Here’s Rudy in 2000, at the height of his political career, dressed up in a costume from (we can only guess) The Lion King, and complaining somewhat nonsensically about the lions in the Bronx Zoo being on welfare.
Or something.
No, I’m not kidding….
Presidential, huh?
The annual Everyman Photo Contest is a photo contest exclusively for non-photographers, operating on the assumption that every person has one taken one really excellant photo at one point in their lives. I may be the sole exception to that rule, which is probably why I’m attracted to the site.
Anyway, I finally went to the site of the 2007 Everyman Photo contest winners. It’s a good way to get wisked away for a few minutes. I especially like the fact that they award prizes in an "From The Attic" category — photos taken long ago.
Pictured above: "On Her Way" (1946)
The Beatles were scheduled to perform in Israel back in 1965, but that country refused to grant the necessary permits. Why? Because they thought that the Beatle’s music might corrupt the country’s morals.
But now, Israel wants the Beatles to participate in a concert celebrating the country’s 60th birthday.
Except, you know John and George are dead (I’m sure it was in the papers), so… you know….
Sometime next month, I’m doing a stage reading of a one-act play called Green by Bekah Brunstetter. It’s about a soldier named Clint, returning from the Iraq war, learning to adjust (not very successfuly — he holds conversations with his gun and cigarettes, who talk back).
I play Alex, the soldier’s best buddy from childhood. Alex is artistic, liberal, anti-war, and 22 years old. (I may have a problem pulling that last one off). He’s also kind of a dick — no problem pulling that last one off. A typical exchange:
ALEX: Actually, uh, fuck no, Clint. It’s real stuff. Like did you know that the government totally monopolizes everything and turns us into these robotic consuming voting machines? Wait, so you got to vote when you were over there, right?
CLINT: Yeah, we voted.
ALEX: I mean, I assumed yeah, but – how messed up would that be, if you guys didn’t get to? Man. At least you’re back. At least you didn’t end up some kinda faux martyr for some duies’s cause, I mean, Fucking Bush. Sending like 300,000 more troops over as we speak. Saw it on CNN, cross-eyed murderer, he–
The play itself isn’t a political polemic about Bush/Iraq, but my character is. And a rather annoying one at that — the kind of liberal who think he knows all there is to know about all matters political, simply because he saw a Michael Moore film.
Ms. Brunstetter is an upcoming/struggling playwright in NYC. In her introspective blog, she wrote this about Green last November:
Blurb:
When Clint returns from Iraq to his strangely liberal bible belt college community, Alex, his Bush-trash talking best friend, and Rhea, Alex’s confused and beautiful girlfriend await him with baited breath. Clint wants to settle back down into normal life, but his memories of his experiences at war make this adjustment harder for him than he ever anticipated. Green is a fresh look at the high price of service, using magical realism and an amorous anthropomorphized fire-arm.
Something like that.
Lil’ Green has had quite the life: produced (as our first production ever) by WMC in 2004 – read in NYU’s HotINK festival of New Plays 2007 – finalist for the Tennesee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival 2007 – semi – finalist for ONeill Playwright’s conference 2007 – National Finalist, Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival 2007 – and now the Kendeda thing, through Atlanta’s Alliance theater – with a reading presented in conjuction with SPF and Fox Theatricals.
What I need to remember about this play is that I wasn’t thinking when I wrote it. That shows, yes, for sure – lots of things in it sort of lack poor planning, but: I had no agenda. I was just having fun and wrestling with something that confused/intrigued me. I think this is the correct way to enter a first draft, with no calculation. Maybe?
The agency I have been a-courtin for sometime is trying to find the ‘money project’ that might come from these stubby fingers – something I muster up in down time, some dramaplay fed by cheap white wine, white girl angst and a delightful, whimsical perspective on humanity.
It might be Green. It wasn’t You may Go Now, it wasn’t Walls – maybe – I hope – please – it will be this. The guy who’s directing a reading of it through the Alliance Theater Kendeda reading series – Rajendra Maharaj – an amazing director who’s working at the Goodman – is represented by this Agency, and is going to get them in the door to see it. Le Yay! I feel like pants need to be wowed until they are off.
People, I feel pressure. The good kind that makes impromptu birthday cakes happen in the span of two hours; the kind that makes your heart race and your product good.
I feel this is my chance to blow it, or not blow it. Over the next week, I will be squeezing writey time between work and babysitting to re-enter this story, find the humanity, make it fresh. Perhaps the gun and the cigarette will make out. Perhaps someone will monologue about oil prices, perhaps I will channel three years ago, and the things I then felt. I think it’s actually a story about comfort, and feeling comfortable in ignorance – I think it’s about home? We shall see.
In conclusion, I have decided that everything is important – nothing is no big deal.
Nice to do something contemporary and "arty". Should be fun.
Well, the landscape changed more than I thought it would.
McCain takes Florida. Not too much of a surprise. He was polling slightly ahead of Romney — ever so slightly — on the last day. It’s a bit of a shame that he gets declared the "winner" when it was so close. Then again, he does take all of Florida’s GOP electorates.
Rudy, naturally, is dropping out now (yes, yesterday was "Goodbye Rudy Tuesday"), although at least he didn’t entirely embarrass himself by getting beat out by Ron Paul (again). Heck, he even beat the Huck.
The good thing about the demise of Rudy? Well, I think the conservative Politico put it best: it marks the end of "9/11 politics".
Giuliani’s national celebrity was based on his steady, comforting appearance in Americans’ living rooms amid the terrorist attacks, and his campaign for president never found a message beyond that moment.
The emotional connection he forged that day, it seems, has proved politically worthless. After months of wonder that the former mayor seemed to have no ceiling to his support, he turned out to have no floor, trading fourth-place finishes with Ron Paul, a little-known Texas congressman.
"There’s a paradox for Rudy," said former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, who was a member of the 9/11 Commission. "One of the things he did very well on 9/11 was say, ‘We’ve got to get back to normal.’ And that’s what’s happened. We’ve gotten back to normal."
His expected endorsement of McCain comes as no surprise, and I expect that Rudy supporters will, for the most part, gravitate there anyway.
But the BIG NEWS, just coming over the wires, is Edwards. He’s dropping out.
A bit of a shame — I liked what he was saying, but he simply doesn’t have a chance and he knows it. It’s Barack and Hillary — a two-person race. There was a lot of talk about him staying in the race, and getting enough delegates to act as "kingmaker" at the convention. Guess that’s not to be.
He ran an excellant campaign, and certainly won the "ideas" debate, especially on the issues of health care and poverty. And he possessed more passion, I think, than all his Democratic opponents combined. Unfortunately, he just couldn’t overcome the media stampede to make it a two-person race — Barack and Hillary got all the attention.
The HUGE QUESTION MARK now is who, if anybody, will Edwards endorse. And also, whether that endorsement makes any difference.
I suspect that Edwards personal inclination is to endorse Barack Obama. [UPDATE: Scuttlebutt is that he won’t endorse anyone "for the moment"]. I also expect that is the inclination of most of his supporters. So yesterday, when all is said and done, probably was a "win" for Barack Obama, and he — more than McCain — will get the biggest bounce.
But will the Barack bounce be enough to put Barack over Hillary? Probably not. But pretty close. Take a look at this graph and the trendline for Obama.
Now add the red of Edwards to the orange of Obama, and you’ve got as tight a horserace as can be. This is putting Obama in an excellant position for Super Tuesday. You can see this happening in the individual states of Super Tuesday, like California:
Again, adding Edwards and Obama puts Obama very close to Clinton.
Of course, as I said, not all of Edwards supporters will go to Mr. Obama. And I suspect that, as I type this, Edwards is on the phone with someone in the Clinton campaign (are they making promises of Vice-Presidentship?). [UPDATE: Hillary and Obama are "banging down the doors" to get Edwards’ endorsement].
The absence of Edwards was written about two days ago by Dana Goldstein here. A nice tribute, but she comes away thinking differently about where Edwards supporters might go:
Intuitively, it makes sense that Edwards supporters would trend toward Obama. Both candidates ran as the anti-Clinton. Edwards even spoke about his own affinity toward Obama’s "change" message at the last New Hampshire debate.
But some polling suggests otherwise. A Jan. 24 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg News poll found that nationally, Edwards voters prefer Clinton to Obama by a slight margin. She could have an edge among those who are attracted to Edwards’ focus on the economy. "Hillary talks about the economy more than Obama, and she’s connected to the Clinton presidency, which people view as successful on the economic front," Teixeira said.
Edwards supporters bristle at the idea that Clinton could effectively assume Edwards’ mantle as the economic populist in the race. They point to her husband’s support for free trade and her own strong ties to corporate America. "John’s views on trade and tax fairness are just different than what the Clinton administration’s were, so there will be a credibility issue on these matters," said Leo Hindery, a former telecom executive and the senior economic policy adviser to the Edwards campaign. But most voters don’t have a grasp of the finer policy differences between the Democratic candidates, and low-income voters — those who would be most helped by Edwards’ populist policies — are especially loyal to Clinton. In recent weeks, she has doubled down on that appeal, speaking often about pocketbook issues such as the sub-prime mortgage crisis and health-care costs.
Well, time will tell.
At the risk of being disjointed, let me return to McCain. I find it very curious that he is (by most accounts) the GOP frontrunner (some are now saying, prematurely in my view, that a McCain nomination is a done deal). One wonders what his appeal is. McCain is as close to Bush as one can get on the Iraq War. The problem is, most Republicans are opposed to the Iraq War. And McCain is talking about expanding it, and even growling at Iran. (But then again, he’s emphatically anti-torture, for obvious reasons, so even the red-meat conservatives can’t be totally happy with him).
Okay, you say — maybe people are voting for McCain for other reasons. Well, like what? He’s not a social conservative by any means. He admits to knowing little about the economy. He’s not anti-immigration at all, except on the days when he says he is (alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays, I think).
And — something that people forget (but I’m sure you’ll hear more about it) — McCain considered dropping out of the GOP in 2001 (McCain denies this), and entertained the idea of becoming Kerry’s running mate in 2004 (McCain can’t deny this).
It’s very bizarre.
I suspect that the McCain votes are, well, not very enthusiastic. And man, talk radio (e.g., Rush) hates McCain. At best, he’s the best of a lackluster pack. But who knows? It wasn’t long ago when McCain was a "nobody" talking to small crowds in New Hampshire:
Several months ago I was covering a John McCain event in Keene, N.H. It was at the low point of the McCain candidacy, after his staff explosion and when the campaign bank account was dry. There was no bus and he was staying in the cheapest motels in town.
After the event, he invited the press corps out to dinner. I was the entire press corps. We went to a cheap hamburger place and I was tempted to buy him and his three aides dinner, since his campaign had no money. (Being a cheap journalist, I resisted the temptation.) But do you want to know what his mood was like?
He was fine. Winning the nomination, let alone the presidency, seemed like the longest of long shots back then. But he was fine with that…
So how did McCain get to be frontrunner? Ross Douthat makes the case that McCain got really lucky.
[M]uch of what’s happened to make McCain the presumptive nominee has been luck, pure and simple. He was lucky, to begin with, that George W. Bush lacked an heir apparent – no Jeb, no Condi, no Dick Cheney – who could unite the movement establishment against him.He was lucky that Mitt Romney was a Mormon. He was lucky that Fred Thompson, a candidate who might have succeeded in rallying both social and economic conservatives against his various heresies, was out-campaigned by Mike Huckabee, whose appeal was ultimately too sectarian to make him a threat. He was lucky that Rudy Giuliani ran an inutterably lousy campaign. (More on this anon.) He was lucky that Mike Huckabee won Iowa; lucky that the media basically treated that win as a McCain victory (though obviously his skill in cultivating the press made a big difference, in that case and many others); lucky, as David Freddoso suggests, that Huckabee decided to campaign in New Hampshire and (taking my foolish advice) Michigan instead of going straight to South Carolina; lucky that Giuliani decided not to campaign in New Hampshire after Christmas; and lucky, finally, that Fred Thompson decided to go all in against Huckabee in South Carolina, thus delivering McCain the Palmetto State and with it Florida.
And he was lucky, above all, that his strongest challenger was a guy that almost nobody liked — not the media, not his fellow candidates, and not enough of the voters, in the end.
Carpetbagger looks back to Apriol 2007 when the McCain campain was simply not in the news, and adds:
McCain didn’t have to do much of anything — the Republican rank and file already knew him, recognized what he brought to the table, and most of them liked him. He didn’t need commercials or the buzz from The Note; he was John McCain, and that was enough. That, plus the undying adulation from the media establishment, was more than enough to carry him through a “recuperation” period.
From there, it was simply a matter of waiting until everyone else collapsed. Giuliani was a joke candidate, Huckabee was a niche candidate, Thompson was a lazy candidate, and Romney was a Mormon candidate who was moderate-to-liberal up until a few minutes ago. And with that, McCain, through process of elimination, was the last man standing.
Sometimes, it really is better to be lucky than good.
Yup. But one thing’s for sure — this ain’t over for anyone.
This is my theory, which is to say, that is it mine. Here is my theory (by me):
This pro-Romney video, ostensibly by the Iowa College Republicans (but probably really just junior high schoolers) was put out on the Intertubes by the McCain people.
In his State of the Union address last night, Bush said, "We are grateful that there has not been another attack on our soil since 9/11."
Oh, really?
I’m not trying to play a cute semantics game; I know what conservatives mean when they talk about “terrorist attacks.” They’re describing devastating, cataclysmic events that kill a lot of people at once. I get it.
But about a month after 9/11, someone sent weaponized anthrax to two Democratic senators and several news outlets. Five Americans were killed and 17 more suffered serious illnesses. For reasons that I’ve never been able to explain, the incident — it’s entirely reasonable to call it an “attack” — is hardly ever mentioned. No one knows where the anthrax came from, who sent it, or why. It was a horrifying incident, immediately on the heels of another horrifying incident, but more than six years later, it’s almost as if the episode never happened.
Flickr has an entire pool devoted to them. Some of my faves:
If you happen to be on the set of a Warner Brothers cartoon…
And please, don’t slap the penguins. It upsets them greatly, and when you think about it, there’s really no call for it…
Jazz hands, people!
The approach of large waves will cause Charlie Brown’s limbs to separate from his body….
Sex with dumpsters? That’s a no-no…
If you are Spiderman, avoid casting your web onto, uh, these things…
Modern ballet with industrial machinary? Only on level surfaces. Here’s why….
And finally….
Absolutely NO Savian Glovers!!!
Rudy thinks he’s going to win today.
How very very sad.
UPDATE: I guess I should say a little more, as Rudy Giuliani is the only candidate that I’ve met (several times) personally. This was all back in the late 1980’s, before he was mayor. Back then, he was the U.S. District Attorney in New York. I was a law clerk in a criminal defense law firm. Despite being on opposite ends of the criminal justice system, Rudy and my boss, Barry Slotnick, had a professional friendship, and there were many times when Rudy would show up in the office after-hours. (The two of them served together on various boards and civic organizations). It was at that time that I came to "know" Rudy, to the extent that it afforded me special insight.
Barry and Rudy were cut from the same cloth. Both of them possessed a quality of shameless self-promotion. In Barry — who was, is, and always will be the pinnacle of self-promotion in my book — I found that quality to be slightly irritating; "irritating", that is, until I realized how much it generated business for the boutique firm which kept me gainfully employed. After that, I had a begrudging respect for it (and smiled silently to myself when others called him a "media whore").
With Giuliani though, I really found his self-aggrandizement kind of creepy. He was a public servant, appointed to his position of U.S. District Attorney. He didn’t have to run for anything, and unlike Barry, he didn’t have to generate business. So where did that pompousity come from? A character flaw, I took it.
I guess it served him well in later years, when he did run for mayor, although I don’t know many New Yorkers (Barry excepted) who were too fond of him and his tactics at the time.
And when 9/11 rolled around, well, I had long since abandoned the city for greener pastures. And seeing Rudy on TV back then — well, I can’t believe he’s been running on the basis of his performance on the day of, and the days immediately following, 9/11.
I mean, what did he do exactly? He gave press conferences. Sometimes they were in the street (but that was only because he couldn’t go to the Emergency Command Center, having made the brilliant decision of putting it in the World Trade Center, after it had already been the target of the 1993 terrorist attack!). And what did he say in those conferences? Well, he praised the police and fire fighters a lot. Really, that’s what he did.
Well, what would YOU do? Exactly the same thing, I expect. Does this qualify you to be president?
The one thing that struck me about Rudy Giuliani is this: he’s not very smart. He’s really not. And his campaign strategy, which I believe was his idea as much as his advisor’s, proves that.
The man is political toast now. Time to join the lecture circuit, Rudy.
I admire your optimism, but this kind of premature hubris is just asking for the Gods to serve up some humble pie. [UPDATE: Link no longer working because Amazon removed it. It was a listing for a book by the Editors of the Boston Globe. Title: "19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England’s Unbeatable Patriots". An article in the Boston Herald is here.]
Be sure to read the comment by Amazon reader Matthew Valentinas:
This was a fabulous book. Excellent use of foreshadowing. The chapter dedicated to the Supber Bowl was written so well I can’t even compare it to any other books covering Super Bowl XLII. The author is clearly ahead of his time. Even though I knew the ending this book read like the Superbowl had not even happened yet. It made me re-live the the hype of Super Bowl week all over again. The way the author incorpates Einstein’s use of EMC squared by switching dimension and time brings a fresh new perspective to the linear concept of beginning middle and end. I highly recommend this book. Truly one of a kind.
Man, what a liar he turned out to be:
“America’s armed forces need better equipment, better training and better pay . . . A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming . . . I don’t have enemies to fight. I have no stake in the bitter arguments of the last few years. I want to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect . . . We’re learning to protect the natural world around us. We will continue this progress, and we will not turn back … to lead this nation to a responsibility era, that president himself must be responsible. So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to uphold the laws of our land . . . I will not attack a part of this country because I want to lead the whole of it.”
A "snowball sentence" contrived by Dmitri Borgmann – each word is one letter longer than the last:
I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications’ incomprehensibleness.
Try to come up with one yourself.
Political advertising going negative:
I missed the speech last night. So what is the state of the Union?
Is it "strong"? Yeah, I bet it is. I bet that’s what he said. It’s "strong".
UPDATE: Well, looking through the text, he never actually said that. Usually, within the first couple of sentences, the President will proclaim (not just "say", but literally proclaim) "The State of the Union is strong!" [Applause].
I guess his speechwriters saw the wisdom in not opening with a laugh line.
They did manage to weasel this in the end, though:
And so long as we continue to trust the people, our nation will prosper, our liberty will be secure, and the state of our Union will remain strong.
So, you know, it’s like he had already said the state of the Union is strong, and now he’s telling us it will "remain" that way. Except, he never actually could say the state of the Union was strong.
