Surprisingly, comedies aren’t given quite as much of a raw deal as you might think. Horror films, though, really don’t stand a chance.
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And this is the key to why.
A Santorum candidacy would probably just be a longer version of the Sarah Palin section of the 2008 election, with actual sentences this time. Only difference is Palin was a genuinely magnetic figure–whether you believed she walked on water or correctly believed she was a completely ignorant trainwreck of a person, she commanded serious attention. Santorum, though, is just a sad, bitter man who can’t get over losing in 2006, has preserved the particular fights he waged at the time in amber and wants to fight them again and again, ad infinitum, as well as refighting a lot of older ones. Scattered message discipline is the hallmark of an underfunded, ad hoc political campaign, which again, shades of McCain 2008. But it’s not just that, as Alex MacGillis persuasively argues:
We talk a lot these days about Washington having been overtaken by conservative ideologues, but this is an exaggeration. Many of those glibly parroting right-wing ideology these days—say, Eric Cantor—are mere opportunists. But Rick Santorum is a rare breed—a bona fide ideologue with a fixed and coherent world view. He can’t just switch some button and turn off the social stuff and talk jobs instead. It’s all woven together. “I’m not going to go out and lay out an agenda about how we’re going to transform people’s hearts,” he said today. “But I will talk about it.” The contrast with Mitt Romney, the man who is all buttons and switches, couldn’t be any greater.
Which means that, if Santorum is the candidate, he’s going to be running on a holistic hyper-right worldview that will mystify and alienate pretty much everyone else. That’s much harder for Obama to campaign against, but luckily it will be impossible for Santorum to argue for everything to the electorate. How on Earth is he going to convince Protestants (who outnumber Catholics substantially in America) that they’re not really Christians? That’s not at all a political issue and it’s incredibly poorly suited to our soundbyte media culture to boot. Overall, the Santorum campaign doesn’t believe much in emphasizing one issue over another, modulating the impact of his statements for general public consumption, or even holding back on some of his less popular notions. Which is to say that his true enemy isn’t Romney or Obama, but the very idea of politics itself. This is why the Tea Party loves him, as it’s largely their contempt for the actual practice of politics that drives them, as opposed to the not-at-all political Great Statesmanship of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, men who were so morally pure and leader-y that they completely dominated all opponents and got every single thing they wanted when they wanted it due to that awesomeness, and none were known to make a bad call ever. It’s a complete fantasy, of course, but seductive to a lot of people on the right and some on the left too. This is why Santorum would be completely hopeless in a general election (and, God forbid, as president).
This is not the most important metric of economic success by any measure, but still a pretty significant accomplishment nonetheless. Welcome to the recovery.
Here’s what action on privatization will get you:
David Cameron has squandered the Conservatives’ new year lead as voters turn against his health reforms, according to a Guardian/ICM poll. The Tories are down by four percentage points in a single month, slipping from 40% to 36% since January.
Labour is one point ahead, on 37%, with Ed Miliband’s party up from 35% last month. The Liberal Democrats slip back two to stand at 14%, and the combined total of the smaller parties has climbed by four points, to 13%.
As the prime minister hosted a special NHS summit, which excluded the professional bodies most opposed to his health and social care bill, the public is siding with those royal medical colleges who want the legislation ditched.
An outright majority of respondents, 52%, say that the bill – which would overhaul NHS management, increase competition and give family doctors more financial responsibility – should be dropped. That is against 33% who believe it is better to stick with the plans at this stage.
Which is to say, push more costs onto providers and introduce some kind of a Medicare Advantage-like program to complement, shall we say, the NHS (MA “competed” with Medicare at 150% the cost or so). But once again, the lesson is reaffirmed that steps toward privatization just aren’t going to be stomached by the voters of this or really any other electorate.
As usual, the worst news here is for the Liberal Democrats. But this would be a golden opportunity to tear their misbegotten alliance asunder, if they wanted to. Whatever the logic behind it at first, it’s pretty clear that the new Tories are essentially the same as the old Tories, only with dumber leadership. Even Thatcher never messed with the NHS. Clegg must have decided to go all-in with this alliance, hoping things will get better before it’s too late, but as we Democrats have learned here in the US, passively waiting for the economy to get better isn’t where you want to be in politics.
There are a lot of people out there who believe that Mitt Romney is basically a decent person with dignity and decency and everything, and that he just doesn’t think that elections ought to be taken seriously. It’s hard to reconcile a concept of Romney with dignity to this:
With just over a week to go before the Michigan primary, ABC News reports Mitt Romney “is enlisting the help of one of his highest-wattage surrogates: Donald Trump.”
“The real estate mogul is preparing to spread his pro-Romney, anti-Rick Santorum message in a series of radio interviews this week on local stations from Traverse City to Detroit.”
Is this going to convince anyone to vote Romney? Probably not. Nobody’s ever pegged the Donald as having the common touch, and aside from his ongoing birther fixation there’s little there for working-class white conservatives to have much of an interest in there. It would be one thing if Romney were trying to steal the New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut primaries away from Santorum, but Trump has no connection to Michigan or Ohio, he’s just the guy who says “You’re fired!” on the TV to everyone not in the Tri-State Area. Hard to see how he helps Romney, and it could even backfire by making him less credible with elites.
Does this reek of desperation? Of course, but Romney’s been wearing that scent so long it might as well be his cologne. And I do think there’s a fascinating angle here. Back when Romney was the unchallenged frontrunner, he declined an invitation to participate in a debate hosted by…Donald Trump, basically saying it was beneath him. Both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum agreed to participate. But, now that pretty much everyone in America has turned on poor old Mittens, he’s decided that acknowledging the unbearable orangeness of being is now hardly beneath his dignity, and failed alternative football league founder Trump is now cheerleading for the candidate who publicly snubbed him, against one of the two guys who never did, and who additionally is the one whose style he most resembles. How confusing.
What can we conclude from all this? I think (1) that Donald Trump has no memory and is making it all up as he goes along, and (2) that while I do agree that Romney is probably not a horrible person deep down, the depth of his tragic flaw (i.e. an insatiable desire for power) is practically Shakespearean, and the few scruples that he still has today will probably be out the door in a few months if things get desperate enough. He’s like Francis Urquhart without the wit and humor.
One thing I’m always interested in watching or reading are accounts of when pundits or other noteworthy people personally undergo torture techniques and talk about them. In almost every case, the end result is they wind up more skeptical of the practices than they were before. This clip of the actor Denzel Washington is pretty short, but it sure seems like that was the case after he went through it (sorry no embed, but I tried for about 10 minutes and couldn’t figure it out–it’s worth a click, I assure you).
Not that I’d ever advocate forcing Sean Hannity or Marc Thiessen to undergo torture, but maybe if they could be dared into it, possibly with some sort of Reagan-based macho contest, we could move beyond this dumb debate already and go back to when everyone agreed torture was horrible.
It’s been something of an unusually ranty week for me, which is odd because I’ve been in a better-than-usual mood. So I’m taking a breather and passing on this:
A lavish New York penthouse with panoramic views of Central Park has become the most expensive apartment ever sold in the city.
Russian fertiliser magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev – said to be the world’s 93rd richest man – spent $88m (£56m) buying the Central Park West pad.
It is thought to be for his 22-year-old daughter, Ekaterina Rybolovleva.
The 6,744 sq ft (627 sq m) apartment was sold by American Sandford Weill, a former head of banking giant Citigroup.
The penthouse stands atop 15 Central Park West, a landmark building designed by architect Robert Stern.
I’d definitely recommend clicking through–the floor plan is ridiculous, and this is what the interior looks like:
Image courtesy of the BBC
I don’t know what 22 year old is going to want alone to live in something that enormous and isolated and imposing. At that age I was renting a room on the Central Coast that was about the size of a mid-range sedan, so I guess I can’t entirely get into that mindset, but still. This is more like Citizen Kane stuff, like where Charles Foster Kane lived before Xanadu. There are plenty of expensive lofts that a billionaire could give to his kid, but I guess none would quite “make the statement” that this one does, and get the guy a lot of ink for being so rich.
Wil Wheaton’s post is a good argument that most people are alright, and that it’s the moneygrubbing entertainment execs and a small number of people that are bad, at least when it comes to Chris Brown:
On Sunday, I was personally offended that Chris Brown performed at the Grammys. Violence against anyone is never okay, but the quiet acceptance of violence against women we see all over the world is especially reprehensible to me. Allowing someone who beat his girlfriend so severely she was hospitalized to perform on a national stage — and then framing it as some sort of comeback — didn’t sit well with me. Celebrities — especially pop music celebrities — are role models, even when it’s inconvenient for them, and what they do and how they treat people matters. So I posted a link on Twitter to the police report, just to remind people who they were celebrating.
I’d say about 98% of the repsponses I got were from people who thanked me for speaking up, but the remaining 2% were pretty awful: vulgar, barely-literate, blaming the victim, blinded by celebrity, convinced that it’s something I should just get over and forget about, and — incomprehensibly — self-identified as devout Christians.
While I didn’t take their anger and heartfelt wishes that someone “beat my ass” personally (it genuinely made me sad for them and their families), it has brought into sharp focus something I didn’t even realize I’ve been taking for granted: I’m really lucky that the overwhelming majority of people I interact with — many of whom I will never meet in person — are kind and awesome to me.
I’m honestly shocked by this saga, and I’m actually sort of bitter that America remained interested enough in this guy so that he didn’t just go away. He’s basically been soaking in self-pity ever since beating up his girlfriend, has clearly learned nothing, and now gets to wax triumphant. It really makes me sick to watch, and I’m more philosophical about the public’s sad interest in notoriety than most.
I readily admit that I’m a judger. I don’t like it because it makes it much more difficult to get along with people, to form relationships, and ultimately to live life. Having to negotiate all these preconceptions all the time is frankly exhausting. I feel as though I’ve gotten a bit better at this over the years, but the conservative evangelical upbringing I had has left some strong traces on how I view other people that will be there until I die. Knowing this is helpful because I can try to compensate, but it operates below an intellectual level and it’s sort of instinctual. I always have to remind myself that I don’t know nearly as much as I think I do, and that a lot of the impressions I have are inevitably skewed. I think there’s real wisdom in the “judge not” idea, and as a Christian I do what I can to follow it. At the very least, I’m able to reverse judgments easily.
But while I don’t know exactly what’s in Chris Brown’s heart, I really have no reservation in saying that he is a monster according to everything we know about him, and basically if you like the guy to the extent that you think what he did was no big deal, then you’re a monster too. Nobody is beyond redemption, but if human virtue is distributed along a straight bell curve, which I do basically believe, there always have to be a few people on the extreme left side of that. I don’t profess to know everything inside this man’s soul, but I don’t know everything that was in Hitler’s soul either, or Jefferson Davis’s, or O.J. Simpson’s either. Some people just can’t hide what they are, and I do believe Brown is one such. After a certain point, it’s almost crazy not to just accept the overwhelming reality of the thing, I think. And I really don’t want to hear about how his art somehow makes up for his failings as a person any more than I wanted to hear it about Roman Polanski. The question is whether someone doing awful things drags down their art–it doesn’t–but the reverse formulation is ludicrous. And the argument itself doesn’t work here: at least Polanski managed to make a couple of really distinctive and successful films, instead of cookie-cutter autotuned pop that you could hear from a hundred other comparable people (and better from them too).
Richly deserved:
The Fix suggests Newt Gingrich may be the most unpopular person in American politics right now. A CNN/Opinion Research poll finds 63% of all Americans viewed Gingrich unfavorably, compared to just 25% who saw him in a positive light. And a new CBS News/New York Times poll shows a similar split: 54% view Gingrich unfavorably, compared to 16% who say they feel positively predisposed towards him.It’s certainly a singular distinction during a period of high unpopularity of politicians in general. But Gingrich has been just an exceptionally trying figure this cycle, and it’s good to know that it’s not going unnoticed. Call me a starry-eyed idealist, but I believe that, if he tries really hard, Mitt Romney can beat Newt on this too.
Some impressive political courage by the moderates in Congress:
After indicating that they were placated by President Obama’s tweaked birth control regulation, Maine Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins appear to be hedging on it, speaking late Tuesday to Jonathan Riskind of the home-state Portland Press Herald.
They appeared to dance around the issue, not taking a stance but saying they aren’t fully with Obama.
I really have had enough of this party. I’ve had it. I’ve had enough of their greedy paymasters, I’ve had enough of their ignorant rank-and-file, and I’ve had enough of the spineless moderates and establishmentarians who know better, but who have been beaten down so much that they can’t even stand up for the most basic things anymore. Nobody is making these people stay in office. They could resign or not run for another term any time they like. I mean, if these two formally pro-choice women can’t even stand up for birth control access, they really ought to take a good look in the mirror. There’s just no excuse for it, none, except coveting more time in office. I sure hope they pay for it.
The pundits will remind us that it used to be the case that moderates in both parties worked together, but those days are over. Snowe, Collins, Kirk, Brown–all supposedly pro-choice, all self-described as moderate, all equally worthless. It’s a sorry situation when certified wingnut Rand Paul has been far more independent, productive, and valuable in the Senate than these four fools combined. And while I’m hardly an overall fan of the guy’s program, I can understand what Rand Paul wants to accomplish out of his public service. These four, I have no idea.
Go away.
Snack Food
This is not the most important metric of economic success by any measure, but still a pretty significant accomplishment nonetheless. Welcome to the recovery. (0 comments)Richly deserved: The Fix suggests Newt Gingrich may be the most unpopular person in American politics right now. A CNN/Opinion Research poll finds 63% of all Americans viewed Gingrich unfavorably, compared to just 25% who saw him in a positive light. And a new CBS News/New York Times poll shows a similar split: 54% view Gingrich unfavorably, ... (0 comments)GOP Voters: 'Can We See What It Looks Like With Huntsman And Perry Again?'
WASHINGTON—Claiming something “just seemed off” with the combination of candidates currently seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for president, voters asked Tuesday if they could see once more what the GOP field would look like with Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry back in the race.
... (3 comments)Romney Still Soulless, Insincere, Greedy Humanoid
This really pisses me off: Well my own view is, it’s a great idea. People who are receiving welfare benefits, government benefits, we should make sure they’re not using those benefits to pay for drugs. I think it’s an excellent idea. Why not just pass a law requiring HHS employees to just mock people getting their welfare ... (2 comments)E.D. Kain ponders “Why conservatives can’t do pop culture very well“
It reminds me of a post I did back in 2009, “And Jesus Blessed This Nation At Our Founding… Literally“
(3 comments)Official Gingrich-Cain 2012 response to Rick Santorum’s homophobia: “Rick, Rick, Rick. Don’t you know that the anti-gay bigotry only carries water if you have a few failed straight marriages under your belt?” Follow all their other words of wisdom here. (0 comments)Ron Paul Quote of the Week: Honest Rape
Here’s Grandpa Fustypants on rape and abortion:“If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen.”
via (4 comments)Unhinged vagina-shackler on Komen’s volte face:Cancer is Cancer! Aboration is Aboration!
(0 comments)Since it’s Mitt Romney week everywhere, I figured I’d post this op-ed by an ex-Mormon, which is a pretty interesting take at the institutional culture of the LDS church. Not much to say about it, but it’s definitely worth 5 or so minutes of your time. (0 comments)Why Bipartisanship Is Impossible, In One Sentence
When one party climbs back to power by promising action on the economy, does nothing on it, and instead spends literally all its time trying to hurt the other party. (0 comments)New From The Gingrich-Cain Front
Newt rants about cable movies he doesn’t like, and flips out when Herman tries to seize control. Catch all the fun here. And the main site is here, as always. (0 comments)Headline of the Week: Making Rapeanade
Leave it to TBogg:
(0 comments)Rick Santorum Suggests That When Life Gives You Rape, You Should Make Rapeanade Back when I was in junior high and the Clinton Impeachment was going on, I could hardly have imagined that Clinton would be used as an excuse for wrongdoing by Republican leaders. But that’s where we are. Interesting, isn’t it? (0 comments)Catch up with the official Gingrich-Cain “Great Statesmen” series over at @GingrichCain12. (0 comments)Only 65% of White Americans Have a Favorable Opinion of MLK Jr
…with a whimper. Drum is worth reading on this. I think he’s just got to be the most overhyped and overcovered guy who never managed better than third place since…Joe Lieberman? (0 comments)
(THE GRAPEVINE
