While Bernie Sanders rose in an Iowa favorability poll to thirty percent, encroaching on Hillary Clinton's thirty-seven, a news announcement on her whereabouts entered my ears this past weekend.
A fundraiser in the Hamptons at the home of entertainment lawyer Elliot Groffman, tunes provided by singer Dar Williams. Hors d'oeuvres, according to Politico, provided by Chef Jason Weiner, brother of dick-pic-infamous Anthony, and brother-in-law of Clinton's aide, Huma Abedin.
"...so far, [Anthony Weiner] has remained at arms-length from the [Clinton] campaign." I assume his wife attended the fundraiser, but maybe he stayed away. If so, he got to watch Donald Trump over the weekend call him a "sleazebag" and a "perv," while also slandering his wife, questioning her judgment in marrying such a person. Trump claims defensively that he likes women, but he has no problem beating on their characters for his own sleazy purposes.
"Clinton's Hamptons break from the campaign trail," continues Politico, "will double as a chance to raise money from New York's elite."
It's been asked a great deal in the news media why Hillary Clinton's race to the White House seems more like an Edsel than a Mustang (my simile). Is it just the e-mail scandal? Fox News Channel picks it up, dissects it, puts it back in the fridge and dissects it again the next day, on and on, like they did with the Benghazi incident. Clinton, for that side of modern entertainment-driven politics, is and always will be a bright target. The absurd lengths Fox and other anti-Clinton news outlets will go to in the future, if she's elected president, will consume long enough portions of the news cycle to strengthen ratings and further degrade minds.
Hillary Clinton's chief electability problem, in my view, consists of what could be symbolically called Weekending in the Hamptons Syndrome. Spending inordinate time with and kissing the asses of rich people doesn't look good to many poor and middle class voters. For me, Clinton's air, the physical way she holds her head, makes her seem remote, cold, and arrogant. In an age when no one normally saw candidates up close, this visual wouldn't have mattered as much--although her being a woman would've mattered a great deal, negatively, even more than it still does to some stupid men, unfortunately.
She's an example of an overexposed celebrity. We've been aware of her, nationally and internationally, since 1992, a long fucking time. Long-term celebrity isn't necessarily a bad thing. Madonna's been in the public eye since 1983, but she's had the sense to drop out of sight now and then. She remains vital and creative with an increasingly great singing voice, her latest album, Rebel Heart, as fine as anything she's done.
Yes, I'm a Madonna fan. I put her in this piece, I guess, because I needed to mention someone I like, in the midst of writing about someone I don't.
I assume Clinton will advocate the continuation of the Affordable Care Act, and for that I will be grateful. I assume she will continue America's significant part in the Global War on Terror, and will prove she is, like every other president, a novice at killing early on, but by the end of her first or last term, will be grim, gray-haired, and blasé, having overseen the mass deaths of civilians caught in freedom's crosshairs, and taught herself to believe, even behind her cold face, in "the greater good."
If, in November 2016, I'm faced with the main party choices of Clinton or Trump, I may put this in the write-in candidate space:
Are you fucking kidding me?
Vic Neptune
Monday, August 31, 2015
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Fox News Channel's Outnumbered, displayed onscreen as Out#, using what was regularly used as the number sign, should be called Outhashtagged, a word sounding like the name of an H.P. Lovecraft deity. The show features four pairs of women's crossed legs, right wing opinions, and a lone male in the middle looking stupid and acting deferential.
In today's episode, actress/Republican mouthpiece Stacey Dash called Hillary Clinton "a sociopathic criminal," and defended Donald Trump's ejection of prominent Univision journalist Jorge Ramos from a Dubuque, Iowa, press conference. Ramos had the gall, or, from my perspective, guts, to ask Trump logistical questions about the candidate's plan to deport eleven and a half million people. Trump was vague, grew irritated with a journalist--from the TV channel that dropped Trump's Miss Universe Pageant--and had his bodyguard push Ramos from the room. Outside, a man "not connected with the Trump campaign," but probably inspired by it, told Ramos to get out of the country. Trump let Ramos back in; they engaged in an exchange heated by the candidate's apparent inability to offer details--a character trait of this particular broad-brush megalomaniac. His police state fantasy plan of deportation, of course, resides in Trump's head like a sketch for an outline of a never-to-be-written novel.
Stacey Dash, a Black woman whose ancestors were abducted from their home continent to work as slaves on another continent, called Ramos's questioning a "rant," a word often associated with the mad. Her Outnumbered co-hostess, Harris Faulkner, also descended from people abducted from their home continent to work as slaves, castigated Jorge Ramos for speaking out of turn. When one is in the presence of an exemplar of goodness like Donald Trump, one must observe protocol and play according to his arbitrary rules, which include sociopathic tweet-pestering of one of Faulkner's co-workers, Megyn Kelly, because Kelly, like Jorge Ramos, also had the guts to ask the great man a relevant and penetrating question.
Dash, Faulkner, and the other two ladies on the show obviously approve of Trump. Their call-in poll asked, "What's the first word that comes to mind when you think of Trump?"
Andrea Tartaros read four of the five results out loud, "Arrogant" coming in first. The third result, "Idiot," she left out. It merely reflects that some Republican voters don't like Trump, and it's not Fox News policy at this time to call Donald Trump an idiot.
Stacey Dash clearly supports Trump. Fifteen years ago, when I first saw her in Clueless, I would've been startled to hear my present opinion of this beautiful woman with the extraordinary hazel eyes. Before I heard her political views, I enjoyed her presence on the screen in various movies. I may disagree with someone's politics without objecting to the person, but when their views are so densely unaware, with no regard for the subtle thread of things, I get turned off.
I enjoyed, I admit, in typical shallow male fashion, looking at Stacey Dash for many years, until I heard her talk about politics.
Ann Coulter, trying to get people interested in reading her new book, has joined Trump on his look-at-me trampoline. Coulter complained recently that she's not sought out in the news media like she used to be. Her vicious sound bites used to draw a great deal of attention, like the one right after 9/11: "We should bomb their countries and convert them to Christianity," a line rivaling Sarah Palin's "Waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."
Coulter, attaching herself to the Trump cause, can perhaps regain some lost celebrity territory, but it might be too late. She does, as she insists proudly, write her own books, a process involving months and years--vanishing from public view during research and writing. She now finds herself in a world less interested in reading books, and more devoted to informational bits, coming into minds like M&Ms popped into consumption holes without thinking. I haven't heard about any Coulter tweets--she's old-fashioned, like me; she writes books and other pieces without resorting to cute abbreviations--but consider that Donald Trump, in twenty minutes a few nights ago, wrote five anti-Megyn Kelly tweets, flinging his own mental disease of vindictive pettiness at American minds much faster than Coulter can ever do by writing volumes that require time to compose.
I can't stand Ann Coulter, I'm not defending her, but I see the news media landscape curdling into a new phase of quick judgments and quicker con artists manipulating a rich and developing information space characterized more and more by a growing stupidity and fascination with illusions built on flair.
Vic Neptune
In today's episode, actress/Republican mouthpiece Stacey Dash called Hillary Clinton "a sociopathic criminal," and defended Donald Trump's ejection of prominent Univision journalist Jorge Ramos from a Dubuque, Iowa, press conference. Ramos had the gall, or, from my perspective, guts, to ask Trump logistical questions about the candidate's plan to deport eleven and a half million people. Trump was vague, grew irritated with a journalist--from the TV channel that dropped Trump's Miss Universe Pageant--and had his bodyguard push Ramos from the room. Outside, a man "not connected with the Trump campaign," but probably inspired by it, told Ramos to get out of the country. Trump let Ramos back in; they engaged in an exchange heated by the candidate's apparent inability to offer details--a character trait of this particular broad-brush megalomaniac. His police state fantasy plan of deportation, of course, resides in Trump's head like a sketch for an outline of a never-to-be-written novel.
Stacey Dash, a Black woman whose ancestors were abducted from their home continent to work as slaves on another continent, called Ramos's questioning a "rant," a word often associated with the mad. Her Outnumbered co-hostess, Harris Faulkner, also descended from people abducted from their home continent to work as slaves, castigated Jorge Ramos for speaking out of turn. When one is in the presence of an exemplar of goodness like Donald Trump, one must observe protocol and play according to his arbitrary rules, which include sociopathic tweet-pestering of one of Faulkner's co-workers, Megyn Kelly, because Kelly, like Jorge Ramos, also had the guts to ask the great man a relevant and penetrating question.
Dash, Faulkner, and the other two ladies on the show obviously approve of Trump. Their call-in poll asked, "What's the first word that comes to mind when you think of Trump?"
Andrea Tartaros read four of the five results out loud, "Arrogant" coming in first. The third result, "Idiot," she left out. It merely reflects that some Republican voters don't like Trump, and it's not Fox News policy at this time to call Donald Trump an idiot.
Stacey Dash clearly supports Trump. Fifteen years ago, when I first saw her in Clueless, I would've been startled to hear my present opinion of this beautiful woman with the extraordinary hazel eyes. Before I heard her political views, I enjoyed her presence on the screen in various movies. I may disagree with someone's politics without objecting to the person, but when their views are so densely unaware, with no regard for the subtle thread of things, I get turned off.
I enjoyed, I admit, in typical shallow male fashion, looking at Stacey Dash for many years, until I heard her talk about politics.
Ann Coulter, trying to get people interested in reading her new book, has joined Trump on his look-at-me trampoline. Coulter complained recently that she's not sought out in the news media like she used to be. Her vicious sound bites used to draw a great deal of attention, like the one right after 9/11: "We should bomb their countries and convert them to Christianity," a line rivaling Sarah Palin's "Waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."
Coulter, attaching herself to the Trump cause, can perhaps regain some lost celebrity territory, but it might be too late. She does, as she insists proudly, write her own books, a process involving months and years--vanishing from public view during research and writing. She now finds herself in a world less interested in reading books, and more devoted to informational bits, coming into minds like M&Ms popped into consumption holes without thinking. I haven't heard about any Coulter tweets--she's old-fashioned, like me; she writes books and other pieces without resorting to cute abbreviations--but consider that Donald Trump, in twenty minutes a few nights ago, wrote five anti-Megyn Kelly tweets, flinging his own mental disease of vindictive pettiness at American minds much faster than Coulter can ever do by writing volumes that require time to compose.
I can't stand Ann Coulter, I'm not defending her, but I see the news media landscape curdling into a new phase of quick judgments and quicker con artists manipulating a rich and developing information space characterized more and more by a growing stupidity and fascination with illusions built on flair.
Vic Neptune
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Eating breakfast in the early morning, a second day of thick gray clouds drifting quickly southeast, I moved through TV channels, finding the usual skin care/hair/God will save you/astounding vacuum cleaner programming airing inevitably around dawn. A mid-1930s movie with young Robert Taylor and Virginia Bruce seemed a relaxing way to spend twenty minutes, but I looked elsewhere before settling on that, to see Chris Jenner, mother of five dark-haired TV stars with grating voices, seated in the back of a luxury SUV, enthusing to her unenthusiastic daughter, Kylie, about a "just the two of us" jaunt to San Diego.
Chris Jenner's failure as a parent of Kylie became evident to me during the two segments I watched this morning of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Season 10, Episode 5.
Yes. Season 10.
Chris suggests they have "a slumber party" in their hotel suite. Watch a movie, eat popcorn, wear pajamas. She seems eager to embrace her inner adolescent. Her outer adolescent, Kylie, seventeen, won't look at her. Her phone beeps with incoming messages and calls every time she's on camera. Later, Chris explains she's trying to get Kylie to engage with the world around her, a good piece of advice, but it's too late, isn't it? What is Kylie's world, anyway? Since 2007, she grew up in a family on camera, her half-sisters--Kourtney, Khloe, Kim--setting a standard for their younger two half-sisters, Kendall and Kylie, consisting of living a weird life of exposed privacy and riches.
Once established in the hotel suite, Chris says, like a normal person born before the age of personal computers, "What do you think of that view?!"
The blue Pacific, seen from a five star hotel's most vertical height, spreads out into an illusion of infinity, while Kylie, unmoved, blank, tells her mother she needs her own room. Chris, apparently not realizing her daughter is still a minor and can thus be told to shut up, and put up with the four figure a night hotel suite, again brings up the slumber party idea. Kylie's having none of that. Chris gives in, calls for an additional room.
Later, walking on the sidewalk near the hotel to see a friend of Chris's, Kylie complains, "How far is this place?"
"It's just a block from the hotel!" Chris says, either regretting or not regretting never having taken the little shit camping in past irrecoverable years.
In the friend's shop, Kylie tells her mother, and us, that she's moving out the "minute" she turns eighteen. Chris hasn't heard this before. It doesn't seem to bother her that such a bold declaration was shared not between mother and daughter privately, but within the Kardashian open concept video prison of their lives.
Cutting edge Wikipedia research on my part reveals that Kylie, in February 2015, bought a $2.7 million mansion in Calabasas, California, making it "...her primary residence upon her 18th birthday [August 10, 2015]."
Did she buy her own place to get away from the Kardashian show cameras? I don't know, but I doubt it.
Her Instagram photos include a sloppily composed shot of a matte light gray Ferrari with red rims.
heyitsnadiaxo comments, "u gon crash that too? lol"
A shot from inside that car, or some other, shows off Kylie's shoes against the black sunlit interior. She calls this image, "black"
Kylie's photo titled "today's catch" is my favorite on the first page of offerings, receiving one million "likes." Again, the setting is a car with a black sunlit interior. Two pairs of new sunglasses are held by Kylie or someone else as the cameraperson (Kylie or someone else) shoots at a downward angle, picking up reflections on the lenses, as well as fingerprints.
Why do I find this interesting? I don't consider myself a "hater" of the Kardashians. I observe them and the phenomenon of unseen cameras and sound equipment surrounding them as a symbol of our time. Reality TV is complicit surveillance; I find that interesting, as I do the explosion of the practice of selfie-taking. Young generations have grown up in a technologized world turned back on itself; a room of mirrors where everyone can generate images seen by thousands or millions across the planet.
Kylie Jenner took a photo of mirrored sunglasses, lenses that forbid contact with the wearer's eyes. On a person's face, mirrored sunglasses convey distance and impersonality (picture a cop looking at you, wearing them and asking for your driver's license and registration). In her million-liked Instagram photo, Kylie, whose focus was probably just on fashion, shows a fascination for reflections, surfaces, characterizing a key idea-world of twenty-first century youth. I don't condemn them for this, I just point it out.
We're far from the time when a majestic view of the Pacific, meaning nothing to Kylie Jenner now, spoke of new and unimaginable lands and cultures to Vasco Nunez de Balboa when he first saw the same ocean in 1513.
Vic Neptune
Chris Jenner's failure as a parent of Kylie became evident to me during the two segments I watched this morning of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Season 10, Episode 5.
Yes. Season 10.
Chris suggests they have "a slumber party" in their hotel suite. Watch a movie, eat popcorn, wear pajamas. She seems eager to embrace her inner adolescent. Her outer adolescent, Kylie, seventeen, won't look at her. Her phone beeps with incoming messages and calls every time she's on camera. Later, Chris explains she's trying to get Kylie to engage with the world around her, a good piece of advice, but it's too late, isn't it? What is Kylie's world, anyway? Since 2007, she grew up in a family on camera, her half-sisters--Kourtney, Khloe, Kim--setting a standard for their younger two half-sisters, Kendall and Kylie, consisting of living a weird life of exposed privacy and riches.
Once established in the hotel suite, Chris says, like a normal person born before the age of personal computers, "What do you think of that view?!"
The blue Pacific, seen from a five star hotel's most vertical height, spreads out into an illusion of infinity, while Kylie, unmoved, blank, tells her mother she needs her own room. Chris, apparently not realizing her daughter is still a minor and can thus be told to shut up, and put up with the four figure a night hotel suite, again brings up the slumber party idea. Kylie's having none of that. Chris gives in, calls for an additional room.
Later, walking on the sidewalk near the hotel to see a friend of Chris's, Kylie complains, "How far is this place?"
"It's just a block from the hotel!" Chris says, either regretting or not regretting never having taken the little shit camping in past irrecoverable years.
In the friend's shop, Kylie tells her mother, and us, that she's moving out the "minute" she turns eighteen. Chris hasn't heard this before. It doesn't seem to bother her that such a bold declaration was shared not between mother and daughter privately, but within the Kardashian open concept video prison of their lives.
Cutting edge Wikipedia research on my part reveals that Kylie, in February 2015, bought a $2.7 million mansion in Calabasas, California, making it "...her primary residence upon her 18th birthday [August 10, 2015]."
Did she buy her own place to get away from the Kardashian show cameras? I don't know, but I doubt it.
Her Instagram photos include a sloppily composed shot of a matte light gray Ferrari with red rims.
heyitsnadiaxo comments, "u gon crash that too? lol"
A shot from inside that car, or some other, shows off Kylie's shoes against the black sunlit interior. She calls this image, "black"
Kylie's photo titled "today's catch" is my favorite on the first page of offerings, receiving one million "likes." Again, the setting is a car with a black sunlit interior. Two pairs of new sunglasses are held by Kylie or someone else as the cameraperson (Kylie or someone else) shoots at a downward angle, picking up reflections on the lenses, as well as fingerprints.
Why do I find this interesting? I don't consider myself a "hater" of the Kardashians. I observe them and the phenomenon of unseen cameras and sound equipment surrounding them as a symbol of our time. Reality TV is complicit surveillance; I find that interesting, as I do the explosion of the practice of selfie-taking. Young generations have grown up in a technologized world turned back on itself; a room of mirrors where everyone can generate images seen by thousands or millions across the planet.
Kylie Jenner took a photo of mirrored sunglasses, lenses that forbid contact with the wearer's eyes. On a person's face, mirrored sunglasses convey distance and impersonality (picture a cop looking at you, wearing them and asking for your driver's license and registration). In her million-liked Instagram photo, Kylie, whose focus was probably just on fashion, shows a fascination for reflections, surfaces, characterizing a key idea-world of twenty-first century youth. I don't condemn them for this, I just point it out.
We're far from the time when a majestic view of the Pacific, meaning nothing to Kylie Jenner now, spoke of new and unimaginable lands and cultures to Vasco Nunez de Balboa when he first saw the same ocean in 1513.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, August 22, 2015
"...a Narcissus [quoting The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera] is not proud. A proud man has disdain for other people, he undervalues them. The Narcissus overvalues them, because in every person's eyes he sees his own image, and wants to embellish it. So he takes care of all his mirrors."
Donald Trump, in the news media, has been called a narcissist. Following Kundera's quote above, is Trump not proud? He reeks of pride, but also he slams those he perceives as enemies, his relentless belittling of Jeb Bush a sharp example. Yet, Trump grows stronger from attention. Like a 1950s science fiction movie monster increasing in power from energy blasts meant to destroy it, the unflappable billionaire rampages over his pathetic competition, using the news media as an array of mirrors, projecting his image, dreary power-speak, and self-reinforced belief in his own greatness, linking journalism, ideally objective, to celebrity worship.
Trump's Republican competitors have tried three tactics to combat him: 1) Ignore him. If one doesn't attack Trump, Trump won't counterattack. 2) Praise him, and receive praise in return, there's a good little pet rat, keep it up if you want to live. 3) Attack. If well-worded, the attacker sounds rational and courageous, but Trump's counterattacks will wither and destroy.
Senator Ted Cruz uses the second tactic. He claims that Trump has shone a needed light on the scourge of illegal immigration. Cruz, descended from Cubans, born in Canada, seems to feel contempt for millions of his own Hispanic people. He's suffered, poll- and attention-wise, from Trump's command of self-glorifying publicity practiced now for four decades--but so have all of the egomaniac's challengers.
Senator Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Senator Lindsay Graham, and Jeb Bush have all tried the third tactic, without success. Paul's mocking of Trump got him nowhere, but Trump's counter-gripe directed at Paul got more coverage. Rick Perry, backed by millions of super PAC dollars keeping his presidential run on life support--while he can't pay his campaign workers--was the first to feel the tycoon's wrath, after the former Texas governor spoke out against Trump's ridiculous exaggerations about the criminality of illegal immigrants. Graham, after calling Trump a "jackass," suffered the indignity of a wealthy, whining bully of a private citizen revealing a sitting senator's personal cell phone number. Jeb Bush...well, his fumbles merit their own paragraphs.
It wasn't long ago, the beginning of 2015, when I, like many others, figured the 2016 presidential race would have Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush as inevitable, more than well-funded nominees, both representing political dynasties. As the months passed, the idea of Clinton/Bush baggage proceeded to sicken more and more Americans, yearning for the first time since H. Ross Perot (in 1992) to welcome anti-establishment possibilities. Perot's campaign and rise to national consciousness was comparatively modest in scale to what we have now, with Bernie Sanders (a Socialist), and Donald Trump (a self-financing flamboyant mouth-hole), commanding speaking engagement audiences in the tens of thousands.
It's true that it's too early to predict what will happen with the Trump and Sanders campaigns. The same, though, can be said about the formerly anointed Clinton and Bush. Clinton, mentioned on cable news, even away from Fox, is referred to lately (except by her advocates) as "floundering," while her e-mail scandal seems to have developed into one because she didn't level with the news media and American voters when it first broke. She handled the scandal exactly like they shouldn't be played: letting information out piecemeal, causing people to speculate, stretching it all out and hoping public amnesia would muffle it. She released her server, finally, after months of holding it back, and now, according to the Washington Examiner, there may have been two servers.
That Clinton, an old hand in politics, would allow herself to fuck up her public relations profile like this doesn't point to a successful future presidency. Her haughty Hillary Clintonesque attitude about this situation, for which she herself is to blame, has displayed confrontation and anger when asked about it by journalists. She shows a pissed off face instead of controlling her negativity. Barack Obama, like him or not, is quite skilled at keeping his emotions to himself, parsing them out calculatedly. Jeb Bush, like Clinton, has also lost control of his public face.
On August 20, 2015, in New Hampshire, Bush gave what looked like an impromptu press conference; outside, with twelve to fifteen journalists around him, including a few behind. His demeanor reminded me of a man who's just finished a long shift at work, but has to take care of some annoying business before going home, where he can relax, eat, watch TV, and think about anything but work. The gathering of reporters, cameras, microphones, candidate and guards, looked and felt spontaneous. Most people running for president, you'd think, would welcome any opportunity to speak to an assembly of TV journalists (some of them prominent), knowing this will be aired on television, a medium commanded by adversarial Trump, so why not be friendly, likable, and informative, as well as inspiring to voters? Not Jeb Bush.
A male journalist, after shouting a clarification question from behind the candidate, received this response: "I'm answering the question! You don't have to shout at my ear!"
The lovely Kasie Hunt of MSNBC asked Bush if the term, anchor babies, used by Bush in a recent interview, is derogatory.
"What other term is there? What should I call them?"
He could call them, per the Fourteenth Amendment, American citizens, but that may not be an Amendment he respects as much as the Second. Another journalist suggested using the word drier and less inoffensive word, undocumented, following that with several more descriptive words.
Bush scoffed, smiling with exasperation: "You substitute the term with seven or eight words."
Soon after, Bush strode away with his armed men, beaten by television reporters, his body language saying, I hate this, I hate these people, just get me elected, God, or Satan, or whoever the fuck I made the deal with.
At the beginning of the year, when we lived in the Clinton-Bush 2016 dualism, Bush's campaign "war chest" began to fill with hundreds of millions of dollars. We all knew this and what it meant, but he stayed coy about running for president. Now, only two months after announcing his run, he's facing an opponent he may have known would enter the race, but whose tactics have proven surprising. Out of respect, one doesn't insult one's political opponents, but that's so late twentieth century. Trump's jabs have left Jeb Bush flinty and brittle, evident two days ago in the outdoor press conference. Do we want a leader who can't handle answering logical questions from a dozen journalists about his own statements? How difficult is that, compared to deciding whether or not to attack North Korea, intensify the anti-ISIS war, or coming up with a sane, workable, and compassionate immigration bill that leaves racist terms like anchor babies out of its, and the president's, language?
As far as ignoring Donald Trump, can the master narcissist who polishes and maintains so many adoring mirrors in the public and in the news media be ignored forever?
Vic Neptune
Donald Trump, in the news media, has been called a narcissist. Following Kundera's quote above, is Trump not proud? He reeks of pride, but also he slams those he perceives as enemies, his relentless belittling of Jeb Bush a sharp example. Yet, Trump grows stronger from attention. Like a 1950s science fiction movie monster increasing in power from energy blasts meant to destroy it, the unflappable billionaire rampages over his pathetic competition, using the news media as an array of mirrors, projecting his image, dreary power-speak, and self-reinforced belief in his own greatness, linking journalism, ideally objective, to celebrity worship.
Trump's Republican competitors have tried three tactics to combat him: 1) Ignore him. If one doesn't attack Trump, Trump won't counterattack. 2) Praise him, and receive praise in return, there's a good little pet rat, keep it up if you want to live. 3) Attack. If well-worded, the attacker sounds rational and courageous, but Trump's counterattacks will wither and destroy.
Senator Ted Cruz uses the second tactic. He claims that Trump has shone a needed light on the scourge of illegal immigration. Cruz, descended from Cubans, born in Canada, seems to feel contempt for millions of his own Hispanic people. He's suffered, poll- and attention-wise, from Trump's command of self-glorifying publicity practiced now for four decades--but so have all of the egomaniac's challengers.
Senator Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Senator Lindsay Graham, and Jeb Bush have all tried the third tactic, without success. Paul's mocking of Trump got him nowhere, but Trump's counter-gripe directed at Paul got more coverage. Rick Perry, backed by millions of super PAC dollars keeping his presidential run on life support--while he can't pay his campaign workers--was the first to feel the tycoon's wrath, after the former Texas governor spoke out against Trump's ridiculous exaggerations about the criminality of illegal immigrants. Graham, after calling Trump a "jackass," suffered the indignity of a wealthy, whining bully of a private citizen revealing a sitting senator's personal cell phone number. Jeb Bush...well, his fumbles merit their own paragraphs.
It wasn't long ago, the beginning of 2015, when I, like many others, figured the 2016 presidential race would have Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush as inevitable, more than well-funded nominees, both representing political dynasties. As the months passed, the idea of Clinton/Bush baggage proceeded to sicken more and more Americans, yearning for the first time since H. Ross Perot (in 1992) to welcome anti-establishment possibilities. Perot's campaign and rise to national consciousness was comparatively modest in scale to what we have now, with Bernie Sanders (a Socialist), and Donald Trump (a self-financing flamboyant mouth-hole), commanding speaking engagement audiences in the tens of thousands.
It's true that it's too early to predict what will happen with the Trump and Sanders campaigns. The same, though, can be said about the formerly anointed Clinton and Bush. Clinton, mentioned on cable news, even away from Fox, is referred to lately (except by her advocates) as "floundering," while her e-mail scandal seems to have developed into one because she didn't level with the news media and American voters when it first broke. She handled the scandal exactly like they shouldn't be played: letting information out piecemeal, causing people to speculate, stretching it all out and hoping public amnesia would muffle it. She released her server, finally, after months of holding it back, and now, according to the Washington Examiner, there may have been two servers.
That Clinton, an old hand in politics, would allow herself to fuck up her public relations profile like this doesn't point to a successful future presidency. Her haughty Hillary Clintonesque attitude about this situation, for which she herself is to blame, has displayed confrontation and anger when asked about it by journalists. She shows a pissed off face instead of controlling her negativity. Barack Obama, like him or not, is quite skilled at keeping his emotions to himself, parsing them out calculatedly. Jeb Bush, like Clinton, has also lost control of his public face.
On August 20, 2015, in New Hampshire, Bush gave what looked like an impromptu press conference; outside, with twelve to fifteen journalists around him, including a few behind. His demeanor reminded me of a man who's just finished a long shift at work, but has to take care of some annoying business before going home, where he can relax, eat, watch TV, and think about anything but work. The gathering of reporters, cameras, microphones, candidate and guards, looked and felt spontaneous. Most people running for president, you'd think, would welcome any opportunity to speak to an assembly of TV journalists (some of them prominent), knowing this will be aired on television, a medium commanded by adversarial Trump, so why not be friendly, likable, and informative, as well as inspiring to voters? Not Jeb Bush.
A male journalist, after shouting a clarification question from behind the candidate, received this response: "I'm answering the question! You don't have to shout at my ear!"
The lovely Kasie Hunt of MSNBC asked Bush if the term, anchor babies, used by Bush in a recent interview, is derogatory.
"What other term is there? What should I call them?"
He could call them, per the Fourteenth Amendment, American citizens, but that may not be an Amendment he respects as much as the Second. Another journalist suggested using the word drier and less inoffensive word, undocumented, following that with several more descriptive words.
Bush scoffed, smiling with exasperation: "You substitute the term with seven or eight words."
Soon after, Bush strode away with his armed men, beaten by television reporters, his body language saying, I hate this, I hate these people, just get me elected, God, or Satan, or whoever the fuck I made the deal with.
At the beginning of the year, when we lived in the Clinton-Bush 2016 dualism, Bush's campaign "war chest" began to fill with hundreds of millions of dollars. We all knew this and what it meant, but he stayed coy about running for president. Now, only two months after announcing his run, he's facing an opponent he may have known would enter the race, but whose tactics have proven surprising. Out of respect, one doesn't insult one's political opponents, but that's so late twentieth century. Trump's jabs have left Jeb Bush flinty and brittle, evident two days ago in the outdoor press conference. Do we want a leader who can't handle answering logical questions from a dozen journalists about his own statements? How difficult is that, compared to deciding whether or not to attack North Korea, intensify the anti-ISIS war, or coming up with a sane, workable, and compassionate immigration bill that leaves racist terms like anchor babies out of its, and the president's, language?
As far as ignoring Donald Trump, can the master narcissist who polishes and maintains so many adoring mirrors in the public and in the news media be ignored forever?
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Donald Trump seduces America and its press corps. You can tell from the lit-up face of Katy Tur, who endured Trump in an interview in which he sometimes berated her, that she's having fun covering the Trump Campaign which is right now (9:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time) in New Hampshire for the great man's first town hall meeting.
Earlier this evening on MSNBC, Chris Matthews, an old political observer, spoke passionately, if not affirmatively, in favor of Trump's liveliness as contrasted with his dull Republican competition. Only Trump and Bernie Sanders are bringing in the crowds. They're both whipped up in their enthusiasm for the campaigning process. It shows, while Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, and other conventional candidates seem like containers of leftover soup forgotten in the refrigerator.
I acknowledge Trump's excitement factor, while grimacing at his words, boasts, absolute statements, ego blasts, and wearisome vagueness. Journalists, more and more, speak of his entertainment value.
Jeb Bush, in spite of the exclamation point after his first name--the minimalistic slogan presented when he finally announced his run--is wooden and showing stress-related signs of craven politicking, as when he used, today, in an interview, the term anchor babies. This frankly racist idea suggests that women of other nations (i.e. Mexico) sometimes seek to have babies in the United States so that they can take advantage of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes that children born in this country are automatically American citizens. Donald Trump has griped about this law, so some of his competitors do the same, even Bobby Jindal, who became an American citizen because of the law he now condemns (since he's far behind in the Republican race to prove who's the least principled).
Trump stoops low, his competitors follow, not realizing, apparently, that Trump, having first engaged a large portion of voters with his nutty ideas, rules the idea, while his stupid imitators (Walker, Cruz, Jindal, et al) come across as the panderers they are. I don't know if this is Trump's strategy, or just something that happens, but we now have a Republican frontrunner controlling his competition by making them sink to his lows. Does Jeb Bush, married for decades to a Latina, realize how racist he sounds when he says, "...anchor babies..."? I don't doubt his intelligence, so I assume he does understand the disgusting level he's stepping down to in order to match wits with a sharp-tongued businessman who nevertheless spins rhetorical circles around him, and manages to do so without saying anything substantial.
Does Jeb Bush deserve that exclamation point? Do any of the other Republican contenders, besides Trump? Trump's competition suffers from their being unable to say shitty, uncompassionate things without seeming abhorrent. Trump, because he is an experienced master pitchman, can be abhorrent, ride out subsequent negative commentary, and move on to even greater popularity.
In Iowa, a Midwestern state where one would assume its voters, Republican, Democrat, or Independent, have their feet on the ground and aren't taken in by razzle dazzle, seemed to have enjoyed Trump's time there as he traveled by helicopter and golf cart. Hillary Clinton, strolling at the Iowa State Fair wearing her usual long-sleeved pantsuit in the stuffy humid air of a Midwest August, seemed lifeless and stony, coming to life, in a miffed way, mostly when asked by reporters about her ongoing e-mail scandal.
Today, for the first time in this eternal circus of the 2015-16 election campaign, I began to think Donald Trump has a serious chance of winning the Republican nomination. Jeb Bush had a town meeting this evening in New Hampshire, a few blocks from Trump's. Did MSNBC, the supposed liberal network, cover Jeb? Fuck no. They spent big blocks of time on Donald Trump metaphorically caressing his nipples.
We desire an entertainer, a reality show host, a hypercapitalist with no ability to hold back his thoughts. No journalist has yet asked Trump if, after he's elected president (we're assured by him that he will be), he will keep the same hairdo after it's turned white.
He will, as our leader, discover, like Eisenhower knew, that fighting wars is very difficult.
Trump likes to remind us of his opposition to the Iraq War. He knows this is a sensitive topic for Jeb Bush, what with his older brother, so Trump needles him about it--a good campaign tactic. But what did Trump think about the Iraq War in 2003? Given his current declared bloodthirstiness when talking about ISIS, I suggest he doesn't have a problem with the United States using its military to devastate, and he had no qualms about it then. In 2004, though, he said in an interview that the Iraq War was a mistake. A year into an already evident disaster, an easy statement to make. Iraq, in 2004, was wrenched by civil war, U.S. troops were fully engaged in fighting in cities and feeling the lessons of occupying a justifiably ungrateful country, and the Abu Ghraib human rights abuse tragedy (I won't use the mild and safe word, scandal) had been revealed. Calling a horrible mess a horrible mess didn't take an insightful genius, no matter what Trump says now about his views on the Iraq War.
According to David Corn in a recent Mother Jones article, one of Trump's military policy advisors is John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, neoconservative, Israel supporter (no matter what horrifying actions that government takes against Palestinians--in other words, a typical American political thinker), and heavy-breathing paranoid alarmist. Bolton also advises Bobby Jindal, but I suspect Trump's number is higher on his speed dial. Bolton was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Iraq War, and still, like all of his fellow pundits and opinion-makers who pushed for that catastrophe, regards it as a success, marred, of course, by Barack Obama, who withdrew the troops "prematurely." In the reality-based world, Obama followed to the letter George W. Bush's 2008 order that the troops be withdrawn by the end of 2011. Obama has since put troops ("advisors") back in, and a whopping total thus far of sixty Syrian "freedom fighters" have been trained by the U.S. military to turn the tide in the Syrian Civil War.
John Bolton, though, as a military policy advisor for Donald Trump? Has he advised Bolton that he was dead wrong about Iraq in 2003? Does Trump like Bolton for the latter's equally stupid view on attacking Iran?
Trump, though he's fun to write about, is a horrible fucking person representing this country's historical nadir in public affairs, and the news media supporting, through publicizing, his ridiculous cause. Candidates trying to sound serious aren't coming across, except Bernie Sanders, who resonates with a lot of people because, like Trump, he speaks plainly. Unlike Trump, he really wants to help the majority of this country's citizens and go after Wall Street and the wealthy. Sanders' supporters, I'm guessing, tend to be stronger in the brain department than Trump's.
Trump, as I wrote in a previous post, has the idiot vote wrapped up, but I think he'll also attract smarter people who can't stand Hillary Clinton's aloof personality and sense of entitlement to the presidency which emanates from her imperious face. The more intelligent Trump enthusiasts may also regard, with much justification, the Republican candidates as cretins (Jindal), loathsome (Cruz), or boring with baggage attached (Bush). The country is in tense catapult mode, ready to fling away establishment politicians, while embracing new, assumedly untainted, private sector personalities with "fresh" ideas.
Unfortunately, whether an establishment or anti-establishment candidate prevails in 2016, we may be doomed.
Views to my blog from other countries have been increasing. I'm glad my words go to other parts of the world. My commentaries on America's bizarre political processes consist of my own perspective, based on allowing information in the news media and material I read on foreign websites, to enter my mind and move around in there until I write about whatever I feel like writing about. If I've enlightened anyone in other nations about this particular 2015-16 election cycle, I'm glad I've done so, but bear in mind that my opinions on Trump and others are entirely my own.
Thank you, though, for reading these posts. I always try, at least, to be interesting.
Vic Neptune
Earlier this evening on MSNBC, Chris Matthews, an old political observer, spoke passionately, if not affirmatively, in favor of Trump's liveliness as contrasted with his dull Republican competition. Only Trump and Bernie Sanders are bringing in the crowds. They're both whipped up in their enthusiasm for the campaigning process. It shows, while Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, and other conventional candidates seem like containers of leftover soup forgotten in the refrigerator.
I acknowledge Trump's excitement factor, while grimacing at his words, boasts, absolute statements, ego blasts, and wearisome vagueness. Journalists, more and more, speak of his entertainment value.
Jeb Bush, in spite of the exclamation point after his first name--the minimalistic slogan presented when he finally announced his run--is wooden and showing stress-related signs of craven politicking, as when he used, today, in an interview, the term anchor babies. This frankly racist idea suggests that women of other nations (i.e. Mexico) sometimes seek to have babies in the United States so that they can take advantage of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes that children born in this country are automatically American citizens. Donald Trump has griped about this law, so some of his competitors do the same, even Bobby Jindal, who became an American citizen because of the law he now condemns (since he's far behind in the Republican race to prove who's the least principled).
Trump stoops low, his competitors follow, not realizing, apparently, that Trump, having first engaged a large portion of voters with his nutty ideas, rules the idea, while his stupid imitators (Walker, Cruz, Jindal, et al) come across as the panderers they are. I don't know if this is Trump's strategy, or just something that happens, but we now have a Republican frontrunner controlling his competition by making them sink to his lows. Does Jeb Bush, married for decades to a Latina, realize how racist he sounds when he says, "...anchor babies..."? I don't doubt his intelligence, so I assume he does understand the disgusting level he's stepping down to in order to match wits with a sharp-tongued businessman who nevertheless spins rhetorical circles around him, and manages to do so without saying anything substantial.
Does Jeb Bush deserve that exclamation point? Do any of the other Republican contenders, besides Trump? Trump's competition suffers from their being unable to say shitty, uncompassionate things without seeming abhorrent. Trump, because he is an experienced master pitchman, can be abhorrent, ride out subsequent negative commentary, and move on to even greater popularity.
In Iowa, a Midwestern state where one would assume its voters, Republican, Democrat, or Independent, have their feet on the ground and aren't taken in by razzle dazzle, seemed to have enjoyed Trump's time there as he traveled by helicopter and golf cart. Hillary Clinton, strolling at the Iowa State Fair wearing her usual long-sleeved pantsuit in the stuffy humid air of a Midwest August, seemed lifeless and stony, coming to life, in a miffed way, mostly when asked by reporters about her ongoing e-mail scandal.
Today, for the first time in this eternal circus of the 2015-16 election campaign, I began to think Donald Trump has a serious chance of winning the Republican nomination. Jeb Bush had a town meeting this evening in New Hampshire, a few blocks from Trump's. Did MSNBC, the supposed liberal network, cover Jeb? Fuck no. They spent big blocks of time on Donald Trump metaphorically caressing his nipples.
We desire an entertainer, a reality show host, a hypercapitalist with no ability to hold back his thoughts. No journalist has yet asked Trump if, after he's elected president (we're assured by him that he will be), he will keep the same hairdo after it's turned white.
He will, as our leader, discover, like Eisenhower knew, that fighting wars is very difficult.
Trump likes to remind us of his opposition to the Iraq War. He knows this is a sensitive topic for Jeb Bush, what with his older brother, so Trump needles him about it--a good campaign tactic. But what did Trump think about the Iraq War in 2003? Given his current declared bloodthirstiness when talking about ISIS, I suggest he doesn't have a problem with the United States using its military to devastate, and he had no qualms about it then. In 2004, though, he said in an interview that the Iraq War was a mistake. A year into an already evident disaster, an easy statement to make. Iraq, in 2004, was wrenched by civil war, U.S. troops were fully engaged in fighting in cities and feeling the lessons of occupying a justifiably ungrateful country, and the Abu Ghraib human rights abuse tragedy (I won't use the mild and safe word, scandal) had been revealed. Calling a horrible mess a horrible mess didn't take an insightful genius, no matter what Trump says now about his views on the Iraq War.
According to David Corn in a recent Mother Jones article, one of Trump's military policy advisors is John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, neoconservative, Israel supporter (no matter what horrifying actions that government takes against Palestinians--in other words, a typical American political thinker), and heavy-breathing paranoid alarmist. Bolton also advises Bobby Jindal, but I suspect Trump's number is higher on his speed dial. Bolton was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Iraq War, and still, like all of his fellow pundits and opinion-makers who pushed for that catastrophe, regards it as a success, marred, of course, by Barack Obama, who withdrew the troops "prematurely." In the reality-based world, Obama followed to the letter George W. Bush's 2008 order that the troops be withdrawn by the end of 2011. Obama has since put troops ("advisors") back in, and a whopping total thus far of sixty Syrian "freedom fighters" have been trained by the U.S. military to turn the tide in the Syrian Civil War.
John Bolton, though, as a military policy advisor for Donald Trump? Has he advised Bolton that he was dead wrong about Iraq in 2003? Does Trump like Bolton for the latter's equally stupid view on attacking Iran?
Trump, though he's fun to write about, is a horrible fucking person representing this country's historical nadir in public affairs, and the news media supporting, through publicizing, his ridiculous cause. Candidates trying to sound serious aren't coming across, except Bernie Sanders, who resonates with a lot of people because, like Trump, he speaks plainly. Unlike Trump, he really wants to help the majority of this country's citizens and go after Wall Street and the wealthy. Sanders' supporters, I'm guessing, tend to be stronger in the brain department than Trump's.
Trump, as I wrote in a previous post, has the idiot vote wrapped up, but I think he'll also attract smarter people who can't stand Hillary Clinton's aloof personality and sense of entitlement to the presidency which emanates from her imperious face. The more intelligent Trump enthusiasts may also regard, with much justification, the Republican candidates as cretins (Jindal), loathsome (Cruz), or boring with baggage attached (Bush). The country is in tense catapult mode, ready to fling away establishment politicians, while embracing new, assumedly untainted, private sector personalities with "fresh" ideas.
Unfortunately, whether an establishment or anti-establishment candidate prevails in 2016, we may be doomed.
Views to my blog from other countries have been increasing. I'm glad my words go to other parts of the world. My commentaries on America's bizarre political processes consist of my own perspective, based on allowing information in the news media and material I read on foreign websites, to enter my mind and move around in there until I write about whatever I feel like writing about. If I've enlightened anyone in other nations about this particular 2015-16 election cycle, I'm glad I've done so, but bear in mind that my opinions on Trump and others are entirely my own.
Thank you, though, for reading these posts. I always try, at least, to be interesting.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, August 15, 2015
"Yesterday," by the Beatles, had the working title, "Scrambled Eggs." Would the beautiful song had been as popular if the lyrics remained absurd? Is beauty in art marred by silliness? Paul McCartney wrote beyond the rough draft of "Yesterday," saving us from the wounding our ears may have suffered had nonsensical poetry prevailed over the moving artistic expression of the song's final version.
Still, my argument above is challenged by the chorus in John Lennon's Dada lyrics for "I Am the Walrus":
I am the Eggman
I am the Eggmen
I am the Walrus
Goo goo a' joob
Another memorable Beatles song, lacking the sentimental prettiness of "Yesterday," but a hard piece of musical candy, probably meaningless beyond Lennon's own personal viewpoints. "I Am the Walrus," however, will enhance the mood of a cannabis experience. Much of their released music, after 1966, goes well with being stoned. The same can be said of Jefferson Airplane and many other bands of the period.
One curious thing about weird lyrics is how the ears, not always picking up on exactly what the singer sings, substitutes words, fills in, tries to make sense out of the misheard. When I was very young one of my sisters owned the Simon and Garfunkel album featuring "Scarborough Fair." I liked the song and the album quite a bit, and was puzzled and deeply intrigued by the refrain,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
I knew nothing of herbs, although I recognized parsley, since I tried to avoid eating it whenever it was on my dinner plate. What I heard of that line was this:
Parsley, saydrills, Mary, and time
I wondered about that every time I heard the song. For several years of my young life I believed Simon and Garfunkel were singing about saydrills (whatever that might be--I looked it up in the Dictionary without success), a girl named Mary, and time, as well as parsley. The four elements seemed very strange to me as a group. A girl, time itself, something unwanted on my dinner plate, and the mysterious saydrills.
I didn't ask anyone about this, I didn't try to look up the lyrics, I can't remember if the album had the lyrics printed, and in any case, I didn't look at them. The peculiar verse remained with me. In the pre-Internet era, finding out things was more of a task than it is now. At about seventeen, another song came along with a vocal moment that baffled me, and still does, since I haven't yet try to find out what Chrissie Hynde sings during a blizzard-like flow of words in the song, "Precious."
I'm content to let those few seconds of "Precious" be mysterious, but with "Scarborough Fair" I finally discerned they were singing the names of four herbs. By not knowing the answer, I managed for years to believe there was a word, saydrills, that wasn't in any Dictionary, a word sung in a popular song--nonsense, perhaps, but real in my mind, like "Goo goo a' joob" was real in John Lennon's mind, and then he put it in his listeners' minds.
The Information Age is a fascinating time, but always having knowledge at one's fingertips can eliminate beautiful illusions sprung from the imaginations of children and adults, misinterpreting meanings, but even now, with new knowledge, we can call yesterday scrambled eggs.
Vic Neptune
Still, my argument above is challenged by the chorus in John Lennon's Dada lyrics for "I Am the Walrus":
I am the Eggman
I am the Eggmen
I am the Walrus
Goo goo a' joob
Another memorable Beatles song, lacking the sentimental prettiness of "Yesterday," but a hard piece of musical candy, probably meaningless beyond Lennon's own personal viewpoints. "I Am the Walrus," however, will enhance the mood of a cannabis experience. Much of their released music, after 1966, goes well with being stoned. The same can be said of Jefferson Airplane and many other bands of the period.
One curious thing about weird lyrics is how the ears, not always picking up on exactly what the singer sings, substitutes words, fills in, tries to make sense out of the misheard. When I was very young one of my sisters owned the Simon and Garfunkel album featuring "Scarborough Fair." I liked the song and the album quite a bit, and was puzzled and deeply intrigued by the refrain,
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
I knew nothing of herbs, although I recognized parsley, since I tried to avoid eating it whenever it was on my dinner plate. What I heard of that line was this:
Parsley, saydrills, Mary, and time
I wondered about that every time I heard the song. For several years of my young life I believed Simon and Garfunkel were singing about saydrills (whatever that might be--I looked it up in the Dictionary without success), a girl named Mary, and time, as well as parsley. The four elements seemed very strange to me as a group. A girl, time itself, something unwanted on my dinner plate, and the mysterious saydrills.
I didn't ask anyone about this, I didn't try to look up the lyrics, I can't remember if the album had the lyrics printed, and in any case, I didn't look at them. The peculiar verse remained with me. In the pre-Internet era, finding out things was more of a task than it is now. At about seventeen, another song came along with a vocal moment that baffled me, and still does, since I haven't yet try to find out what Chrissie Hynde sings during a blizzard-like flow of words in the song, "Precious."
I'm content to let those few seconds of "Precious" be mysterious, but with "Scarborough Fair" I finally discerned they were singing the names of four herbs. By not knowing the answer, I managed for years to believe there was a word, saydrills, that wasn't in any Dictionary, a word sung in a popular song--nonsense, perhaps, but real in my mind, like "Goo goo a' joob" was real in John Lennon's mind, and then he put it in his listeners' minds.
The Information Age is a fascinating time, but always having knowledge at one's fingertips can eliminate beautiful illusions sprung from the imaginations of children and adults, misinterpreting meanings, but even now, with new knowledge, we can call yesterday scrambled eggs.
Vic Neptune
Friday, August 14, 2015
Dunkin' Donuts raises money for Special Olympics by putting police officers on their shop roofs all day. I'd never heard of this before today. In Milwaukee, for instance, according to PR Newswire, "...police officers are scheduled to cover 43 Dunkin' Donuts rooftops throughout Wisconsin to heighten awareness and raise money for the Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics Wisconsin...rain or shine!"
The article's unnamed author continues punning: "In return for the police officers 'doing time' at their restaurants, Dunkin' Donuts will donate $5,000 to the organization."
It sounds wholesome! Buy doughnuts and coffee, let your spending go towards a good cause--but that cop on the roof...
On local news I saw a Dunkin' Donuts with a beefy, crew cut-head cop standing at the edge of the roof, arms folded, looking down through his shades at the news camera. Is this what we want to see when we go into an eatery? Do all members of society want to see cops staring at them from rooftops? I don't. Do African-Americans? I suspect not, at least most of them. I'm not Black, but I sympathize with their general view that the police departments of this country are adversarial towards them, and sometimes act from their own fears, with occasional fatal results.
I don't like to be around cops. There are times when their mere presence makes me nervous, and it's not because I've done anything illegal. I'm a good driver, I follow traffic laws to the best of my ability and awareness, but when a cop drives behind me for a long way I start to feel anxious, and I can't wait for him or her to peel off and get the fuck away from me.
Cops have sometimes helped me out, dealing with neighbors disturbing the peace late at night, for example. A good, steady, rational cop can be very handy to have around in a crisis, or even when you're lost in some unknown town and you're trying to find the highway. What I don't like are increased police presences where they're unnecessary, like on top of snack food shops. Building roofs are sometimes where police snipers position themselves. These associations pop into my head, but they're based on the real world.
Am I overreacting? Shouldn't I find it cute that Cop on a Rooftop (as it's called) ties into the
cliché of the doughnut-eating cop? Shouldn't I feel warm inside that money from this goes to Special Olympics?
I don't complain about the charitable aspect of the event, just the method. When I see a cop on a rooftop I think of surveillance. I think of the gun at his hip. I think of the horrid national tendency of police brutality and oppression against African-Americans. I think how unsettling it is to see a cop standing on a roof, arms folded, projecting macho unfriendliness.
According to the PR Newswire article, "[Dunkin' Donuts'] has more than 11,300 restaurants in 36 countries worldwide."
That's a lot of cops.
Vic Neptune
The article's unnamed author continues punning: "In return for the police officers 'doing time' at their restaurants, Dunkin' Donuts will donate $5,000 to the organization."
It sounds wholesome! Buy doughnuts and coffee, let your spending go towards a good cause--but that cop on the roof...
On local news I saw a Dunkin' Donuts with a beefy, crew cut-head cop standing at the edge of the roof, arms folded, looking down through his shades at the news camera. Is this what we want to see when we go into an eatery? Do all members of society want to see cops staring at them from rooftops? I don't. Do African-Americans? I suspect not, at least most of them. I'm not Black, but I sympathize with their general view that the police departments of this country are adversarial towards them, and sometimes act from their own fears, with occasional fatal results.
I don't like to be around cops. There are times when their mere presence makes me nervous, and it's not because I've done anything illegal. I'm a good driver, I follow traffic laws to the best of my ability and awareness, but when a cop drives behind me for a long way I start to feel anxious, and I can't wait for him or her to peel off and get the fuck away from me.
Cops have sometimes helped me out, dealing with neighbors disturbing the peace late at night, for example. A good, steady, rational cop can be very handy to have around in a crisis, or even when you're lost in some unknown town and you're trying to find the highway. What I don't like are increased police presences where they're unnecessary, like on top of snack food shops. Building roofs are sometimes where police snipers position themselves. These associations pop into my head, but they're based on the real world.
Am I overreacting? Shouldn't I find it cute that Cop on a Rooftop (as it's called) ties into the
cliché of the doughnut-eating cop? Shouldn't I feel warm inside that money from this goes to Special Olympics?
I don't complain about the charitable aspect of the event, just the method. When I see a cop on a rooftop I think of surveillance. I think of the gun at his hip. I think of the horrid national tendency of police brutality and oppression against African-Americans. I think how unsettling it is to see a cop standing on a roof, arms folded, projecting macho unfriendliness.
According to the PR Newswire article, "[Dunkin' Donuts'] has more than 11,300 restaurants in 36 countries worldwide."
That's a lot of cops.
Vic Neptune
Thursday, August 13, 2015
American cable newscasters, told repeatedly by guests these past few weeks that candidate favorability polls at this time are meaningless, revert to almost pleading for predictions and wisdom applied to what the pointless numbers nevertheless mean.
In a poll of (some) New Hampshire voters, Hillary Clinton came out ahead, not surprisingly, of Bernie Sanders, who nonetheless has been gaining on her--in these same polls, which, political historians and other experts insist, are unreliable if a news organization doesn't want to indulge in fantastic speculation. Too late for that.
Cable news networks, operating around what Millennials don't recognize as the clock, use hours of their time each day wondering about shit instead of practicing real journalism. Opinion-based anchors are common now. The sober tones of Roger Mudd or David Brinkley don't exist anymore, replaced by Shepard Smith wandering around his "Fox News Deck," a room filled with giant computer screens and information-gatherers researching stories for him to comment on. It looks like J.J. Abrams' bizarre concept of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, brightly lit and lacking the centralized space commanded by Kirk's swivel chair in the original TV series.
Smith makes no secret of what he thinks--a journalistic taboo in the past--and neither do Carol Costello and Erin Burnett of CNN.
Costello said to a guest who's focused on the Bernie Sanders Campaign, "But do you really think he can get the nomination away from Hillary?" Her scoffing tone revealed two things: she supports Hillary Clinton, and, like most cable news journalists and pundits, doesn't want to admit yet that Sanders has a real chance of securing the Democratic nomination.
The "Socialist" Vermont Senator, his unembarrassed Socialist beliefs emphasized by some pundits as if they're implying he's a Commie, was dismissed with polite ridicule by cable news geniuses as recently as two months ago. He draws the biggest crowds of any candidate so far, Democrat or Republican, indicating to me at least his popular (if not poll-taking) favorability over the duller Clinton.
"Of course," the refrain in opinion-based news goes, "Bernie Sanders won't be getting the nomination..."
They've said the same about Donald Trump, assuming he would've flamed out by now. They
apparently need to have pundits explain to them over and over again that the post-Citizens United electoral process is a madhouse on wheels. Someone as indecent and politically foolish as Ted Cruz can get a billionaire who'd rather donate money to his campaign than help war refugees in Africa, and then proceed to last well beyond the point when shitty candidates in the past would've been unable to continue.
This election cycle has left behind politics as a short season entertainment, and become a long-running spectacle that's an end in itself. Who in corporate-run cable news high echelons is sorry that Trump, in his presidential run, is so prominently ahead in the polls; is such an attention-drawing prom queen? While his petty and sexist remarks about Megyn Kelly brought support for her and helped boost Fox's ratings, journalists on other networks shook their heads and laughed about his entertainment value. They don't say that Trump has become America's political butthole. He's useful to cable news with its lazy practices--he occupies broadcasting time. Finding guests to discuss his newest jumble of idiotic claims and presidential promises is easy. Very few pundits and journalists, though, speak bluntly about him. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show did, but he's retired.
I heard people on MSNBC talk about the following Trump moment, but I heard no in-depth remarks. I'll recount the story and offer my view, which demonstrates what I think cable news people should be doing when they talk about this blob of self-inflated, inaccurate and vague information calling himself Donald Trump.
In Michigan two days ago he gave a speech during which someone in the audience held up a copy of his 1987 bestselling book, The Art of the Deal. Trump declared it to be "my second favorite book." Look up the book's cover and you'll see it was written by Donald J. Trump with Tony Schwartz. The word with, as opposed to and, means that Trump didn't write it, but rather Tony Schwartz did. I remember shelving this ghost-written book when I worked in my hometown public library in the 1980s. Because it was a bestseller, the library ordered tens of copies for the various branches. After a year or so had gone by, I'd see six or seven copies of a no longer checked out The Art of the Deal occupying too much space on one of the shelves at the small branch I worked at. I wonder if Americans will get the same feeling eventually of being gorged on that man's words, face, and whining voice?
After promoting his "great" "second favorite" book, Trump asked the Michigan audience, "What's my favorite book?"
I answered out loud, "The Bible," and then he said, "The Bible."
What else, but the go-to book for phony politicians trying to get ahead, and simultaneously pretending they care about their voters' values.
Do you read the Bible, Donald? Can you quote one verse? What's your favorite book in the Bible? Who's your favorite prophet? Can you name, in order, the four Gospels? Why was Moses not allowed to enter the Promised Land? Who offered Jesus dominion over the entire world, an offer Jesus refused, but you would be unable to?
I'm not a Christian, though I've read the entire Bible. I can answer all of the above questions and I suspect that Trump can't. His favorite verse, though, might be the one from Genesis, including the line, "God created the heaven and the earth..." Just spell God using five letters.
Presidential candidate polls so soon before primaries may not mean anything, but images do. Journalists, office workers, "the Republican base," seem to enjoy looking at a hideous egotist proud of his Dorian Gray face, saying preposterous things like, "Mexico will be happy to be pay for the wall [built along the U.S. border during a future Trump administration, dreamed at this time from his butt]."
Have I, like the cable news people, been pulled in to the Trump vortex? I've written several pieces starring him in recent months. I haven't turned the Vic Neptunian disdain towards Rand Paul or Scott Walker, yet. Trump is easy to talk and write about, but I think it's important to call him the manipulator he really is--that this country, and the world, need him as a leader like Michael Jackson needed his last doctor.
Vic Neptune
In a poll of (some) New Hampshire voters, Hillary Clinton came out ahead, not surprisingly, of Bernie Sanders, who nonetheless has been gaining on her--in these same polls, which, political historians and other experts insist, are unreliable if a news organization doesn't want to indulge in fantastic speculation. Too late for that.
Cable news networks, operating around what Millennials don't recognize as the clock, use hours of their time each day wondering about shit instead of practicing real journalism. Opinion-based anchors are common now. The sober tones of Roger Mudd or David Brinkley don't exist anymore, replaced by Shepard Smith wandering around his "Fox News Deck," a room filled with giant computer screens and information-gatherers researching stories for him to comment on. It looks like J.J. Abrams' bizarre concept of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, brightly lit and lacking the centralized space commanded by Kirk's swivel chair in the original TV series.
Smith makes no secret of what he thinks--a journalistic taboo in the past--and neither do Carol Costello and Erin Burnett of CNN.
Costello said to a guest who's focused on the Bernie Sanders Campaign, "But do you really think he can get the nomination away from Hillary?" Her scoffing tone revealed two things: she supports Hillary Clinton, and, like most cable news journalists and pundits, doesn't want to admit yet that Sanders has a real chance of securing the Democratic nomination.
The "Socialist" Vermont Senator, his unembarrassed Socialist beliefs emphasized by some pundits as if they're implying he's a Commie, was dismissed with polite ridicule by cable news geniuses as recently as two months ago. He draws the biggest crowds of any candidate so far, Democrat or Republican, indicating to me at least his popular (if not poll-taking) favorability over the duller Clinton.
"Of course," the refrain in opinion-based news goes, "Bernie Sanders won't be getting the nomination..."
They've said the same about Donald Trump, assuming he would've flamed out by now. They
apparently need to have pundits explain to them over and over again that the post-Citizens United electoral process is a madhouse on wheels. Someone as indecent and politically foolish as Ted Cruz can get a billionaire who'd rather donate money to his campaign than help war refugees in Africa, and then proceed to last well beyond the point when shitty candidates in the past would've been unable to continue.
This election cycle has left behind politics as a short season entertainment, and become a long-running spectacle that's an end in itself. Who in corporate-run cable news high echelons is sorry that Trump, in his presidential run, is so prominently ahead in the polls; is such an attention-drawing prom queen? While his petty and sexist remarks about Megyn Kelly brought support for her and helped boost Fox's ratings, journalists on other networks shook their heads and laughed about his entertainment value. They don't say that Trump has become America's political butthole. He's useful to cable news with its lazy practices--he occupies broadcasting time. Finding guests to discuss his newest jumble of idiotic claims and presidential promises is easy. Very few pundits and journalists, though, speak bluntly about him. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show did, but he's retired.
I heard people on MSNBC talk about the following Trump moment, but I heard no in-depth remarks. I'll recount the story and offer my view, which demonstrates what I think cable news people should be doing when they talk about this blob of self-inflated, inaccurate and vague information calling himself Donald Trump.
In Michigan two days ago he gave a speech during which someone in the audience held up a copy of his 1987 bestselling book, The Art of the Deal. Trump declared it to be "my second favorite book." Look up the book's cover and you'll see it was written by Donald J. Trump with Tony Schwartz. The word with, as opposed to and, means that Trump didn't write it, but rather Tony Schwartz did. I remember shelving this ghost-written book when I worked in my hometown public library in the 1980s. Because it was a bestseller, the library ordered tens of copies for the various branches. After a year or so had gone by, I'd see six or seven copies of a no longer checked out The Art of the Deal occupying too much space on one of the shelves at the small branch I worked at. I wonder if Americans will get the same feeling eventually of being gorged on that man's words, face, and whining voice?
After promoting his "great" "second favorite" book, Trump asked the Michigan audience, "What's my favorite book?"
I answered out loud, "The Bible," and then he said, "The Bible."
What else, but the go-to book for phony politicians trying to get ahead, and simultaneously pretending they care about their voters' values.
Do you read the Bible, Donald? Can you quote one verse? What's your favorite book in the Bible? Who's your favorite prophet? Can you name, in order, the four Gospels? Why was Moses not allowed to enter the Promised Land? Who offered Jesus dominion over the entire world, an offer Jesus refused, but you would be unable to?
I'm not a Christian, though I've read the entire Bible. I can answer all of the above questions and I suspect that Trump can't. His favorite verse, though, might be the one from Genesis, including the line, "God created the heaven and the earth..." Just spell God using five letters.
Presidential candidate polls so soon before primaries may not mean anything, but images do. Journalists, office workers, "the Republican base," seem to enjoy looking at a hideous egotist proud of his Dorian Gray face, saying preposterous things like, "Mexico will be happy to be pay for the wall [built along the U.S. border during a future Trump administration, dreamed at this time from his butt]."
Have I, like the cable news people, been pulled in to the Trump vortex? I've written several pieces starring him in recent months. I haven't turned the Vic Neptunian disdain towards Rand Paul or Scott Walker, yet. Trump is easy to talk and write about, but I think it's important to call him the manipulator he really is--that this country, and the world, need him as a leader like Michael Jackson needed his last doctor.
Vic Neptune
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
A week ago, as I drove to work, about to be late, I saw a crow ahead of me in the middle of the street, picking at the remains of what was probably a squirrel carcass. I didn't slow down, never thinking the bird would get under my tire. As I got closer, the crow turned and walked four steps into the other lane and waited for me to pass. It was a leisurely walk, as if to say, "What, do you think I'm a robin?" I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the bird ambling back to its food. I guess the crow displayed cautious optimism.
One pre-dawn morning last summer, my bedroom windows open, I woke up and lay there for a while, unable to get back to sleep. A crow in a nearby tree began a morning song. The night lack of traffic on my usually busy street put my focus into the crow's voice, because it was a solo sound. I noticed patterns to the caws, and, far away, answering caws from at least two other crows. The crow near me would caw five times, then four, then three, then two. There were patterns around this basic countdown pattern, too. It wasn't as sophisticated, perhaps, as Morse Code, but it had to be a language. I've noticed patterns, harder to follow, in the songs of crickets. Car noises on my street, by contrast, are chaotic and lacking in elegance.
Vic Neptune
One pre-dawn morning last summer, my bedroom windows open, I woke up and lay there for a while, unable to get back to sleep. A crow in a nearby tree began a morning song. The night lack of traffic on my usually busy street put my focus into the crow's voice, because it was a solo sound. I noticed patterns to the caws, and, far away, answering caws from at least two other crows. The crow near me would caw five times, then four, then three, then two. There were patterns around this basic countdown pattern, too. It wasn't as sophisticated, perhaps, as Morse Code, but it had to be a language. I've noticed patterns, harder to follow, in the songs of crickets. Car noises on my street, by contrast, are chaotic and lacking in elegance.
Vic Neptune
Sunday, August 9, 2015
It seems impossible to me, but I detest Donald Trump more and more each day. How could he, as I watched the Republican Party's number one presidential candidate, behave as boorishly as I expected him to behave during last Thursday's big debate, manage to top (or bottom) himself the following day? When Trump is "attacked," as he puts it, he attacks back with middle or high school maturity-level insults. He did not like Megyn Kelly's debate question about his attitudes towards women. He told CNN's Don Lemon on Friday that "You could see there was blood coming out of her [Kelly's] eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever."
Trump had been scheduled to give the keynote speech the following day at Erick Erickson's event for GOP presidential candidates in Atlanta, but Erickson drew a line and went back on his invitation to the vile leading Republican candidate, explaining, "I've got my wife here, I've got my daughter here. It's a family-friendly program..."
Trump attacked: "[Erickson] is a total loser [who] has a history of supporting establishment losers in failed campaigns so it is an honor to be uninvited from his event."
Saturday morning--I'm picturing him sitting on one of his toilets--he clarified on Twitter that by "blood coming out of her wherever," he meant, "NOSE [all caps his]."
Later that morning he issued a statement saying, "Only a deviant would think anything else."
My obvious question to him would then be, "Are you calling yourself a deviant?"
Trump defenders might now be relieved to say, "Oh, he meant Megan Kelly's nose! Not her vagina! He wasn't implying that she was having her period! He just thought she should tilt her head back because that's what one does for a nosebleed!"
Among Trump's colleagues, I'm aware that Mike Huckabee, Lindsay Graham, Carly Fiorina, Scott Walker, and Jeb Bush condemned Trump's words about Kelly. Marco Rubio, interviewed Sunday by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, protested that if he had to comment on Trump's statements he'd never be able to talk about anything else. He didn't say that it would've taken him three and a half seconds to say, "It was an insensitive and inappropriate thing to say about a woman." So go fuck yourself, Marco Rubio.
Ted Cruz remarked, "I think every candidate should treat everyone [else] with civility and respect. It's a standard I try to follow." Please remember he called Mitch McConnell a liar on the Senate floor, violating rules of decorum. "I don't think we're going to solve the problems in this country by obsessing over the politics of personality..." Go fuck yourself, Ted Cruz.
Defending a woman's honor used to mean something more than tweeting one's disappointment in the statements made by a wealthy scumbag who projects his media-created personality at the chumps who feed on it, and then pretend to be shocked by it even as its creator develops new ways to make decent people sick in their hearts. Rubio and Cruz couldn't be bothered to spend a few seconds condemning Trump's disrespect for a woman, but also towards a moderator in a debate he was invited to participate in.
I'll take up some of the slack created by weak politicians competing with Trump by addressing Megyn Kelly--not that she's likely to read this:
What Donald Trump said and wrote about you is unforgivable. As harsh as that seems, bear in mind that Trump is a psychopathic narcissist who loves himself so much that he can never apologize for readily crafted insults, and never behave humbly, making it impossible for him ever to be worthy of forgiveness, except by saints or those willing to confuse forgiveness with forgetfulness. Your relevant question about his words and attitudes about women set him off. His subsequent gripes about you in interviews and tweets show the nerve you touched. He's guilty of what you pointed out. Good job. You helped further demonstrate that Donald Trump is a disgusting piece of shit. Thank you.
Vic Neptune
Trump had been scheduled to give the keynote speech the following day at Erick Erickson's event for GOP presidential candidates in Atlanta, but Erickson drew a line and went back on his invitation to the vile leading Republican candidate, explaining, "I've got my wife here, I've got my daughter here. It's a family-friendly program..."
Trump attacked: "[Erickson] is a total loser [who] has a history of supporting establishment losers in failed campaigns so it is an honor to be uninvited from his event."
Saturday morning--I'm picturing him sitting on one of his toilets--he clarified on Twitter that by "blood coming out of her wherever," he meant, "NOSE [all caps his]."
Later that morning he issued a statement saying, "Only a deviant would think anything else."
My obvious question to him would then be, "Are you calling yourself a deviant?"
Trump defenders might now be relieved to say, "Oh, he meant Megan Kelly's nose! Not her vagina! He wasn't implying that she was having her period! He just thought she should tilt her head back because that's what one does for a nosebleed!"
Among Trump's colleagues, I'm aware that Mike Huckabee, Lindsay Graham, Carly Fiorina, Scott Walker, and Jeb Bush condemned Trump's words about Kelly. Marco Rubio, interviewed Sunday by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, protested that if he had to comment on Trump's statements he'd never be able to talk about anything else. He didn't say that it would've taken him three and a half seconds to say, "It was an insensitive and inappropriate thing to say about a woman." So go fuck yourself, Marco Rubio.
Ted Cruz remarked, "I think every candidate should treat everyone [else] with civility and respect. It's a standard I try to follow." Please remember he called Mitch McConnell a liar on the Senate floor, violating rules of decorum. "I don't think we're going to solve the problems in this country by obsessing over the politics of personality..." Go fuck yourself, Ted Cruz.
Defending a woman's honor used to mean something more than tweeting one's disappointment in the statements made by a wealthy scumbag who projects his media-created personality at the chumps who feed on it, and then pretend to be shocked by it even as its creator develops new ways to make decent people sick in their hearts. Rubio and Cruz couldn't be bothered to spend a few seconds condemning Trump's disrespect for a woman, but also towards a moderator in a debate he was invited to participate in.
I'll take up some of the slack created by weak politicians competing with Trump by addressing Megyn Kelly--not that she's likely to read this:
What Donald Trump said and wrote about you is unforgivable. As harsh as that seems, bear in mind that Trump is a psychopathic narcissist who loves himself so much that he can never apologize for readily crafted insults, and never behave humbly, making it impossible for him ever to be worthy of forgiveness, except by saints or those willing to confuse forgiveness with forgetfulness. Your relevant question about his words and attitudes about women set him off. His subsequent gripes about you in interviews and tweets show the nerve you touched. He's guilty of what you pointed out. Good job. You helped further demonstrate that Donald Trump is a disgusting piece of shit. Thank you.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, August 8, 2015
When I was about ten I saw The Seven Year Itch in color at my sister's house. My parents' TV was black and white. I grew up thinking of Star Trek and Gilligan's Island in terms of black and white. To see anything in color on television in the 1970s was, for me, a strange visual experience. TVs in those days lacked the precision color of today's models. Images seemed garish, the colors too red, too green, too blue. Black and white looked more real to me.
When I saw five Marilyn Monroe movies in one week on my sister's set, I felt a confirmation of my interest in the actress, which had mainly come before from seeing photographs of her. She'd been dead only about ten years by then--the first wave of Marilyn publications was in its heyday. I looked at the pictures in the public library's copy of Norman Mailer's biography, Marilyn. The big book was kept in a special adults only section, not locked up. It was simply a matter of sliding a glass door aside and taking the book out. I'd find an uninhabited area of the library to look at the pictures, only a few of which are nudes, barely justifying its status in the forbidden section. Her face fascinated me, as it still does. The arched eyebrows, the cute mouth and slightly upturned nose, her widow's peak. Her features were pointy, making her resemble a mischievous elf. I still maintain that she was the prettiest woman who's ever existed; a subjective view, I know, but it's mine and I stand by it.
WGN, the cable station out of Chicago, showed movies in prime time weeknights, and that week they committed to a Marilyn Monroe theme. In those early days of cable TV, there were about six or seven channels available. That may seem a poor selection of TV entertainment, but actually it wasn't. A limited number of channels, of anything, focuses the mind in its decision-making processes. How many times have I, and you, gone through channel after channel, tens, dozens, hundreds, unable to settle on anything? An old friend of mine in the 1990s had a TV he found on a curb. He was able to get one channel on it, enabling him to see the occasional movie, the news, the TV shows on that channel. He said, "When you have one channel to watch, that's what's on television, and if I feel like watching TV, that's the channel I watch." He didn't watch TV much, but when he did, he enjoyed the experience.
Seeing and hearing Marilyn forty years ago in one of her great comedies, The Seven Year Itch, was for me, color TV or not, one of the great film viewing experiences of my life. There were ads, but I was well-used to that. The wide screen Cinemascope film was panned and scanned, depriving the viewer of the full image, but I didn't know about such things when I was ten. Marilyn was funny and beautiful, filled with vitality and almost artlessly sexy. One of the other films I saw that week, Niagara, showed a different Marilyn--the only femme fatale villainess she ever played. Also in lush color (garish on my sister's color TV), Niagara deals with adultery, a murder plot gone haywire, and a man who has nothing left to live for except revenge.
Marilyn was a good, and at times, great actress. She had natural ability. The camera lens loved her. She managed to convince millions of people that her breathy, high-voiced, pouting sexpot persona constituted her real personality. She was actually nothing like her movie personas, except that she used pieces of herself from deep inside to convey certain truths in many of her characters. It's interesting to hear her speak in her natural voice, possible through listening to interviews with her, especially when she can go on at length. Her voice was lower than what the viewer of her movies usually hears. She had a Scandinavian woman's way of ending her sentences, her voice tending to go up at the end. Hearing the real Marilyn voice should correct any perception of her as a dim-witted blonde (her natural hair color, incidentally, was reddish-brown).
The fifty-third anniversary of her death just passed. Much has been made about the mysteries surrounding her demise. I've read much about these matters, but I tend to focus on her life, rather than on some of her unfortunate connections in the last year of her life. That an evil old man like J. Edgar Hoover saw fit to have FBI agents spy on her activities says more about her goodness, in my view, than it does about anything questionable in her life. John Lennon, too, was regarded by Hoover as a dangerous person. John Lennon, for God's sake!
Watch a Marilyn Monroe movie sometime.
Vic Neptune
When I saw five Marilyn Monroe movies in one week on my sister's set, I felt a confirmation of my interest in the actress, which had mainly come before from seeing photographs of her. She'd been dead only about ten years by then--the first wave of Marilyn publications was in its heyday. I looked at the pictures in the public library's copy of Norman Mailer's biography, Marilyn. The big book was kept in a special adults only section, not locked up. It was simply a matter of sliding a glass door aside and taking the book out. I'd find an uninhabited area of the library to look at the pictures, only a few of which are nudes, barely justifying its status in the forbidden section. Her face fascinated me, as it still does. The arched eyebrows, the cute mouth and slightly upturned nose, her widow's peak. Her features were pointy, making her resemble a mischievous elf. I still maintain that she was the prettiest woman who's ever existed; a subjective view, I know, but it's mine and I stand by it.
WGN, the cable station out of Chicago, showed movies in prime time weeknights, and that week they committed to a Marilyn Monroe theme. In those early days of cable TV, there were about six or seven channels available. That may seem a poor selection of TV entertainment, but actually it wasn't. A limited number of channels, of anything, focuses the mind in its decision-making processes. How many times have I, and you, gone through channel after channel, tens, dozens, hundreds, unable to settle on anything? An old friend of mine in the 1990s had a TV he found on a curb. He was able to get one channel on it, enabling him to see the occasional movie, the news, the TV shows on that channel. He said, "When you have one channel to watch, that's what's on television, and if I feel like watching TV, that's the channel I watch." He didn't watch TV much, but when he did, he enjoyed the experience.
Seeing and hearing Marilyn forty years ago in one of her great comedies, The Seven Year Itch, was for me, color TV or not, one of the great film viewing experiences of my life. There were ads, but I was well-used to that. The wide screen Cinemascope film was panned and scanned, depriving the viewer of the full image, but I didn't know about such things when I was ten. Marilyn was funny and beautiful, filled with vitality and almost artlessly sexy. One of the other films I saw that week, Niagara, showed a different Marilyn--the only femme fatale villainess she ever played. Also in lush color (garish on my sister's color TV), Niagara deals with adultery, a murder plot gone haywire, and a man who has nothing left to live for except revenge.
Marilyn was a good, and at times, great actress. She had natural ability. The camera lens loved her. She managed to convince millions of people that her breathy, high-voiced, pouting sexpot persona constituted her real personality. She was actually nothing like her movie personas, except that she used pieces of herself from deep inside to convey certain truths in many of her characters. It's interesting to hear her speak in her natural voice, possible through listening to interviews with her, especially when she can go on at length. Her voice was lower than what the viewer of her movies usually hears. She had a Scandinavian woman's way of ending her sentences, her voice tending to go up at the end. Hearing the real Marilyn voice should correct any perception of her as a dim-witted blonde (her natural hair color, incidentally, was reddish-brown).
The fifty-third anniversary of her death just passed. Much has been made about the mysteries surrounding her demise. I've read much about these matters, but I tend to focus on her life, rather than on some of her unfortunate connections in the last year of her life. That an evil old man like J. Edgar Hoover saw fit to have FBI agents spy on her activities says more about her goodness, in my view, than it does about anything questionable in her life. John Lennon, too, was regarded by Hoover as a dangerous person. John Lennon, for God's sake!
Watch a Marilyn Monroe movie sometime.
Vic Neptune
Friday, August 7, 2015
A presidential candidates' debate to inspire hope for the future of the nation!
I watched about an hour and a half of the program before realizing my brain was turning to mush. I drank enough bottles of Guinness to feel a welcome barrier between my reactive brain and the words and personalities of the hopefuls and hopelesses on stage.
The proceedings began awkwardly, with the three moderators, Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Chris Wallace, not seeming to know how to commence introductions of the candidates. Before they stepped out there was a pause, as if we were all waiting for a beloved comedian to come from the wings, but instead of laughs we got an ill-timed parade of familiar faces, hairdos, and bodies. Each raised his hand for a greeting as he was introduced, while Christie, at the far left (the number ten spot), raised his hand when another candidate was introduced.
The first question involved a show of hands. Which of you will not now pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee and will not now rule out an independent run if you don't get the nomination? Obviously, the question was a set-up for the one man who raised his hand: Donald Trump. He thus immediately got applause and recognition well out of proportion to any merits he brings to potentially winning a job as so-called leader of the free world. Senator Rand Paul (Republican/Libertarian--Kentucky, his campaign manager revealed recently as a skimmer of contributions), shouted his outrage at Trump, referencing the latter's connections to the Clintons. An idea getting thrown around in the news media lately has Trump, who talked with Bill Clinton on the telephone before announcing his presidential run, acting as a ringer to taint the Republican Party (as if it's not already a wreck), and then run as an independent, drawing votes from the Republican nominee and thus helping Hillary Clinton win in 2016. To that, I say, Maybe?
Trump, characterized by many as smart, does not strike me as the kind of long-term strategist who could succeed at acting as someone's else agent. Does he really want to do such a favor for the Clintons? Incidentally, he remarked a few days ago that he donated money to Hillary Clinton in the past to "get her to come to my wedding." That sounds plausible, given that he bribed hundreds of extras in New York to act as fervent Trump supporters at his presidential run announcement.
An exchange, getting a lot of attention the morning after the debate, showed Trump at his most belligerent, and gross, last night. Megyn Kelly asked him about how he's called women names, like "pigs," and how he said to one of the contestants on Celebrity Apprentice that she'd "look good on her knees." Kelly mentioned other insulting terms he's used against women, while Trump held up a phallic finger, clarifying, "I only said those things about Rosie O'Donnell."
Laughter and applause broke out in the auditorium. Gosh, it's so funny when a billionaire macho fuck who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War calls a woman a pig. Megyn Kelly was clearly unamused when she pointed out, "For the record, Rosie O'Donnell hasn't been the only woman you've talked about this way." He didn't argue that, because he knew such a statement on her part is so easy to prove. He did get testy with Kelly, though, showing his cool heating up a bit at the gall of a woman criticizing him for saying insensitive things about, and to, women. He said, "The big problem with this country is political correctness." He said he doesn't have time for political correctness. He didn't say how political correctness replaced illegal immigration or U.S. dealings with China as "the big problem," and none of the moderators asked him to clarify, not that I expect precision of language from Trump, or cable news journalists.
The other candidates, when they spoke seriously, sounded like they'd prepared their statements, and somehow their attempts at bringing the tone to serious matters seemed boring, or maybe I was too buzzed from the alcohol after about a half hour had crept by. I did notice that when the questions turned to foreign policy, the candidates sounded insane. It was as if computer-generated muscles began to bulge on their limbs as their intolerant and hate-filled words for Iran and other enemies of America, like Obama, poured out with no evidence of prior rehearsal. At their stupidest, politicians of either party can speak unfiltered nonsense like anyone else.
A moderator's question, "On day one of your presidency, would you tear up the Iran nuclear deal?" ignores the impossibility of a president's doing so without immediately becoming a dictator; yet, the question was taken seriously by the candidates, as if they wouldn't, on day one, be attending their own inauguration, watching a very long parade, and going to expensive balls.
"Excuse me, sweetheart," the new Republican president whispers to his wife during a dance on the evening of January 20, 2017, "I have to go to the Oval Office, tear up the many pages of the nuclear deal with Iran, using my bare hands and not a paper shredder, and prepare the armed forces for war."
I didn't do a good job of watching the debate, and missed the earlier Happy Hour debate entirely. My mind wandered, I drank beer, I looked at Megyn Kelly when she was onscreen (she's nice to look at), I looked at Trump (he's not nice to look at) as I, like millions of others, waited for the next bold and megalomaniacal declaration to come from his anus-like mouth. The debate wasn't spectacular, or even something I would let my children, if I had any, under the age of twelve watch, but it was an excuse to get drunk, and that could be a harbinger of what's coming if one of these people gets elected president: altered states of consciousness will be preferable to regarding any of their administrations with sober eyes that will become tormented by the doom their bleak minds embrace.
Vic Neptune
I watched about an hour and a half of the program before realizing my brain was turning to mush. I drank enough bottles of Guinness to feel a welcome barrier between my reactive brain and the words and personalities of the hopefuls and hopelesses on stage.
The proceedings began awkwardly, with the three moderators, Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Chris Wallace, not seeming to know how to commence introductions of the candidates. Before they stepped out there was a pause, as if we were all waiting for a beloved comedian to come from the wings, but instead of laughs we got an ill-timed parade of familiar faces, hairdos, and bodies. Each raised his hand for a greeting as he was introduced, while Christie, at the far left (the number ten spot), raised his hand when another candidate was introduced.
The first question involved a show of hands. Which of you will not now pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee and will not now rule out an independent run if you don't get the nomination? Obviously, the question was a set-up for the one man who raised his hand: Donald Trump. He thus immediately got applause and recognition well out of proportion to any merits he brings to potentially winning a job as so-called leader of the free world. Senator Rand Paul (Republican/Libertarian--Kentucky, his campaign manager revealed recently as a skimmer of contributions), shouted his outrage at Trump, referencing the latter's connections to the Clintons. An idea getting thrown around in the news media lately has Trump, who talked with Bill Clinton on the telephone before announcing his presidential run, acting as a ringer to taint the Republican Party (as if it's not already a wreck), and then run as an independent, drawing votes from the Republican nominee and thus helping Hillary Clinton win in 2016. To that, I say, Maybe?
Trump, characterized by many as smart, does not strike me as the kind of long-term strategist who could succeed at acting as someone's else agent. Does he really want to do such a favor for the Clintons? Incidentally, he remarked a few days ago that he donated money to Hillary Clinton in the past to "get her to come to my wedding." That sounds plausible, given that he bribed hundreds of extras in New York to act as fervent Trump supporters at his presidential run announcement.
An exchange, getting a lot of attention the morning after the debate, showed Trump at his most belligerent, and gross, last night. Megyn Kelly asked him about how he's called women names, like "pigs," and how he said to one of the contestants on Celebrity Apprentice that she'd "look good on her knees." Kelly mentioned other insulting terms he's used against women, while Trump held up a phallic finger, clarifying, "I only said those things about Rosie O'Donnell."
Laughter and applause broke out in the auditorium. Gosh, it's so funny when a billionaire macho fuck who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War calls a woman a pig. Megyn Kelly was clearly unamused when she pointed out, "For the record, Rosie O'Donnell hasn't been the only woman you've talked about this way." He didn't argue that, because he knew such a statement on her part is so easy to prove. He did get testy with Kelly, though, showing his cool heating up a bit at the gall of a woman criticizing him for saying insensitive things about, and to, women. He said, "The big problem with this country is political correctness." He said he doesn't have time for political correctness. He didn't say how political correctness replaced illegal immigration or U.S. dealings with China as "the big problem," and none of the moderators asked him to clarify, not that I expect precision of language from Trump, or cable news journalists.
The other candidates, when they spoke seriously, sounded like they'd prepared their statements, and somehow their attempts at bringing the tone to serious matters seemed boring, or maybe I was too buzzed from the alcohol after about a half hour had crept by. I did notice that when the questions turned to foreign policy, the candidates sounded insane. It was as if computer-generated muscles began to bulge on their limbs as their intolerant and hate-filled words for Iran and other enemies of America, like Obama, poured out with no evidence of prior rehearsal. At their stupidest, politicians of either party can speak unfiltered nonsense like anyone else.
A moderator's question, "On day one of your presidency, would you tear up the Iran nuclear deal?" ignores the impossibility of a president's doing so without immediately becoming a dictator; yet, the question was taken seriously by the candidates, as if they wouldn't, on day one, be attending their own inauguration, watching a very long parade, and going to expensive balls.
"Excuse me, sweetheart," the new Republican president whispers to his wife during a dance on the evening of January 20, 2017, "I have to go to the Oval Office, tear up the many pages of the nuclear deal with Iran, using my bare hands and not a paper shredder, and prepare the armed forces for war."
I didn't do a good job of watching the debate, and missed the earlier Happy Hour debate entirely. My mind wandered, I drank beer, I looked at Megyn Kelly when she was onscreen (she's nice to look at), I looked at Trump (he's not nice to look at) as I, like millions of others, waited for the next bold and megalomaniacal declaration to come from his anus-like mouth. The debate wasn't spectacular, or even something I would let my children, if I had any, under the age of twelve watch, but it was an excuse to get drunk, and that could be a harbinger of what's coming if one of these people gets elected president: altered states of consciousness will be preferable to regarding any of their administrations with sober eyes that will become tormented by the doom their bleak minds embrace.
Vic Neptune
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Anticipation of the two Republican presidential candidate debates later today flutters in my stomach. I plan to watch the Big Ten, led by the great Trump, featuring also Trump's self-described friend, Governor Chris Christie, who just squeezed onto the exclusive stage in Cleveland. Poll numbers determined the debate's complement, but Fox News decision-makers chose to ignore the most recent poll, which would have benefitted the rejected Rick Perry. Perry gets to participate in the so-called Happy Hour debate broadcasted before the main event. It will take place during a bar's traditional Happy Hour, but the candidates, including Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal, and three other losers who will never be elected president, will not be served drinks, except bottled water.
Trump and Jeb Bush will be center stage. Will there be fireworks? Will Trump violate Reagan's Eleventh Commandment to not speak ill of other Republicans? He's already done so; I think we can expect him to explode his verbal diarrhea all over the other candidates. His wet oral flatulence will be the main story for journalists tomorrow when they speak about the debate.
Debates usually hinge on a candidate successfully delivering zingers, as when Walter Mondale said to Reagan, quoting a then-popular TV ad, "Where's the beef?" Reagan zinged Mondale with "There you go again." In the long run, does it matter how well a candidate zinged an opponent?
Debate gaffes, too, get airtime years after they occurred. Mitt Romney's offer of a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry, his never-worked-a-day-in-his-life right hand extended, unshaken, towards the Governor of Texas, made Romney look like the reckless cad he is.
Someone at least, out of the two debates, will fuck up to the extent their mistake gets played in a loop for years, but I don't think Donald Trump will be the one. He's been playing with the news media since the 1980s, a skilled bullshitter who will never need a course on how to spin lines of simple rhetoric. Competing with such a wizard of his own image makes the nine others he will face this evening seem doomed to follow in the master's unwholesome sparkle.
Ted Cruz, who just released a campaign video showing him wrapping bacon around an automatic rifle's barrel and cooking it during target practice, can be relied on to say bizarre, mentally unstable things. I'm counting on Cruz to deflect some attention from Trump.
Chris Christie, one of the nation's most contemptible loudmouths, might say a thing or two to get noticed, but this points to the key problem for anyone putting their faith in such grotesque politicians: Is it important for a possible future president of the United States to be able to smoothly say meaningless bullshit during a popularity contest debate put on fifteen months before the election by a news network run by Republican propagandists?
I will buy some Guinness today so I can be drunk while I watch the worst the political scene in America has to offer.
Vic Neptune
Trump and Jeb Bush will be center stage. Will there be fireworks? Will Trump violate Reagan's Eleventh Commandment to not speak ill of other Republicans? He's already done so; I think we can expect him to explode his verbal diarrhea all over the other candidates. His wet oral flatulence will be the main story for journalists tomorrow when they speak about the debate.
Debates usually hinge on a candidate successfully delivering zingers, as when Walter Mondale said to Reagan, quoting a then-popular TV ad, "Where's the beef?" Reagan zinged Mondale with "There you go again." In the long run, does it matter how well a candidate zinged an opponent?
Debate gaffes, too, get airtime years after they occurred. Mitt Romney's offer of a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry, his never-worked-a-day-in-his-life right hand extended, unshaken, towards the Governor of Texas, made Romney look like the reckless cad he is.
Someone at least, out of the two debates, will fuck up to the extent their mistake gets played in a loop for years, but I don't think Donald Trump will be the one. He's been playing with the news media since the 1980s, a skilled bullshitter who will never need a course on how to spin lines of simple rhetoric. Competing with such a wizard of his own image makes the nine others he will face this evening seem doomed to follow in the master's unwholesome sparkle.
Ted Cruz, who just released a campaign video showing him wrapping bacon around an automatic rifle's barrel and cooking it during target practice, can be relied on to say bizarre, mentally unstable things. I'm counting on Cruz to deflect some attention from Trump.
Chris Christie, one of the nation's most contemptible loudmouths, might say a thing or two to get noticed, but this points to the key problem for anyone putting their faith in such grotesque politicians: Is it important for a possible future president of the United States to be able to smoothly say meaningless bullshit during a popularity contest debate put on fifteen months before the election by a news network run by Republican propagandists?
I will buy some Guinness today so I can be drunk while I watch the worst the political scene in America has to offer.
Vic Neptune
Sunday, August 2, 2015
It's the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. I heard about it from my friend's car radio as we began pulling out of a grocery store parking lot. A girl we knew named Cathy drove into the lot right then and shouted a smiling hello. We had bought cheese, Triscuits, beer, sausage, and bread. Everything was fine and humid where we were.
Eight days earlier, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, had cabled Saddam Hussein: "We [the U.S.] have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."
Kuwait was regarded by ambitious Iraqi leaders over the years as "the Nineteenth Province," a name deriving from a time before that region was sliced off of Iraq by the British. Kuwait's strategic location on the Persian Gulf, its numerous oil fields, made it a sought after prize in Hussein's set of goals. The recently ended war with Iran, a conflict sustained by the cynicism of First World politicians and arms providers, left Iraq in bad straits, needing revenue and, in Hussein's case, I'm guessing, a renewed swelling of pride. He'd been a U.S. ally since his takeover of Iraq in 1979. He had no reason, in my opinion, to believe George Bush would offer a hands-off viewpoint on Kuwait, and then have a problem with it. This misunderstanding and underestimation by Hussein of the duplicity of President Bush and Secretary of State Baker in 1990 has written many chapters of the violent world saga we now live in.
Hussein sent his army into Kuwait, a nation ill-prepared to withstand such force. Bush, meanwhile, condemned the invasion, not mentioning his own role in letting it happen. His own presidential library has provided the Glaspie text quoted above. It's not a secret that Baker and Bush knew, in late July 1990, that Hussein wanted to act on his "dispute" with Kuwait. What did our leaders think Hussein was planning? This begs the question: Given their knowledge of Hussein's upcoming attack against Kuwait, did Baker and Bush allow it to happen? Would they have been able to stop Hussein with the warning, "We will go to war with you over Kuwait"?
We know they didn't warn Hussein of the terrible possible consequences of his planned invasion. Were Bush and Baker looking for an excuse to go to war in the Middle East? Can the same be said of Bush's son, George W., when 9/11 gave our leaders the excuse to attack a country, Iraq, that had nothing to do with the fall of the Twin Towers?
That Baker and Bush had "no opinion" about Hussein's "Arab-Arab conflicts," is unbelievable. Considering the region's oil wealth alone, it's not credible that power brokers like James Baker and George Bush regarded the Middle East as a lacuna in their minds.
The Coalition, brought together by Bush, included many Arab countries glad to slap Saddam Hussein. Hafez Assad, father of Syria's current leader Bashir, was, like his son, a dictator who killed a lot of his own people. He'd been marginalized by the United States until Bush brought him into the Coalition. I remember watching the two on television, sitting together, not saying anything, smiling. Not Bush's finest gesture towards humanitarianism, and not his worst.
In 1991, the Iraqi army folded like crumpling, burning paper. Coalition air forces bombed Iraq to the extent there was, as one American pilot put it, "nothing left to bomb." The country's infrastructure smashed, the Iraqi people, victims of their leader's oppression and the Coalition's unloving attentions, had to subsequently experience U.N.-enforced sanctions until 2003, when another war, from another Bush, lit up their country.
Abuse of the Iraqi people by their own bad governments and First World powers is not much focused on in the U. S. news media. U.N. sanctions, enforced mainly by the United States, led to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, mostly children, women, and the elderly, deprived of basic medicines and health care in a demolished country. Bill Clinton presided over eight years of the sanctions and is largely responsible for letting children die in massive numbers. Maybe he's trying to atone with his Clinton Global Initiative, but I still say, "Fuck you, Bill Clinton."
Clinton's heaping of misery on Iraqis, along with the two Bushes militarily destroying their country in two wars, shows how bipartisan the practice of American war crimes can be.
Vic Neptune
Eight days earlier, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, had cabled Saddam Hussein: "We [the U.S.] have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."
Kuwait was regarded by ambitious Iraqi leaders over the years as "the Nineteenth Province," a name deriving from a time before that region was sliced off of Iraq by the British. Kuwait's strategic location on the Persian Gulf, its numerous oil fields, made it a sought after prize in Hussein's set of goals. The recently ended war with Iran, a conflict sustained by the cynicism of First World politicians and arms providers, left Iraq in bad straits, needing revenue and, in Hussein's case, I'm guessing, a renewed swelling of pride. He'd been a U.S. ally since his takeover of Iraq in 1979. He had no reason, in my opinion, to believe George Bush would offer a hands-off viewpoint on Kuwait, and then have a problem with it. This misunderstanding and underestimation by Hussein of the duplicity of President Bush and Secretary of State Baker in 1990 has written many chapters of the violent world saga we now live in.
Hussein sent his army into Kuwait, a nation ill-prepared to withstand such force. Bush, meanwhile, condemned the invasion, not mentioning his own role in letting it happen. His own presidential library has provided the Glaspie text quoted above. It's not a secret that Baker and Bush knew, in late July 1990, that Hussein wanted to act on his "dispute" with Kuwait. What did our leaders think Hussein was planning? This begs the question: Given their knowledge of Hussein's upcoming attack against Kuwait, did Baker and Bush allow it to happen? Would they have been able to stop Hussein with the warning, "We will go to war with you over Kuwait"?
We know they didn't warn Hussein of the terrible possible consequences of his planned invasion. Were Bush and Baker looking for an excuse to go to war in the Middle East? Can the same be said of Bush's son, George W., when 9/11 gave our leaders the excuse to attack a country, Iraq, that had nothing to do with the fall of the Twin Towers?
That Baker and Bush had "no opinion" about Hussein's "Arab-Arab conflicts," is unbelievable. Considering the region's oil wealth alone, it's not credible that power brokers like James Baker and George Bush regarded the Middle East as a lacuna in their minds.
The Coalition, brought together by Bush, included many Arab countries glad to slap Saddam Hussein. Hafez Assad, father of Syria's current leader Bashir, was, like his son, a dictator who killed a lot of his own people. He'd been marginalized by the United States until Bush brought him into the Coalition. I remember watching the two on television, sitting together, not saying anything, smiling. Not Bush's finest gesture towards humanitarianism, and not his worst.
In 1991, the Iraqi army folded like crumpling, burning paper. Coalition air forces bombed Iraq to the extent there was, as one American pilot put it, "nothing left to bomb." The country's infrastructure smashed, the Iraqi people, victims of their leader's oppression and the Coalition's unloving attentions, had to subsequently experience U.N.-enforced sanctions until 2003, when another war, from another Bush, lit up their country.
Abuse of the Iraqi people by their own bad governments and First World powers is not much focused on in the U. S. news media. U.N. sanctions, enforced mainly by the United States, led to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, mostly children, women, and the elderly, deprived of basic medicines and health care in a demolished country. Bill Clinton presided over eight years of the sanctions and is largely responsible for letting children die in massive numbers. Maybe he's trying to atone with his Clinton Global Initiative, but I still say, "Fuck you, Bill Clinton."
Clinton's heaping of misery on Iraqis, along with the two Bushes militarily destroying their country in two wars, shows how bipartisan the practice of American war crimes can be.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, August 1, 2015
In 1997 I went on a picnic with a new woman in my life. We drove for several hours, stopping at a state park by a bay connected to one of the Great Lakes. We spread a blanket on leaves recently fallen and ate and drank. Quiet over everything. A town across the bay gave off that silent look even large conglomerations of people and structures have when viewed from far enough away that a loud noise from over there would've come after seeing the sound's cause.
We kissed, longer than ever before. A strange buzz came from our left, faint, but getting louder. The trees' foliage and bushes blocked our view of the wavering sound's direction. It got louder--obviously some kind of vehicle's engine. The sound's pitch rose and fell, rose and fell. It became quite loud and we still couldn't see it. Then, a man in a baseball cap, tee shirt, and jeans appeared, riding a three-wheeled ATV, two wheels (left and front) in the water, the third on the soggy bank. He was tilted down to his left as he rode slowly by, not seeing us. We laughed at the unexpected weirdness of it. What was he doing? I suggested he was traveling along the edges of the bays, inlets, and shorelines of the Great Lakes. For all we knew he'd been on this journey for years.
What else happened in 1997?
In January of that year came a brief but disorienting depression characterized by restlessness that felt like winged insects trapped inside my clothes. I felt helpless. A friend, after I'd called her several times, told me I needed to get a grip. The worst of it lasted only two days, and then it lifted during an evening. I selected a book I hadn't read from one of my shelves and began reading Forbidden Colors by Yukio Mishima. His elegant prose, albeit translated into English, melted the remnants of a depression that later seemed like a dream.
Later in 1997 I moved in with the woman from the picnic. We lived together until 2002. Our first place was the ground floor of what had originally been a stable, remodeled in odd ways into a very small house. Past the living/dining room a set of three stairs led to a narrow kitchen. To the kitchen's left, two more steps up opened on a tiny bathroom with sink, toilet, and a refrigerator-sized shower stall I couldn't stand upright in.
Above us, an even smaller apartment held a man in his forties who got up late at night to work. My girlfriend disliked him on sight. One night, as usual, around two in the morning, his alarm clock blared above our bedroom, but he wasn't home to switch it off. The grating full volume beep went on and on. My girlfriend got up, put on her slippers, found a flashlight, and went outside. The alarm stopped. She got back into bed, saying she'd switched off his power. This peculiar shack of a house had a power box for the upper level on the outside near our front door. Our power switches were inside.
The next day our neighbor told my girlfriend his power had gone out. Did ours go out, too?
"Yes," she lied. "It did."
In 1997 we hadn't heard of Britney Spears and didn't know Brad Pitt would leave Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie. The name Kardashian was associated only with one of O.J. Simpson's lawyers. We had never heard of Monica Lewinsky or Osama bin Laden. Electronic information exchange, by today's standards, was primitive. In The Net, released just two years earlier, it was amazing that Sandra Bullock could order a pizza online. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a new show. The man on the ATV, half in the water, half on land, did various things in private and public in 1997. People screwed and got stoned, drank and caused car accidents. Earth continued to rotate--it's amazing how it just keeps rotating. Princess Diana died horribly in a car crash, her last moments gawked at and photographed by paparazzi who should still all be identified, rounded up, and shot.
A typical year.
Vic Neptune
We kissed, longer than ever before. A strange buzz came from our left, faint, but getting louder. The trees' foliage and bushes blocked our view of the wavering sound's direction. It got louder--obviously some kind of vehicle's engine. The sound's pitch rose and fell, rose and fell. It became quite loud and we still couldn't see it. Then, a man in a baseball cap, tee shirt, and jeans appeared, riding a three-wheeled ATV, two wheels (left and front) in the water, the third on the soggy bank. He was tilted down to his left as he rode slowly by, not seeing us. We laughed at the unexpected weirdness of it. What was he doing? I suggested he was traveling along the edges of the bays, inlets, and shorelines of the Great Lakes. For all we knew he'd been on this journey for years.
What else happened in 1997?
In January of that year came a brief but disorienting depression characterized by restlessness that felt like winged insects trapped inside my clothes. I felt helpless. A friend, after I'd called her several times, told me I needed to get a grip. The worst of it lasted only two days, and then it lifted during an evening. I selected a book I hadn't read from one of my shelves and began reading Forbidden Colors by Yukio Mishima. His elegant prose, albeit translated into English, melted the remnants of a depression that later seemed like a dream.
Later in 1997 I moved in with the woman from the picnic. We lived together until 2002. Our first place was the ground floor of what had originally been a stable, remodeled in odd ways into a very small house. Past the living/dining room a set of three stairs led to a narrow kitchen. To the kitchen's left, two more steps up opened on a tiny bathroom with sink, toilet, and a refrigerator-sized shower stall I couldn't stand upright in.
Above us, an even smaller apartment held a man in his forties who got up late at night to work. My girlfriend disliked him on sight. One night, as usual, around two in the morning, his alarm clock blared above our bedroom, but he wasn't home to switch it off. The grating full volume beep went on and on. My girlfriend got up, put on her slippers, found a flashlight, and went outside. The alarm stopped. She got back into bed, saying she'd switched off his power. This peculiar shack of a house had a power box for the upper level on the outside near our front door. Our power switches were inside.
The next day our neighbor told my girlfriend his power had gone out. Did ours go out, too?
"Yes," she lied. "It did."
In 1997 we hadn't heard of Britney Spears and didn't know Brad Pitt would leave Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie. The name Kardashian was associated only with one of O.J. Simpson's lawyers. We had never heard of Monica Lewinsky or Osama bin Laden. Electronic information exchange, by today's standards, was primitive. In The Net, released just two years earlier, it was amazing that Sandra Bullock could order a pizza online. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a new show. The man on the ATV, half in the water, half on land, did various things in private and public in 1997. People screwed and got stoned, drank and caused car accidents. Earth continued to rotate--it's amazing how it just keeps rotating. Princess Diana died horribly in a car crash, her last moments gawked at and photographed by paparazzi who should still all be identified, rounded up, and shot.
A typical year.
Vic Neptune
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