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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
afhickman
Published Letters: 45 Editor's Choice: 4
It's hard to tell what game the press might be playing in cozying up to this mental midget, but Huckabee is certainly the flavor of the moment. Perhaps they're just bored. Or perhaps they look forward to exploiting the face-off between Hillary and the Huckster. It's a mystery. But Max Brantley has done us all a huge service by throwing cold water on journalists' claims that Mike Huckabee walks on the stuff. He was an embarrassment to the "banana republic" he trashed on Imus, and he is an embarrassment to the electoral process today. My "favorite" memory of him will always be the day he appeared on Arkansas television, red-faced and pouty, to decry then-governor Jim Guy Tucker, who was having second thoughts about stepping down from his office and letting Lieutenant Governor Huckabee slimeball into his seat. It was like watching an angry two-year-old throw a rattle across the room. It was also a preview of things to come. Message to the national press: don't give this man a forum. Treat him like all the other candidates, but don't be fooled by what passes as the Huckster "charm." That rattle could be the sound of a snake about to strike.
When the student was handed the mike, she should have said, "I was told to ask another question, but what I want to know is...". I would have asked her why her staffers think she needs to be spoonfed questions at public events. Hilary probably would have made an interesting reply. That said, I'm still voting for her.
As always, it boils down to pantsuits and baldspots. Where does one go to find substantive coverage of these debates? Not to Blitz Wolfer, not to Michael Sherer. I'm not living in the United States this year, and, although I get an international version of CNN on my television, I somehow don't count myself informed. The best news I get is the weekend update on the interntional edition of John Stewart's show. If I miss that, it's all Wolfer and Quest. Which is to say, bupkus. When is America's punditocracy going to quit clowning around and get down to some real, investigative journalism? And I'm not talking about John Stewart.
I'd gladly date Hillary Clinton, but I have a feeling she's going to be busy for the next eight years.
My favorite scene in the film is when "Dylan" comes tumbling onto the screen with the Beatles in an obvious homage to Richard Lester and the early Beatles films. Dylan (Quinn) then has to tear himself away from his friends and get back to the business of being a legend. His confrontations with the media, as epitomized by Bruce Greenwood's Mr. Jones, are the stuff of myth. It takes another genius to understand a genius. Mr. Jones can only "know there's something happening," but he can't know what it is. Dylan and the Beatles are "song and dance men" (to quote Dylan in another context) who happened along at just the right time to musically define an era. We can love or hate them or both (both Dylan and John Lennon were called the devil), but we can never understand them, anymore than we can understand God.
I remember the early, heady days when Dylan was a guilty pleasure, known only to the, yes, cognoscenti. Then he went and did a bad thing: he produced a series of brilliant albums that guaranteed him immortality. No matter what he did before or has done since, there remains the uncomfortable fact of these masterworks. Now every Tom, Dick, and Bozo thinks he has a right to stick his oar in and say foolish things about Bob Dylan. The fact remains, not even the man himself can deny his genius. It's as palpable as the album cover for Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61 Revisited (obviously a source of inspiration for Haynes' film). It's as plain as the air we breathe.
Portis has his devotees. I remember discovering Portis' "True Grit" in an English-language library in Bangkok over a quarter-century ago. Like the previous poster, I had seen, and enjoyed, the movie, but I was overwhelmed by the novel. I also found the delightful "Norwood" in that same library; then began an odyssey to discover more writing by this 20th century successor to Mark Twain. I was disappointed in my search. Even though "Dog of the South" had been published in 1979, I had to finally track it down in a (pre-Ebay) second-hand book store in Fayetteville, Arkansas. When "Masters of Atlantis" emerged, I thought Portis was on a roll. However, it's been sixteen years since the only other book I know of, "Gringos," appeared. There have been the occasional magazine sightings in The Atlantic Monthly and Oxford American, but, otherwise, bupkus. Every word this man writes is pure gold, and all his fans can do is hope for at least one last novel before this genuine original joins Rooster and Mattie in the great beyond. Or in Chiapas.
No child should be spanked until he's old enough to enjoy it.
President Clinton would be well advised to appoint Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd to her cabinet.
In addition to finger-pointing, Huckabee is famous for at least two other unattractive behaviors: getting revenge and playing God. He got to indulge both when he pushed for the release of DuMond. He got revenge on Bill Clinton, who was a distant relative of Dumond's Arkansas victim (the daughter of a monied Clinton backer) and who was being pilloried by conservatices like Steve Dunleavy for taking a personal interest in the case and for, well, just being Bill Clinton, and he got to play God by leading DuMond (who had been castrated or who castrated himself, depending on whom you believe, by unknown assailants following the rape, and who had claimed to find God in his more familiar incarnation while in prison) to freedom. Haven't seven years of pettiness and self-promotion in the White House been enough?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
