this — rated 1,872 movies on the one-through-five-star system. Yes, that’s one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-two. Any time Netflix has said I need to “rate more movies” — and it seems to have an insatiable appetite in this regard — I have taken a few moments (in the evenings, of course) to oblige.
I have done this in a vain attempt to give Netflix enough info to at least make a wild guess as to what sort of movies I like. It still doesn’t seem any deeper or more intuitive than what a clerk at an ’80s-style video store might have guessed after less than a dozen rentals. Or so it seems to me.
For instance, Netflix is convinced I’ve got a fierce hankering to watch “Classics” — you know, movies with Clark Gable or Myrna Loy or whatever. Apparently, this is based on the fact that I’ve given high ratings to, for instance, “It Happened One Night” and “The Thin Man.” But of course I give those high ratings! Any literate movie fan would! That doesn’t mean I want to see them again, or that I want to see lesser films with the same actors in them! I don’t have a black-and-white jones here, people. I just acknowledge quality, and I think my judgments along those lines are fairly conventional, really. What I need you to do is extrapolate what I might like among films I haven’t seen or heard about…
Whatever. Anyway, this sort of software hasn’t figured me out, even when I’ve wanted it to. It’s more like somebody’s stupid second cousin than Big Brother.
Here’s another excellent example of the places you can go when you combine an attention deficit problem with the magic of hypertext links.
I was reading the comments on this post, and decided to answer some points Peter brought up. In particular, I took issue with this assertion:
From the problems at Corrections, Health and Human Services, Commerce
and others, the blame ALWAYS stays at the agency and never seems to
rise to the governor….
In part, I said:
As for Corrections, please tell me what problems you think there are
that stem from the administrative side. The problem with Corrections is
deep, profound, fundamental, and lies with the Legislature. It is this:
That our lawmakers embrace locking people up when it is unnecessary,
and refuse to fund Corrections sufficiently to imprison that many
people effectively and safely, much less do anything in the way of
rehabilitation.It’s an enormous waste of money to lock up nonviolent offenders,
people who pose no physical threat to the citizenry. In their own
perverse way, lawmakers agree with this equation. So they lock them up
anyway (because of some atavistic urge they have to do so), and just
don’t appropriate the money. The results are predictable.Or were you suggesting there is something wrong with what Ozmint and
Sanford have done with the situation handed them? Personally, I don’t
see any failings on their parts that pose even a measurable fraction of
the systemic problem our laws create. (Ozmint’s greatest sin is
refusing to criticize the underlying situation more forcefully and on
the record, although he has recently begun to crawl out of that shell.) Here’s a column I wrote about that problem , back in 2005. Things have not changed since then…
There’s more, but I won’t bore you further, but will move on to the fun, ADD stuff.
Looking for links to support my assertions without having to go into even greater detail (yes, my comment was, unfortunately, much, much longer than that — as was Peter’s let me hasten to add), I ran across this old post.
I found myself rather frustrated in reading the comments on that one, because … well, for the usual reason that I get frustrated. I had simply noted that something Jon Ozmint had said was like something the Captain had said in "Cool Hand Luke." I thought that was cool in and of itself. For me the connection is the thing. It releases dopamine in my brain or whatever.
But to some of my correspondents, to whom everything has to be this big black-vs.-white argument, preferably of the ideological variety, my pointing that out was some kind of huge, bleeding-heart whine for the poor criminals or something. Such people ascribe to me an affinity for relevance that I don’t possess.
So, to prove to them that it WAS like what the Captain said (yes, we’re talking Strother Martin here), I went looking for the appropriate clip, and here it is. Now this next part is not my fault, because the YouTube page suggested it under "Related videos." It’s the scene in which the girl whom Dragline dubs "Lucille" washes the car. I had to go ahead and look at it for research purposes.
And then I got to wondering about the um, actress who portrayed "Lucille" with such compelling force. Turns out her name was "Joy Harmon," and she also portrayed a 30-foot-tall woman in "Village of the Giants," which is not to be confused with the 50-foot-woman Maureen Dowd recently referred to.
Now here’s the icing, as it were. Turns out that Wikipedia refers to Joy Patricia Harmon as "a baker and former American actress." It also says she wore a bikini in the famous "Cool Hand Luke" scene, which we know she did NOT do, but then everybody says Wikipedia gets things wrong. (Come on, safety pin — Pop!)
A baker?, you’re thinking. Exactly. So I had to read a little further, and I discovered that after she retired from washing cars and being abnormally tall, Ms. Harmon started a business in beautiful downtown Burbank, and it’s called "Aunt Joy’s Cakes." Really. She started the business because "The demand for her delicious treats became too great for her to do alone in her kitchen." (You hush now; Dragline doesn’t want you talking that way about his Lucille.)
So now you know. And now you see how pointless it is to argue against government restructuring.
Charles Krauthammers’ column on our Sunday op-ed page makes reference to the Saturday Night Live skits mocking the media’s fawning over Barack Obama. An excerpt:
Real change has never been easy. . . . The status quo in Washington will fight. They will fight harder than ever to divide us and distract us with ads and attacks from now until November.
— Barack Obama,
Pennsylvania primary
night speechWith that, Obama identified the new public enemy: the "distractions" foisted upon a pliable electorate by the malevolent forces of the status quo, i.e., those who might wish to see someone else become president next January. "It’s easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit for tat that consumes our politics" and "trivializes the profound issues" that face our country, he warned sternly. These must be resisted.
Why? Because Obama understands that the real threat to his candidacy is less Hillary Clinton and John McCain than his own character and cultural attitudes. He came out of nowhere with his autobiography already written, then saw it embellished daily by the hagiographic coverage and kid-gloves questioning of a supine press. (Which is why those "Saturday Night Live" parodies were so devastatingly effective.)…
That prompted me to search for and find the skits, which I had not seen. They are funny. Not Akroyd-Belushi funny or anything, but amusing by the standards of latter-day casts. The funnier (and longer) one is the second one, at the bottom of this post.
Of course, the mockery isn’t one-sided. There’s also a funny send-up of Hillary Clinton being petulant about how Obama is treated and received. If you think that’s over-the-top, here’s a link to a real-life video in which, ironically enough, Hillary invokes the SNL skits, but only after whining in a particularly passive-aggressive manner about always having to answer the first question — acting a lot like her mimic in the skit. And I don’t think she’s kidding…
This being Sunday, I’m not going to go to all the trouble of compiling a full Top Five List on this subject. But if I did, I think this one would make the list.
Have you seen the recent Will Smith vehicle, "I Am Legend?" I did, and I suppose it was OK. But having seen it, I recalled that I had not seen the 1971 flick of which it was a remake — "The Omega Man," which in turn was a remake of Vincent Price’s "The Last Man on Earth," which was based on the 1954 Richard Matheson sci-fi novel, I Am Legend.
So in honor of the recently departed Charlton Heston, I ordered "The Omega Man," and watched it last night. It was OK, although it’s cheesy production values were approximately those of the average made-for-TV movie of the period. Overall, the Will Smith version was better, although more maudlin.
But in one respect, "Omega" beat the more recent version all hollow. In term of evoking sheer weirdness, Will Smith watching "Shrek" and maniacally reciting all the line along with the DVD doesn’t accomplish much. To get that full, apocalyptic, world-has-already-come-to-an-end feeling, you have to see the scene in which Charlton Heston goes into a movie theater, cranks up the projector and watches "Woodstock," and recites the dialogue from that. You know at that point that everything that can happen in this world has happened, and then some.
You just haven’t seen "out of character" until you’ve seen the man who was both Moses and head of the NRA channeling a blissed-out flower child asking, "If we can’t all live together and be happy… if you have to be afraid to smile at somebody… what kind of a way is that to go through this life?"
It’s a grabber in the same league as the last scene of "Planet of the Apes." It will leave you muttering, "Charlton, we hardly knew ye."
And if you don’t believe me, here’s the video. You can skip the rest of the flick; this is the good part.
Next, I’m going to order "Touch of Evil."
Get ready, ladies; the big day is coming up Saturday!
I was reminded of the advent of Husband Appreciation Day — actually, informed of it for the first time ever
— by this promotional e-mail from a Fort Mill photographer named Stephen Hollis (and Stephen, if you don’t want me sharing the photo at right, I’ll take it down, but I figured you wanted folks to see it).
This is a real holiday, ladies! At least, I can find numerous references to it on the Web, as being the third Saturday (of course; what other day could it be?) in April. I’ve been unable to find out the origin of it so far, though. (Apparently, it dates back at least to 2003.)
The picture offers some lovely gift ideas for you ladies to consider, but don’t be limited by it. There are plenty of other possibilities (many of which are way better than a lousy blog post about us). Surprise us.
Being the sophisticated sort that I am, I had remained aloof from the "excitement" of having yet another motion picture being shot here in our fair city — although I admit that perhaps even my pulse would speed up a bit if I were to run into that Jessica Biel person, assuming of course that I were half my current age (ahem). I believe I did see her in something once, and as I recall she was rather symmetrical and pneumatic and so forth.
But that hasn’t happened. However, brother blogger Adam Fogle has experienced the next best thing (if you’re willing to reach far afield) — he bumped into ‘Pee-Wee Herman’ himself.
He wrote about the experience here. From his account, he’s still holding out hope of encountering Ms. Biel, so the lad still has his priorities straight.
Today, I received this release from the Obama campaign:
Obama Statement on the
Anniversary of the Virginia Tech TragedyCHICAGO, IL –
Today Senator Obama issued the following statement on the anniversary of the
tragedy at Virginia Tech."One year after
the tragedy at Virginia Tech, families are still mourning, and our nation is
still healing. As Americans gather today in vigils and ‘lie-ins’ – or pray
silently alone – our thoughts are with those whose lives were forever changed by
the shootings. But one year later, it’s also time to reflect on how violence –
whether on campuses like Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University or on
the streets of Chicago and cities across this nation – can be prevented.
Clearly, our state and federal governments have to strengthen some laws and do a
better job enforcing others. But we all have a responsibility to do what we can
in our own lives and communities to end this kind of senseless violence. That is
still our task one year later, and it will be our ongoing task in the years to
come."###
This statement brings to mind two objections. The first is, what is this national fascination with anniversaries? Just because something was news a year ago does not make it news now. It’s not happening now. It was happening then. Aside from the entirely artificial connection of occurring on the same date on this artificial thing we call a calendar, today and that day have nothing to do with each other.
But that’s just a minor peeve. Here’s the major one: Why do we expect presidents to make statements about things that have nothing to do with the job of being president — even to the extent that people applying for the job think that they have to make such statements?
This peeve is a very old peeve for me. Or maybe not all that old. I think it reached its peak during the Clinton years. Bill Clinton was really, really into resonating to the news, the more emotional the news the better.
Mind you, I’m not blaming Mr. Clinton himself for this. He just happened to be very good at it, and to come along at the moment in history when 24/7 TV "news" was coming into its own. Remember that the 1991 Gulf War was the first CNN war (as I recall, Saddam Hussein was a big fan of the network). That’s when Wolf Blitzer became a household name. The next year, Mr. Clinton was elected, and the man matched the moment.
By the end of the decade, the assumption that the president would resonate with news that had nothing to do with him had become so assumed that by the start of the next decade, serious political observers upbraided Mr. Clinton’s successor for failing to play along. That brings me to an interesting historical artifact — a column I wrote in April 2001, at the very start of the current Bush administration.
It may for that reason seem anachronistic — particularly where I speculate that Mr. Bush is "too isolationist for my taste." This was, of course, before 9/11, and before the Iraq invasion — although I would submit that perhaps one reason Mr. Bush botched the Iraq intervention in so many ways is that he remains at heart an isolationist rather than an interventionist. (In other words, if he actually believed in nation-building, perhaps he’d be better at it.) But that’s not my point here today.
My point is that this piece reminds me of one thing I did like about Mr. Bush (sometimes it can be hard to remember such things): The fact that he doesn’t do the presidential resonance thing. Of course, this may be due to something in his character that is exactly what so many others hate about him — and remember (in spite of current political commentary militating against your remembering it), Bush-haters hated him way before Iraq.
Anyway, here’s the column:
The State
April 25, 2001, Wednesday
The president should do his own job, not everybody else’s
BYLINE: By Brad Warthen
SECTION: COMMENTARY
LENGTH: 1133 words
Exactly two years ago as I write this, I found myself a
captive audience for CNN’s breaking coverage of the shootings at Columbine High
School. I was on the stair-climber in the workout room, and somebody else had
the remote. So I got a larger dose of television news than I would normally
subject myself to.At the time, I did a column on the nature of the coverage,
which was appallingly inaccurate and careless in the rush to tell everyone
right now what had happened, even though no one really knew at the time.I left out of that column one of the things that bothered me
most: Every few minutes, the announcer would cut in to say that the White House
would have a statement from the president on the incident shortly. The tone and
context implied that this was something everyone was anxiously awaiting. I got
the impression that everyone involved thought the president would be derelict
in his duty if he didn’t hurry up and say something.And all I could think was: Why? Why would the president say
anything about this, especially at this moment? The people on the scene, the
people who know more than anybody, don’t even know how many victims there are
yet, much less how or why this happened. What in the world is the president
going to be able to add that will be relevant or helpful? I wouldn’t presume to
say anything about it. Why would the president? It’s not his job to do so any
more than it’s mine. More importantly, why does anyone expect him to say
anything?The last part was what really got me. This was, after all,
happening in Littleton, Colo., and was the responsibility of the local
authorities there. No one had suggested that there was anything about this that
bore upon the powers and duties of the federal government.Yet the nation was presumably breathless to hear what the
president had to say about it. And you know what? Those announcers were
probably right. The truth is, the nation has increasingly come to expect the
president to weigh in on such things.If something happens somewhere in the nation that makes
headlines, we expect the president to do something about it _ or at least to
say something. If there’s a flood or an earthquake, there’s a demand for the
president to drop everything and go fly over it, to let us know he cares.This makes no sense, but then, it’s not supposed to. It’s
about emotion, not reason. But for my money, there are far too many actions and
decisions taken in the public sphere on the basis of emotion already. We don’t
need any more of it.What provoked this rant? A David Broder column in The
Washington Post. Mr. Broder doesn’t usually set me off like this. He is, in
fact, the columnist I admire most. He’s calm, rational and knowledgeable. But
when he argues that George W. Bush is falling short as president because he
doesn’t have something eloquent to say about every major news development
across the nation, I just have to break with him.Dubya has a lot of faults. He’s a mushmouth. He lacks what I
consider to be an adequate respect for the environment. To the extent that he
has an overarching foreign policy vision _ and I’m not sure yet whether he does
_ I suspect that it is too isolationist for my taste. For these and other
reasons, he was not my first choice to be president.But he has his virtues as well. He seems to be a pretty fair
manager. He knows how to assemble a team and let it do its job. Vision or no, he
seems to deal effectively with specific foreign policy issues as they arise _
the confrontation with China over our surveillance aircraft being an instance
that Mr. Broder rightly cites.But my very favorite thing about President Bush is that he
seems content to be the chief executive of the federal government, and feel
absolutely no obligation to be the nation’s Chief Empathizer. No urge at all to
go on television every day and bite his lip, give a thumbs-up, shed a tear and
let us know he feels our pain.I really, really appreciate that.
And I’m not just saying this to put down Mr. Bush’s
predecessor. The greater problem lies with us _ the press and the public. We
simply expect things of a president that are not a legitimate function of the
job. After Hugo hit South Carolina in 1989, many complained indignantly that
Bush pere failed to rush right down here. Mind you, he had immediately declared
the state a disaster area."This other stuff, like flying over the damaged area,
is largely PR, although I admit good PR. But what does that accomplish?"
one politico said in defending him. "What you’re asking me is, why didn’t
Bush have a photo op?" Exactly. Bill Clinton’s weakness in that regard was
that he enjoyed the photo ops too much.If it weren’t David Broder complaining about it, I’d say
this was a case of a Washington journalist feeling a loss of his own power
because the president refuses to use his bully pulpit to make everything that
happens anywhere a federal case, thereby making Washington _ and its vast media
army _ the center of attention. With the Cold War over, Washington has had to
look in previously unexamined boxes to find issues to justify its continued
paramount importance.But this is David Broder, and I know he seriously believes
that these matters should be on the president’s priority list. I just think
he’s wrong.Sure, there are national, non-Washington stories that are
very much the president’s business, and demand that he exercise leadership
before the nation _ the Oklahoma City bombing, for instance. But that was a
deliberate attack, not only upon a federal building and the people in it but
upon the entire notion of the federal government. The Colorado shootings, as
tragic and horrific as they were, lacked that feature.Similarly, the president’s failure to step to the fore
regarding the riots in Cincinnati is by no means a serious "leadership
omission," as Mr. Broder characterized it. As he further writes, "The
incident was local." He goes on to say that "the problem of police-minority
relations is national and important."Indeed. But it is national mainly in the sense that it is a
problem in local jurisdictions all over the country. If the riots were about
what the FBI or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had done, we’d be
talking federal interest. But we’re not in this case.At some point, there will be an issue that I, too, will want
Mr. Bush to care about more than he does. But for now, I find his reticence a
welcome relief.
Oh, and back to where I started — I don’t blame Mr. Obama for trying to resonate on the anniversary of the slaughter at Blacksburg. That’s what presidential candidates are expected to do these days, especially if they are Democrats, and most especially if they are falling behind among women (yes, I think there’s a gender gap in this issue somewhere). Maybe Hillary Clinton and even John McCain have put out similar releases, and I just haven’t seen them yet.
I just don’t think they should be expected to do it.
Just got a telemarketing call that was more interesting than most. A young lady from Greenville said, "I’m calling on behalf of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’."
Well, I couldn’t hang up on her after a beginning like that. If Spidey needs me, how can I turn my back? He’s suffered enough at the hands of a fellow newspaper editor, and I am no J. Jonah Jameson.
But when she started thanking me for being such a loyal subscriber, I told her that would be my son, the serious collector. Some of his comics still come to our house from when he still lived at home, but it would be up to him whether to renew at the terrific new price they were offering.
I gave her his number. I hope it was the right thing to do. But how could it not be? I’ll bet she looks just like M.J.
Yes, it’s that time of year when I truly do what so many of you think I do every day — offer my assessment about something that I know nothing about. In this case, the NCAA basketball tournament. Here’s last year’s effort. Above is an actual, undoctored photograph of the one I completed earlier today. (To keep me honest, you might want to print this one out, if you’re really that suspicious.)
I assure you that, once again, I’ve gotten through an entire season without watching, or checking the paper for the results of, a single game. No, wait — after hearing how excited my in-laws in Memphis were about a game between U. of Memphis and Tennessee, I did check the next morning to see how it came out. But I don’t remember which one won. I’m thinking it was UT, but then how did Memphis get seeded so high if that’s so? Whatever.
And no, I’m not going to go look up the answer, which would spoil the purity of my system for making predictions. I generally give the advantage to three kinds of teams:
Oh, and I have one other rule — all things being roughly equal, bet on Duke. I did that for several rounds this year, getting them into the Final Four, but didn’t take them all the way.
Anyway, you’ll see that this year, I gave the most emphasis to Rule 1. Only time will tell if I was right.
Someone sent me a copy of that video about how fast the world is changing, and about how China has more economic growth in its little fingernail than we’re likely to have in a billion years and stuff. I’m not sure whether this was an update of the video or what (I know there are several versions of it floating out there); there was no accompanying information.
Anyway, while it was very interesting once again, it left me with a maddening question: What is that background music?
It’s from a movie, a movie I’ve seen. I’m even willing to go so far as to say I might have liked the movie. But I can’t place it.
For some reason, the music suggests something about the Scottish highlands. I picture characters running about on the heath in kilts — maybe something out of a remake of "Kidnapped" — with a wide, moving shot taken from a low-flying helicopter.
But I’m almost sure that image has nothing to do with this music. Maybe I’m thinking of a similar shot of the wilds of New Zealand from the "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. But I don’t think that’s it, either.
Normally, I can place things like this immediately, which is what is so crazy-making about this instance.
Where is it from?
Apparently, Elvis isn’t the only legendary rocker who is still with years after his reported death. In catching up on papers I missed while out of town, I find this story.
It may be true that "All Things Must Pass," but doesn’t
Carlton "Baseline Jesus" Thompson look an awful lot like someone else we once knew, circa 1971?
Why didn’t Barack Obama put it away last night? Well, you can look to all sorts of causes — he had been too far behind in Ohio and Texas to do more than almost catch Hillary Clinton; some of her criticism of his supposed lack of experience had had an effect in recent days; he was on a streak of unfavorable news that outweighed his streak of wins, etc.
But here’s an alternative theory: On the very day of the vote, the chairwoman of the S.C. Democratic Party endorsed him. Here’s what Carol Fowler said in a release from the campaign:
“South Carolina Democrats have told me repeatedly that their greatest concern is that we nominate a candidate who can win in November, and who will help us build the Democratic Party across our state. I have observed the presidential campaigns for more than a year, and there is no doubt in my mind that the Obama campaign has what it takes to bring us a Democratic president. Senator Obama and his team have already made significant organizational contributions to the SC Democratic Party, and I expect their good work to continue through the fall campaign and into his administration.
“Senator Obama has proven, through a lifetime of advocating for middle class families and workers, his unique ability to create change that matters in the lives of Americans. He has proven his ability to win in the so-called "red states" like this one, and has brought countless new voters into the process. The people of South Carolina chose change by a decisive margin on January 26th, and I’m proud to stand with voters across the country who have backed Barack Obama to win in November and to lead our country in a new direction.”
Maybe the Democrats in Ohio, unlike the Democrats in S.C., didn’t care to "nominate a candidate who can win in November." Or maybe, just maybe, it was… dare we say it … the Chicken Curse? Did a gratuitous, out-of-nowhere, five-weeks-plus-after-the-fact endorsement from a party chair from the home of the Gamecocks just have way too much bad mojo riding on it for Obama or anyone else to overcome?
The Curse has, of course, been more or less proven to have effects beyond the football field upon people or endeavors with incidental Gamecock connections — including in the realm of presidential politics. Most experts point with great confidence to the moment when Gary Hart’s chances turned to dust — it was when he decided to engage in monkey business with a former USC cheerleader.
There are those — strict constructionists, I suppose you might call them — who maintain that the curse is limited in its scope, that the cursed must have a brush with someone who has had direct contact with USC athletics, or (and these would be your hyperfundamentalists) just with the football program.
But these things are little understood by science. I think there’s more to it. If the effects can extend beyond athletics, might not the cause as well? Maybe you can get it just from association with anyone who has ever taught at USC, or driven through the campus. Or bet on a cockfight — and in South Carolina, that broadens the field considerably.
In any case, it’s not to be fooled with.
This morning on NPR, Jimmy Breslin was talking about his new book, The Good Rat. It was, of course, an interview replete with his raspy assertions that he knew what the real mob was all about, and that stuff in the movies is a lot of hooey.
Yeah, I know Breslin knows more about the mob than I do, but as an enthusiast of mob flicks, I find his attitude kind of irritating. Sure I know "The Godfather" wasn’t for real — it was less about the Mafia and more a sort of grand American morality play centering around the questions of which is right and good: a society built on laws or one on personal relationships between men. Sure, I know that The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight was probably closer to the truth, but it’s a parody, and I suspect "Mean Streets" is even closer. And "Goodfellas" closer than that.
What about "The Sopranos?" the interviewer asked. He copped a plea: "I was working doing columns on… Sunday nights. I never saw it."
Never saw it? Come ahhhn! Who, in the 21st century, is dependent on watching something when the network (is HBO technically a network? maybe not) shows it? It’s better on DVD. I, who didn’t have HBO anyway, am currently in the middle of the fourth season. Somehow, you get the idea that Mr. Breslin is so Old School, he doesn’t own a DVD player, and still lives life in real time.
But I think he’d like it if he watched it. Don’t you?
Anyway, he did admit that DeNiro is really good at playing a wise guy, so that’s something.
The other day I said something about memories of someone doing impressions of William F. Buckley, and that I thought it was David Frye. As is usually the case with such unimportant matters, I was right (note that I make no such claims to total recall on matters of any significance).
This was back in the 60s, and when I think back to my first awareness of Mr. Buckley and who he was, I see rubber-faced Frye impersonating him before the real man comes clearly into memory’s focus. I suspect that, young as I was, I may have seen the mimic before I ever did the genuine article — or at least, more often.
Either that, or it’s like Dana Carvey and George H.W. I used to entertain friends with Bush impersonations in the early ’90s (I must have done it too much, because I was once asked to do it while speaking to the Sumter Rotary), but they were really Carvey impersonations. The mimic exaggerates in ways that enable the less talented to get a tentative grip on the impression.
Anyway, since I ran across the video, I thought I’d share it. But you know what I’d really like to find? A skit Frye did on the Smothers Brothers’ show in 1968 — a spoof of the 68 elections done on the outlines of "The Sword in the Stone." Frye did all the characters, as I recall. I’d love to see that again. I’d be indebted to anyone who helped turn it up.
Tuesdays are turning out to be especially fine in the year of our Lord 2008.
Another excellent result tonight, with these two headlines topping the WashPost‘s Web site:
I’ve been following politics professionally for more than three decades, and I’ve never seen go as well as they have this year, as my greatly preferred candidates in the Republican and Democratic contests both move from success to success.
I hope I’m not jinxing anything with all this joy, but I can’t help it. I’ve never had the chance to enjoy a presidential election like this in my adult life, and may never get it again, so I’m not going to play it cool by making this world a little colder (doesn’t quite work, does it, except in the song; logically, it should be "makes the world a little bit colder by playing it cool" — oh, well; just enjoy it).
Even Mike Huckabee, a candidate I sorta like also, is playing his part by making this McCain victory worth reporting. Those wins he had over the weekend help to make tonight more enjoyable. And the closer we come to Obama passing and beating Hillary — and he’s got the Mo now — the closer we come to that no-lose situation I’ve been hoping for, which goes like this:
Either way, I get my way, but far, far more importantly, the nation is better served than it has been in many an election.
Anyway you look at it, Paul Simon’s gonna have to change the words to HIS song.
The only thing that can spoil all this is if Hillary Clinton manages to pull this thing out. That looks less and less likely, although at the same time I don’t EVER expect to see her bow out. She wants it too badly; the good of her party is nothing against that.
But that, you see, produces another wonderful result, because both of the following happen:
Readers may have noticed that I take an interest in which of my videos seem to be most popular — more of an interest than readers themselves take, judging by the few comments on my Top Five Videos posts. Fine. But maybe you’ll find this interesting.
It just occurred to me to compare videos posted at roughly the same time featuring competing presidential candidates. The results are interesting — OK, they’re interesting to me. But I’m going to share them anyway. If you’d like to look at the raw data to draw your own conclusions, my videos are listed chronologically, with the most recent first, at this link. For the most popular, with the most-watched first, click here. But here’s what I’ve noticed glancing over them just now:
That’s all for now.
Total trivia from blogs past, but it has at least symbolic meaning. Never mind why I was looking at such an old post (another one of those things where TypePad told me it was getting fresh hits, and I couldn’t figure why), but in skimming through the comments on "W is Gilligan; Al is Mr. Howell," I ran across bud’s proposed "Gilligan’s Island" cast:
Gilligan – George W. Bush
Skipper – Dick Cheney (or Karl Rove)
Mr. Howell – George H. W. Bush (or John Kerry)
Mrs. Howell – Barbara Bush (or Teresa Kerry)
Ginger – Condi Rice
Mary Anne – Hillary Clinton
Professor – Al Gore
Most of those are pretty much on-point (as long as we think of a Brian Dennehy sort of dark, menacing Skipper, rather than the Alan Hale version), except for the two unattached females on the island. Condi as Ginger? I don’t think so. Condi’s more of a female version of the Professor.
But the one that still gets me the most is Hillary as sweet, unassuming little Mary Ann? I’m just not seeing that.
bud, or anyone — care to update that cast?
