The GOP debates could make a profit on Pay TV if they let Stephen Colbert join the panel. How much would it be worth to see him match wits with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry?
Sadly, like his other ventures, Colbert’s South Carolina candidacy is only fodder for his reality-blurring show, the perfection of a trend that began to emerge in the 1960s when TV made American life too complicated for Bob Hope-Milton Berle one-liners.
Rough sketches for the persona Colbert now presents were subjects back then for New Yorker critics such as Susan Sontag (“Notes on Camp”) and Jacob Brackman in “The Put-On” to define a slippery comedy in which the audience is in the know as a figure feigns utter seriousness while subverting a subject’s defenses.
Brackman could have been describing today’s Colbert in parsing the put-on as “it disorients the interviewee, ridicules the interview process, communicates ‘real’ ideas and feelings yet deflates the seriousness of questions and replies.”
Only clueless Al Gore has breached this implicit agreement by referring to “your character” during an interview, shocking Colbert into a “My character?” reaction.
Susan Sontag in her ambivalent book-length essay on Camp quotes Oscar Wilde, "One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art," linking it to a gay sensibility that emphasizes artifice but holding on to her own reservations about its ultimate value.
She would be in a minority today. For those who revel in being part of Colbert’s “in the know” audience, this week’s New York Times Magazine has a fascinating profile of how he came to be what is now an iconic 21st century figure.
He won’t be running for president, but he’s doing more than any of Obama’s challengers to help keep us sane.
Update: Colbert will be on ABC Sunday morning. Now that he’s turned his Super PAC over to Jon Stewart, the quasi-candidate is free to take his act beyond Comedy Central.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Yankee Acts in South Carolina
As Mitt Romney tries to seal the deal in the Palmetto state and falls in the polls, memories come back of a culture clash when I was in basic training there during World War II. How much has changed in seven decades?
The country boys in my company were excited by anything exotic and, given their lives before induction, it took little to tickle them. One day they were chortling over a guy in the next battalion named Zero.
He had been at City College a decade before me and in the 1940s was getting known in Manhattan night clubs for political satire that would later fail to amuse the House Un-American Activities Committee. The night I looked him up, Zero Mostel was on his way to becoming the pear-shaped presence that years later would charge around a Broadway stage and turn into a rhinoceros.
Sitting on his bunk, field jacket zipped to the throat, his big head seemed to be resting on a bulging bag of laundry. He was in his late twenties, but his eyes were a thousand years old. When I told him I was from the Bronx, he grabbed me as if I were a pastrami sandwich.
We went into town Saturday night to the Spartanburg USO, where local ladies entertained with doughnuts, coffee and Southern charm, and the troops entertained back however they could. When the hostesses heard Zero was a professional performer, they pushed him to the stage. I sat in the front row, happily awaiting my share of the attention he would be getting.
Zero slouched up to the microphone with a shy smile and a glint in his eye, gathered his bulk, fixed his face into a scowl and suddenly emitted the roar of a deep Southern demagogue. To this audience of dewy damsels and redneck recruits, he was offering his rendition of Senator Pellagra T. Polltax, a raging parody of the Mississippi racist, Theodore Bilbo.
As Zero flung his arms in all directions and turned up the angry rant about niggers and kikes, I slid down in my seat, looking for an exit.
By the time he finished, I was crouching near the floor. Through the startled silence, I heard the start of a low rumble, and I sprinted to the stage where Zero was beaming and bowing, grabbed his elbow and shoved him through a door toward the bus that would carry us, untarred and unfeathered, back to camp. On the ride Zero seemed relaxed, a small smile on his face. We never went to the USO again.
All these years later, Mitt Romney no doubt faces a different South Carolina, but the latest polls show him with only a slim lead there. If he can win, the nomination will undoubtedly be his but, somewhere in Comedy Heaven, I can picture Zero still smiling that knowing smile.
The country boys in my company were excited by anything exotic and, given their lives before induction, it took little to tickle them. One day they were chortling over a guy in the next battalion named Zero.
He had been at City College a decade before me and in the 1940s was getting known in Manhattan night clubs for political satire that would later fail to amuse the House Un-American Activities Committee. The night I looked him up, Zero Mostel was on his way to becoming the pear-shaped presence that years later would charge around a Broadway stage and turn into a rhinoceros.
Sitting on his bunk, field jacket zipped to the throat, his big head seemed to be resting on a bulging bag of laundry. He was in his late twenties, but his eyes were a thousand years old. When I told him I was from the Bronx, he grabbed me as if I were a pastrami sandwich.
We went into town Saturday night to the Spartanburg USO, where local ladies entertained with doughnuts, coffee and Southern charm, and the troops entertained back however they could. When the hostesses heard Zero was a professional performer, they pushed him to the stage. I sat in the front row, happily awaiting my share of the attention he would be getting.
Zero slouched up to the microphone with a shy smile and a glint in his eye, gathered his bulk, fixed his face into a scowl and suddenly emitted the roar of a deep Southern demagogue. To this audience of dewy damsels and redneck recruits, he was offering his rendition of Senator Pellagra T. Polltax, a raging parody of the Mississippi racist, Theodore Bilbo.
As Zero flung his arms in all directions and turned up the angry rant about niggers and kikes, I slid down in my seat, looking for an exit.
By the time he finished, I was crouching near the floor. Through the startled silence, I heard the start of a low rumble, and I sprinted to the stage where Zero was beaming and bowing, grabbed his elbow and shoved him through a door toward the bus that would carry us, untarred and unfeathered, back to camp. On the ride Zero seemed relaxed, a small smile on his face. We never went to the USO again.
All these years later, Mitt Romney no doubt faces a different South Carolina, but the latest polls show him with only a slim lead there. If he can win, the nomination will undoubtedly be his but, somewhere in Comedy Heaven, I can picture Zero still smiling that knowing smile.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
The Also-Rans' Anti-War Vote
After all the demographic slicing and dicing, the final primary figures disclose one New Hampshire result pundits are ignoring: The only two candidates who unequivocally want to take us of out of Afghanistan and most of the Middle East muddle now, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, together received 39.8 percent of the vote to Mitt Romney’s 39.6 percent.
In contrast, Rick Perry, who advocates going back into Iraq, got one percent as superhawks Santorum and Gingrich drew single figures.
Granted, the contest was about the economy, but both Paul and Huntsman kept pointing out that trillions being wasted on nation-building in the Middle East, to say nothing of the continuing human toll, could be better spent back home rebuilding America.
In his victory lap, Mitt Romney, having it both ways as usual, promises jobs to veterans when they come home but avoids taking any position on bringing them back, settling for jingo clichés about American power.
In the GOP fantasy world of 2012, the horse race will go on, but won’t change, as a New York Times editorial points out:
”The candidates’ economic arguments were disturbingly disconnected from economic reality. They spoke of government spending as if it were the sole cause of the federal budget deficit and cutting it the sole solution. In reality, it was tax cuts for the wealthy, an assault on social programs and a deregulatory zeal that allowed a recklessness that led to near economic collapse.
“The solution is policies that promote growth and help the middle class, not what the Republican hopefuls want. Mr. Obama said it well on Monday night: ‘We can’t go back to this brand of you’re-on-your-own economics.’ You couldn’t tell that by listening to Mr. Romney prattle about a merit-based economy and call for lowering taxes and cutting spending.”
To say nothing of completely ignoring the Middle East elephant in the room, unless Ron Paul or Jon Huntsman manages to get the Presidential nomination.
In contrast, Rick Perry, who advocates going back into Iraq, got one percent as superhawks Santorum and Gingrich drew single figures.
Granted, the contest was about the economy, but both Paul and Huntsman kept pointing out that trillions being wasted on nation-building in the Middle East, to say nothing of the continuing human toll, could be better spent back home rebuilding America.
In his victory lap, Mitt Romney, having it both ways as usual, promises jobs to veterans when they come home but avoids taking any position on bringing them back, settling for jingo clichés about American power.
In the GOP fantasy world of 2012, the horse race will go on, but won’t change, as a New York Times editorial points out:
”The candidates’ economic arguments were disturbingly disconnected from economic reality. They spoke of government spending as if it were the sole cause of the federal budget deficit and cutting it the sole solution. In reality, it was tax cuts for the wealthy, an assault on social programs and a deregulatory zeal that allowed a recklessness that led to near economic collapse.
“The solution is policies that promote growth and help the middle class, not what the Republican hopefuls want. Mr. Obama said it well on Monday night: ‘We can’t go back to this brand of you’re-on-your-own economics.’ You couldn’t tell that by listening to Mr. Romney prattle about a merit-based economy and call for lowering taxes and cutting spending.”
To say nothing of completely ignoring the Middle East elephant in the room, unless Ron Paul or Jon Huntsman manages to get the Presidential nomination.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Trampling New Hampshire
Tomorrow residents of the Granite State will be feeling like Roxie Hart after the verdict in her “Chicago” trial, abandoned and forgotten by hordes of reporters and camera crews who have besieged them over weeks for every detail of their decision-making, leanings and doubts about the candidates.
All that ends tonight when votes are counted, and as the crafty lawyer explains in the movie, the “journalists” will all be rushing off for “fresh blood on the streets” in Florida and South Carolina.
As New Hampshire loses all the attention (and money) that has washed over the state, what will we have learned? Not much beyond how crafty the candidates have been in smearing one another with one PAC hand behind their backs (as John McCain notes), while posturing to the heavens as noble statesmen with the other.
The change in this year’s tone from 2008, when McCain won, might be encapsulated by a crowd booing Rick Santorum’s mention of his name as the kind of centrist candidate of the past, like Bob Dole, they have mistakenly chosen in the past.
Meanwhile, another non-centrist, Ron Paul, cuts off CNN again as Dana Bash tries to ask him about “connecting with New Hampshire voters” who have been crowded out of a diner by reporters and cameras.
After tonight, New Hampshire streets will be back to normal, and there will be empty stools at the diners, but what we will have learned about the nation’s political mood beyond what a crush of well-heeled pols and their media counterparts can fabricate for the headlines and TV cameras?
All that ends tonight when votes are counted, and as the crafty lawyer explains in the movie, the “journalists” will all be rushing off for “fresh blood on the streets” in Florida and South Carolina.
As New Hampshire loses all the attention (and money) that has washed over the state, what will we have learned? Not much beyond how crafty the candidates have been in smearing one another with one PAC hand behind their backs (as John McCain notes), while posturing to the heavens as noble statesmen with the other.
The change in this year’s tone from 2008, when McCain won, might be encapsulated by a crowd booing Rick Santorum’s mention of his name as the kind of centrist candidate of the past, like Bob Dole, they have mistakenly chosen in the past.
Meanwhile, another non-centrist, Ron Paul, cuts off CNN again as Dana Bash tries to ask him about “connecting with New Hampshire voters” who have been crowded out of a diner by reporters and cameras.
After tonight, New Hampshire streets will be back to normal, and there will be empty stools at the diners, but what we will have learned about the nation’s political mood beyond what a crush of well-heeled pols and their media counterparts can fabricate for the headlines and TV cameras?
Monday, January 09, 2012
Obama's Two Mates
As Republicans loudly proclaim marriage as between one man and one woman, Democrats are quietly debating White House partnerships—-not only in a new insider book on the First Lady’s role but renewed discussion of Hillary Clinton joining the President on this year’s ticket.
In the book, a New York Times reporter describes Michelle Obama “as a woman who, despite her public face as ‘mom-in-chief’...has been a behind-the-scenes force helping shape her husband’s presidency as a steady reminder and custodian of the principles he touted as a candidate,” often in conflict with members of his staff.
Such speculation echoes the days when Nancy Reagan reportedly took on the same role and is less consequential to both the President’s chances for reelection and the nation’s future than the argument for Hillary Clinton running as Vice President this year.
The case for doing that is cogently made by Bill Keller, former executive editor of the Times and now an OpEd columnist:
“She would bring to this year’s campaign a missing warmth and some of the voltage that has dissipated as Obama moved from campaigning to governing. What excites is not just the prospect of having a woman a heartbeat--and four years--away from the presidency, although she certainly embodies the aspirations of many women. It’s the possibility that the first woman at the top would have qualifications so manifest that her first-ness was a secondary consideration.”
Two years ago, Bob Woodward, in another insider book, reported: “It's on the table. And some of Hillary Clinton's advisers see it as a real possibility in 2012. President Obama needs some of the women, Latinos, retirees that she did so well with during the 2008 primaries...The other interesting question is, Hillary Clinton could run in her own right in 2016 and be younger than Ronald Reagan when he was elected president.”
As GOP pygmies throw darts at the President’s foreign-policy successes, the presence on the ticket of a Secretary of State who helped implement them would be a constant reminder of how divorced from reality such blathering really is.
In private life, Barack Obama is the model for a one man-one woman union. Politically, he has the opportunity of blessing us all by taking his vows with a former adversary and worthy partner.
Update: As the President loses his ineffectual Chief of Staff William M. Daley, he takes on Jacob J. Lew, a longtime Washington hand from the Clinton days, one small sign that the White House may be moving Hillaryward.
In the book, a New York Times reporter describes Michelle Obama “as a woman who, despite her public face as ‘mom-in-chief’...has been a behind-the-scenes force helping shape her husband’s presidency as a steady reminder and custodian of the principles he touted as a candidate,” often in conflict with members of his staff.
Such speculation echoes the days when Nancy Reagan reportedly took on the same role and is less consequential to both the President’s chances for reelection and the nation’s future than the argument for Hillary Clinton running as Vice President this year.
The case for doing that is cogently made by Bill Keller, former executive editor of the Times and now an OpEd columnist:
“She would bring to this year’s campaign a missing warmth and some of the voltage that has dissipated as Obama moved from campaigning to governing. What excites is not just the prospect of having a woman a heartbeat--and four years--away from the presidency, although she certainly embodies the aspirations of many women. It’s the possibility that the first woman at the top would have qualifications so manifest that her first-ness was a secondary consideration.”
Two years ago, Bob Woodward, in another insider book, reported: “It's on the table. And some of Hillary Clinton's advisers see it as a real possibility in 2012. President Obama needs some of the women, Latinos, retirees that she did so well with during the 2008 primaries...The other interesting question is, Hillary Clinton could run in her own right in 2016 and be younger than Ronald Reagan when he was elected president.”
As GOP pygmies throw darts at the President’s foreign-policy successes, the presence on the ticket of a Secretary of State who helped implement them would be a constant reminder of how divorced from reality such blathering really is.
In private life, Barack Obama is the model for a one man-one woman union. Politically, he has the opportunity of blessing us all by taking his vows with a former adversary and worthy partner.
Update: As the President loses his ineffectual Chief of Staff William M. Daley, he takes on Jacob J. Lew, a longtime Washington hand from the Clinton days, one small sign that the White House may be moving Hillaryward.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Overdose of GOP Apocalypse
Just in time, our frayed nerves can go back tonight to the quiet and calm of “Downton Abbey” in World War I after a weekend of Republicans crying havoc over Barack Obama, pausing only in sniping at one another for restful outbursts of road rage, blaming the President for everything wrong in the 21st century world.
Robotic Mitt Romney, as befits a frontrunner, leads the pack in letting “slip the dogs of war,” stabbing today’s Caesar with a Tiffany icepick at every possible turn, claiming that the nation needs to be saved by the kind of downsizing he did at Bain and starting a trade war with China.
Newt Gingrich, who came out of Iowa snarling at Romney, backs off his attacks with sneers at Obama and a fervent defense of marriage as between one man and one woman, reminding those who have been paying attention that he has done it three times under two religious faiths.
Rick Santorum, trying to sound normal, backs off his “man on dog” rhetoric about homosexuality and, when asked what he would do if his son told him he was gay, says piously, “I would love him as much as I did the second before he said it” and urge him to be celibate.
Only Ron Paul sounds relatively honest in defending his consistent views of an alternate universe, and Jon Huntsman's interjections of sanity seem too little too late.
How much of this can human minds take? The Republican campaign has gone well beyond unleashing the dogs of class warfare but poking at them with sharp sticks. When voters register with the Grand Old Party these days, do they get injections making them immune to truth?
The U.S. economy is improving, however slowly, and President Obama is winding down Middle East wars on George W. Bush’s schedule, but the GOP wannabes are picturing America as a burning Atlanta in “Gone With the Wind,” while debate moderators spent all their time trying to get them to pummel one another rather than acknowledging American reality toward the end of Obama’s first term.
Downton Abbey’s World War I will be a haven of human decency by comparison.
Update: Romney tries to have it both ways (what else is new?), declaring in the debate that his dad, who ran an auto company and became a governor, told him to “never get involved in politics if you have to win election to pay a mortgage.”
If that sounded elitist, he tells a crowd afterward, “I was just a high school kid like everybody else with skinny legs. And, you know, I imagined that I’d be in business all my career. And somehow I backed into the chance to do this.”
In Romneyworld, if your family is rich enough, you can back in all the way to the White House on skinny legs and a mouth only loosely connected to your brain.
Robotic Mitt Romney, as befits a frontrunner, leads the pack in letting “slip the dogs of war,” stabbing today’s Caesar with a Tiffany icepick at every possible turn, claiming that the nation needs to be saved by the kind of downsizing he did at Bain and starting a trade war with China.
Newt Gingrich, who came out of Iowa snarling at Romney, backs off his attacks with sneers at Obama and a fervent defense of marriage as between one man and one woman, reminding those who have been paying attention that he has done it three times under two religious faiths.
Rick Santorum, trying to sound normal, backs off his “man on dog” rhetoric about homosexuality and, when asked what he would do if his son told him he was gay, says piously, “I would love him as much as I did the second before he said it” and urge him to be celibate.
Only Ron Paul sounds relatively honest in defending his consistent views of an alternate universe, and Jon Huntsman's interjections of sanity seem too little too late.
How much of this can human minds take? The Republican campaign has gone well beyond unleashing the dogs of class warfare but poking at them with sharp sticks. When voters register with the Grand Old Party these days, do they get injections making them immune to truth?
The U.S. economy is improving, however slowly, and President Obama is winding down Middle East wars on George W. Bush’s schedule, but the GOP wannabes are picturing America as a burning Atlanta in “Gone With the Wind,” while debate moderators spent all their time trying to get them to pummel one another rather than acknowledging American reality toward the end of Obama’s first term.
Downton Abbey’s World War I will be a haven of human decency by comparison.
Update: Romney tries to have it both ways (what else is new?), declaring in the debate that his dad, who ran an auto company and became a governor, told him to “never get involved in politics if you have to win election to pay a mortgage.”
If that sounded elitist, he tells a crowd afterward, “I was just a high school kid like everybody else with skinny legs. And, you know, I imagined that I’d be in business all my career. And somehow I backed into the chance to do this.”
In Romneyworld, if your family is rich enough, you can back in all the way to the White House on skinny legs and a mouth only loosely connected to your brain.
Saturday, January 07, 2012
Ron Paul, GOP's Satchel Paige?
With a double-header debate this weekend, memories arise of the legendary Satchel Paige who, before baseball was integrated, was the greatest pitcher in America, often starting two games in a day and was considered by Joe DiMaggio et al the best they never had to face in the big leagues during his prime.
Satchel pitched well into his sixties, famously saying, “Never look back, something might be gaining on you.”
Ron Paul, who will turn 77 in August, like Paige, is an all-star in his own Libertarian league, and the question arises: Is it too late for him to make it in the Big Show?
Between Iowa and New Hampshire, Paul was the only major contender to go home for a few days rest and his son Rand has been out stumping for him since.
To an observer particularly conscious of age, the elder Paul has seemed a little slower recently in his usually snappy debate responses.
How will he do Sunday morning after a Saturday night outing?
Update: Ron Paul did senior citizens proud this weekend, slapping down Rick Santorum and showing up the rest of the field by exemplifying a couple of Satchel’s other rules for the aging: "Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move" and "Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society—-the social ramble ain't restful."
Paul can still throw those fastballs.
Satchel pitched well into his sixties, famously saying, “Never look back, something might be gaining on you.”
Ron Paul, who will turn 77 in August, like Paige, is an all-star in his own Libertarian league, and the question arises: Is it too late for him to make it in the Big Show?
Between Iowa and New Hampshire, Paul was the only major contender to go home for a few days rest and his son Rand has been out stumping for him since.
To an observer particularly conscious of age, the elder Paul has seemed a little slower recently in his usually snappy debate responses.
How will he do Sunday morning after a Saturday night outing?
Update: Ron Paul did senior citizens proud this weekend, slapping down Rick Santorum and showing up the rest of the field by exemplifying a couple of Satchel’s other rules for the aging: "Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move" and "Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society—-the social ramble ain't restful."
Paul can still throw those fastballs.
Friday, January 06, 2012
Learning to Love Santorum
Three moderate GOP weathervanes—-George Will, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks—-are being blown by Iowa winds in Rick Santorum’s direction, but in a wobbly way.
The usually dour Will starts out almost giddy, claiming Republicans “crave fun. Supporting Mitt Romney still seems to many like a duty...Suddenly, supporting Santorum seems like a lark, partly because a week or so ago he could quit complaining about media neglect and start having fun, which is infectious.”
Backing off quickly, Will notes that the new non-Mitt “can, of course, be tenaciously serious” and ends the column wistfully, “Even if Santorum is not nominated, he might galvanize a constituency that makes him a vice presidential choice.”
Brooks, as is his wont, is more global, admitting he himself is to the “left on most social issues, like same-sex marriage and abortion,” but comes up with one of his deep-think conclusions:
“America is creative because of its moral materialism--when social values and economic ambitions get down in the mosh pit and dance. Santorum is in the fray.”
Noonan is more listless: “Rick Santorum has a lot going for him, most especially a deep identification with and caring for the working class, for the displaced and unempowered people who once worked in steel mills and factories and have seen it all go away. He is a Catholic who sees society not as an agglomeration of random Randian individualists but as part of a community...
“But his weakest spot is foreign policy, where he is not thoughtful but reflexively hard-line. It is one thing to say, as all candidates do and must, that America must be strong...It is another to be aggressive, to be too burly, to be all George W. Bush and no George H.W. Bush.”
So New Hampshire Republicans can avoid boring Mitt Romney, according to their leading pundits, by getting on the bandwagon of a fun-loving but tenaciously serious advocate of moral materialism who can’t be trusted with his finger on the nuclear trigger.
Sounds like a choice.
The usually dour Will starts out almost giddy, claiming Republicans “crave fun. Supporting Mitt Romney still seems to many like a duty...Suddenly, supporting Santorum seems like a lark, partly because a week or so ago he could quit complaining about media neglect and start having fun, which is infectious.”
Backing off quickly, Will notes that the new non-Mitt “can, of course, be tenaciously serious” and ends the column wistfully, “Even if Santorum is not nominated, he might galvanize a constituency that makes him a vice presidential choice.”
Brooks, as is his wont, is more global, admitting he himself is to the “left on most social issues, like same-sex marriage and abortion,” but comes up with one of his deep-think conclusions:
“America is creative because of its moral materialism--when social values and economic ambitions get down in the mosh pit and dance. Santorum is in the fray.”
Noonan is more listless: “Rick Santorum has a lot going for him, most especially a deep identification with and caring for the working class, for the displaced and unempowered people who once worked in steel mills and factories and have seen it all go away. He is a Catholic who sees society not as an agglomeration of random Randian individualists but as part of a community...
“But his weakest spot is foreign policy, where he is not thoughtful but reflexively hard-line. It is one thing to say, as all candidates do and must, that America must be strong...It is another to be aggressive, to be too burly, to be all George W. Bush and no George H.W. Bush.”
So New Hampshire Republicans can avoid boring Mitt Romney, according to their leading pundits, by getting on the bandwagon of a fun-loving but tenaciously serious advocate of moral materialism who can’t be trusted with his finger on the nuclear trigger.
Sounds like a choice.
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Anyone-But-Romney Sweepstakes Survivors
Parsing Iowa results is like trying to solve the old riddle of why French intellectuals loved screwball comic Jerry Lewis, critics gave “The Nutty Professor” their Oscar and the government showered him with honors.
In the world of slapstick, you never know which way the croissant will crumble and, post-Iowa, Michele Bachmann is gone, Rick Perry has his foot on a banana peel and Newt is revving up to pummel Mitt in a round of revenge debates.
In the Anyone-But-Romney Sweepstakes, the umpteenth frontrunner is now Rick Santorum, whose default facial expression is that of the kid in the big family who always got the smallest slice of pie, and he will do without help from previous nominee John McCain, who is endorsing Romney, at least in part as a result of Senate brawls over torture with Santorum accusing the former POW of “not understanding how advanced interrogation works.”
The next day on his Facebook page, a McCain aide wrote, “Ron Paul may be the wackiest candidate in the G.O.P. field. But for pure, blind stupidity, nobody beats Santorum. In my 20 years in the Senate, I never met a dumber member, which he reminded me of today.”
Back on the stump in New Hampshire, McCain is using former Governor John Sununu as a straight man, telling his old knee-slapper about “the two inmates in the chow line in the state prison and one of them turned to the other and said the food was a lot better in here when you were governor.”
Now, Santorum himself is facing advanced interrogation—-about his “man on dog” comments on gay sex, among other gems—-while Ron Paul’s best hope seems be a rich Conservatives’ “emergency meeting” in his native Texas to coalesce behind a single candidate.
The Obama White House, of course, is watching this with great interest, hoping the GOP will be French toast all year, and fervently praying over the two-party system, “Vive le difference!”
In the world of slapstick, you never know which way the croissant will crumble and, post-Iowa, Michele Bachmann is gone, Rick Perry has his foot on a banana peel and Newt is revving up to pummel Mitt in a round of revenge debates.
In the Anyone-But-Romney Sweepstakes, the umpteenth frontrunner is now Rick Santorum, whose default facial expression is that of the kid in the big family who always got the smallest slice of pie, and he will do without help from previous nominee John McCain, who is endorsing Romney, at least in part as a result of Senate brawls over torture with Santorum accusing the former POW of “not understanding how advanced interrogation works.”
The next day on his Facebook page, a McCain aide wrote, “Ron Paul may be the wackiest candidate in the G.O.P. field. But for pure, blind stupidity, nobody beats Santorum. In my 20 years in the Senate, I never met a dumber member, which he reminded me of today.”
Back on the stump in New Hampshire, McCain is using former Governor John Sununu as a straight man, telling his old knee-slapper about “the two inmates in the chow line in the state prison and one of them turned to the other and said the food was a lot better in here when you were governor.”
Now, Santorum himself is facing advanced interrogation—-about his “man on dog” comments on gay sex, among other gems—-while Ron Paul’s best hope seems be a rich Conservatives’ “emergency meeting” in his native Texas to coalesce behind a single candidate.
The Obama White House, of course, is watching this with great interest, hoping the GOP will be French toast all year, and fervently praying over the two-party system, “Vive le difference!”
Monday, January 02, 2012
Iowa Caucuses Made Simple
For those who may be confused by the sophisticated ritual to take place tomorrow night, explains the NY Times Caucus, “the process requires a commitment of several hours for a voter. And it encourages campaigns to have a level of organizational sophistication that often helps separate candidates who can go the distance from those who cannot...
“Once voters show up at their caucus location, it is not as simple as just making a quick decision. Representatives of each campaign are typically given the opportunity to make remarks in an attempt to sway some people at the last minute.
“The better-organized campaigns will have members of the community stand up for them at every caucus location. By contrast, the candidates with passionate, energized followings often receive more spontaneous expressions of support.
“It is a very different kind of democratic process than in primary states, where overt electioneering is kept at a distance from the actual voting. In Iowa, the campaigns are waged up close and personal, all the way until the end.”
Few people realize that the Iowa Caucuses are based on an ancient British tradition, which is perhaps best understood in the graphic illustration here.
Update: In a last-minute tweet, Rupert Murdoch calls Rick Santorum the “only candidate with genuine big vision” for the United States. Apparently, the Caucuses have their roots in the Australian culture as well.
Who knew?
“Once voters show up at their caucus location, it is not as simple as just making a quick decision. Representatives of each campaign are typically given the opportunity to make remarks in an attempt to sway some people at the last minute.
“The better-organized campaigns will have members of the community stand up for them at every caucus location. By contrast, the candidates with passionate, energized followings often receive more spontaneous expressions of support.
“It is a very different kind of democratic process than in primary states, where overt electioneering is kept at a distance from the actual voting. In Iowa, the campaigns are waged up close and personal, all the way until the end.”
Few people realize that the Iowa Caucuses are based on an ancient British tradition, which is perhaps best understood in the graphic illustration here.
Update: In a last-minute tweet, Rupert Murdoch calls Rick Santorum the “only candidate with genuine big vision” for the United States. Apparently, the Caucuses have their roots in the Australian culture as well.
Who knew?
Mission Impossible: Humanizing Eric Cantor
No matter who faces him for the White House, Barack Obama starts 2012 with one advantage against the GOP—-the poster boy for intransigence, Eric Cantor, who proves again on 60 Minutes that there is no way to “humanize” him.
In an interview, the usually genial Lesley Stahl starts by saying flatly, “President Obama's nemesis throughout the year was 48-year-old Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader of the House, who played a major role in the Republican strategy.
“The White House blames Eric Cantor, more than anyone else, for disrupting the president's first term. Especially for scuttling one set of deficit reduction talks after another...the president's keying on him has taken its toll. He's been picketed and heckled.
“He has fallen in the polls and so has his party as, according to a CBS News poll, the public blames them more for the gridlock in Washington.”
Stahl presses the indictment: “Eric Cantor was the one who went out in 2010 and recruited most of the freshmen who are conservative and backed by the Tea Party.
“He meets with them regularly, and several of them told us Cantor is their inspirational leader and father figure. But Eric Cantor does not want to be seen as unreasonable.”
To that end, Cantor’s people obviously sought the 60 Minutes interview, inviting cameras into his home to meet his family. There Stahl found one point of agreement with Obama: Cantor’s mother-in-law lives with them as does the President’s. But his wife, a former Democrat, is pro-choice and for gay marriage.
As Cantor continues to “charm” Stahl, an aide is moved to yell out “That’s not true” off camera when she notes that his idol Ronald Reagan “raised taxes.” Mischievously, 60 Minutes inserts a clip of the Great Communicator doing just that.
Cantor concludes the séance by denying “personal animosity” between himself and the President, who recently told a crowd, “I'm going to keep on talking to Eric Cantor. Some day sooner or later he's going to say, 'Boy, Obama had a good idea.'”
But not before next November.
In an interview, the usually genial Lesley Stahl starts by saying flatly, “President Obama's nemesis throughout the year was 48-year-old Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader of the House, who played a major role in the Republican strategy.
“The White House blames Eric Cantor, more than anyone else, for disrupting the president's first term. Especially for scuttling one set of deficit reduction talks after another...the president's keying on him has taken its toll. He's been picketed and heckled.
“He has fallen in the polls and so has his party as, according to a CBS News poll, the public blames them more for the gridlock in Washington.”
Stahl presses the indictment: “Eric Cantor was the one who went out in 2010 and recruited most of the freshmen who are conservative and backed by the Tea Party.
“He meets with them regularly, and several of them told us Cantor is their inspirational leader and father figure. But Eric Cantor does not want to be seen as unreasonable.”
To that end, Cantor’s people obviously sought the 60 Minutes interview, inviting cameras into his home to meet his family. There Stahl found one point of agreement with Obama: Cantor’s mother-in-law lives with them as does the President’s. But his wife, a former Democrat, is pro-choice and for gay marriage.
As Cantor continues to “charm” Stahl, an aide is moved to yell out “That’s not true” off camera when she notes that his idol Ronald Reagan “raised taxes.” Mischievously, 60 Minutes inserts a clip of the Great Communicator doing just that.
Cantor concludes the séance by denying “personal animosity” between himself and the President, who recently told a crowd, “I'm going to keep on talking to Eric Cantor. Some day sooner or later he's going to say, 'Boy, Obama had a good idea.'”
But not before next November.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
Heaven's Rap Sheet
The new year brings news of a 16-year-old girl named Heaven Chamberlain, arrested with Occupy the Caucus protesters in Des Moines along with her mother.
Heaven, detained once before at an Occupy rally in October, says her rap sheet is like lines on a résumé (“It shows that I’m active with the community and that I care about people’s opinions”) and that she plans to run for president in 2036 after a stop brief in the Senate.
Ms. Chamberlain (no descendant of Neville, by all evidence) takes me back over seven decades when I was her age and preparing to become a foot soldier in World War II, but my teen-age rap sheet was different.
College had become unreal, unbearable, so I signed up for a summer in the Maine woods on a Federal Youth Project, an odd choice for a kid who had never been away from city streets or held a shovel or an ax.
It was a fiasco, of course. I rode all night on the Boston & Maine Railroad, drank coffee on an empty stomach, threw up at 3 A.M., arrived in camp for a checkup by a gaunt woman doctor who sent me into a panic by fingering my scrotum and, after a day in the woods that is now a merciful blank, I was put back on a southbound train. So much for a would-be Paul Bunyan from the Bronx and, all in all, no preparation for going into the Army a year later to train for hand-to-hand combat.
But if I was afraid, and I certainly was, I was also restless. I couldn't concentrate on classes so that fall, when the Daily News had lost enough Irish Catholic copy boys in the draft to start hiring Jews, I left school and took a job there in some blind urge to meet what was coming head-on, an eager lemming packing his bags for a seaside vacation. If I was going to be shoved into the world, I wanted to take some experience with me, even if it meant being drafted before my college exemption ran out.
In four months, I learned a few things. While waiting to run errands, I taught myself to touch-type. Each day I carried gallons of coffee in cardboard containers to rewrite men with headphones while their fingers flew across keyboards and copy editors who sat around a horseshoe-shaped table pushing thick pencils, smoking and gossiping. (One of them, a nasty man who never let a copy boy keep the change, was later charged with treason for failing to stop moonlighting as a flack for the Japanese government after Pearl Harbor.)
On Saturday afternoons I would meet a photographer at Madison Square Garden and rush back with film of high-school basketball for the back page of Sunday’s early edition. The first Monday I turned in my expense slip: ten cents for the round trip by streetcar. The head copy boy tossed it back, “Put in for taxis, like everybody else.”
At a four-alarm fire, again a photographer’s coolie, I was clutching film through heavy smoke when a fireman spotted me, shook his head at my knickers and the press card in my cap, took me firmly by the shoulders and turned me in the opposite direction, away from the fire.
I tell all this to Heaven Chamberlain, and generations between, not only to underscore the difference in expectations back then but to suggest that something may have been lost in an era of self-entitlement that equates carrying placards for TV cameras as “being active with the community.”
All my best to Heaven and her counterparts now reoccupying Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, but they may want to consider trying some scut work like those of us did back then, and try bringing coffee to campaign workers and getting closer to the electoral fires by ringing doorbells.
Not all presidents start out by being community organizers or Wall Street tycoons.
Heaven, detained once before at an Occupy rally in October, says her rap sheet is like lines on a résumé (“It shows that I’m active with the community and that I care about people’s opinions”) and that she plans to run for president in 2036 after a stop brief in the Senate.
Ms. Chamberlain (no descendant of Neville, by all evidence) takes me back over seven decades when I was her age and preparing to become a foot soldier in World War II, but my teen-age rap sheet was different.
College had become unreal, unbearable, so I signed up for a summer in the Maine woods on a Federal Youth Project, an odd choice for a kid who had never been away from city streets or held a shovel or an ax.
It was a fiasco, of course. I rode all night on the Boston & Maine Railroad, drank coffee on an empty stomach, threw up at 3 A.M., arrived in camp for a checkup by a gaunt woman doctor who sent me into a panic by fingering my scrotum and, after a day in the woods that is now a merciful blank, I was put back on a southbound train. So much for a would-be Paul Bunyan from the Bronx and, all in all, no preparation for going into the Army a year later to train for hand-to-hand combat.
But if I was afraid, and I certainly was, I was also restless. I couldn't concentrate on classes so that fall, when the Daily News had lost enough Irish Catholic copy boys in the draft to start hiring Jews, I left school and took a job there in some blind urge to meet what was coming head-on, an eager lemming packing his bags for a seaside vacation. If I was going to be shoved into the world, I wanted to take some experience with me, even if it meant being drafted before my college exemption ran out.
In four months, I learned a few things. While waiting to run errands, I taught myself to touch-type. Each day I carried gallons of coffee in cardboard containers to rewrite men with headphones while their fingers flew across keyboards and copy editors who sat around a horseshoe-shaped table pushing thick pencils, smoking and gossiping. (One of them, a nasty man who never let a copy boy keep the change, was later charged with treason for failing to stop moonlighting as a flack for the Japanese government after Pearl Harbor.)
On Saturday afternoons I would meet a photographer at Madison Square Garden and rush back with film of high-school basketball for the back page of Sunday’s early edition. The first Monday I turned in my expense slip: ten cents for the round trip by streetcar. The head copy boy tossed it back, “Put in for taxis, like everybody else.”
At a four-alarm fire, again a photographer’s coolie, I was clutching film through heavy smoke when a fireman spotted me, shook his head at my knickers and the press card in my cap, took me firmly by the shoulders and turned me in the opposite direction, away from the fire.
I tell all this to Heaven Chamberlain, and generations between, not only to underscore the difference in expectations back then but to suggest that something may have been lost in an era of self-entitlement that equates carrying placards for TV cameras as “being active with the community.”
All my best to Heaven and her counterparts now reoccupying Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, but they may want to consider trying some scut work like those of us did back then, and try bringing coffee to campaign workers and getting closer to the electoral fires by ringing doorbells.
Not all presidents start out by being community organizers or Wall Street tycoons.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Romney's Death and Taxes
The candidate’s son Matt steps into a brouhaha by answering a question about his father’s refusal to release tax returns by being flip about Obama’s birth certificate.
Bad move. The elder Romney has a valid Michigan birth certificate, but there is also the question of a death certificate, officially stamped on his passport ("He is dead") by the French police after a lethal auto accident while he was a missionary there in 1968.
If the Birthers can see a Manchurian candidate scenario in sunny Hawaii, how much more plausible is the substitution by the devious French of a 21-year-old imposter with plastic surgery, waiting to emerge decades later and moved into the White House to foist foreign ideas on America?
To make their case for a fake Romney today, Iowa Birthers could cite all those flipflops on major issues, proving that he is not a genuine Conservative but an undercover agent who will do anything to get elected in order to confuse and undermine America.
Bring on Donald Trump’s team of crack investigators and tell the Romney boys to cool it.
Bad move. The elder Romney has a valid Michigan birth certificate, but there is also the question of a death certificate, officially stamped on his passport ("He is dead") by the French police after a lethal auto accident while he was a missionary there in 1968.
If the Birthers can see a Manchurian candidate scenario in sunny Hawaii, how much more plausible is the substitution by the devious French of a 21-year-old imposter with plastic surgery, waiting to emerge decades later and moved into the White House to foist foreign ideas on America?
To make their case for a fake Romney today, Iowa Birthers could cite all those flipflops on major issues, proving that he is not a genuine Conservative but an undercover agent who will do anything to get elected in order to confuse and undermine America.
Bring on Donald Trump’s team of crack investigators and tell the Romney boys to cool it.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
The Santorum Joke
If Mitt Romney wins in Iowa next week, he could find nipping at his heels the runt of the 2011 litter.
Two weeks ago, in post-debate stupor, I woozily compared the GOP race to an action movie:
“If the Great Screenwriter in the Sky is following the...plotlines, after all the car chases, explosions and reversals, the eventual nominee is clear: Rick Santorum. He’s been a bit player who has never had a big scene and, by all conventions of the genre, has to be revealed as the powerful genius who has been pulling all the strings.”
Now, with Ron Paul finding there is no statute of limitations on racist rant, life is imitating my lame joke with Santorum running a close third in a new poll.
This is the same Santorum who, after making headlines for zany comments on subjects ranging from Catholic priests’ child abuse to the Middle East, lost his bid for reelection only five years ago by 41 percent to 59, the largest margin of defeat ever for an incumbent Republican Senator in Pennsylvania.
Yet, here is a serious analysis that gives him a rising chance of actually winning the Caucuses based on his current momentum as desperate Rick Perry runs ads accusing Santorum as “proud of feeding at the earmark trough in Congress.”
If the Joke candidate ends up close to the hard-charging Romney next week, it may prove that Iowans have a sense of humor after all. Or would it be desperation?
Two weeks ago, in post-debate stupor, I woozily compared the GOP race to an action movie:
“If the Great Screenwriter in the Sky is following the...plotlines, after all the car chases, explosions and reversals, the eventual nominee is clear: Rick Santorum. He’s been a bit player who has never had a big scene and, by all conventions of the genre, has to be revealed as the powerful genius who has been pulling all the strings.”
Now, with Ron Paul finding there is no statute of limitations on racist rant, life is imitating my lame joke with Santorum running a close third in a new poll.
This is the same Santorum who, after making headlines for zany comments on subjects ranging from Catholic priests’ child abuse to the Middle East, lost his bid for reelection only five years ago by 41 percent to 59, the largest margin of defeat ever for an incumbent Republican Senator in Pennsylvania.
Yet, here is a serious analysis that gives him a rising chance of actually winning the Caucuses based on his current momentum as desperate Rick Perry runs ads accusing Santorum as “proud of feeding at the earmark trough in Congress.”
If the Joke candidate ends up close to the hard-charging Romney next week, it may prove that Iowans have a sense of humor after all. Or would it be desperation?
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Notes From a Shipwreck Year
Reading bloggers' own favorite posts of 2011 is a reminder of how much political and social sanity has been lost in this Tea Party world. Satire and rage abound.
Yet it’s cathartic to read these notes in a bottle from survivors and realize we are not alone in this shipwrecked world.
Such comfort is provided by keeping alive a tradition started by the late Al Weigel, who wrote brilliantly under the nom de plume of Jon Swift and was tireless in promoting the work of others, an effort now being maintained by Batocchio at the Vagabond Scholar.
There you can find what bloggers consider their year’s best posts, a fascinating mosaic of commentary on what we have been living through. GOP presidential candidates to the contrary, the human mind is still alive and well in America.
With a sense of inevitability, I chose a political post but was tempted by others on a range of subjects—-aftermath of Tuscon, the fragility of human life in the face of Nature, and a memoir of two friends, authentic public figures a world apart.
This comes with my best wishes to all for a saner 2012 and special thanks to Joe Gandelman, who allows me to be part of his civil community on The Moderate Voice, a tireless band of resisters to online vitriol and viciousness.
Happy New Year and good reading!
Yet it’s cathartic to read these notes in a bottle from survivors and realize we are not alone in this shipwrecked world.
Such comfort is provided by keeping alive a tradition started by the late Al Weigel, who wrote brilliantly under the nom de plume of Jon Swift and was tireless in promoting the work of others, an effort now being maintained by Batocchio at the Vagabond Scholar.
There you can find what bloggers consider their year’s best posts, a fascinating mosaic of commentary on what we have been living through. GOP presidential candidates to the contrary, the human mind is still alive and well in America.
With a sense of inevitability, I chose a political post but was tempted by others on a range of subjects—-aftermath of Tuscon, the fragility of human life in the face of Nature, and a memoir of two friends, authentic public figures a world apart.
This comes with my best wishes to all for a saner 2012 and special thanks to Joe Gandelman, who allows me to be part of his civil community on The Moderate Voice, a tireless band of resisters to online vitriol and viciousness.
Happy New Year and good reading!
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Gingrich, Mel Gibson Divorce News
Breaking up is hard to do, but much more expensive in today’s Hollywood than rural Georgia of three decades ago.
Mel Gibson is finally divorced from his wife of more than 30 years and mother of seven children after turning over an estimated half of his $850 million in movie earnings.
At the same time, the nation’s other Lethal Mouth seems to have been lying about his first divorce three decades ago as CNN unearths Georgia court documents showing that his wife wanted to stay married.
Even worse, the first Mrs. Gingrich’s petition states: "Defendant shows that she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce, but that she does not desire one at this time."
Former friends say they took up collections for the family, because Gingrich "wouldn't give them a dime" in the first months of the separation, and there were "no lights, no heat, no water, no food” in the home. "We had a food drive at First Baptist Church," says a former fellow professor. "The deacons went down and stocked her pantry."
Before the advent of no-fault, divorces were admittedly messier than they are now, but as the husband of a lawyer-mediator and co-author of a book about how women are treated in marital breakups, I can testify that the first Gingrich divorce seems par for the course back then: Get a tough lawyer and starve out an unwilling wife, even if the kids go hungry, too.
It’s heartening to see the former Mrs. Mel Gibson get a just share of her loathsome former husband’s movie loot, but then again, he isn’t Newt Gingrich, who dumped two wives on the way to running for President on a platform of bringing back good old family values for us all.
Mel Gibson is finally divorced from his wife of more than 30 years and mother of seven children after turning over an estimated half of his $850 million in movie earnings.
At the same time, the nation’s other Lethal Mouth seems to have been lying about his first divorce three decades ago as CNN unearths Georgia court documents showing that his wife wanted to stay married.
Even worse, the first Mrs. Gingrich’s petition states: "Defendant shows that she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce, but that she does not desire one at this time."
Former friends say they took up collections for the family, because Gingrich "wouldn't give them a dime" in the first months of the separation, and there were "no lights, no heat, no water, no food” in the home. "We had a food drive at First Baptist Church," says a former fellow professor. "The deacons went down and stocked her pantry."
Before the advent of no-fault, divorces were admittedly messier than they are now, but as the husband of a lawyer-mediator and co-author of a book about how women are treated in marital breakups, I can testify that the first Gingrich divorce seems par for the course back then: Get a tough lawyer and starve out an unwilling wife, even if the kids go hungry, too.
It’s heartening to see the former Mrs. Mel Gibson get a just share of her loathsome former husband’s movie loot, but then again, he isn’t Newt Gingrich, who dumped two wives on the way to running for President on a platform of bringing back good old family values for us all.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Firing an Icon, Pauline Kael
A mutual grandparent at holiday dinner confronts me with the accusation that I fired a cinema icon in the 1960s. Guilty. So I may as well share my confession with the whole world.
I brought out the worst in Pauline Kael. She started irritating me the minute we met and never stopped.
Looking for a movie reviewer with intelligence and style when I became editor of McCalls, I had read and admired Kael’s work in periodicals with small circulation. Another editor and I took her to lunch.
The ice in our drinks had barely melted when Kael went into a diatribe about the awfulness of mass magazines. When she paused for breath, I said, “I could tell you worse than that, but we’ve established how independent you are, so let me make a suggestion. When your friends accuse you of selling out, just admit you’re doing it for the money.”
We agreed on a year’s contract.
Kael’s first column was an essay on movie critics. It could have been titled, “Is There Anyone I Haven’t Offended?” She described readers as boobs who expected critics to like what they like and reviewers as venal enough to do that and went on to assail education (“academic dry rot”), art houses and film festivals (patrons are “afraid to say what they think or just don’t know what to think”) and good taste (what’s new and important is “in terrible taste”).
That took care of everybody but Kael and her groupies, as she savaged movies from “Zorba the Greek” and “The Pawnbroker” to the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night.”
In the following months, it got so bad that even Kael seemed aware of what she was doing, pausing during a round of demolition to observe that “a reader may easily say, ‘She just doesn’t like movies’ and then start trying to figure out what’s the matter with me.”
“Dr. Zhivago,” “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Born Free” went under her scalpel and did not survive. After eviscerating movies, Kael went at the people who made them with nasty comments on the taste and motives of Paul Newman, among others.
After five columns, I had enough. To complete her self-directed drama of Life Among the Philistines, Kael told reporters I did not honor her contract (I paid her for the year) and that I fired her for attacking “The Sound of Music” as “The Sound of Money” (actually I agreed and had told her so). Years later, when she was established at the New Yorker, Kael finally admitted to an interviewer that I was right on both counts.
I got some insight into what went wrong between us when she wrote about Herman Mankiewicz, a bitter man who collaborated on “Citizen Kane.” Very drunk at a Hollywood party, he had vomited over the dinner table. “Don’t worry,” he reassured the hosts, “the white wine came up with the fish.”
Kael, who shared Mankiewicz’s contempt for the conventional, had to explain her firing by announcing “The Sound of Music” had come up with the sour grapes.
So I’m guilty, guilty, guilty. I didn’t lose it at the movies, but over the unearned contempt of a self-made icon-to-be.
I brought out the worst in Pauline Kael. She started irritating me the minute we met and never stopped.
Looking for a movie reviewer with intelligence and style when I became editor of McCalls, I had read and admired Kael’s work in periodicals with small circulation. Another editor and I took her to lunch.
The ice in our drinks had barely melted when Kael went into a diatribe about the awfulness of mass magazines. When she paused for breath, I said, “I could tell you worse than that, but we’ve established how independent you are, so let me make a suggestion. When your friends accuse you of selling out, just admit you’re doing it for the money.”
We agreed on a year’s contract.
Kael’s first column was an essay on movie critics. It could have been titled, “Is There Anyone I Haven’t Offended?” She described readers as boobs who expected critics to like what they like and reviewers as venal enough to do that and went on to assail education (“academic dry rot”), art houses and film festivals (patrons are “afraid to say what they think or just don’t know what to think”) and good taste (what’s new and important is “in terrible taste”).
That took care of everybody but Kael and her groupies, as she savaged movies from “Zorba the Greek” and “The Pawnbroker” to the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night.”
In the following months, it got so bad that even Kael seemed aware of what she was doing, pausing during a round of demolition to observe that “a reader may easily say, ‘She just doesn’t like movies’ and then start trying to figure out what’s the matter with me.”
“Dr. Zhivago,” “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Born Free” went under her scalpel and did not survive. After eviscerating movies, Kael went at the people who made them with nasty comments on the taste and motives of Paul Newman, among others.
After five columns, I had enough. To complete her self-directed drama of Life Among the Philistines, Kael told reporters I did not honor her contract (I paid her for the year) and that I fired her for attacking “The Sound of Music” as “The Sound of Money” (actually I agreed and had told her so). Years later, when she was established at the New Yorker, Kael finally admitted to an interviewer that I was right on both counts.
I got some insight into what went wrong between us when she wrote about Herman Mankiewicz, a bitter man who collaborated on “Citizen Kane.” Very drunk at a Hollywood party, he had vomited over the dinner table. “Don’t worry,” he reassured the hosts, “the white wine came up with the fish.”
Kael, who shared Mankiewicz’s contempt for the conventional, had to explain her firing by announcing “The Sound of Music” had come up with the sour grapes.
So I’m guilty, guilty, guilty. I didn’t lose it at the movies, but over the unearned contempt of a self-made icon-to-be.
A Year of Block-and-Blame: What Next?
In the residue of Christmas spirit, a serious attempt to understand what’s behind a toxic cloud that the Tea Party has cast over American government all year:
Yes, the economy has been bad, and many of us have been hurting—-from young people without jobs to the retired with no increases in Social Security and no place to earn interest on their life savings.
Yes, bailouts and stimulus have been very costly yet still not enough to turn the recession around, creating huge deficits.
Yes, government has grown more intrusive with massive health care reform and new regulations for financial institutions that control so much of the national wealth.
Yes, Barack Obama has not been a perfect president in a time of trouble and turmoil.
Yes, but...
Why must all these challenges mean government is the problem and not part of the solution, as it was during the Great Depression?
Next year’s election will provide the answer. The contest, as E. J. Dionne puts it, is between “a tradition that sees government as an essential actor in the nation’s economy, a guarantor of fair rules of competition, a countervailing force against excessive private power, a check on the inequalities that capitalism can produce, and an instrument that can open opportunity for those born without great advantages” and today’s Republicans who “cast the federal government as an oppressive force, a drag on the economy and an enemy of private initiative.”
Their most likely candidate, Mitt Romney, is now campaigning against the straw man of “an Entitlement Society,” in which “government provides every citizen the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to innovate, pioneer or take risk.”
In our 24/7 media world, these opposing arguments may be treated as if they were of equal weight, even though the second is palpable nonsense. Just measure Romney’s own rewards for financial juggling against those of any middle-class worker.
In these dark Washington days, however, there is a ray of hope. A full year of nothing more than block-and-blame by the Tea Party House minority has given voters a full picture of the consequences their continued dominance would have for the country.
An embattled six-term conservative, Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana, points out that in 2010 “people who claimed that they wanted somebody who was more of their tea party aspect...killed off the Republican chances for a majority" in the Senate.
Next year, as Dionne observes, Barack Obama may be running as “the conservative.”
Update: Upping the 2012 ante, Newt Gingrich fails to make the Virginia primary ballot and, ever the historian, compares the event to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
“Block that metaphor!” The stakes are high enough without dragging World War II into it.
Yes, the economy has been bad, and many of us have been hurting—-from young people without jobs to the retired with no increases in Social Security and no place to earn interest on their life savings.
Yes, bailouts and stimulus have been very costly yet still not enough to turn the recession around, creating huge deficits.
Yes, government has grown more intrusive with massive health care reform and new regulations for financial institutions that control so much of the national wealth.
Yes, Barack Obama has not been a perfect president in a time of trouble and turmoil.
Yes, but...
Why must all these challenges mean government is the problem and not part of the solution, as it was during the Great Depression?
Next year’s election will provide the answer. The contest, as E. J. Dionne puts it, is between “a tradition that sees government as an essential actor in the nation’s economy, a guarantor of fair rules of competition, a countervailing force against excessive private power, a check on the inequalities that capitalism can produce, and an instrument that can open opportunity for those born without great advantages” and today’s Republicans who “cast the federal government as an oppressive force, a drag on the economy and an enemy of private initiative.”
Their most likely candidate, Mitt Romney, is now campaigning against the straw man of “an Entitlement Society,” in which “government provides every citizen the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to innovate, pioneer or take risk.”
In our 24/7 media world, these opposing arguments may be treated as if they were of equal weight, even though the second is palpable nonsense. Just measure Romney’s own rewards for financial juggling against those of any middle-class worker.
In these dark Washington days, however, there is a ray of hope. A full year of nothing more than block-and-blame by the Tea Party House minority has given voters a full picture of the consequences their continued dominance would have for the country.
An embattled six-term conservative, Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana, points out that in 2010 “people who claimed that they wanted somebody who was more of their tea party aspect...killed off the Republican chances for a majority" in the Senate.
Next year, as Dionne observes, Barack Obama may be running as “the conservative.”
Update: Upping the 2012 ante, Newt Gingrich fails to make the Virginia primary ballot and, ever the historian, compares the event to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
“Block that metaphor!” The stakes are high enough without dragging World War II into it.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Romney's Rewrapped Gift
We’ve all done it, and Mitt seems like someone who wouldn’t hesitate to pass on a second-hand present. He did it to a voter yesterday.
Asked by a New Hampshire man who was being foreclosed by Bank of America even though he had made all his mortgage payments, a problem Romney has clearly never faced, the candidate suggested he go to court or occupy bank headquarters until he gets satisfaction.
“That would get their attention,” Romney said.
Problem is, neither the Governor or his staff has been paying enough attention to the news, having missed a widely spread story of a Florida couple who did just that last summer and, accompanied by Sheriff's deputies and movers, went with court permission to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and cash in the teller's drawers, before the bank finally anted up what it owed them.
Oh well, never mind, it’s the thought that counts. And a Merry Christmas to all!
Asked by a New Hampshire man who was being foreclosed by Bank of America even though he had made all his mortgage payments, a problem Romney has clearly never faced, the candidate suggested he go to court or occupy bank headquarters until he gets satisfaction.
“That would get their attention,” Romney said.
Problem is, neither the Governor or his staff has been paying enough attention to the news, having missed a widely spread story of a Florida couple who did just that last summer and, accompanied by Sheriff's deputies and movers, went with court permission to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and cash in the teller's drawers, before the bank finally anted up what it owed them.
Oh well, never mind, it’s the thought that counts. And a Merry Christmas to all!
Friday, December 23, 2011
Tea Party Goes to the Dogs
Talk about misreading a mandate: The bitter enders give the President the best Christmas present of all—-pushing their block-and-blame strategy off a political cliff to make Barack Obama, previous evidence to the contrary, look like Harry Truman against “a do-nothing, good-for-nothing Congress.”
It wasn’t easy to get the President off his perch as “compromiser in chief,” requiring most of the Senate GOP, Karl Rove and the Murdoch media to stop Boehner’s gang from acting like a circular firing squad.
Even dour Eric Cantor is reduced to leaden levity: “I saw the president out yesterday doing his Christmas shopping. I saw he brought his dog with him. We’re here. He could bring his dog up here. We are pet friendly. It will not take a long time. We could probably resolve the differences within an hour.”
No sale. Nothing could stop this one from ending with the Tea Party going to the dogs. Happy New Year, guys, keep on woofing!
It wasn’t easy to get the President off his perch as “compromiser in chief,” requiring most of the Senate GOP, Karl Rove and the Murdoch media to stop Boehner’s gang from acting like a circular firing squad.
Even dour Eric Cantor is reduced to leaden levity: “I saw the president out yesterday doing his Christmas shopping. I saw he brought his dog with him. We’re here. He could bring his dog up here. We are pet friendly. It will not take a long time. We could probably resolve the differences within an hour.”
No sale. Nothing could stop this one from ending with the Tea Party going to the dogs. Happy New Year, guys, keep on woofing!
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