Ichabod's Kin

Dec

I See Crazy People

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I saw crazy people throughout the GOP candidate debates.

Each time, all present had a case of the crazies except for some debate moderators, like Wolf Blitzer, who was universally lauded for his handling of time, issues and the gaggle or show-offs who mugged for attention. Fox News didn’t come close to that level of expertise: Brett Baier barely could manage the Gang of Seven and Megyn Kelly was way in over her head. Chris Wallace may fancy himself a top-drawer TV journalist but is a far cry from his old man.

And don’t forget the crowds–the zanies who applauded everything, even contradictory statements from the platform. Whatever happened to conviction among the Republican base? They were ready to settle for anyone who might beat Obama, however ignorant of issues or bizarre in behavior: all they had to do was declare themselves Republican, whatever that means anymore.

If ever a so-called prospect wasted the nation’s time, it was Herman Cain, a total nutwing that the conservative base decided, however briefly (and only because Cain blew himself up in such spectacular fashion), that ol’ Herm was a serious alternative; this is a mystery known only to God and my guess is the Big Guy himself was stumped over that one.

Rick Perry strutted in amid the pack and stuck out his chest as if he were in the Swimsuit portion of a Miss America contest. We knew right away that there’s a guy who, when God offered him brains, thought he heard, “trains,” and declined the offer. Perry never grew up, mentally or sexually, and the only state that could elect such a governor is Texas. The little nickname he earned early in life that’s supposed to mean “adjusting” one’s blue jeans, really refers to the habit, in stupid boyhood days, of grabbing one’s own crotch as if to declare to all the girls–and male competitors–that he thought his was the biggest and all other comers were to stay away. So, clearly, in his formative years, the three most important things to Rick were girls, sex–and, uh, he can’t remember the other one.

Newt Gingrich’s fantasy is to deem himself an “intellectual,” a designation that the Fox News brain trust repeated in hopes of scaring off Romney. Maybe Newt dreamed of being the Michelin Man and is sore that he’s now mistaken for the Pillsbury Dough Boy. The litmus test is to watch him and ask if you want talking at you everyday for four to eight years on the evening news. Add dear Callista, his darling third wife (who knows?–maybe there’s more) to the equation and the answer goes from “No” to A Thousand Times No.

The criticism that Obama is a “lecturer” and too “professorial” as a communicator is to ignore Newt’s prowess in that regard. When asked why he worked for Fannie Mae for big bucks, Newt reckoned that we were all dumb and would believe that his role was solely that of an “historian” for those crooks. I’d like to see his thesis on that study project.

Rick Santorum hung around long enough in the debates to repeat himself ad infinitum, ad nauseum while reminding us of all the children he has sired. Debate audiences dozed off when his turn came but his “surge” in Iowa is now proof of George Burns’ dictum that if you live long enough you’re bound to make a comeback. I for one don’t trust a man with a name like his who didn’t change it long ago; John Stewart of the Daily Show reminds us often to Google the word, santorum, and thereafter try not, as Pogo said, to larf.

But the Santorum Surge brings pause as to why Michele Bachmann can’t get one: she’s been as consistently on message; was born in Iowa and serves a neighboring state (Minnesota). Is it because her eyes are too far apart and you can’t tell if she’s looking at us or the moon? Of course, her attack gun is never aimed at Romney because she wants to be his running mate, but he’s too smart for that.

You have to love Ron Paul, who flutters onstage like the fairy godfather in a grade school play. Suit jacket askew, he begins each response as if formulating a thoughtful notion, then bursts into a breathless paean of idiocy, bringing wild applause from a crowd that is not quite sure what he said or what it would mean if this little crank was in the White House. Ron lives in a Bizarro world where every good idea is trumped by its antithesis. He and Kim Jong Il would’ve gotten along well together, trying to top the other’s crackpot notions of foreign policy in a world that requires top-notch diplomacy.

We know the GOP currently harbors the shallow end of the conservative gene pool when a guy like Jon Huntsman couldn’t win a vote if he were a Baptist instead of a Mormon. He’s thoughtful and sensible, though not the brightest bulb in the ceiling–but neither was Gerald Ford and, hey, he got to be prez.

This leaves the Mittster, the Flip-Flop champion of all time but, after all, you have to be a mental contortionist to survive among Crazy People. Long ago I predicted that he and Obama would end up vying for the Presidency (see my Ichabod post: “Why It’ll be Obama and Romney”) and was pilloried by conservative friends who are now begging my forgiveness. I mercifully sentence them to combing Mitt’s hair and shining Barack’s shoes (get it?).

A quick survey of the GOP’s wannabes is to realize that, were Obama to have any of their failings, he would be deemed totally unqualified for office: too many wives or girlfriends; no idea where Becki-Becki-Stan-Stan is or how to pronounce it; or given to petulance or anger. It’s amazing how Obama keeps his cool amid clowns, each of whom is less than half the man he is. There is an adage that we know how late in the day it has become when pygmies cast such long shadows.

FDR “invited the hatred” of his enemies, and how cathartic that must have been to an era trapped in its own political logjam. We also know that Obama can never do that: to be an angry black man would unleash the worst in his peculiar opposition which, regardless of denials, is in good measure racist.

So I’ll say it again, but in short form: when Romney’s the nominee and free of having to placate the vacuous Republican “base,” he and Obama will engage in publicly enlightening debates that will remind us of the real and legitimate difference between liberalism and conservatism in modern times. Then we’ll know we have a real choice and the voters will decide.

But neither will be shooting from the hip, comparing himself to Winston Churchill (like Newt), defending oneself against charges of womanizing (like Cain), or grabbing his crotch (a la Perry). The real loser will be Fox News, at a loss for what to do with a GOP candidate that doesn’t pander incessantly to the lowest common denominator.

Obama will win the election, but we’ll have a real Republican Party again and Tea will go out of fashion as a hat accessory and return as an alternative to $5 coffee at Starbucks.

And I’ll stop seeing Crazy People.

Categorized in Politics
Tags: Barack Obama, Chris Wallace, Fox News, Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman, Megyn Kelley, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Republican debates, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Wolf Blitzer

Nov

America the Moderate Again, At Last

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    In recent weeks I have cautiously observed a morphing towards change-for-the-better that trumps my prior heightened sense of alarm at the political direction of this country. And of late I have heard this echoed by other observers of the national scene. Let me explain.
   Not to say that there won’t be disappointments and temporary setbacks between now and 2015 when we are looking beyond an Obama presidency and considering who will carry on. But I do feel the Tea Party has turned the corner toward its own death, along with extreme Republicans and their right wing fellow-travelers. They will always be around but much less as the brats who disrupt the entire classroom.
   America always has countenanced, for a time, all expressions, however nutty, and proposals however extreme (both of the Left and the Right), but at last is always seeking moderation. This is one of those times. The populace begins at last to sense that extremism is deadly to its future and well-being, and is finally sizing up the list of pretended saviors in a more realistic light.
   The age that is about to come to an end began years ago with a damaging assault on both the body social and politic, launched during the “Reagan Revolution.” People more extreme than Reagan ever was, used him to advance a cause that was beyond the pale of traditional conservatism. Unlike Eisenhower, who saw danger in, e.g., the Military-Industrial Complex, Reagan misjudged the extremist wing of conservatism and used its tide to carry his own agenda–which was much less ambitious than theirs has since been.
   The architect of the “Politics of Personal Destruction” was Lee Atwater who, before his untimely death, came to regret what he had wrought, politically, in America. Regardless of his second thoughts, it poisoned the political well in America thereafter, leading to right-wing extremism of the most vitriolic sort, from the launch of Fox News to what we now know as the Tea Party.
   We should be cautious as to the mythical dimensions of this. Whether this is divine justice is limited to the realm of speculation. We must also consider that the deity that is preached in the most righteous sense is one of mercy and forgiveness– meaning that those deserving of judgment would probably be given an overabundance of the above. But our civilization does rest on a “natural” justice, one given by laws, morals and ethics which humankind has imposed on itself and that exacts a more perfect impartiality, or what is known as “a fair field and no favor.”
   Everywhere it turns at present, extreme conservatism is confronted by its own undoing. The most caustic critics even of global warming are changing their tune and defecting to the side of facts: before, they were against the evidence because right wingers opposed it. Now, to save their reputations as scientists, if such they are, they announce with great fanfare that truth lies elsewhere.
   There have been recent elections involving political Recalls that are giving extremists representatives in Congress pause to think of their own fates in future elections. A newer attempt to squash bargaining rights of unions took a tumble in a state where a popular GOP governor had denied them with a great flourish of his pen. He found that you can’t fool all the people all of the time. And the nutty attempt to declare “personhood” as at the time of conception, as a thinly veiled attempt at outlawing abortion, in as conservative a state as Mississippi, fell on its nose as well.
   And none can overlook the political demise of state senator Russell Pearce of Arizona, author of the anti-immigration bill there. That recent election washed him from office at what he thought was the height of his power. I personally sat in sessions of that legislature and over years saw him stand to say the most godawful things about migrants that shouldn’t be said about any human being. I save my most fond good riddance to him and his ilk, wherever their ultimate fate.
   The latest sign of weakening in right wing ranks was the the Occupy movement. At first, led by Fox News, the demonstrations were used as pinatas on evening news, but that was before they noticed that it was rife not only with young people, but with hard hats, jobless veterans and the unemployed in general. At which point the “fair and balanced” so-called “journalists” at Fox switched their concerns to Solyndra and to calls for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder, a ploy that gets as much traction as a treadless tire in mud.
   The saddest moment in this Twilight of the False Gods has been the Republican presidential campaign debates. The flirtation with anyone who will spout radical notions, however lacking in substance, is symptomatic of an extremist base that is fatuous to the max. Had Obama made any single one of the misstatements, misrepresentations and outright gaffes we have heard from them, he would have been declared unfit for office and impeachment proceedings would have long been underway.
   For Michele Bachmann to have even the gall to think of herself as presidential shows that bad taste is foremost within the GOP. For Rick Perry to think the country, with all its problems, was ready for a hick with cracker-barrel witticisms, would slap their thighs and knees on their way to polling stations to vote for the likes of him, was another sign of political dementia.
   This is not to forget Herman Cain, intended to be the foil to charges that the GOP is racist–no mind that he lacks political experience and even less judgment. It is impossible to imagine debates in 2012 between him and Obama, but too many Republicans harbor dreams that would make Freud have to revise his theories. Cain’s blow-up in the face of journalists’ questions regarding Libya shows his complete ineptitude for anything more than, well, leading a pizza company. We were generous to a fault to have entertained his lack of political experience and, of late, the growing revelations of years of womanizing; now we know for sure that such was a waste of our time whilst he used it all to self-aggrandize in our presence.
   Perhaps the worst in political judgment is the notion of Pudge Gingrich as the “intellectual” force in modern conservatism, the “idea” man who is now being reconsidered to lead next year’s charge against the president. How soon they forget all his past foibles and foolishness, inconsistencies and crackpot notions, all of which would be revisited by the Democractic machine once the campaign was underway. And this is not counting what would be his future blunders of mind and indiscreet opinion. Certainly he would rely heavily on his penchant for hyperbole–words like “astounding,” “incredible,” etc., to convince voters that he would end an era of darkness and introduce one of beatific light.
   We are so used to the worst of thought and behavior as the “new normal” that we can actually believe that the current aggregate of GOP nincompoops are credible candidates to be the face of our country.
   Whoever wishes to review my post of months ago, “Why It Will Be Obama and Romney in 2012,” in the Political category on this blog, will find my reasons, stated prior to most other pundits, why it can and must be the Mittster to carry the Republican banner.
   I have observed him for a long time and am convinced that he is Moderate to a keen degree, which is precisely what the Tea Party & Co. dislike about him. I am also convinced that, when one looks beyond the little bit of red-meat rhetoric he is obliged to throw to the goofy crowd at the current debates, it is clear that he wants to save the GOP from itself.
   Debates between him and Obama could be among the most enlightening of modern political history. They would be absent, for the most part, of one-liners intended only to get crowd reaction, and devoid of evasion. There would be a real airing of substantive issues, to the benefit of all.
   Fox, of course, will not know what to do with Romney under such circumstances. That mis-named “news” corporation gets no oxygen from rationality and reasonableness, and will be sucking for air throughout the campaign. They will do their best, of course, to turn any good point made by Mitt into an outlandish, extremist point of view.
   It won’t work. Romney can’t win because the self-righteous religionists in the American South and elsewhere won’t vote in sufficient number for him; and from the Tea Party right on down to the right wing gutter there will be, at last, great disinterest in the outcome. Whatever else is going on at any time in America will be the salve of their injuries that have been brought on by themselves.

Then all will begin to be, if not well, at least better in America. Ugly town hall meetings will fade at best into memory, and Lee Atwater will turn over in his grave.
And the worm, too, will have turned, so to speak. And we now know for certain who the worms are.

Categorized in Politics
Tags: GOP, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Military–industrial complex, Obama, Russell Pearce, Tea Party

Oct

Of Race, Rebels and Reprisal

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    Three recent movies. And it is not my custom generally to say run, don’t walk, to see modern flicks. If you are as selective as I am regarding cinema and of what among it is a waste of time, you too are amazed at the way people enter theaters with such expectation and, sadly, tend to forgive the disappointment of a dud, of which there seem to be a frightful number these days. I do not disparage however mere entertainment value as a relief and distraction from the vicissitudes of life.
   People tend also to overrate movies: when The Exorcist opened to raves, critic Stanley Kaufmann noted that all it takes to scare people is to jump out of a closet at them, so why be surprised when millions of dollars are spent on creating horrific effects? But there is value in movies that effectively portray a moral.
   If you didn’t see “The Help,” please do. Some people are tired of attention to racism, most likely because they’re not victims of it and do not realize that if all of us did something about it, it would be a thing of the past and indeed unworthy of mention. But we don’t, so there it is, still hanging around while we wonder why.
   I expected it to be overdone and preachy, but it’s actually an understatement of the problem but ends with perhaps too much hope. For someone born and bred in the American South, I am wary of such conclusions, because I never saw similar instances evolve toward such glowing promise.
   “Hilly,” the antagonist and trend-setter for a clutch of privileged, bossy young women, doesn’t think she is a racist, and hence is a prototype of average America, regardless of gender. The first omen is her warning to the protagonist, a writer, to cease and desist her probes there are people in town who can inflict great harm on such snoops. She says so, ostensibly, in the best interests of the journalist when she is actually expressing her own protection of the way things were at last mid-century.
   Regrettably, many people who lived those days in that region may marvel that such things went on, including its violence because at the time they simply weren’t paying attention. For them, the show can be a giant leap forward while, unsurprisingly, blacks will wonder what else is new.
    The movie, “The Debt,” on the other hand, is a story of importance regarding the unrequited injustice of the Holocaust, of which there were many parts, and about which people also wish Jews would shut up, with the same results as the denial of racism.
   Herein, a “debt” is owed to Israel and to Jews everywhere in the pursuit of a Josef Mengele-type perpetrator of the worst of antisemitic evils (Photo: door to the surgical ward at Auschwitz). But another debt arises having to do with what is owed to truth as it, in turn, dogs those who are committed to bring the perp to justice.
   There is violence but it is hardly the tip of the iceberg of what was launched by Nazis on hapless citizens that included, yes, socialists, communists, Romanys and homosexuals; but toward the Jews it was genocidal. The mental, physical and psychic strength of the antagonist as an aging man is symbolic of his being driven by a hate that passes all understanding on the part of those who would suppress or obliterate all intended victims forementioned.
   “The Rise of the Planet of the Apes” has so much symbolism and borrowings from other stories as to be blatantly obvious, most overtly with hints and reminders of King Kong, e.g., though the airplane and the Empire State building are replaced by a helicopter and the Golden Gate Bridge. And yes there is mayhem, including that of exploding cars, manned mostly by police.
   What is compelling amid its incredulousness is that we are forced to see society through eyes that we deem inhuman or subhuman, but who themselves are victims, not of Nazis and racists, but of all of us who are complicit in what happens to fellow creatures in the interest of improving our own lives and safety.
   It is also a reminder of how revolutions begin, most of which, like the “rise” of the apes, seem implausibe in their early stages. We are obliged also to remember that Freud did not just say that humanity is a “herd animal,” but one with a leader, which is crucial to all social change.
   The last of these films is the lesser of the three, but with worth of its own. I wish also that “The Help” and “The Debt” were shown in educational settings, especially for the young, as to what holds society together, or drives it apart.
   Why don’t we mainstream anti-racism training in our public schools? I don’t know. And when things go bad, as in these economic times, clearly the pain is directed toward minorities, with the same vengeance as the doctor of death in “The Debt.”
   When we don’t pay the piper early on, we surely pay later, if not forever.

Categorized in Race in America and Social Issues
Tags: " "Rise of the Planet of the Apes", " "The Debt, "The Help, Animal abuse, Anti-racism programs, antisemitism, Golden Gate Bridge, Holocaust, Jews, Josef Mengele, Mid-20th century U.S., Nazi, Nazism, Racism

Sep

Kill The Umpire!

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Cover of "Baseball Double Feature - Kill ...

Cover via Amazon

    Two teams, the Red Sox and the Braves, have suffered colossal collapses and lose playoff spots for this baseball year.
   Due to career mobility, mine is a serialized fan history, from the Cardinals to the Braves and Diamondbacks, and in these latter days I root for the dearly departed Sox from Beantown. So I know that being a fan is heartbreaking, that most predictions are false, and that annual Octobers can bring anything.
   The Red Sox were in no way deserving of the playoffs, and had they gotten there, it would have been a miracle, and likely not one of their own doing.
   So I hereby recommend that Boston fans herewith and forever shut up about Bill Buckner, whom they have vilified since his costly error, lo, those many years ago. Whoever can’t forgive and forget by now is in need of serious therapy. Having reason now to curse the entire 2011 Sox team, they won’t, because it’s much easier to blame one person than many.
   Their failure was not due to umpires, no more so than all other teams, which doesn’t save the men in black from the damnation they deserve. I watched many a team via TV in this notable season, and was heard to say aloud and often that all were getting screwed to the max by pitch calls. Umpires are equal opportunity abusers of all who hold a bat in hand.
   There is absolutely no excuse for the escalation of bad calls over the past decade. The profession has not changed since it was first deemed necessary that someone call balls and strikes behind batters. Every umpire sees more pitches than all of us put together, and by now it should be a supreme art with few lapses, however many dips and curves pitches take in the modern day. Compared to their counterparts in football and basketball, baseball umps have to focus on but one thing at a time.
   Umpires have become a privileged class, immune to public reprimand or penalization. There was a day when fans had to wait to know a call. Only later did umps employ hand signals and, later still, shout out balls and strikes. Now they sport all manner of cute little barks and behavior behind the plate that more properly belong to rock stars on a stage. And it’s gone to their heads.
   The answer? The pitch-monitor is already a staple of televised games, and please ignore all assertions that they are error-prone too, since the lords of baseball are too invested in keeping things unchanged.
   Do away with umps? Heavens, no. They are needed to call action on the bases (which they are not good at either) and to affirm that fly balls in the outfield are fair or foul. But for god’s sake strip them of their tyrannical power over balls and strikes. A standardized pitch monitor could be connected to the scoreboard for instant communication (hey, “if we can put men on the moon…”), even if a plate ump is still used to bellow it out.
   Other dispensable things: the international “world” series that comes before the opening of our season every several years should be off-limits to those under contract to Major League teams. This is what screwed Daisuke Matsuzaka, who felt he was “honor-bound” to participate but should have been told it isn’t the player’s call when he has another contractual obligation.
   Pitchers are most at risk in such contests because they have to throw at World Series level before beginning a long season for those who are paying them handsomely. Matsuzaka, as they say in the sport, “threw out his arm” that year and isn’t worth the inordinate millions he now gets to ride the Red Sox bench. And don’t get started about his role in the ‘07 Series win by the boys from Boston: he didn’t win it all by himself, and only if he had would the price be merited. And that would be in another world, not this one.
   And get rid of that insane home run contest at the All-Star Game break. It ruins more than a few sluggers for the balance of the season: they line up for big, fat pitches and swing from the heels, knocking them off the groove of their established timing and batting stances. Exhibit A this year is the Red Sox’ Adrian Gonzalez, whose last-half of the season was much less homer-productive.
   Last: get rid of big money in baseball. It got that way due to free agency, which was to protect players from greedy owners and front offices, but it merely opened the door to George Steinbrenner, whose expenditures on play rosters was beyond sanity. I grieved when the Red Sox joined that crowd only to find it did them no good in this highly anticipated year. Josh Beckett hasn’t been worth a damn since he got that obscene contract at last mid-year.
   Bless all those other owners who dare not go there. This is a game, not life and death itself.
   I’m still a Red Sox supporter, but in other bad news, this won’t be the Patriot’s year either.

Categorized in Sports
Tags: Bill Buckner, Boston Red Sox, Daisuke Matsuzaka, George Steinbrenner, Josh Beckett, Major league umpires, World Series

Sep

The Emmys: Or, Where the Red Carpet Leads

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Kate Winslet: Image via Wikipedia

    I am cynical to the max regarding the world of celebrity, and TV’s Emmys take no edge from my sarcasm. It is my missionary duty to convince others that it will rot mind and soul.
    Emmys night is the time to see all the TV actors and shows you didn’t know existed. Or if you do, there is a distinctive possibility that your life sucks.
    Pundits decide which year’s program is better or worse than another. This time, Jane Lynch got the critical hook for leading an “uneventful” procession of non-starting witticisms, songs, acts and acceptance speeches. The same liars then did an about face for their little darling Deschanel, whose gum-chewing, retro-Valley Girl banter charmed them utterly. Go figure.
The obligatory Red Carpet gushing begins long before the awards ceremonies. Given the chronic misbehavior of what Shakespeare called those of “bubble reputation,” it’s more like a Perp Walk. The difference is that the perps are showered with, “you’re looking beautiful…ravishing…lovely…” and why not, after fortunes spent on gowns (for some, a great mistake), hairdos, makeup and other pampering?
    Men seem less enamored of the flattery, like Steve Buscemi of “Boardwalk Empire,” a man of so few words that he resisted all provocations to reply; he knows the real talking is done on-screen. And Steve Carrell, who corrected the flatterer’s description of his spouse as “beautiful” by saying, no, she’s “hot.”

      Thank goodness “full-figured” gals are now given their due, like Melissa McCarthy (dressed in purple but in her right mind); Loretta Devine, already an Emmy winner; and Marlo Martindale of “Justfied.” Before, such women had to be smaller-waisted while otherwise broad-breasted, like Jane Russell, Ethel Merman or Kate Smith. Ugh.
    Kate Winslet was somewhat of an uncomfortable shrinking violet despite two Oscars and now an Emmy for “Mildred Pierce.” When everyone was all a-flutter over DiCaprio in “Titanic,” I tried to call attention to Winslet, whom I thought was the real budding star. Now Leo is the leading money-maker in Hollywood because Martin Scorcese likes him, but still no Oscar for the lad, after all this time. Match, game and set: Winslet.
   Lynch was even told by Leonard Nimoy that to men she is womanish and to women she is mannish. Sorry, Spocky, but your good sense timed out long ago, along with your pointy ears. I guess Lynch is just another gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered person who gets the back of our hand, like Chaz Bono, Ellen Degeneres before him, and countless others.
      Actually, Jane had some good lines, she just didn’t flaunt her boobs and butt when delivering them, something oft-demanded of women; it certainly helps Julia Roberts in her otherwise “dramatic” roles. Lynch called that night’s Emmys “the Modern Family Show,” which it turned out to be; and if that ain’t funny, what is? When Bob Hope did the Oscars the crowd laughed like hyenas at scores of his very un-funny one-liners.
   Jane is just a new kind of host, you know, recent vintage. Her sin, in the eyes of many, is that besides being lesbian she’s too big and tall, like a family friend of my youth who was lovely to the max but couldn’t get a guy in that day of fragile male egos, and became a nun. Please don’t do that, Jane: tell your critics to shove it or, better, just ignore them.
   She’s also the adult leader of the pack in “Glee,” a cast of ordinary-looking but extremely talented actors, the kind formerly kept out of the entertainment world doomed to raise kids in small towns for dull, detached fathers, till the latter ditched and threw them before divorce courts that no sympathy for unwanted women.
    Oh, there was Jon Hamm again, the mad man of “Mad Men,” but thank god without the little hat that’s too small for his head. The Jimmys, Kimmel and Fallon, tried to impress the critics with their roll on the floor, but were they wrestling or having a Guy Thing right there on national TV? But did the show have to let Charlie Sheen on stage: thanks to meds, surely, he was sane for the moment but they dared not chance much time on his mercurial personality.
   As for big winners that night, anyone on Modern Family deserved a prize, but I was bemused that Julie Bowen got one, having morphed from just another office slut on “Boston Legal” to playing a funny mummy in her current role. Corporate affairs are not allowed in real corporations but they are okay in legal and detective dramas. Ty Burrell, who got the other nod, could as well have been cast as “Cameron”: he arouses my gaydar without even trying.
    And why do winners brandish their Emmys on stage like parents wagging their daughter’s surreptitious sex-tape found in her face? Why not just throw the damned thing at someone? Someday, we’ll see Emmys and Oscars actually dropped during the festivities.
    And isn’t it time to admit that regardless of our denials, no one cares about writers, directors and producers, secretly considering those acknowledgments a waste of time and not to be bothered with so we can get back to our beloved starts? No, you say? Then name one. See, you can’t.
   I get perverse satisfaction that Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” mop up Emmy after Emmy, to the annoyance of right-wingers who claim he doesn’t do “real” news; of course they love that Rush Limbaugh dubs himself an “entertainer,” and one who gets his thoughtless minions to write daily hate-mail to liberal politicians.
    The “sleeper” stars are in the “Memoriam” segment, what I call the “Obituaries,” our last nod to people we never knew in person but think we did, like we could wake some morning and find them in bed with us or waiting at the breakfast table. It’s the great illusion of our obsession with celebrity. I suggest we try to get closer to the real people in our lives.
    “Sixty Minutes” had the cruel fate of being up against the Emmys for the night, featuring. you know, ol’ boring stuff like the recent (and incredible) Medal of Honor winner; and Fareed Zakaria hosted a valuable report on the Jobs crisis that had much more to do with our present and future well-being.
   But who needs all that crap, when there’s make-believe fun to be had?

Categorized in Pop Culture, Social Issues and Women and Society
Tags: Emmy Award, Fareed Zakaria, Glee, Jane Lynch, Jon Hamm, Julie Bowen, Kate Winslet, Mad Men, Medal of Honor, Melissa McCarthy, Ricky Gervais, Rush Limbaugh, Steve Buscemi, Steve Carrel, The Good Wife, the Red Carpet, Ty Burrell, Zooey Deschanel

Sep

Current Looks Are Deceiving

5 Comments

Image via Wikipedia

“Americans will flirt with and hear out any voice or opinion but will at last tend toward moderation.

   My last post told why Romney, at campaign’s end, will be the Republican nominee, and I stick with that prediction.
   Just a little over a month ago, Michelle Bachmann was the flavor of the moment but then slipped a long way even before her vaccination blooper during a debate.
   Extremism wears thin with enough exposure and Rick Perry has no innnoculation against that as well. Americans will flirt with and hear out any voice and opinion but at last they tend toward moderation. That is one of the blessings of free speech. Don’t be surprised however when the Rickster tones down his rhetoric depending on where he is. His ego, not his brain, is what wants to be president but the most he would bring to a debate with Obama is a handful of Texas witticisms and cracker-barrel bromides–none of which does a Chief Executive make.
   Whatever my issues with Romney, I truly feel that he wants to save the Republican Party from its current self, as a hostage of the present crop of hysterical Tea Partyers for whom compromise is a dirty word.
   This has resulted in GOP lawmakers going home during the recent Congressional break and facing angry voters in their districts who blame Congress more than anyone. Make no mistake, they knew the ire was directed more at them than Obama and they came back to Washington in a more sober frame of mind. Too many know that their own seats are at risk.
   I’m also upset with too many liberals and other Democrats. What the hell or they drinking or smoking? Are they overlooking all the president’s accomplishments, as they did Jimmy Carter’s in his mere but remarkable four years? Obama’s latest is his superb handling of the Libyan crisis, forging a broad coalition of support so that the U.S. didn’t appear, once again, to be policing the world on its own. We’ll be reminded of this not only during 2012 debates for President, and showcased at the Democratic convention. Seeing it all in context will have a public effect; after all, not everyone in American is a hothead of either left or right.
   If the race for Weiner’s seat in New York really was a referendum on Obama, including his posture on Israel, I’ve yet to see the real evidence. Word is that Jews in that district flipped to the GOP for the reasons aforementioned. Are Jews there really so thin-skinned as to go Republican at a crucial time in U.S. history? Can nothing critical be said of Israel, even when well-taken, without them handing over even one district to the poisoned well of a Tea Party-toxic GOP?   I’d also like to know exactly Independents and Libertarians stand presently; they seem to be ignored in latest polling though they will figure importantly in a close race for President.

    After what I believe will be a series of much more helpful Obama-Romney presidential debates on issues of substance, Republican Tea-baggers will start sucking for air, those nasty town hall meetings will recede into history and there will be a return to more civil and productive communication between pols and their constituents.
   This will have an effect as well on Fox News as well, along with the soon-to-be-determined fate of Rupert Murdoch, the Darth Vader of modern so-called “journalism.” And may his tribe decrease ever after. Megyn Kelly will be obliged to abandon her daily “let’s-talk-about-Obama” schtick. Is there no cure for cancer? Is there an increase in cases of Housemaid’s Knee? Megyn will want to discuss how such irrelevancies might effect Obama’s re-election chances, with a panel that will call the president names and make reference to him and “his cronies,” who are “lying to the American people” and turning us into European socialists.
   And Fox and Friends (“Fox and Fiends”?) will lose its luster for sobered-up conservatives and we’ll see no more of (from left to right): the Big Dumb Doofus, the Little Beauty Queen, and The Other Guy (like the Other Tenor whom no one can name) all of whom have not even a passing acquaintance with the truth.
   Fox News occasionally trots out what vaguely resembles a focus group but in reality are ordinary lock-step right-wingers, who hold up both hands when asked if they prefer Rick Perry–but when asked if they wish New Jersey Gov. Chris Christy would jump in the race, all paws are in the air again. This is further indication that they aren’t really all that happy with Perry.
   All of this is to say that present looks are deceiving. Exposure will continue to change the GOP presidential lineup; political moderation will rise again; and extremism will take its deserved Humpty-Dumpty tumble before all our eyes.

(To readers: summer days brought vacation time and other hiatus for Ichabod’s author. Posts were less often and regular, but the longer a blog post stays up, readership grows rather than declines. New readers seem also more apt to scan other Categories on the front page. You too are encouraged to tap into these nearly 100 posts if you haven’t already–dealing not only with Politics and Social Issues but with Women in America, Gun Control, Gays in Society, Race issues, Pop Culture, Religion, Sports and Travel. Remember too that you can Subscribe easily and without obligation to Ichabod’s Kin: it merely means you will get a nudge from WordPress when a new Post is entered, and save you from constant checking. Some readers contact me directly and offer off-line comments and criticisms, all of which are valued).

Categorized in Politics
Tags: Fox and Friends, Fox News, Free Speech, GOP, Gov. Chris Christie, Jimmy Carter, Megyn Kelly, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, President Obama, Rick Perry, Rupert Murdoch, U.S. Congress

Aug

Why It’ll Be Obama and Romney in 2012

4 Comments

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    With all the pointy-headed intellectuals in Washington and their supposedly prissy ways, thank god for a cowboy to freshen up the political dialogue.
   For that, of course, we need a real cowboy, and they typically have little interest in politics. The laconic speech of strong, silent types makes for poor rhetoric, as in: “Yep” and “yup,” “nope,” “much obliged, ma’am” and, “Don’t make me shoot yer sorry ass.”
   What we don’t need is what we get, cowboy wannabes. People who didn’t know what a real cowboy was thought Lyndon Johnson sounded like one but he was just a hick, and there is a difference. His saving grace was that he knew it and it bothered him.
   Such self-reflection finds no home in the mind of Texas gov Rick Perry, who has ridden in on a horse and will indeed play well in all of Hicksville. He’s a legend in his own mind, but a cowboy he is not, just another pretender.
   Perry’s problem is that rubes and hicks are not numerous in the USA. Concentrated in a certain region and sparsely scattered in others, some of them vaguely remember that LBJ was once president but can’t tell you when: did he kneel with Washington at Valley Forge?…ride with Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill?…or was he Reagan’s running mate? It don’t make much differnce to them.
   What they really like is someone who talks tough, and Perry does just that, laced with corn-pone that is heavy on the sauce–a defective form of English in some parts. Other numbkull candidates at least come from where speech is recognizable. What modern conservatives are really partial to are candidates who are sassy and impertinent, preferably to the point of rude and insulting: Palin, Bachmann, Gingrich, and so on.
   That’s Romney’s and Huntsman’s disadvantage: they take slaps at the President without sounding ignorant. That will cost them some voters but they’ll win others with their civility. So far they and Obama are the only adults in the room. I don’t know where Herman Cain belongs in all of this, but would like to try his pizza, as long as it’s not delivered cold. Rick Santorum tries hard to sound like a smart-ass but you can see him biting his tongue in the process. See ya later, Santorum. Ron Paul actually has some radically sensible ideas, and that precisely is his problem within the GOP.

Perry sure cut a fine figure riding his pony over the Texas border and into South Carolina, safe territory for someone who shoots from the hip. But he fared much less well in New Hampshire where he wasn’t as smart as a fifth-grader who asked him why he didn’t believe in science and how old he thought the earth was. Why, it’s very, very old, said the Rickster, but it ain’t really settled yet as to how far back it goes. Say, there, young’un: you want better answers, go ask yer teacher.
   Perry’s been salivating over the presidency for a long time, and you could tell by watching him. He has a king-size ego and is tired of governing Texas, or Texiz, as he calls it. And this is where the media come in.
   Now, we know that Fox News is the long, ugly arm of the GOP, of conservatives in general and of the Tea Party in particular. Candidates of such stripe are saved the scramble for lots of face-time with the public and to become well-known. Fox’s talent is to make a silk purses from a sows’ ears and is generous to right-wing palookas, as long as they take verbal pokes at Obama. There always have been extreme media down through political history but Fox calls to mind the press that assailed Jefferson in his time.
   It is fun to watch Fox treat the Republican candidates as if they are serious alternatives, regardless of their banal notions, historical mis-quotes, and absence of just plain good sense–while ascribing to Obama all manner of evil, a preposterous birth plot, and condemn his spouse for sleeveless fashions and him for taking vacations.
   CNN, the sane news source that avoids slinging red-meat to its audience, gives cowboys and their ilk enough rope to hang themselves. They outdo Fox in getting fresh faces Out There till sensible folks can see them for what they are. That’s what they’re doing with Perry, who will not wear well over time. What will be a sad spectacle will be his coming Losers’ food-fight with Sarah and Michelle.
   Left standing, long after Huntsman has limped away, will be Romney and we’ll have a fairly civil campaign between him and Barack. Fox will have a hard time playing the politics of personal destruction with Mitt as their candidate. Just pray he doesn’t make a bad choice for Veep on the ticket, but I truly doubt Romney would do that either.
   Even were Mitt to win in 2012, look for the Tea Party to be sucking for air, nasty town hall meetings to be things of the past, and Speaker Boehner able to cut reasonable deals with the Chief Exec, as he wished to do earlier in the debt ceiling debate.
   Then everybody can go back to being mad about overpaid athletes or that the Prez is a black man.
   And Perry will have hanged himself with all the rope he wished for, after his Last Meal of cold corn-pone. Ugh.

Categorized in Politics
Tags: GOP, Jon Huntsman, LBJ, Mitt Romney, New Hampshire, Obama, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul

Jul

Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

I See Crazy People

America the Moderate Again, At Last

Kill The Umpire!

Current Looks Are Deceiving

Why It’ll Be Obama and Romney in 2012

Murdoch: Or, When They Do It to Themselves

ABOARD THE GOP BANDWAGON

Who Is John?

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Who Is John?

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A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues