I Razz The Razzies

I want to express my displeasure with the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation.

Am I angry that they've nominated the legendary Sarah Jessica Parker for worst actress in two separate performances in two separate movies? No, since she has shown obvious poor judgment of late in the roles she plays.

Am I upset that Adam Sandler got a whopping eleven nominations, including worst actor and worst actress, for his non-comedy Jack and Jill, in which he plays both title roles? No, because I consider Sandler to be one of those typical dumb American males who go from adolescence to senility while bypassing adulthood, and so I do not take him seriously . . . at all.

Am I stunned that Madonna didn't get nominated as worst director for her ego voyage W./E.? No, because I don't think that movie was eligible for consideration anyway. Wait until 2013.

No, I'm peeved because the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation chose this year not to announce its nominations the day before the Oscar nominations or give out its awards the day before the Oscar ceremony. Instead, GRAF founder John Wilson and the voting members of his group chose to announce the nominations now and have their "award" ceremony on April 1 this time, because April Fool's Day was deemed a perfect date for it.

"I have always wondered if we stepped slightly away from lockstep with the Oscars, what would happen," Wilson explained. "We just kept hoping the Oscars would do their ceremony on April 2, but they just never did."

Right. As we all know, the Oscars were once held in late March, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences moved the ceremony up to February to take advantage of TV ratings sweeps. As for holding the Razzies five weeks later, it defeats the purpose of getting Hollywood's worst out of our system before we celebrate Hollywood's finest.

No matter, I eagerly look forward to seeing the purveyors of everything wrong with American cinema get their just deserts as soon as March has gone out like a lamb. And Wilson and the GRAF will come roaring in like lions . . . to which Adam Sandler will likely be thrown.

The Miseducation of Rick Santorum

Liberals have likely been double-checking their passports and looking into foreign real estate trends with Richard John Santorum becoming an even more viable candidate for the Presidency . . . especially since he appeared in a Tennessee church and attacked President Obama for saying that every child should go to college. "I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely," he also told Glenn Beck, expressing fear that liberal college professors are trying to pollute young minds. "The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country."

The Pennsylvania State University alumnus somehow sees higher education, traditionally the realm of critical thinking and intellectual development, as a form of brainwashing just because students tend to develop more tolerant attitudes towards different sorts of people and may be open to more contemporary ideas. So how did Rick manage to escape indoctrination - not just in Penn State's undergraduate department but at the university's Dickinson Law School? And how much liberal indoctrination could there possibly be in the University of Pittsburgh's business administration master's program, from which Ricko received an M.B.A. in 1981?

This latest hypocritical belittling of intellectual development from the Republican party as an un-American activity is pathetic, but even more troubling is that the real crisis of American higher education is not that students are being told what to think but that they're graduating without learning how to think . . . just like Rick Santorum. America boasts of having the most colleges and universities in the world - at last count a total of 5,758 higher education institutions, an average of more than 115 per state - but, as I have noted before, few of these institutions have produced many great thinkers. For more on this subject, please see my earlier post, "Higher Miseducation."

As for Santorum, I imagine that he's shown no curiosity in art and letters despite his own education. I seriously doubt that he's even displayed any curiosity in the intricate machinations of the body politic despite his own B.A. degree in political science. It would benefit a politician running for President to learn of the rise of Islam in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to understand the Middle East or the balances of power in post-Napoleonic Europe to understand how the Old Country went from imperial competition in the nineteenth century to a legally sanctioned socioeconomic community today. But Santorum seems to be comfortable with his own righteousness and absolutism without seeking out the nuances of how the world he'd have to deal with as President got to be the way it is. All he knows is that Iran may have the bomb, and we may - no, as far as he sees it, will - have to start another war in the Middle East.

If Santorum does get the Republican presidential nomination, I hope he releases his college transcripts. I want to see how he fared in his remedial courses.

Music Video Of the Week - February 24, 2012

"The Show Must Go On" by Leo Sayer (Go to the link in the upper right hand corner.)

Drilling For Ignorance

Maybe it's time for Republicans to lighten up on the energy debate.

With gasoline prices rising again, Republican presidential candidates are accusing President Obama of not doing enough to get prices in the opposite direction, suich as drilling for more oil. Obama shot back today in Miami, pointing out that his administration has drilled, baby, drilled - all over the place, with drilling increasing fourfold since he took office in January 2009. But with demand for oil in countries like China and India rising, Obama points out, gasoline prices are bound to go up based on global market demand. And generous subsidies still keep gasoline half as expensive as it is in European countries. If gasoline were sold in the United States at prices genuinely based on the free market that Republicans worship, we'd be paying as much as the French and the Germans.

Republicans, of course, are going to ignore these stubborn facts. They will also ignore the huge profits oil companies are raking in, as well as the fact that the U.S. now exports more oil than it imports - qualifying us for OPEC membership. They'll continue to insist on two-dollar-per-gallon gas. Of course, if we hadn't gotten addicted to big cars, if we had more mass transit, if Republican governors didn't keep canceling high-speed rail projects (as has happened twice in Florida in the past fifteen years), if more people could walk to work, and if more people could bike to work, as the mayor of Montclair, New Jersey does, how likely would Republicans even be starting conversations based on such asinine talking points? As I type, the House is pushing for dedicated spending for highways only, and mass transit projects like the Second Avenue Subway in New York City are aberrations rather than norm in this country.

Texas populist Jim Hightower once said that if ignorance were as valuable as oil, he'd want drilling rights on George Bush's head. He was referring to the elder George Bush. But if ignorance were as valuable as oil, the combined heads of both George Bushes wouldn't even pay half as many dividends as those of the four remaining candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

By the way, I have a message for those who bitch about high gas prices but won't ride a bus: Get a subcompact. You'll find a subcompact more nimble and fun than your SUV. Get a Chevrolet Sonic, and help an American autoworker keep his job.

Newt Targets The Volt

In his latest attempt to distinguish himself from both President Obama and his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich blasted the President's transportation and energy policy while campaigning in Oklahoma by claiming it was anti-American to encourage the development of electric cars and more fuel-efficient conventional vehicles when the free market has shown a clear preference for light trucks, preferring instead to drill for more oil to increase the supply of gasoline and bring gas prices down (although American oil would be sold on the global market and have no effect on gas prices home). He drew numerous cheers from the hayseeds he was addressing when he added, "You cannot put a gun rack on a Volt."

It's easy to attack General Motors after it used its government loans to develop an electric Chevy that costs almost as much as an entry-level Cadillac and has had teething problems in its early stages. Also, anyone who needs a gun rack on his vehicle wouldn't buy one anyway. But it's weird that Gingrich would complain about so much money spent on helping American car companies develop electric cars when, as Michigan Live's Jeff Wattrick is ready to remind us, Newt wants a lunar base that would be more expensive and yield fewer consumer-friendly benefits. Newt also says he would prefer to spend the subsidy on helping Americans who can't afford a Volt to buy a cheaper used car - preferably a pickup, I'm sure.

Okay. Never mind that a subsidy for a used car would make it less necessary for GM to sell a new car and make it less necessary for GM to keep as many dealerships as they have remaining after the mass dealership closures of 2009. Yes, GM is making smaller cars, but they've been making small cars since the late seventies. That includes the downsizing of their larger cars in response to rising gas prices; the big sedans GM used to make before the 1973 oil crisis bear no resemblance to their largest sedans of today. The current crop of GM's largest cars are two feet shorter than the big sedans they were making forty years ago - because the free market demanded smaller (but not necessarily small) cars. And yes, the Volt costs nearly a$40,000, but new technologically advanced products always cost a lot when first introduced. As they technology becomes more mainstream, the price of the product comes down. DVD players, after all, were very expensive when they first went on the market it 1997. Now they're so cheap that even CVS can sell them.

And, true, more people have bought pickups and SUVs in the past twenty years rather than small cars, but no one is stopping Detroit from making them. And if you do need a vehicle that can bear a gun rack, you can still buy a Chevrolet Silverado pickup.

Oh, and, by the way, while you can't put a gun rack on a Volt, you can put a gun rack in a Volt:

Happy driving!

Little Note Nor Long Remember

Okay, this is really dumb . . ..

The National Park Service has opened a new museum devoted to Abraham Lincoln across the street from Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., where he was assassinated in 1865. The museum is called the Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership. The museum's mission statement is to educate people on Lincoln's presidency and impact on popular culture. Visitors, the new museum's Web site explains, can "explore the lasting effect Abraham Lincoln’s presidency — and its untimely end — have had on our country." Umm, we already have something that does that. It's called the school system.

Any and all indications that this is going to be seen as Epcot at Northwest Tenth Street are likely to be confirmed when you walk in the building. The museum contains a replica railroad car with artifacts from Lincoln's funeral, as well as a theatrical model of the tobacco barn where John Wilkes Booth was cornered and shot to death by Union soldiers. Also on display are mannequin statues of Presidents who took inspiration from Lincoln, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower, along with pictures of Lincoln, quotes from Lincoln, videos of portrayals of Lincoln, an interactive display of Lincoln on the five-dollar bill, Lincoln Logs . . . everything but a Lincoln Town Car.

This proves once again that Americans can't be taught history unless you jazz it up with all sorts of hands-on displays and irrelevant stimuli to entertain their short attention spans. Not too long ago, the site of the wonderfully preserved Ford's Theatre and the small, inconspicuous display of artifacts in its basement told the story of Lincoln and his assassination sufficiently and people could walk into the building - and the Petersen House across the street, where Lincoln died - and feel all the emotion and gravity of what transpired that Good Friday and Holy Saturday in 1865. Now you need all sorts of Disneyfied displays to bring history to life. But, as walking into Independence Hall in Philadelphia, one of the few buildings in Independence National Historical Park that hasn't been retrofitted with drywall and Plexiglas partitions and with dropped ceilings with track lighting to tell the story of the American Revolution in a "contemporary" style, proves, none of that is necessary. You don't need rooms walled off and kept under glass to make what happened in them seem more special, nor do you need mannequin statues or video displays to make a visit to an historic site more compelling. Standing in that room in the old Pennsylvania State House (what Independence Hall used to be called) and pondering what was achieved there should be enough. Btu maybe we Americans don't have enough historical imagination to contemplate the solemnity of a vacant room anymore. We need an interactive display to explain history to us. Hence the National Constitution Center near Independence Hall, and now . . . the Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership.

The focal point of the new Lincoln museum is a 34-foot-tall tower of books about Lincoln in the building's central atrium - seven thousand titles - to demonstrate just how important Lincoln still is. You know, in order to divine Lincoln's importance, maybe it would be better if we Americans actually read these books instead of stacking them.

In fact, I'll take one right now. Heads up!

Funny Business

When I was a kid in the '70s, I had different ideas of what I wanted to be when I grew up. At one point I wanted to be a carpenter, because I lived in a subdivision where there was always a house going up every other week or so, and building things looked like a fun job. Later, I wanted to be a highway builder - the guy who maps out and designs the highways. I mentioned that once on this blog. Needless to say, I pursued neither career . . . and I'm glad I didn't. We don't need any more subdivisions and highways in America.

Anyway, I more or less decided on some kind of career involving writing when I was in my teens. But what kind of writing? I suggested to my mother and sister that I could be a comedy writer.

My sister replied, "You'll starve!" Not very encouraging.

I still entertained the idea for awhile . . . until one weekend evening when we were returning from a family outing at the Jersey Shore. In the back seat of the car with my sister, I was tossing out ideas for "Saturday Night Live"-type skits to my sister to see what she thought. She grew vocally exasperated. From the front of the car, my mother said, "Steve - stop bothering your sister!"

That was the last time I ever considered becoming a comedy writer. Ultimately, I became a news writer, and, on this blog, I decided that I would comment on the news of the day and do so in straight fashion. No jokes. Just tell it like it is.

My writing has never been funnier.

P.S. I recently watched a whole episode of "Saturday Night Live." I only chuckled once or twice through the whole ninety minutes. I'm sorry the mothers of the writing staff didn't tell their kids to be quiet when they were considering comedy sketch writing as a career.

Know Your (Lack of) Rights

In staging a U.S. House hearing on the need to preserve religious freedom by giving employers the right to deny contraception and birth control coverage, and having an all-male panel of witnesses, the Republicans appear to have shot themselves in the feet. They appear to be wrecking their changes of electoral success in November, right?

Not so fast. The GOP may be driving moderates and most female voters away with their assault on women's rights, but they're energizing more Christian conservatives into showing up at the polls this fall and possibly making the difference in close congressional elections, as well as in the presidential election . . . where a few thousand or even a few hundred popular votes can swing a state's electoral college votes toward the Republicans. The strategy already seems to be working in the U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts, which has a large working-class Catholic population; woman of the people Elizabeth Warren seems to be in trouble in her bid to unseat incumbent Cosmo boy Scott Brown.

Oh yeah, the singling out of this particular aspect of the Affordable Care Act could attract independent and establishment Republican voters who don't care about contraceptive coverage but detest the health care law to come out and vote, because the law includes a government mandate for everyone to buy medical insurance. Such voters may see the contraceptive coverage requirement as a reminder of the idea of government intrusion into health care, not necessarily as a way to keep women down. They may vote Republican simply to get the law repealed.

Meanwhile, the Fat Man In the State House, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, vetoed a bill allowing gay marriage in the Garden State after both houses of the New Jersey legislature approved it with solid majorities. They just don't have enough votes to override it. This will help Christie shore up his bona fides with the national right-wing movement - look for lots of out-of-state money to pour into his campaign for re-election next year - and position him for a presidential run in 2016 or 2020.

Despite ample evidence that the majority of voters always reject by popular vote the extension of rights to others - in New Jersey itself, the all-male electorate voted down a referendum to grant women the vote in the state in 1915 - Christie prefers to have the gay marriage issue voted on by referendum. How many states have placed a referendum on gay marriage before the voters? 31. How many of these referenda have passed? Zero. Christie says he respects the intelligence and integrity of the voters to make the right decision on the issue. Why would they - they voted for him, didn't they?

The only people who should vote on civil rights are legislators. The Democrats in New Jersey have made it clear that they won't stand for a referendum on this issue, which would likely fail. They also plan to garner enough votes to override Christie's veto before the current legislative session ends in January 2014. Personally, I think gay marriage has a better chance of passing by referendum. :-(

Music Videos Of the Week - February 17, 2012

"Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" by the Beatles (Go to the link in the upper right hand corner.)

To Be Blunt About It . . .

President Obama apparently didn't know how big a hornet's nest he was stirring up by advocating a contraception insurance coverage directive that required faith-based institutions to provide such coverage to their employees. Although he revised it to allow religious organizations to be exempted and have insurance companies fill the gap by mandate, and although Catholic groups are pleased with the compromise, the pro-life movement in the Republican party sees the revised version as forcing other employers to provide coverage contrary to their own moral objections.

In that spirit of ill will, Senator Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican elected in 2010, has introduced an amendment that would allow all employers the right to refuse coverage to employees for any medical procedure they deem morally offensive. These procedures include maternity care, HIV/AIDS screenings, diabetes testing . . . any procedure involving treatment and care for a medical condition which could have been brought on by a lifestyle that the employer may find unhealthy and/or immoral. Thirty-seven Senate Republicans, including accidental senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, have signed on to the Blunt amendment, which would likely be mated to a transportation bill - the same transportation bill ending dedicated funding to non-automotive transportation modes and initiatives - currently up for consideration in the House.

Oh yeah, don't think Brown is shooting himself in the foot with his support of this amendment as he runs for a full Senate term in liberal Massachusetts. It will likely get him more support from national Republican and pro-life groups and win him favor with Catholic Democrats and independents in his state. Brown can't fend off the challenge he faces in November from Democrat Elizabeth Warren with only Republican votes; he needs to fool enough gullible Massachusetts voters with his manly pro-life positioning. Enough Bay Staters, after all, were taken in to elect him to the Senate once - and to elect Mitt Romney as governor in 2002.

Meanwhile, the Virginia state legislature is pushing a pair of pro-life bills that could conceivably (no pun intended) become law. One would require mandatory ultrasounds for women seeking abortions. But because most abortions are performed within twelve weeks, a transvaginal ultrasound - literally inserting the instrument into a woman's body - would be required. So what, says Virginia State Delegate Todd Gilbert (Republican- male caucus) - abortion isn't really medically necessary all the time, he argues, it's mostly just a "lifestyle convenience."

The other bill would recognize fetuses as persons, similar to the bills rejected in Colorado and Mississippi. Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, a Republican, has indicated that he will sign at least one of them, most likely to burnish his vice presidential prospects.

Apparently, it's not the American infrastructure, antiquated as it may be, that is severely outdated. It's the American political establishment. And the idea that a handful of reactionaries could win power at the ballot box and use it to deny rights to others with a technologically superior communications system and a ruthless organizational structure suggests that we're closer to fascism in America than any of us have ever imagined.

Santorum Rising

Is Rick Santorum for real? I think he is.

Ricko the Sicko has statistically insignificant leads over Mitt Romney in national polls for the Republican presidential nomination, but the fact that they're leads just the same has given Mitt Romney cause for concern. Romney is coming off as more of a phony as he tries to tighten what had once been thought to be a secure grip on the nomination, all the while coming across as an out-of-touch spoiled rich kid who doesn't seem angry about the perceived decline of the American middle class. Rick Santorum seems more authentic as an angry working-class-rooted conservative warrior going against the powerful economic elites, despite the unpleasant truth that the policies he espouses - which would make such economic interests more powerful and elitist - aren't that different from the ones Romney supports. But he has an obvious appeal to blue-collar "Reagan Democrats" who are inclined to vote Republican in presidential elections on cultural issues.

It is for that reason alone that Santorum should be no less underestimated than Newt Gingrich has been. (We can't rule out Newt yet either.) President Obama is presiding over an economy that seems to be on the mend, but we could reach a particular threshold, at which the economy has improved to the point where it's good enough to let people focus more on social issues (the kind of social issues that were resolved decades, if not centuries, ago in other Western countries) but not good enough to be neutralized as an issue in and of itself. A condition like that could make a Republican presidential candidate like Santorum very attractive.

Do not imagine for one moment that a rabidly conservative and intellectually bankrupt politician like Santorum could never make it to the White House. I've said it before and I'll say it again (an annoying habit on this blog, I know, but what the heck, history has been repeating itself a lot lately): Back in the 1990s, everyone knew that the idea of "President George Walker Bush" was ridiculous.

Rolling In the Deep

I didn't watch the Grammy Awards last night - I tend to avoid awards shows these days, they're so boring - but I have heard that the impromptu Whitney Houston tribute was very nicely done.

The biggest story, of course, was Adele sweeping the awards she was up for, winning Album Of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album (21), Record Of the Year ("Rolling In the Deep"), Song Of the Year (ditto), Best Short Form Music video (again, the same song),and Best Pop Solo Performance ("Someone Like You"). It's official: In popular music, it's cool to be British again.

And despite the continuing war against rock and roll from rappers, trendies, and demographically driven radio conglomerates, rock pushed back at the Grammy ceremonies. In addition to Whitney Houston, another departed soul's spirit - Kurt Cobain's - was felt when his ex-Nirvana bandmate Dave Grohl's band the Foo Fighters won four awards, for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance for "Walk," Best Hard Rock/ Metal Performance ("White Limo") and Best Rock Album - Wasting Light, which, if not for Adele , might have had a chance of winning Album of the Year. It's times like these you learn to live again, indeed.

The biggest surprise came from the alternative folk rock band Bon Iver, who won the Best Alternative Album Grammy for their self-titled LP. That's not the surprise; despite Madonna's insistence from 1990 that alternative music is music that's not popular, Bon Iver, from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, turned out to be popular enough (popular enough with the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, anyway) to take home the Best New Artist award, beating out Nicki Minaj, who records music that is very popular. Take that, Madge!

Of course, an earlier collaboration between Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon and hip-hop star Kanye West (!) obviously helped the band's cause.

However, the Best New Artist Grammy is a curse - only rare acts like the Beatles and Crosby, Stills and Nash have survived it - so I hope Vernon and his bandmates don't end up losing by winning. :-(

Whitney Houston: 1963-2012

I'm still in shock over the news that Whitney Houston died last night at 48. Although she'd had her share - more than her share - of mishaps in her battles with all sorts of substance abuse (mostly drugs), she appeared to be on the mend and poised to come back bigger and better than before. She has just wrapped production of a new movie, and she was in Beverly Hills to perform at a tribute to her mentor, record company executive and legend Clive Davis. Now the Grammy Awards ceremony is paying tribute to her tonight.

Although Whitney Houston was a very conventional singer who mostly showed only traces on her records of what she achieved singing gospel songs in church (and I noted over two years ago that Davis, as her mentor, had some responsibility for this by watering down her sound), it's worth noting that even a bland Whitney Houston is preferable to a Britney Spears at her most inventive and creative. You can pick almost any Whitney Houston single and listen to it with the pleasure of appreciating her vocal talent.

Whitney Houston first achieved success with her debut album in 1985, which roughly corresponded to the increasingly annoying trend of female pop singers who cared more about gimmickry and the style than genuine talent. Houston made it big without offensive videos, blue hair, vulgar dancing, or any of that stuff. She just had her voice. Her success led to that rise of other female singers who relied more on vocal talent than tawdry showmanship; it's no accident that performers like Anita Baker, Oleta Adams, and Mariah Carey followed in Whitney's wake.

I don't know where everything went wrong for her, though. After the 1992 movie The Bodyguard and the 1995 movie Waiting To Exhale, she should have been on top of the world, but she sank to the bottom of a drug-infested, soul-sucking living pattern. I was always rooting for her to get back on her feet, but she always seemed to stumble again once she did. Not even her undeniable talent could save her. It's a terrible shame.

Ironically, the news of Houston's death comes even as the British pop/soul singer Adele - now fully recovered from her vocal cord surgery and likely to tour soon - is up for six Grammy awards tonight after conquering her own personal demons.

A new beginning comes from another beginning's end. R.I.P. :-( 

Correction and Clarification: February 12, 2012

I don't like it when I make mistakes on my blog, but when I do make one, I correct it as quickly as possible. And I made a beauty of a mistake . . . about a beauty.

I am, of course, referring to my blog entry yesterday about Gisele Bündchen for her outburst at the Super Bowl last week. I wrote yesterday that Bündchen "let out a tirade against [husband Tom] Brady's teammates dropping passes and suggesting that Brady himself was not culpable for their loss." I also opined that "the situation of your wife giving instructions to your coworkers on how to do their job causes more problems than it solves. Yoko Ono sat in on numerous Beatles sessions, and we know how that worked out."

I wrote this thinking that Bündchen made that angry comment directly to Brady's teammates. In fact, she made it in response to a Giants fan who taunted her. So, I was wrong. Although I still think that her outburst was uncalled for and undignified, I nonetheless apologize for improperly misrepresenting the context.

And while I maintain that I'm not saying that Gisele Bündchen is a jerk but think she merely acted like one, the Giants fan who taunted her by saying, "Eli owns your husband," a reference to Giants quarterback Eli Manning , also acted like a jerk. But I think Gisele Bündchen should have been classy enough to ignore the fan.

That's it, I don't want to write about Super Bowl XLVI anymore . . . except to say that Madonna, who is a jerk, had no right to be angry at British rapper M.I.A. for giving the finger during the halftime show on live television after Madge herself built her entire career on obscene gestures. She certainly didn't build it on that meaningless afterthought, the music.

Model Misbehavior

Gisele Bündchen probably reversed years of progress in the fashion world's efforts to get people to see models as something other than vain, superficial, narcissistic spoiled brats. Most models aren't like that, just like most members of Congress aren't corrupt, but it takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch - or in this case, one bad Bündchen to spoil the apples.

I am, of course, referring to Bündchen's outburst after the New England Patriots - which include Bündchen's husband, quarterback Tom Brady - lost the Super Bowl to their hated rivals the New York Giants. Bündchen may now be more hated in the New England region than the Giants. After the game she let out a tirade against Brady's teammates dropping passes and suggesting that Brady himself was not culpable for their loss. "My husband cannot f***ing throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time!" she yelled.

Okay. Last time I checked, Ms. Bündchen is not an expert on football. In fact, growing up in Brazil, she wanted to be a volleyball player. Also, the situation of your wife giving instructions to your coworkers on how to do their job causes more problems than it solves. Yoko Ono sat in on numerous Beatles sessions, and we know how that worked out. I assume Gisele Bündchen felt entitled to inject herself into the issues of the Pats' loss because, well, she's Gisele Bündchen! And there's the problem.

This can't possibly play with the fans, who must be looking at the "Brady Bündchen" (get it?) union with utter contempt. At a time when the American middle class is struggling, Patriots fans probably don't appreciate the idea of a supermodel who makes $45 million a year lecturing the team just because she's married to their quarterback - and it must seem pretty galling when they remember that Tom Brady himself doesn't exactly have to worry about his income, especially when he's been getting paid millions to lose. Some Patriots fans have even suggested that Gisele Bündchen is a curse on the team, since Brady has failed to win another Super Bowl for the Pats since his relationship with Bündchen began in 2006. (They married in 2009.) Before he started dating her, his Super Bowl win record was 3-0.

Every time a model acts like a jerk, I wince. As many readers of this blog know, I am friends with several veteran fashion models through Facebook, including 1980s model Nancy Donahue. So I know that most models aren't jerks. I'm not even saying that Gisele Bündchen is a jerk; I'm only saying she acted like one. Maybe she's not the arrogant, self-important person she appears to be; good grief, she devotes time to charity. But when people have a negative image of modeling, her behavior doesn't help the profession. Not every model marries a celebrity athlete or a rock star, not every model makes $45 million a year, and even models that do marry well and make a lot of money don't think that such distinctions make them important. But when Gisele Bündchen or any other cover girl acts the way she acted, she doesn't do the modeling trade any favors.

By the way, not too many people seemed to noticed that the biggest display of arrogance and self-importance by a woman at the Super Bowl came not from Gisele Bündchen but from . . . the halftime show headliner. :-p 

Contraceptive Confoundment

President Obama is suddenly getting applauded by Catholic Democrats and some independent Catholics who supported him in 2008 for his announcement earlier today that he would continue the policy of guaranteeing contraceptive and birth control supplies to women who work in Catholic schools or hospitals (the same guarantee to female employees in other institutions), but with the proviso that health insurance companies must provide coverage when Catholic institutions refuse to do so out of conscience. People are already talking about how he defused a political issue with this move especially by showing respect for matters of faith, but I'm not sure about that. First of all, he galvanized the right. Second of all, he made himself look foolish by doing now what he should have done a few weeks ago. And third of all, while some Catholic clergypersons such as Sister Carol Keehan, the nun who runs Catholic Health Association, is pleased with this, the bishopric is reserving judgment pending further review. And Obama's change of course may have opened a new can of worms. He's essentially telling insurance companies to issue certain policies, playing into the hands of accusations of a "government takeover of health care."

Still, this is a good plan.  Obama did the right thing by women and he did the right thing by himself; he owed up to a mistake, corrected the mistake, and now he seeks to move on. But - do you think reactionaries in the Republican party will let him? He may have lit the match, but Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are going to fan the flame into a firestorm. in fact, at the annual Nuremberg rally - uh, Conservative Political Action Conference meeting, they're already at it. And (picking up on where I left off yesterday), while a majority of American Catholics support and use birth control, the fact that Obama had already issued a directive to put the onus on birth control coverage on the Church may have left a bad taste in people's mouths.

I hope I'm wrong about all this, and that this is the end of the issue for awhile with Obama having the advantage. But the righties going to exploit this issue for as long as they can. The Republicans were never going to support the revised version of this policy anyway. But they now have all of the media attention on the issue to milk it for all it's worth.

Music Video Of the Week - February 10, 2012

"No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Alice Cooper (Go to the link in the upper right hand corner.)

The Land Ain't Got No Culture

Oh, Christ, are the culture wars starting up again?

The Obama administration has issued a directive stating that Catholic schools and hospitals have to provide coverage for contraceptives and birth control pills without co-pays in an effort to broaden health access for women. Republicans have jumped on this issue like vultures on a carcass signifying their opposition to force Catholic institutions to pay for medical practices they're philosophically opposed to, calling it an affront to religious freedom and an attack on the Catholic Church. Noted Republican Catholic lawmakers such as House Speaker John Boehner and U.S. Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Marco Rubio of Florida vow to support legislation to overturn Obama's directive. Meanwhile, noted Democratic lawmakers such U.S. Senators Charles Schumer of New York Barbara Boxer of California and Illinois congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, along with Judith Waxman and Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center, praised the administration's efforts for expanding coverage for women.

By the way, while there are many Gentiles who back the President as well, I narrowed my examples of individuals supporting this new policy to Jews for a reason. I have long suspected that contraception opponents are as anti-Semitic as they are misogynistic, because many women's health advocates tend to be Jewish.  And, whenever Catholics and evangelicals complain about assaults on their religious liberties and their anti-contraception, pro-life beliefs by the liberal elites, it's a slippery slope to blaming the "New York" or "Hollywood" elites, which are both code phrases to refer to Jews. Catholics and evangelicals say they're defending themselves against what they call the "secular Jewish assault" on their faith, without stopping to think how a people who spend a day in early autumn atoning for their sins are a secular people.

Whether or not conservative Christians see any stand in favor of reproductive rights as being redolent of Jewishness, their stand on denying women their right to control their own bias reeks of being elitist itself - a mostly male elite telling women of different religious and economic backgrounds how to run their lives, including the non-Catholic female employees of Catholic universities and hospitals who need this coverage. Republicans think they may have found the issue to swing enough votes - Catholic votes - their way to unseat Obama in November. It's all good and fine to say that many Catholics use birth control and don't automatically subscribe to church dogma, but there are many more Catholics disgusted enough by how the GOP has framed this issue - and by the way, 335,000 houses of worship have been exempted from this directive - to desert Obama and Democratic congressional candidates at the polls. Obama can count on the support of every critical thinker in America who recognizes the value of his decision. But as Adlai Stevenson II would have said, he needs a majority to get re-elected.

And even though a poll found that a majority of Catholics support contraception coverage, many of them may be uncomfortable with the government ordering Catholic institutions to provide it. More on that later.

Activists for women's health rights, though, are on a roll. They successfully forced the Susan G. Komen Race For the Cure foundation, a leading breast cancer awareness group, to reverse its decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood due to a congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood's alleged use of taxpayer funding for abortions, and Karen Handel, a senior Komen vice president and a failed Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, was forced to resign. Although Planned Parenthood has been assured continued funding to help poor women get breast examinations they can't get anywhere else, many women's health advocates are going to have a hard time trusting the Komen foundation again. But Komen's 180 is still a victory.

And, as all this was going on, the Washington state legislature just passed a bill legalizing gay marriage, which Governor Christine Gregoire supports, even as California's anti-gay marriage law has been struck down by federal appeals court - a decision that will soon be reviewed ultimately by the Supreme Court. The trend in favor of gay marriage has pleased at least one conservative - Rick Santorum, who now has a lot of momentum from anti-gay activists to propel his presidential campaign.

With Obama trying to defuse a politically charged health issue, and a new battle over gay rights having been joined, the culture wars are on again, and Americans are fighting over how this nation's culture should be defined. The joke's on them; we Americans have no culture to fight over. The closest we come to showing any culture is that annual ritual that takes place every February, where overpaid contestants battle it out in a public arena for supremacy and glory, where the winners are lauded and the losers are ridiculed, and with a hideous musical number midway through the show - for all the world to see on television. I am, of course, talking about the Oscars. :-D

Clarification and Follow-Up: February 8, 2012

I have been told that a long blog entry is no good, because it's too cumbersome to read online.  There's another problem: When you write a long blog entry and you have to get it out as soon as possible owing to the timeliness of the subject, it can be completely free of spelling errors but still have something wrong with it. So I need to issue a clarification of my long annual winners and losers lists for 2011" In declaring Woody Allen a winner of the year because of his latest movie, his "love letter to the American literature and music of the 1920s," I omitted the title of the movie.  It was, of course, Midnight in Paris.  I have since corrected the original post.

Meanwhile, I'm guessing that one of my posts has offended fans of an overrated fiftysomething Italian-American scam artist with a large following.  I am, of course, talking about Rick Santorum.  Earlier today I made reference to the fact that he and his wife slept in a hospital bed with their dead baby son between them by saying his Lakota Indian name would be "Sleeps With Dead Babies."  Admittedly, this makes him sounds sick.  Because, he is.  Some people might think that I should apologize to Santorum for offending his sensibilities.  Well, here again is some of the shtick about Rick.  He opposes all forms of health care reform.  He hired a campaign  staffer who says that God decreed that a woman shouldn't be President of the United States.  He says global warming is a hoax.  He likened homosexual relationships to bestiality.  He dismissed black people as parasitical welfare dependents.

So here's my point: I'll stop offending Rick Santorum's sensibilities when he stops offending mine.

Much Ado About Nothing

Rick Santorum - also known by his Lakota name, "Sleeps With Dead Babies" - is the man of the hour in the Republican presidential nomination contest, having swept the caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota and won a primary in Missouri, a state considered a microcosm of America at large. He's shaken up the Republican race by winning 28 convention delegates for a total of 45 so far, putting him ahead of Newt Gingrich and damaging Mitt Romney's aura of inevitability as the Republican nominee. Gingrich has to find a way to keep his campaign going in the month leading up to Super Tuesday on March 6, when many Southern states with voters friendly to his proposals are holding primaries and caucuses, while Romney has to avoid freaking out.

But wait a minute! Isn't the focus on this Santorum sweep just a lot of hype from a mainstream media eager to keep the GOP race alive? I think so. As someone who wants to see those Grand Old Partisans go down this autumn, I hope this does keep the race alive. But how can it be anything other than hype when the caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado are in fact the first step in a complicated process to award delegates to the Republican convention, and the delegates Santorum won last night are not bound by the caucus results? And shouldn't it matter that Missouri didn't matter? Missouri's primary was nonbinding; the state Republican party chooses its convention delegates through a series of caucuses and state conventions starting next month. Why have a primary that doesn't count? And why should Santorum brag about winning it? This would be like Jon Cryer bragging about winning a best TV actor poll on Facebook - or, for that matter, a People's Choice award.

Holding nonbinding primaries is a useless gesture, it wastes taxpayers' money, and it gives Chris Matthews way too much to talk about. Besides, we already have political contests in this country that don't count. They're called general elections. :-p

New Flickr Link

A technical error involving the Flickr gadget that showed my photostream at the bottom of my blog has caused me to remove it, so until further notice, I have a link to my Flickr page under my "Miscellaneous Links" list instead.  Sorry.

Tick Me Off

They haven't been around that long- their first album came out in 2007 - but the Rhode Island band Deer Tick has already become as annoying as the insect they named themselves after. Their most recent single of this writing, "Miss K," with its sparse, traditional guitar arrangement, purports to be a savvy, modern take on rock and alternative country. Instead, it sounds like a warmed-over Spin Doctors record. I've written here before that hip-hop is relentlessly pushing rock and roll out of the way, but if Deer Tick is rock's way of fighting back, we might as well surrender right now.

As far as I can discern, "Miss K" is about a free-spirited, spacey chick that the narrator wants to get more personal with. It sounds like a daring song, but its only daringness is throwing in an expletive that the college indie stations that play it are only going to bleep out anyway. The music is so low in key it almost evaporates, and the male protagonist's directives the woman in question almost sound like the sexual musings of a high school freshman - "Come on, Miss K, put you lovin' arms around me / Talk dirty, turn me on, let's get goin'."

Maybe there's more to Deer Tick than this song, but I doubt it. As John Cafferty proved back in the eighties, no band from Rhode Island should be taken seriously.

Also, no band named "Deer Tick" is ever going to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Beatles, yes. Deer Tick, no.

No Dedication To Transit

I've constantly asked myself what could possibly make normal Americans hate mass transit. Oh, I know why abnormal Americans - that is, Tea Party Republicans - hate it. They complain that it has to be subsidized (like the highways, like aviation) that it's an inefficient boondoggle (despite the fact that mass transit moves more people than highways for less money), and that it's an attack on the freedom to go where and when you want (never mind that commuting to your job isn't a trip you necessarily want to take) - I get all that. But why would sane Americans oppose it?

It turns out that normal people don't hate mass transit, really. Because a large number of them wrote to the House Ways and Means Committee to protest a proposed plan to end dedicated funding for mass transit and leave such funding to the whims of politicians during annual appropriation disputes. How many? How about five thousand individuals and six hundred groups representing thousands more? In a country as complacent as ours, that's actually pretty impressive!

But not good enough for the GOP-dominated House Ways and Means Committee, which voted mostly along party lines - 20-17 - to kill dedicated transit funding. (Two Republicans sided with the Democrats.) Apparently they had no interest in siding with un-American, pinko subversive groups who support dedicated transit funding that allows people to get around without cars - groups like the Club for Growth, whose alumni include noted lefties Stephen Moore and Pat Toomey, along with those defenders of European-style socialism, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The proposal wouldn't save any money; it would just redirect the 2.86 cents out of the total 18.4-cent motor fuel tax currently put into Highway Trust Fund's transit account and pour it into more spending on highways. The committee essentially told Americans who rely on trains, buses and light rail to get around that they don't matter. They zealously want to cut money on public programs like transit and promote a new American order in honor of Ronald Reagan's legacy.

Except for one thing: The idea to have a dedicated transit funding component in the Highway Trust Fund came from President Ronald Reagan himself. Even though Reagan was famous for saying foolish things about mass transit - like, when he said that no one used it - he probably did more for transit than many Democratic leaders have.

The bill will be sent to the whole House, where it will likely be voted on and sent to the Senate, so here are plenty of opportunities to reverse this hideous decision. But I'm not holding my breath.

American Strife

So who's going to win Super Bowl XLVI tomorrow? Guess what - I don't give a twit. The Super Bowl is a vulgar display of excess, grandiosity, spectacle, and crudity. In that sense, it's a latter-day Roman Coliseum, and a sorry reflection of who we are as Americans. The Super Bowl is so mired in cheap showmanship that the game no longer matters.

So it seems all too appropriate that Madonna is performing in the halftime show.

I have long regarded Madonna as the musical equivalent of the Iraq War. By that, I mean she's a crime against civilization that America must someday be punished for, but nothing that's my fault. It just completely nauseates me that a novelty-act disco singer with a cheap gimmick - a churlishly slutty image that deliberately contradicts her name - could somehow become a pop icon. In the past thirty years, she has completely destroyed American popular music; her influence has led it to become more style than substance, where spectacles in musical performances count for more than the music itself.

Her relentless emphasis on music videos as an art form rather than as the commercials they are led many record companies to push promotional videos rather than spend money on tours that are so vital to the growth of young bands and solo performers. Madge's music is itself all sizzle and no steak - mindless drum machine beats driving insipid melodies played on cold synthesizers, all topped by her tinny, whiny vocal styles that sound like breaking glass scratching a blackboard. She is the reason for talentless phonies like Britney Spears and walking disasters like Lady Gaga. Her use of rap lyrics has also helped popularize hip-hop, easily the worst musical form ever conceived. She may be the only pop performer who has had fans eagerly awaiting her next outrageous publicity stunt more than her next record. She's a very big reason you don't hear traditional rock and roll so much anymore; a whole generation of performers has tried to emulate her lamebrained disco/hip-hop style, and our popular culture is all the more unbearable for it.

And yet, despite her obvious lack of taste, despite her equally obvious attitude toward music as just a vehicle to achieve fame and fortune with, despite all of that, she has the nerve to insist that her career has always been about the music.

If I sound cynical, perhaps you should bear in mind that every move Madge has made in the past three decades - from dating a record producer to trying to break into movies - has been coldly calculated. For example, she let listeners of her early records think she was black by keeping a low profile and by saying in early promotional material that she danced in the Alvin Ailey company, a dance troupe not known for its affirmative-action outreach programs for Caucasians. Every time I hear her 1986 single "La Isla Bonita" - not often, of course, but always unwillingly - it sounds like Madge woke up one morning, read over breakfast that Hispanics were the fastest-growing population segment in the United States, and decided to craft herself a Latin ballad to pander to an increasingly important demographic. She's recorded a song for every possible radio format except rock and country, two formats that aren't exactly thriving right now thanks to her own influence.

What's worse is that she's inescapable. And not just for this weekend, when she's promoting her upcoming record and the new movie she directed - yes, directed. I've always agreed with the notion that if you don't like some kind of music, you simply shouldn't listen to it. It makes sense, until you go into a restaurant or a store and suddenly her one of Madge's songs leap out of the radio or piped-in music system on the premises. I can't tell you how many times her tinny voice and her smug emoting ruined my lunch or my shopping experience . I go into a store, I hear her - well, I hesitate to call it music - and even if I need something in the store, I just walk right out and wait out in the freezing cold or the blistering heat for at least five minutes. Every one of Madge's songs seems to be five minutes long. Sometimes they seem longer.

I publish this Madonna-bashing post knowing I'll get a lot nasty comments for daring to be critical of her. Because her fans are even nastier than they are; if you so much as mildly criticizes her records, her fans accuse you of being a sick, hateful person with a snobbish attitude toward popular music. I don't find many people agreeing with my mindset in the pop press either; critics are always defending her as a daring courageous artist for "pushing people's buttons," and the veteran pop critic Dave Marsh even accused white male music fans of being prejudiced against her for being a female performer with a large black and Hispanic audience. Madge loves all of it. She likes to say, "I hate people who hate." What she really means is, "I hate people who hate me."

I admit, it's rather difficult to express a negative opinion of Madonna when the only person who agrees with you is Rick Santorum.

It turns out that a lot of people find her a hateful person. I've heard stories of Michael Jackson having been put off by her nastiness, and she's been known to even treat her own fans with contempt. When two young girls one approached her for her autograph, Madge told them that she singed autographs for them she'd have to sign autographs for every fan who approached her. "Who are you?" she told them. "You're nothing."

Oh yeah, a security officer at an airport once asked her for an autograph. She wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to him before moving on. The paper scrap bore the following words: "F--- you." And the press finds stories like this amusing.

I was hoping that the bias against elders in America and particularly against women over 50 would finally bring her down. I've seen far more competent singers and actresses see their careers end at 40, and so I looked forward to the day Madge would be cast aside by misogynistic ageism. Wouldn't you know it - there's an exception to the rule . . . and she's it!

She is pure evil.

Personally, I think the damage Madonna has wrought on American popular culture in general and American popular music in particular - it's become so tawdry, vulgar and irredeemable - has been so great that we Americans won't be able to set things right until enough of us admit that something went horribly wrong on December 16, 1984, the day "Like a Virgin" began its six-week run on the pop singles chart. That's not likely to happen. Madge has returned with a vengeance, and her Super Bowl appearance is just the beginning of a manufactured media onslaught tied around her new LP, her movie (about a frustrated Manhattanite who identifies with Wallis Simpson, or something like that) that no one will be able to deny, ignore or resist. And enough of us will be taken in by her pretentious aspirations to "artistry" to make her latest endeavors huge hits. And we Americans will get the popular culture we deserve.

Just like we're going to get the Super Bowl.

Music Video Of the Week - February 3, 2012

"Carrie-Anne" by the Hollies (Happy birthday, Graham Nash, 70 years old as of yesterday! Go to the link in the upper right hand corner for the video.)

The Latest Weather

Yesterday it got up to 65 degrees Fahrenheit in the afternoon in northern New Jersey, despite the fact that it was the first day of February. Meanwhile, much of Europe is going through a deep freeze. The worst of the cold has been in Poland, Russia, Ukraine and the Balkans: Moscow saw temperatures of six degrees below zero Fahrenheit, while Romania has seen temperatures plummet to 26 below Fahrenheit. Several people in numerous European countries have died of hypothermia. Several villages in Bosnia and Serbia have been cut off by cold and snow, with supplies and rescues having to be made by helicopter.

The United Kingdom is experiencing a more moderate winter, certainly more moderate than the deep freezes of more recent years, with temperatures in London right around the freezing mark, but still below normal. The cold snap was big enough news in Britain to get disc jockeys on BBC Radio 2 to comment on it. So, yeah, it's a big freakin' deal.

The abnormally warm temperatures in the American Northeast should also be a big deal. I don't see spring- like days in early February as a good thing. I see it as the planet being completely out of whack. Because climate change means that not only is North America getting warmer, it means that much of Europe could end up in a new Ice Age. A good deal of Europe sits above the 50th parallel, and the Gulf Stream pretty much makes human habitation possible in Great Britain, Ireland and Norway.  Melting polar ice caps may have a tendency to skew the Gulf Stream rather considerably.

Back in the U.S., many folks in the Northeast took advantage of the abnormally (soon to be normally) warm temperatures, and I doubt many of them knew about the cold snap in Europe - especially if they read USA Today. People were in New York's Central Park soaking up the sun. In February. Don't they get it? It's like Michael Moore once said - If the sun rose at night, you'd be freaking out, yet warm temperatures in the northern U.S. in February are just as abnormal and unnatural. Wake up, America: Climate change is real!

And yet, I don't mind if it continues to be mild in my neck of the woods.  I hate myself right now.  

Oh yeah, today's Groundhog Day. Punxsutawney Phil in western Pennsylvania saw his shadow, meaning six more weeks of winter, but it New York City, Staten Island Chuck (Chuck?) did not see his shadow, meaning an early spring. Climate change even has the groundhogs confused.

Wednesday Night Television

ABC now has four consecutive sitcoms on Wednesday nights that don't rely on a laugh track. And the newest of the lot, "Suburgatory," may very well be the best new sitcom of the 2011-12 season.

As the title suggests, "Suburagatory" (on at 8:30 PM ET, after "The Middle") sounds like just another piece of entertainment depicting how much the suburbs suck. But it's more than that. The suburbs here are not a Levittown on Long Island or in Bucks County, Pennsylvania but a fictional upper-class Westchester County (New York) enclave. The perspective of this upper-crust suburbia is not that of a cynical punk rock burnout but that of a savvy high school girl wise beyond her years who has lived in Manhattan and knows there's more to life than an upper-class subdivision.

Tessa Altman (played by Jane Levy) is the high school girl, uprooted from New York City by her architect father, George (Jeremy Sisto) who decides to move to Westchester County after finding a box of unopened condoms in Tessa's drawer. The lure of illicit behavior has convinced him to move himself and his daughter to suburbia so that Tessa can have a better life. Actually, Tessa is worse off, cast in a sea of shallow phonies and complacent conformists she has nothing in common with. Her father George is hoping she'll be able to reach maturity in a safer and more comfortable environment, but it turns out he's the one who needs the comfort of the suburbs. He's a single dad who can't relate to his daughter and is learning by experience how to raise a teenager. And, it turns out she's savvier than he is; he's still finding his way in the world, trying to navigate his way around this alien culture Tessa can see right through. He's also having a hard time finding true love; Frasier Crane had better luck with women by comparison.

As Dallas Royce, a seemingly shallow housewife with an absent husband and who only hints to George that a love interest is possible, Cheryl Hines gives a sense of substance and warmth underneath her character's plastic persona. Even more interesting is the friendship between Tessa and Lisa Marie (played by Allie Grant), a nerdy but sweet girl who's embarrassed by her family. The various twists and turns that ensue - along with Tessa's attempts to adapt to or at least cope with her surroundings (with the pain of having to deal with Dallas's glamour queen daughter Dalia) are fascinating.

So, yes, I'm a fan of this show, which replaced "Better Than You" in ABC's 8:30 PM ET time slot. And after several trial-and-error program schedulings, it looks like ABC finally has a solid Wednesday night lineup. This includes "Happy Endings" at 9:30 PM Eastern (after "Modern Family"), a sitcom that's definitely an acquired taste, plus the one-hour drama "Revenge," with Emily VanCamp, at 10 PM Eastern. I haven't seen that, but it appears to have succeeded where at least three ABC dramas in that same time slot have failed in as many years.

I watch the first three shows in ABC's Wednesday night lineup regularly, and that's actually more shows than I watch on NBC for the whole week. I believe I'm not alone in that respect.

(Aside: NBC is debuting a new series produced by Steven Spielberg (who famously graced NBC with the series "Amazing Stories" in the eighties) about staging a Broadway musical, "Smash", which, I'm led to understand, is basically a scripted version of talent contest shows (or a "Glee" ripoff). It's about a musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe and stars Debra Messing - Debra Messing - as one of its writers. Debuting this coming Monday at 10 PM Eastern, it displaces Brian Williams' newsmagazine "Rock Center," which will go against "Modern Family" and "Happy Endings" at 9 PM Eastern on Wednesdays. Next Wednesday: an interview with yet another woman who claimed she was seduced by John F. Kennedy. It's official: NBC is beyond desperate.)

To The Moon?

The Florida Republican presidential primary is today, and I'll be glad when it's over. Not because it'll bring an end to the sniping and snarling from Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich for awhile - that's going to resume in time for Saturday's Nevada caucuses - but because after Florida, it'll be the last we hear of Newt Gingrich's cockamamie scheme to colonize the moon in eight years' time. He only proposed it in Florida because of all of the jobs there connected to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and even after that, he's still behind in the polls.

Gingrich's 2020 vision of a permanent lunar base is a relic from a time when Americans thought that they could accomplish anything if they banded together (and we did make it to the moon, of course), and when space exploration hinted at a future dramatically different from what existed in the 1950s and the 1960s. It was expected that one day we'd be driving around in flying cars, vacationing on Mars, and eating capsules instead of real food. The only thing that came true is that we don't eat real food anymore.

A permanent lunar base, once entertained by both the Americans and the Soviet-era Russians, is a spectacularly bad idea, because it diverts resources toward establishing an unnecessary habitation project and away from doing things like trying to house people and fight poverty here on earth. I understand that Gingrich is suggesting a scientific base like the one at the South Pole, not a Tomorrowland-style city, but if the goal is to expand knowledge of the sciences, we can do it more efficiently with robotic vehicles on the moon, like the ones we sent to Mars in the nineties.

It's easy to understand Gingrich's obsession with a lunar base, since his politics and policy proposals border on megalomania. Harder to understand is Neil deGrasse Tyson's interest in the proposal. Neil deGrasse Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, and he's actually enthusiastic about the idea. His objection to Gingrich's proposal is not to the idea itself but to Gingrich's failure to explain how to do it or why to do it. But Tyson thinks it would be wonderful if we had such an ambitious project like a lunar base that would encourage young people to engage in and study the sciences (and a lunar base would necessitate study of biology, chemistry, physics - pretty much the complete works).  Never mind that it's impractical. He laments that we haven't done anything like that in nearly forty years.

Hmm . . . forty years . . . the early seventies. So, what happened in the early seventies that changed our big-picture outlook? How about the Arab oil embargo? The sudden shortage of oil that resulted from American support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War reminded us that limits exist not only in the mind but in the real world. Once we had trouble running our tech-happy civilization on earth, colonizing the moon or Mars and trying to begin a new civilization elsewhere seemed pretty silly. True, we did get some amazing technological breakthroughs from NASA's space exploration programs, such as the Internet and ready-mix foodstuffs, and I am grateful for a computer network that has allowed me to write this blog, but why should I care about Tang?

Besides, the space race with the now-defunct Soviet Union was an extension of the lamebrained Cold War psychosis that led both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to spend lots of money to demonstrate whose economic system was better. When the Cold War ended, it turned out that neither side won. Both the U.S. and post-Soviet Russia were flat broke.

If we're going to have a massive technological project to expand our capabilities and grow our economy, I'd obviously prefer that we focus on something that can give us real value. I'd prefer we focus on building a national high-speed rail network - and build one that's accessible to everyone by 2020, not build one that's accessible to four out of five Americans by 2035, as President Obama's pathetic piecemeal approach would do. The only problem is that even Obama's modest plan has been repeatedly attacked as a government boondoggle (and Florida's own attempts to build high-speed rail lines keep getting canceled by Republican governors), so if Obama proposed something bolder and more dramatic, opposition to such a program might be even more hostile. And no one seems to be interpreting Newt's moon plans as anything other than the boondoggle it is. Romney has said if he ran a company that did business with NASA and someone came to him with that idea, he'd fire him. Good for him.

But Romney - no big thinker - would as President probably fire a Transportation Secretary who proposed a national high-speed rail network as well.

Flickr In Trouble?

I was in New York with my friend Clarisel yesterday, and we got to talking about our various media endeavors. She told me that Yahoo, which owns Flickr, is losing money, and so it's possible, however unlikely, that Flickr could be terminated and anyone who posts photos there could lose them. Clarisel has ten times the number of pictures I have, and I have a lot, and she's already considering which ones she hopes to save.

Let me stress and re-assert that neither one of us has any firsthand knowledge of any possible shutdown of Flickr. This is pure conjecture and speculation on our part. And, if not for a technical difficulty in posting of photos I made tonight (January 29) on Flickr, I wouldn't have even considered such a possibility.

I uploaded three pictures, and it took forever for Flickr to process them due to an error on the page. I never got the message saying that it was finished processing; I simply checked my photostream in another window to see if they took. When I saw that they did, I closed the upload page and added descriptions and tags on each individual photo - i.e., the hard way -in the other window. This led me to suspect one of two things: Flickr is struggling all of a sudden and could be in serious trouble, or; something is wrong with my computer. As I depend on Flickr for photo sharing and publicizing my amateur photography, I find myself in the unenviable position of hoping it was my PC.

Okay, not really - my PC is only nine months old. But it would be terrible if Flickr suddenly went away, despite the problems I've had with it of late. (Sometimes the Facebook feed doesn't work.) Be that as it may, Yahoo is trying to do something about it. Yahoo has made a three-month version of its Pro service option, which includes unlimited uploads, for $6.95, with the cost for the two-year version (which I have) reduced to $44.95 from 47.99, in an effort to get more customers who have otherwise balked and longer-term subscriptions. (The one-year subscription remains $24.95, which is much less economical than four three-month subscriptions - do the math.) But with other social network sites gaining popularity for photo sharing, and with Flickr remaining mostly unchanged with few new features added over the years, it's in danger of becoming the photographic equivalent of MySpace.

My experience with Flickr tonight notwithstanding, Flickr has remained fairly solid, and that very staidness may help buy time for Yahoo while it tries to figure out how to keep Flickr relevant. "Flickr is a reliable photo sharing and storage service," writes Tom Warren of The Verge, "but it could offer a lot more, potential that we'd like to see Yahoo invest more in."

I don't mind if Yahoo adds more features to Flickr or not; I'm happy with the way it is. I just hope they can at least get the upload screen to work right again.

Winter: So Far, So Good

It was fairly warm in the American Northeast today, and it's been mild overall this January. Don't tell me there's no climate change! Seattle had a devastating snowstorm earlier this month, the very kind of storm New York is used to seeing in the winter. We in the Greater New York area have been getting mostly rain, the same kind of winter weather you normally see in . . . Seattle. (Alas, New York hasn't adopted Seattle's grunge rock culture, but that's another post.)

The only snow we Tristaters have gotten this winter so far is the snowfall of last Saturday (January 21), which barely amounted to three inches and melted within almost as many days. So far we've had a manageable winter in the Greater New York area, and while I hope it continues to work out that way, I know the weather could turn nasty and cold any time now.

Meanwhile, the forecast around her calls for temperatures in the mid-forties for the coming week. I'll take it.

Christie's Gambits

Chris Christie is suddenly looking very foolish. Faced with resurgent Democratic majorities in the New Jersey state legislature, the state's supersized governor is proposing a popular referendum on gay marriage to skirt the issue and keep it off his plate. See, if the New Jersey legislature passes a bill legalizing gay marriage, Christie will feel compelled to veto it to burnish his social conservative credentials for a possible future presidential run, and his veto could be overridden. So he's proposing that it be put to a popular vote, insisting that voters should have the final say on an issue that he says is better left to the people than to the politicians.

Since when did voters - who usually cast ballots out of self-interest, which is why politicians appeal to their self-interest in the first place - ever vote to expand the civil rights of others? New Jersey actually had the extension of suffrage to women on the ballot in 1915, and the all-male electorate soundly defeated it - a result invalidated by the Nineteenth Amendment five years later.

Speaking of self-interest, Christie only wants something put to a popular vote if he thinks it will benefit him. It's all about strategy. Certainly a public referendum on gay marriage will spare him the responsibility of taking a stand on the issue. But having an early Republican presidential primary in the state and opening up the possibility of his candidate, Mitt Romney, faring poorly - nope, can't have any of that. So Christie had the New Jersey presidential primary moved back to the first Tuesday following June 1, in tandem with the primary elections for state and local offices. Genius! Romney was expected to have clinched the Republican presidential nomination by April. So, by moving the presidential primary back to June, Christie could endorse Romney and ensure that he would win New Jersey . . . because by June, Romney was expected to have token or even non-existent opposition for the nomination. Also, Christie could enjoy the same position of a neutral politician when the primary occurred, because Romney would already be the last man standing and Christie would never worry about having to deliver the state to his candidate. He wouldn't have to do any heavy lifting in his own state . . . and Christie, from the looks of things, obviously hates lifting heavy things. It seemed so clever . . . until Newt Gingrich surged in South Carolina and turned Romney's lead in the polls leading up to the Florida primary to a dead heat, turning the whole race upside down.

More recently, Romney has bounced back, and now he's likely to win the Sunshine State's winner-take-all primary. But other battles - including the Nevada caucuses on February 4 - await Romney, and Gingrich doesn't look like he's going to quit the campaign even if he loses Florida. This race could go all the way to May . . . or even June.

Genius!

Music Video Of the Week - January 27, 2012

"Beauty Queen Sister" by the Indigo Girls (Go to the link in the upper right hand corner.)  

"Work It" Out

You know a TV show is spectacularly bad when it airs on ABC for only one or two episodes, because even NBC, which no one watches, has aired shows that have lasted longer than that. But, as it happens, "Work It," a sitcom about guys who dress as gals to get jobs in a bad economy, was canceled after two episodes, ironically putting everyone involved with that show on unemployment.

An attempt at reworking the formula that produced "Bosom Buddies," the cross-dressing sitcom that introduced us to Tom Hanks, "Work It" turned out to be the most offensive sitcom in recent memory, with many critics finding it too broad (no pun intended) and aiming too much for cheap laughs. As someone who remembers "Bosom Buddies," I don't recall that show being either broad or cheap. And in these more sensitive times, the sensitivity and relative subtlety of the earlier show could have come in handy for the producers and writers of "Work It." The show offended homosexual and transgender activists as well as Puerto Ricans, when one Puerto Rican character said that his ethnic background gave him a natural ability to "sell drugs" for a pharmaceutical sales job. It also offended the unemployed by making fun of jobless folks who have to humiliate and degrade themselves just to put food on the table if they're even lucky enough to work.

The funniest thing about "Work It," apparently, was that ABC was promoting it as a "new hit comedy" after its initial airing. So much for truth in advertising - there was nothing accurate about that claim.

ABC attempted to present sitcoms that explored (explored? explored? a pretentious word) men holding on to their masculinity in a feminized America, but the network's efforts with three such shows fell far short of the mark. Tim Allen's "Last Man Standing," according to Star-Ledger TV critic Alan Sepinwall, has morphed into a clone of his earlier (and inoffensive) sitcom "Home Improvement" after it tried to be a latter-day "All In the Family," with Allen's character very misogynistic and mildly racist. But anyone who's seen Tim Allen knows that he has more in common with Archie Andrews than Archie Bunker. "Man Up!" was canceled. (I covered that show already.) And now "Work It" is gone. It all makes sense. Pussy-whipped men are not funny, and the idea of men complaining about being pussy-whipped (especially when they're really not) isn't funny either.

Anyway, ABC, having inexplicably shelved "Cougar Town" despite its solid and solidly loyal audience, is bringing it back and inserting it in the 8:30 PM Eastern time slot on Tuesdays, in place of the two failed sitcoms "Man Up!" and "Work it" and following the now appropriately titled "Last Man Standing," beginning February 14. Meanwhile, it appears that the alphabet network finally has a solid Wednesday night lineup. I'll comment on that in another post.

Union Busting

I couldn't watch President Obama's third (and maybe last?) State Of the union address last night, but I understand the base of the Democratic party was pleased. That's not necessarily a good thing. The base of either party swoons too easily to partisan presidential rhetoric.

Anyway, the President, as I understand it, demanded that Republicans work with him on restoring fairness to the tax code and have the wealthy pat their fair share, along with urging action on immigration reform, tax credits for companies that invest in factories in America, and clean energy incentives. Republicans responded by saying - angrily, of course - that the President was was just trying to divide people along class lines and stuff big government down our throats.

So what did I miss?

Anyway, Obama hoped to sharpen the definition between what the Democrats stand for (assuming they stand for something) and what the Republicans stand for, and show that the Democratic vision of America is more populistic and more equitable, with the hope of getting people to start debating over just what kind of country we want to live in.

Hmph. I know what kind of country I want to live in, and this ain't it. Because every public amenity I support that makes any country worth living in - public medical insurance, high-quality surface mass transit, world-class public schools, a federal department of artistic and cultural affairs (which Quincy Jones supports), and public broadcasting that's more like the BBC (the Best Broadcasting Corporation) than PBS (Pro-Business Soapbox, Pathetic Broadcasting Service, Pretentious Blowhard Shows) or NPR (Not Particularly Riveting) - isn't likely to become reality any time soon. Nor is any other legislation I support - tougher gun laws, re-introducing the Equal Rights Amendment, overturning Citizens United. I know what I want to United States to be like, and it isn't. And realities that have nothing to do with Democratic politics or Republican politics but, rather, American thinking will continue to prevent my America from materializing.

Goodbye, Gabby

It should have become apparent to anyone who realized just how badly wounded Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was in the January 2011 shooting in Tucson that she would eventually have to resign her seat. So it was no surprise when Giffords announced that would in fact quit the House of Representatives this week to concentrate on her ongoing recovery. She was able to put the announcement in her own words, literally - she made the announcement in a video release - so the woman who has been an inspiration to many has a very good chance of recovering fully. And she's vowed to remain active in politics regardless.

Alas, she won't be an inspiration to pass meaningful gun control legislation, which has a very good chance of getting defeated in Congress - if anyone has the gall to even bring it up. (Every time a horrendous shooting occurs in this country - which happens frequently enough to feel like an everyday occurrence - Chris Matthews asks the panelists on his Sunday broadcast show if gun control legislation has a chance of even getting considered, and his panelists respond with an imitation of Marcel Marceau in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie - "No!") This isn't so much a partisan condition as it is an American condition - a peculiarly and insufferably American love of firearms.

Am I suggesting that Americans are peculiar and insufferable? You can draw your own conclusion.

On the other hand . . .. Sarah Palin - one of the most peculiar and most insufferable Americans in recent memory - has seen her stature reduced a result of the Giffords shooting. In the 2010 midterm election campaign, Palin posted a map of Democratic House districts targeted by Republicans, depicting the districts with rifle crosshairs over them - one of them was Giffords' district. After the shooting, she gave such a mean-spirited defense of her actions in the wake of charges that she incited violence that her rising star dimmed quickly. So some taste survives here, enough to not only lessen Palin's visibility but to also eliminate the Minnesota Twins (Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann) from the Republican presidential nomination contest early.

Who Won?!?

Newt won the South Carolina primary?

This cancels out what I said about him a week and a half ago.

And Santorum actually won the Iowa caucuses?

This cancels out everything I've said about Mitt Romney since the year began.

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.  

Countdown To Exiting

It's about a year from Inauguration Day. Could this be Barack Obama's last year in office?

The campaign for the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, taking place today, has taken numerous twists and turns. Newt Gingrich had turned the tide against Mitt Romney only to face new questions about his fidelity in his previous marriage - and then turned it into an asset by throwing the issue back at CNN's John King during a debate after King brought it up. Mitt Romney still won't release his tax returns, thinking that Republican voters don't care about how much money he makes and confusing that with their interest in how much money he pays. President Obama must be watching this with glee, hoping that the Republicans protract their nomination fight to the point where the eventual nominee is so weakened and bloodied, it will be an easy victory for the Democrats in November.

No, it won't. And the Democrats could still lose. Some pundits have noted that the eventual winner of the Republican presidential nomination could be toughened up enough to take the fight to Obama hard, just as Obama was toughened up by his long fight against Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. A more apt comparison might be the internecine warfare between Walter Mondale and Gary Hart in the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination contest that eventually weakened Mondale in his campaign against President Reagan that fall, as both Mondale did and the eventual 2012 Republican presidential nominee will go against an incumbent. But even that comparison has problems. Reagan was overseeing an improvement in the economy and renewed faith in the country's standing in 1984. Obama is currently overseeing little of either, and his mealy-mouthed campaign commercial touting his clean energy initiatives in response to a Koch brothers-funded onslaught is the textbook example of starting off on the wrong foot.

One year from now, the winner of the November election will be sworn in, and don't be surprised if Obama is an outgoing President swearing under his breath. His approval rating is at 44 percent, the economy isn't growing fast enough in 2012, like it was in 1984, the chances of Democrats regaining the House and holding onto the Senate are statistically difficult, and one of these Republican candidates could indeed very well be in a strong position going into the fall campaign. The clearest evidence that Obama could (will?) still lose is that his opponents obviously want to get rid of him more than his supporters (just as obviously) want to keep him.

Music Video Of the Week - January 20, 2012

"Do It Again" by the Kinks (Go to the link in the upper right hand corner.)

Power To the People

My, oh my, it's amazing what a little populism can do to the sociopolitical landscape, isn't it?

Yesterday's protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act were more successful than anyone could have imagined. While the latter bill remains on track for a vote in the Senate this coming Tuesday, the demonstrations against the bills - from street protests in Manhattan to blackouts of various Web sites - caused several House members to drop their sponsorship of the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Meanwhile, out in Wisconsin, petitions with a million signatures calling for an election to recall Governor Scott Walker like a defective Pinto were turned in at the state government accounting office in Madison - almost twice the 540,208 signatures required. Walker says he's confident that he can survive a recall election because 80 percent of the state's population didn't sign the petitions. Bear in mind that about a third of the people in Wisconsin who didn't sign the petitions couldn't have signed them, as they were too young to vote. What Walker conveniently forgets is that he got in to office with 1,128,941 votes out of only 2,133,244 votes cast, or 52.25 percent of the vote, between him and his Democratic challenger, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett. If everyone who signed the petitions votes in the recall election, Walker stands a pretty slim chance of holding on to his office.

Meanwhile, public opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline on environmental grounds - particularly the idea of the pipeline on environmentally sensitive grounds - caused President Obama to cancel the project. The Republicans in Congress wanted a decision on the pipeline, which would originate in Canada and carry dirty tar sand oil to Texas, by February 29. President Obama, having decided that not even an extra day in February allowed enough time for a proper environmental assessment, just said no. Republicans complain that Obama missed out on an opportunity to create more jobs and lessen our dependence on foreign oil (even though tar sand oil from a pipeline would make its way out of Texas to the global petroleum market).

Hey, I have a great idea on how to create jobs and lessen our dependence on foreign oil: Build more mass transit networks, especially high-speed train lines!

Which returns me to the unpleasant topic of Scott Walker. Walker canceled Wisconsin's high-speed rail project and is shifting transportation funding to highways. Yes, he has oil refinery and highway construction interests to repay for funding his gubernatorial campaign in 2010, but it turns out that Walker is not a big fan of mass transit in any circumstance. He's opposed expanding it since he began his political career in the Wisconsin state assembly.

These victories are not the last word on any of these issues. Anti-piracy legislation still has broad support in Congress. Scott Walker hasn't been recalled yet. And TransCanada, the company that wants to build that pipeline, can re-apply for permission to build it. In each case, battles, not wars, were won. But these wins all prove that populist movements can succeed. And you don't have to camp out in a park or dress in a silly costume to make your point - and a lot of Occupy Wall Street protestors did both.

(Note: Occupy Wall Street protestors may sometimes resemble "Let's Make a Deal" contestants, but there's a difference between the two. "Let's Make a Deal" contestants are known to win! :-p )

My Special Announcement

(This post is an act of protest. I'm showing you what my blog could look like if SOPA or PIPA becomes law. Don't waste your time by coming back to this blog later today for a new post - come back tomorrow!)

SOPA Stopped - PIPA Moving

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would fundamentally alter the Internet and the way it is used, has been shelved from consideration by the U.S. House of Representatives. This is good news, but SOPA's sister bill, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), is up for a vote in the U.S. Senate next Tuesday. Many of the provisions in that bill are similar to SOPA, which is adamantly opposed in the House by Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has threatened to filibuster PIPA if it comes up on January 24 as scheduled.

The provisions of PIPA include the right of Internet service providers to voluntarily block sites suspected of even the mildest copyright infringement and punitive action against sites that give Internet users information on how to access blocked sites. Any site can be blocked or shut down by the federal government at whim if it is suspected of copyright infringement of any sort. Essentially, it (like SOPA) advocates Internet censorship.  Also, SOPA as written would allow domain name servers to be filtered or blocked, which computer experts say could weaken the global Internet, as the provision would have a long, global reach against all Web sites irrespective of country of origin.

With progressives and Tea Partiers alike opposing these bills (and with Wikipedia's English-language pages  going black for tomorrow in protest), the prospects for their eventual defeat are fairly bright. They just got brighter, in fact, with a statement from White House, which said that it could not support "legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet." President Obama, however, hasn't flatly ruled out signing whatever bill comes to his desk.

I myself could be affected by this legislation. If YouTube is shut down for having too many videos infringing on copyrights, I won't be able to continue my Music Video Of the Week feature on my blog. This blog itself could easily shut down by using quotes from other sources, credited or not. And since I use photos on my beautiful women picture blog that are not my own (like I can really use a picture of Reese Witherspoon that I took myself) and come from a variety of sources, every goshdarn picture could be deemed an illegal copyright infringement.

I have a special post on this subject planned for tomorrow. Tune in then to see what is.

The Depth Of Our Idiocy

I have a dream that when one of our greatest historical figures speaks out for what is important and pertinent in our lives, his quote will not be mangled by abridging it, which is what happened with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. on a wall at his memorial in Washington. King said, two months to the day before his assassination, "If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter." On the wall of the national Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, only part of the quote was used: "I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness." It makes Dr. King sound like an arrogant braggart. That is, it makes him sound like a Republican.

I have a dream that, if engineers can't find a stone tablet strong enough to include the entire quote, they'll find a similarly suitable one that can be placed on stone tablet in thirty days, as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has ordered the National Park Service to do. I have a dream that, when we honor someone else with a national memorial, the advisory board will be smart enough to exclude quotes too big for stone tablets and not place on such tablets truncated versions of said quotes taken out of context. Correcting a technical error after the fact is not how you erect a memorial. It's how you blog. :-p

I also have a dream that statues for future national memorials will not, as this one was, be carved in China. Ye gods, now we're outsourcing statues to the Chinese?

I have a dream that one day we'll be able to stand by an expertly crafted piece of public art, and join in the old American battle cry, "Made In the USA!"