Whiskey Fire

Double Standards Incorporated

-By Jake T. Snake

Just ran across this piece of rancid shite at Powerline titled Barack Milhous Obama posted July 3rd and had to share it with you all. It boggles the mind that anyone on the right would have the 100 ton stones to make a peep about Obama using executive privilege after 8 years of the Bush administration using it to hide how much toilet paper Dick Cheney ordered for the shitter in his secret bunker and a multitude of crimes against humanity. I am speechless...  What is interesting is that the post compares Obama to Nixon in his use of executive privilege, presumably because Nixon has historically been cast as a crook. Funny that they seem to forget he was also a repukeblican't, like them.

Like most of the tripe that has been dug up by these asshats to smear the man it is trivial bullshit. I may periodically disagree with his policy stances, but do believe at the end of the day he is an honorable man. There really is no comparison between a human resources issue and the murder of 100s of thousands of people through an illegal war that also wasted billions of dollars that my great grandchildren will be paying back...but hey! if you want to try to make that case have at blog monkeys.

 Reminds me of a family member who is a 20%er telling me last weekend that Obama was a bad president, because he took his wife out on dates and the security cost the taxpayers a good chunk of change and people are suffering.  First time he ever cared about that I can tell you. Hmmm... yes...clearly that is the rabbit hole all our money has gone down recently, nothing to do with disappearing palettes of cash in the desert, big checks to Blackwater and defense contract cost overruns. I may be falling for a line of shit, but I kind of like that the president seems to genuinely enjoy spending time with his wife.

Believe me when I tell you that I have had conversations with actively psychotic people that were more cogent and rational than those I have had with die hard repukeblicant's of late. Their nonsense is becoming stupider and stupider and I did not think that was possible.I find myself repeatedly saying things like "Can we stop talking about personalities and discuss policy". They are acting like a bunch of teenagers discussing who the hottest boy is in the new issue of Tiger Beat, which would be OK if the economy wasn't circling the drain etc..

Later today I was trying to read the paper in peace and I have to deal with this turd floating to the top of the media bowl again (you know those ones that won't go down no matter how many times you flush?). Sarah Fucking Palin surfaces again (pun fully intended)to let us know it is time for a career transition. Still, as annoyed as I am by her at a personal level I think it is great news for Obama and the democratic party. The queen of the hidden agenda has not revealed her grand scheme yet. Not that we will know even after she holds another press conference to tell us what it is, given that the lies and deceptions always have several layers. Then there is the eternal head scratcher of whether her inconsistencies are intentional deception or just plain ignorant and proud moments.

We have not received a statement from Gus Hall's campaign yet and so Whiskey Fire has taken no official position at this juncture on the 2012 election. I tried to reach Thers at home, but his answering machine said something about hiking the Appalachin Trail with a friend from South America.

They Cling to the Cinema

The Son of Erick on Sarah Palin resigning:

I’ve had this running thought all day, perhaps because I was watching it on TV in HD for the first time, that this is kind of like Ben Kenobi letting Darth Vader strike him down.

The Son of Erick on local GOP party elections in Arizona counties:

Yes, let’s remember that 300 Spartans held off the Persian Army.

Discuss: was the remainder of his intellectual development more profoundly informed by the Highlander movie, or the series? I say the series. The film seems beyond him, philosophically.

And of course, ahem, Wolverines.

NOTE. There were Highlander sequels? Gracious.

MORE. Equally gooberish commentary:

The explanation suggested by this latest Martin story seems pretty persuasive to me: get out of Alaska as a bigger stage beckons, earn lots of money to support your family, and keep your options open in national politics. If the world wants you to be a celebrity, why bother with the grinding details and all the frustrations of being governor of Alaska? Be a celebrity.

Is a decision to walk away from the people who voted for you because you want to be a celebrity a good way of "keeping options open in politics"? I myself find this a not entirely "persuasive" line of thought, but then I am not Rich Lowry.

These idiots confuse their perception that "Palin annoys liberals" with the notion that "Palin is therefore great." The reason they do this is that they are idiots.

Excited Words Are Drooling Forth

There's been lots of Very Serious Wingnut opining recently about just why Liberals Hate Sarah Palin, all of it pretty hilarious at the moment, and even funnier now. Jonah Goldberg, fresh after losing an arm-wrestling match to a thesaurus, managed, as usual, to take home the booby prize:

There’s a reason why the Left and much of the media establishment hated you from day one. Some hated you out of the fear that you might stop Barack Obama’s unfolding coronation. Others because you seemed to expose the snobbery, arrogance, and ideological pieties of elite feminism. Your beauty, your status as a working mom, your blue-collar husband, your bravery in taking on the political establishment in Alaska, your proud status as a pro-lifer and mother of a special-needs child: All of these things were — and are — deeply threatening to a secular left-wing cultural elite.

None of which makes much sense (feminists are opposed to working mothers?) But then, the thesis is stupid: the only "threat" she posed was the remote chance that a reactionary inarticulate lunatic might end up vice president through some bizarre fluke. But apart from that when the already leaky inflatable purple-polka-dot dragon floating pool toy that was the McCain campaign took her aboard, they took aboard an anvil with lipstick.

Sarah Palin is "threatening" in the sense that clowns are scary.

Of course, to be fair, in this sense it's not like she was any more alarming than anyone else in Greater Wingnuttia. I mean -- she's being lectured on the need for more policy gravitas by Jonah Goldberg? That's like Carrot Top giving you advice on your dissertation, or your haircut. More broadly, nobody in Conservative Circles nowadays does "policy"; there's just some of them who are better at pretending they do on inane Sunday morning televised bullshit sessions. Does Newt Gingrich make mush more sense than she does? Or, hell, John McCain? Or her svengali/fanboy, Bill Kristol? (Now pull the other one, Bill.)

I think Scott's right that there's a bit of sexism going on here, in the form of a double standard that's not necessarily applied to all the other corrupt, strange, unprepared, cultish GOP specimens. But there's also something else, namely how the Palin phenomenon reveals how utterly devoid the GOP is of anything approaching an "idea" or "sanity."

Mitt Romney is now the closest thing they have to a Serious Candidate with a Grasp of the Issues.

And that is just so very sad.

UPDATE. Former paid Bushite bullshit artist Dana Perino solemnly informs us at NRO that "the great 2012 GOP nominee chess match has already started." I'm not surethough that "chess match" is the proper term -- the footage below seems more accurate a metaphor.

Demons Are Real

Hey, this wasn't too far from us! Exciting!

June 8, 2008
Six people with ties to the militia movement are arrested in rural north-central Pennsylvania after task force officers find stockpiles of assault rifles, improvised explosives and homemade weapons, at least some of them apparently intended for terrorist attacks on U.S. officials. Agents find 16 homemade bombs during a search of the residence of Pennsylvania Citizens Militia recruiter Bradley T. Kahle, who allegedly tells authorities that he intended to shoot black people from a rooftop in Pittsburgh and also predicts civil war if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton are elected president. A raid on the property of Morgan Jones, captain of the 91st Warriors Militia, results in the seizure of 73 weapons, including a homemade flame thrower, a machine that supposedly shot bolts of electricity, and an improvised cannon. Also arrested and charged with weapons violations are Marvin E. Hall, his girlfriend Melissa Huet and Perry Landis. Landis allegedly tells undercover agents he wanted to kill local magistrates and, if Clinton were elected president, planned to assassinate her in an attempt to trigger an armed revolution.

The whole list makes fascinating if disturbing reading. I hadn't heard about most of these incidents, probably because the liberal media covered them up, for some reason.

Don't you forget about me

- or - Sarah's Mile

by Ripley

Remember this guy?  Hell No! Of course you don't! 

Oh, man... those were good times, though, weren't they?

Yes, they were... good times, indeed...

But just when you thought you'd heard the last of Fail, Inc., well... God, they just won't let them go away, will they?

Asked if he has plans to run for public office, he replied, “I hope not. You know, I talked to God about that and he was like, ‘No.’”

He continued, “I believe he’s gotten me on this grassroots movement. If I can encourage leaders to step up, that’s what I would like to do. That’s a heavy role. That’s something I don’t know if I am prepared to do yet.”

But Wurzelbacher said he will keep that door open if God ever calls him to be that leader.

Fuck... me? Seriously?  First of all, Sam the Joe, "gotten" is not a word that we English speakers use or recognize.  Beyond that, you're a fucking idiot.  (Yeah, yeah - have your PR monkey write me with your complaints.  I'll, like, totally look into that and, like, possibly, like, make sure that you've gotten an apoligizey thing.)  Next-ly, God will give you some hair and an 8", cut penis before he ever asks you to be a leader.  C'mon, Sam, you're a tabloid whore and you know it.  We all know it.  Speaking of whores...

She hunts, she runs, she ran and why the fuck does anyone care what Sarah "Me! Me! Me!" Palin has to say about anything?  I can only imagine the personal angst she suffered while the media was talking about Farrah Fawcett.  "I have a poster! I do!  Get your sexy poster here!"  It is to sigh...  Runner's World... yeah...

Still, she's gold, Jerry!  Gold!

The world is falling apart and nipping at its own heels (Kirkegaard, Nietzsche, Ripley - choose your philosopher) and we're bludgeoned with the dullest of weapons as if we were sheep minding our sheepy business and our sheepy neighbors as we head down the chutes.  USA! US- god I'm tired... Please, can I have just one more story about Sam the Joe or Sarah Palin before my head is whacked off and I'm... what, off to never never land?

I love my gay brothers and sisters but - OMG! Sarah Palin said blughferzwiluhaetnder! And Such. Also.  (And you know you can't out-queen The Queen, right? Sorry...)

OMG! Someone waved a tea bag and.. shit!  A fucking tea bag!  Come on, America!!!

Health care?  HEALTH CARE?!?  Fuck you!  It's time to do something with some green shit for IraqiRaniStanRabiaOilFieldistan!   Green to win, amirite???  And something about socialism. err... SOCIALISM!!!

Runner's World.  Fuck me runnin'.  We are the saddest species...

Rip -

Better Yet Let's All Get Wet!

Congratulations are in order for Jonah Goldberg, who has discovered a way to be oppressed by a thesaurus. Maybe he can now apply for a grant to pioneer a method whereby "conservatives" might be enslaved by toasters.

MORE. Oh wait, I see this is actually a hereditary condition involving paranoid attitudes in regards to reference works. Well, if I were their phone book, I wouldn't have liked them, either.

Six months

by flory

This is to certify that on the fourth day of November, 2008, Al Franken was duly chosen by the qualified electors of the State of Minnesota a Senator

So does the certification that he was elected in November mean he's entitled to six months back pay?

Bee Two Million

Sometime today the two millionth visitor to Whiskey Fire will arrive, presumably in order to snigger at some innovative use of the f-word ("fuck"). When I first started this blog in 1975 I had no idea it would ever achieve this level of success -- I thought we'd get up to 1,956,304 visitors tops, and then we'd all die of sexual overstimulation in one of the fabled back rooms at Studio 54.

Anyway you probably won't be the exact 2,000,000th visitor, because, let's face it, you just don't have that kind of luck. Not that it matters. What matters is that once we get that Two Millionth Visitor, the formula for the Krabby Patty will at last be mine! Hahahahahaha!

 

... And the 2,000,000th visitor to Whiskey Fire came in from Chandler, Arizona! Congratulations! You win a free blog!

I Would Like to Congratulate The Firefox People...

... For somehow convincing Microsoft to produce and release this commercial for Internet Explorer 8, which may not merely be the worst tech commercial ever, but the worst commercial of any sort for anything in the history of things. Perhaps the makers of the ad were out sick the day their Intro to Marketing prof covered the topic of "avoiding the use of projectile vomiting to sell your product." If so, that would indeed be a cruel irony. (Also from a tech angle the ad just makes no sense -- other browsers have private browsing, and the capability of blocking certain sites, like the YouTube of Michelle Malkin in a cheerleader outfit, which I presume is what the fellow was looking at to cause that reaction in his wife.)

Warning: even for this blog, this is a genuinely revolting ad. It's not exactly NSFW; more like, it's just not, you know, safe.

Redux

by flory    

Mark Sanford: "I never crossed the sex line". Does this sound vaguely familiar to anyone else?  I'm sure we'll be hearing from the wingnut chastity brigade on their plans for the impeachment any time now....

Yes, I Am a Psychiatrist

William Kristol casts asparagus upon the veracity of the Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin which suggests that Palin might just be a wee bit self-absorbed:

Lefty journalist Todd Purdum has a hit piece in the new Vanity Fair on Sarah Palin. You don’t have to be a big Palin fan to recognize the article is full of dubious claims, and is dependent on self-serving stories provided on background by some of the people who ran the McCain campaign into the ground.

Here’s a highlight of Purdum’s reporting: “More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders--’a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy’--and thought it fit her perfectly.”

Kristol doubts this:

Is there any real chance that "several" Alaskans independently told Purdum that they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? I don’t believe it for a moment. I’ve (for better or worse) moved in pretty well-educated circles in my life, and I’ve gone decades without “several” people telling me they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Well, jeez, they'd hardly say it to your face, Bill, for fear that you'd snap.

Intergalactic Treason!

All day I've been sort of avoiding thinking about Paul Krugman's use of the word "traitor" to describe the GOP and Democratic House members who voted against the climate-change bill:

A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases. And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

I frankly thought "treason against the planet" was something the Captain Planet writers might have decided was just too corny, and therefore I wished he'd come up with a different term. Though towards the end of the column Krugman does explain himself somewhat:

Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn't it politics as usual?

Yes, it is — and that's why it's unforgivable.

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an "existential threat" to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it's in their political interest to pretend that there's nothing to worry about. If that's not betrayal, I don't know what is. 

That's about right; climate change really is such a threat, and the behavior of the GOP particularly in regards to this crisis is astonishingly horrible (or it would be if it weren't just them being their usual tedious selves). Hence, by any petard-hoisting standard if the wingnut notion of "treason" circa 2002-3 had any empirical valence whatsoever, James Inhofe makes Benedict Arnold look like he just wasn't nothing.

However, this argument does not totally answer the potential problems with the word "traitor." John Cole objects to Krugman on the grounds that "treason" is a "loaded term," which it is -- though, and this is not precisely to disagree with John, it seems to me that the trouble is that the term has become unloaded after its promiscuous usage on the part of radical Bushite extremists. "Treason" used to have a generally accepted meaning, and now it doesn't, having become just one more wildly devalued, thoroughly trashed national asset. Now "a traitor" is merely someone not worth paying attention to who should be at best laughed at, and at worst locked up. And that's it. Any other meaning has been wrung out like the juice from last month's lemons.

But then this line of reasoning, misfortunately, brings us back by a process of commodious recirculation to one of the central preoccupations of this blog, namely, analysis of the "conservative" effort to establish a monopoly over the dominant definition of legitimate discourse, and the central role played by notions of "civility" in this struggle. (This is why I wasn't eager to think about Krugman's column; I'm too busy right now for this shit.)

Climate change is the most perfect example of what I mean. When these people were in power, it was suppress by force; now, it's try to get in the back-door by claiming preposterous grievance, and they're seizing on Krugman's column like leeches who got turned into vampires. Take for instance the always silly Andrew Stuttaford, pretending that Krugman Has Gone Too Far and Now Can We Please Just Speak Civilly?

Krugman's one good point was that GOP Representative Broun (he's the strange fellow who tried to ban Playboy from the PX) had slipped into conspiracism when he alleged that the notion of (I presume) man-made climate change was a "hoax." Broun's claim is, of course, nonsense. There are indeed reasonable grounds for believing that man is having/could have a significant impact on the climate (just as there are reasonable grounds to suspect that man's impact on the climate may be reduced to insignificance by countervailing natural factors). But for those inclined to believe in a hoax, shrill, hysterical language such as Krugman's is only like to reinforce their suspicions.

Which is pretty classic stuff. As it turns out, no, as a matter of fact, this is not a matter for calm, polite debate: if you "suspect that man's impact on the climate may be reduced to insignificance by countervailing natural factors," why, you're a clown, and if you're in the House of Representatives and you think this, or pretend to, you're a dangerous clown (more so than most ordinary clowns, even, who are, of course, already plenty frightening).

"Civility" is the last refuge of bullshit artists; it's the bunker they hole up in when they hear the guns of reality booming close.

So as to whether or not Krugman should have said "traitor," well, he seems to have pissed off precisely the people who I most enjoy seeing pissed off, and I have to confess, I never ask for much more. And Mac liked the column, and he's punk rock. So there!

Also, Jules Crittenden wants me to fuck him, but I don't think I will.

MORE. The proof, as always, is in the puling.

Potions Pills and Medicines

Jesse discovers a news report quoting a genuine black person who attended a Tea Party Rally, which is surprising, and not just for the black person part, but because, holy shit, they're still having Tea Parties? I had no idea. Which is fair enough, as neither do they.

But Jesse's claim that beyond this particular black tea-bagger (Darjeeling perhaps?) there are no further black people with whom conservatives might be "comfortable" is unfortunately compromised by his lamentable unfamiliarity with Mainstream African American Culture, as the following musical "video" quite clearly demonstrates.

Your liberal media is sometimes really liberal

by flory

Good editorial in the NYTimes. They hit the high points on what's needed to make sure healthcare reform actually reforms anything:

As health care reform moves forward, Congress must impose tighter regulation of companies that clearly are not doing enough to regulate themselves. Creating a public plan could also help restrain the worst practices, by providing competition and an alternative

My one quibble is in the first paragraph:

Congressional committees heard a lot this month about the devious schemes used by health insurance companies to drop or shortchange sick patients. It was a damning portrait — and one Americans know from painful personal experience — of an industry that all too often puts profits ahead of patients.

If by "all too often" you mean "always" then that's an accurate statement. The for-profit insurance industry -- and that's the majority of the healthcare insurance biz these days -- is pretty much by definition 'for-profit'. When you consider your patient payouts to be your 'medical losses', then your job is to be putting your profits ahead of your patients.

A Table Out of Clay

It's a very odd thing: there are lots and lots of perfectly legitimate reasons to criticize the Obama administration, but the right wing blogosphere has yet to come up with a single line of attack that isn't totally loony. Here for instance is the latest attempt to come up with a Shocking Scandal, one that will shock you with its shockingness, especially if you don't think about it too hard, which none of the idiots running with it have bothered to do.

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages....

Gadzooks how startling. Or not. Sifting through the horseshit for the undigested nuggets of something that might just mean something in this article, we discover the following, that the author of the shunted aside memo "has an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a PhD in economics from MIT," which is entertaining, but not nearly as much fun as this:

Carlin's report listed a number of recent developments he said the EPA did not consider, including that global temperatures have declined for 11 years; that new research predicts Atlantic hurricanes will be unaffected; that there's "little evidence" that Greenland is shedding ice at expected levels; and that solar radiation has the largest single effect on the earth's temperature.

The problem though is that these claims are embarrassing crap. Here:

 

An official scientific body not allowing crazy non-science to be promulgated as science is an official scientific body acting responsibly and in the public interest. 

And that's all she wrote. Though it does get worse. AND WORSER.

Centrists are Republican Fucking Lite

-By Jake T. Snake

I am having one of those weeks where I am sorry that I voted for Obama. I suspect that I am not the only one. Seriously, from a policy perspective how are we qualitatively different than when Bush and Cheney were in office? I mean on anything substantive? It's not like I had any choices really, I mean I couldn't vote for fucking McCain, but all the same I am having Bill Clinton dejavu all over again. Fuck whoever you want, but don't fuck single mothers on welfare en masse. Centrists are just Republicans who pretend to be Democrats long enough to be elected. Since when is welfare reform a Democratic issue, I mean really? It feels as though there are no Democrats left, there are just slightly less obnoxious Republicans. Molly saw this coming a long way off and took a metric assload of shit for suggesting that Obama might not be all he promised.

The economy is in shambles and people realize that we need safety net services like extended unemployment and maybe a government health insurance option. The time is ripe to strike while the iron is hot and Obama is shrugging his shoulders and saying " I don't know what do you guys think we should do?" Spineless, like a jellyfish. They call themselves Centrists, but to me they are conservative reactionaries, including Obama. He seems to be waffling on all the important issues that he received my vote and that of many other liberals to address.

On health care he is providing little leadership and seems to be waiting for the lowest common denominator, in this case both parties, to decide what it will allow so that it looks like something is changing while allowing the insurance company fuckers to continue raping us all wholesale. He has made no movement on repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and has completely left the gay community to hang out in the wind on the issue of marriage. Guantanamo is humming along with no real trials in site for the people detained there. Lest we forget, that 16 month withdrawal timetable  in Iraq seems to have evaporated. Consensus is a great model for leadership when you are dealing with people willing to compromise, it doesn't work so well with zealots and idealogues.

On the positive side, I feel justified voting for Hilary in the primaries, that was certainly the right decision. Can any of us imagining Hilary rolling over for the Republicans the way Obama has on healthcare? I think not. She would have taken the fight to them and highlighted the insurance company abuses. I wish we had someone in the White House now with a set big enough to do that, but we are stuck with the milk toast that could be elected.

I was hoping for a man who would decide policy based on what is right and moral, rather than another politician who would make all his decisions on the basis of polling data. I was naive. It pains me to say this, but I think the last man to decide policy on the basis of his own moral compass may have been Bush 1 and before that Jimmy Carter, not coincidentally, both 1 term presidents. If this is really the best we can do to advance an agenda with the barest flavor of liberalism, well it is just sad. I knew he would disappoint me, I just had no idea how deeply.

Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Kicker of

Hi kids! It's Minority Leader Boehner.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had a few choice words about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) landmark climate-change bill after its passage Friday.

When asked why he read portions of the cap-and-trade bill on the floor Friday night, Boehner told The Hill, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of s--t."

Gasp.

I don't think he said sasteriskasteriskt. I think he said "shit."

And holy fucking shit! This is some fucked-up shit.

Using his privilege as leader to speak for an unlimited time on the House floor, Boehner spent an hour reading from the 1200-plus page bill that was amended 20 hours before the lower chamber voted 219-212 to approve it.

Maybe every other word was "shit!"

I mean, like, if not, that was still a fucking clever thing to do, spending an hour reading out shit from a 1200 page bill. That is fucking dramatic political theater. That shit is going to be shown on C-Span X-Treme Classics forever. Shit!

Republican congressional leadership is fucking awesome. The Republicans are so fucking smart for not falling for any of that global climate change shit. I mean, decades from now, everyone is going to look back at this particular month in American history and say, HOLY SHIT IS JOHN FUCKING BOEHNER SO FUCKING SMART THAT MOTHERFUCKER IS AS BRIGHT AS A FUCKING DOORKNOB HOLY SHIT JOHN BOEHNER THANK YOU FOR NOT GIVING A SHIT ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING YOU FUCKING DOORKNOB.

I mean, like future schoolkids are going to be saying that shit, on like, the federal holiday Fuck You John Boehner You Dick Who Fucked Up The Earth Day.

Like, shit. Fucking doorknob.

Notorious (1946)

by JB

I'm not sure why Notorious isn't my favorite Hitchcock movie, because it's pretty great. It's got two of my favorite things about movies: Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. I love the way Hitchcock makes his protagonists, played by the leadingest of leading men--Cary Grant, James Stewart, Sean Connery--freaks or bastards or both. And I'll bet they liked it too ... they certainly seem to be having fun.

Because I know you're dying to know, my favorite Hitchcock film is Shadow of a Doubt ... disease and decay under the thin veneer of healthy, small-town America ... great film-making.

But Notorious is what I'm talking about tonight, inspired in part by Alec Baldwin's discussion of it with Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies just now. I'm glad Baldwin isn't my dad, but he's quite engaging in small doses. And yes, I'm watching this week's film on basic cable ... I spare no expense!

So the party scene at the beginning of the film reminds me oddly of a party I attended in Miami many years ago, probably because I remember very little about it. It was definitely in black and white. If Ingrid Bergman was there, she left before I got there ...  but it might have been the same house, and I feel a strange affinity with those guests who outstay their welcome, as well as with Mr. Grant, being driven around Miami by an intoxicated, intoxicating, femme fatale. It's a good story, and it gets better every time I tell it, but it's not germane.

Look at how long Cary Grant has his back to the camera in that party scene, though. Very interesting, very effective, but not quite gimmicky. The master's touch is more subtle here than it is in some of his other movies, but there are enough signature Hitchcock flourishes to satisfy, including of course the requisite cameo.

Watch Ingrid Bergman's eyes ... she gets so much done with her eyes. Her eyes and her face, unlike her hats, are timeless. Her expressions are so carefully controlled and choreographed, and you can see Grant avoiding eye contact with her. There's an intentionality and precision to this that you just don't see that often.

And there's a darkness to this film, a feeling of shame and self-loathing that hit Grant's and Bergman's characters differently (necessarily). He pimps her for God and country (well, country anyhow) and then treats her like a whore. She embraces the role to please him and hates him for it. There's a lot of hurt in this movie that you won't see in some of Hitchcock's other espionage films (North By Northwest comes to mind). It's an emotionally complex film, but with the leads and with Claude Rains, we're in very good hands. If you haven't seen this one, or haven't seen it recently, check it out.

PS: Awesome character actor of of the week: Louis Calhern. I'm trying to imagine what this guy would look like if he were alive and middle-aged today ... people just don't look like that anymore, do they?

PS: And check out the hairdo at about 1:50 in this clip. A little bit Leia, a little bit Lollipop Guild, and somehow, sexy as hell.

Weird Weather Patterns

MollyI & I are off to see Fountains of Wayne at Maxwell's tonight with WT & also BillyToej. While I'm out entertain yourself by contrasting the WSJ Kiddie Korner Editorial Page version of Australian politics in regards to global climate change... and the version put forward by those who know what they're talking about and aren't gleefully destroying the world by prancing about screeching horseshit pseudoscience. Also you should be reading Phila.

Awaiting the Solid Gold Display

On this blog we will not mention the passing of Michael Jackson.

Wait...

MORE. Well, since I've already stepped in it, I suppose I'll just say that I have far fonder 1980s memories of Michael Jackson than I do of Ronald Reagan.

ALSO. I've long been impressed by how for all Greater Wingnuttia disdains the em ess em, nobody obeys the em ess em news cycle more slavishly and obsessively. "Citizen journalism! Down with the Legacy Media! Also, there's a dead pop singer, so here's Michelle, Allah, and Gateway, and Glenn has a good take." It's very silly. They don't want to smash the em ess em, they want a moron pundit cable show.