In The News - June 30, 2009

Al Franken finally got certified to take his seat in the United States Senate when the Minnesota State Supreme Court voted unanimously to recognize his election victory by 312 votes. For once, Norm Coleman knew when to quit, and he graciously conceded. Now Democrats are under pressure to deliver with a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but on major legislative items like health care, where there's a bipartisan impetus to get something done, that shouldn't be a problem.

Sonia Sotomayor's bid to take a seat on the Supreme Court suddenly got easier as well, for not only are the Republicans unable to stop her with a filibuster, Franken will sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee - here, during the Sotomayor hearings, more comedy will be provided by Jeff Sessions than by Franken.

Meanwhile, acting on George Walker Bush's timetable, President Obama had the military hand over control of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities to the Iraqi army. U.S. troops will for now remain in the areas outside the cities but still get involved on the Baghdad and other urban areas in case of further trouble.

Typical of Americans to move to the suburbs and ignore the cities except for their own interests.

More News

I don't know what to make of the Supreme Court ruling overturning the decision by the city of New Haven, Connecticut, to throw out tests given to firefighters because not enough blacks scored high enough. Several blacks did rather well among the 56 firemen who passed, but only nineteen promotions were available, and most of the firemen who scored well enough for promotions were white. So the test was thrown out. But the test was impartial, and it was designed by an outside firm that probably had no idea of the new Haven fire department's demographics, so the conservative majority's reinstatement of the tests was the correct decision, right?

Well, not if you listen to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who sympathized with the white firemen but said they had "no vested rights" to be promoted, or Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, who called the ruling in this case "cramped and wrong."

So why was it wrong? That's what I want to know. The test might have been flawed, the pool of applicants might have titled too much in favor of one racial group. . . . I can't get a handle on it because much of the attention on this case focuses on the fact that Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who has been selected by President Obama to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court. She was one of the judges who let the original decision by the city of New Haven stand in a lower court - based on procedure and, again, without explanation of the merits of the case. Sotomayor was doing exactly what a judge should do - she based her decision on restraint and precedence. Instead, right-wing critics have carped on her decision because she discriminated against white firefighters and therefore has racist attitudes towards Anglos. Never mind that one of the plaintiffs was Hispanic, like Sotomayor, and one of her colleagues, Judge Jose Cabranes - a Hispanic who almost got the Supreme Court seat that went to Stephen Breyer - criticized her decision on the merits of the case.

Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee that will decide Sotomayor's appointment have expressed concern over work she did for a Puerto Rican rights group. Because it's a liberal activist organization? No, probably because it's Puerto Rican. Sotomayor has been under fire for saying that she has an advantage of being a "wise Latina" with better experience in some cases. But white male Republicans are ticked off with her not because she's wise. It's because she's a Latina. (Rush Limbaugh dismissed her for belonging to an all-female legal group, accusing her of sexism as well as racism. Then he said something about her cleaning up the trash after the meanings.)

Expect Republican senators Mitch McConnell and Jeff Sessions to play up the Puerto Rican card and derail the Sotomayor nomination. Their respective states of Kentucky and Alabama are not known for having large Puerto Rican populations, so they have nothing to lose.

Meanwhile, we go from a thriller to a shiller - right after Michael Jackson's death, television pitchman Billy Mays, also fifty years old, died of a heart attack. Well, he was an overexcited type . . ..

Style Over Substance

One of the most fascinating things about Michael Jackson's death is how quickly history has been revised right after he received the weaver's answer. One commentator on MSNBC commented on how Jackson broke the color barrier in popular music and how he gained a large white audience when he crossed over into the mainstream.

Interesting. That's news to me. Let's see . . . Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis, Jr., Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington . . .. Dude, how far back do you want to go? White people were listening to Louis Armstrong in the twenties.

Jackson's barrier breaking was limited at best. "Beat It" got airplay on white rock radio thanks to Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo on that single, and even Prince benefited from Jackson's achievement for awhile, but the breakthrough didn't last. Things quickly reverted to business as usual. And it's hard to imagine someone "crossing over" to the mainstream when he'd been in the mainstream since his career began. The Jackson Five performed on Ed Sullivan's show, and in the sixties, you couldn't get much more mainstream than that. If you wanted to go against the mainstream, you played on the Smothers Brothers' show. Ask Pete Seeger.

Jackson did shatter the barrier for black musicians that kept their videos from being aired on MTV, and it legitimized the channel as a pop-cultural institution, but with his emphasis on style, visual charisma, and elaborate production, Jackson made it possible for anyone with more style than musical substance to break through.

And so there was Duran Duran. And then came . . . Madonna.

Not a great legacy . . .

On the other hand, the inclusion of Jackson's videos on MTV meant that the channel had to cut some performers from its playlist. That's one thing I'm grateful to Jackson for - I never had to watch videos from obscure but awful bands like LeRoux or Red Rider ever again.

Then again, Night Ranger still managed to break through anyway.

Five Will Get You Ten

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently decided to expand the number of Best Picture Oscar nominees from five to ten for the next awards ceremony. This was the original standard back in the thirties and forties.

There's only one thing wrong with the Academy's decision: There aren't enough good pictures to qualify for so many nominations these days. For every Meryl Streep picture or every independent production that debuted at Sundance or Cannes, there are a slew of big action movies, live-action cartoons, or films based on sixties sitcoms. (Coming soon: Gilligan's Island: The Movie!)

This, of course, will enable twice as many movie to be advertised for their Best Picture Oscar Nomination, whether they're worthy of the honor or not. If you can't have quality (and Hollywood has been lacking there since at least the Carter administration), get quantity.

On the other hand, this may be the only way a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston can get taken seriously.

I expect the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation to double its Worst Picture nominations any day now.

Regress

Congress, the late Nipsey Russell once said, is the opposite of progress. Last night, however, the House of Representatives stunned everyone by actually making progress on a contentious environmental issue - global warming. The clean energy bill passed by the House passed narrowly - by five votes - making investments in clean energy production more of a reality. The bill, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act but sometimes called the Waxman-Markey Act (after its sponsors), requires carbon pollutants to be reduced by 17 percent by 2020, and up to 80 percent by 2050. Other provisions include a requirement for new use of renewable energy by utilities and energy efficiency incentives for homes and buildings.

Republicans and oil companies fought this bill diligently, and only eight Republicans voted for it. Tellingly, three of those Republican votes came from my own state of New Jersey. Sadly, my congressman's vote was not among them.

Bob Etheridge voted for it. :-) ;-)

The bill now goes to the Senate, where chances of passage seemed dim but get a boost from the House vote. This news is a big win for President Obama, who hopes at least to put America on a wiser, more efficient path when it comes to energy usage, and do more to combat climate change.

Abort Tape

Recently unearthed tapes from the presidency of Richard Nixon showed the President making some surprising and shocking statements on Vietnam and abortion. (The Roe v. Wade decision was handed down by the Supreme Court two days after Nixon's second term began.) Most of the tapes refer to Vietnam. Some of the tapes depict Nixon on the phone with Bob Hope heralding the Vietnam cease-fire - announced a week into his second term - as the) as "peace with honor." In actuality, as he admits in other taped conversations, Nixon readily admits that South Vietnam would eventually fall to the Communists after the Americans were gone - which it did two years later.

On abortion, Nixon admitted to the practice being necessary in cases of rape. But get this. He also said it was necessary in cases of interracial pregnancies.

What?

Nixon made all of these comments thinking they would never be heard.

Imitation Is Not the Sincerest Form of Flattery

Someone on MSNBC - I think it was Keith Olbermann - suggested that Michael Jackson's death may lead to a slew of Michael Jackson impersonators, just as Elvis Presley's death led to people impersonating him. 

 There already are Michael Jackson impersonators. Their names are Justin Timberlake and Chris Brown.

They're Out of Our Lives

I have mixed feelings about the death of Michael Jackson. I appreciated his showmanship and his obvious musical talent, but his life and his public persona in recent years always perplexed me, as it did others. In that same time, he seemed to keep putting out the same musically cliched pop songs that sounded more banal and tired with repeated listening. And I don't even want to start about his history with children.

In truth, the Michael Jackson I remember fondly died several years ago. I liked the Michael Jackson who sang and danced with his four (later five) brothers, the Michael Jackson who recorded Off The Wall, the Michael Jackson who sang "She's Out of My Life" and "Rock With You" (from that same LP). The Michael Jackson I watched for the past twenty-five years or so was someone I never knew. That Michael - the Michael who tried to buy the Elephant Man's bones and made elaborate but empty promotional videos that were more important than the singles they supposedly promoted - freaked me out.

I guess I feel about Michael Jackson the way John Lennon did about Elvis Presley. Lennon contended, upon learning that Elvis had died, that Elvis died the day he was drafted into the Army.

Meanwhile, Farrah Fawcett also died of cancer. I found the media coverage of her in her last months in infuriatingly bad taste. I'm not talking about the NBC documentary on her battle with her disease. I'm talking about how they wrote about her as if she were already dead while she was still alive. In fact, I think some commentators were already referring to her in the past tense. For Pete's sake, I wanted to shout, she's not dead yet!

Special attention should go to Ryan O'Neal, Fawcett's love for the last several years, who was her caregiver for so long and went beyond meeting his responsibilities by always being there for her. It's sadly ironic that O'Neal lived out in real life the ordeal of his most famous character, Oliver Barrett IV, in Love Story. Those who remember the 1970 movie recall that Oliver had to endure the death of his love Jenny (played by Ali McGraw) of . . . cancer.

He Wines and Dines With Argentines

I can't keep up with this story.

Not only was South Carolina Mark Sanford in Argentina instead of hiking in the Appalachians, he was having an affair with a woman in Buenos Aires.

He even wrote steamy love letters to his mistress with the kind of European-style erotic prose normally unassociated with politicians from the American South. He may even know how to tango.

Trouble is, he might have traveled there on the taxpayers' expense.

And he was away on Father's Day, despite the fact that he has four sons.

Wonder how this all looks to Richard Shindell, the American folk singer-songwriter who moved to Argentina in part to escape people like Mark Sanford?

A once-promising political career has ended because Sanford chose to wine and dine with an Argentine.

No Kuwaitis. That's not his style. ;-)

Mark His Words

The latest from South Carolina: Mark Sanford did not hike the Appalachian Trail after all, though he'd considered it. He spent his absence doing something less explicable: He went to Argentina.

Alas, he was not considering political exile.

Maybe he was hunting for Nazi war criminals! :-D

All Sanford said was that he wanted to go someplace exotic after a long legislative session, so he went to Argentina and took a drive along a coastal highway.

I hope he didn't rent a convertible, because it only gets up to fifty degrees or so in Argentina at this time of year - it's winter down there!

Wonder if he knew that?

News of the Weird

U.S. Senator John Ensign of Nevada looked to be in big trouble when it turned out he had an affair with a staffer's wife, but when the Republican lawmaker announced the affair himself to short-circuit an extortion scheme against him, it got him a warm reception from his fellow GOP senators. They applauded him at their weekly luncheon. That showed 'em! :-D

Meanwhile, Mark Sanford, South Carolina's Republican governor, went on a five-day hike on the Appalachian Trail without telling his wife, the lieutenant governor, the South Carolina state police, and just about everyone else in the state.

Oh yeah, he might have hiked naked.

I didn't know Republicans were trying to get themselves back to the garden. Sanford wanted to get back to Eden!

He has a better chance than John Ensign.

No Doubt

Meryl Streep turns sixty today.

Wrong Call

Have you ever wondered why progressive causes and policies a majority of Americans support - tougher environmental laws, more support for Amtrak, universal health coverage - never come to be? Perhaps this episode involving the Sierra Club explains it.

I got a call today from a Sierra Club asking me if I would support the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which is up for a vote in the House of Representatives, by speaking directly to someone in my congressman's office. The Sierra Club representative told me she could transfer me to my congressman's office, as they knew who my congressman was based on my telephone number exchange. It sounded like a good deal to me, so I said yes.

The next voice I heard on the phone answered, "Good morning, Congressman Bob Etheridge's office."

Bob Etheridge is not my congressman.

I didn't know what to do, so I feebly excused myself and hung up.

And people wonder why the left never gets anywhere.

Maybe I'm better off just clicking form letters to my congressional representatives through e-mail.

Social Media News

A business story in my local newspaper yesterday reported that Facebook has overtaken MySpace in the number of users for the first time since it was founded five years ago. Facebook users totaled 70,280,000 in May; MySpace users totaled 70,250,000.

Perhaps this was not unexpected. MySpace has grown increasingly stodgy, while Facebook offers more interactive features that allows people to interact more freely. That is, when it works. (I've had my problems with Facebook, but as of now I can say that they've since been fixed for good.)

While Facebook offers immediate information and easier interaction for its users, MySpace tried to offer more entertainment content - music downloads, movie previews - that people simply didn't care about. Right now there's a trailer for Sandra Bullock's latest movie, and while I like Sandra Bullock (and will probably like The Proposal, if I get around to seeing it), that's not what I go to social networking sites for. I go to them to communicate with my friends.

That's why I go to Facebook more than anywhere else. I can spend up to thirty minutes at a time there; I'm on MySpace for only a couple of minutes at a time. Most of the people I know in my writers' group are there; by contrast, only one of them is a MySpace friend, and I haven't heard from her in months. (This friend also has a Facebook account.) Several other MySpace friends haven't visited their own sites for weeks, sometimes months; they're too busy congregating on Facebook because it's easier. I communicate with friends of mine with both MySpace and Facebook accounts more often on Facebook, which more people take more seriously.

As for MySpace, no one seems to take that seriously anymore. Statuses and moods haven't been updated on many of my friends's pages for months. Statuses on Facebook, by the way, disappear after a week. Someone who says he's happy on MySpace - because that's what he wrote in March - might be miserable now. If he hasn't updated his Facebook page in over a week, you have no idea how he is.

Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation bought MySpace in 2006 and was hailed as a visionary for getting a piece of the Internet social networking action - now looks like a square who can't keep up with the times. Murdoch has vowed to get MySpace - which had to lay off a third of its 1200 or so employees - back on top, but that objective is in doubt. In the brief history of Internet social networking sites, such sites tend to be forgotten once they lose momentum. Friendster, for example, is like a bland sitcom that's been on the air for a decade; no one knows it's there. As I previously noted, I know a married couple who met through Friendster, and they're grateful to it for having found each other. But a married couple having met through Friendster sounds as hip these days as a married couple having met through a Catholic Youth Organization dance.

MySpace may not go the way of CYO dances, but just the fact that they're capable of going the way of Friendster must be frightening to Murdoch and to Tom Anderson, a co-founder of MySpace who immediately becomes your first friend when you sign on. (That might be another reason MySpace is in trouble; becoming friends with one of its leaders automatically might seem creepy to some.) Social networking sites tend to have their moments in the sun, but the ones that succeed stay ahead of the curve. Those that don't do so lose their edge with little hope of regaining it. That's just as true in other businesses - look at all the American and European auto companies still reeling from loss of market share to the Japanese. And, just as GM never quite regained an advantage over Toyota, the evidence of history suggests that MySpace isn't likely to get back its edge over Facebook.

Nevertheless, I plan to keep my MySpace page. Its format is like that of a real Web site, and I use it to promote myself to the outside world; my Facebook page is private. Plus, I love putting up a new music video on my MySpace page every week for people to see; the only way you can keep something up on a Facebook page for a week or longer is to not post anything for awhile. (I inform people of my latest MySpace "Music Video Of the Week" through - you guessed it - Facebook.) These small features might just keep MySpace in the running, if only as an also-ran.

Unlike Friendster, which is just plain out of contention.

Iranian Democracy

Iran's Supreme Leader has decided the vote held for the presidency was fair and has threatened to crack down on protests against his ruling. At this point, no one believes that a revolution against the Islamic republic is possible, given the general support for the theocratic state and the previously explained willingness of the opposition led by Mir Housain Mousavi to work within the system had they won (which they probably did - are you telling me all of those paper ballots were counted so quickly?). But given Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's arrogance, it could be that the clerics who run the country could re-arrange the positions of power to hold onto them. Bear in mind that the Soviet Politburo was able to purge Nikita Khrushchev from the Communist party leadership and the government premiership in 1964 out of dissatisfaction with the way he was running the show. Something similar could happen in Iran. Or, maybe the mullahs will freak out and crack down on dissenters as was done in China twenty years ago.

It's going to get very interesting there very soon.

Un-American Dream

CNN and Money magazine did a special program on the economy hosted by Anderson Cooper and Ali Veshi, and the took a poll through Facebook. One result showed that, despite the economy, 61 percent of people surveyed thought their job was secure.

That high?

But get this: A whopping 44 percent - a plurality - would be ready to leave the country if they knew they could get a job overseas! Those who would definitely move across the country for a certain job totaled 33 percent.

So much for patriotism.

I'd heard anecdotal stories of Americans this intent on moving abroad once George Walker Bush was elected to a second term, as well as those who were ready to quit America at the notion of Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from ultimate power. But I never thought the economy would be bad enough to produce this result.

Vote Early and Often

President Obama's speech in Cairo had such a positive effect on the Muslim world that pro-American politicians won elections in Lebanon, Given that, and given the President's conciliatory moves toward Iran, it seemed likely that that reformist presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi would comfortably defeat incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad going into this past Friday's vote.

It didn't quite turn out like that. As anyone who had the good sense to ensure that their television sets had digital reception beforehand knows already, the vote count in Iran gave Ahmadinejad a 2-1 victory . . . but with many provinces reporting far more votes than any one candidate could possibly expect to win, making a lot of people very upset. President Ahmadinejad dismissed the reaction of Mousavi supporters as comparable to soccer fans blowing off steam after a match.

Dude, this doesn't look like Manchester United fans bitching about a loss to Everton.

The Iranian people are rising up en masse to protest a voted that was most likely rigged in favor of the incumbent President, who's known to be the preferred candidate of the cleric councilors who actually run the country. Internet access has been cut, demonstrations have been banned, and Mousavi is under pressure to concede, and the people are not taking the results at face value. The supreme religious council is so unnerved that they've even called for an investigation into the vote themselves, although it could be mere window dressing. More likely, they're really scared.

If only the American people had been this much up in arms when Albert Gore had the presidency stolen from him in 2000.

If this happened in a Latin American country, it would mean a new government in a week, and I have an Argentine friend who can possibly vouch for me on that. No one is predicting a revolution in Iran like the one that toppled the Shah thirty years ago, because some of the mullahs support continued electoral and democratic reform and Mousavi had planned to support, and govern within the framework of, the Islamic Republic. But with the Iranian economy a mess, unemployment rising, and Ahmadinejad increasingly clueless, the "experts" could be wrong. Iran is and always will be a devoutly Islamic country, but many Iranians, including younger ones, are looking beyond the theocratic model of governance and looking for a more enlightened civic path.

I trust this blog will not reach anyone in Iran.

The American Meddling Association

The American Medical Association recently came out against any form of public medical insurance out of fear that government health mandates would adversely the private practices of their doctors, not to mention their ability to make a buck. Although the AMA represents only about a quarter of the nation's doctors, they are a powerful lobbying group, and President Obama has acknowledged their clout by taking them on in a speech to an AMA convention this coming Monday.

Interestingly, the AMA fought - and delayed - the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid in the sixties, yet despite their bigger membership and formidable clout, they failed because the public wanted those programs. A public insurance option is still in doubt with regards to today's health care proposals, and a single-payer program itself is off the table, but Obama has support from the public for reform - especially from us uninsured Americans - just as President Kennedy and President Johnson had for Medicare and Medicaid.

Obama is willing to give up some of his own ideas to make health care reform a reality today, and he's willing to meet the AMA halfway. Maybe the AMA should heed the maxim Obama has already chosen to follow: You can't get everything you want.

Unless, of course, you're Madonna, who just won the right to adopt a second child from Malawi in spite of the obvious case against her after the Malawian government tried to block her. :-O

Responsiblities?

While Rush Limbaugh blames the murderous shootings by supremacist James von Brunn at the National Holocaust Museum on the anger spewed by the left, another white supremacist, John de Nugent, says that the responsible white supremacist community condemns this act because "it makes us look bad."

He thinks racism and anti-Semitism presented rationally and calmly makes his kind look better?

"Responsible racism" makes about as much sense as astronomers who believe in a flat earth.

Or, blaming the Holocaust Museum shooting on the left.

On the lighter side of the news, noted hater Carrie Prejean lost her Miss California-USA title for not honoring her responsibilities. This is shocking! Miss USA contenders have responsibilities?

Trojan Horses

Are social networking sites overrated?

Forget the horror stories about people who got involved with MySpace or Craigslist. Episodes of that nature have gone on in one way or another for years, mostly without help from the Internet. Leaving the tales of the dangers of social networking sites aside for the sake of this post, I ask this - are social networking sites all that wonderful?

I've met a couple of people through the Internet - I met one friend through Flickr, in fact, if Flickr counts as a social networking site - but most of the people I connect with through MySpace or Facebook are folks I know in the real, non-cyberspace world. I prefer the actual company of people rather than the virtual one - that's why I made the eleven MySpace friends of mine that I have met and know in person my top eleven friends. More often than not, social networking sites are sites for me to go to in order to keep up my "real world" friendships.

I've tried meeting new people through MySpace, for example, but it doesn't usually work out. Case in point: One of my MySpace friends celebrated her birthday this past Monday. I had been trying to meet this woman in person for some time, because she sounds interesting. Anyway, I seized the occasion of her birthday to leave her a comment on her page wishing her a happy birthday, as a friendly gesture. But, because all comments left on this woman's page requires her approval before they're added to her comments page, it wouldn't appear until she looked at it and approved it.

It hasn't appeared at all. She has logged in to her MySpace page since Monday, but she didn't bother to post the comment I left her.

Come to think of it, she rarely approves any of the comments I've left for her photos as well.

So, I tried to meet someone and be nice and friendly and all that, and it didn't happen.

Oh yeah, I have 67 MySpace friends at this posting, and I'm in regular contact with no more than a few of them at a time. There are some MySpace "friends" I am in no contact with at all.

So, given all that, why do I have so many MySpace friends, especially when most of them are friends in name only?

I'm seriously considering dropping a lot of my MySpace friends (including the woman I just mentioned) for the same reason General Motors dropped so many brands - they're superfluous. If I want to meet anyone that badly, I'll do it the old-fashioned way - go to a bar. As for my MySpace page, well, it makes a good personal Web site, and I enjoy posting a different music video on it each week.

More of my Facebook friends, by contrast, are people I know in the real world, so that works out better, especially now that all of the bugs that affected my Facebook screen - part of it was truncated - have been worked out. I don't know about Friendster, though; I tried opening mail on that site and a Trojan virus hijacked my PC and it took me all afternoon to remove it.

Ironically, the chap who introduced me to Friendster met his wife through it.

Me, I get a Trojan from it.

And don't even get me started on Twitter, which I rarely use.

This . . . Is CNN!

I went to my New York University continuing education class on magazine publishing tonight, and the class took place at CNN's New York offices. We learned about how content is collected for the CNN/Money site on the Internet and how it relates to the wonderful world of magazines on the Web.

And then I saw, right before my eyes, the story of the Supreme Court's decision to let the Chrysler/Fiat deal go through on the wire.

Cool. :-)

The Penske File

Roger Penske's auto parts company looks to a be a big winner in the shakeup affecting the American automotive industry. Penske's namesake transportation services company, which already sells Daimler's Smart car in the United States, has acquired GM's Saturn brand.

Why is this good? Well, it will keep Saturn dealers in business and save jobs. And, despite the brand's loss of direction in this past decade, it continues to have a good reputation for quality service and no-haggling deals. Penske will continue to sell GM-made cars for a couple of years - sorry, no Astras - and after 2011, the firm will sell cars from other manufacturers.

The sad irony is that Saturn started out as an effort by GM to win buyers back from imports, and it succeeded at first. But as subsequent product became more generic and efforts at carving out a new image for the division failed, the General has had to give up on the venture and concentrate on its more mainstream brands. Penske will have to find another source for Saturn vehicles, and there's no other domestic manufacturing base he can turn to, unless he wants to sell Fiskers or Texas-made DeLoreans. What's left? You got it.

Saturns for the 2012 model year might come from Renault or possibly even from a Chinese company.

Meanwhile. . . . After years of a huge German and Japanese presence in the U.S. automobile market, the pending sale of Chrysler's assets to Fiat of Italy seemed to complete the domination of the American highway by the old members of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. Not so fast. Chrysler's stiffed bondholders, whose intransigence put the automaker in bankruptcy in the first place, petitioned the Supreme Court to block the sale approved by a New York bankruptcy judge, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg - who must have had a bad experience with a Dodge - temporarily delayed the sale pending a review by her and her colleagues. If the delay goes on long enough, the Fiat-Chrysler deal could be scuttled and the company liquidated. Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, Il Duce, would not be pleased.

And if that happens, how would Marchionne get Fiat back into the U.S. market?

Hmm, maybe he should call Roger Penske . . .

Old-Time Religion

Ever wonder if the heads of evangelical conservatives are exploding internally?

After numerous character assassinations of Kansas abortionist Dr. George Tiller on Fox News, a lunatic decided to do more than assassinate his character. A gunman shot Dr. Tiller to death in church in Wichita this past weekend. Abortion rights activists were appalled, but anti-abortion groups were even more outraged, quickly distancing themselves from Scott Roeder, the accused murderer, saying that they do not believe in killing doctors to prove killing unborn babies is wrong, and that all human life should be respected.

Someone forgot to tell Tom Coburn.

Meanwhile, President Obama spoke at a mosque in Cairo yesterday extolling the virtues of Islam and admitting to American mistakes in the Middle East while singling out Muslim extremists such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda as blaspheming the religion. Republicans are going ballistic over the first part, claiming that the President has some nerve apologizing for the United States of America, a country committed to freedom and justice. Like the CIA-backed overthrow of the democratically elected prime minister of Iran in 1953 to put the Shah back on the throne.

And, even though religious conservatives scored a victory when the California state Supreme Court upheld the proposition passed in November banning gay marriage, six states have now legalized it. Also, the two lawyers who represented the opposing sides of the Bush-Gore electoral case in 2000 - David Boies and Ted Olson, respectively - announced their commitment to overturn the California ban.

"If you look into the eyes and hearts of people who are gay and talk to them about this issue, that reinforces in the most powerful way possible the fact that these individuals deserve to be treated equally," one of them said.

Boies? No, Olson, the Republican.

Boies concurred by saying, "I couldn't have said it better."

Olson is the former Solicitor General under George Walker Bush. So, we now have two former Bush Administration officials - the other being Dick Cheney - to come out of the closet as gay marriage supporters. We'll know the pro-gay marriage side is winning when Karl Rove does the same.

Or Dub the Shrub himself.

That old-time religion ain't what it used to be.

Conan the Comedian

Conan O'Brien became the fifth host of "The Tonight Show" on NBC Monday, and he hopes to put a more youthful, more hip spin on the program. I haven't seen him yet, but I hope to find the time.

The big issue is how O'Brien's only living predecessor is going to fare this fall. Jay Leno is preparing to do another talk show, an weeknightly show at 10 PM Eastern Time on NBC, given to him in part to keep Leno from jumping to another network (now that he's been getting better ratings than he got when Conan O'Brien was announced as the new "Tonight Show" host five years ago) and in part to fill the one-hour 10 PM ET time slot.

All of NBC's drama shows in that slot have failed, and its one reliable drama, "ER," finally sang its swan song after fifteen years this April. Their general programming isn't any better; all but one of the shows premiered on the so-called Peacock Network that premiered in September 2008 are gone.) NBC needs to cut costs, and talk shows are cheaper and easier to produce. NBC still hasn't climbed out of its ratings slump since going from first to worst in 2004.

Their best hope of making that time slot work with a new talk show for Leno is to give it a distinctive image that separates it from just being a prime-time version of "The Tonight Show," otherwise O'Brien will seem redundant. Because if Leno does what he's been doing for the past seventeen years, O'Brien might be the one jumping to another network.

And if Leno doesn't make it the second time around, NBC might want to go the way of Fox and surrender that time slot to one-hour newscasts from local affiliates.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon is getting impressive ratings as the host of "Late Night." I couldn't believe it either.

Nukes of the North

A week ago North Korea tested a nuclear weapon that sent shock waves in the ground and around the world. South Korea responded by joining the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led effort to keep weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands, which led North Korea to vow to no longer honor the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War. This week . . . well, the crisis seems to be getting less attention, possibly because of GM's bankruptcy being such a big story. But it's still an issue. South Koreans got a little scared recently when a North Korean patrol boat briefly crossed into South Korean waters. North Korea has put two American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling (Lisa Ling's sister) on trial, accusing them of espionage.

No one seriously believes that North Korea will start another war, and the consensus is that they're merely rattling their sabers in a show of force. But many are concerned with the possibility of their weapons falling into the hands of the wrong people (I'll come right out and say it - terrorists!), and Kim Jong Il, currently reported to be ill, remains impenetrable.

Meanwhile, the North Korean population is starving, and if the country gets in an even deep rut, everything there could collapse. And with nuclear weapons on top of that? If the peninsula ever does become one country again, it won't be as peaceful and seamless a reunification as happened in Germany.

Or even Vietnam.

Loathing and Marriage

Dick Cheney has been appearing so much on television talk shows these days, people think he's considering a presidential run in 2012.

What would he run for, the excitement? With his heart? Why would he run, because of his excellent chances of winning? With a nineteen percent popularity rating?

And why would her suddenly endorse gay marriage, given the opposition to gay marriage among the Republican base? Since his daughter Mary is a lesbian, what stopped him from endorsing it in 2004? Oh, wait - Karl Rove.

Then again, the first caucus is in Iowa, and the first primary is in New Hampshire, both states as of today having legalized gay marriage. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch signed the bill making it legal in the Granite State today.

Nonetheless, we may have a pretty hard time accepting Cheney as an avuncular figure of trust, like Walter Cronkite.

Incidentally, this leaves Rhode Island - the place once described in the seventeenth century as a moral sewer by Massachusetts Puritans - as the only New England state not to allow gay marriage. Several attempts to change that have failed.

Meanwhile, putative presidential possibility Newt Gingrich says that maybe he was too strong in calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist. Oh - now he tells us!