Cop-out, she wrote

additions, corrections, and further thoughts...

Realized several days after I posted "Dick and Mick" on this site, that I'd mistakenly referred to Mrs. Richard Nixon as "Patricia" Nixon.  When we hear Mrs. Nixon's first name, it's always "Pat" and I assumed that was short for Patricia -- but Free Encyclopedia lists her original name -- Thelma Catherine Ryan, and says her family nicknamed her Pat because she was born close to Saint Patrick's Day.

Oops.

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Yesterday, enjoyed listening to President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell speech from Jan. 1961, while typing it from the text provided on a site called "American Rhetoric."

The way he spoke, and reading the words, it made me think, "dignity," and "grace."
'...Three days from now, after a half century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.  This evening, I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.'

in traditional and solemn ceremony

I come to you

...with you, my countrymen

'America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world.  Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.'
(That's an elegant mouthful -- dynamite!)
That's the essence of public service, and you could say, any human achievement -- not just get, get, get, but -- what are we doing to improve the bigger picture...?

When I was typing yesterday, I put the paragraph about the military-industrial complex in bold and italic type -- that was my emphasis, I should have put that in there, mentioned that it was My emphasis -- I didn't mean to make it look like "Ike" stood up and hollered that part...! (?)

The reason I wanted to emphasize that paragraph, is because that concept is one that endures to this day -- at the beginning of the movie JFK, there's a clip of Pres. Eisenhower giving that part of the farewell speech.

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And in the 11-27 post here, was considering writing by Steven Soderbergh about violence in movies --
"All I can say to people is that (a) when people stop going to see these films they will stop being made -- this is a business driven completely by money."

I would dispute that statement -- while every business wants money, falling back on the excuse that "this" [film business, or any other business] "is a business driven completely by money" is a cop-out which doesn't address the issue, and is ALSO -- not true.  I can think of two examples, just from my own very light, skimming-type reading about entertainment business, where decisions about TV-shows were not driven by money, but by ego, according to what kinds of shows some network executives wanted to be associated with.  And what kinds of shows they didn't want to be associated with.

The series "Murder, She Wrote" was dropped, not because it didn't bring money to the tv network in commercial sales, and not because it didn't have high numbers of people watching it, but because some of the people at the network wanted to replace it with "edgier" material -- some type of show that would be controversial, and make their names and reputations in Hollywood seem more cool.

Same thing was done to the Lawrence Welk Show, years earlier, same reasons.  (Yes, believe it or not, there were some Southern California thick-carpet-officed Executives who did not think Lawrence Welk was "cool"...!  Figure that out....)

And there are probably many more examples like that, which I don't know about. ...

A paragraph or two later, Mr. Soderbergh turns the tables on his own argument anyway, saying, "I think the ultimate responsibility has to be the film-maker's."

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