...to understand ourselves

"Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries."

~  Jimmy Carter
     Georgia peanut farmer, and U.S. President, 1976 - 1980

"The minute someone says 'Oh God, you could never do that; you can't get that kind of stuff on the air' that's the kind of stuff I want to do."

~  Elizabeth Montgomery
     American actress  {1933 - 1995}

"Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike."

~  Alexander Hamilton
     American statesman  {1755 or 1757 - 1804}

"I've written songs on everything.  Menus.  Napkins.  Little pieces of paper."

~  Chuck Berry
     American singer, songwriter, musician, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music  {1926 - 2017}

"The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."

~  Thomas Paine
     English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary  {1737 - 1809}

"All of the women on 'The Apprentice' flirted with me."

~  Donald Trump
     current U.S. President, real estate practitioner, and television entertainer

_____________________________________

-30-

Dr. Strangetweet, or how I learned to stop worrying...

in The Guardian-UK:
article titled
Ambien maker responds to Roseanne Barr:  'Racism is not a known side effect'

___________________________________

Guardian Reader Comments


~  ...Given the lessons of history, probable challenges ahead, and the threat to democratic ideals, we are fools to put up with irresponsible narcissists at the helm of our ship of state.


~  Barr thinks she is being anarchical, when in fact she's being an arsehole.  Her Twitter is an echo-chamber for the far-right.

~  Another very wealthy, very white, very stupid and very racist person.  They seem to come out of the woodwork lately, attracted by the Trump "light," like moths.
Ignore them or swat them, yawn....


~  Being nasty is a very common schtick for comedians.  Ricky Gervais, Michelle Wolf come to mind immediately.  

The threshold of what's acceptable keeps shifting towards more and more distasteful.  

Roseanne, who definitely has a history of unacceptable remarks, is not bright enough to understand the line between comedy and bigotry.  

Comedy has made her wealthy, we all laughed and now she pushed it too far.

~  In Ambien veritas

~  Appalled by this outburst from Roseanne.  She gives drug users a bad name.

~  ...An appropriately droll response from Sanofi.

~  These makers of sleeping pills are woke

~  Lawyers are now scouring the contracts for an 'act of nod' clause.

~  "Reported activities include having sex."  Is this stuff freely available in Britain?


~  In my experience sex has never been freely available in Britain.


~  One of the few occasions that I've ever applauded Big Pharma.

~  RoseAmbien:  or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Tweet the Hate.

~  And its follow-up, Bitter Living through Chemistry

~  ...Decent, sane people need to show there is a better way to behave.  We have to take over, now that the GOP is no longer the decency and family values party.


~  She has form - and it's not pretty.  Have a little Google trawl through Rosanne's .. let's say .. 'little foibles' then have another go.

Cheers.


~  Roseanne is a self-absorbed narcissist.  She always was.  Her political  ideas are half baked and superficial.  That's why she flip flops between Hollywood liberal to independent conservative.

~  Incidentally, Barr has saved some of her worst bile for other women.  A feminist she is not.

~  Roseanne Barr has been an ass for decades....

~  Now even Big Pharma is woke

~  It's amusing how good old capitalism has mastered the virtue signalling.


~  A severely personality disordered gargoyle of a gobshite.  That's been her for years.

~  I love how everyone is so quick to defend a massive pharmaceutical company just because they want to prove Roseanne wrong.
     Drugs are cool now because we need them to be cool so that we can continue hating on this other person, but don't worry next  week we'll be back to hating the drugs too.

~  That's because this week we've found something more repulsive than big pharma.

~  WARNING:  May cause drowsiness and accidental race hate.

~  I took some herbal sleeping tablets a few years ago and woke up the next day without realising I'd perpetrated a small scale coup d'etat in a third world country, so you do have to be careful.

~  Didn't Trump recently say "she represents us" about her new tv show?  Says it all really.

~  Sweet story, racist moo lost her revenue stream....

~  Broadcasting corporations like ABC indulge these jerks, until it blows up in their faces.


~  The glimpse into reality that this affords is that much of America is out-of-it on prescription drugs.  And that must include a fair number of leaders and public figures.  

Another obvious secret that no-one wants to discuss.  Out of control, and bringing a war to somewhere near you real soon.  Have a nice day.

~  This is the woman who dressed up as Hitler and had herself photographed putting Jew gingerbread men in an oven.

~  I wonder what medication she was on back then.

~  Eh?  
That's a new one, racist baking, it's also bloody weird.
I thought the American right wing were pro-Israel.
This is getting extremely confusing.

~  When you make big pharma look ethical...

~  Haha class comment!

~  Pharmachameleon.

~  Roseanne has been tweeting bat-shit crazy stuff for years; her mental illness is well-documented - she's been upfront about it for years.

She's apologised for this and (rightly) paid a heavy price.  Not much point in everyone ripping into her now - but they will - only in a 'twitterstorm' could the makers of Ambien race to the moral high ground.

(I do not claim to understand this painting, but the title of it is "Big Pharma 3" from the Colin Smith Studio.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-30-

in the season of Radical Chic

_______________________________

     Two influential writers died in the past two weeks:  Philip Roth (age 85) and Tom Wolfe (age 88).

     Wolfe's body of work includes

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby  (1965)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test  (1968)
Radical Chic  (1970)
The Right Stuff  (1979)
The Bonfire of the Vanities  (1987)

as well as other books, both nonfiction and fiction.


----------------------- [excerpt, Radical Chic] ----------------- Felicia is remarkable.  She is beautiful, with that rare burnished beauty that lasts through the years.  Her hair is pale blond and set just so.  

She has a voice that is "theatrical," to use a term from her youth.  

She greets the Black Panthers with the same bend of the wrist, the same tilt of the head, the same perfect Mary Astor voice with which she greets people like Jason, D.D., Adolph, Betty, Gian Carlo, Schuyler, and Goddard, during those aprés-concert suppers she and Lenny are so famous for.  

What evenings!  

She lights the candles over the dining room table, and in the Gotham gloaming the little tremulous tips of flame are reflected in the mirrored surface of the table, a bottomless blackness with a thousand stars, and it is that moment that Lenny loves.  


There seem to be a thousand stars above and a thousand stars below, a room full of stars, a penthouse duplex full of stars, a Manhattan tower full of stars, with marvelous people drifting through the heavens, Jason Robards, John and D.D. Ryan, Gian Carlo Menotti, Schuyler Chapin, Goddard Lieberson, Mike Nichols, Lillian Hellman, Larry Rivers, 

Aaron Copland, 

Richard Aevdon, 

Milton and Amy Greene, Lukas Foss, Jennie Tourel, Samuel Barber, Jerome Robbins, Steve Sondheim, Adolph and Phyllis Green, Betty Comden, and the Patrick O'Neals . . .


. . . And now, in the season of Radical Chic, the Black Panthers.  That huge Panther there, the one Felicia is smiling her tango smile at, is Robert Bay, who just 41 hours ago was arrested in an altercation with the police, supposedly over a .38-caliber revolver that someone had, in a parked car in Queens at Northern Boulevard and 104th Street or some such unbelievable place, and taken to jail on a most unusual charge called "criminal facilitation."  


And now he is out on bail and walking into Leonard and Felicia  Bernstein's 13-room penthouse duplex on Park Avenue.  

Harassment & Hassles, Guns & Pigs, Jail & Bail -- they're real, these Black Panthers.  

The very idea of them, these real revolutionaries, who actually put their lives on the line, runs through Lenny's duplex like a rogue hormone.  Everyone casts a glance, or stares, or tries a smile, and then sizes up the house for the somehow delicious counterpoint... Deny it if you want to! but one does end up making such sweet furtive comparisons in this season of Radical Chic....


     ...Cheray tells her:  "I've never met a Panther -- this is a first for me!" . . .

----------------------------------------

The way I see it, he said
You just can't win it

Everybody's in it for their own gain
You can't please 'em all
There's always somebody calling you down
I do my best
And I do good business --

There's a lot of people asking for my time
They're trying to get ahead
They're trying to be a good friend of mine

I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
There was nobody calling me up for favors

And no one's future to decide

You know I'd go back there tomorrow
But for the work I've taken on
Stoking the star maker machinery
Behind the popular song


I deal in dreamers
And telephone screamers
Lately I wonder what I do it for
If I had my way
I'd just walk through those doors
And wander --

Down the Champs Elysées
Going cafe to cabaret
Thinking how I'll feel when I find
That very good friend -- of mine


I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
Nobody was calling me up for favors
No one's future to decide

You know I'd go back there tomorrow
But for the work I've taken on
Stoking the star maker machinery
Behind the popular song

______________________________

On Google, type in 

Joni Mitchell, Free Man In Paris

and Play.

"Free Man In Paris" painting by Rod Craig

-30-

{"Free Man In Paris," written by Joni Mitchell.  Asylum Records.}

with a dark cloud above you

     American novelist Philip Roth died last Tuesday, at the age of 85.

     He worked a lot, and wrote many books.


------------------- [excerpt, Goodbye, Columbus] ----------------

     "...How did you meet her?"

     "I didn't really meet her.  I saw her."

     "Who is she?"

     "Her last name is Patimkin."

     "Patimkin I don't know," Aunt Gladys said, as if she knew anybody who belonged to the Green Lane Country Club.  "You're going to call her you don't know her?"

     "Yes," I explained.  "I'll introduce myself."

     "Casanova," she said, and went back to preparing my uncle's dinner.  None of us ate together:  my Aunt Gladys ate at five o'clock, my cousin Susan at five-thirty, me at six, and my uncle at six-thirty.  There is nothing to explain this beyond the fact that my aunt is crazy.

     "Where's the suburban phone book?" I asked after pulling out all the books tucked under the telephone table.

     "What?"

     "The suburban phone book.  I want to call Short Hills."

     "That skinny book?  What, I gotta clutter my house with that, I never use it?"
     "Where is it?"
     "Under the dresser where the leg came off."
     "For God's sake," I said.

     "Call information better.  You'll go yanking around there, you'll mess up my drawers.  Don't bother me, you see your uncle'll be home soon.  I haven't even fed you yet."


     "Aunt Gladys, suppose tonight we all eat together.  It's hot, it'll be easier for you."

     "Sure, I should serve four different meals at once.  You eat pot roast, Susan with the cottage cheese, Max has steak.  Friday night is his steak night, I wouldn't deny him.  And I'm having a little cold chicken.  I should jump up and down twenty different times?  What am I, a workhorse?"

     "Why don't we all have steak, or cold chicken -- "
     "Twenty years I'm running a house.  Go call your girl friend."

_____________________________

If you're driving into town 
With a dark cloud above you
Dial in the number
Who's bound to love you

Oh honey you turn me on
I'm a radio
I'm a country station
I'm a little bit corny
I'm a wildwood flower
Waving for you
Broadcasting tower
Waving for you


And I'm sending you out
This signal here
I hope you can pick it up
Loud and clear...

----------------------------------------------
On the Internet, type in
Joni Mitchell, you turn me on I'm a radio

and play.

-30-

ain't it hard to stumble and land in some funny lagoon?

"If you have class, you have it.  It doesn't matter who you're with."
~ Julia Sugarbaker


     I've heard of people "binge-watching" a television show, but can you "binge-watch" an episode?  I've been watching "Designing Women," Season 1, Episode 19, on You Tube several times over....  

     It's the one where the Sugarbaker interior designers are hired to renovate some rooms for a super-wealthy partying married couple, the Tates.  One by one, and each in their own style, Julia, Suzanne, Mary Jo, Charlene, and their delivery driver Anthony Bouvier all get "sucked in" to the Tates' lifestyle which is sort of based on a lack of impulse control.


     During a party on the Tates' boat, Mary Jo fixes a toilet, and Sissy Tate's so grateful, she takes the diamond bracelet off her own wrist and puts it on Mary Jo.


     Mr. Tate fancies a stone-crab dinner, so he flies from Atlanta to New Orleans and brings Julia with him. 

     Later in the episode, there's gunplay.

     I don't know why, but ever since I discovered "Designing Women" on You Tube, the recollection of that episode kept walking stealthily around my brain, a memory from clear back in the Reagan years -- and I wanted to see it again.

     I scanned episode titles from Seasons 5, 4, 3, and 2, thinking it was in one of the later seasons, but then -- no, found it in Season 1.


     What makes this DW episode resonate? 

 (Perhaps it's the uneasy truth that a sanguine desire to connect with others exists side-by-side with the awareness, whether naturally assumed based on one's temperament, or learned from experience, that "others" can be trouble.)

     (Makes me think of Bill Cosby -- he would wear a shirt with the caption on it reading, "Hello, Friend."  The man wants to be everyone's friend.  Now, that's beautiful.  A natural, and very sweet, human sentiment.  [Until somebody gets slipped a mickey...]  In an interview, Cosby's music collaborator Stu Gardner said, with layered meaning, "He -- invites people into his life"....)


________________________________
______________________________

{"Donald Trump Is Saving Our Democracy"
an article written by Frank Rich
published in New York Magazine,
September 20, 2015}

---------------------------- [excerpt, to end of article] -------------

If the best his intraparty adversaries can come up with as dragon slayers are his fellow outsiders -- the joyless scold Fiorina, who presided over the firing of 30,000 Hewlett-Packard workers (a bounteous gift to Democratic attack ads), or the low-low-energy Carson, who has never run anything except an operating room -- that means they have no plan.  

And thanks to another unintended consequence of the GOP's Citizens United "victory," the PACs it enables will keep hopeless presidential candidates financially afloat no matter how poorly they are faring in polls and primaries, thereby crippling the party's ability to unite early behind a single anti-Trump alternative.  In a worst-case scenario, the GOP could reach the spring stretch with the party's one somebody still ahead of a splintered field of nobodies.


     By then, Trump's Establishment nemeses, those who march to the beat of the Journal editorial page and Krauthammer and Will, will be manning the backroom battle stations and writing big checks to bring him down.  

The specter of a brokered Republican convention loomed briefly in 2012, when Romney was slow to lock up the nomination.  

Should such a scenario rear up again in 2016, the Koch brothers, no fans of Trump, could be at the center of the action.  


Whatever happens, there will be blood.  


The one thing Trump never does is go quietly, and neither will his followers.  As Ross Douthat, a reform conservative, wrote in August, Trump has tapped into the populist resentments of middle-class voters who view the GOP and the elites who run it as tools of "moneyed interests."  

If the Republicans "find a way to crush Trump without adapting to his message," he added, the pressure of that resentment will keep building within the party, and "when it bursts, the GOP as we know it may go with it."

     Even if this drama does not play out to the convention, the Trump campaign has already made a difference.  Far from being a threat to democracy or a freak show unworthy of serious coverage, it matters because it's taking a much-needed wrecking ball to some of what has made our sterile politics and dysfunctional government as bankrupt as Trump's Atlantic City casinos.  


If that's entertainment, so be it.  If Hillary Clinton's campaign or the Republican Party is reduced to rubble along the way, we can live with it.  Trump will not make America great again, but there's at least a chance that the chaos he sows will clear the way for those who can.

--------------------------------------
-----------------------------------

-30-

the unsure thing

     The 2015 Frank Rich article about the Trump Phenomenon in America's political life continues here today, & concludes tomorrow.  (Phew!  That was a two-week-long article!  When Frank Rich writes -- he writes!)

     I wanted to mention also, first, last Saturday's royal wedding.  I found myself getting interested, in spite of not being interested.

     I was working at a stockbroker company in Boston 

when Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles in 1981.  A stockbroker in the office was named (I think) Jim Brady -- or something like that -- and he brought to the office that day a small television set so he could have it on his desk, and watch the royal wedding.

     He said he really enjoyed all that tradition and formality.

_________________________________________

----------------------- [excerpt, Frank Rich NYMagazine article, continuing] -------------------- 

Having no Citizens United-enabled political-action committee frees him to remind voters daily that his Republican adversaries are bought and paid for by anonymous wealthy donors.  


The notion of a billionaire playing this populist card may seem counterintuitive, but paradoxically Trump's populism is enhanced by the source of his own billions.  

His signature business, real-estate development, is concrete, literally so:  He builds big things, thus visibly creating jobs, and stamps his name on them in uppercase gold lest anyone forget (even when he hasn't actually built them and doesn't actually own them).  This instantly separates him from the 

"hedge-fund guys" and all the other unpopular one percenters who trade in intangible and suspect financial "products," facilitate the outsourcing of American jobs, and underwrite much of the Republican presidential field and party infrastructure, to some of the Republican-primary electorate's dismay.

            The simplicity and transparency of Trump's campaign funding are going to make it harder for his rivals -- and perhaps future presidential candidates -- to defend their dependence on shadowy, plutocratic, and politically toxic PAC donors.



     The best news about Trump is that he is wreaking this havoc on the status quo while having no chance of ascending to the presidency.  


You can't win the Electoral College in 2016 by driving away women, Hispanics, blacks, and Asian-Americans, no matter how large the margins you pile up in deep-red states.  



Republicans who have started fretting that he might perform as Barry Goldwater did on Election Day in 1964 have good reason to worry.

     But Goldwater won the nomination in the first place by rallying a disaffected hard-right base that caught the GOP Establishment by surprise, much as the remnants of that Establishment were blindsided by Ronald Reagan's insurgency that almost denied the nomination to Gerald Ford in 1976.  


Trump's ascent, like the Goldwater and Reagan rebellions, makes it less likely that the divide between the GOP's angriest grassroots and the party elites who write the checks will be papered over in 2016, as it was by the time the 2008 and 2012 Republican conventions came to order.  

*********************************
***************************
     Probable as it may be that Trump's poll numbers will fade and that he will flame out before the Republicans convene in Cleveland in July, it's not a sure thing.

---------------------------- [end, excerpt] ------------- which leads us to 

...publish several pictures of 
IRONS and
THINGS MADE OUT OF IRON

to represent the 

IRONY

...of that last sentence.

-30-