Monday, September 29, 2008

Glenn Greenwald of SALON on bailout and House rejection thereof.

Here's the latest Glenn Greenwald SALON column regarding the "leave the driving to Hank Paulson" bailout:

Bailout follows the 10 normal principles for how our government functions

(updated below - Update II)

The word being used most frequently to describe the bailout package that is about to pass is "extraordinary." That adjective may apply to the amounts of money being transferred from taxpayers to Wall Street, but the process by which this is all happening is anything but "extraordinary." All of the "principles" that drive how our Government functions in general -- what explain the last eight years at least -- are perfectly evident in what has happened here:

(1) Incredibly complex and consequential new laws are negotiated in secret and then enacted immediately, with no hearings, no real debate, no transparency. Nancy Pelosi has praised herself for decreeing that the new law will be online for 24 hours before Congress votes on it -- a full 24 hours for the American public to understand and assess a law that forces them to subsidize Wall St.'s losses in a way that may impact them for decades, if not generations. The most significant and consequential pieces of legislation over the last eight years -- the Patriot Act, the various expanded surveillance laws, the Military Commissions Act -- were the by-product of identical anti-democratic processes.

(2) Those who created the crisis, were wrong about everything, drive the process. Experts who dissent from the prevailing Washington orthodoxy, particularly ones who were presciently warning about what was happening, are simply ignored -- systematically excluded from the process. Professor Nouriel Roubini:

It is pathetic that Congress did not consult any of the many professional economists that have presented -- many on the RGE Monitor Finance blog forum -- alternative plans that were more fair and efficient and less costly ways to resolve this crisis.
Last week, Hank Paulson -- who bears responsibility for the crisis in numerous ways -- demanded that $700 billion be transferred to him in order to purchase toxic assets from his Wall St. friends, and while there was much howling of outrage in many quarters, no other framework was ever considered.

(3) Public opinion is largely ignored, as always, and public anger is placated through illusory, symbolic and largely meaningless concessions. Much is being made over the allegedly strong oversight provisions to limit the Treasury Secretary's power, accomplished through the creation of two oversight panels -- one that is composed of 5 administration officials (including the Treasury Secretary himself, the Federal Reserve Chairman and the SEC Chairman -- the definitive foxes guarding the hen house), and another that is appointed by Congress but which -- as is true for everything Congress touches -- has little real authority over what is done.

Identically, executive compensation limits -- used to bestow the plan with its populist bona fides -- are minimal and extremely limited. Worse, the public is being told that the financial services industry must pay for any losses to the Treasury still outstanding after five years, but the bill requires nothing of the sort, simply requiring that the president "propose" a plan for recoupment, not that Congress enact any such plan.

And, most of all, while not as absolute as it was in the original Paulson proposal, the Congressional plan still vests extraordinarily vast and centralized power in the Treasury Secretary -- just as Paulson demanded. As the NYT put it this morning: "During its weeklong deliberations, Congress made many changes to the Bush administration’s original proposal to bail out the financial industry, but one overarching aspect of the initial plan that remains is the vast discretion it gives to the Treasury secretary."

(4) The Government begins with demands for absolute power so brazen and absurd that anything, by comparison, seems reasonable. Thus, the law that will be passed does improve on the original Paulson Plan in certain ways -- equity shares under some circumstances, some oversight provisions and mild home-owner protections -- and people thus end up grateful for what is, by any measure, an extreme outcome, all because it's not quite as extreme as what the Bush administration began by demanding.

(5) Wall Street, large corporations and their lobbyists own the Federal Government and both parties, and (therefore) they always win. Professor Roubini:

Thus, the Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown . . . . This is again a case of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses; a bailout and socialism for the rich, the well-connected and Wall Street. And it is a scandal that even Congressional Democrats have fallen for this Treasury scam that does little to resolve the debt burden of millions of distressed home owners.
Both parties depend on, are drowning in, the largesse of the very industries they are supposed to regulate, and the only possible outcome from the very beginning was that Congress would do what most helps Wall St. and their largest corporate donors. That's what they always do.

(6) The people who run the Washington Establishment are drowning in conflicts of interest. Hank Paulson let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt while intervening to save AIG, only for it to be revealed after the fact that Goldman Sachs -- Paulson's career-long firm of which he was Chairman until just a couple years ago -- would have lost $20 billion had AIG failed. Worse, Goldman's current CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, was present with Paulson when the decision to save AIG was made.

Beyond the litany of Wall St.-loyal government officials demanding this Wall St.-friendly bailout (Bush's Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten, is also a former Goldman Sach official), Congressional leaders are, with very few exceptions, all vested heavily in Wall St. As but one example, Nancy Pelosi's tens of millions of dollars are invested (.pdf) in firms such as AIG, AT&T and others. It only stands to reason -- as always -- that if Wall St. is both owning the Government and running it, it will prevail over the proverbial "Main Street" every time. And it does, and just did again.

(7) For all the anger over what Wall St. has done, the Government -- as it bails them out -- isn't doing anything to rein in their practices. Nancy Pelosi today said: "We sent a message to Wall Street -- the party is over," but to the extent that's true, the Government has done nothing to bring it to an end. To the contrary, by announcing -- yet again -- that there are never any consequences for recklessness and real corruption on the part of the ruling class, that behavior is only being further incentivized. If you were running a large financial services corporation whose failure would jeopardize many other companies, why wouldn't you continue to pursue extremely high-risk/high-reward transactions, comfortable in the knowledge that the Congress you own will protect you from any real cataclysmic failure (in exactly the way that high government officials know they can commit crimes with impunity and thus are incentivized to do so)?

(8) When the Government wants greater and greater power and wants to engage in pure corruption, it need only put the population in extreme fear and it gets its way in every case. Establishment mavens rush forth to assure the public that they have no choice but to submit to what the Government is demanding. The anger and impotence level of the citizenry increases further, further alienating them from their Government and ensuring even greater levels of submission in the future, grounded in an accurate perception of futility.

(9) On the most consequential and fundamental questions that define the country, the establishment/leadership of both political parties are in full agreement, and insulate themselves from any political ramifications by acting jointly. Democrats in particular jump eagerly into line when told they must cooperate with the White House to avert whatever the Disaster du Jour is (and in this case, House Republicans were most impressive in defying these orders until they, too, were basically whipped into line), but ultimately, the differences between the parties at the level of their leadership are impossible to detect.

(10) Whenever you think that the Government has done things so extreme that it can't top itself -- torture, theories of presidential lawbreaking, a six-year war justified by blatantly false pretenses -- it always tops itself. On top of the massive debt under which the country was already drowning, another $700 billion is now being added in order to save the nation's richest individuals from the consequences of their own recklessness, allowing many of them not only to remain enriched, but become further enriched, all while basically ensuring that the Government is incapable of spending any money for years, if not longer, on programs designed to improve the lives of the vast, vast majority of its citizens -- the same citizens who are forced to fund this bail-out. That seems hard to top, but the only thing certain is that they will find a way to do so.

UPDATE: Amazingly, the House just rejected the bailout, sending the Dow plummeting by more than 500 points. According to Kagro:

The bill is defeated. 205-228 -- there was a last, and I mean really last, minute switcher. A Dem, switching from yea to nay. Could have been a yea voter looking to move to reconsider. Partisan breakdown: 140 Dems for, 95 against, and 65 Rs for, 133 against.
The economy and the markets are clearly in severe distress, and some form of Government action is needed. I don't think anyone denies that. But this was the wrong deal, and in terms of market confidence and stability, there's probably nothing worse than announcing so definitively -- again -- that a deal has been agreed to, only for it to be defeated. Our political leaders are as inept as they are corrupt.
 
Full text can be found on Salon's site at: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/29/bailout/

Sony wants you to watch old Columbia movies--and laugh at them.

A few hours ago, I finished watching THE ANDERSON TAPES (a somewhat-forgotten caper film from 1971 with Sidney Lumet directing, among others, Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, and a young Christopher Walken), which I rented from Netflix. I noticed that Sony has unearthed a lot of films of varying quality from its library (THE GARMENT JUNGLE, DOLLARS, NICKELODEON, THE NEW CENTURIONS, NIGHTWING, I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER) and given them the "Martini Movies" brand for midprice DVD sales. I watched a meant-to-be-cute "How to be a Leading Man" short with ANDERSON which seemed to do little more than showcase a few clips and a recipe for a certain kind of shaken martini.

Not being a Sony employee (I once remember speaking to Michael Schlesinger, someone responsible for prints of old Columbia movies sent to repertory screenings), I wonder why the hell the decision was made to classify, say, 1970's I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER (with fine performances by Melvyn Douglas and Gene Hackman), as camp to be laughed at instead of more deserving "Martini Movie" titles from the same period such as THE LOVE MACHINE (a Jackie Susann adaptation with John Phillip Law as a sexual-dynamo TV newscaster) and DOCTORS' WIVES [these films, as far as I know, aren't on the "Martini Movies" release schedule].

But they're "old movies" to the Sony video people and I guess that, with a lot of them not being "classics", they're going to sell them in the dumbest possible manner. Just thought potential DVD buyers/renters might want to know if you're not already aware of this "martini" marketing gimmick.

[UPDATE 2/4/09: The latest slate of old Columbia titles to get the "Martini Movies" treatment include Stephen Frears' GUMSHOE from 1971 with Albert Finney, Richard Rush's 1970 campus unrest comedy/drama GETTING STRAIGHT with Elliott Gould, Candice Bergen and a young Harrison Ford in a bit part--and Carol Reed's spy satire OUR MAN IN HAVANA from 1959 with Alec Guinness and Ernie Kovacs.]

Friday, September 26, 2008

John McCain boards the Double Talk Express.

From an AP wire story by Nedra Pickler:

Republican John McCain agreed to attend the first presidential debate Friday night even though Congress doesn't have a bailout deal, reversing an earlier decision to delay the event until Washington had taken action to address the crisis.

Forget it, Jake, it's politics as usual.

Maybe we'll find out in a few days that Sarah Palin has mysteriously developed laryngitis before the Vice Presidential debate.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Will the economy get the Democrats and their sympathizers to redirect their focus?

One potential plus of the Wall Street miseries of the past couple of days (disclosure: Bank Of America is now prominent in my financial life and home ownership) is that people who want to see Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the White House can drop the rapid-fire personal attacks on John McCain and Sarah Palin in favor of straight, hard talk about the economy and finding ways to keep America from sliding into another Great Depression.

The current notions of "hitting back" ( Senator Claire McCaskill, a MOR pol I generally admire, was sent out to cable news to vocalize the "McCain's too old and he's had cancer" recitative) and letting slip the left-wing 527 attack dogs amount to little more than trying to avenge John Kerry's loss of the 2004 election.   This is akin to the 2004 election attempts to harpoon George Butch, Jr. for his National Guard Vietnam-avoidance service--an attack that should have been retired after Baby Butch's 2000 appointment to the Presidency.

It's time for the Democrats and their sympathizers to cut the crap--along with the temptation to condescend to/snark over the "stupidity" of members of the GOP who take McCain and Palin at face value.

It's time to win with the truth--and ensure a healthy voter turnout that can override any voter-registration chicanery/mis-or-uncounted votes. 

Update (9/24/08): A link to an old Evan Thomas NEWSWEEK article from 2000 about McCain's temper and decision-making in the Senate: http://www.newsweek.com/id/82862

Update (9/25/08): Apparently CNN has decided that Campbell Brown can express opinions just as Glenn Beck does on sister channel Headline News.  Here's a quote from Ms. Brown about the race to get the financial bailout bill passed without any real scrutiny:

"Now, I know everyone is screaming about how urgent this crisis is, that action must be taken immediately. But I love and live by former Supreme Court Justice Brandeis' great quote: 'Sunshine is the best disinfectant.' What we need is scrutiny and debate. If it has to happen quickly, then do it fast. But without grandstanding, or political posturing. Serious scrutiny and debate — and that should happen whether we are talking about a giant piece of legislation that is going to affect all of our lives, or whether we are talking about our Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates."

Link that includes a videoreplay from CNN:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/25/campbell-brown-holds-paul_n_129296.html

 

 

 

Kid Rock and Dale Earnhardt Jr. sell young moviegoers on the National Guard.

Here's an article from the Firedog lake blog about a new National Guard ad playing in multiplexes: http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2008/09/15/kid-rock-sells-national-guard-to-his-demographic-base/

It's a definite sign of the times where the Guard is being sold as nothing more than another go-fight-in-Iraq branch of the armed forces.

And what's especially hard to take is the intercutting of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and NASCAR footage throughout the ad. 

Yes, going to Iraq and fighting a "preventive" war (which George Butch Jr. was determined to fight before 9/11--I remember Regis Philbin asking candidate Baby Butch what he was going to do about Saddam during the 2000 campaign)  designed in part to secure a firm grasp over its oil reserves, is as much a kickass, worthwhile adventure as racing around a track while wearing a helmet and jumpsuit plastered with corporate logos.

One important exception: NASCAR racers don't carry guns and aren't shooting at each other and/or the fans in the grandstands.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Virginia Madsen gets fearful and gives in to Botox.

It's an old story--actresses and some actors (remembering Jack Lemmon's facelift that gave him an overly rosy-cheeked appearance around the time of the GRUMPY OLD MEN duology) give in to the demands of Hollywood to have Botox and/or facelifts once they reach a certain age.

Virginia Madsen, a fortysomething actress who revitalized her career years ago with her fine performance in Alexander Payne's SIDEWAYS, is now doing ads for Botox.  And like other actresses on various levels of the showbiz ladder--Jackie (GENERAL HOSPITAL) Zeman, Jessica Lange, Lara Flynn Boyle--the cosmetic changes to ward off the evils of aging aren't doing her any recognizable good.

Here's some Botox propaganda about how the treatment doesn't really affect the ability to have facial expressions: http://www.botoxcosmetic.com/botox_safety/facial_expressions.aspx

Yesterday, I saw an advance screening of Jonathan Demme's RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (written by Sidney Lumet's one-time actress daughter Jenny).  It's Demme's best film in almost two decades; he's shrugged off the over-PC self-importance of too much of his recent work and has rediscovered the hipster/humanist fusion marking his great run of films from MELVIN AND HOWARD to MARRIED TO THE MOB.

The reason i'm mentioning RACHEL GETTING MARRIED is because Debra Winger appears in a supporting role.  Ms. Winger has opted out of the Industry in recent years and has spent some of her time as an author and teacher of acting.

Debra Winger, as viewers will notice when the film opens on October 3rd, doesn't use Botox and isn't afraid of getting older and appearing her age.

And she looks a hell of a lot better than the airbrushed creature that Virginia Madsen has now become.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Random 9/11/08 observations.

1. I shouldn't be surprised that George Butch, Jr. once again tied 9/11 and Iraq together in yesterday's speech dedicating the Pentagon memorial.

2. I also shouldn't be surprised by this excerpt (taken from THE HUFFINGTON POST; THE DRUDGE REPORT is displaying positive spins) from the Charles Gibson/Sarah Palin summit meeting.  Dan Quayle wasn't removed from the GOP ticket after Lloyd Bentsen exposed Quayle's limitations two decades ago--and Palin, for all her don't-know-enough-but-I'm-energizing-the-base-that-votes-for-guts-not-brains provincialism, won't be going anywhere either:

GIBSON: But this is not just reforming a government. This is also running a government on the huge international stage in a very dangerous world. When I asked John McCain about your national security credentials, he cited the fact that you have commanded the Alaskan National Guard and that Alaska is close to Russia. Are those sufficient credentials?

PALIN: But it is about reform of government and it's about putting government back on the side of the people, and that has much to do with foreign policy and national security issues Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, that I worked on as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas development in our state to produce more for the United States.

GIBSON: I know. I'm just saying that national security is a whole lot more than energy.

Tell that to our current Vice President.

 

Monday, September 8, 2008

Another chapter in the fractious MSNBC story: Olbermann and Matthews demoted to "analysis.'

Other than perhaps the BBC, there's not much "objectivity" in the way news is covered.

On the cable networks, Fox News and CNN both tilt right (though the latter does it subtly enough that some conservatives think that CNN is "liberal") and MSNBC, at least in its evening broadcasts, tilts a sort of mainstream-left (you're not likely to see Amy Goodman or Noam Chomsky on the channel).

The media gossip site Jossip.com is a good source for recent MSNBC in-house news.  Here's their take on the demotion of Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews to mere analysts, in favor of David Gregory (who, in the past, has been to George Butch, Jr. what Dan Rather was to Richard Nixon) as the "objective" anchor: http://www.jossip.com/msnbc-reduces-olbermann-and-matthews-to-mere-pundits-20080908/

And another article updating this story: http://www.jossip.com/phil-griffin-thought-he-was-saving-msnbc-from-itself-maybe-he-was-wrong-20080908/#more-31023

While I'm at it, here's a link to a commentary piece from Jeffrey Wells of HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE that reminds us that Gregory was part of last year's infamous "MC Rove" sketch during the Washington Correspondents' Dinner, where the press and the politicians get to suck up to each other: http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2008/09/msnbc_bad-guy_p.php

Regarding MSNBC, my thoughts are mixed.  Yes, Olbermann is a good newsertainer--but he doesn't seem to be comfortable with anything other than being highly scripted and only interviewing people on the same ideological page (one hopes this doesn't extend to the bright and interesting--and not afraid to debate conservatives--Rachel Maddow, whose show debuts tonight).

But a lot of the channel's output is subpar.  I once erroneously blamed Dan Abrams (when he was still general manager) for the late-evening hours being clogged with prison documentaries/TO CATCH A PREDATOR reruns.  Jeff Zucker takes the blame for that programming decision.  And if MSNBC had a bit more money to do real reporting, maybe the channel wouldn't resort to so much dumb (and cheap to air) talking-head speculating on what Candidates X and Y will do next.

And some daily anchors (such as the mind-numbing Contessa Brewer) need to be fired.

Your thoughts?  Please post them in the "comments" section.

Update 9/10/08: Another Jossip post which articulated the concerns of NBC "news" talent who don't want to be tainted by MSNBC "comments"--

http://www.jossip.com/whos-on-team-olbermann-matthews-and-who-wants-that-ship-to-sink-20080910/#more-31427

Update 9/11/08: Let's allow Charles Warner, writing in THE HUFFINGTON POST, to have the last word:

If MSNBC had been only a cable news network and not associated with NBC News, had not used NBC News talent such as Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams, and Andrea Mitchell, and had tilted to the left with Olbermann and Matthews, it would have branded itself as a liberal alternative [to Fox News] and possibly prospered.

Full article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-warner/msnbc---the-place-for-pol_b_125533.html

 


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Sunday, September 7, 2008

Sarah Palin's media embargo over: Barracuda to sit down with Charlie "Official Story Only" Gibson.

Given that Disney/ABC news tends to tilt either right or tabloid, it makes sense that the McCain campaign has allowed Gov. Sarah Palin to sit down with Charles Gibson for her first post-convention interview.

Curious as to whether short-attention-spanned people can even remotely recall the rather partisan performances Gibson and George Stephanopoulos gave in the ABC Presidential debate earlier this year.

Trust me--Gibson will let Palin off easy with no follow-up questions.  Charlie will only be an attack dog with Obama and/or Biden.

Here's a sardonic take on all of this from the media gossip site Jossip: http://www.jossip.com/sarah-palin-invited-for-an-afternoon-of-suntanning-and-margaritas-by-the-fourth-estates-pool-20080908/ 

 

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Get ready as John and Sarah set out to Win Ugly.

I could only tolerate a few minutes of John McCain's convention acceptance speech before coming upstairs to write this entry.

Let's face it: all the GOP can do this year is to attack, attack, attack, etc. etc. since there's precious little of the last eight years that can be defended--both on the domestic and foreign fronts.

And it looks like Sarah Palin's probably a front-runner for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination after all the gush from the news media--the bar's been set so low that competent speechreading is treated as a Great Victory.  I almost fell off my chair when my wife said that Chris "Softball" Matthews compared Palin to Sally Field's heroic union-organizing character of Norma Rae (from the 1979 film of the same name).

We're going into the Age of Unreason and extreme-sports level fascism for the next eight weeks.  The upcoming campaign will be conducted in the underground sewer that the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt now chooses to crawl in.  Of course, the 527s will be called in to do the really dirty work against Obama and Biden.

And a lot of people will vote for fear wearing the grotesquely fake mask of hope--with "change" a word that only means a different, don't-offend-the-oil companies-the-multinationals-and-the-K-Streeters GOPer in the Oval Office.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

G. Murray Thomas explains it all for you.

G. Murray Thomas, at one time in his Southern California poetic career, edited a magazine called NEXT.  NEXT was how I found out there was a local "scene" in Southern California. 

Prior to that, all I knew about SoCal poetry was that luminaries like Drew Barrymore and Charlie Sheen tried their hand at the written word at the now-defunct Cafe Largo on Fairfax and all this was chronicled by scenester Eve Babitz in the old MOVIELINE magazine.

After NEXT ended as a hard-copy publication, Murray kept compiling a monthly calendar of local poetry events, both on the net and in print.

And he also contributes periodic poetry reviews to Poetix.net.

Take a look at this excerpt from a review of Murray's (regarding a chapbook by Radomir Luza called 7TH LIFE).  In a nutshell, Murray's given a lot of local poets a "that's the way I expect you to do it" moment where the Secret of how to "fit in" with those who write "true" poetry is revealed; remember to dig deep, be ultrathoughtul and always be "elevating"--which, at worst, can be self-conscious in the wrong way:

Poetry as art takes a lot more effort, and focus. If Luza wants his poetry taken as art (and the fact that he has published these chapbooks indicates that he does), he needs to put in that effort and focus. Some of these poems already stand as art, but many more need the extra work.

Luza’s poetry obviously means a lot to him. There’s a poem called “Poetry Is All I Have.” Another one (“Little Phone”) describes almost losing his journal, and what a tragedy that would have been. Unluckily, it doesn’t say much more than that. It’s a journal entry about losing his journal.

That’s one of the problems with this book. Many of the poems read like journal entries. While I believe there is poetry in every moment, I do not believe that recording every moment makes it a poem. There are poems about buying a car, sitting in the Social Services office, sitting in the Social Security Office (a very different office), hanging out in Carmel, and so on, and they all feel like they were transcribed directly from his journal to the chapbook. There isn’t that extra push that would make them poems. If Luza aspires to poetry as art, he needs to make his poetry mean something to us, not just to him.

The thing is, Luza has a definite poetic talent. There are pieces here I consider fully formed poems, such as “If I Can Make It Back Home by Noon” (p. 14), “43rd St.” (p. 20), “The That” (p. 24) and “Out Here” (p, 29). And there is only a shade of difference between these poems and the weaker pieces. These poems also take a specific occurrence (a journal entry), but they work with it, find its deeper meaning, or at least find original language to express it in. The starting point is the same, the end result is elevated.

I feel that sometimes a "journal entry" poem can be greater art than poems that painfully strive to be "elevated" and "profound"--but that puts me in a minority.

When I began in 1998, there was a scene that would accomodate different types of poetry and poetic styles.  Not now--the "standards" have contracted and the poets who believe themselves to be more talented and discerning than average folk (often considered stupider-than-thou) are still intent on keeping poetry as an underground subculture that must not be diluted by "wrong" popular interest.

Here's a poem I wrote about this mentality.  Perhaps Murray might consider this a "journal entry."

 

it’s not just you

 

I read the news today, oh boy

about the lucky poetry venues

that made the grade

 

it made me kind of sad

to know you ushered me in

ten years ago

and are now letting me and others know

about the poetry venues

that are too highfalutin

for cheap entertainers like me

 

I remember a lot of poets

no longer active on the scene

(or in some cases not on the scene at all)

who were mainstays ten years ago

 

now even if a few of them came back

they probably wouldn’t be accepted

in the new poetic order

 

it’s not just you that’s making things clear to me

I’ve been told to get educated

and upgrade my craft to be taken seriously

 

but I like being a cheap entertainer

and committing the sin of being easy to understand

 

so it’s time for me to go quietly

into that gentle night

reserved for sig rumanns and margaret dumonts

declaiming into microphones

about their hot new pantoums

as the audiences go

mmm, mmm, mmmm

in approval

 

if it doesn’t make most hosts

and some audiences go

mmm, mmm, mmmm

it just isn’t poetry anymore

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, September 1, 2008

Sarah and Bristol Palin: maybe the pregnancy rumors were Republican dirty tricks?

The DAILY KOS has a theory about Bristol Palin, the maybe-pregnant-for-five-months 17-year-old daughter of GOP Vice-Presidential nominee-to-be Sarah Palin (governor of Alaska): http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/30/121350/137/486/580223 [Update: the story has been taken down by DAILY KOS, but here are some other points of discussion about Sarah Palin: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/1/224723/7128/944/582808]

If the theory (that Bristol gave birth to a child that's now being passed off as Sarah's youngest) turns out to be 100% accurate and factual, it will be another in a line of career-protecting subterfuges caused by inconvenient pregnancy.  One of the most famous examples is the story of Judy Lewis--illegitimate daughter of movie legends Clark Gable and Loretta Young (who in her later career became a moral maven like Sarah Palin).

Hopefully, the mainstream media can dig deeper into the possibility of the DAILY KOS story being true--and not settle for merely writing down GOP spin about how Bristol's pregnancy should be private and not a factor in Sarah's quest for the Number Two position in our nation's government.

[Update 9/10/08: In the wake of the now-debunked DAILY KOS rumor as to Trigg Palin's actual mother--plus the now-debunked "banned books list" that Sarah Palin allegedly forced on the Wasilla librarian--it's safe to conjecture that some variety of Republican dirty tricks may be played on liberal/progressive types who are eager to believe the worst based on the facts about Ms. Palin that are already known.]