Archive Listing
May 24, 2007 - May 17, 2007

Monday, May 22, 2006

PSAYINGS.5A.13. There are only a few hands that beat a full house. That's why the Democrats are so confident about their chances in the 2006 and 2008 elections. We have to agree. Gosh, it'd take royal flush or something like that to best the party that has no foreign policy and no domestic agenda but raising taxes. Wouldn't it?


Maybe they should use a different deck in November.

Friday, May 19, 2006

Thursday, May 18, 2006

                     
MOTION PICTURES. We were talking movies — or trying to — and I began to wonder what my friend’s son would reflect on at a later time, tables turned, in a similar conversation with a person half his age. That’s when I realized something was missing.

I’m not an avid movie goer, but used to be. In the fifties and early sixties, Saturday afternoon was the time to box up the Fort Apache stockade, put away the plastic burp gun, and bike to the movies. “Shoot-em-ups” my mother called them. Westerns and war flicks. Occasionally, usually by accident, I’d see films with no combat at all.

I wasn’t lusting for bloodshed, I wanted to see heroes, learn what it takes to be a man. But the names and the faces I call up are barely known today, or so it seems.  They were genuine, solid, and, yes, earnest. They could win you over without histrionics or fake attitude.  All of them looked exactly like my father. Van Heflin in Shane. Joel McCrea in Ride the High Country. Glenn Ford in any movie that had him in uniform. Each would invariably leave me with the impression I’d encountered someone real, someone worthy to emulate. Someone who would stand and fight if he had to — and only for the right reasons. No phoniness. Just men.  Who remembers them now?

Not my young friend. One name, he says, sounds vaguely familiar. Then it’s his turn. He asks what I think about someone in some movie I think I’ve seen but can’t exactly place. I’ve caught several, I’m certain. Can almost recollect the special effects, which seem to be the real point. See in my mind’s eye a few smug expressions and maybe bring up a one-liner or two of bravado. I know these big movies feature big stars, because that’s the way it’s supposed to work. I just can’t recall their faces or their names. But the fact is, I just don’t care.

In the end we might have found one icon in common, the brightest star of all for me, William Holden. He remembers him, sort of. Something about a river and a bridge. Time rolls on.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

NOSTALGIA. The princelings of the blogosphere are proud, perhaps justifiably, of the impact their new form of media has had in recent years. They brought down Dan Rather, they helped reelect George W. Bush in 2004, and they have played a part in the steady erosion of the credibility and circulation totals of major newspapers like the  New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Boston Globe. They see themselves as a potent new political force climbing atop the crumbling ruins of the Mainstream Media.

The only problem with this view of media matters is that it's wrong. Think back to September 12, 2001. Imagine that an omniscient seer had told you then that four-and-a-half years later, the U.K. and Spain would have experienced al Qaeda attacks in their own countries; France's appeasement-oriented government would have been rocked by Islamic riots in Paris and other cities, Denmark would have had its citizens and embassies targeted for Islamic terror attacks on account of political cartoons portraying Muhammed; Russia would have endured a deadly hostage siege by Islamic terrorists at a school full of children; and in all that time, the United States would not have experienced a single additional terror attack on its own soil. Imagine the seer had told you further that the United States would, in the same period of time, wage and win two wars in the middle east, overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan and midwifing the formation of a parliamentary democracy there, then driving Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and bringing that destitute country to the verge of its first parliamentary government, elected by nation-wide vote and backed by a western-trained police force and a non-Baathist army, while Saddam himself sat in the dock awaiting the verdict of his trial for crimes against humanity. Imagine he had told you that American combat deaths in these two wars over three years time would not have exceeded 5,000. Imagine that he also told you the American economy would have fully recovered from the 9/11 attack in this timeframe, returning to employment, interest, inflation, and growth rates rivalling if not exceeding those of the Clinton years, despite wartime budget deficits and huge increases in gasoline prices caused by the inevitable uncertainties in the middle east, while the socialist economies of Europe stagnated or shrank. Then imagine that he told you George W. Bush's approval rating just six months after his reelection would stand at 29 percent.

Would you have believed him? Would you have believed that the predicted accomplishments could be achieved so speedily, if at all, in the post-9/11 world? And would you have believed that a man who led such bold endeavors would be the least popular president in modern history save for Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter?

Yet that is the case. And here, courtesy of CNN, is the unkindest cut of all:

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