Today, I turn my attention to television. Not just any television. Or rather, not just anything on television. Not sitcoms, nor crime dramas, nor soaps, nor talk shows, nor reality shows. I want to go deeper than that. I want to examine the essence of television, it's very soul.
You guessed it, folks. I'm talking about the commercials.
The first commercial I'd like to examine is the most poignant. It's for Liberty Mutual Insurance. It begins with three young boys sitting on bleachers. As they're wearing soccer uniforms, we can assume practice just ended, and they're waiting for their parents. Sure enough, a woman drives up and yells out,
"C'mon! We have to meet your father at the airport!"
Two of the boys, brothers, jump down, and run to the car. To the remaining child, the woman asks,
"Dillion! You need a ride?"
"That's all right," Dillion answers. "My father should be here!"
The woman seems less than satisfied by his reply. Nevertheless, she begins to drive away. As she looks back at Dillion in the mirror, she appears increasingly worried.
Dillion sits alone in the bleachers. It's starting to get dark. Suddenly, a beam of light hits his face. Is it his father? Or some pedophile trolling the soccer fields for little boys? Neither. The woman has returned. The ad ends with her and her two sons sitting in the bleachers, keeping Dillion company. Whew! According to the narrator, "All over the world, people are doing the right thing." Especially when they're scared silly some sicko out there might do a very wrong thing.
I'm not sure what any of this has to do with insurance. Maybe at a premium of, say, $350 every couple of months, they'll make sure a soccer mom keeps your child from ending up in a missing person's report. And do they have a similar policy for Little League baseball and Pee-wee football?
Another question hangs agonizingly over this ad. Where is Dillion's father? Did he get into an accident? Or did he run off with the cashier at the local Hooters? Either event could have tragic implications for such a young boy.
And what about the OTHER father? You know, the one waiting at the airport. I can just imagine him waiting on the curb outside the terminal, looking at his watch and thinking, "WHERE THE HELL IS SHE?"
Two of the leading vixens of the 1970's, Valerie Bertinelli and Marie Osmond, have been doing weight-loss ads for NutriSystem and Jenny Craig, respectively. Or is that Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem, respectively? Whatever, they both lost weight. Career wise, they were both so far off the celebrity radar screen for awhile there, I doubt if most people even knew they'd gain weight in the first place. Heck, I doubt if even the National Enquirer knew. But they're back in the spotlight now. Valerie's on the best sellers' list, and Marie's hit the dance floor. Literally.
Both these ads have "before" pictures. In Valerie's, it's kind of hard to tell just how much weight she'd gained. She's wearing something formless and baggy, a la Rhoda Morgenstern during the first couple of years of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Like that earlier Valerie, you're not sure whether she should lose the pounds, or just the polyester.
Marie "I'm losing it!" Osmond is another matter. This woman has spent her career looking for ways to be sexy without violating any Mormon tenets. Back in the '70s she accomplished this by eschewing cleavage, and instead wearing costumes just tight enough to make you think, "Ah, yes, she has reached puberty!" A couple of decades later, when this "before" picture was shot, this had become a bit trickier. Here, she's seems to be wearing a black slip-like dress, slinky without the actual slink. She's wearing a see-through blouse, brightly decorated to keep you from actually seeing through. It's all offset by a wild mane of black hair, as if she'd blow dried it in a wind tunnel. Is she a little bit country, or a little bit '80s metal?
Both ladies are now as thin as they were in the '70s. They also look as YOUNG as they looked in the '70s. Are Botox commercials next?
Now, on to an oldie but goodie. The Xerox Color Copier commercial. It first ran about two years ago, and I caught it again just the other night. Some one's buying those copiers. This funny ad begins with an office drone, who looks a little like Paul Simon, sitting next to a copy machine, looking a bit distressed.
"She's going to kill me!" Paul says to a co-worker.
As the copy is in color, he's afraid it cost too much.
"Don't worry," replies the co-worker (whose name we later learn is Dave). "With the Xerox Color Copier, we save pennies on the dollar!"
Act II takes place in a conference room. Somebody on the phone--a client, maybe--sounds elated.
"Great color! I'm shocked!"
A woman wearing glasses--the boss--replies, "Glad you liked it, sir!"
Paul Simon smiles. She's not going to kill him, after all.
The boss then presses a mute button, and gleefully yells into the phone: "You're shocked?! We're shocked you even get it, pal!" She's suddenly distracted. "Dave! What are you doing here?"
Poking his head in the door, Dave (apparently not important enough to be in this meeting) replies, "I came to fix the mute button."
The boss looks down at the phone. There's a clicking sound.
Some guy nearby who looks like he's straight out of the Far Side comic strip says, "Bye, bye, bonus."
HAHAHAHA! Pretty funny stuff! So funny I feel like going out and buying a, um, what's this commercial selling again? Let me think. The punch line involved a mute button. Oh, yeah. I remember. So funny it makes me want to go out and buy a Xerox Mute Button.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Crude and Unusual Punishment
If you're too young to remember the Energy Crises of the 1970s, or are old enough but have blocked that traumatic event from your mind, here's a brief recap. OPEC, long lines at the pump, thermostats turned down, sweaters over sweaters, diesel cars, siphoned gas, siphoned gas poisoning, moral equivalent of war. Things were bad. Then things got worse, and worse, and WORSE , and WORSE , until...it was the 1980s, and the Energy Crises had gone the way of pet rocks and Leo Sayer.
The new fad was the oil glut. People now drove more, mowed more, flew more, snowmobiled more, motor boated more, and even accidentally spilled more at the pump. It was cheap; why be careful? Cars beget minivans, minivans beget SUVs, SUVs beget Hummers. Things got better, and better, and BETTER, and BETTER, until...well, until now.
As soon as he took office, President George W. Bush appointed an energy task force, with Dick Cheney in charge. This energy task force's task was to force energy to be more, um, plentiful? Cheap? Energizing? Among the groups this task force met with was, well, we don't know. Dick Cheney won't tell us. He's claiming Executive Privilege. Isn't having your own chauffeur, and your own bodyguards, and your very own hiding place in case of another terrorist attack privilege enough? No, he also wants the privilege of dancing up and down Pennsylvania Avenue singing, "I know a secret and you don't. Ha, ha, ha," Word did get out that the task force included several Enron executives. It was later revealed that Enron was doing all it could to make energy less plentiful. At least in California. Off the record, but on a recording (like Nixon, they taped themselves), Enron executives joked about engineering blackouts that left little old ladies in the dark. A year later, when their company collapsed, they themselves were left in the dark. A dark jail cell.
I bring this up because there's been speculation that speculators are behind the spectacular rise in gas prices. This didn't make sense to me at first. Why speculate about oil? What do you think that black, gooey substance is, syrup of ipecac? Then I did a little research. See, there's something called a "futures market" What kind of futures are they marketing? Star Trek? The Jetsons? Nope. Those were fiction. This is real. A future is what a commodity, such as oil, will cost in the future, assuming you buy it in the, uh, present. Mathematically, this is expressed as F={S-PV (Div) (1+r)(T-t) (let's see THAT on the Jetsons!) Apparently, what you do--"you" being either a humongous financial institution that buys and sells a commodity, such as oil, or a humongous financial institution that buys and sells pieces of paper that represents a commodity, such as oil--is agree to buy the future sometimes in the future, and hope that the future in the future is more expensive than the future was in the past, and then resell that future in the present, which was the future in the past, and that's how you make your profit (come to think of it, maybe this is like an episode of Star Trek. Remember the one with Joan Collins?) Now, all this buying and selling the future use to be regulated. You could buy only so much of the future. You only could buy the future with the money you had in the present. You couldn't pretend you had less future than you did. These regulations were repealed because--well, I've searched the Internet for some other explanation than "political favor", but to no avail. Enron first took advantage of this new freedom. Boldly going where no humongous financial institution had gone before, they bought a lot of the future (electricity) with money they didn't have in the present, and then pretended they had less of the future, now the present, than they did. In short, they shut down a few power plants, causing the aforementioned blackouts. Are oil speculators the new Enrons, leaving old ladies, if not in the dark, than in the red? (No, it's not like Star Trek, after all. Captain Kirk let Joan Collins get hit by a truck so as to keep Hitler from winning World War Two, and he didn't even make any money off it!)
That's just one theory on the current spike in gas prices. There are others. Ones that don't involve the future. Such as, oil executives, in the present, are screwing us over, in the present, in order to make a big pile of money, in the present.
You may get the impression from reading all of the above that I don't believe there's an actual shortage of oil. You'd be wrong. I genuinely believe that overpopulation, combined with mass consumerism, combined with globalization, combined with our corporate masters' need for this quarter's profit to be bigger than last quarter's profit which were bigger than the quarter before, will eventually cause us to run out of everything from oil to food to water to the very ground beneath us, and we'll all have to walk, hungry and thirsty, on the Earth's molten core.
But what I just don't get is this twenty year lull between energy crises. It's like some one's on their death bed, surrounded by his loved ones, with a priest delivering the Last Rites. The guy doesn't die, however. The very next day, he plays a couple rounds of golf, takes in a game of tennis, goes jogging, shoots a couple of hoops, does some laps around the pool, plays horseshoes, and, at night, goes bowling. The day after that he's back on his death bed, his loved ones are all looking at their watches, and the priest is reminding everyone he gets paid by the hour.
Then there's that other problem--global warming. It made all the headlines last year, but lately it's been pushed toward the back somewhere between Goren Bridge and the crossword puzzle. It'll come back. In fact, during that twenty year lull (and this is why I think the shortage can't be entirely fake), we had the two hottest decades in history. Until this decade, that is. We shouldn't be surprised that energy shortages and environmental destruction should coincide with each other. They're both caused by the same thing: using too much fuel. To paraphrase Frank Sinatra, the two problems go together like a horse and carriage (which may soon be our principle means of transportation.)
While we're pointing fingers at oil speculators and oil executives, how about We, The People? Are we to blame? Well, Pogo's dictum still holds: "We have met the enemy and he is us!" First, though, we have to be introduced.
You may have heard it said that Americans are addicted to oil. Well, let's compare it to other addictions. Most addicts don't start out as addicts. You don't smoke, then you have that first cigarette. You don't drink, then you have that first beer. You don't do drugs, than you have that first toke, snort, or fix. Where petroleum's concerned you have to go back almost 100 years, to the horse-and-buggy era. At first, that was all people knew. It was all they ever knew. Then came the automobile. At first, it was intimidating. As intimidating as the personal computer was to a later generation (at least this particular blogger.) Then they got behind the wheel. Goodbye, horse. Goodbye, carriage. It was their first smoke, first drink, first toke, first snort, first fix.
Those people are most likely all gone by now, but they left behind their addiction, the car culture we all grew up on. We, The People are not just addicts, we're crack babies.
Actually, I may be jumping ahead a bit. If you watch old movies from the '30s and '40s, yes, there are cars, but they also take trains and buses. And they walk. Even in the big city. Especially in the big city. At all hours of the night, in the poorest neighborhoods, without the slightest fear of getting mugged (even in the gangster films it's safe, as long as you stay the hell away from Edgar G. Robinson.) Then came the suburbs, and that's where we get to the crux of the problem.
No trains came to the suburbs. Busses came maybe twice a day, not twice a minute like in the big city. You could walk in the suburbs, but where. One development led to another, identical development. You'd find yourself walking in circles, or in cul-de-sacs. You needed a car. It's a lot easier driving in circles than walking.
I grew up in the suburbs, but my parents didn't. They grew up in the big city. So did the parents of the kids next door. And the kids across the street. And all the kids on the block. And all the kids at school. I never met a single kid whose parents grew up in the suburbs. How could they? There was no suburbs for them to grow up in. We kids were first generation suburbanites.
Lo, these many years later, it's quite different. Not only have the average suburban kid's parents also grown up in the suburbs, but in some cases, so have their grandparents . Not always the same suburbs, of course. First, there was just suburbs, which we now call inner ring suburbs. Followed, naturally, by outer ring suburbs. Now, there's exurbs. What's next? Inner and outer ring exurbs, I suppose. After that, who knows? Extraexurbs? Meanwhile, the abandoned big city is turning into Greenfield Village, but without the tour guides.
Suburbs, superhighways, shopping centers, and parking lots. It's all we know. It's all we've ever known. Not only are We, The People crack babies, but crack babies abandoned on the doorstep of the Columbia drug cartel. And just who abandoned us? Just our politicians, business leaders, advertisers, developers, editorial writers, even our educators, when they all sold us on the Good Life. Of course, we bought it. What do you want, a Bad Death?
Please don't think from reading all this that I'm anti-car or anti-driving. Nope. I absolutely, positively love to drive. Or I did until I got into one wreck too many. Still, it beats walking 20 miles to work in the morning. And it's a way of getting out of the house on a Saturday night. What I absolutely, positively don't like, however, is being sold a bill of goods.
But that's all in the past. We've got the future (but not the kind you buy and sell) to think about. We need to free ourselves from foreign oil. Maybe oil, period. We need green technologies (see Kermit? That color's in now.) We need to develop alternative (punk? grunge? new wave?) sources of fuel. We need renewables, such as wind or solar (I hope the sun's renewable. I'd hate to see two moons in a permanently dark sky.) We need an Apollo-like program for energy independence ("One small spin around the block for man, one giant cross-country trip to the Grand Canyon for mankind!")
Do all that, or even begin to do all that, and we'll see which drops faster: the price of gas, or an oil executive's shit.
The new fad was the oil glut. People now drove more, mowed more, flew more, snowmobiled more, motor boated more, and even accidentally spilled more at the pump. It was cheap; why be careful? Cars beget minivans, minivans beget SUVs, SUVs beget Hummers. Things got better, and better, and BETTER, and BETTER, until...well, until now.
As soon as he took office, President George W. Bush appointed an energy task force, with Dick Cheney in charge. This energy task force's task was to force energy to be more, um, plentiful? Cheap? Energizing? Among the groups this task force met with was, well, we don't know. Dick Cheney won't tell us. He's claiming Executive Privilege. Isn't having your own chauffeur, and your own bodyguards, and your very own hiding place in case of another terrorist attack privilege enough? No, he also wants the privilege of dancing up and down Pennsylvania Avenue singing, "I know a secret and you don't. Ha, ha, ha," Word did get out that the task force included several Enron executives. It was later revealed that Enron was doing all it could to make energy less plentiful. At least in California. Off the record, but on a recording (like Nixon, they taped themselves), Enron executives joked about engineering blackouts that left little old ladies in the dark. A year later, when their company collapsed, they themselves were left in the dark. A dark jail cell.
I bring this up because there's been speculation that speculators are behind the spectacular rise in gas prices. This didn't make sense to me at first. Why speculate about oil? What do you think that black, gooey substance is, syrup of ipecac? Then I did a little research. See, there's something called a "futures market" What kind of futures are they marketing? Star Trek? The Jetsons? Nope. Those were fiction. This is real. A future is what a commodity, such as oil, will cost in the future, assuming you buy it in the, uh, present. Mathematically, this is expressed as F={S-PV (Div) (1+r)(T-t) (let's see THAT on the Jetsons!) Apparently, what you do--"you" being either a humongous financial institution that buys and sells a commodity, such as oil, or a humongous financial institution that buys and sells pieces of paper that represents a commodity, such as oil--is agree to buy the future sometimes in the future, and hope that the future in the future is more expensive than the future was in the past, and then resell that future in the present, which was the future in the past, and that's how you make your profit (come to think of it, maybe this is like an episode of Star Trek. Remember the one with Joan Collins?) Now, all this buying and selling the future use to be regulated. You could buy only so much of the future. You only could buy the future with the money you had in the present. You couldn't pretend you had less future than you did. These regulations were repealed because--well, I've searched the Internet for some other explanation than "political favor", but to no avail. Enron first took advantage of this new freedom. Boldly going where no humongous financial institution had gone before, they bought a lot of the future (electricity) with money they didn't have in the present, and then pretended they had less of the future, now the present, than they did. In short, they shut down a few power plants, causing the aforementioned blackouts. Are oil speculators the new Enrons, leaving old ladies, if not in the dark, than in the red? (No, it's not like Star Trek, after all. Captain Kirk let Joan Collins get hit by a truck so as to keep Hitler from winning World War Two, and he didn't even make any money off it!)
That's just one theory on the current spike in gas prices. There are others. Ones that don't involve the future. Such as, oil executives, in the present, are screwing us over, in the present, in order to make a big pile of money, in the present.
You may get the impression from reading all of the above that I don't believe there's an actual shortage of oil. You'd be wrong. I genuinely believe that overpopulation, combined with mass consumerism, combined with globalization, combined with our corporate masters' need for this quarter's profit to be bigger than last quarter's profit which were bigger than the quarter before, will eventually cause us to run out of everything from oil to food to water to the very ground beneath us, and we'll all have to walk, hungry and thirsty, on the Earth's molten core.
But what I just don't get is this twenty year lull between energy crises. It's like some one's on their death bed, surrounded by his loved ones, with a priest delivering the Last Rites. The guy doesn't die, however. The very next day, he plays a couple rounds of golf, takes in a game of tennis, goes jogging, shoots a couple of hoops, does some laps around the pool, plays horseshoes, and, at night, goes bowling. The day after that he's back on his death bed, his loved ones are all looking at their watches, and the priest is reminding everyone he gets paid by the hour.
Then there's that other problem--global warming. It made all the headlines last year, but lately it's been pushed toward the back somewhere between Goren Bridge and the crossword puzzle. It'll come back. In fact, during that twenty year lull (and this is why I think the shortage can't be entirely fake), we had the two hottest decades in history. Until this decade, that is. We shouldn't be surprised that energy shortages and environmental destruction should coincide with each other. They're both caused by the same thing: using too much fuel. To paraphrase Frank Sinatra, the two problems go together like a horse and carriage (which may soon be our principle means of transportation.)
While we're pointing fingers at oil speculators and oil executives, how about We, The People? Are we to blame? Well, Pogo's dictum still holds: "We have met the enemy and he is us!" First, though, we have to be introduced.
You may have heard it said that Americans are addicted to oil. Well, let's compare it to other addictions. Most addicts don't start out as addicts. You don't smoke, then you have that first cigarette. You don't drink, then you have that first beer. You don't do drugs, than you have that first toke, snort, or fix. Where petroleum's concerned you have to go back almost 100 years, to the horse-and-buggy era. At first, that was all people knew. It was all they ever knew. Then came the automobile. At first, it was intimidating. As intimidating as the personal computer was to a later generation (at least this particular blogger.) Then they got behind the wheel. Goodbye, horse. Goodbye, carriage. It was their first smoke, first drink, first toke, first snort, first fix.
Those people are most likely all gone by now, but they left behind their addiction, the car culture we all grew up on. We, The People are not just addicts, we're crack babies.
Actually, I may be jumping ahead a bit. If you watch old movies from the '30s and '40s, yes, there are cars, but they also take trains and buses. And they walk. Even in the big city. Especially in the big city. At all hours of the night, in the poorest neighborhoods, without the slightest fear of getting mugged (even in the gangster films it's safe, as long as you stay the hell away from Edgar G. Robinson.) Then came the suburbs, and that's where we get to the crux of the problem.
No trains came to the suburbs. Busses came maybe twice a day, not twice a minute like in the big city. You could walk in the suburbs, but where. One development led to another, identical development. You'd find yourself walking in circles, or in cul-de-sacs. You needed a car. It's a lot easier driving in circles than walking.
I grew up in the suburbs, but my parents didn't. They grew up in the big city. So did the parents of the kids next door. And the kids across the street. And all the kids on the block. And all the kids at school. I never met a single kid whose parents grew up in the suburbs. How could they? There was no suburbs for them to grow up in. We kids were first generation suburbanites.
Lo, these many years later, it's quite different. Not only have the average suburban kid's parents also grown up in the suburbs, but in some cases, so have their grandparents . Not always the same suburbs, of course. First, there was just suburbs, which we now call inner ring suburbs. Followed, naturally, by outer ring suburbs. Now, there's exurbs. What's next? Inner and outer ring exurbs, I suppose. After that, who knows? Extraexurbs? Meanwhile, the abandoned big city is turning into Greenfield Village, but without the tour guides.
Suburbs, superhighways, shopping centers, and parking lots. It's all we know. It's all we've ever known. Not only are We, The People crack babies, but crack babies abandoned on the doorstep of the Columbia drug cartel. And just who abandoned us? Just our politicians, business leaders, advertisers, developers, editorial writers, even our educators, when they all sold us on the Good Life. Of course, we bought it. What do you want, a Bad Death?
Please don't think from reading all this that I'm anti-car or anti-driving. Nope. I absolutely, positively love to drive. Or I did until I got into one wreck too many. Still, it beats walking 20 miles to work in the morning. And it's a way of getting out of the house on a Saturday night. What I absolutely, positively don't like, however, is being sold a bill of goods.
But that's all in the past. We've got the future (but not the kind you buy and sell) to think about. We need to free ourselves from foreign oil. Maybe oil, period. We need green technologies (see Kermit? That color's in now.) We need to develop alternative (punk? grunge? new wave?) sources of fuel. We need renewables, such as wind or solar (I hope the sun's renewable. I'd hate to see two moons in a permanently dark sky.) We need an Apollo-like program for energy independence ("One small spin around the block for man, one giant cross-country trip to the Grand Canyon for mankind!")
Do all that, or even begin to do all that, and we'll see which drops faster: the price of gas, or an oil executive's shit.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Drawn and Cartered
Temporary lay offs--Good Times
Easy credit rip offs--Good Times
Scratchin' and surviving--Good Times
Hangin' in a chow line--Good Times
Aint we lucky we got 'em--Good Times
--theme song from the '70s sitcom
John McCain, who some time ago, maybe back when he was a "maverick" (is he also a Rockford File?), admitted that he knew nothing about economics, has apparently been brushing up on the subject. He's brushed up by backing up--all the way to the Carter administration, evoking memories, and comparisons, that he hopes causes voters to give Barack Obama the brush off. Running against Jimmy Carter has been the Republican strategy for a quarter of a century, plus two. Ronald Reagan got the ball rolling by running against Carter in 1980. I mean, really running against Carter, not the Liberal Democrat Incarnate of popular myth, but the actual, physical, living, breathing human being. Reagan won, partly due to the situation in Iran (I wonder what ever happened to that country), and partly due to the dismal state of the economy. And what a dismal state it was, what with double digit inflation and unemployment running about 7.5%. Under those circumstances, God would have lost to Reagan. During Reagan's presidency, unemployment increased to a whopping 10%, but was down to 7.1% by 1984. If I'm doing my math right, that's, um , a .4% difference (I hate decimals. Whoever invented them should be decimated ) between Carter and Reagan. I'm not sure how many actual, physical, living, breathing human beings this .4% represented, but there was apparently enough of them for Reagan to trounce Walter Mondale in the general election. Of course, it didn't help that Mondale had been vice-president under Jimmy Carter, the Liberal Democrat Incarnate of popular myth, or maybe just short memory. It also didn't help that upon receiving his party's nomination, Mondale triumphantly announced plans to raise taxes. That's always a vote getter. Four years later, Reagan's vice-president, the first George Bush, ran against Michael Dukakis AND Jimmy Carter. I still have a vivid memory of the commercial the Bush campaign put out that year. There was a picture of Willie Horton--hold on; wrong commercial, wrong vivid memory. OK, the other commercial showed a bunch of down-and-out people during the Depression of the 1930s. Actually, it was the Recession of the 1970s, but it was in black-and-white, so it was LIKE the Depression of the 1930s. Who wants to go back to the 1970s?, the narrator ominously, or maybe just drolly, asked. Not us, the voters replied, for now Jimmy Carter was not just Liberal Democrat Incarnate, but 1970s Recession Incarnate as well. Dukakis, who would have preferred to have been identified with John F. Kennedy, was trounced. Bush couldn't rely on the same tactic four years later, for by then the economy, stupid, had become Carter Lite, and thus he served a single term, to make the comparison complete. Since then Carter's name's been occasionally bandied about, but the Republicans have moved on to the War on Terrorism, or thought they had until war was declared on America's pocketbook.
And so McCain has revived the Grand Old Parting Shot. He sounds just like Reagan in 1980, and 1984, and the first Bush in 1988, warning about a return to the "failed policies of the past." The past is certainly returning in other ways. High prices at the pump, high unemployment, and soon, they're predicting, high inflation. This is more than Carter Lite. It's Carter Heavy! It's wholly appropriate McCain would evoke his name, except for one little thing. CARTER ISN'T PRESIDENT. He hasn't been president for a very long time. Britney Spears wasn't even an embryo when Carter last sat in the Oval Office. The man who has presided over Carter Heavy is the son of the man who presided over Carter Lite, President George Walker Bush.
Of course, John McCain isn't President Bush. He's a "maverick". But while criticizing the failed liberal policies of an increasingly distant past (even Ashton Kutcher has left the '70s behind) wouldn't it be nice to occasionally criticize the failed conservative policies of the here and now. Do that, and I might not feel the need to put quotation marks around "maverick". Some true conservatives (they call themselves that to distinguish themselves from the other kind, whatever the other kind is) don't consider George Bush a true conservative (so that must be the other kind!) what with the deficit and all that, so John McCain could always try that tack, except he's not trying that tack. Not that the true conservatives want him to. They don't like John McCain. No one in the Republican Party seems to like him very much. So why is he the presumptive nominee? Either they've already written 2008 off and are throwing McCain under his his very own Straight Talk Express bus, or they think he'll get those swing voters thrilled at the prospect of a "maverick" boldly taking on a president who's been out of office for 27 years. Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side.
So expect, my friends, to hear more about how Barack Obama is just like Jimmy Carter, Failed Liberal Policies of the 1970s Incarnate. Just keep two things in mind. First, a decade is ten years. Carter took office in 1977. As far as the seventies go, he had a measly three years. A lousy measly three years, but what came before was hardly a rose garden. For the first part of the decade, not only wasn't Carter president, most people outside of Georgia didn't even know he existed. Yet we still had inflation, high unemployment, long lines at the pump. You see those lyrics that I started this spiel off with? Written during a Republican administration.
The second thing. When he ran for re-election in 1980, Carter was challenged within his own party by Ted Kennedy, who was backed by a lot of unhappy liberals. Why were they so unhappy? They didn't like the way Carter kept deregulating things. They thought him too conservative.
Easy credit rip offs--Good Times
Scratchin' and surviving--Good Times
Hangin' in a chow line--Good Times
Aint we lucky we got 'em--Good Times
--theme song from the '70s sitcom
John McCain, who some time ago, maybe back when he was a "maverick" (is he also a Rockford File?), admitted that he knew nothing about economics, has apparently been brushing up on the subject. He's brushed up by backing up--all the way to the Carter administration, evoking memories, and comparisons, that he hopes causes voters to give Barack Obama the brush off. Running against Jimmy Carter has been the Republican strategy for a quarter of a century, plus two. Ronald Reagan got the ball rolling by running against Carter in 1980. I mean, really running against Carter, not the Liberal Democrat Incarnate of popular myth, but the actual, physical, living, breathing human being. Reagan won, partly due to the situation in Iran (I wonder what ever happened to that country), and partly due to the dismal state of the economy. And what a dismal state it was, what with double digit inflation and unemployment running about 7.5%. Under those circumstances, God would have lost to Reagan. During Reagan's presidency, unemployment increased to a whopping 10%, but was down to 7.1% by 1984. If I'm doing my math right, that's, um , a .4% difference (I hate decimals. Whoever invented them should be decimated ) between Carter and Reagan. I'm not sure how many actual, physical, living, breathing human beings this .4% represented, but there was apparently enough of them for Reagan to trounce Walter Mondale in the general election. Of course, it didn't help that Mondale had been vice-president under Jimmy Carter, the Liberal Democrat Incarnate of popular myth, or maybe just short memory. It also didn't help that upon receiving his party's nomination, Mondale triumphantly announced plans to raise taxes. That's always a vote getter. Four years later, Reagan's vice-president, the first George Bush, ran against Michael Dukakis AND Jimmy Carter. I still have a vivid memory of the commercial the Bush campaign put out that year. There was a picture of Willie Horton--hold on; wrong commercial, wrong vivid memory. OK, the other commercial showed a bunch of down-and-out people during the Depression of the 1930s. Actually, it was the Recession of the 1970s, but it was in black-and-white, so it was LIKE the Depression of the 1930s. Who wants to go back to the 1970s?, the narrator ominously, or maybe just drolly, asked. Not us, the voters replied, for now Jimmy Carter was not just Liberal Democrat Incarnate, but 1970s Recession Incarnate as well. Dukakis, who would have preferred to have been identified with John F. Kennedy, was trounced. Bush couldn't rely on the same tactic four years later, for by then the economy, stupid, had become Carter Lite, and thus he served a single term, to make the comparison complete. Since then Carter's name's been occasionally bandied about, but the Republicans have moved on to the War on Terrorism, or thought they had until war was declared on America's pocketbook.
And so McCain has revived the Grand Old Parting Shot. He sounds just like Reagan in 1980, and 1984, and the first Bush in 1988, warning about a return to the "failed policies of the past." The past is certainly returning in other ways. High prices at the pump, high unemployment, and soon, they're predicting, high inflation. This is more than Carter Lite. It's Carter Heavy! It's wholly appropriate McCain would evoke his name, except for one little thing. CARTER ISN'T PRESIDENT. He hasn't been president for a very long time. Britney Spears wasn't even an embryo when Carter last sat in the Oval Office. The man who has presided over Carter Heavy is the son of the man who presided over Carter Lite, President George Walker Bush.
Of course, John McCain isn't President Bush. He's a "maverick". But while criticizing the failed liberal policies of an increasingly distant past (even Ashton Kutcher has left the '70s behind) wouldn't it be nice to occasionally criticize the failed conservative policies of the here and now. Do that, and I might not feel the need to put quotation marks around "maverick". Some true conservatives (they call themselves that to distinguish themselves from the other kind, whatever the other kind is) don't consider George Bush a true conservative (so that must be the other kind!) what with the deficit and all that, so John McCain could always try that tack, except he's not trying that tack. Not that the true conservatives want him to. They don't like John McCain. No one in the Republican Party seems to like him very much. So why is he the presumptive nominee? Either they've already written 2008 off and are throwing McCain under his his very own Straight Talk Express bus, or they think he'll get those swing voters thrilled at the prospect of a "maverick" boldly taking on a president who's been out of office for 27 years. Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side.
So expect, my friends, to hear more about how Barack Obama is just like Jimmy Carter, Failed Liberal Policies of the 1970s Incarnate. Just keep two things in mind. First, a decade is ten years. Carter took office in 1977. As far as the seventies go, he had a measly three years. A lousy measly three years, but what came before was hardly a rose garden. For the first part of the decade, not only wasn't Carter president, most people outside of Georgia didn't even know he existed. Yet we still had inflation, high unemployment, long lines at the pump. You see those lyrics that I started this spiel off with? Written during a Republican administration.
The second thing. When he ran for re-election in 1980, Carter was challenged within his own party by Ted Kennedy, who was backed by a lot of unhappy liberals. Why were they so unhappy? They didn't like the way Carter kept deregulating things. They thought him too conservative.
In Memoriam: George Carlin 1937-2008
Commedian and Author
"That's all your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!"
"That's all your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!"
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Blog Verite: Rock, Paper, Caesar,
The following conversation took place a couple of years ago at work:
"What's this paper doing on the floor? Now it's covered with footprints!"
"That's because everybody's been stepping on it."
"Well, I can see everybody's been stepping on it. Why is everybody stepping on it?"
"To get to the tape machine."
"Why don't they just move the paper?"
"Where? You see how crowded it is."
"You can move it, uh, hmmm...I have to use the tape machine, so I'll just step on the paper myself. When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
"Why don't you piss against a rock?"
"What?"
"Why don't you piss against a rock?"
"Why should I piss against a rock?"
"You just said, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do'. Well, in Ancient Rome, didn't they piss against rocks?"
"What makes you think they pissed against rocks?"
"'Cause they didn't have toilets."
"Why wouldn't they have toilets? They had aqueducts."
"What's an aqueduct?"
"An aqueduct is--well, it's kind of like a pipe. A big, long, pipe that can bring water over long distances. For instance, I think it's an aqueduct that brings water from Lake Erie all the way to Akron."
"Really? That's pretty impressive."
"It is."
"Just think, piss from Ancient Rome is going all the way from Lake Erie to Akron."
"What's this paper doing on the floor? Now it's covered with footprints!"
"That's because everybody's been stepping on it."
"Well, I can see everybody's been stepping on it. Why is everybody stepping on it?"
"To get to the tape machine."
"Why don't they just move the paper?"
"Where? You see how crowded it is."
"You can move it, uh, hmmm...I have to use the tape machine, so I'll just step on the paper myself. When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
"Why don't you piss against a rock?"
"What?"
"Why don't you piss against a rock?"
"Why should I piss against a rock?"
"You just said, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do'. Well, in Ancient Rome, didn't they piss against rocks?"
"What makes you think they pissed against rocks?"
"'Cause they didn't have toilets."
"Why wouldn't they have toilets? They had aqueducts."
"What's an aqueduct?"
"An aqueduct is--well, it's kind of like a pipe. A big, long, pipe that can bring water over long distances. For instance, I think it's an aqueduct that brings water from Lake Erie all the way to Akron."
"Really? That's pretty impressive."
"It is."
"Just think, piss from Ancient Rome is going all the way from Lake Erie to Akron."
Friday, June 13, 2008
Fist Fuss
It's been almost two weeks since Barack and Michelle Obama's famed "fist bump", and people are still talking about it, which, of course, means I can still talk about it, and talk about it I shall! So, what the hell did it mean? There seems to be two schools of thought, so let's get educated!
(As I'm sitting here typing this in the library, someone just shouted, "Tim Russert died!". One possible consequence is that people may actually stop talking about the fist bump. I'm still going to write about it. Tim Russert would have wanted it that way.)
The first school of thought is that the fist bump is descended from the Black Power salute, made famous during the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. American Tommie Smith had just won the 200 metre race, and John Carlos, also representing Uncle Sam, came in third. Both men were black. Upon receiving their medals, they bowed their heads and raised their fists skyward, scaring the hell out of millions of white Americans watching at home. I don't know why they were so scared. Look where their fists were pointed. What were they going to do, punch out the birds? At any rate, Obama and Michelle are supposedly carrying on the struggle. From Mexico City to the White House. I'm not sure what that portends for the immigration issue.
The second school of thought is that this is some sort of secret Al-Qaeda handshake. A secret handshake in front of fifty-million people? If I were Osama bin Laden, I'd revoke their membership. Let Hezbollah have 'em! Of course, they could be signaling all the sleeper cells, instructing them to create havoc during the upcoming presidential election. Don't worry. The terrorists are no match for Republican poll watchers.
So, which is it, Black Nationalism or Islamofascism? I'd like to suggest a third possibility.
Let's watch that fist bump again. Barack and Michelle. Such a young attractive couple. Barack looks like he should be on the cover of GQ. Heck, for all I know, he has been on the cover of GQ (someone Google and find out). Michelle is dressed to the T's. Slit revealing a bit of leg above the knee. Sleeveless. She's got a Jackie Kennedy-type of hair style. Or maybe Laura Petrie (I wonder if she wears Capri pants around the house). Barack and Michelle, waving victoriously to the cheering crowd. They turn and face each other. Barack moves in for a kiss, but not on the lips. Looks like just a peck on the cheek. Wait. Higher than that....He's aiming for her ear!...Let me rewind and watch that again...Did he blow in it, or did he nibble on the lobe?...It's inconclusive...Whatever he did, he's done. Now, on to the main event, the fist bump. Michelle goes first. She raises her hand, and clenches her fist. A nice , tight clench. Look at her expression. She kind of lowers her eyes, and...let me get a closer look...I know I'm at risk of getting eyeball cancer staring this close to the screen, but I just have to know...She's biting her lip! I swear to God Almighty, she's biting her lip!...Let me watch that again...and again...and again...whew!...and again...It's inconclusive...OK, she's got her fist up, now Barack raises his hand, clenches his fist, tightly, and with a forward thrust, makes contact. It only lasts a second, but what a second! OK, they pull away from each other, Michelle gives the thumb's up--heh, heh--and, wait--IS SHE BITING HER LIP AGAIN?!I'm going in for a closer look--BUMP--I just hit my head on the screen. Let's just say it's inconclusive. Now, Michelle turns to leave, and as she walks away, Barack PATS HER ON THE TUSH!!!!
In conclusion, the fist bump was merely an act of, ahem, affection. A perhaps more spontaneous, and even more natural, act of affection than, say, the famous Al and Tipper Gore mouth lock at the 2000 Democratic convention. I shouldn't be so hard on the Nobel Laureate and his wife. They were a step up (right direction, at least) from the usual presidential and presidential-wannabe couples. Usually the spouse--no matter how attractive--looks like she's (so far it's a she. Sorry, Bill) been pulled down from the attic, dusted off, and strategically placed next to their supposed soulmate. No matter how often you see them together, they look like they've just been introduced fifteen minutes earlier.
If Barack and Michelle Obama make it to the White House, they will be the first presidential couple in my lifetime I can actually imagine doing it.
(On second thought, maybe Tim Russert wouldn't have wanted it that way.)
(As I'm sitting here typing this in the library, someone just shouted, "Tim Russert died!". One possible consequence is that people may actually stop talking about the fist bump. I'm still going to write about it. Tim Russert would have wanted it that way.)
The first school of thought is that the fist bump is descended from the Black Power salute, made famous during the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. American Tommie Smith had just won the 200 metre race, and John Carlos, also representing Uncle Sam, came in third. Both men were black. Upon receiving their medals, they bowed their heads and raised their fists skyward, scaring the hell out of millions of white Americans watching at home. I don't know why they were so scared. Look where their fists were pointed. What were they going to do, punch out the birds? At any rate, Obama and Michelle are supposedly carrying on the struggle. From Mexico City to the White House. I'm not sure what that portends for the immigration issue.
The second school of thought is that this is some sort of secret Al-Qaeda handshake. A secret handshake in front of fifty-million people? If I were Osama bin Laden, I'd revoke their membership. Let Hezbollah have 'em! Of course, they could be signaling all the sleeper cells, instructing them to create havoc during the upcoming presidential election. Don't worry. The terrorists are no match for Republican poll watchers.
So, which is it, Black Nationalism or Islamofascism? I'd like to suggest a third possibility.
Let's watch that fist bump again. Barack and Michelle. Such a young attractive couple. Barack looks like he should be on the cover of GQ. Heck, for all I know, he has been on the cover of GQ (someone Google and find out). Michelle is dressed to the T's. Slit revealing a bit of leg above the knee. Sleeveless. She's got a Jackie Kennedy-type of hair style. Or maybe Laura Petrie (I wonder if she wears Capri pants around the house). Barack and Michelle, waving victoriously to the cheering crowd. They turn and face each other. Barack moves in for a kiss, but not on the lips. Looks like just a peck on the cheek. Wait. Higher than that....He's aiming for her ear!...Let me rewind and watch that again...Did he blow in it, or did he nibble on the lobe?...It's inconclusive...Whatever he did, he's done. Now, on to the main event, the fist bump. Michelle goes first. She raises her hand, and clenches her fist. A nice , tight clench. Look at her expression. She kind of lowers her eyes, and...let me get a closer look...I know I'm at risk of getting eyeball cancer staring this close to the screen, but I just have to know...She's biting her lip! I swear to God Almighty, she's biting her lip!...Let me watch that again...and again...and again...whew!...and again...It's inconclusive...OK, she's got her fist up, now Barack raises his hand, clenches his fist, tightly, and with a forward thrust, makes contact. It only lasts a second, but what a second! OK, they pull away from each other, Michelle gives the thumb's up--heh, heh--and, wait--IS SHE BITING HER LIP AGAIN?!I'm going in for a closer look--BUMP--I just hit my head on the screen. Let's just say it's inconclusive. Now, Michelle turns to leave, and as she walks away, Barack PATS HER ON THE TUSH!!!!
In conclusion, the fist bump was merely an act of, ahem, affection. A perhaps more spontaneous, and even more natural, act of affection than, say, the famous Al and Tipper Gore mouth lock at the 2000 Democratic convention. I shouldn't be so hard on the Nobel Laureate and his wife. They were a step up (right direction, at least) from the usual presidential and presidential-wannabe couples. Usually the spouse--no matter how attractive--looks like she's (so far it's a she. Sorry, Bill) been pulled down from the attic, dusted off, and strategically placed next to their supposed soulmate. No matter how often you see them together, they look like they've just been introduced fifteen minutes earlier.
If Barack and Michelle Obama make it to the White House, they will be the first presidential couple in my lifetime I can actually imagine doing it.
(On second thought, maybe Tim Russert wouldn't have wanted it that way.)
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