I'm Paul Iorio, and here's my regular column,
The Daily Digression, which covers pop culture and beyond...
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All comments welcome at pliorio@aol.com. (I don't think comments are enabled on this site, by the way.) Original photos on this site are copyrighted.
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THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 26, 2008
Shining Light on "Shine a Light"
torn, frayed, mostly fabulous
I finally got around to seeing "Shine a Light"
and couldn't help but think it might have benefited
from a more straightforward approach cinematographically
instead of the incessant cutting that makes this more
of an editor's film than a director's film, though
anything Martin Scorsese is involved with is a
Scorsese film, period. Then again, any movie the
Rolling Stones are involved with is a Stones film,
period, so there is almost a tug of war between
strong-willed auteurs here, with Scorsese
seen pleading for a setlist at one point, which
he definitely could've used to block and plan
shots for his cinematographers who seem to be
scrambling frantically to catch pictures of lightning
after the lightning has already struck, though every
now and then they do catch and bottle a bolt
or two.
But it would've been nice if one of the cameras had
caught, say, Darryl Jones playing the bass intro
to "Live With Me" instead of focusing on one of
the guitarists or had shown Charlie Watts doing
that vintage drum roll that opens "All Down
the Line."
The setlist is a masterpiece, around as good as the
one at the Olympia show in Paris captured in the
"Four Flicks" film, though one can quibble at the edges.
Perhaps the better-live-than-on-the-album "You
Got Me Rocking" might've worked better than the
better-on-the-album-than-live "Shattered," which
I've never heard performed successfully live.
And "Sweet Virginia" or "Dead Flowers" could have
best filled the "country" slot reserved here for
failed joke "Faraway Eyes." And "Respectable" would've
been the perfect song to play with the Clintons
in the audience. And what about a nod to "Bigger Bang"
with "Oh No, Not You Again," the best of the new
ones live.
The choices are otherwise dead on; "She Was Hot," a
highlight, has terrific, unexpected momentum; "Loving Cup"
now sounds like it was written with Jack White in mind
all along; "As Tears Go By" has a real pulse, thanks to
Watts; "Connection" is one of the band's best
overlooked songs of the 1960s, though Keith botches it
here (he did a far better version in Oakland, Calif.,
shortly after this gig).
And each guest star tops the previous one, with
Buddy Guy leveling the place with "Champagne & Reefer"
and with offhand artistry that is assured, authentic
(he livens up the place much as Dr. John did in
"The Last Waltz"). Christina Aquilera, trading vocals
with Jagger on "Live With Me," is a powerhouse, a hurricane,
always blowing audiences away. (Wish they'd brought her
on for the Merry Clayton part of "Gimme Shelter,"
not played here.)
This is a concert film with spliced-in archival footage
that is often hilarious and rare while heavily favoring
self-promo bits in which Jagger one-ups various
interviewers -- as opposed to the Maysles brothers's
"Gimme Shelter," which shows Jagger at both his wittiest
and unwittiest (remember the "philosophically trying"
remarks?). Though the film doesn't pretend to be any
sort of definitive docu on the Stones, one still wonders
where Brian Jones is in all the vintage footage;
Jones has gone from being wildly overemphasized as a Stones
member to, today, being almost completely erased from the
band's history. That said, it's telling that the group
got only better in the years after Jones's death (see:
"Exile," "Sticky Fingers," "Some Girls").
They performed almost half of the "Some Girls" CD,
likely to remain their best-selling studio album of
all time, now that the dust has settled, though at
the time who'd have guessed that its unlikely combination
of disco and punk, warring genres in their day, would
have eclipsed both "Sticky Fingers" and "Exile." But it's
the closest the Stones have come to a diamond seller
like "Nevermind" or "Boston," which they've never had,
even if their cultural influence has been far greater
than all but a few in the rock era. Today, it's easy to
see that "Some Girls," released 30 years ago this June,
had a sort of shock jock element that made it popular
among millions of non-Stones fans, though that
element was partly excised in this film, with the
deletion of an explicit verse from the title track,
a song rarely (if ever) performed by the Stones.
I was lucky enough to have heard the very first public
performance of "Some Girls" material by the Stones, on
the first night of their "Some Girls" tour, June 10, 1978,
a couple days after the album's release, at the Lakeland
(Florida) Civic Center -- and I saw the group from only
several feet away.
As I recall, the new album was erupting unexpectedly,
so the band was in an extremely good mood at this
kick-off gig in '78. In fact, they seemed
downright giddy and manic and drunk on (among other
things) their own effortless rock 'n' roll mastery.
I remember seeing Jagger take the stage to the
opening chords of "All Down the Line," as flashing
lights briefly illuminated his leap into the air
(he looked just like a whip or a lightning bolt) and
remember seeing him physically and playfully
push Ron Wood to the side of the stage at another point.
And I remember how eerie and spooky it looked and
sounded to see Jagger right in front of me singing that
falsetto part of "Miss You" -- and he was singing it
live for the first-time ever.
A year later, with those songs still ringing in my
head, I moved to Manhattan, where I lived for years at
the Beacon, 25 floors above the theater where the
concert in "Shine a Light" took place. In those days
I used to travel to the Beacon Theater by...taking
the elevator!
Which is part of what makes that final shot of "Shine a Light"
(in which Scorsese directs the cameraman to film from
above the Broadway marquee to the rooftops of the Upper
West Side, literally between the moon and New York City) so
magical to me. And it suggests an even better flick: a
movie of a concert on the Beacon roof, a la "Let It Be," in
which the Manhattan skyline co-stars.
the Stones's bestseller, released 30 years ago this June
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 24, 2008
I was reading a transcript of the latest
audio recording from Osama bin Laden the
other day and wondering: is he dating? Does he
have a lover? Would bin Laden be a less violent
person if he had a sexual partner? Could we save
the world from his destructiveness by simply...setting
him up on a date?
Hence the origin of my screenplay, "Play It
Again, Osama," presented below:
Play It Again, Osama
By Paul Iorio*
INT. OSAMA'S BACHELOR APARTMENT, SOMEWHERE IN WAZIRISTAN
OSAMA BIN LADEN (to himself): What's the matter with me?
Why can't I be cool like the Prophet Mohammed?
What's the secret?
An imaginary Prophet Mohammed, wearing a fedora and looking
and sounding like Humphrey Bogart, appears from the shadows.
PROPHET MOHAMMED: There's no secret, kid.
Infidels are simple. I never met one that didn't understand
a slap in the mouth or a slug from a .44.
OSAMA BIN LADEN: Yeah, 'cause you're Mohammed.
I'm not like you. When you lost Aisha, weren't you crushed?
PROPHET MOHAMMED: Nothing a little bourbon and soda
wouldn't fix. Take my advice and forget all the romantic stuff.
The world is full of infidels to fight. All you have to do is whistle.
OSAMA: He's right. You give the unbelievers an inch
and they step all over you. Why can't I develop that attitude?
[mimicking Mohammed] Nothing a little bourbon and soda
couldn't fix.
[He swigs a shot of Old Crow, gags.]
CUT TO:
INT. TORA BORA APARTMENT OF DICK AND LINDA CHRISTIE (OSAMA'S FRIENDS)
LINDA CHRISTIE: Osama's calling again. We've got to find him a girl.
Somebody he can be with, get excited about.
DICK CHRISTIE: We'll have to find him a nice girl.
LINDA: There must be somebody out there. Someone to take his
mind off losing Mohamed Atta. I think he really loved Atta.
DICK [picking up phone]: I know just the girl for him.
CUT TO:
INT. OSAMA'S APARTMENT
Osama is preparing for his date, which is in an hour or so.
Again, from the shadows comes an imaginary Prophet Mohammed.
MOHAMMED: You're starting off on the wrong foot.
OSAMA: Yeah, negative.
MOHAMMED: Sure. They're getting the best of you
before the game starts. What's that stuff you put on your face?
OSAMA: Canoe. It's an aftershave lotion.
MOHAMMED: You know, kid, somewhere in life
you got turned around. It's her job to smell nice for you.
The only bad thing is if she turns out to be a virgin --
or an agent for the JTTF!
OSAMA: With my luck, she'll turn out to be both.
TITLE CARD: Later That Night....
INT. OSAMA'S APARTMENT -- LATE AT NIGHT
The doorbell rings and Osama opens the door. It's Linda.
LINDA: How did the date go?
OSAMA: It never would have worked between us.
She's a Shiite, I'm a Sunni, it's a great religious abyss.
LINDA: [laughing]
OSAMA: You're laughing and my sex life
is turning into the Petrified Forest.
Millions of women in the Northwest
Territories and I can't wind up with one!
Osama takes a seat on the couch and Linda sits next to him.
OSAMA: I'm turning into the strike-out king
of Waziristan!
LINDA: You need to be more confident, secure.
OSAMA: You know who's not insecure?
The Prophet Mohammed.
LINDA: That's not real life.
You set too high a standard.
OSAMA: If I'm gonna identify with someone,
who am I gonna pick? My imam?
Mohammed's a perfect image.
LINDA: You don't need to pretend. You're you.
Osama nudges closer to Linda on the couch.
The imaginary Mohammed appears and speaks.
MOHAMMED: Go ahead, make your move.
OSAMA: No, I can't.
MOHAMMED: Take her and kiss her..
LINDA (getting up to go to the kitchen): I'll get us both a drink.
MOHAMMED: Well, kid, you blew it.
OSAMA: I can't do it. We're platonic friends.
I can't spoil that by coming on.
She'll slap my face.
MOHAMMED: I've had my face slapped plenty.
OSAMA: But your turban
don't go flying across the room.
Linda returns with two drinks.
LINDA: Here we are, you can start on this.
MOHAMMED: Go ahead, kiss her.
OSAMA: I can't.
The phone rings and startles Osama, as he answers it.
OSAMA (into phone): Hi, Dick. Yes, she's here.
I was going out -- I had a Polish date.
He hands the phone to Linda.
MOHAMMED: Relax. You're as nervous as Abu Jahl was before
I beat his brains out at the Battle of Badr. All you've got to do is
make your move.
OSAMA: This is crazy. We'll wind up
on al Jazeera!
LINDA (into phone): OK, goodbye.
LINDA: Dick sounded down. I think
he's having trouble in Karachi. I wonder
why he never asks me along on his trips.
OSAMA: Maybe he's got something
going on the side. A fling.
LINDA: If I fell for another man,
it'd have to be more than just a fling.
I'd have to feel something more serious.
Are you shaking?
OSAMA: Just chilly.
LINDA: It's not very cold.
MOHAMMED: Move closer to her.
OSAMA: How close?
MOHAMMED: The distance of Flight 175 to the south tower..
OSAMA: That's very close.
MOHAMMED: Now, get ready for the big move
and do exactly as I tell you.
Suddenly an imaginary Mohamed Atta appears and
confronts the Prophet Mohammed.
ATTA [to Mohammed]: I warned you to leave my ex-lover alone.
Atta draws a pistol and shoots Mohammed.
Osama looks a bit panicky now that Mohammed is gone.
LINDA: I guess I'd better fix the steaks.
OSAMA: Your eyes are like two thick juicy steaks.
Osama kisses Linda, who recoils, pushing him away.
OSAMA: I was joking. I was just testing you.
It was a platonic kiss.
LINDA: I think I'd better go home.
OSAMA: You're making a mistake.
Linda waves goodbye and leaves the apartment.
OSAMA: I attacked her. I'm a vicious jungle beast..
I'm not the Prophet Mohammed. I never will be.
I'm a disgrace to my sex. I should get a job at an Arabian palace
as a eunuch.
The doorbell rings.
OSAMA: That's the vice squad. [He opens the door, and Linda is there.]
LINDA: Did you say you loved me?
Osama and Linda embrace and kiss and the scene fades.
INT. OSAMA'S APARTMENT -- THE NEXT DAY
MOHAMMED: That's all there is to it.
OSAMA: For you, because you're Mohammed.
MOHAMMED: Everybody is at certain times.
OSAMA: I guess the secret's not being you, it's being me.
MOHAMMED: Here's looking at you, kid.
*with massive apologies to Woody Allen.
-------
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 21, 2008
Oh! Ye bitter Pennsylvanians, come 'round to the polls,
but drink not from the chalice of disappointment and
woe, or seek succor by clinging to thy religion and
thy guns, when ye cast ye ballots in the Primary of
the Greatest Publick Importance, at least this week,
until next month, when the next state decideth.
Thou must not delayeth thy journey to thy polls with vain
prayer or the reloading of thy guns. Thou must not
cling to that which provides false solace in grim
times. Thou must not pray out of bitterness in thy
voting booth upon the altar of discredited touch screens,
or place thy bullets amidst the paper ballots that have
largely replaced thy touch screens. Oh, ye bitter
Pennsylvanians, put aside thy clinging and loading and
praying to dodge the sniper fire on the way to the
Primary of Publick Importance!
But I digresseth. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 17, 2008
The 'Gotcha' Debate
I just saw the ABC debate, in which four millionaires
who have top-notch health insurance talked for two
hours in prime time about everything except
health care reform. Or at least it seemed that way.
The short math is this: Hillary won the debate,
with Stephanopoulos coming in a close second,
Gibson third, and Obama fourth.
Thing is, Clinton has really grown to the point where
(now that she's losing) she finally seems like a
credible president. Too late. Too bad.
Obama seemed winded, weary, tired, on defense. The
Wright thing hurts him. The Ayers thing hurts him.
The flag lapel, Bittergate -- it all mounts up. Pretty
soon he looks pretty unelectable against McCain.
Gibson/Stephanopoulos seemed to be harder on Obama than on
Clinton, who they should've pursued on the sniper lie; the
question Steph should've asked but didn't is: what were
you confusing the Bosnia incident with?
The odd thing is that I began to think in mid-debate, gazing
at Obama, that he could very well become the most
unlikely general election winner in presidential history.
Reason I thought that is because they showed a clip
of McCain, who looked so old and creaky as he stumbled over
his words, and I felt that, with McCain's health problems, he
might become disabled by, say, a stroke, before
November and have to be replaced by his running mate,
probably Romney, who Obama could handily beat.
Just as Obama became a US Senator because of a
fluke -- remember how the main contender had to drop out
because of scandal, leaving the GOP to consider Mike Ditka as
a contender? -- so Obama could become president because
of the random nature of politics.
Anyway, Hillary has also become much more entertaining and got off
the best zingers of the night: Dick Cheney is the 4th branch
of government, this may be the first time a president
took us to war but refused to pay for it. I think that Crown
Royal has opened up whole new doors of perception for this
former Goldwater gal, who may yet be the nominee,
but probably won't.
-------------
If I were at NBC Entertainment, I'd immediately
start creating a new prime-time sitcom starring
Kristen Wiig (called "The Kristen Wiig Show" or
"The Kristen Wiig-Out!" or "Flip Your Wiig"
or something like that), in which the SNL
player would play a thirtysomething
nervous wreck in the style of some of the characters
she plays on SNL. It's becoming increasingly
obvious that in the constellation of stars
at SNL, she's outshining lots of 'em. (She nearly
brought down the house with her "just joking" bit
last week and with the "surprise party" sketch
from the previous week, and I'm still chuckling over
her Peter Pan; by the way, one of the magical things
about Penelope is the way she appears unexpectedly,
almost floatingly, in different parts of the master shot
throughout the sketch.) Just don't name it "The New
Adventures of the Old Kristen." Just joking.
---------
Wow, the Daily Digression seems to be setting
trends these days -- or at least it's preceding
the coverage agenda in some publications.
For example, The Digression has been talking for
weeks about Obama being the new Dukakis and/or
Stevenson (I called him "Adlai Dukakis" the
other day). Now, in Maureen Dowd's latest
column in the New York Times, she makes the same
comparison (though, truth be told, I don't think
she's a Daily Digression reader).
Also, I wrote an interesting line the day before
yesterday in one of my Digressions:
"One predicts the future, to the meager degree that one
can, by looking at the past, not at the future," I wrote.
Nice line (if I should say so myself!).
In today's Times, I hear an echo: "By looking into history,
we can see the future," the paper quotes some
guy saying in today's paper in a story about a Tibet
museum; I'd love to hear the interview tape on
that one; I may be wrong but I
bet it's one of those things where the reporter is
virtually putting the words in the source's mouth,
i.e., "Why does history matter? Is it because that's
how we see the future?")
There are other examples, too, both at The Times and
at other publications, but I don't have time to
detail it; I'm too busy coming up with the stuff
they'll echo in coming days.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- You know, I hear there are expensive journalism
schools that offer courses like: "How to Get Away with
Plagiarism in a Completely Legitimate Way by Slightly
Modifying an Idea or a Sentence, Putting the Words in
Someone Else's Mouth or Rushing Stolen Ideas From
Obscure Sources into Print Before the Originator
Does: 101." If they don't offer that course,
it's learned by some on the job.
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 16, 2008
Now More Than Ever, We Need an LBJ
Strong persuader.
It's about health care, stupid.
Because this has gone on too long. The impasse
feels permanent, and probably is.
In order to provide health insurance for the
48 million Americans without it, we need a president
who's an arm twister, a son-of-a-bitch,
someone who's gonna make threats and make good on
them, step on toes, be merciless -- and all in an
effective way.
We need an LBJ.
Remember Lyndon? He could be rude and coarse and a
bully, but he...got...it...done. He rammed major
civil rights legislation through the
Congress as president -- even if he had to make ugly
ultimatums about canceling that bridge project in your
district or had to get in your face as he thumped your
chest with his finger.
And his tactics are, frankly, the only way the
8 million uninsured kids in this country will
be able to see a doctor if they're sick. (I mean,
think of it: 47 million people. That's the entire
population of South Korea! The whole population of
England is only around 10 million more than that.)
Problem is, there is no LBJ, or anyone nearly as effective,
running for president this year.
Yeah, Hillary is feisty but more often merely mean (and sort
of weak), and she has already failed at pushing through
health care. Whatever her excuses, her legacy so far has
been one of ineffectiveness.
Obama is a strong persuader -- but it's discouraging and
telling that his golden oratory about health care has not
inspired the current Congress to pass a single payer plan
or anything close to it. One has to wonder whether he'd
fare any better as president.
John McCain sounds like someone who has been rich too
long to understand what a shrieking nightmare it is
not to have health insurance; perhaps if he
were forced to use only Clearasil to combat his next
bout of melanoma, or to use Listerine to treat his
root canal, he'd get it. (And don't tell me
about the deprivations of McCain's youth; that was
too many decades ago to be relevant today.)
The 44th president of the United States is not
likely to provide health care to the 47 million
uninsured, because there's just too much money in
the Health Care Industrial Complex. I mean, making
huge profits off of sick people is what the insurers
and Big Pharma do, which is why I'm surprised
there isn't more of a popular uprising
and revulsion about it.
It seems as if protest -- coupled with a sympathetic
president -- is the only way sick people are going
to get care in this country.
If activists would put aside relatively marginal issues
for a time to focus on the Big Kahuna, we might be able
to save lives. In other words, come down from your oaks
(once you've saved them), take your minds off gay marriage
and the WTO for a couple years, and unite and focus solely
on effective, extreme civil disobedience and protest
that target the health care moguls who are making money
off the sick. Find out where the CEOs of the top Pharm
companies and health insurance providers live, and then
organize big raucous protests in front of their mansions
relentlessly.
If we can't get an LBJ in the White House in January,
then the people themselves will have to become the
arm-twisters.
But I digress. Paul
[above photo from Life magazine]
_____________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 15, 2008
I betcha Barack tries a cowboy hat next.
Yup, any day now I bet Obama's handlers
are gonna put him in a Stetson and have him
do a two-step to George Strait or maybe have him
croon some Toby Keith for YouTube consumption.
And he'd better do that or something like it quick,
because this race is quickly shaping into a contest
between Dwight Dole and Adlai Dukakis.
Unpopular truth be told, Barack was right when he
said people cling to religion and guns out of a sort of
bitterness or desperation. Yes, religion is the opiate
of the people (as you-know-who once put it),
the delusion of last resort for the hopeless. But
I don't expect that my own non-theistic views about
religion will become mainstream for another, oh, 400
years or so. Until the mysteries explained
away by science are accepted by people who haven't
studied science, which is to say most voters, religion
will continue to exert its irrational hold on the
electorate.
How do I know that's likely to be true? By seeing how
far we've grown in 2008 from the literalist
Christianity rampant 400 years ago, in 1608, and then
extrapolating that trajectory into the next 400 years.
And the trajectory of the centuries is clearly in the
opposite direction of religion, or at least in the
opposite direction of fundamentalism. (One predicts
the future, to the meager degree that one can, by
looking at the past, not at the future.)
But then, see, I can speak the truth because I ain't
running for anything. Barack is.
And if I were running for office, I wouldn't say what he
said in San Francisco last week; it suggests that he doesn't
have the level of circumspection required of a world
leader. It implies that he is more prone to say, as
president, that (for example) some of the people of
the Northwest Territories of Pakistan are backward in their
fundamentalist beliefs -- which may be true but is not
something you want to say if you're negotiating with the
new president of Pakistan.
It's funny: now that Americans have gotten to know him,
Barack seems less too-black and more too-Harvard to his
opponents (which is always what happens when you get to
know somebody from a different ethnic group; at some point,
they stop being Irish or Mexican or Jewish or African-American
and start being that snob or that dullard or that
artist or that really intuitive guy -- i.e., an individual).
In the end, in November, the central irony of the
2008 election may be that the first major black candidate
for president, Obama, spouting rich guy Harvardisms too
true for the campaign trail, was defeated because he was
too white.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 14, 2008
humor by paul iorio
Little-Known Popes in Papal History
Pope Benedict XVI is visiting the U.S. this week for
the first time since becoming pontiff in 2005, and he
is, of course, not the most famous pope in
Vatican history, though he's also not the most
obscure.
In fact, there have been many lesser-known popes
through the centuries, and now may be the time to
remember some of them. Here are ten:
POPE NAPOLEON THE 13TH
Mad Pope Napoleon the 13th's brief reign was marked by grandiose
plans and an obsession with Napoleon Bonaparte. He was deposed
when he tried to turn the Vatican into a nuclear power. (1952)
POPE LUCIFER
An experimental pope who advocated praying to the Devil and to
God in order to cover all bases. (431 A.D.)
POPE JESUS GOD THE SECOND
For all the arrogance of his name, Jesus God 2 actually turned
out to be somewhat humble and unassuming, noted mostly for his
punctuality. Was convinced the Old Testament had been penned by
a guy named Smith. (1564)
POPE MUHAMMAD THE FIRST
With the Ottomans threatening Western Europe, the Vatican
decided to throw Constantinople a bone by elevating a former
imam to the top spot. Muhammad the First, a lapsed Muslim who
fled Turkey and converted to Catholicism, fell from favor after
he proposed building minarets atop St. Peter’s Basilica. (1627)
POPE KEITH
A hippie pope known for his casual manner and affinity for
pop culture, he dispensed with Latin rites in favor of
"happenings." (Sept. 1974 to Sept. 1974)
POPE SASKATOON, GOVERNOR OF SASKATCHEWAN
As his expansive title suggests, Saskatoon might have been
a bit more preoccupied with claiming long-denied status
from the folks back home than with his duties as pope. (1910)
POPE LITERALIST THE 16TH
Took transubstantiation far more literally than most; after
a car accident, he insisted Vatican doctors give him a
blood transfusion using Chianti Classico instead of blood,
a fatal decision. Advocated medical care for the dead, who
he called the "as yet unrisen." (1960)
POPE JOHNNY THE FIRST
An American greaser of the 1950s -- and self-styled
"Method Pope” -- who rode a Harley to work. (1956)
POPE DIDDY
The first hip hop pope. Expanded the use of "signs of the Cross"
to include gang hand signs. (1998)
POPE RABBI GOLDSTEIN
Not officially a pope or a rabbi, and operating for a time
from a psychiatric facility in Antwerp, where he occasionally
broadcast a syndicated faith program called “This Week in Eternal
Damnation," he actually convinced several dozen people, mostly
Belgians, that he was the first Jewish pope. (1988)
But I digress. Paul
____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 8, 2008
Of all the cities in North America, I'd say
San Francisco is probably the last place
that one would want this year's Olympic torch to
pass through, unless you're looking for turbulence.
As everyone knows, San Francisco virtually
invented protest and demonstrations and civil
disobedience, I think. Or at least it perfected
dissent, raising it to a craft as a high as the
protesters on the Golden Gate bridge yesterday
morning.
The Chinese government is learning what the idiot
hijackers of United Flight 93 in 2001 also
quickly discovered: people in the Bay Area don't
acquiesce when it comes to tyranny and don't
take well to totalitarian types and will "place
their bodies on the gears of the machine"
to stop it from running altogether, if necessary,
to quote Mario Savio.
So it's as puzzling as a Puzzle Tree to see that
the powers-that-be are allowing The Torch to wend
its way through the streets of San Francisco tomorrow,
because there is no way that Free Tibet activists are
going to let that happen without incident. It's not
a question of whether there will be disruption on
Wednesday (or as the San Francisco Examiner once put
it, "Wensday"), but how much disruption there
will be.
* * *
Was listening to the "Moonlight" sonata the
other day and caught myself thinking,
this is almost as brilliant as "Street Spirit"
or "Lucky" (I bet Yorke/Greenwood's melodies
resonate into the far reaches of this century --
the part we won't be a part of -- and maybe
beyond. By the way, Radiohead headlines
a 3-day music fest in Golden Gate Park
in San Francisco in August, two years after
the band memorably premiered a dozen tracks
from its latest album, "In Rainbows," in
Berkeley and elsewhere.
* * *
NBC has an institutional memory that reminds
it that "Seinfeld" took a few years to find
its audience, and that may have played into the
its decision to renew "Friday Night Lights"
for a third season, starting in early '09 (after
a fall run on DirecTV).
By the way, I was re-watching Edward Burns's
amazing "The Brothers McMullen" the other night,
after not having seen it for many years, and
couldn't help but think of Coach Taylor's wife in
FNL every time Connie Britton, who plays Molly
McMullen, appeared on screen. It was Britton's film
debut, and it's easy to see her performance in
a whole new light, now that she's so identified
with "Friday Night Lights."
* * *
Wow, whatta setlist. Nearly half of the "Some Girls"
album, the cream of "Exile," rarity "As Tears Go By"
(not played in concert until the months preceding this
show), the underrated "She Was Hot" (from the not-underrated
"Undercover" album), and "Connection" from that treasure
trove of mini-gems, "Between the Buttons").
Can't wait to see "Shine a Light," Martin Scorsese's
Rolling Stones concert film docu. I'm told this is
the list:
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
Shattered
She Was Hot
All Down the Line
Loving Cup
As Tears Go By
Some Girls
Just My Imagination
Faraway Eyes
Champagne & Reefer
Tumbling Dice
You Got the Silver
Connection
Sympathy for the Devil
Live With Me
Start Me Up
Brown Sugar
Satisfaction
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 6, 2008
Is The Impeachment of President McCain Now Inevitable?
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- March 19, 2010 -- The Impeach President McCain
movement has gained enough steam this week, on the 7th
anniversary of U.S. involvement in Iraq, that it's now
considered more likely than not that articles of
impeachment will be introduced by the House Judiciary
Committee early next month, insiders say.
A bi-partisan majority in the House now agree that
the president's secret bombing raid on the suburbs
south of Tehran last week was the last straw and
proof that McCain is out of control, as he conducts
an ever-escalating and expanding war in both Iraq
and now in Iran without so much as consulting Congress
(in his defense, which he'll soon have to tell Judiciary,
McCain says he can't afford to reveal American
strategy publicly, as that would be revealing it to
the enemy, too).
And all this comes a mere 16 months after McCain's
solid electoral win over Senator Hillary Clinton in '08.
Today, in 2010, the triumphant landscape of '08 seems
distant. McCain's political capital is all gone. His
job approval ratings in some polls are as low as 17%.
And his increasingly surly, defiant press conferences
tend to stoke the flames of the Impeach McCain crowd.
Like last week when he declared, "When it comes
to waging war, I listen to the generals, not to the
people. The people are militarily illiterate."
Dems immediately noted that President McCain was
speaking a few blocks from a D.C. neighborhood burned
down in the summer of '08 by rioters angered by the
denial of the nomination to Sen. Obama -- a neighborhood
still not rebuilt. (By the way, where is Obama now? His
"burn, baby, burn" remark during the riots, caught by a
sneaky reporter's hidden mic, has likely ended his
political career for good.)
One White House correspondent says McCain may
try to head off impeachment proceedings by declaring
early that he will not seek re-election in 2012, due to
the recurrence of his skin cancer (which he also
is being secretive about). But not even that
will save his political skin if the Mahdi Army
keeps slaughtering Americans at a clip not seen since Tet,
because the public has clearly lost its patience with
a war it thought was coming to a close nearly two years
ago. McCain's latest "surge" (he seems to be addicted to surges
these days) has only strengthened the hand of Prime Minister
Sadr.
Insiders say Vice President Romney has spoken privately
to friends about the possibility of having to assume the
presidency soon and appointing his own vice president
(he is reported to have already broached the subject with
Sen. Joe Lieberman, floating the idea of a possible
Romney/Lieberman unity team).
In any event, all this this makes Romney the clear
front-runner for the GOP nomination in '12, if only
because he's likely to be the incumbent by then. The
DNC, meanwhile, is reportedly feverishly trying to
convince Al Gore to run again, assuring him that
he would have a clear shot at the nomination and
that there would not be the fractious infighting
that doomed prospects for the Dems in '08.
The fact that pundits are already looking beyond the
McCain presidency to the '12 race is a sign that Chief
Justice Roberts may soon be swearing in the 45th president
of the United States. But if war policy doesn't
change dramatically, a 46th president may be taking
office shortly after that.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for April 1, 2008
One of the reasons John McCain supports American
involvement in Iraq may be that he's seriously
uninformed about that war. In fact, he seems to
have a shockingly casual, almost amateurish grasp
of the basic facts about the conflict and
its ancillary issues.
I mean, there was the press conference last week
at which McCain said:
.
"Well, it's common knowledge and has been reported
in the media that al Qaeda is going back into Iran and
is receiving training and are coming back into Iraq
from Iran. That's well known and it's unfortunate."
Though his traveling companion, Joe Lieberman,
immediately corrected him, McCain still revealed a
lack of fundamental knowledge about the currents and
cross-currents in the region.
The big fear among foreign policy experts has always
been, post-Saddam, that there might be an unholy Shiite
alliance between Tehran and Baghdad. Is McCain also
unaware that Saddam was an enemy of bin Laden's and
that Saddam (for his own reasons) didn't want al Qaeda
to gain a foothold in Iraq because he saw the group
as a competing power base? (If we had been shrewd, we
could have built on and exacerbated the natural
animosity between the two.) One wonders whether
McCain would have supported the war if he had
been more knowledgeable about the issues involved.
To his credit, though, McCain hasn't yet
called the Sunnis "gooks." (Lieberman might
have warned him off that one.)
* * *
Hillary Clinton keeps using that line about answering
the phone at 3 in the morning, but, as I recall, when
she and her husband were in the White House, the
president wasn't even available for phone calls
at three in the afternoon! (Remember Bill's "sexy time"
in the middle of a weekday, when he had guests like Lloyd
Bentsen waiting in the lobby?) Then again, President
Clinton gave us results (e.g., peace, prosperity), so
maybe a bit of mid-day fellatio is part of the recipe
for successful policy-making. Give
me what he's drinking (just not so literally!).
* * *
Odd that Time magazine chose to publish a ranting
letter from Jeremiah Wright complaining about
a story in The New York Times -- a full year
after Wright sent the letter to the New
York Times (which ran a fair and accurate story, by
the way).
You know, I can't see how Wright could be considered
a very credible source these days about much of
anything, now that his history of making crackpot
comments has come to light.
I mean, how much credence can you give a guy who says
that "the government lied about inventing the HIV
virus as a means of genocide against people of color"?
It's hard to fathom the unhinged mindset of somebody
who would say something like that.
Wright's remarks recall nothing so much as Gen. Ripper's
lunatic belief that the communists were putting fluoride in
America's water supply in "Dr. Strangelove."
Beware if Wright starts writing letters that
mention his "precious bodily fluids."
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 29, 2008
Lately I've been looking at the three main
contenders for president and wondering
whether candidates were always this flawed or
whether I was just too young to notice the
imperfections in previous decades.
One candidate, John McCain, has an explosive temper
and has openly used the ugly ethnic slur "chink" to
describe Asians (he was in prison when "All in the
Family" was in its prime, which means he missed a
big part of America's cultural education and
evolution).
Another hopeful, Hillary Clinton, talks about
landing under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia
in the 1990s. Earlier I was thinking the
same thing that one television pundit later voiced
on Friday night: was she confusing the Bosnia
incident with another event in which she
actually did come under fire? If not, then how
does she explain the fact that she fabricated
the incident?
Finally, we have Barack Obama, who stands by a
crazy pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who says lots of
really idiotic things.
Hey, Mike Gravel is starting to look nearly normal!
Elsewhere in politics, it was also recently revealed
that the former governor of New York whored until he
was caught, the new guv of New York slept around and did
cocaine, the former governor of New Jersey had threesomes,
the mayor of Detroit was caught having steamy extramarital
sex, McCain appears to have had a thing for that Vicki
Iseman woman, and so on and so on.
I'm starting to get the feeling that the whole world
is having a wild Dionysian bash but forgot to invite
me. As I sit here on a Friday night, watching the
AccuWeather forecast and sipping Yuban, I'm beginning
to suspect I've been thrown out of the gene pool by
whoever controls the guest list.
Anyway, back to the flaws of the White House hopefuls,
specifically Obama's response to the Rev. Wright
controversy (I wrote about Hillary's Snipergate
below, hence I'm not playing favorites).
Anyone who would say "the government lied about
inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide
against people of color," as Wright did, is
seriously and dangerously out of touch with
reality.
And anyone who has the temerity to say that the
U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks on itself (attacks
planned by bin Laden during the progressive Clinton
regime, when our military was actually siding with
Muslims and against Christians in a conflict in
the former Yugoslavia) is either stupid or
uninformed or both.
But what also bothers me is there were people
in the audience at his church applauding all
that crap.
Why didn't Barack Obama walk out in protest when
Wright started mouthing off like that? He should
know there are far higher values than loyalty in this
world. If Wright were a good friend of mine, I
would say, no friend of mine would be talking like
that, and I'd walk out in the middle of
his sermon and loudly tell people afterwards
that I strongly disagreed with what he said.
It's like sitting around with an old friend who
suddenly starts disparaging blacks and Jews; you
don't let it pass; you stop him right there and
make it clear that's not acceptable talk.
That's why Barack's speech on race was one
of his worst. It sounded so Adlai, so Taubman
building, so no-controlling-legal-authority.
What I didn't hear was genuine, visceral
revulsion at Wright's rants. I didn't see the
profile in courage of someone willing to take a
solitary, principled, "High Noon" stand and
walk out on both a friend who said the n-word
and the people who laughed when he said it.
The speech on race sounded like Obama's exit
interview -- just as Romney's hyped speech on
Mormonism felt like an exit. Don't get me wrong,
Barack will probably be the nominee, but it was
an exit speech in the sense that we all now
know -- and so does he, at least unconsciously -- that
he is not going to be elected president in
November. No way, no how. Clip this, save this,
put it on your frig, and tell me I'm wrong on
the morning of November 5th.
And don't tell me about all the national polls
that have him leading McCain by however many points;
instead show me one credible independent poll that
has Obama leading McCain in Florida. Or in Ohio.
Or even Wisconsin. Without those states,
he can't possibly win the electoral tally.
By the way, Wright: the murders of 9/11 were
done for religious reasons, which is to say for
irrational motives (see: the letter
of intent found in the luggage of Mohamed Atta,
full of a lot of religious mumbo jumbo about
the way and the light and the path and nonbelievers
and god and other such junk).
Later on, of course, months after the fact, bin
Laden ladled on political reasons for having
committed the 9/11 massacres, but only
when he discovered the attacks weren't playing
so well in the Muslim mainstream.
I wonder if there's a clip somewhere of Wright
screaming, "God damn bin Laden!," and of Barack
applauding when he said that.
But I digress. Paul
______________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 25-26, 2008
Intriguing but flawed story in today's
New York Times about East Germans escaping to freedom
during the Cold War by traveling to Bulgaria and
slipping across its border into Greece. The story
fails to note that Bulgaria is widely
and definitively known as having been among the
most -- if not the most -- totalitarian and brutal
of the Eastern Bloc nations (in fact, insiders used
to call it the 16th republic of the CCCP).
I'm surprised his editor allowed him to write it
without noting the country's overall Cold
War reputation. (Further, his story has the
unmistakable sound of a piece that a writer
writes when he subtly wants to even up a
score with another writer.)
It also quotes someone characterizing Bulgaria as
sunny and southern, which gives the wrong impression.
Yes, the small part of it that is near the Black Sea may be
a vacation spot, but that's not the bulk of Bulgaria, which
is mostly grey and drab and sober and insular and
super-provincial -- and not a lot of fun at all. And
any look at an atlas would tell you that it's
on the same latitude as New England (Sofia almost
never gets above 75 degrees, even in August).
As I've noted in this space before, I traveled through
Bulgaria (alone, by local train, as a
teenager in 1976) from its Serbian border to Sofia
through Plovdiv and to Edirne, which is the virtual
three-way intersection of Bulgaria, Turkey and
Greece (aka, Thrace).
And then I did it again in the reverse direction!
My impressions: it felt like a military state, as
opposed to a police state, which is what Yugoslavia
resembled. Its border with Serbia was a bit less
protected than the one at Edirne, a somewhat
scary checkpoint in that soliders rifled roughly
through passengers's luggage while wielding their
rifles and flashlights/spotlights in
intimidating ways.
In any event, it was sure easier to get into
Bulgaria from the Edirne checkpoint than it was
to get out. The border guards were far less uptight
(I didn't even have a double transit visa, required for
the return trip, but they bent the rules and sold me
one on the spot, enabling me to get back to Italy,
where I was studying at the time.)
As for the reverse journey from Bulgaria to Serbia,
through Dimitrovgrad, I mostly slept through it because
I'd become very sick on the train, probably because of
food poisoning at an Istanbul restaurant.
Frankly, I was more worried about returning through
Zagreb, where, days earlier, I'd been taken off
the train, stripped of my passport and briefly detained
by Yugoslavian cops (because I had an American passport).
In Bulgaria, I had no such personal encounter with the
authorities, though I had been taking notes and snapping
pictures at various points along the route, which might
have been considered provocative if they had caught me
doing it. In retrospect, I can see I was probably
simply lucky not to have had a run-in with the
Bulgarian border soldiers, who truly looked
and acted like serious motherfuckers.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 25, 2008
Stream of Hillary ("Can You Hear the Drums, Fernando?")
The snipers are out again tonight, shooting from the nearby
hills as part of a vast right-wing conspiracy, reminding
me of that night in Memphis when I was with Rev. Martin
Luther King, who I first met at age six -- and I have seven
paid campaign workers who will back me up thoroughly on this,
because I did see King when I was 12 and was the only
Barry Goldwater supporter in the joint when he spoke -- and
by the way I misspoke about meeting King at 6, I've been
distracted by snipers lately, coming at me from different
directions, giving me the vapors, reminding me I've seen
some "hard places come down in smoke and ash" in my 50
years as U.S. Senator, and, yes, I have the scars to prove
it, because Bill First once had me in a death grip on the
Senate floor as Trent Lott sniped at me with what looked like
a Confederate-era pistol from an upper floor, and suddenly
I flashbacked to that night in Memphis when I was at
King's side, presciently advising Jesse Jackson to drop
out of the South Carolina primary, but I digress and
should note that, if anything, I have had too much
foreign policy experience, having taken the SeaDream Cruise
of the Caribbean during spring break in college, coming
within 200 miles of Cuba and its snipers, and I don't
want to cry, but I really sincerely -- and this comes
from the heart -- I sincerely hate to lose, particularly
to a one-term Senator from Illinois, who stands in contrast
to my 53 years of Congressional experience, if you include
the times in my youth when I would walk by the Capitol
building late at night, a dangerous neighborhood with
potential snipers on rooftops -- experience that should
count for something, as should my experience as the
right-hand of Rev. King, who I cradled in my arms
in '68 on the balcony of that motel in Memphis, which
is in a state that has 11 electoral votes that I might
win if I become the nominee, though it looks like Barack
has it wrapped, and if he does win the nomination, I'll offer
him the second spot on the ticket, and I'll say, "I want
you by my side Barack, in case of snipers and to hear
my remembrances of Dr. King" -- but I must cut this short,
because I think I hear Kalishnikovs in the nearby hills,
I can hear the drums, Fernando, I can still "recall the
frightful night we crossed the Rio Grande," or it might have
been the Danube, or maybe the East River on the way to Zabar's.
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 19, 2008
Today's Anti-War Protests in Berkeley, Calif.
A spirited group of protesters on Telegraph Avenue,
around 1:30pm today. [photo by Paul Iorio]
Five years after the start of the Iraq war, anti-war
demonstators took to the streets of cities across
America -- and Berkeley, Calif., the traditional
epicenter of protest, was no exception.
Here are a few photos I shot around a couple
hours ago in Berkeley.
Another shot of the Telegraph Avenue
protesters. [photo by Paul Iorio].
* *
A contingent of demonstrators on Shattuck
Avenue, after 2pm today. [photo by Paul Iorio]
--------------------
Now it emerges in a newly released audiotape that bin Laden's
delicate sensitivites are still offended by the little
cartoons that satirists in Europe published a couple
years ago. What a fragle flower this bin Laden
fellow is, no? People jump burning from the twin towers,
and bin is unmoved. But bin sees an episode of
Huckleberry Hound and he's in tears. Awww.
Well, bin, if ya liked the the Mohammed cartoons,
you're really gonna like my own cartoon series, "Bin Laden,
the Jihadist Pooch," which (much to my surprise) has
spread virally over the Internet since I posted the
series last October. Perhaps you've already seen the
cartoons. But if not, lemme take this opportunity to
reprint the best of the series right here and now.
Viddy well and enjoy!
Series by Paul Iorio.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 18-19, 2008
Race and the '08 Campaign
Well, the good news for the Dems is they're going
to win the White House -- in 2012. President McCain
will announce in late 2011 that he won't seek a second
term (because of health issues), leaving the field
open to Dems ravenous for a long-denied
victory.
So the Dems should set their sights on '12 and in the
meantime fix the holes in their nominating process
that perennially give rise to factional candidates who
simply can't cut it in the general election.
The Super Delegates invention was supposed to do just
that, but instead comes across as an imperious imposition
by national party insiders. Maybe Dems ought to
experiment with truly new ideas -- such as (off the top of
my head): having double primaries. What I mean is,
follow the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday and with
a mail-in New Hampshire primary on Thursday that pits
the two top contenders (who won Tuesday's vote) against
one another, with delegates going to the winner of
Thursday's vote, winner-take-all. (The other primary
states could do the same.) That way, whoever
progresses to front-runner status becomes front-runner
with a 50%-plus majority, not with, say, a 27% plurality.
The 27% plurality thing is what's keeping the Dems from
nominating an electable general election candidate.
The comparisons of Barack's juggernaut to Jesse Jackson's
presidential campaigns of the 1980s don't really obtain,
because Jackson was never as popular as Barack is now.
Rather Barack's candidacy is starting to resemble
George Wallace's run in '72, which Wallace probably
would've won, much to the extreme chagrin of party
regulars, if there hadn't been tragedy on the
campaign trail.
Meanwhile, the general election is taking on a
different shape altogether, looking increasingly like
Adlai versus Ike, circa '56 or '52 -- take your pick.
And Rev. Wright just finished cutting McCain's Halloween
scare ad for the swing states. The GOP now doesn't
have to find some obscure footage of Obama and Sharpton
embracing; it need only run Wright's "God Damn America!"
clip on a loop in the purple states on the weekend
before the general election.
In order to believe Obama will become our 44th president,
one must be convinced that he can win Florida and Ohio, or
at least Florida or Ohio, and I don't see how he could
win either. (If there is a credible poll that puts him
over McCain in either state, please send it to me at
pliorio@aol.com, because I've not seen it.)
Don't get me wrong, if Obama's the nominee, he will
likely win more states than Mondale or McGovern or
even George Wallace -- his electoral total will probably
be even bigger than Michael Dukakis's, though only
slightly.
You know, around a week or so ago, before Rev. Wright's
sermon came to light, I saw some elementary school
kids -- black kids -- cheerfully walking on a sidewalk
as a car passed with an Obama for President bumper
sticker on it, and for a moment I had a sort of heartwarming,
almost corny, but genuine thought: their first memories
of a presidential election will be this one, in which
an African-American candidate is the leading Democratic
contender for the nomination. They will not know a world,
first-hand, in which blacks are prima facie excluded from
the top job in the land.
But the glow of that thought lasted only until the
Rev. Wright incident, which reminded me there
is still sickness and infection on both sides of
the racial divide.
As testament to that, one of the biggest issues that
is not even being discussed in the campaign (because
it's too incendiary) is legal reform to correct the
injustices that we've recently seen against both blacks
(in Jena) and against whites (in the Crystal Mangum
defamation case).
The Jena case points to a need for tort reform that
somehow takes into account the overarching context of
a crime (a reform that should go beyond the existing
"mitigating factor" standard).
The Duke case points to a horrifying hole in our legal
system that should be remedied by de-politicizing the
position of D.A., creating a serious penalty for
intentional aggravated slander (though this one would be
tough to pull off without infringing on 1st amendment
rights), understanding how serious the crime of false
accusation can be, etc.
Duke and Jena should both be exposed to the
disinfectant of sunlight in this campaign, otherwise
the infection on both sides of the racial divide will
continue to fester, and we'll continue to hear the
hate talk of the Rev. Wrights and the Bill
Cunninghams.
--------------------------
Stray thought: Of all the women I've known who
have changed their last names since college or
high school, I can think of only a few who have
changed it completely, without even hyphenating it.
So is the tradition of name-changing now mostly
a thing of the Boratian past? If we elect Clinton, might
she decide to turn into President Rodham somewhere
down the line?
-----------
OK, time to break for lunch and have a hamburger. Yes,
I've heard about how risky beef is this days, but frankly
a certain burger looks so good right about now I could eat
it all day, E. coli or not!
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 10, 2008
Alan Dershowitz said it best, in Byron Pitts'
excellent report (does Pitts ever do anything but
excellent reports?) on "The CBS Evening News":
in most countries, what Eliot Spitzer did would
not even be illegal. Spitzer was about to have sex
(again) with an adult woman behind closed doors,
which is really his own personal business and not
ours (unlike Larry Craig, who was planning to
have sex in a public restroom with someone who
could have been underage, for all he knew). Sure,
there's an element of hypocrisy in both cases,
but that's not a hanging offense. I've always
thought we'd be a better nation if we had the
prostitution laws of Holland (and the health care
system of Canada!), but for now America is stuck
with its Puritanism and sexual provincialism, which
I hope doesn't claim another victim in Spitzer, who
should remain in Albany.
Still, it's becoming an unmistakable pattern:
politicians and others who codemn sexual deviance the
loudest are often those who are involved in such
activities themselves.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 9, 2008
I'm told Scarlett Johansson has recorded an
album of Tom Waits covers, "Anywhere I Lay
My Head," which'll be out in May and oughta
be interesting. Haven't heard it yet, but it's
amazing what -- at only age 23 -- she's already
accomplished in movies. She also appears
in will.i.am's pro-Obama video, "Yes, We Can,"
directed nicely by Jesse Dylan (son of
you-know-who). Great to see that Jesse has
become a successful film director, by the way;
I've only seen him in person once -- albeit,
in a very memorable setting, on a boat on which
ZZ Top was performing for a few dozen people or so
on the 4th of July in 1986. We were docked in
New York harbor, and I remember walking to a
side of the boat to take a look at the Statue of
Liberty, sidling next to a couple. "Doesn't she
make you weak in the knees?," said the woman to
her friend, referring to the Statue. And when
she turned her head I saw it was Martha Quinn,
the pioneering MTV VJ who I think every
twentysomething guy had a crush on in 1986. With
her was a guy who looked like a charismatic rock
star but who I didn't recognize; later I was told
he was Jesse Dylan. But I didn't get to meet him.
* * *
There may be some talented editors at HarperCollins
but I've never met one, though I have come in contact
with some exceedingly dim editors there.
Now comes word from The New York Times that
HarperCollins is publishing a new book by James
Frey -- you know, the guy who made stuff up in
a non-fiction book, abused the trust of his
editors and readers, etc.
Doesn't surprise me. A couple years back, I had
dealings with HarperCollins and saw first-hand how
profoundly stupid some of their decisions were.
I was writing a biography of Richard Pryor and interviewed
a source, corroborated by other info, who said Pryor
had done, uh, xyz some decades ago. An editor at
HarperCollins, through my agent, said
great, write it up as a sample chapter about Pryor
doing xyz. So I did. When the editor received it, he
suddenly pretended to be shocked -- shocked -- that I
had written that Pryor had done xyz. I told the dolt,
that's what you requested and that's what my info
was, so that's what I wrote. (Did he want me to
cover-up the info I'd uncovered?)
Well, he didn't really have a comeback for that. What
probably happened is that a top boss at the company
read the xyz thing and was shocked, and so my
editor suddenly had to appear shocked, too, even though he
had requested exactly that material.
Anyway, people wonder why people don't read anymore,
but I don't wonder. There's far, far more enduring value and
artistry in a single episode of "Friday Night Lights" or "The
Sopranos" than in most of the novels released by HarperCollins
in a given season. As for James Frey, I fell asleep
reading "A Million Little Pieces" even before the book
was exposed as a fraud.
* * *
The San Francisco Chronicle has yet another new
editor, a guy named Ward Bushee, who will need all
the luck he can get to save the struggling paper.
With the newspaper business collapsing almost
everywhere, my suggestion to Bushee is this: discontinue
the paper edition of the paper and publish it just
as an online daily. (That's where the industry is
going to be in ten years anyway, and here's your chance
to get there first.) And then I'd fire two features
editors who've been screwing up: David Wiegand, who
is a fraud, and Ed Guthmann, who is a thief.
(And this is coming from someone who wrote for the
paper for years.)
But I digress. Paul
________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 7, 2008
An Alternate Penalty for Florida and Michigan
If there is no penalty for Florida and Michigan
moving up their primaries in violation of Democratic
party rules, then in 2012 there will be no disincentive
for other states to do the same. Suppose
Alabama wanted to be a playa and moved its primary
to, say, Thanksgiving of 2011, and Vermont leap-frogged
Alabama and moved its own contest to Halloween, causing
Iowa to protect its first-in-the-nation
status by having its caucus on Columbus Day.
If there is no penalty, then there will be no order to
the nominating process, and the national party will not
be able to ensure that its grand design and overall
strategy are respected.
So the question becomes: what should the penalty
be for Michigan and Florida?
Stripping them of their delegates may be a little
harsh -- and counter-productive, too, given that
the general election may hinge on a handful of voters
in either Florida or Michigan. The DNC's retaliation
shouldn't be scattershot in a way that affects
innocent voters along with the party insiders who
should be punished.
My suggestion is to make the penalty an inside baseball
thing. The DNC should say nobody at this year's Democratic
National Convention from Florida or Michigan will be
allowed to give the keynote or nominating speeches (or
any other formal speeches from the podium). That way the
punishment is limited to the politicians guilty of
violating the rules.
Regarding the idea of a do-over vote:
Hillary has said, why don't we do a do-over in just
Michigan, where Barack wasn't on the ballot, but not
in Florida, where he was.
But that's not really fair because Hillary campaigned in
Florida and Barack did not.
The big question is: why did Hillary campaign in
Florida when she knew and agreed that that primary
would not count? Barack honored the boycott; Hillary
didn't. Her campaigning in Florida back in January
implies a disingenuousness about her support of that
boycott; in other words, there is the appearance that
she was cynically figuring all along that the Florida
vote would have to eventually count (if only because
she planned to make a stink about disenfranchisement
later on, as she's doing now).
Because she appears to have unfairly manipulated the
boycott to her advantage (by campaigning in Florida),
any do-over should include both Michigan and Florida.
And the penalty should affect the insiders,
not the voters.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 5, 2008
Hold the Seltzer, Please
One thing that bothers me about the Margaret
Seltzer scandal is that it should've been
easy to figure out long ago. I mean, here's a
synopsis of the fraudulent book (as quoted by the
Washington Post):
It's "about her life as a half-white, half-Native
American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles
as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs
for the Bloods."
Hey, that almost sounds like a laugh line on Letterman!
Seriously, folks, some mysteries can be solved by
simple common sense. For example, if Joe Schmo claims
to have written, say, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," and
yet Schmo's own work is far, far less excellent
than "Howl," then one can conclude that Schmmo must
be lying about having written "Howl."
Another thing that disturbs me about the Seltzer
affair is that while the book publishing biz was busy
falling for her outrageous lies, while the industry
and reviewers and agents were absolutely
abuzz about this untrue story that they wanted to be
true, they were rejecting a lot of terrific,
honest manuscripts -- including my own proposal
for a fresh, expert bio of Richard Pryor, and for a
solid anthology of my own non-fiction stories
(now available online at www.paulliorio.blogspot.com).
Same thing bothered me about the Jayson
Blair scandal. Sure, I greatly appreciate the
fact I was given the opportunity to write stories
for the New York Times in the 1990s (and I hope
I can do so again in the future).
But when the Blair scandal erupted, one of my
thoughts was: while Blair was fabricating stories
that wouldn't have been any good even if they had
been true, I was pitching several stories to The Times,
among them a groundbreaking piece on J.D. Salinger,
that the paper rejected (see story at
www.pauliorio.blogspot.com, and judge for yourself).
The paper was apparently too busy publishing Blair to give
me a fair hearing.
At the same time Blair was fabricating, I wrote a
very well-received (and scrupulously accurate)
media piece that still stands as the only story
about the tv networks's immediate coverage of
the 9/11 attacks. The Times rejected that story
(and others) for no good reason (The Toronto Star
ultimately ran it, and I thank that paper profusely;
the story can also be found at www.paulliorio.blogspot.com).
I sometimes wonder: if Jayson Blair hadn't been caught,
and he almost wasn't, he would've surely been promoted
up the ranks, with all flanks protected by management,
so that any whistle-blower who tried to complain about him
would be drummed out of the business, ridiculed and made to
look dishonest -- and you know that's true. And you have
to wonder how many Blairs-that-haven't-been-caught are
working in upper management at lesser newspapers than
the Times. At some companies it might be an epidemic.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for March 4, 2008
-- So who's going to win in Ohio and Texas tonight?
Hard to predict. The best comment came from
Obama: "Remember New Hampshire."
-- Everyone's talking about Hillary's cameo on
SNL but the funniest stuff came later in the program
when the always-inspired Kristen Wiig played Peter
Pan -- truly hilarious.
-- Regarding my column of February 22 (below): someone
is curious about whether I went far into Bulgaria
during my '76 trip. I did. I traveled alone by
local train across the entire length of Bulgaria -- and
then back again! -- snapping pictures and taking notes
all the way. My account of it can be read at
www.paulliorio.blogspot.com.
-- Also, an old friend wanted to know if I've ever
co-written a song. My response: I've written
countless songs over the decades but I have never
co-written a song with anyone. By the way,
MP3 versions of 60 of my songs are posted at
www.vibecat.com/pauliorio, and anyone with an Internet
connection can listen for free. And, yes, every note and
every line of all 60 songs were written solely by me
(only exception is "Waterboardin' USA," which is based
on a Beach Boys tune).
-- Also, I hope my "Holy Country Song" isn't
misunderstood -- I actually enjoy some gospel music
and think the folks at the CMAs have honored some
of the greatest recording artists ever. My song
is meant to be irreverent satire, and should be
heard in that spirit.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
EXTRA! for February 29, 2008
Regarding Hillary's ad about answering the phone at 3am:
At three in the morning, in the White House, I want
a president who's in the process of getting a good
night's sleep, so that he or she is fully ready
for whatever events erupt when he or she is awake.
We're not electing a receptionist who's responsible
for fielding and filtering every call that
comes through the switchboard -- the president
hires smart and capable people to do that and to
handle emergencies that might crop up in the
overnight hours. Her ad presents a somewhat
disturbing vision of a Hillary presidency, in
which she pulls all-nighters by the phone, popping
speed, drinking Yuban and waiting anxiously for that
hypothetical world leader to call.
And by the way, if you're awake at 3am, then you're
almost certainly asleep -- or awfully wired and
tired -- at 3pm, which may not be the way you want to
arrange your day as president or as candidate.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- With the selection of Matt Gonzalez as his
running-mate, Ralph Nader has now exponentially
increased his chances of winning most voters in
some parts of Haight Street.
____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 26, 2008
Regarding the photo of Obama in Kenya: frankly, he
looks a bit like Chef Boyaredee, doesn't he?
Look, I took off my shoes when I visited the
Haghia Sofia, and that doesn't make me a Sunni.
There's always an element of when-in-Rome in
both state and personals visits abroad (didn't
I see footage of Bush in a dashiki during an
African visit?).
That said, Hillary is inadvertently doing Obama
a bit of a favor, giving him a taste of the
nasty ads he'll be facing from the Republican
machine come October.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
EXTRA! for February 25, 2008
I really have nothing much to say about the Oscars
this year. I mean, I really admire Paul Thomas Anderson
and Daniel Day Lewis and "There Will Be Blood"
and the Coen Bros. -- and Cate Blanchett is exactly
as awesome as any woman can ever get, Hilary Swank
looks fabulous, and it's always great to see
Harrison Ford and George Clooney. But for the
most part it was snoozeville. I was even wondering
whether the writers' strike was still on when I saw the
Rogen/Hill bit, easily the most embarrassing and unfunny
comic segment in recent Oscar history.
And the overnight ratings have just come in, folks. The
80th Academy Awards telecast is now officially the
lowest-rated Oscar ceremony ever -- and they worked
overtime to earn that distinction, I can assure you.
Next year, here's an idea: bring back Steve Martin. Or
bring back David Letterman. I know his first try
didn't exactly light up the airwaves,
but Letterman is starting to look better and better
now that we've seen host after host fail.
But I digress. Paul
___________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 25, 2008
Regarding Ralph Nader, let me say this:
A man who stands atop a mountain at noon
stands in sunlight; the same man who stands
atop that same mountain at midnight stands
in darkness. He who refuses to change changes
anyway, because the world changes around him. In
his youth, Nader was progressive; in his old age,
refusing to shift with the times, Nader is an utter
reactionary, one of the world's truly despicable
fascist-sympathizers.
As Bob Dylan wrote: "Your old road is rapidly agin'/
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand/
For the times they are a changing."
* * *
I'm flattered and gratified and a bit surprised that
my extremely irreverent cartoon series -- "Bin Laden,
the Jihadist Pooch" -- is being circulated on the web
as much as it is. I wrote, drew and posted the series
independently last October, not expecting it to
go very viral, but now I'm seeing it show up in lots
of places online.
And let me say if bin Laden or his people are
in any way offended by my series then I
just want to say that I sincerely and deeply
hope that you are offended on a fundamental level.
The series, "Bin Laden, the Jihadist Pooch,"
can be viewed at:
http://cartoonsbyiorio.blogspot.com.
Enjoy!
But I digress. Paul
___________________________
-- the daily digression column celebrates its first anniversary today. it made its debut on february 24, 2007. thanks to all those who have linked it to their sites, quoted it or written with comments. a second year of digressions begins today! ---
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 24, 2008
Ralph Nader in drag atop his beloved Corvair in the 1960s (or so say the people at Nader's nursing home). It was a bit heartwarming to see Tim Russert
raid the nursing home to give some airtime to an
apparent Alzheimer's patient, though it was obvious
the guy's cognitive functions were clearly
compromised, so it was sort of exploitative to
see such a mentally disabled guy on "Meet the Press"
(he said his name was Ralph Nader and apparently
couldn't tell the difference between Barack Obama
and George W. Bush, when shown photos of the two).
People at the nursing home, though not reliable,
tell me he was once an automobile exec, responsible
for the Corvair or something, and also that Russert
took the time to pick up another resident of the
home, Doris Goodwin, in a package deal for his
show; she provided the much-needed Theodore Roosevelt
angle on the '08 election, an insight now spreading
like wildfire on the blogs and among cutting edge
academic thinkers.
I mean, hey, Russert coulda put some innovative
theorist or a brilliant Stanford prof or even
me on his show to talk about the '08 election,
and he would've been better off. (My qualifications
are at www.paulliorio.blogspot.com. But I guess I
don't have the requisite experience as a
plagiarist, so that would disqualify me.)
After seeing Nader, I must admit I started to see the
Corvair in a new light. Looking at it from just the
aesthetic angle, and putting aside its considerable safety
flaws, I can now see its design as evocative of an entire
era of suburban pop culture in America -- it almost
qualifies as pop art, like a can of Tab. So in celebration
of the Corvair, I've posted a picture of Nader with his
classic vehicle (above).
* * *
Is Black the New Catholic?
Truth be told, some Dems aren't backing Barack because
they think most of America is still a bit too racist to
elect a black president.
But think of it this way: if the GOP ticket was
Condi Rice/Alan Keyes and the Dem ticket was
John Edwards/Bill Richardson, Republicans in red
states would vote in droves against the white
ticket and for the African-American one. Which proves
there is no inherent aversion to electing a black
president among even conservative voters, if they
feel that candidate can best represent their interests.
When thinking of bigotry in the U.S., think of the
white racist in a red state who gets himself into
legal trouble and decides to hire an ace black attorney
because he knows he's one of best in the biz. That
white guy still has an underlying bigotry toward
blacks, but he hires the African-American because
he knows his interests will best be served by him.
Likewise, if a white bigot in Utah has to have delicate
heart surgery and must choose between a black
surgeon whose medical judgment has been proved
correct time and again and a veteran white surgeon
who has had several malpractice suits filed against
him, who do you think the racist would choose?
That sort of dynamic may come into play in November,
if Obama is the nominee. Swing rednecks in purple
states might think this way: "I don't like black people
very much, but this Obama guy is smart and has
good judgment and will do my bidding most effectively,
so I'm voting for him."
Could it be that Obama is more like JFK than we imagined?
Could it be that...black is the new Catholic?
Some months ago, which is to say centuries ago in political
years, there was misplaced concern that Mitt Romney's
Mormonism was like JFK's Catholicism -- a point of
prejudice that voters might not be able to overcome.
But voters ended up dismissing Romney for reasons
unrelated to his religious beliefs.
Turns out Mormonism wasn't the new Catholicism;
prejudice against African-Americans is apparently what
still needs to be overcome in '08 and what might
keep Obama from having his mail re-directed to
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next year.
But that prejudice seems to be fading fast as voters
realize that...this guy makes sense. And just as the
redneck in Selma will hire a brilliant black attorney
to get him out of a legal jam, so some borderline racist
voters might hire Barack to carry out their agenda,
because they know he's more effective than his rivals.
As I've written before, the black/white division in
this country is getting to be quaint, an almost old
fashioned way of viewing American ethnic diversity.
Out here, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and along
much of the Pacific rim, the primary ethnic division
is between Asians and non-Asians, not between blacks
and whites. And as the population of other parts of
the country diversifies, the "black" classification
becomes increasingly meaningless and insignificant.
(I mean, does a dark-skinned Jamaican qualify as black?
How about someone of Jamaican-British ancestry who
has lighter skin than an Italian Calabrian? Ethnic
distinctions become increasingly irrelevant as more
diverse ingredients are added to the melting pot.)
More than race, age may be the driving factor in
the '08 campaign. It's probably less significant that
Barack is black than that he is the first post-baby
boomer, post-rock 'n' roll era candidate.
Over the decades, we've had our earful of boomer
candidates like Bill Clinton, who liked to don shades
and play bluesy sax like a jazzbo wannabe of the Beat era.
And we've seen amiable pols like Mike Huckabee, who have
a rock 'n' roll sorta cadence to their speechifying ways
on the road.
But Barack is the very first serious presidential
candidate who speaks with a hint of the cadence and
the rhythm of the hip hop generation. And I don't mean
hip hop in terms of race, I mean hip hop in terms of age
group, hip hop in terms of a rhythm and tone of talking
that almost qualifies as a separate pop culture dialect
from the rock 'n' roll dialect.
Obama's general flow of oratory is clearly influenced
by a post-rock era of expression, and that's probably
part of the reason why young people are responding to
the undertone and undertow of his message.
"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what
you can do for your country" was like a succinct and pithy
pop song of its era.
But listen to the expansive rolling flow of the post-rock
generation(from an Obama speech of 1/26/08): "And as we
take this journey across the country we love with the message
we've carried from the plains of Iowa to the hills of New
Hampshire, from the Nevada desert to the South Carolina coast,
we have the same message we had when we were up and when we
were down: that out of many, we are one..."
The generational divide will be even more vivid if it's
Obama versus John McCain, who is not only pre-Run DMC
but pre-Beatles in general sensibility.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 22, 2008
The Birth of a Nation
Back when it was communist and run by Tito, and
when I was a teenager, I traveled alone by local train
through Serbia and the rest of the Balkans, the area
that's now in turmoil because of Kosovo's secession.
Hard to believe today that all those diverse countries
in that region I traveled through -- Serbia, Bosnia,
Croatia, Slovenia, Kosovo, etc. -- were once part
of a single unified nation called Yugoslavia.
That said, Kosovo's independence is a very welcome
development, and Russia and China should get on board
and recognize its sovereignty.
Sovereignty is the only effective protection the
Kosovars have against the historically hostile Serbs
that surround them. Have Russia and China forgotten that
the entire Kosovar Albanian population was on its way
to being mass murdered by the Serbs in the late
1990s -- before the U.S. got involved and put an
end to the genocide (euphemistically called
"ethnic cleansing")?
I mean, Kosovo is not a heavily populated area,
by any means (the entire population of the country
has around 2 million people, which is roughly the
size of Houston, Texas; Pristina, the only "big
city" in that area, has around half the population
of Oakland, Calif.). So the fact that the Serbs
killed at least 6,000 Kosovars in 1999 alone is
significant -- and that's a low ball estimate,
because the military folks in Belgrade burned a lot
of bodies to cover up their atrocities. Not only
that, but almost everyone in Kosovo (90%, for
crissakes!) was run out of his or her home in '99
(remember the endless stream of Kosovar Albanians
making that long march to safety to Albania?).
Meanwhile, the sadistic Serbian government at
the time actually used mass rape as a military
weapon in towns like Pec and Djakoivica.
What more proof does Vladimir Putin require to
see that Kosovo needs the protection of sovereignty?
Or does he not see the reality because of an overriding
preoccupation with the loss of the Soviet empire?
Remember, less than two decades ago, Russia was
the seat of the vast Soviet Union, which included 15
republics (16, if you count Bulgaria), numerous European
satellites and various allies elsewhere. Today, the empire
is in fragments, and even the fragments of the fragments
have fragmented.
To be sure, Yugoslavia was never formally an Iron
Curtain country. While nominally allied with the Soviets,
Tito always maintained some independence from the
Kremlin. But it was still, essentially, part of the
Eastern Bloc, which is why it now must be a bitter reality
for Putin to see Yugoslavia splinter into not two or three
pieces but into six independent nations -- and, as of
this week, seven!
Loss of empire is a tough reality for any country. And
Putin is merely reflecting his constituents's passionate
desire to be strong again, on par with the U.S. again,
a playa again, feared by enemies again.
For four years, I lived in a heavily Russian/Ukrainian
neighborhood in Los Angeles, so I was constantly in contact,
on a daily basis, with Russian immigrants. And almost every
time I talked with them about their homeland, they said
the same thing (to a person): they wanted Russia to be
strong again, like it was during the Soviet era.
And one really nice guy -- his name was Vladimir,
and he used to let me use his fax machine -- would always
smile and flex his biceps like Popeye when he said he
wanted his country to be powerful again.
And I can imagine that if that's how they feel
in east West Hollywood, they must surely feel that
way in Russia itself (coverage of Kosovo's secession
on the Russia Today (RT) news service shows that).
As I mentioned, I traveled deep into south Serbia
in '76, an area very few tourists ever see, and went
just east of Kosovo before crossing into the most
Iron Curtainish of all Iron Curtain countries, Bulgaria.
And what I remember (besides the spectacular Balkan
Mountains scenery, among other things) is that it seemed
to get poorer and more rural the farther south I went.
The area between Kosovo and Bulgaria was, frankly,
downright depressing, full of "empty roads, solemn faces,
dreary checkpoints," as I wrote in my journal at the time.
Today it's still one of the poorest regions in Europe
(even though the Kosovar Albanians are better off than
the Albanian Albanians, which isn't saying much, given
the enduring paranoid legacy of Hoxha). Common
sense says Kosovo and Serbia both have better chances
of improving their lots as separate entities. And
let's face it, the Serb's fixation on Pristina as
their national birthplace has to be a secondary
consideration, given the murderous practical
realities of the past decade.
By the way, yesterday's rioting in Belgrade was carried
out by a suspiciously small number of people (or at least
the burning of the embassy was); it didn't
look much like a real riot or a populist uprising where
the streets are overflowing with people who are overflowing
with passion. There doesn't seem to be evidence of a
extraordinary popular groundswell in Serbia against Kosovo's
secession, so I bet the new nation stands.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 21, 2008
The John 'n' Vicki Scandal
The Man Who Missed the 1960s: did he discover free love only decades later? I've done enough journalism to know that when a story
like the one about John McCain in today's New York Times
appears, there is almost certainly a vast amount of
reportage that the paper is withholding.
In other words, The Times probably knows that McCain and
Vicki Iseman had had a sexual affair, but the paper isn't
reporting it because some editors at the Times don't feel
they've nailed it. I mean, I have no inside info about
this particular story, but I do know, from having written
and reported for almost all the major newspapers in the
U.S. on a variety of subjects, that that's usually the
pattern, that only a small percentage of what you know
to be true actually sees publication, particularly in a
story that's as potentially explosive as this one.
Look at the reporting about Mark Foley's serial flirtations
with underage pages. In that case, papers like the
St. Petersburg (Fl) Times had solid knowledge of Foley's
indiscretions but didn't go to press with it, probably partly
because of pressure from the Foley camp. (And the Larry Craig
incident wasn't reported until months after his arrest.)
Thankfully, the New York Times bowed to no such pressure
in this case, despite the fact that McCain himself made a
personal phone call to Bill Keller, who runs the Times.
No, my intuition tells me the Times is being very
restrained in its reporting and that there's a lot more
to this than has already been made public. Kudos
to Rutenberg/Thompson/Kirkpatrick/Labaton -- and Keller --
for running the story.
But I digress. Paul
The Iseman Trophy? (Doesn't she look like the sort of woman who would be Vladimir Putin's "special personal assistant"? Or NASA's first female moonwalker?)
P.S. -- Now that he's in the national spotlight, McCain
is starting to show signs of a Nixonish furtiveness, if not
paranoia. Notice how he criticized Barack Obama for
saying that Obama would bomb Pakistan to kill bin Laden
whether the Pakistani government gave its consent or
not. McCain retorted that a world leader shouldn't
telegraph such intentions.
McCain is wrong. Sometimes you should telegraph your
intentions and sometimes you shouldn't. For example,
if we knew that bin Laden was in Karachi right now,
we would, of course, not signal to anyone that
we were about to attack his hide-out, lest we run
the risk of alerting bin Laden, who would then try
to escape.
But in speaking generally about whether we would
attack inside Pakistan if bin Laden were there, it
is important that we let the Pakistanis know
that our standing policy is that we're going to
take out Osama where ever we find him, without
asking any government's permission.
Telegraphing that intention in advance is strategically
important, because you don't want to run the risk of
surprising your allies in Pakistan with a bombing raid.
Telling them of your standing policy prepares them,
psychologically and otherwise, for the moment
when we do strike. (There are also examples where
signaling your intentions can serve as a deterrent
to bad actors. Remember the wisdom in the famous
lines in the Kubrick picture "Dr. Strangelove":
"Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of
the enemy the fear to attack" -- and "the whole point
of the Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret!
Why didn't you tell the world?!")
Psychologically, it appears as if McCain has
the mindset of a leader with a predilection
for secret foreign policy ventures. What
such leaders don't understand is that they're
conducting foreign policy at the behest of
the public, which has every right to know,
by and large, what's being done in its
name.
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 15, 2008
Don't act shocked. Don't act like it was an
isolated incident. Every four or
five months, there's a brand new massacre at some
school or at some mall, and every time it happens,
there is collective amnesia throughout the land.
Suddenly, conveniently, we forget all all about
the previous massacre that happened a mere few months
earlier, that one that happened at the mall in Colorado,
remember, the one in which the guy brought a bazooka into
a china shop and killed 87 people or something. Remember?
And remember the one before that, the one in Omaha, the
one where some guy in a trench coat opened fire during home
economics class? Or was that the one at the taco stand?
They all seem to blend together, like blood into blood.
Almost nobody in the media mentions the previous massacres
that happened two and five months ago when they mention
the current one. Could somebody tell me why that
is? Is it amnesia? Stupidity? Lack of journalistic
training? Pressure from the NRA? All four probably.
To show you how strikingly similar these shootings
have become, here's my Daily Digression column from
April 18, 2007 (after the Virginia Tech shooting):
Every few years we go through the same pattern in the
U.S.: there is an awful mass murder, everyone agrees the
massacre could've been avoided if there had been tougher gun laws,
and then we hit the snooze alarm. Several years later, there
is yet another unspeakable shooting, everyone agrees there should
be stricter gun control, and then we hit the snooze alarm again.
This time, following the tragic killings at Virginia
Tech, we will no doubt hit the snooze alarm once again.
Oh, there will inevitably be Senate hearings and high-minded
editorials in major papers, but that will all come to naught.
Because the gun lobby and the NRA are simply too influential.
Again, we will pursue all the wrong avenues. We will
focus on campus lockdown procedures when we should be focusing on
gun control. We will focus on monitoring creative writing
classes when we should be focusing on gun control.
-------
And here's my Daily Digression from December 10, 2007 (after
the Omaha shooting):
Yet Another Tragedy Caused By Gun Permissiveness
Almost no news organization is reporting the Colorado
shootings this way: "In the wake of the Omaha
shootings...."
Yet every news organizaton should be mentioning Omaha
in its stories about Colorado. Context is Journalism 101.
But lots of tv news correspondents are saying, "Omaha?
What's Omaha? Ohhh that!! That was soooo 72 hours ago!"
So let's see: Omaha has been completely wiped from memory
now that there's this new shooting spree in Colorado.
And lemme guess the reason why certain tv newsers aren't
mentioning Omaha in stories about Colorado; they're
probably saying something like, "The shooter in the last
one used an AK-47 and the shooter this time used an AK-46,
which, of course, is a vast difference."
They fail to see that the common denominator is bullets.
Both shooters used bullets. If they hadn't, nobody'd be
dead today.
Now let's take a look at the real reason Omaha isn't
being brought up in stories about Colorado: it's
called the NRA. The NRA is so well-organized, so
lawyered up, with so many true believers who know
how to threaten you without threatening you, that
some news orgs take the path of least resistance
and leave out references to Omaha in stories about
Colorado, just as they left out references to Virginia Tech
in stories about Omaha, just as they'll leave out references
to Colorado in stories about the next shooting (and, by the way,
just as they left out references to Tawana Brawley in stories
about Crystal Mangum).
At some news organizations, they report the truth without fear
or favor -- unless the truth is too unpopular.
* * *
And here's my Daily Digression from December 7, 2007:
Oooops! I forgot! Gays, guns and god are forbidden
topics during a presidential election year, which is
why you're hearing absolutely n-o-t-h-i-n-g about gun
control in the wake of the Omaha slayings.
So I now have a new personal policy. From here in, I'll
not extend sympathies to victims of gun violence who
weren't in favor of stricter gun regulations before being
shot. Because everybody, by now, can see plainly and in full
light that gun permissiveness is precisely the cause of all
these mass killings.
After every one of these slaughters, gun fanatics always
say the same thing, and that is: "If a nearby bystander
had been armed, the gunman could have been taken out."
OK, fine. let's put that theory to the test. Name one
major mass shooting incident -- Columbine, Virginia
Tech, etc. -- where an armed bystander (not a cop or
guard) saved the day by shooting the gunman. Name one.
The reason you can't name one is because there isn't
one, and the reason there isn't one is because in a
random shooting 1) victims are taken by surprise,
and 2) it's all over within minutes, before anyone
else can lock and load, and 3) the gunman typically
ends the rampage by killing himself.
Even in robberies that unfold over a longer period of
time, there is still massive and unpredictable risk
when an armed bystander intervenes (it often ends up
more like the robbery sequence (in the pastry shop)
in the movie "Boogie Nights" than like a Charles
Bronson flick).
----
Only thing I have to add is that the "Today" show is
my favorite morning program, but the people on that
show are profoundly stupid when reporting about gun massacres.
Don't be so disingenuous as to ask "Why" on a segment
about the Illinois shooting that doesn't even
mention gun control issues. Don't think we can't
read that. In reality, you're afraid of the NRA;
but your phony public explanation is that you're
trying to be fair to the NRA. (And by the way, what the
fuck are you doing giving podium to a liar like
Al Sharpton on Today? You know for a fact
he's an extravagant liar yet you still give him
airtime. What's the matter? Doris Goodwin wasn't
available?)
Anyway, "why" is not the salient question
in this case. "Why" is a notably dim question
in this case because everybody already knows "why."
Why it happened is because a mentally ill person
had easy access to guns. That's why. The important
question is "how," as in: "how are we going to
prevent the next one?"
And now there's almost a let's-throw-good-money-after-bad
syndrome at certain news organizations; they're
not mentioning the preceding massacres because they
haven't mentioned them for months, so they justify
their bad judgment by continuing to exercise their
bad judgment.
At least we can applaud Congress; they're busy
making sure that future gunmen don't inject steroids.
My condolences to all the victims of the Illinois
shooting who supported stricter gun control before
this latest massacre.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 14, 2008
To celebrate Valentine's Day, I've posted a new MP3
of one of my songs, "I'll Love You Forever (But Not
in This Weather)," which people seem to be enjoying.
Just go to vibecat.com/pauliorio and click on the name
of the song! (No downloads, no passwords, no payment.)
Some backstory on the song: I wrote it in Berkeley in
2003. In 2004, I self-produced a cassette tape version
of it. In 2005, a friend I hadn't seen in decades heard
that song (and others I'd written) and funded/produced a
CD version of the song.
Unfortunately, I've never been satisfied with the production
quality of either edition, so yesterday I self-produced a
new version of "I'll Love You Forever (But Not in This
Weather)," which I think captures the song best.
The song was sort of inspired by Dean Friedman's "Ariel,"
The Small Faces's "Lazy Sunday Afternoon" and The Kinks's
"Apeman."
Anyway, as I said, people seem to enjoy it, so give it
a listen! (And happy Valentine's Day to -- I think
she knows who she is.)
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- Lyrics at www.pauliorio.blogspot.com.
________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 13, 2008
Can somebody please explain why the hell Congress is
currently having hearings on steroids use by
sports entertainers rather than working feverishly
to provide universal health care for all Americans?
Oh, and also, isn't it a scandal that our current
governmment hasn't found Osama bin Laden after
six and a half years of searching? Uh, maybe that's
worth a Congressional hearing, dontcha think?
But no: instead Congress is spending valuable
time and money documenting who injected various
sports entertainers in the ass with drugs
that helped them do their jobs better.
You guys on the Hill have your priorities
right this morning (I said ironically).
But I digress. Paul
___________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 12, 2008
I've seen all sorts of Berkeley
protests and demonstrations in my day, but the
ongoing scene outside the Berkeley city council
building, which I photographed a couple hours
ago, has got to rank among the most eccentric of
'em all. At this hour, members of the U.S. Marines,
and their advocates, are squaring off against anti-war
protesters, as scores of police in riot gear
stand by to keep the peace.
The confrontation is the result of a recent
Berkeley city council letter that stated that
the Marines and their recruitment office
were unwelcome and unwanted within city
limits -- a letter that the USMC and its
allies vigorously objected to. Tonight
the city council is expected to formally
retreat on its condemnation of the Marines, much
to the chagrin of some anti-warriors.
Here's how things looked during the 6pm hour:
Supporters of the Marines are waving a vast number of flags.
---
the anti-war crowd was kept at a distance from the Marine supporters
---
Marines, cops and even a counter-cultural banjo player mill in the protest area.
----
police were in riot gear, just in case
-----
If the photo developing machine hadn't chopped off the top of this pic, you'd see that some demonstrators had some wit -- like this guy with a sign reading, "I Can't Afford an Actual Sign."
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 10, 2008
Remembering Roy Scheider
with this immortal facial expression, Scheider convinced millions of moviegoers that "we're gonna need a bigger boat."
Sad to hear that actor Roy Scheider died a few
hours ago in Little Rock. Scheider was
very kind to me as a source in the spring of 2000
when I was busy writing and reporting a feature story
that had a fresh angle on the making of the
movie "Jaws," in which, of course, he starred.
I was so pleasantly surprised when he phoned me
at home and started talking at length -- and with
great humor and warmth -- about how "Jaws"
came to be. My story ran in the San Francisco
Chronicle on May 28, 2000, and here's the story
I wrote (before my editor made a couple minor but
counter-productive edits):
Reconsidering "Jaws"
By Paul Iorio
When Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" was released 25 years ago this
summer, it was upstaged by its own mechanical shark and then by its
unprecedented commercial success. Today, after decades of repeated
viewing, it's easier to see the movie for what many think it really is:
a quality thriller in league with such Alfred Hitchcock classics as
"The Birds" and "Psycho."
What emerges from my own interviews with the film makers is that one
of the best things to have happened during the making of "Jaws" was the
malfunctioning of the main mechanical shark (and the two supporting
sharks).
"The shark didn't work," actor Roy Scheider, who plays police chief
Martin Brody, tells me. "And that left us with weeks and weeks
and weeks to shoot, to polish, to improvise, to discuss, to enrich, to
experiment with all the other scenes that in a movie like that would [usually]
get a cursory treatment."
"What happened was, [Robert] Shaw, [Richard] Dreyfuss and Scheider
turned into a little rep company," he says. "And all those scenes, rather than
just pushing the plot along, became golden, enveloping the characters. So
when the crisis came, you really cared about those three guys."
Those "three guys" are by now familiar to moviegoers everywhere:
Matt Hooper (Dreyfuss), an aggressive scientist from a wealthy family;
Quint (Shaw), a veteran fisherman unhinged by past trauma; and Brody
(Scheider), a phobic police chief from the big city trying to assimilate in
small town Amity ("A fish out of water, if you'll excuse the expression,"
quips Scheider).
Spielberg's problem in getting the shark to work was also one
of the main reasons he didn't show the fish until very late in the movie
(eighty minutes in, to be precise). This contradicts the generally accepted
explanation that the delay in showing the shark was a purely aesthetic
strategy meant to enhance audience anticipation and suspense.
"The shark didn't work," says screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, echoing
Scheider's words exactly. "It was a difficult piece of mechanical
equipment....It malfunctioned most of the time [so] we had no shark to
shoot."
Spielberg and Gottlieb got the idea for withholding a glimpse of the
monster until the end from the b-movie "The Thing," says Gottlieb. But
the decision was more along the lines of, 'this is a way we can get around
the fact that our main prop isn't working' rather than 'this is a choice
that we would've made in any case,' according to Gottlieb.
Gottlieb's screenplay was based on a best-selling novel by Peter
Benchley, though the finished film differs from the novel in significant
ways.
Benchley initially wrote a couple drafts of the screenplay, before
Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Howard Sackler ("The Great White Hope")
took on the task, writing a couple drafts of his own. Finally Spielberg
brought aboard Gottlieb, a comedy writer and actor who had won an Emmy
for his work on TV's "The Smothers Brothers Show," to write the final
script. Others also contributed to the screenplay, including Shaw, Scheider,
Spielberg, and writer John Milius ("Apocalypse Now").
The script was another element that was inadvertently helped by the
shark-related glitches, since the downtime gave Gottlieb more time to
write and revise. And the screenplay did undergo lots of changes. Hooper's
character (which was almost played by Jan-Michael Vincent instead of
Dreyfuss) changed from a womanizer who had an affair with Brody's wife
to that of the monomaniacal scientist in the film. Quint (almost played by
Sterling Hayden) developed "from this crazy lunatic to this guy with a real
reason to hate sharks," as Scheider puts it.
And Brody (a role originally sought by Charlton Heston) became an
everyman rather than a conventional action hero. "Every aggressive and
macho impulse I had in my character, [Spielberg] would grab me and pull
me back and say, 'No, don't talk like that, don't speak like that. You
are always afraid, you are Mr. Humble all the time,'" recalls Scheider.
"He would say, 'What we want to do is gradually, slowly, carefully,
humorously build this guy into being the hero of the movie.'"
The first scripts did not include the part of the film that Spielberg
and many others consider to be the movie's best: the nine-minute
sequence on the Orca that starts with the three main characters
comparing scars, progresses through Quint's Indianapolis monologue, and
ends with the three singing sea songs together.
How exactly did that sequence evolve? "Howard Sackler was the one
who found the Indianapolis incident and introduced it into the script," says
Gottlieb. "Scar-comparing comes out of a conversation that Spielberg had
with John Milius. John said that macho beach guys would try to assert their
manliness and would compare scars...So Steven said, 'Great, let's see if we
can do something with that.' So I wrote the scar-comparing scene."
Meanwhile, several writers took a crack at Quint's Indianapolis speech,
in which he tells of delivering the Hiroshima bomb aboard a ship that
subsequently sank in shark-infested waters. "Steven was worried about the
Indianapolis speech," says Gottlieb. "My drafts weren't satisfactory.
Sackler's draft wasn't satisfactory to him."
"The conventional historical inaccuracy that has found its way into
most of the literature about the movie is that Milius dictated the speech over
the phone and that it's basically Milius's speech. I was on the phone taking
notes and the speech is not Milius's speech. It's close, it's got elements of
it. But what Milius was working from was my drafts and Sackler's drafts."
[Milius did not respond to our request for comment on this.]
Gottlieb remembers the moment when the Indianapolis monologue was
officially born. "One night after dinner, Spielberg, me, [and others] were
talking about the movie," he says. "Shaw joined us after his dinner with a
wad of paper in his pocket. He said, 'I've been having a go at that speech. I
think I've got it now.'...The housekeeper had just packed up; she dimmed the
lights as she left. Shaw takes the paper out of his pocket and then reads the
speech as you hear it in the movie....He finishes performing that speech and
everyone is in stunned silence. And finally Steven says, 'That's it, that's what
we're going to shoot.'"
"It took two days to shoot that scene," says Gottlieb. "Shaw was
drunk one day, sober the other. What you see on film was a very clever
compendium of the two scenes....If you watch that scene, listen for the tap
[on the table] because that's where it cuts from sober to drunk. Or drunk to
sober, I don't remember which."
And indeed there is a tap on the table by Quint that splits the two parts
of the Indianapolis monologue. Shaw appears to be drunk in the first six
minutes of the sequence and sober in the last three minutes. (For those who
want to locate the splice on video, it happens at the 91-minute mark,
between the phrases "rip you to pieces" and "lost a hundred men.")
By all accounts, the shoot at sea, off Martha's Vineyard, was
nightmarish and difficult. Originally, Spielberg expected to spend only 55
days on the ocean but ultimately stayed for 159. At times, there was tension
and conflict among the cast and crew. At one point, Gottlieb fell overboard
and risked being sliced by a boat propeller.
Further, Spielberg insisted on having a clean horizon during the Orca
sequences, in order to emphasize the boat's isolation at sea. If some vessel
happened to be sailing in the background of a shot, Spielberg would have
one of his crew drive a speed-boat a half-hour or so away to the offending
craft to ask the sailor to consider taking another route. "A lot of times
there was no other way to go, so they'd say, 'Fuck you,'" says Gottlieb.
"So we had to wait for the boat to clear the horizon."
And if the film makers wanted some food while they waited, they
had to settle for turkey and tuna sandwiches that had somehow lost their
freshness in the heat and salt water at the bottom of the boat. They'd sip
coffee that was sometimes four-hours old. And occasionally, the waves
would cause the boat to pitch and bounce in place ("Not a great thing early
in the morning on a sour stomach," says Gottlieb).
"You'd go home at the end of the day sea-sick, sunburned,
windburned," says Gottlieb.
But when the main shark worked, it was a wonder to behold, says
Scheider. He recalls the moment when he knew the movie was going to
succeed: when he first saw the shark sail by the Orca on the open sea. "They
ran [the shark] past the boat about two or three feet underwater," says
Scheider. "And it was as long as the boat. And I said, 'Oh my god, it looks
great.' I remember that day. We probably all lit cigars."
When the movie finally wrapped, nobody knew for sure whether it
would succeed or fail. The first clue came when they brought the film to
technical workers for color-timing purposes. The techies, who were looking
at the film only for purposes of checking the color density of the negative,
were almost literally scared out of their chairs during certain scenes. "Guys
in the lab were jumping," says Gottlieb. "So we started to have a feeling."
Still, nobody was certain how the general public would respond. The
tell-tale moment came during a sneak preview of the film in Long Beach,
California, in the late spring of '75. Gottlieb remembers driving to
Long Beach in a limo with his wife and Spielberg. "We gave Steven...tea to
calm him down on the drive," says Gottlieb. "He was so nervous."
His nervousness apparently subsided about three minutes and forty
seconds into the screening when the invisible shark ripped apart its first
victim. The audience went nuts, drowning out dialogue for the next minute
or so. "You could tell from the crowd reaction that it was going to be a very
important movie," he says.
When the lights came up after the screening, top executives from
Universal Pictures quickly headed straight to the theater restroom -- "the
only quiet spot in the theater," says Gottlieb -- and proceeded to change
the film's release strategy on the spot. Realizing they had a massive hit
on their hands, the execs immediately decided the movie would not be opened
in a normal gradual fashion, but in wide release. Amidst the summer toilets
of Long Beach, movie industry history was made that night.
"The idea of opening a picture simultaneously on 1,500 to 2,000
screens was unheard of," says Gottlieb. "After 'Jaws,' it became standard.
Every studio had to have a big summer picture."
By mid-summer, the film was taking in a million dollars a day. Within
a couple months, it had become the biggest grossing movie of all time.
Today, its domestic gross stands at around $250 million, making it the
13th top grossing movie of all time.
"I see it the same way I saw it then," says Scheider. "It's a very good
action adventure film...Plus it's well-directed, it's well-acted, it's
beautifully shot, it's got a great score and a fabulous story. So why shouldn't
it be a classic movie?"
[this is my original manuscript; a slightly edited version ran in
the San Francisco Chronicle on May 28, 2000.]
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 9, 2008
The Other Stars of February 9, 1964: The Chicks!
Everyone knows the Beatles became megastars in America
44 years ago, after performing on "The Ed Sulliavn Show"
on February 9, 1964, but the other stars of the night,
the ones who became minor pop culture icons in their
own rights, were the screaming girls. Who can forget the
cutaways to the teenagers (and tweenagers) in the audience:
the modern-looking girl in horn rims, the one with braces who
stuck out her tongue, the carbonated girl who couldn't
stop jumping up and down? Who knows where they
all are now. (Sorry, boys, they're all in their sixties
at this point!)
Anyway, here's a gallery of the Beatles girls from that
legendary night:
Who can forget Brace Face?
----
She invented modern Pogoing!
----
Covering her ears, but not her emotions!
----
Pure sugar: this cutaway shot shows the crowd just
as the Beatles take the stage for the first time (notice
how every girl's mouth is open in unison).
----
Sorry, girls, he's been assassinated.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 6, 2008
A few quick notes on Super Tuesday:
-- Yes, Huckabee, the jihadist candidate, surprised
everyone with his strong showing among holy rollers,
people who believe Creation just took one night,
but he's still far, far behind McCain, who'll almost
certainly be the GOP nominee.
-- Romney will almost surely have a "brainwashed" moment
(it runs in the family, you know) in which he says he
has seen the light and will not continue to spend his
family's inheritance on what now is a vanity run for the
presidency.
-- Some pundit (I don't remember who) said it best:
if Super Tuesday had been on Thursday, Obama would have
won a majority of the delegates at stake that day.
Obama could still capture the nomination, what with
all the arcane party rules about super-delegates and
proportional allotment -- plus his own growing momentum.
His loss of California was a stunner; I wrongly predicted
an Obama win in Calif., not understanding the extent of
Hillary's support in Hispanic areas. (I was looking
at the Obama-mania in my own area, which doesn't have
many Hispanics.)
-- By the way, kudos to Ted Kennedy for taking time
to speak at a church on a blighted block of Oakland
last Friday. As I walked around the neighborhood near
the gathering (I didn't have time to hear him speak but
did drop by the event), I thought that he could have
taken the easy route and made the usual appearance at
someplace cushy like the Hyatt or the Commonwealth Club,
but instead he cared enough to visit an area that
obviously needs revitalization. I mean, across from
the church where Kennedy spoke was a boarded-up and
apparently burned-out building, and elsewhere was other
vivid evidence of urban rot.
And I thought: parts of this area look sort of like
the aftermath of Katrina. It looked like a Katrina
of neglect. A Katrina of neglect duplicated in
almost every major city in Amercia.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for February 1, 2008
the Barack Industrial Complex is alive and well in northern California!I don't know who the pollsters are talking to or
what their methodologies are, but I do know that
Barack Obama will win the California primary on
Tuesday. As I've been saying since last March,
in this column and elsewhere, there is absolutely
no evident enthusiasm for Hillary's candidacy in
the Golden State, no yard signs for Hillary,
very few bumper stickers for her -- and that's still
the case. But Barack signs and stickers are
everywhere, and leafletters enthusiastically hand
out copies of his latest speeches in front of local
supermarkets as if they were the next installments
in the Harry Potter series or newly uncovered Beatles
singles.
No, Barack will win here on Tuesday, and the only
suspense, it seems, is whether he'll win by a large
margin or a small one. Granted, I live in a very
liberal pocket of the state, but, even so,
it seems as if Hillary is showing no strength
even amongst her base of graying feminist pioneers.
Last night's debate made it obvious that we're
now looking at the Democratic ticket,
and Tuesday's primaries will determine only the order
of the ticket.
I have decided who I'm going to vote for on
Tuesday, but I don't want to publicly endorse
anyone, and that's because I'd like to cover the
upcoming campaign as a reporter for publications
other than my own Daily Digression, and I don't
want to be seen as an advocate for any one
candidate.
However, I'll give you a hint as to who I'm voting
for: with regard to the Democratic contest, I
think the progressive agenda might be better served
by a brand new strong persuader in the White House,
someone who hasn't already failed to build the
coalitions necessary to pass universal health care
legislation, etc.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- By the way, the description of last night's
debate as a "one-on-one" debate is sort of a misnomer.
I mean, a one-on-one debate would be a
debate in which Clinton and Obama are on a stage asking
each other questions without a moderator or outside
interviewers (not a bad idea, actually).
When I, as a journalist, label one of my interviews a
one-on-one interview, I'm referring to the fact that I
interviewed the person without anyone else being
in the room (see: my interviews with Heath Ledger,
Woody Allen, Annette Bening, etc.). Last night's debate
didn't fall in that category.
[photo of Obama Store by Paul Iorio.]
_____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 28, 2008
Our first female president should've been the second one from far right.
It has long been my opinion that the first female
president of the U.S. should have been Caroline
Kennedy's mother, Jacqueline, a woman of
intelligence and great style and courage. (By
the way, Jacqueline Kennedy is also the only Kennedy
I've ever personally seen close-up; in the fall
of 1981, when I was briefly working at the editorial
headquarters of Doubleday in Manhattan, I passed
right by her in the hallway, and I remember how
incredibly elegant she was and how she somehow reminded
me of the Eiffel Tower.)
But, sadly, she is no longer with us, and so
we have to choose from the current field of candidates.
Caroline Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama
proves, if there was ever any doubt, that Hillary
Clinton is not the feminist icon she's been cracked
up to be and is not even the candidate that most
progressive women are supporting. Womyn may be
supporting Hillary, but women are not. (Womyn are
older females who were shaped by the rough draft of
early 1970s feminism rather than by the version of
feminism that was revised and amended in subsequent
decades.)
Let me put it a bit more vividly than many of my
readers would like: the main organ responsible for
a successful presidency is a couple feet north of
the vagina. Having a vagina does not necessarily mean
that you can push a feminist agenda more successfully
than someone with a penis. If Liddy Dole were our
first female president, she would not be a feminist
icon and would not even be seen as serving the
interests of women on issues like abortion rights,
gender segregation, etc.
Further, a mediocre female candidate, progressive or
not, is still a mediocre candidate. Witness Geraldine
Ferraro. (Who?, many younger readers might be asking.)
Ferraro is almost completely forgotten today by just
about everybody (except womyn, of course) -- or, more
accurately, is about as well-known today as William Miller,
Barry Goldwater's running mate in 1964. And for good
reason: she pioneered nothing, took no brave stands, put
out no original ideas, and came across as insufferably
local. (In fact, if she's known at all today by the
general public, it's probably because of the controversy
involving her husband -- which shows how easily she
could be outshone.)
All this means the following: being the first female
anything is no virtue or achievement if you're not good at
the job in the first place. I mean, there are plenty of female
Dan Quayles out there, and we shouldn't be giving such
people 10 extra points just because they have a clitoris.
In the 1990s, there was a mystique about Hillary born of
the mythology that she was somehow the brainy, underemployed,
mastermind of all that Bill did. But now that the curtain
has been parted, and we can actually see Hillary in harsh
light, we realize that the opposite is true, that the real
mastermind behind the Clinton administration, and behind
Hillary's own "work," was President Clinton.
Her candidacy is looking more and more like a "front"
candidacy, in which she fronts the ticket for the true
contender, her husband (how unfeminist!), who -- rest
assured, dear voters -- will be running things in the
WH if she's elected in November.
But a Hillary administration may not be as much of a
third Clinton term as you might think. For example,
if, say, bin Laden's location is pinpointed in Yemen,
and Bill comes into the Oval Office and says, "Hillary,
I think we should do an airstrike inside Yemen right
now," Hillary might just as likely say, in her scolding tone,
"Bill, I'm running things, not you, and I'll be deciding
whether I'm going to strike or not." And out of spite
or vain self-assertion, she might decide to override
Bill's smart suggestion just to show she, not he, is in
charge. Hence, a Hillary presidency might actually
(and dangerously) veer away from Bill's judgment
(even when Bill is correct) -- and for no good reason.
Hillary is not the first mediocre female candidate to have run for national office
--
ah, the days when the term dynastic royalty actually meant something
But I digress. Paul
_________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 25, 2008
As things now stand, here's my prediction of how
the headlines will look on November 5, 2008:
The Thinking Behind My Electoral Map and Math
First, Wisconsin. If Dems sneeze, they lose it, which
is why you hear nothing about gun control
during prez election years, seeing how all those
moose lodgers in Wisc love their guns and all. This
year, the male vote will tilt it the third of a percentage
required for McCain to win the state.
Second, New Hampshire only went Kerry because Mass. was
next door; Hillary has no such advantage.
Third, just as Gore lost Tennessee in '00, so Hillary
will lose Arkansas. She's really not of Arkansas the
way Bill is, and she turned her back on the state to
run from NY, so Ark will return the favor come Nov.
Fourth, Louisiana, Missouri and Iowa are never really
in play for the Dems unless a Perot is siphoning votes
from the GOP, though Katrina may have changed the
calculus slightly in LA.
Fifth, Ohio is almost always 5 points from the Dems's
reach, and will be so this time, too.
Sixth, a Florida win for Hillary requires a majority
of swing voters along the I-4 corridor, which will
give her 45 percent of the vote -- tops (I know
because I used to live around there).
Seventh: oops! Should have added Maine to
the McCain column on above map.
Eighth, all other states are self-explanatory.
Ninth, Barack would fare even worse, though not
as badly as you might think; on a good day for
Obama, take the above electoral map and add Minnesota
to McCain's column. But there would inevitably be
dirty TV ads against Obama by the Republicans that
would run in heavy rotation around Halloween in key
swing states like Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin,
and they'd go something like this: "Can America Trust
Barack Hussein Obama?" would be the refrain, with the
final frame featuring Obama embracing Al Sharpton.
Whoever Obama taps as his veep, the GOP would see
to it, through negative commercials, that his real
running-mate in the eyes of swing state voters is Al
Sharpton. Barack could mitigate this possibility
slightly by having a Sistah Soldier moment with
Sharpton, but the ads would still eat
into his totals in the upper midwest, at least.
* * *
Not That There's Anything Wrong With That
How to put this. Time and again I've watched
interview footage featuring Hillary Clinton and seen
the same thing, and maybe I should shut up
about it, but then again I'm a reporter, and reporters
are in the business of revealing, not concealing.
Anyway, back to the interview footage. Whenever Hillary
is interviewed by a drop-dead gorgeous woman, and this has
happened many times, Hillary sort of blushes and loses her
breath and sort of looks away and becomes somewhat shy in
the manner of someone who -- how to put this? -- has a
special appreciation of or passion for feminine beauty.
In other words, she sort of reminds me of how I, a
hetero male, react when I sit down and talk with a
super-model sort of woman. (You know how it is,
it's always sort of impossible to hide how you feel,
and it tends to come through even when you try to cover
it up.) Thing is, she doesn't seem to respond that
way to other interviewers, for whom she does her usual
bug-eyed thing.
And I'm talking about her involuntary, reflexive
reactions, as opposed to her conscious, deliberate
responses.
So what I am trying to say? I guess I'm observing that the
person who might become our 44th president appears to have
a, uh, special appreciation of feminine beauty -- not a bad
thing. And that her election may possibly -- just
possibly -- be a first for two groups.
By the way, seeing how things in this column tend
to get around (and are stolen by the
same publications that reject my findings when I
pitch them), I bet the Hillary camp neutralizes
this by having her hug both a gorgeous actress
and her hunky husband at a campaign
event -- on camera, of course. Or stage photos in
which women are looking adoringly at Hillary instead
of vice versa. Or something like that.
* * *
My favorite headline of the week: CJR's "To Check the
Facts, You Need the Facts," which tops a story that
fact-checks one TV network's fact-checking. Leave
it to the CJ Review to see through the
daily chronicle of distortions and lies by
official sources.
Remember, this is an era when people see the
Virgin Mary in a coffee stain and UFOs in every
wisp of smoke, so fact-based perception and
analysis are in short supply everywhere these
days. Add to that the fact that several
major news organizations don't even discipline
the plagiarists in their number, much less the
people who merely get their facts wrong.
But I digress. Paul
[above graphic by Paul Iorio.]
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 22, 2008
Remembering Heath Ledger
My Unpublished (or Mostly Unpublished)
Interview with Ledger
What a shock and a tragedy to hear that Heath
Ledger died today.
It wasn't very long ago when I was sitting
around with Ledger in some hotel room in Beverly Hills,
conducting a one-on-one interview with the actor
for a story that I wrote and reported for the
San Francisco Chronicle. He was 21 then and rising
fast, so it hardly seems believable that he's
already gone.
To remember him, I'm posting here most of my
interview with Ledger, which has been unpublished
until now (except for 80 words of it, which I used
in one of my stories for a newspaper).
My interview with Ledger happened on June 3, 2000,
and my story on him -- also posted below -- ran in the
San Francisco Chronicle's June 25 - July 1, 2000 issue.
PAUL IORIO: I SAW ['THE PATRIOT"] LAST NIGHT.
HEATH LEDGER: Yeah, so did I.
IORIO: WERE YOU AT THE [SCREENING]?
LEDGER: Yeah. I was there. Snuck in.
IORIO: SO YOU GOT TO HEAR AUDIENCE REACTION AND ALL THAT?
LEDGER: I was too consumed with the movie [laughs].
WHAT WAS YOUR OPINION OF IT?
I loved it. Huge. Shit! Massive. Epic.
[DO YOU THINK] IT LOOKS LIKE IT'S GOING TO BE A
"BRAVEHEART" KIND OF SUCCESS STORY?
I have no expectations for what the movie's going to do.
[Ledger tries lighting a cigarette with a final match.]
That was the last match, too.
SECOND MATCH, NOTED FOR THE RECORD. AND SMOKING A
MARLBORO, HE IS. SO WHAT'S THE MOVIE IN WHICH
YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SMOKE. THAT'S "TEN THINGS" --
"Ten Things I Hate About You."
RIGHT. THERE'S A SCENE IN THERE WHERE SHE'LL GO OUT WITH
YOU ONLY IF YOU AGREE TO --
Quit smoking.
* * *
HOW DID YOU GET THE AUDITION [FOR "THE PATRIOT"]?
...The first reading I did was fucked. I went in there, I had two
scenes to prepare, and I was halfway through the second scene and I
dropped my head and I just said, "I'm sorry, I'm wasting your time,
I'm really embarrassed, God, I'm so sorry, I'm wasting your time and
I'm wasting my time, I'm sorry, if you want me to come back, I'll
come back and do it, but I gotta leave." And I walked out with my
head down and my tail between my legs.
WELL, THAT'S NO WAY TO GET THE PART! I MEAN, CERTAINLY
THEY MUST HAVE SAID, "FORGET HIM." AND THEN YOU CAME BACK?
Yeah, they called me back.
THEY CALLED YOU BACK EVEN THOUGH YOU TOLD WHO --
[The director] Roland [Emmerich] and [the producer] Dean
[Devlin] --
[TOLD THEM] THAT "I CAN'T HANDLE THIS RIGHT NOW"'?
'Cause I was doing a lousy reading. I was just, like, not
there, and my morale was down by my feet.
* * *
WHERE DO YOU LIVE NOW?
Well, I was in the States for about two and a half years. I
was in L.A. And then I packed up my stuff in L.A., closed down my
home and went to South Carolina to shoot "Patriot." And after
that I had two months off, so I went and fucked off to New York
and hung out there for a bit. And then I went straight from
New York to Prague, and I was there for two months...where I'm
shooting "A Knight's Tale." And I've got eight days off now
to do all this shit and then I go back and have another two months
there [in Prague] and then I've got two weeks off and I go to
Morocco for four months to do "The Four Feathers" That's why I
don't really have a home right now, I'm just living out of bags.
Which is kind of the way I've been for the last five years, I've
kind of been on the road, living out of bags, which is good.
WHERE DO YOU TEND TO LIVE ONCE THE DUST SETTLES?
I don't know. I don't look that far ahead in the future. I
choose not to. If you live in the future or the past you
lose touch with the now. So I generally live every minute of
every day in the present. I don't have a diary, I don't have
a journal, I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. I don't what
I'm doing after this. That's good. And it keeps
my life fresh and exciting. [coughs]
...WHAT'S YOUR VIEW OF...PEOPLE WHO [OBJECT TO THE VIOLENCE
IN "THE PATRIOT"]?
Well, they're all fucking idiots because they let their kids
watch fucking TV, they let their kids play computer games and
rip heads off people. They're hypocrites....It's ridiculous.
If they're going to complain about that, let them. Fuck
them, because, really, the world is so full of fucking shit
and chaos right now it's not funny. You put on the TV. I don't
watch TV. I haven't watched TV in fucking years. I don't have
one. I have one only for movies. I have a DVD and a video
player. I don't hook it up to fucking cable, nothing. It's
trash. And if they think ["The Patriot" is] trash, well,
fuck, there's something wrong. With computer games and all
that shit?! That's ridiculous. They don't have to worry about
this. They have to worry about the shit from the electronic
nanny they sit their kids down in front of so they don't have
to worry about their kids, so they don't have to create shit
for them to do and let them use their imagination and go, "hey,
go outside and run around in the garden." No, stick them in
front of here and you don't have to worry about them. They
can go fuck off. Fuck 'em. We're not teaching kids to do
[violence]. We're telling a story, that's all.
[top photo of Ledger is a still from the movie "The Patriot"; photographer unknown.]
_______________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 21, 2008
Remember Martin Luther King, Jr. Today!
To commemorate King, I'm re-running the Daily
Digression of September 6, 2007, which talks
about a television appearance by King. Here it is:
I recently watched the uncut version of the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s appearance in 1967 on
"The Merv Griffin Show," in which he talked at length about his
opposition to the Vietnam War. And it's truly astonishing
footage, if only because almost everything Rev. King
said on that show about the Vietnam War could easily apply
today to American involvement in Iraq (e.g., that the U.S.
is involving itself in someone else's civil war, that the
"enemy" is not monolithic, that an escalation or surge is
not the solution, etc.). In fact, it might be interesting to
get a transcript of his remarks and replace the word Vietnam
with the word Iraq.
And by the way, what also emerges from that interview
is how truly brilliant and unflappable and dignified
and poetic Martin Luther King was. Truly Lincolnesque.
(And modest, too; he insisted that his father
was the number one pastor at their church in Atlanta,
and he himself was merely his number two.) As revered as he is
today, he's still underrated (and, frankly, I couldn't
help but think that, in a perfect world, he should have
been the Democratic nominee for president in 1968).
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 16, 2008
But I digress. Paul
[all three graphics above by Paul Iorio, though the praying hands are
from assumptionmthealthy.com and the golf ball from north-cyprus-properties.com.]
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 21, 2008
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!
To commemorate King, I'm re-running the Daily
Digression of September 6, 2007, which talks
about a television appearance by King. Here it is:
I recently watched the uncut version of the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s appearance in 1967 on
"The Merv Griffin Show," in which he talked at length about his
opposition to the Vietnam War. And it's truly astonishing
footage, if only because almost everything Rev. King
said on that show about the Vietnam War could easily apply
today to American involvement in Iraq (e.g., that the U.S.
is involving itself in someone else's civil war, that the
"enemy" is not monolithic, that an escalation or surge is
not the solution, etc.). In fact, it might be interesting to
get a transcript of his remarks and replace the word Vietnam
with the word Iraq.
And by the way, what also emerges from that interview
is how truly brilliant and unflappable and dignified
and poetic Martin Luther King was. Truly Lincolnesque.
(And modest, too; he insisted that his father
was the number one pastor at their church in Atlanta,
and he himself was merely his number two.) As revered as he is
today, he's still underrated (and, frankly, I couldn't
help but think that, in a perfect world, he should have
been the Democratic nominee for president in 1968).
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 15, 2008
Received my official ballot for the California Presidential
Primary Election the other day and was, as usual, sort of
amused by the presence of dozens of minor or completely
unknown contenders running as third, fourth, fifth and
even sixth party candidates.
So I decided to check out the official websites of several of them.
Two presidential contenders -- former Congresswoman Cynthia
McKinney, who thinks UFOs flew into the twin towers on 9/11
(isn't that what she thinks?), and Ralph Nader, who makes people
want to go out and buy a Corvair -- appear on the ballot
twice, in both the Green party and the Peace & Freedom party
categories.
Here are bits from the more obscure candidates' websites:
-- Mad Max Riekse of the American Independent Party.
Mad Max is also running for president in 2012, in case you were
wondering. He's from a place called Fruitport, Michigan. Notable quotes
from Mad Max include: "Get the MM word out" and "Don't get
involved with other people's politics or wars." His website has had
1,121 hits.
-- Jared Ball of the Green Party.
An assistant prof. Qualifications include: "I am the son of a
European-descended Jewish woman and an African-descended
Black man," he explains, and am married to a "powerful and dynamic
woman from Panama."
-- Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party.
Her site has not been updated since last December. "Money is
the Mother's Milk of Politics," begins her website, which is
equally riveting throughout.
-- Kent Mesplay of the Green Party.
"Urgent," warns Mesplay, "Homeland Security is preparing
to seize Apache lands!"
-- Ralph Nader of the Green Party.
I think everyone's heard quite enough from him for now.
-- Kat Swift of the Green Party.
Her web page looks vaguely like a porn site and also
has a dynamic calculation of "the cost of the war in Iraq"
that changes upward every few seconds.
-- Michael P. Jingozian of the Libertarian Party.
"Attacks against Jingo have backfired," he insists, adding:
"We have many things going for us. First, people are mad."
-- Steve Kubby of the Libertarian Party.
"You can smell it in the air -- voters aren't happy,"
says his website.
-- Alden Link of the Libertarian Party.
"New York City could convert the current U.N. building to
a hotel and gambling casino," says Link on his site.
-- George Phillies of the Libertarian Party.
"Under a Phillies administration, torturers will be despised,"
he says on his website.
-- Wayne Allyn Root of the Libertarian Party.
Root describes himself as "a highly recognized sports oddsmaker
and prognosticator who now lives in Vegas."
-- Christine Smith of the Libertarian Party.
"As President, my priority will be the American people,"
she says on her site.
-- Stewart A. Alexander of the Peace & Freedom Party.
Writes about a "gasoline boycott" and "free education."
-- John Crockford of the Peace & Freedom Party.
"Abolish vagrancy laws," says Crockford, who runs a
website design business.
-- Stanley Hetz of the Peace & Freedom Party.
"I have obtained ballot access," Hetz writes. Writes one
Hetz fan: "Hetz is a very intelligent, well-spoken man."
-- Brian P. Moore of the Peace & Freedom Party.
A Florida socialist. Qualifications include being "threatened
with arrest the other day by police in Brattleboro, Vermont."
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 10, 2008
Hillary Does. Big Girls Don't.
I was re-thinking Hillary's Muskie Moment
this morning and started wishing she had
said the following when asked whether it was
hard for her to get up every morning and ride
chartered buses and eat any kind of food she
likes. And I wished she had responded with:
"Is campaigning hard for me? I'll tell you
what's hard: changing bed pans for a dying
loved one. That's hard. I'll tell you what's hard:
dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear explosion when
hospitals are overflowing with patients with gamma
burns. I'll tell you what's hard: ordering the bombing
of a major city because its leader has just bombed us.
I'll tell you what's hard: having a terrorist
make death threats to your family members by name.
No, compared to all that, compared to what a president
has to deal with every day, campaigning is easy,
it's a walk in the breeze."
As a voter and a citizen and a media person, I really
wish Hillary had answered the question that way. Because
I want to have a president who is tougher than me,
someone who is cool and composed and in charge
when the bombs and bullets are flying nearby. I don't
want a leader who is in the corner crying or praying or
hiding when a dirty bomb has just been set off in a town
where he or she has relatives. I want someone taking
charge and being smart and making terrific decisions.
Can you imagine what would have happened if JFK had
addressed the nation about the Cuban Missile Crisis
and started tearing up? What message would that
have sent to a belligerent, macho guy like Khrushchev?
This isn't like Johnny Carson or Tiger Woods crying;
they weren't in charge of the nuclear arsenal, for
crissakes!
I talked with the late Frank Zappa on the phone in
1988, and he weighed in about the presidential contest
of that year with words that have stuck with me
ever since:
"You don't want a Perfect Little Man in the White House,"
Zappa told me. "You want a motherfucker in there!"
But I digress. Paul
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 9, 2008
Hillary, last night in ManchesterFirst, this wasn't the Michigan or South Carolina
primary, where there's a huge African-American vote
that would be expected to turn out for Obama. This
was New Hampshire, virtually all-white New Hampshire,
and a black candidate just came within a heartbeat
of a-winnin' against a very well-organized, mainstream
contenda. That's one of the main headlines from
last night.
Second: what up with them thar polls?
Third: On Sunday morning, after the debates
and before I was misled by the polls, I wrote
in this space:
"If Obama wins, it will be by a slim
margin, and there's a chance Hillary
could pull it off by a whisker."
(The complete column is below, under the heading
"January 6.")
So from now on, I'm listening to my own instincts
and not to the pollsters!
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- If a news organization is going to
appropriate unique coinages and insights of
mine, would it please take the time to
cite the source (e.g., "as freelance
writer Paul Iorio wrote in his online column")?
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 7, 2008
Hillary's Muskie Moment Foretold by The Daily Digression!
(by the way, I coined the phrase "Muskie Moment" before other reporters started using it)
There's something about New Hampshire in the winter
that tends to bring out the tears even in candidates
for the toughest political office in the land. I grew
up in early childhood north of New Hampshire, in Maine,
a latitude that produces more singer-songwriters per
capita than any other place on Earth, perhaps because
the vast expanses of snow and the eternal
winters (relieved only by the whiff of rhubarb in the
summer) breed melancholy, introspection.
So I felt bad seeing Hillary tearing up in Portsmouth
today, just as Ed Muskie did all those years ago, but I
could also understand part of the reason why: those
New England winters. Notice that candidates, win or
lose, don't cry while campaigning in fun, warm places
like Santa Barbara or Key West.
Also, I must note that the Daily Digression sensed this
might happen; back on October 14, 2007, I opened my column
with the following words (highlighted in bold):
Hillary's lead in the polls may be widening
but it's not deepening. Hard-core Democrats I've
spoken with, men and women, have approximately
zero enthusiasm for her candidacy. And she irritates
even feminist friends of mine. Bad sign.
That also means she's too susceptible to having
a Muskie Moment in the snow that destroys her
candidacy. She almost had a Muskie Moment in Iowa
last Sunday, when that "double agent" asked her a
question that was off script. There's bound to be
one in the coming months, once things get tougher
and when there really are plants
and hecklers in the crowd.
The entire column is archived below, under the heading "October
14, 2007."
* * *
Could an Obama/Edwards Ticket Beat McCain/Lieberman?
Now that it's obvious that Barack Obama is going to
win -- and win big -- tomorrow in New Hampshire,
another trend is emerging in subsequent primary
states: states where Clinton once had a double-digit
lead in polls in early December are now trending
unmistakably toward Obama.
Though post-Iowa state-by-state poll results are
scarce, the trajectory is the same almost
everywhere, with all signs pointing to Obama
winning the top five SuperTuesday states on
Feb. 5 (e.g., his home state of Illinois, California,
Georgia, New Jersey and even New York, where
Clinton serves as Senator).
And it's highly doubtful the next three biggest
SuperTuesday states -- Missouri, Arizona and
Tennessee -- would somehow be immune from the nationwide
trend toward Obama.
The speculation, at least on the Democratic side,
should now turn to who Obama will choose as his running
mate, a decision that, of course, would partly depend
on who the Republican nominee is going to be, and
that's uncertain at this point, though if I had to
guess, I'd call it for McCain. And, if I had to guess
again -- and, admittedly, it's way too early for this
sort of thing -- I'd say the Arizona senator has been
acting pretty chummy lately with his lonely comrade
in Iraq war boosterism, Joseph Lieberman, who would
provide That Special Blue State Wedge for a red
state candidate like Mac.
Meanwhile, Obama and his people must be
huddling around now, or will be huddling soon,
to draw up the proverbial Short List. And such a
list is surprisingly short when it comes to
potential veeps who have already been vetted by
voters and by the media and have had some
experience hiking the national campaign trail.
First, obviously, Obama would want to turn to
the candidates who came in second, third and beyond
in the primaries. But Hillary has too much pride
for the number two spot, and besides, the Democrats
can't afford to lose a Senate seat. Biden/Dodd/Richardson
are terrific statesmen but box office poison. Evan
Bayh's name always comes up in these things but,
face it, he couldn't even get through the
starting gate of the '08 race a year or so ago. Ditto
Vilsack. Obviously, a charismatic swing
state politician from Florida or Ohio might fit
the bill, but John Glenn is pushing 90, a bit of a drawback,
and Lawton Chiles is currently dead,
which would definitely rule him out.
Wesley Clark will probably be considered and rejected
(his '04 bid was anemic), as will Michael Bloomberg,
who will turn it down because he's thinking of his
own run. Oh, how the list is short of peeps who
wanna be the president's bitch for four years!
Of course, that leaves Barack with, pretty much, one
possibility. This next contender has already left
his job, so there'd be no loss in Congress, and
has plenty of time on his hands, which he's currently
spending on a (at this point) vanity campaign for
president. Further, he's already done the veep
thing and has a southern accent, which will play
nicely in some purple states. He needs no further
introduction, folks, he's That Two Americas guy
y'all been hearin' about: former Senator John
Edwards of one of those red states Obama would
love to pick off and put in the Democratic column
next November.
Then again, all bets are off if Oprah says, "yes."
But I digress. Paul
__________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
EXTRA! for January 6, 2008
Why McCain and Obama Will Win in New Hampshire on Tuesday
the likely winners on Tuesday
The reasons Barack Obama
and John McCain will win
the New Hampshire primary
on Tuesday are these:
First, the Iowa win has given Obama momentum in a race that
had been virtually tied in New Hampshire.
Second, it was plain to see that Obama won last night's
debate and Clinton lost and even seemed unsure of
herself (see analysis below), which has probably added to
Obama's total by a couple percentage points.
Third, at the GOP debate, McCain trounced Romney, who
looked weak and was already suffering from negative
momentum from his Iowa loss.
Incidentally, The Daily Digression has not yet endorsed a
candidate for president and may not do so (I try to keep my
analysis as objective as possible).
But I digress. Paul
[posted at around 10:30 am [PT] on January 6.]
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 6, 2008
I've purposely not read or heard any of the spin or
commentary about last night's presidential debates
because I want to come to my own analysis fresh.
That said, the debate winners last night were -- by many
miles -- Barack Obama and John McCain, and the big
losers were John Edwards and Mitt Romney.
Romney, rapidly losing his favorite son advantage
in New Hampshire, came off worst of all, particularly on
the health care issue when he implied that things like heart
attacks and strokes are business proposals, not
diseases, and that one could go into an ER and get
a "repair" for a thousand bucks.
Suddenly, Romney seemed like Poppy Bush being
mystified by a check-out scanner at the supermarket,
the blue blood who has been rich too long to understand
what a shrieking nightmare the American health care
system really is.
By contrast, McCain came across like the disciplinarian,
spanking Romney on immigration and sending him to bed
without his pork rinds. Mitt seemed thin-skinned, defensive,
like the son of somebody instead of his own man
(a bit like Haven Hamilton's "nice" son in the movie
"Nashville"), trying for that Reaganesqe effect but
not quite getting it. If McCain had a lead in the
polls going into the debate, he clearly increased it
with his performance last night. (Still, if nominated,
McCain might turn out to be the Dole of '08.)
On the Democratic side, Edwards seemed distracted, even
losing track of a question at one point, and otherwise
appearing flabby in direct contrast to Obama.
Obama was the star of the show, dwarfing everyone else
onstage, and completely comfortable with being a leader
in every instance.
Hillary tried a bit too hard to show that she understood the
nuances of various issues, inadvertently revealing that she
tends to get mired in unnecessary detail. For example, in
response to the question of whether we should unilaterally
strike bin Laden in Pakistan, she noted the "inherent
paranoia" about India in Pakistan and how that might play
into a surprise strike. And with regard to withdrawing from
Iraq, she brought up the ancillary issue of how we would
withdraw the translators (I'm no expert, but I would guess
they'd board the same planes that the soldiers are
boarding). In sum, she was being too...too.
Elsewhere the Dems all scrambled to say that they would
deliver the troops back to their hometowns within nine months
or a year or your pizza's free.
Hillary also repeated her much stated bit about working
hard for change. But working hard in the service of a flawed
policy is no virtue at all. One could, for example, work 20
hour days, 7 days a week, phoning world leaders and chewing
them out one by one, and that would certainly be working hard,
but it would also be working hard in the service of a
seriously misguided goal. The folks who gave us the Iraq
war worked around the clock to make the war
happen in '03 but we all would've been better off
if Rumsfeld and Co. had taken a long vacation in Cabo
instead. It's more important to work smart AND hard.
Meanwhile Richardson asks, "Is experience a leper?"
The answer to that is, "Sometimes." The wrong kind of
experience is a leper. To note an extreme example: in 1944,
Hitler was a very experienced world leader -- and a hard
worker, by the way -- but he was also clueless about
his own evil and wrongheaded policies.
Richardson keeps touting his own foreign policy
credentials but the bigger question is whether he has
foreign policy wisdom.
Just ask Richardson two simple questions to find out if
he's actually smart about foreign policy:
1) Did you support the Afghanistan war BEFORE the Afghanistan
war in 2001?
2) Did you oppose the Iraq war BEFORE the Iraq war in 2003?
If he answers yes to both questions, then he does have sound
foreign policy judgment. If he answers no to even one of the
questions, he doesn't.
All told, Richardson looked generally befuddled (if he's so
smart, how come he's not so smart?).
Also, another winner tonight was ABCs Charles Gibson,
whose performance as moderator was, in a word, perfect.
Gibson made sure that this was truly a debate and not
just a series of joint appearances, and he ended up creating
the most revealing candidate forum in many, many years,
a striking piece of television journalism.
In the wake of the debates and the Iowa results, my
best guess is that the winners on Tuesday in New Hampshire
will be McCain and Obama (though if Obama wins, it will be
by a slim margin, and there's a chance Hillary could
pull it off by a whisker).
For the first time, I can envision a debate stage, circa
Halloween, featuring Obama and McCain. It may not happen,
but after last night I can actually see how it might.
But I digress. Paul
[posted around 6:15am [PT] on January 6]
_____________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 5, 2008
the best picture Oscar front-runner?After seeing Paul Thomas Anderson's "There
Will Be Blood," I couldn't help but think
the film may turn out to be the major
picture of '07 -- and a front-runner for the best
picture Oscar, too (though, admittedly, I've not
yet seen some of the other major contenders).
It's the sort of epic, like "Citizen Kane" or the
flashback parts of "The Godfather, Part 2,"
that captures the thrill of a hard-scrabble
entrepreneur overcoming impossible obstacles to become
both a wealthy tycoon and the apple that doesn't
fall far from the tree.
Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a grand American
cinematic character, halfway between Noah Cross
and Howard Hughes, who starts his career as a miner
and ends up an oilman, building a fortune on a foundation
of blood and petroleum, both spilled liberally
throughout the film.
The imagery is novel and riveting. The
scene in which oil literally rains everywhere from an
unexpected geyser may well take its place in future
years in the pantheon of unforgettable, iconic cinematic
images. And I think it's safe to say
there has never been a murder on the big (or small)
screen quite like the one that ends this film.
To those who recoil at some of the violence in the movie,
I say that Plainview is not nearly as ruthless and brutal
as many of America's pioneering entrepreneurs, Plainview's
predecessors, who stole land outright (they didn't just
offer an unfair buy-out, as Plainview did) and killed those
who stood in their way. (America's founding capitalists
were also immoral enough to use free labor, which cut
their overhead considerably.)
This may be Anderson's best film to date but I bet it's not
the greatest he'll ever make, because parts of "There Will
Be Blood" hint at a future, even more brilliant film, an
Anderson "Godfather," still yet to come.
But I digress. Paul
[photo of "There Will Be Blood" from variety.com]
______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 4, 2008
In the wake of last night's Iowa caucuses, I really
don't have much to add to my column of three days ago
(see below) that accurately predicted that
Obama and Huckabee would be the winners of the Iowa
vote. My column, posted on January 1st, also correctly
noted the reasons why the victors would be Obama and
Huckabee, the reason being the fervor of their supporters
(the students and the evangelicals, respectively).
So I don't have anything else to add except to say that
lots of big budget news organizations got it wrong and
the no-budget Daily Digression got it right. Which
leads to the question: why don't certain editors give
me the next paid assignment that you're about to give
to the reporter who got it wrong?
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for January 1, 2008 (happy new year!)
Why Obama and Huckabee Will Win in Iowa on Thursday
It Looks Like The Pews Versus the Dorms (Again!) in '08
the likely winner in Iowa First, John Edwards, you can surrender Friday morning,
if you'd like, but you probably won't, you'll probably
say something like, this doesn't settle or prove
anything, though you know it does, definitively and
forever. Thursday's Iowa vote will permanently end
Edwards's presidential prospects but I bet he might
let it drag on through the snows of New Hampshire in
the hope that South Carolina will recognize kin in
someone who talks like this. But it's over, John,
you bet the table's high limit on Iowa and lost, and (as
I wrote in a previous column) you're what Gephardt
was in '04: old news. You've served your party well
and honorably but, as Al Gore once said, it is now
time for you to go.
Second, Obama will probably win on Thursday for reasons
that are obvious to anyone who has attended one of his rallies:
he attracts true believers who support him with an unusual
level of intensity and who are likely to turn out to vote,
come blizzard or ice storm. Huckabee will win for the same
reason.
Just as in November 2004, the presidential race
is, again, coming down to The Students versus The
Evangelicals, The Pews versus The Dorms. As you may recall,
in Ohio, with the red vote and blue vote almost even, college
students started racking up totals for Kerry in Cuyahoga County
while churchgoers were coming out in droves for Bush,
both groups seeking to break the tie.
In all likelihood, both factions will again be the dominant
voting blocs on Thursday in Iowa, where I bet the finishing
order is Obama-Clinton-Edwards and Huckabee-Romney-McCain.
[For the record, this was posted at 7:30am on
January 1, 2008.]
sayonara* * *
Condolences to Bhutto's son, but in all honesty I think
he needs a lot more seasoning before he assumes any
throne. And one of his profs should tell him
"Democracy is the best revenge" is not a very good
or true line, because it's not the best revenge if the
other guy wins. Perhaps "Democracy is the best policy"
would have been a better bit. Speaking of democracy:
who voted for him? Maybe what he meant to say was,
"Nepotism is the best revenge."
But I digress. Paul
[photos of Obama and Edwards by Paul Iorio.]
_______________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 28 - 30, 2007
During the Writers's Strike, SNL Still Airs -- On DVD
E - I - E - I - OMy main girlfriend in my senior year of high
school brought me over to her house one night
in the spring of 1975 and after awhile phoned her
older sister in New York, who she wanted me to
meet. You've got to meet my older sister, she said
excitedly, her name is Marilyn and she writes for
"Rhoda" and is working on this new television show
for the fall (or was trying to become a writer for
this new television series).
So she dialed her in the kitchen, chatted some
sisterly chat and then handed me the phone. I talked
with her sister for a couple minutes at most and
remember I was sort of daunted speaking to this
star writer as she told me she was busy writing for a
brand new comedy series for NBC that would premiere in
several months (or perhaps she said she was trying to get
onboard the new series as a writer). Good luck, I said,
and we said goodbye.
I really didn't think of what she told me on the phone
that much until months later, late at night on October
11, 1975, when someone said something like come watch
this show, George Carlin's on.
It was, of course, the series premiere of "Saturday
Night Live," then dubbed "Saturday Night," and I instantly
figured out that that was the show my girlfriend's sister
had been talking about on the phone (by then she was an
ex-girlfriend because I had gone away to college, and so had she).
And when the credits rolled, either on that show or
on another one in '75, there was her name, in big
letters, on the tv screen: Marilyn Suzanne
Miller. Wow, I thought.
Anyway, that's a long, unnecessary but completely true wind-up
to saying that I recently re-watched six episodes -- numbers 13
to 18 -- from that golden first season of SNL and had a blast,
for the most part, doing so. Thing is, you get used to seeing
the first season material packaged with bits from the first five
seasons in best-of compilations and forget that there're lots
of forgotten sketches that are wildly funny amidst the overly
familiar classics.
In those six episodes are many of the all-time blockbusters
that still stand as SNL's very best material: "The Super
Bass-o-matic '76," "Lorne's Offer to the Beatles," "The
Ten-Letter Metric Alphabet," and Andy Kaufman's "Old MacDonald"
(Aykroyd's brilliant E. Buzz Miller didn't happen till the second
season).
Loose notes on the episodes:
Episode 15, with Jill Clayburgh as host, is a real gem,
though episode 16, with Anthony Perkins as host, is a snoozer;
Desi Arnaz should've cleaned his teeth (dentures?) before
going onscreen; Ron Nessen and Jerry Rubin were not very
funny people (though seeing Nessen intro Patti Smith was
almost surreal); Chevy Chase had great stuff in Update (he
once reported that Charles Manson was no longer a threat to
society "unless society happens to cross his path"), though
his falls were clearly causing him pain -- and at least
one of his falls could have easily broken his neck. And, no
doubt about it, the reputed tension between Chase and John
Belushi is plain to see onscreen, particularly during one
Update sketch in which Belushi hauls off and punches
Chase at full velocity (see photo).
Also: Laraine Newman has such an expressive face that she
might have been a great silent movie star in another era; the
Bee and Samurai sketches were almost all formulaic
and tedious; Kaufman's "Old MacDonald" is unbelievably riotous;
the weekly "Home Movies" segment was truly the YouTube of its
day; even in the great fertile age of SNL, for every genius
bit like the Bass-o-matic or the offer to the Beatles, there
were around 17 duds.
Anyway, the vintage DVDs will have to do until the writers's strike
is settled.
Here are some pics from the first season:
pure genius (above and below)
---
the dawn and Dean of Update
John and Chevy didn't get alongBut I digress. Paul
[photos of TV stills by Paul Iorio.]
P.S. -- So what ever happened to the relationship
between me and my girlfriend of 33 years ago (her
name is Judy, by the way)? Here's the
scoop (which even she doesn't fully know): I went to a party
in '75 (that she was not at) and snacked on some chips and
brownies and around an hour later started feeling a bit queasy.
And then I started feeling alot worse than queasy, as my heart
started racing and I felt sort of stoned though I hadn't
even had so much as a drink. I went home and slept it off
and when I woke up I felt fine but was wondering what had
caused the previous night's problem. And I remember that
I then wrote a letter to Judy, now away at college, and told
her that "something had happened" and that I'd had this
mysterious experience and didn't know what it was (hey, I
was 17, for crissakes!).
Shortly after I sent her the letter, the mystery was solved.
Later that day, the hosts of the party -- friends of mine
still -- confessed that they had (unbeknownst to me) put a
very large quantity of pot in the brownies that I'd eaten
the night before and that that had been the cause of my racing
heartbeat, etc. Not a funny practical joke, I must admit,
at least from my point of view. In any event, the letter to
my former girlfriend had already been mailed, obviously
before I could explain to her what had actually happened and
that there was no cause for concern, but I think the letter was
a turn-off to her and the damage had already been done. In any
event, we'd already drifted apart, and things were already
over anyway, so that was the last letter I wrote to her.
[this day's column updated January 2, 2008]
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 28, 2007
Benazir Bhutto was the absolute opposite of so many
cowardly politicians and public officials worldwide
who play it safe, don't cause controversy and are the
last to take a daring stand on any issue. She openly defied
death threats, enraged the backward people of the northwest
territories and generally showed more courage than Osama bin Laden
has ever shown, as he hides in his doghouse and releases
cowardly videos from a big distance. Can you imagine
bin Laden having the balls Bhutto had and appearing at
rallies amongst his fans in Waziristan? (By the way, the
next time a bin Laden vid turns up at al Jazeera, would it
kill those tv reporters to break a sweat and try to track
down its chain of custody? Who gave it to the guy who
gave it to the guy? Was there any video surveillance
capturing its delivery to Jazeera? But I digress.)
All condolences about Bhutto's death must go to us all,
because her murder is a global loss and may well cause
enough turmoil to topple Musharraf, which would be a revoltin'
development, to say the least, because the country could
then topple into the hands of the Taliban.
If Pakistan and its nukes were to fall into the hands of the
Taliban or al Qaeda, the U.S. would, of course, have no choice
but to act immediately -- militarily and unilaterally, if
necessary -- to take out the new regime before it becomes
entrenched. There can be no violation of one inviolable rule:
the Taliban/al Qaeda cannot have access to nuclear weapons
under any circumstances.
On July 9, 2007, in the Daily Digression (see below), I
wrote: "Our anxiety should be centered on Pakistan, not
on Iraq. Iraq is soo '03. Pakistan may soon become soo '08."
And that now appears to be the case, or almost the case. Iraq
is becoming far less of a factor in '08 politics than it was
even six months ago, and there is the nauseating possibility
that Musharraf could be deposed in coming months (right in the
middle of primary season, no less).
By SuperDuper Tuesday, the dominant issue in the U.S.
presidential campaign may be our involvement in the war
in Pakistan.
But I digress. Paul
P.S. -- By the way, some have implied that my new song
"I Killed Osama bin Laden" incites violence against the
al Qaeda leader. To which I respond: and your point is what?
Look, I'm not going to sit here and explain my song (my music
website is at pauliorio.blogspot.com) but I will say that I
think it would be great if Osama bin Laden were murdered.
__________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 26, 2007
I've still not seen several of the major feature films
of 2007 (I'm certain I'm going to be knocked out by
the new Paul Thomas Anderson), so I'm not going to
write a ten-best of '07 list yet -- though I will say
that the two most haunting films I've seen this year
were released in '04 and '05.
The first is 2004's "Before Sunset," Richard Linklater's
sequel to his 1995 film "Before Sunrise," and what a
pleasant surprise to see the new one outshines the
original -- in fact, it may be the best two-person
ensemble picture since "My Dinner With Andre." Julie Delpy
can create the sense of falling in love like few other
actresses of her generation, and the last sequence of
the film, in which she opens up gradually like a flower
to sunlight, is very true and poignant and moving and
lovely and I'm running out of words to express exactly
how much I adore it. And that last line ("I know") is
perfect.
The other film is 2005's "Nine Lives," directed by
Rodrigo Garcia, who also directed that memorable
episode of "The Sopranos" in which Carmela
has dinner and talks "Madame Bovary" with A.J.'s
schoolteacher. "Nine Lives" is pure ultra-realism,
nine separate, sometimes harrowing stories that climax
with the last, in which Glenn Close's character visits
a cemetery for a reason that becomes heartbreakingly
evident only if you're watching the last couple minutes
very closely and happen to notice the size of the grave
she's visiting. I'm surprised that some
otherwise perceptive crits didn't get or like it.
* * *
In terms of the best music released in 2007, I nominate
the following:
-- my bootleg tape of Jeff Tweedy live in Golden Gate Park
in San Francisco in October, an inspired performance of
nearly two dozen songs (amazing how strong the "Mermaid"
material is, not to mention "The Thanks I Get," "Passenger
Side," "I'm the Man Who Loves You," etc.). And I
sometimes wonder whether "California Stars" might
eventually become the unofficial (or maybe even the
official) state song of California.
-- my bootleg tape of Oakley Hall performing in
Berkeley, Calif., in May. I still don't know the
names of all the songs, but I enjoy them a lot and
listen to them more than I probably should.
I now see the band as a sort of indie Fleetwood Mac
and wouldn't be shocked if they came up with an
alt-country equivalent to "Rumors" in the future.
-- Bright Eyes's "Cassadaga," particularly the song
"Four Winds."
-- Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible," particularly "Intervention."
-- Paul McCartney's "Memory Almost Full," particularly "That Was Me"
(it's his best solo album in many years).
-- Feist's "The Reminder," particularly the irresistible "1234."
-- Bruce Springsteen's "Magic," particularly "Girls in
Their Summer Clothes," perhaps his best song since
"Brilliant Disguise" and one that I'd love to hear Brian Wilson
perform with the band that backed him on his "Smile" tour.
-- my bootleg tape of Paul Simon's '06 concert in
Berkeley, where he brought his more recent material to
vivid life and put a new light on some of his classics.
-- my bootleg tape of live versions of songs from
Radiohead's "In Rainbows," particularly "4 Minute
Warning" and "Down is the New Up."
* * *
Now that Sacha Baron Cohen has decided to forever abandon
his hilarious Borat and Ali G characters, maybe he might
consider developing a new persona that lampoons India-centric
hippies -- one of the last, uh, sacred cows not yet
touched by major satirists. A Mumbai Borat, if you will.
I thought of that after reading William Grimes's
marvelously witty review in today's New York Times
of Kirin Narayan's memoir "My Family
and Other Saints" (University of Chicago Press).
Haven't read the book yet, but the review is one of
Grimes's best. Here's an excerpt:
"Families can be so embarrassing. Imagine the agonies of
an adolescent girl whose house has become infested with
India-besotted hippies from all over the globe, whose
sarcastic father stumbles around in an alcoholic
haze and whose mother kneels at the feet of every
swami she meets. And let us not forget grandma, who
holds long conversations with her cow and once met
a 1,000-year-old cobra with a ruby in its forehead
and a mustache on its albino face...
....The god-saturated culture of India, which Paw
ridicules, seeps into Ms. Narayan’s pores. At the
same time she tries to interpret American culture in
Indian terms, a constant source of confusion. “Was
‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ a warning to the blue
baby Krishna that his wicked uncle King Kamsa
was sending demons to kill him?” she wonders. And why
was Bob Dylan saying, in another perplexing song, that
everyone would get pelted with rocks?"
Check it out in today's Times!
* * *
Uh oh! Could my humble Daily Digression column be
spawning imitators, or at least an imitator?!! Maybe.
An old high school pal of mine, who I hadn't seen for
decades (until a couple years ago), emailed me recently
and said he was naming his own blog "But I Digress."
That, of course, has been my sign-off for my column
since Feburary '07, as I told him in an email the other
week, though that apparently has not deterred him from
naming his own column, which has yet to launch, after mine.
Just so readers of the Daily Digression know: my blog has
absolutely positively nothing to do with his blog (the pal's
name is Bill Epps) and vice versa.
But I digress. Paul
[this day's column updated, 1/02/08]
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 22, 2007
My column on "The Pat Robertson/Al Sharpton
Conservative Religious Axis" (see below)
seems to have caused a bit of (welcome) controversy.
One reader wants to know what harm it does to
believe in god and in the other supernatural
phenomena in the Bible. My answer: the harm it
does is substantial; religion leaves you
stuck in false hope and delusion, and when
the delusion wears off, and you come to, you'll
end up in more despair than if you had accepted
reality all along.
Further (and more important), religion has a negative
insidious effect on other aspects of a person's
life in that it lowers the bar and the standard of
proof that one sets in order to believe other things;
that's probably part of the reason why many in Pat
Robertson's camp believed Iraq had WMDs, despite a
complete lack of evidence -- and why many in Al Sharpton's
camp believed the lies of, say, Crystal Mangum, despite
copious evidence to the contrary.
When you're raised to believe something because "the Bible
told me so," you're also more likely later in life to
believe stuff like "Iraq has WMDs because Rumsfeld told me so"
and "the Duke Three did it because Crystal Mangum told me so."
Belief in the supernatural cripples your powers of reasoning.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 18, 2007
The Robertson/Sharpton Religious Conservative Axis
Pat Robertson ("right") and Al Sharpton (right)
I recently re-watched some episodes of "All in
the Family" from its brilliant, edgy, thrillingly
audacious first season, and started wondering whether
the series, if it were premiering today, would ever
survive attacks from religious conservatives like
Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton.
Here's what might happen today. First, there would be
a boycott of its advertisers by Robertson. Second,
Sharpton would bring his bullhorn and protesters
to the Black Rock building in Manhattan. Then,
predictably, timid TV execs, with mortgages and private
school tuition to pay, would issue some insincere apology
and cancel the show in order to keep those paychecks
a-comin'.
I also recently re-listened to parts of Richard Pryor's
landmark comedy album "That Nigger's Crazy" and thought
the same thing: if it were released today, how long would
it be before the Robertson/Sharpton crowd forced the
record company to either withdraw the album or to at least
re-title it and delete some of its bits?
And then it dawned on me that America is now less
culturally progressive than it was in the early 1970s.
Back then, Americans seemed to understand irony a lot
better and appreciated artistic freedom a lot more.
Today, I don't think some people in the Robertson/Sharpton
camp understand the nature of irony, were never schooled
in classic satire, have never understood parody. When
they should've been reading Jonathan Swift or Voltaire
or Woody Allen in school, these cultural conservatives were
instead reading stories from the Bible of highly variable
quality (I mean, the story of Abraham and Isaac is not only
crappy, but more than a little creepy). They've not been
properly educated in how one can use, say, ethnic slurs
in the service of condemning ethnic slurs. And so now we're
all supposed to lower our standards to the level
of people like Robertson and Sharpton who simply don't
get it.
The Robertson/Sharpton people should 1) not take the Bible so
literally and 2) develop a sense of humor.
I mean, I watched one episode of "All in the Family" in
which Archie used the ethnic slur "dago." Now, I have an
Italian-American last name and am very proud of my
Italian-American heritage, but I laughed and laughed when I
heard him say the word "dago" because I understood the context
in which it was said: an actor, Carroll O'Connor, was
portraying an ignorant, bigoted guy in a way that showed us how
hilariously ridiculous his ignorance and bigotry was. But if
you're schooled in literalism, which is to say unschooled, you
won't get it, and you'll probably end up insisting that
better-educated people lower themselves to your level of
miseducation.
* * *
The Veepstakes
Could an Obama/Bloomberg ticket be in the works?
For months, everybody has been talking about how
the presidential race of '08 might be a repeat of
the Giuliani versus Clinton U.S. Senate race that almost
happened in 2000.
But what was the ultimate fate of that match-up? And does
it tell us anything about what might happen in the 2008 race?
To recap: Giuliani quit the Senate contest (due to health
problems) and Clinton won against a weak second.
So is Giuliani fated to repeat that same pattern of
entering a high-stakes race, becoming a near front-runner
and then dropping out (for whatever reason)?
One could argue that that pattern already has repeated
itself, because Giuliani has effectively dropped out of the
race, or at least out of the early contests in Iowa, New
Hampshire and South Carolina, which may turn out to be
tantamount to dropping out of the race altogether (though
that is yet to be determined).
The other part of that equation is that, absent Giuliani,
Hillary wins against a nominal Republican opponent (that,
too, is yet to be determined).
By the way, now that Obama is a truly viable contender, it
may be time to speculate about who he'd choose for
his running-mate. My guess: Michael Bloomberg.
How an Obama/Bloomberg ticket would fare, of course, depends
on who the GOP nominates. Possibilities include:
Huckabee/Giuliani, Giuliani/Huckabee, Giuliani/McCain,
Huckabee/McCain -- though a McCain/Lieberman ticket
ain't in the cards in '08 (yes, McCain is presidential,
but actually he's more like a retired ex-president than
a future one). Least likely match-ups: Kucinich/Tancredo,
Gravel/Huckabee, Obama/Winfrey, Hillary/Gore, Giuliani/Ron Paul
and McCain/Kucinich.
* * *
Incidentally, it's a bit of a thrill that Led Zeppelin chose to
start its reunion show at O2 with newsreel footage that mentioned
the one Zep show I actually happened to attend as teenager
(see previous Digression).
But I digress. Paul
[photo of Robertson from unknown photographer; pic of Sharpton from Guardian.co.uk; photo of Obama from msnbc.com; pic of Bloomberg from abcnews.com.]
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 10, 2007
Led Zeppelin reunites tonight in the U.K. for a one-off
gig, featuring the three surviving members plus Jason Bonham,
son of the late John Bonham, on drums.
I was lucky enough to have seen Zeppelin live in its prime,
when I was 15 years old, and to have caught a Zep concert that
actually made pop culture history.
The show was Zeppelin's 1973 record-breaking concert at
Tampa Stadium in Tampa, Florida, and its main
claim to fame is that it attracted more
paying fans than had ever attended a show by a single act in
the U.S., surpassing the previous record set by the Beatles at
Shea Stadium in 1965. (Zeppelin drew 56,800 fans, the Beatles
55,000. For the record, there were other bands on the bill at Shea,
though it was effectively a solo show.)
In rock culture lore, Tampa Stadium is where Led Zeppelin
officially dethroned the Beatles in the concert world,
and it happened on May 5, 1973.
To this day, on and off the web, some rock fans in the
region still talk glowingly about the concert as if it
were the Woodstock festival or the Monterey Pop fest.
Was Tampa Stadium a great Zeppelin performance? Some
of it was. Guitarist Jimmy Page was in rare form and the rest of
the band sounded excited about having broken the Beatles's
record. But Robert Plant was hoarse, a fairly substantial
drawback.
I attended as a 15-year-old high school student,
arriving at the Stadium with a friend well before the
Saturday night concert began. After presenting our five-dollar
advance tickets (six on the day of the show), we took a
place on the field, around a third of the way to the stage.
The springtime atmosphere was mostly festive as the speakers
blasted such music as the Allman Brothers Band's "Revival"
(with its lyrics, "People can you feel it/love is everywhere").
But the crowd was occasionally rowdy, too, throwing bottles at
police officers at one point.
Zeppelin took the stage after 8pm, with the introduction:
"Ladies and gentlemen, what more can I say? Led Zeppelin!"
Fans screamed as if they were on fire.
Plant stepped to the mike. "Looks like we've done something
nobody's done before," he said, referring to the box office record.
"And that's fantastic," he added, according to my bootleg
tape of the show.
Page struck a practice chord. John Bonham played a drum
roll. Feedback filled the air. Then Bonham pounded
out the intro to "Rock and Roll."
As Plant started singing, it became obvious he was straining to
hit the high notes (due to some sort of cold), which was disappointing.
But Page more than made up for it, fluidly riffing through
a stunning twenty-minute opener that included "Celebration Day,"
"Black Dog," "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "Misty Mountain Hop"
in quick succession.
Just before "Misty Mountain," Plant chatted to the crowd
again.
"Anyone make the Orlando gig we did last time?," he asked.
Fans cheered.
"This is the second gig we've done since we've been back to
the States and uh..." Plant seemed speechless for a moment.
"And I can't believe it!"
But the lovey-dovey mood evaporated a bit after "Since
I've Been Loving You," when front row fans began getting out of
control, pushing against barriers and forcing Plant to play
security guard.
"Listen, listen," Plant said to the unruly crowd, according
to my tape. "May I ask you, as we've achieved something
between us that's never been done before, if we could just
cool it on these barriers here because otherwise there're
gonna be a lot of people who might get [hurt],"
Plant told the crowd. "So if you have respect for the person
who's standing next to you, which is really what it's all
about, then possibly we can act more gently."
"We don't want problems, do we?," Plant asked. The crowd
cheered.
Several songs later, after "The Rain Song," it became clear
the crowd was now getting seriously out of control. Plant got
testy.
"We want this to be a really joyous occasion," he says. "And
I'm going to tell you this, because three people have been
taken to the hospital, and if you keep pushing on that barrier,
there're going to be stacks and stacks of people going. So for
goodness sakes...can we move back just a little bit because it's
the only way. If you can't do that, then you can't really live
with your brother. Just for this evening anyway."
"Can you cooperate?!," asked Plant, a bit exasperated. There
was tepid applause. "It's a shame to talk about things like
cooperation when there're so many of us. Anyway you people sitting
up the sides are doing a great job. [fans cheer] But these poor
people are being pushed by somebody. So cool it. That's not very
nice."
Plant also took the opportunity to publicly diss Miami. For some
unknown reason, the band was apparently still sore about a 1970
gig in Miami Beach that stands as the last time Zep played in
that area.
"We played the Convention Center in Miami, which was really
bad," said Plant to the crowd, just before
introducing "Dazed and Confused." "The gig was good, but
there were some men walking around all the time making
such a silly scene." He didn't elaborate.
The crowd problems seemed to dissipate after a few more songs.
By the time the group roared into "Whole Lotta Love," near the
end of the almost three-hour set, Plant shouted, "We've got 57,000
people here and we're gonna boogie!,” segueing into “Let That
Boy Boogie Woogie.” The crowd went nuts, acting like
Beatlemaniacs at Shea.
Unfortunately, I had to be home by around 11pm,
which meant missing encores "The Ocean" and "Communication
Breakdown."
The highlight of the night, judging from a tape of the show and
from memory, was "Over the Hills and Far Away," if only because
of Page's incendiary solo, which was quite unlike his solos in
other live versions of the song. Also notable were extended
instrumental segments during “No Quarter” (courtesy
bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones) and “Dazed and Confused,”
a rousing “The Song Remains the Same,” and a predictable but
engaging “Stairway to Heaven.”
No doubt, some of the same songs will turn up on tonight's
reunion gig setlist. Here's hoping the band decides
to do a full-scale tour in 2008, 'cause it's been a long time.
* * * *
Yet Another Tragedy Caused By Gun Permissiveness
Almost no news organization is reporting the Colorado
shootings this way: "In the wake of the Omaha
shootings...."
Yet every news organizaton should be mentioning Omaha
in its stories about Colorado. Context is Journalism 101.
But lots of tv news correspondents are saying, "Omaha?
What's Omaha? Ohhh that!! That was soooo 72 hours ago!"
So let's see: Omaha has been completely wiped from memory
now that there's this new shooting spree in Colorado.
And lemme guess the reason why certain tv newsers aren't
mentioning Omaha in stories about Colorado; they're
probably saying something like, "The shooter in the last
one used an AK-47 and the shooter this time used an AK-46,
which, of course, is a vast difference."
They fail to see that the common denominator is bullets.
Both shooters used bullets. If they hadn't, nobody'd be
dead today.
Now let's take a look at the real reason Omaha isn't
being brought up in stories about Colorado: it's
called the NRA. The NRA is so well-organized, so
lawyered up, with so many true believers who know
how to threaten you without threatening you, that
some news orgs take the path of least resistance
and leave out references to Omaha in stories about
Colorado, just as they left out references to Virginia Tech
in stories about Omaha, just as they'll leave out references
to Colorado in stories about the next shooting (and, by the way,
just as they left out references to Tawana Brawley in stories
about Crystal Mangum).
At some news organizations, they report the truth without fear
or favor -- unless the truth is too unpopular.
* * *
Looks like NBC's long-shot gamble on "Friday Night
Lights" might actually be paying off. After
a season-plus of basement ratings, the critically acclaimed
series -- which is arguably almost as brilliant
as "The Sopranos" in its way -- was tied last week
for the number one spot in its time period among
viewers 18-49, the main demo advertisers
care about, though it was #3 overall for its time
period. Now the question is whether its momentum
will be slowed by the writers' strike.
But I digress. Paul
____________________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 9, 2007
Advice for the Six Major Presidential Candidates
when she was fabHillary Clinton
Hillary is losing altitude because she appears to
be overscripted, overhandled, overcoached,
overadvised -- and voters can see through it.
The latest example is her response to the hostage
ordeal at her HQ in New Hampshire. To me, she seemed,
above all, privately pleased that she was being given
an opportunity to look like she was in control in a crisis.
But I bet in reality she was handling the ordeal even
better than she was at that appearance; my guess is
she was behind the scenes making calls and intelligently
assessing the situation -- but that was all off-camera.
So her staged reaction seemed less flattering to her than the
way her actions probably unfolded off-camera in real time.
What I'm trying to say is that the real Hillary would
probably be more compelling to voters than the scripted
public one.
Maybe she should try to tap into the identity she
developed at Wellesley College, when she went from
caterpillar to butterfly and gave the commencement
address and wrote a ballsy senior thesis and had an
attracive style, before she married The Viking, as she
has affectionately called him.
Also, it does take a village, but -- much more important -- it
takes villagers. At this point, Hillary has the village, but
Obama seems to have a lot of the villagers.
* * *
not asking permission to take out bin LadenBarack Obama
I've said it before and will say it again: the level
of enthusiasm for Obama is an extraordinary political
phenomenon -- it's like nothing I've ever seen before in politics
(in fact, it's more like rock star adulation).
I've already written about seeing him speak (see previous
Digressions), so I won't go into that again. But I will
say that just yesterday, I walked by shops in downtown Oakland,
Calif., and there were Obama placards in barber shop
windows and Obama bumper stickers on cars. To date, I
have seen exactly one Hillary '08 bumper sticker in
the Bay Area, a blue thing on a car that looked like some
sort of government vehicle.
My advice to Obama is: keep it up with regard to your
hard position on finding bin Laden -- it's not only the
correct policy, but it will play beautifully against
the Republican candidate in November, if you're nominated.
I think voters are now picturing each candidate in the
Oval Office and one of the things they're picturing is
this: If a President Obama received a PDB titled "Bin
Laden's Whereabouts in Waziristan Pinned Down," would
you believe for one moment that President Barack wouldn't
immediately swing into action, marshaling the support of
Musharraf and others for a lightning strike in the
northwest territories?
And voters are also picturing the alternative: a President
Hillary who would receive such an PDB and might get
over-advised, too cautious, afraid of spending
political capital, become over-concerned about how it
would look politically if we bombed Wazirstan, analyzing
it into fine dust until the moment was lost.
In other words, the way they run their campaigns is the
way they would likely run their presidencies.
* * *
he should schedule his withdrawal speech after McCain's next monthJohn Edwards
When Edwards first appeared on the scene in the primaries
in '04, he was electric, like a high voltage wire whipping
in a wind storm, like a brand new rock star.
Problem is, he began repeating his same speech at virtually
every stop -- the Two Americas thing -- and voters began
to sense a disingenuousness, a sort of pre-fab presentation.
It was like Steve Forbes's "hope, growth and opportunity"
bit -- at first it seemed somewhat fresh, and then it became
just so much cynical grandstanding. And after being
relegated to the second spot on the '04 ticket, and sort
of being spanked by Cheney at that one debate,
he lost his luster a bit. So when he came back for
seconds in early '07, he had the stigma of a loser,
and the freshness was way gone. (A sidenote: you know who
should probably run for office? Edwards' advisor Kate
Michelman, whose speech earlier this year in Berkeley
shows she has an engaging charisma.)
My only advice for Edwards is (hate to say it): start
writing your withdrawal speech, which you might have
to give a few weeks from now. Schedule it
after McCain's, and the press won't cover it as much.
* * *
Jesus was born in Provo, and Iran has nukesMitt Romney
Romney is like those pre-Beatles relics of the
1960s who used to organize so-called decency rallies,
appear with Anita Bryant, and act aghast over the
onstage antics of Jim Morrison.
His persona would've played nationwide even 15 years
ago, back before the dot-com revolution when old
guys in polyester suits still ran old-boy old-line
companies, and ex-hippies of the Baby Boom generation were
their subordinates. Today, however, the ex-hippies are
the entrenched power, and Romney seems, well, square and
antiquated even by the standards of 20-years ago.
And frankly, his dreadful religion speech, in which he
insulted non-theists while asking for respect for his
own belief system, looked more like a withdrawal or
resignation speech. (In fact, if you watch his appearance
with the sound down, it looks like he's resigning from something.)
* * *
the Earth was created 350 years agoMike Huckabee
I don't think I agree with Mike Huckabee on any issue, but
he's undeniably likable -- and his affection for Keith Richards
shows that he may be more open-minded than he seems. But his
views on evolution are, let's face it, straight from a Taliban
cave. You have to hope this guy knows better but is pandering
to those who don't. Or maybe not. Perhaps he's one of
the many who has no regard for evidence-based belief.
If he's nominated, he may be a Republican McGovern. Only
thing is, the Democrats may also nominate a
McGovern -- Obama -- so it would be a battle of the factions.
* * *
looking too long in the rear-view mirrorRudy Giuliani
Hearing Giuliani on Russert this morning talking about
how he once shut down traffic around the Stock Exchange
when he was mayor, or something like that, I was reminded
that he's truly a small screen guy, not a big picture policy
maker. His focus is always on operations, tactics, details,
rather than on strategy, overall planning, policy, and that
is why people are sensing he's not really presidential.
And notice that his emphasis is always on 9/11 but
not on finding ways to stop bin Laden from attacking again.
If there were a terrorist attack and my building was on
fire, and Giuliani was my neighbor, he'd be the one I'd
follow to safety, no doubt about it. But I would not
vote to have him deal with the terrorists responsible
for the attack, because he tends to act too viscerally;
he almost has the mindset of a security guard sometimes
(remember when he personally ejected Arafat from Lincoln
Center in the Nineties?).
But I digress. Paul
[photo of Hillary by unknown photographer; Obama from abc.com; Edwards from photobucket.com; Huckabee from wired.com; Romney from ccinsider.com; Giuliani from latimes.com.]
________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 8, 2007
satire
The Beatnik versus the Class Clown in 2008?
High school yearbookphotos of Obama (l) and Huckabee (r)?
The rising stars this month among the presidential candidates
are Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, and that means we may have
a clear, stark choice at the polls this November between two
American archetypes: the class clown and the beatnik.
And it also appears as if both of them attended C. Estes
Kefauver High School in the Sixties, according to my
research of the National Lampoon's "1964 High School
Yearbook Parody." Could the yearbook photo (above) on the
left be Obama (Swisher) and the one on the right Huckabee
(Weisenheimer)? Check out the resemblance.
And also -- who knew Dennis Kucinich (below) also attended
Kefauver High?
Kucinich in high school?
And could this former Kefauver student (below) actually be the
brilliant singer Amy Winehouse, circa several years ago?
Amy Winehouse at Kefauver High?But I digress. Paul
[all three clippings above from "The Original National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody," 1974 edition.]
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 7, 2007
Mitt Romney gave an awful speech yesterday, showing
a disrespect for and implied bigotry toward nontheists,
while saying, essentially, that he's not going to open
up his Mormon beliefs to public scrutiny because
he knows full well that such far-out and strange notions
couldn't possibly stand up to scrutiny.
Well, Mr. Romney, you still have to answer to Ali G.
Here's an excerpt from Season 2 of "Da Ali G Show"
(wouldn't it be great if the next presidential debate
were hosted by Ali G?):
ALI G: HOW COME IN SOME RELIGIONS IT'S OK TO HAVE
MORE THAN ONE WIFE, LIKE THE MORONS?
AUTHOR JOHN GRAY: It's the Mormons or the Muslims. In both those
religions it's ok to have more than one wife.
[Editor's note: for the record, Mormons no longer practice
polygamy, though they still hold other beliefs that are
shockingly bizarre.]
* * *
Oooops! I forgot! Gays, guns and god are forbidden
topics during a presidential election year, which is
why you're hearing absolutely n-o-t-h-i-n-g about gun
control in the wake of the Omaha slayings.
So I now have a new personal policy. From here in, I'll
not extend sympathies to victims of gun violence who
weren't in favor of stricter gun regulations before being
shot. Because everybody, by now, can see plainly and in full
light that gun permissiveness is precisely the cause of all
these mass killings.
After every one of these slaughters, gun fanatics always
say the same thing, and that is: "If a nearby bystander
had been armed, the gunman could have been taken out."
OK, fine. let's put that theory to the test. Name one
major mass shooting incident -- Columbine, Virginia
Tech, etc. -- where an armed bystander (not a cop or
guard) saved the day by shooting the gunman. Name one.
The reason you can't name one is because there isn't
one, and the reason there isn't one is because in a
random shooting 1) victims are taken by surprise,
and 2) it's all over within minutes, before anyone
else can lock and load, and 3) the gunman typically
ends the rampage by killing himself.
Even in robberies that unfold over a longer period of
time, there is still massive and unpredictable risk
when an armed bystander intervenes (it often ends up
more like the robbery sequence (in the pastry shop)
in the movie "Boogie Nights" than like a Charles
Bronson flick).
Look, I was robbed at gunpoint a couple years ago,
and I must confess that I would've been extremely
pleased if some armed onlooker had shot the gunman
dead in the head on the spot; but I also know that
that same hypothetical good Samaritan might have missed
him and hit me instead.
But I digress. Paul
______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 6, 2007
You always hear the same litany of cliches every
time there's some random shooting, whether at Virginia
Tech or at this mall or at that school. If the shooter
was a teenager or a young person, he or she is invariably
described as a loner, disaffected, alienated, etc. (which
pretty much describes most teenagers at one time or another,
by the way).
Never mind that even Lee Harvey Oswald, the archetype of
this cliche, was far from a loner: he had a wife, in-laws,
a steady job at the Depository with co-workers, and political
activist friends.
And the Columbine shooters were part of what was virtually
a high school fraternity.
No, we use the cliche "loner" because, after the fact, after
some nutcase does something criminal, suddenly nobody knows
him or her, and everybody pretends that the person was some
sort of complete stranger.
The most salient and telling and important detail about these
shooters is this: each one had a gun.
A gun. If that sicko in Nebraska hadn't had a rifle yesterday,
none of those people at the mall would be dead today. If he
had had only his fists to express his misguided
rage, maybe one person would have had a black eye before
he was restrained by a security guard. If he had had only a
knife, he might have injured only one person before someone
heroically restrained him.
How many of these shootings do we have to have
before people realize that we need vastly tighter
gun control and the banning of some weapons in this
country?
Every time something like this happens, gun nuts blow all
the smoke they can to obscure the fact that guns were
primarily responsible for the tragedy. And
everybody seems to forget the eight or 12 mass
murders that preceded this one in the past few years alone,
Virginia Tech among them.
My sympathies to those affected by this tragedy.
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 6, 2007
Welcome to the Theistic States of America !
President Huckabee proposes a couple minor changes to the flag (above).
It seems as if the same people who object to perceived
slights against Muslims or Jews or Christians couldn't
care less about the fact that "under god" in the
Pledge of Allegiance deeply offends the nontheistic.
Those who walk on eggshells because of Muslim
touchiness about their religion, who see
anti-Semitism under every stone, who bend over
backwards to make aspects of Mormonism appear
less nutty than they are: such people also
show complete insensitivity about imposing theism
in a setting that should be free of religion.
In this era, it seems that every burqa in America
has been given federal landmark status and far-out
notions of fundamentalist Christians are considered
off-limits to satirists, yet the children of non-theists
are virtually forced to engage in religious chants -- and nobody
seems to bring up issues of tolerance and sensitivity as it
relates to them.
It's an outrage, which is why there is now a case pending
before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals about removing
"under god" from the Pledge of Allegiance (or, more accurately,
restoring the Pledge to its original text).
Try to imagine what it feels like to be a public school kid
who thinks theistic beliefs are wacko yet is virtually forced
to join in a daily pledge that includes, effectively, a group
religious chant -- a group religious chant in a school that
is funded by taxpayers who are nontheists, Hindus, Christians,
etc. ("Group religious chant," by the way, is what "under god"
in the Pledge is. And the chant is essentially compulsory
because it's implicitly coercive in a school environment.)
By contrast, putting "in god we trust" on coins or buildings
is not really objectionable, because it's a passive part of the
landscape. And regarding Christmas, I and my Jewish and
nontheist friends celebrate a secular version of Christmas
every year. But all that is very different than forcing a
kid in public school to chant the word "god" with his classmates.
Nowadays, apparently, you have to throw a violent temper
tantrum and riot in order to have your philosophical world
view respected. I'm probably more offended by "under god"
in the Pledge than many Muslims are by the Mohammed
cartoons --- but I'm just nicer and more non-violent
about it, hence some feel they can run over my sensibilities
with impunity.
So when I'm irreverent in my writings toward various
religions, I'm merely taking my cue from how I've been
treated all my life.
To those who defend "under god" in the Pledge by saying
that it has no significant religious meaning, I respond
with: if it has no significant religious meaning, then
why include it? If the two words mean nothing to the
faithful but insult me, then why include them? If
those two words have no significant religious meaning, then
why not replace the words "under God" with, say, "under Allah"?
Why not? It's just two insignificant words. How would you
feel about that if you were a non-Muslim?
The obvious reason is that having public school kids
chant "under Allah" in the Pledge would violate the
beliefs of non-Muslims, just as "under god" violates my
own private beliefs. So why not take out those two words
if they insult people who don't buy the theistic fantasy?
We're talking about public schools, after all, in a
secular society.
As I said, the same people who twist themselves into
pretzels to understand the illogic of the Teddy Bear
Islamists or of the Mormons seem to care not one whit when
it comes to respecting the sensibilities of the nontheistic.
Meanwhile, I listen to presidential candidates spew cockamamie
religious theories -- I think one candidate believes the Earth
was formed 350 years ago, another one thinks Jesus was born in
Park City during the Ghost Dance of 1872, or something like
that -- and much of the press just nods like a bobblehead
doll and fails to ask the obvious hard questions: will your
policy decisions as president be based on the same non-rationality
evident in your religion? Will your decisions be faith-based?
Would you demand a higher standard of evidence and proof
when determining whether we should wage war than you demand
in gauging the truth of the claims in the Bible?
No, those questions are verboten. And any kid who refuses to
chant about god in school becomes a pariah. Forget about reforming
Islam -- America is the nation that needs an Ataturk.
But I digress. Paul
[flag montage by Paul Iorio.]
___________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 3, 2007
The Fate of the Earth
(above) the reason human beings will one day become extinct.
The funniest movie ever made, Stanley Kubrick's
"Dr. Strangelove," is also one of the scariest
pictures ever made -- and it doesn't include a
single joke. But every time I see it, and I'm
sort of embarrassed to admit how many times
I've seen it, I laugh and laugh.
Kubrick began shooting his comedy about nuclear
annihilation 45 years ago last October, back when
it looked like much of the human race was poised
to die an awful radioactive death. And through
the Sixties and Seventies, everyone had a healthy fear
of the Bomb, though in the cushy, Seinfeld Nineties --
during that cozy period between the end of the
Cold War and the attacks of 9/11 ("Peace Breaks Out"
was a memorable newspaper headline of the era) --
we stopped being so afraid of nukes.
Experts diagnosed the proliferation problem many
decades ago, but it has only gotten worse over the
years. As the number of nations with nukes
has mushroomed, we seem to have become less, not more,
concerned about it. We hear more talk about global
warming nowadays than about nuclear winter, which
(if the latter ever arrives) will make even the
most extreme predictions of climate change seem
quaint and moot.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a gigantic admirer of Al Gore's
campaign to fight global warming, but when the story of
the end of the human race finally unfolds, the villain will
probably ultimately be radioactivity, not fluorocarbons, and
the truly prescient work will be Jonathan Schell's "The Fate
of the Earth," not "An Inconvenient Truth."
And it might not be the communists or the jihadists
who do us in, but rather some obscure dictator who has had,
say, an undiagnosed stroke that has made him or her clinically
paranoid.
When we sit there in the year 2022, watching tv meteorologists
tell us where the radiation cloud is headed today, trying to escape
on frozen highways to dodge a high pressure system that
will keep a dome of radiation over the area for a week or
two, we'll be saying to ourselves, "We saw this coming,
yet it still happened." It's like a car skidding on ice
and heading for a wall; you can slam on the brakes all you
want, but inevitably there's going to be a bad collision.
Perhaps there is no solution to nuclear proliferation (just
as there's no cure for most metastasized forms of cancer)
and the spread of nukes will continue unless, as Schell
wrote, we are willing to destroy all nuclear weapons along
with the means to produce them, which would also mean
reducing ourselves to a 19th century level of
technological advancement -- and that would be
impossible in any event, because the knowledge to create
a nuke would still exist.
So the human race has a chronic and probably fatal disease,
and as with any chronic illness, we can manage but not cure
it. Realistic hope lies in surviving not forever but
for as long as we can stave off what is probably
inevitable. Perhaps our next president will consider
creating a new cabinet-level position -- the Deptartment
of Nuclear Weapons Control -- to try to manage, in a
more focused fashion, the central crisis of our time.
For now, we might as well have a good laugh, courtesy
of "Strangelove," about our probable impending doom,
because there will come a time -- say, after
the gamma burns -- when laughter will be very
hard to come by.
* * *
In Berkeley, It's a Two-Man Race: Ron Paul v. Barack Obama
What many pundits are failing to note in noting
the rise of Mike Huckabee in the Iowa polls is that
Huckabee is virtually a favorite son (Iowa borders Arkansas),
and favorite sons (like Harkin in Iowa or Tsongas in
New Hampshire) have often outpolled the eventual nominee
in their home regions.
On the Democratic side, the inevitability of Hillary's
nomination seems slightly less inevitable lately. I've
believed that Barack Obama would make a strong showing
since hearing him speak in Oakland last March 17 (see
Daily Digression, March 18, 2007). I mean, when a guy on a
crutch stands for around two hours in line to see him,
when a woman with an oxygen tank stands and
waits to catch a glimpse of his passing limo, you
know you're dealing with an extraordinarily
intense level of political enthusiasm for a
candidate.
I used to think Obama was unelectable, mostly
because of his liberalism, but now I'm thinking...who
do the Republicans have to run against him?
The GOP doesn't have a formidable candidate. Obama could
conceivably win against a weak GOP candidate, particularly
in an election year that may also become a recession
year -- and there's nothing like a downturn
in the economy to feed the public's appetite
for dramatic change, which is Obama's calling card.
Meanwhile, John Edwards is looking increasingly
like Dick Gephardt circa 2004 -- a candidate
past his expiration date for freshness -- and my
guess is he'll be withdrawing next month,
probably along with John McCain and Fred Thompson
and a couple others who will likely
exit presidential politics for good.
In these weeks before the California primary, which
could be crucial, I've documented the political mood in
perennially activist Berkeley, Calif., by taking some
some photos of bumper stickers and placards
over the past couple weeks, and here they are:
there are lots of Obama stickers in Berkeley, but very few Hillary ones. 
Who woulda thunk it? A GOP Texan is actually popular in Berkeley!
The only Edwards stickers I've seen are Kerry/Edwards '04 leftovers.
fueling voter anger. Will 2008 be a recession year?
The tree-sitters in Berkeley, who celebrated their 1st anniversary in the oaks yesterday, have evidently expanded their agenda. as their sign shows. But I digress. Paul
___________________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for December 1, 2007
The Teddy Bear Islamists
jihadists riot over the darndest things! ("and if I ever have a teddy bear, I think I'm gonna name him Bill! George! anything but Mohammed!") There's not an easy solution to the culture clashes now
going on in the Benelux nations and in France. Starting
with the unforgivable assassination of film maker Theo
van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri in '04 to the Islamic violence
against European cartoonists in '05 to the current riots in
France, the most liberal parts of western Europe are seeing
the weeds strangle the flowers in the garden.
The problem boils down to this: Muslim miitant immigrants are
very unlike immigrant groups of the past in that they want
to destroy the liberal framework that allows them to thrive in
their new homes.
The Muslim extremist immigrants in Amsterdam and Stockholm
are permitted to pray as they choose and speak as they wish,
yet these newcomers are fundamentally hostile to free speech
and freedom of religion.
Yes, we must let a thousand flowers bloom, but we should
never allow weeds that strangle the flowers to grow in
the garden.
Elsewhere, Muslim fundamentalists continue to show a shocking
intolerance for even the most innocuous free expression.
The latest case involves schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons who
is being jailed in Sudan for letting her students name a teddy bear
Mohammed.
First, don't give me any cultural relativism crap, because it
doesn't apply in this case (common sense does), and we shouldn't
be making excuses for fanatics who act his way. Anyone who would
punish someone for allowing her students to name a teddy bear
Mohammed is backward. Period.
Judge Mohammed Youssef of the Kartoum North Criminal Court is
simply a reactionary -- and even more backward than Sonny Perude
and his holy raindancers.
I lived abroad for extended periods when I was a kid, so
I understand reflexively that every nation has both its
throwbacks and its progressives and its moderates and, frankly,
the same poltiical grid we have here, more or less.
There are red states and blue states (or provinces) in Nigeria
and in France and in Japan and in Sudan. And my early experience
helps me to see through an accent or a turban in order to
recognize someone as the David Duke of the Ukraine or the
Eugene McCarthy of Pakistan.
I find that it's always the most provincial Americans -- who
never traveled outside the U.S. in their youths and
were raised by redneck parents -- who now tend to overcorrect
for their own provinciality by trying too hard to see a logic
that isn't there in the jihadist argument.
The Teddy Bear Islamists are not speaking from logic or
reason but from an early religious indoctrination that
they are not able to overcome in adulthood.
If the Third Reich taught us anything, it's that an entire
culture of millions of people can all be very wrong, can
all suffer from a collective mental illness, can all have
no reasonable side to their side of the story.
There are those who only half-heartedly defend Gibbons by
saying, "She didn't mean to blaspheme," as if her punishment
would be somehow justifiable if she had intended some
religious irreverence.
Whether she intended or didn't intend to disrespect Islam
(and she obviously didn't), she doesn't belong in jail.
Religious free expression -- whether in favor of a
religion or in opposition to it or in satirizing it -- should
not be penalized anywhere, and all laws forbidding blasphemy
should be scrapped as antiques from a less enlightened era.
Of course, the fanatics have every right to be offended
by whatever offends them but have absolutely no right to
get violent about it and should work on developing
alternate ways to express their anger instead of reaching
for the violence option every time someone tells a religious
joke they don't like. And they should
learn to be tolerant and to appreciate (or at least not
kill) the diversity of a thousand flowers blooming.
But I digress. Paul
[photo of teddy bear from bearsonboard.org.]
________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 19, 2007
If I Were Running All Television News, Here's What I'd Do
Create a prime-time show called "Conversations with Katie Couric."
GIVE KATIE COURIC HER OWN SHOW: CBS has
miscast Katie, which is easy to do because she is a bit
too hard for "Today" but not quite hard enough
for "The CBS Evening News." And that's why CBS
should take her off the "Evening News" and create
a prime time (10pm) show for her, modeled
loosely on Murrow's "Person to Person," where
her gift for gab can flourish. Call it "Conversations
with Katie Couric," a weekly interview-centered
series with Couric doing the "get" interview of each
week; the first half would begin with five minutes of
breaking or headline news and then move into newsy
interviews, while the second half would feature Q&As
with entertainment figures, who would also perform at
the end of each show.
* * *
CBS's Matt Lauer?
MATT LAUER TO "60 MINUTES": Lauer's interviewing
has become much sharper after all these years -- to the
point where he now sounds like he'd fit right in at
"60 Minutes." It's time for him to take the next
step up.
* * *
International velvet -- but with a tough Q&A style.
KATTY KAY TO "SIXTY MINUTES," TOO?: Don't let the
velvet manner fool you -- she's a surprisingly tough interviewer
and would also be a strong addition to "60 Minutes," though
she's not quite at the Lesley Stahl level (who is?).
* * *
"Am I the only one who notices that people eventually retire?!"
REPLACE ANDY ROONEY WITH MAUREEN DOWD:
Who will replace Rooney, who has served long and
humorously for his network, when he leaves? Could
Maureen Dowd be persuaded to contribute a weekly endnote?
* * *
Lots of guys see her and lose control of at least two glands.
ERIN BURNETT, "TODAY" HOST?: I'm suspicious of anyone who
gets a seal of approval from the odious Rush Limbaugh, but
there's no denying that lots of men lose control of their salivary
(and other) glands when they see Burnett. Plus she has
this rare ability to say memorable things about very
dry topics (there has never been a housing recession that
hasn't precipitated a general recession, for instance).
And she's postively carbonated. If I ran NBC News, I'd make
her a co-anchor of "Today" immediately.
* * *
A natural at being in charge.
"WASHINGTON WEEK" SUGGESTIONS: Gwen Ifill,
who should probably be credited with the fall of Trent Lott
(remember her show on the Friday before the Lott storm?), runs
a usually terrific program. But there should be more David Sanger,
Linda Greenhouse, Martha Raddatz (she gets better each time
out), Janine Zacharia (hey, a reporter who's actually not
afraid to be inspired!), Janet Hook, E.J. Dionne. Less Michael
Duffy, less Joan Biskupic, far less Gebe Martinez,
* * *
An appearance on Leno might even it up with Williams.
BEST NIGHTLY NEWS ANCHOR: Charles Gibson remains
the best of the anchors by many measures but Brian Williams
is close behind. Funny thing is, Williams's surprisingly
humorous SNL turn has actually made Gibson appear a bit
over-serious by contrast. Can a Gibson appearance on Leno or
Letterman be far away?
* * *
Astonishingly awful.
FIRE NANCY GRACE: Shrill and wrong-headed, Nancy
Grace shouldn't work another day in journalism until she admits
her failings in the biased coverage of the Duke Three case.
(Shouldn't there be a penalty for being wrong and a reward
for being right in tv journalism?)
* * *
Amazing grace.
CAROLYN JOHNSON TO ABC: Still mostly unknown to
national audiences, this local anchor at the ABC affiliate here in
the Bay Area is brainy and refined and pretty. If I were
running ABC News, I'd bring her to the network by (initially)
having her do some on-air health and science
reports for "World News." (Her colleague, Dan Ashley, is
also impressive.)
* * *
KPIX's coverage of the Jill Carroll hostage crisis.
AND FINALLY, LOCALLY: FIX PIX Though there's
a lot of talent at KPIX, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco,
the news division is almost comically error prone (see photo).
And it also has a morning anchor who pronounces "fiscal"
physical. Improvement required.
But I digress. Paul
[photo credits: Couric pic from Glamour.com; Lauer from hbbc.com; kay from casieonline.com; Rooney from xyhd.tv; Burnett from imageshack.com; Ifill from forum2006.nd.edu; Gibson from nymag.com; Grace from cbc.ca; Johnson by Paul Iorio; KPIX by Paul Iorio.]
___________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 15, 2007
If the 2008 presidential race were determined by a
tally of bumper stickers, Barack Obama would become
the Democratic nominee and Ron Paul would be the GOP
candidate -- at least in the San Francisco Bay Area!
Hillary bumper stickers are around but not very numerous,
Edwards stickers exist mostly in the form of leftover
Kerry/Edwards '04 stickers (and there is a surprising number
of 'em still around), and the Kucinich-bumper-sticker-epidemic
of early '07 has sort of faded like UFOs in the mist (to mix
a metaphor). But "Obama '08" can be seen on a lot of fenders in
the area.
Lately, both in San Francisco and Berkeley, Ron Paul
stickers and posters have been cropping up; I saw one
sticker on the UC Berkeley campus the other week and
a poster in the window of an apartment in north
San Francisco the other day.
Which leads to an intriguing question: suppose (and
this is very unlikely, admittedly) the nominees are
Hillary and Ron Paul (who wins in some populist Internet
uprising)? There would then be a Republican candidate
to the left of the Democratic nominee on the war, causing
traditional Dems to vote Paul and trad Republicans to
vote Hillary.
To complicate matters, I saw a chilling bumper sticker
for sale on a stand on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley the
other day, and it read: "Nader '08." Of course,
in the above scenario, Nader would be in the bizarre
position of siphoning votes from the Republican candidate
this time. Go figure.
* * *
Now that Marvel Comics has put some of its superhero
comics online, can we expect some of the indies
to follow suit?
Specifically, wouldn't it be nice to have cyber-access to
Daniel Clowes's "Ghost World"?
Flipping through one of the few "Ghost World"s included
in Clowes's "Eightball" series in the 1990s, I was
reminded of the great powder blue twilight look of the
thing (the movie adaptation was amazing, but I keep
wondering whether it could have been filmed in blue/black
and white like the strip).
Anyway, for those who want to see "Ghost World" online,
here's a taste: the first page of the episode included in
"Eightball" #16:
But I digress. Paul
_________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 14, 2007
Isn't it interesting that Sonny Perdue waited
until the AccuWeather Five Day Forecast was
solid before doing his kooky pray-for-rain
thing on the Georgia state Capitol steps? As
the Church Lady might put it, "How convenient."
Days before the pray-in, meteorologists were
predicting thunderstorms by Thursday in the
Atlanta area.
So now it's inevitable that some cornball tv news
anchor will get on the air on Thursday and say, "And
finally on this broadcast: today it rained in
the Atlanta metro area. In fact, it was a soaker,
just what the parched peach state needed. And this
comes merely two days after the governor of Georgia
prayed for rain on the steps of the state
Capitol. [Reganesque pause]Could
it be that someone up there likes him?"
Meanwhile, here are some other things Perdue might do to
create a rainstorm:
1. Avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalk
2. Sacrifice a lamb and a goat, and co-mingle their blood with
parsley on top
For now, Perdue's imitation of the Taliban, which also believes
god and government should be one, will have to suffice.
But I digress. Paul
_____________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 12, 2007
First-hand report on the oil spill in San Francisco Bay
"Just come on down to the shoreline/Where the water used to be." -- Steve Forbert
Above: San Francisco Bay, yesterday afternoon. (photo by Paul Iorio)
Yesterday afternoon I took an eight-mile hike
through San Francisco, mostly to see and
photograph the damage from the oil spill that
happened near the Bay Bridge last Wednesday.
Walking along the north shore, I saw some places
that were devastated by the slick and others that appeared
to be untouched, though a lot of the shoreline was
cordoned off with ribbons -- and "Danger" signs were
ubiquitous.
The worst I saw was just west of Fisherman's
Wharf, around what is called Aquatic Park, where
gooey black oil was coating some rocks (but not
others) as if someone had splattered black paint
on them. I saw several Gulls with oil on them, but
none completely covered with it; one had oil on the
left side of its neck and on the bottoms
of its feet (see photo), the latter being
the most common condition among affected birds.
The contaminated Gulls and ducks appeared to be
notably less energetic and vibrant than the other
birds around them.
Bird stained by oil on the left side of its neck (and on its feet), on the north shoreline of San Francisco, November 11, 2007. (Photo by Paul Iorio)
Elsewhere, I didn't see any boats in the Marina
blackened (unlike the ones that were reportedly
damaged in Sausalito) and didn't see much spillage
along some of the shore north of Crissy Field to
the Golden Gate Bridge area.
All told, the real horror is that one of the
greatest bays on the planet could have been
thoroughly ruined for many years if the
Cosco Busan's fuel tank had had an even slightly
larger rupture. One way to try to stop oil spills
in the future might be to drastically increase the
fines against companies involved, so that they
have an extreme financial incentive to make sure
they don't put a drunk in the captain's seat or sail
a ship that is even slightly faulty.
For now, the Coast Guard might do well to post new
signs that quote the old song by Steve Forbert:
"Oil, oil/Don't buy it at the station/You can
have it now for free/Just come on down to the
shoreline/Where the water used to be."
But I digress. Paul
Oil on the rocks near San Francisco's Aquatic Park, November 11, 2007. (photo by Paul Iorio.)
_______________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 11, 2007
Remembering Norman Mailer
My only first-hand encounter with Norman Mailer was
a distant one and happened in February 1989 in Manhattan,
at a PEN reading in support of Salman Rushdie, freshly
marked for death by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Mailer
spoke and also read from "The Satanic Verses," and
the event was interrupted by a bomb scare of some
sort -- though he was completely undaunted by that
fact and even a bit fired up by it.
From the podium, Mailer noted that telephoned bomb
threats only cost a quarter to make -- and then he
challenged the religious right of Islam: "Blow out your
farts," he roared, quoting Jean Genet.
It was a memorable moment -- virtually everyone in the audience
was emboldened by Mailer at a time when we needed to
be emboldened.
Sure, he had his personal flaws. He really couldn't be credibly
accused of modesty (one of his books was even titled
"Advertisements for Myself"), but then modesty is an overrated
virtue, much easier to achieve once you've already received
your due (hey, Muhammad Ali, who Mailer vividly wrote about,
made pure poetry out of immodesty).
Truthfulness is more important. So is insight. And his very
best work had plenty of both -- and the power to make readers
see the world in brand new ways.
But I digress. Paul
[photo of Mailer from ViewImages.com; photographer unknown.]
______________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 9, 2007
Since I've been focusing on the 1960s in the last
couple columns, here are two more Sixties-related
DVDs of note:
"It's all the same street," sings the Grateful Dead's
Bob Weir on a DVD called "Rock & Roll Goldmine." The
familiar lyric, of course, is from the Dead's "Truckin',"
which they perform live at an unidentified concert. But
the reason for watching is there's a wonderfully
spontaneous moment when Weir completely blanks out
as the song begins, missing the first verse and catching up
only during the "same street" line. It's revealing to see the
good-natured way both Jerry Garcia and Weir react to the
miscue -- and it's a nice live version of the song.
Also, now that the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson's
"Thriller" is being celebrated, perhaps it's time for a
fresh re-evaluation of Jackson. A good place to start
is the footage of the Jackson Five's first performance,
in 1969, on "The Ed Sullivan Show" (available on disc three
of Sullivan's "Rock 'n' Roll Classics" series).
Sullivan is not just enthusiastic but in genuine awe
after watching 10-year-old Michael Jackson and his
brothers light up the place with "I Wonder Who's Loving
Her Now." And he applauds Diana Ross, who's in the audience,
for her gargantuan A&R find.
"The little fella in front is incredible," says Sullivan,
seeming almost dazed by the band.
Michael Jackson's performance was both dazzling and sad;
dazzling because you could see what an epochal talent
Jackson was; but sad because...well, he looked and acted
more like a pressured adult than he does today. At age 10,
he acted like a 40-year-old, and at age 40, he acted like a
10-year-old.
The expression on his face tells us everything we need
to know about the very adult pressures he was being saddled
with as a kid (show biz deadlines, contracts, complex cues,
etc.). Sure, we all danced to the sounds of Michael Jackson's
lost childhood -- sounded great, didn't it? -- but
many of us now have no sympathy for the freakish adult that
loss has produced.
But I digress. Paul
_______________________________________________
THE DAILY DIGRESSION
for November 8, 2007
Brokaw's "Boom!" and My Own Subjective Remembrances of the 1960s
the suburban kids of WWII vets came of age in the
1960s and looked something like this.
(photo by Paul Iorio)
Now that Tom Brokaw is making the rounds and talking up
his new book, "Boom!," about the 1960s, here are a few of my own
subjective remembrances of the Sixties.
First, there was a huge difference between the older
baby boomers, born around 1940 like Brokaw (the
Elvis-to-Beatles generation) and the younger ones,
born around 1957, as I was (the Beatles-to-Led Zeppelin
generation).
When Brokaw was eight years old, Perry Como and
Peggy Lee were duking it out for dominance on the
music charts.
When I was eight years old, everyone was talking
about the rivalry between the Beatles and the Stones.
And the next year, kids my age were wondering
whether the Monkees would eclipse the Beatles.
Yes, there was a moment, just a moment, if you
were between eight and twelve years old in the fall
of 1966 (Brokaw was 26), just after the Beatles had
played their last-ever live gig but before the release
of "Strawberry Fields Forever," when it looked like
the Monkees, with the one-two punch of "Clarksville"
and "I'm a Believer," might actually overtake the
Beatles (that was the-talk-of-the-recess-yard when I
was in the 4th grade and still carrying around my
Monkees lunchbox -- talk that was poo-pooed by my hip
babysitter, who knew better and would always remove my
Herman's Hermits and Monkees and Beatles 45s from
the turntable and put on full-length LPs by the
Mamas and the Papas, the Beatles, the Supremes, the
Beatles, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Beatles, etc.).
I sometimes think the Sixties actually began when Khrushchev
made his famous space-age "flying" gesture with his hands
during the Kitchen Debate with Nixon in 1959 -- a sign
that neo-psychedelic perception had already
started to permeate the mainstream.
It's hard to say when the 1970s began, but I do know the
1960s ended for good when the Ramones released their
anti-hippie debut in 1976 (see photo below).
The last vestiges of the 1960s were blown away for good in 1976,
with the release of The Ramones's debut. (photo by Roberta Bayley)
And, yes, it's true the '68 presidential election wasn't the
squeaker it has been made out to be (as I noted in The Daily
Digression of September 30, 2007, posted below, the combined
right wing vote -- Nixon's total plus Wallace's -- equalled
almost 60%). But that doesn't really say anything about
the conservatism of the era, because a big percentage of
anti-war Democrats -- put off by the party's unfair treatment
of Eugene McCarthy, depressed by the assassination of Robert
Kennedy and unenthusiastic about Hubert Humphrey, who they
considered a puppet of LBJ -- didn't vote.
My own remembrance of 1968: I was in the 6th grade and
unusually politically active for my age. (Below is my
6th grade class notebook cover, on which I wrote
"Julian Bond" for president. Bond had recently given
an impressive speech at the Democratic National Convention.)
Every weekend for a time in 1968, I'd write a new political
speech -- on the Abe Fortas controversy or on the ABM treaty or
on the latest bombing in Vietnam -- and deliver it on a garbage
can in the backyard of our suburban house; and my audience
was always exactly one person: my younger sister, who
would sit quietly and listen as brother Paul gave his speech.
I was for Julian Bond for President in the 6th grade.
Taking my cue from the college protesters of the
day, I initiated and organized a cafeteria boycott in
the 6th grade to protest a new rule that said students
were not allowed to go to the bathroom without
being accompanied by someone else (in
order to prevent graffiti).
The night before the boycott, I phoned almost everybody in
the sixth grade class at Riverhills Elementary School
in Temple Terrace, Florida, and asked them to bring
their own lunches and to boycott the school's cafeteria
food that week. Then I enlisted my younger sister
and had her call her own friends in the 4th grade
to ask them to join in, too.
Much to my surprise, my boycott was a massive success.
Nearly everybody brought their own lunches that week,
and the school had mountains of uneaten beans and rice
and Salisbury Steaks left over at the end of each day.
School officials were pissed. When they found out
I was the person behind the cafeteria boycott, I was
called in by the principal, who sounded like a George
Wallace supporter as she gave me a stern lecture
condemning the rebelliousness of Today's Youth.
I was eleven years old and was already seeing the
downside of being the Mark Rudd/Abbie Hoffman of
Riverhills Elementary!
The next year, I attended a progressive private
school where I was happy to have been given an outlet
for my political ideas: a newspaper called The Weekly
Wong. My first articles for the paper, in 1969, were
an anti-Nixon satire called "I Dreamed I Was Richard
Nixon" and an anti-war editorial (both are
posted below).
Satirizing Nixon, when I was 12 (aw, c'mon -- what d'ya expect? I was barely out of elementary school!!).
Opposing the Vietnam War, at age 12.
By 1969, when I was 12, I had already gone beyond student
politics to community activism, and some of it was even
covered by the main newspaper of my hometown at the time, The
Tampa Tribune (there was an article in the Tribune in '69
about my anti-war fundraising and another article in '73 or '74
quoting me about an Impeach Nixon rally I had helped to organize).
But my political outbursts had actually started
much earlier, at age seven, in 1964, when I wrote this
scathing "editorial" about the presidential race
(no, I wasn't a Goldwater Girl!):
scathing editorial I wrote at age 7.
And this one:
an endorsement, at age 7.
[Incidentally, my political activism happened almost exclusively
between the ages of 10 and 17; since age 18, I've not been
politically active. (I've taken a different direction and gone on to
write and report for almost all the major newspapers in the U.S. and for
several magazines.) Interesting that I was extremely involved in
politics in childhood but am not today, in contrast to my sister, who
was not very active in politics in childhood but is extremely involved
in it today.]
On a day-to-day level, what did the 1960s really look and feel
like in America? To be honest: like the suburban landscape
portrayed in the first part of the movie "Apollo 13," which
inadvertently captures the co-existence of both the Silent
Majority and the Baby Boomers. (And, yes, the break-up of
the Beatles was truly that traumatic if you were of a
certain age!) Now that I think of it, even more accurate
was the Sixties suburbia of Oliver Stone's "Born on the 4th
of July."
Sixties movies (and feminism) arguably began right here,
with Michelangelo Antonioni's "L'Avventura,"
which resonates even today (David Chase's
open-ended "Sopranos" finale echoes the ending
of the film).
But I digress. Paul
__________________
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