After much deliberation, I've named Doing Something Ignorant/Embarrassing And Then Sternly Saying "That's Not Us" as the Most 2014 Thing.
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) December 23, 2014
.
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If we’re lucky, there’s not gonna be much actual capital-N News produced over the next week or so.
So… what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Mustang Bobby
Going to friends to help consume the leftovers from Christmas dinner, then home to finish watching the “Cosmos” marathon.
Elizabelle
Have had more fun watching Godzilla movie marathon on El Rey network. Had not realized they’re so anti-nuclear, and that Godzilla was a symbol of destruction unleashed by nuclear power. (First movie released in 1954.)
Sadly ironic, given Fukushima.
Anyhoo, never having seen them before, the movies are charming. Like the Japanese touches (these Japanese fairy twins that sing to/communicate with Mothra), the no CGI. Some of the special effects (towns being ruined) are still pretty good 50 years out.
Elizabelle
Plus: Raymond Burr as American reporter Steve Martin, when they inserted English footage into the original Godzilla movie (from 1954) to release “Godzilla, King of the Monsters” in 1956 for an American audience.
Pretty amazing to see how many movies Burr was in before he settled into the Perry Mason role. He snagged a lot of good roles in the 1940s-50s.
rikyrah
Going to start Marco Polo on Netflix
NotMax
It’s a big, wide world out there. There will be no let up in capital N news being made, but there will be a lull in reporting,
@Elizabelle
Burr was often cast as a menacing heavy (no pun intended) pre-Mason.
You’re sure to get a smile out of this lampoon of the Godzilla trope.
Elizabelle
@efgoldman:
Thrilled you are getting so much granddaughter time. She is a doll.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: By the time you see her again I should be joining you in the gf club.
srv
If this week marks the true transition to a post-racial era, what will 2015 be?
Elizabelle
@NotMax: thanks. Will check it out.
Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan all survived to the end of the flick just ended. Kind of refreshing.
Was getting bummed at the various Godzilla death scenes, because he just out there being Godzilla.
NotMax
Fail-Safe just began on TCM. As chilling still as it was 50 years ago. Henry Fonda is perfect as the president under ultimate pressure.
And Dom De Luise in a small but crucial straight dramatic role.
Mike in NC
@rikyrah: We made it through the first three episodes of “Marco Polo” before interest pretty much waned. Decent enough production values but the lead actor is charisma-free.
Elizabelle
@NotMax:
That is a good flick. Sticking with my Toho Studio monsters, though. (ETA: They’ve got 60s military types as characters. Lots of maps and always bedeviled by Godzilla.)
Tommy
@rikyrah: IMHO you will get some joy. Marco Polo on Netfelix is an epic thing,. Clearly they spent a ton of money on it. Oh and most people don’t have clothes on.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
Laying around doing nothing, which was my plan for today. Typing with one hand since Charlotte is laying on the other.
Karen in GA
Heat pump’s been dead since Thanksgiving — just haven’t gotten around to replacing it. (I like it cold. The Scandinavian blood, I guess.) So we’re using the fireplace for warmth, which dries out the air. This is bad for banjos and acoustic guitars. I was at Guitar Center today — did I think to get case humidifiers for the guitar and banjo? No, I did not. Ugh.
I actually feel guilty about this.
Off to rig something with a couple of zip-lock bags and a sponge.
The Dangerman
Busy watching one of the Toilet Bowls; currently, Rutgers is tattooing a big Scarlet “L” on the foreheads of UNC. Can’t wait for the good games to get here…
Elizabelle
@Tommy:
Tommy: you said you laughed a lot during first 10 mins of “The Interview.” What did you think of whole flick? (No spoilers plz; know that KJ Un gets it.)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy:
Does that refer to the people on screen or the people at home watching?
geg6
Dinner out and a few drinks at the club (local VFW). There’s a drawing there tonight for $10k.
Tommy
@The Dangerman: LOL. I swear I saw a game the other night with a 7-6 team playing the same. WTF. I don’t like teams that are not good playing in a bowl game. Heck my LSU Tigers have lost 4 games. But isn’t it supposed to be good teams playing good teams during the holidays?
My only hope is I dislike (OK hate) Notre Dame. We will throttle them as we did the last bowl game. I think 37 to 3.
delk
Finishing up thee second season of Black Mirror.
ruemara
Off to the gym. I’ve been eating carbs. And I finally finished the problem release I’ve been struggling with. Ugh. 500 words, most of them lacking meaning. How awful. Reading some of the most depressing statistics from a source study from the NYT article on AA unemployment levels, even with degree. I knew it was happening, hell, I’m living it, but the numbers are awful. Toss in the last set of figures I read on household net worth based on race and, things don’t look good for domestic tranquility in the near future. You can’t have a stable society like this. People with nothing to lose and nothing to gain are not going to go quietly. Or sanely.
Tommy
@Elizabelle: I stopped watching it, it became upwathable.
@BillinGlendaleCA: Oh watch the show. I feel like at some level they felt the had to out do the Game of Thrones. They did that on a nudy scale of like ten.
lamh36
gonna hopefully finally clear out my DVR queue.
I’ve got stuff on their since before my trip!!!!
Hungry Joe
@Tommy: A few months ago you recommended Harry’s (online) for a good, reasonably priced razor + blades. I took a chance … and yeah, you nailed it: a fine product, indeed. Disposable razors are cheap-o crap, and high-end razors work great but are preposterously expensive. (That’s mostly just price gouging, but it’s probably also to cover the silly Faster-Than-Light spaceship designs). Harry’s found a niche and filled it. So, on the agenda tonight: shaving … around my beard, that is.
J R in WV
@Tommy:
Hated Notre Dame since they dislocated our Q-back’s shoulder on the first series of the Fiesta Bowl back in ? what, 1987? Dirty players hitting so as to injure the opponent is dirty. If you can’t win clean, don’t be playing the game!
Like the NFL guy from Detroit last week, I forget his name, saw him raise his foot and stomp on the other guy’s ankle… ouch! And all he gets is a one game suspension? I would ban him for life! That would make the next guy think twice before cheating and playing dirty!
That’s what I hated about W the most. He couldn’t win without cheating, cheated as hard as he could, and was proud to have won!?! WTF>? Talk about an honor free zone!
I would have hated him if he had fixed the economy, boosted SS benefits, saved private pensions (which have just been destroyed by the CR-Omnibus bill, by the way) etc, he still would have cheated to become president. Slime. All the Bush’s are slime.
lamh36
Great write up of Civil Rights Pioneer Ella Baker over at TPM.
With Selma coming out next month and getting extremely high praise, I’m noticing an uptick in stories on icons from that era, who haven’t been as front and center since the whitewashing of MLK and Civil Rights era activists in US began.
Deecarda
@Karen in GA: leave a large pot of water simmering on the stove, you may even enjoy throwing an orange, cloves or cinnamon sticks. Should put enough moisture in the air.
Tommy
@Hungry Joe: I gave it to every male in my family this year. Said I knew we were all using the same razor, mabey try this.
Corner Stone
To echo others here, Windows OS 8 sucks the proverbial donkey balls.
Bought it on a Toshiba laptop w/ touch screen. Love the laptop itself but the tablet feel of the OS really could GTFOOH.
Pogonip
@BillinGlendaleCA: Depends. Are the people at home mopping while the movie’s on?
the Conster
My new couch was delivered yesterday, and I’ve been on it all day. I got dressed at 1:00, just finished leftovers and am now on my 5th epi in a row of Cosmos, but I’m not Mustang Bobby or his friend, but we’re apparently soulmates.
shelley
As if end-of-year general ennui isn’t enough, TCM now has this year’s “TCM remembers…” Why do I always weep at those?
Crap, wish there was another Yule Log channel on tonight. Liked the one with the marmalade cat wandering in and out of the shot.
piratedan
sitting in the new house (tre awesome), finishing up a day at work. Upon reflection of the year, my weight is down to 285, so that’s a minus 165 on the big ass toteboard. Still have a house on the market but since we had some money saved and I look like I will be gainfully employed for the near future, we took the plunge on a place while the rates are still ridiculously low. Now I have land and a view to kill for (just thankful that no lives were lost),i.e. think majestic mountains and twinkling city lights. Found out that grandfatherhood is just around the corner (well six months away) and have come to the realization that I’m okay with it. Have lost friends and pets along the way, but life goes on and while memory remains, oftentimes you wish that there was still the ability to make more with them…
My wish to all is a better new year and the resolve to keep the theocratic asshats at bay, while their bile may seem infinite, our numbers are growing each and every day while they toady the favor of the absurdly rich while seeking protection from ideas that tilt their ability to accept the reality of the world.
Mike J
Ok, got into the command line recovery mode of win 7. bootrec can’t rebuildbcd because it can’t find the disk.
diskpart list disk only lists the dvd I booted from. list volume finds the volume on the hard drive that has all my data. I can assign it a drive letter and see my stuff. But since diskpart can’t find the drive, bootrec can’t rewrite the bcd.
Arrgh.
mclaren
Actually, I think we need to name committing atrocities and then blithely saying: “Let’s not let a few bad apples ruin the reputation of a fine organization like this” as the Most 2014 Thing.
Barack Obama says the public option is “off the table and signs off on the NDAA while prosecuting more whistleblowers than all previous presidents combined…Joe Biden urges a “D-Day in the war against drugs” and supports the misbegotten Iraq War for 3 long years while yelping “We need to give it one last shot” and making sure his brother gets a contract to build 100,000 low-cost homes for displaced Iraqis while his son gets appointed to the board of directors of a Ukrainian natural gas company…Nancy Pelosi declares prosecution of the Bush war criminals “off the table” and eagerly embraces panopticon police-state surveillance.
But let’s not let a few bad apples spoil the reputation of the magnificent Democratic party!
Kill-crazy cops shoot anything that moves and don riot gear and grenade-launching machine guns to threaten unarmed protesters…but let’s not let a few bad apples spoil the reputation of our wonderful police!
Giant banks turn into loansharking operations preying on the poorest of the poor while investment banks pay billions in fines for scamming countless people out of their life savings…but let’s not let a few bad apples spoil the reputation of our marvelous American financial system!
Careerist cowards lead an army of felons and rapists and gang members into killing themselves more often than they kill enemy soldiers, and being more successful at raping female U.S. army enlistees than in defeating insurgents in Afghanistan…but let’s not let a few bad apples spoil the reputation of The Greatest Military Force The World Has Ever Known™.
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
Making a NASA-themed calendar for printing at my second job this weekend. I have 400+ high-res shots from all of NASA’s manned space flight programs and it’s fun to choose what to use each month.
I did the same thing last year and liked to see my choices on the wall at work.
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
One word, dude:
Linux.
And for the guy whose hard drive blew out:
Trinity Rescue Kit.
It’s free. It’s a linux recovery boot disk with tools specifically designed to work on Windows machines. It works.
Corner Stone
@mclaren: I don’t know why people recommend Linux.
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
Because it just works.
raven
Shit, the gumbo and late xmas dinner went great and then I watch the Illini recover a fumble, run it down to the 20 and fumble it back. They were down three and were in great shape and ended up getting whupped.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: @mclaren: I use linux. But I don’t do PC gaming or need Outlook and whatnot. Plus it’s fun to tinker. My current laptop used to be a Windows 8 ultrabook touchscreen debacle, I didn’t even bother setting up dual-boot. Touchscreen still works too!
Buddy H
@Elizabelle:
Pretty amazing to see how many movies Burr was in before he settled into the Perry Mason role. He snagged a lot of good roles in the 1940s-50s.
He had a small part in the Marx Brothers’ last film; he played a thug who tortures poor Harpo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_v3MJbdHmQ
Kathleen
@lamh36: Erik Loomis also covered her on LGM.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Do you have gesturing working on Linux? Or does touchscreen work like a faux mouse? (Installing Kubuntu in a Virtualbox on a touchscreen presently).
Major Major Major Major
@BillinGlendaleCA: gestures worked for me with Mint in a virtualbox before I nuked the machine, but now it’s just a mouse. Haven’t taken the time to try and mod that yet. Now that I’m back to playing minecraft again though… Ooh, the possibilities.
max
@Corner Stone: I don’t know why people recommend Linux.
Trinity Rescue isn’t for installing Linux, it’s for fixing Windows. Given that Mike J can’t repair his machine with a window install disk and Partition Magic is frying (muh?) then it’s one of a very few choices.
max
[‘I cannot figure out what Mike J’s problem is, exactly, except not booting.’]
Corner Stone
@max: The comment was in two parts.
One to me re: Windows 8 and one to Mike J on his hard drive impotence.
If I wanted Linux I would have installed Linux. I don’t want Linux. Windows 8 sucks but running MS Office 2013 was one of the goals. There are others related to 10 yr olds and school work/programs.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Currently testing the Windows 10 Technical Preview for Enterprise. A damn sight better than 8/8.1 so far.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Corner Stone: Windows 8 isn’t that bad, I’ve been using it for 2 years. It’s not the easiest to use with a mouse, I usually use a touchpad since a mouse can’t do gestures. With a touchscreen, if you can detach your mind from a mouse based mindset, it’s actually quite a pleasure to use(I have a new win8 tablet).
ETA: OR you can just boot to the desktop and get Start8 or something like it and it looks just like win7.
El Caganer
@srv: Post-human
Melissa
@Buddy H: Burr is the murderer in Hitchock’s Rear Window. A fine performance.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Also, you can try it here if you wish:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=3AeeVOzLJsimNvLKgrgJ&url=http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-iso&ved=0CCUQFjAD&usg=AFQjCNEhU_V-Px6vY3kIzbCC6Rzv5rkAFQ&sig2=5LMfOTTyuWUuKz_Slybh2w
Corner Stone
@BillinGlendaleCA: We’re working with it, and through it. I just simply dislike it.
The younker is a little more amenable so far.
jayboat
I’ve been helping a computer-illiterate neighbor with selling some things online. Her deceased husband was a bit of a collector. When he died a few years ago she dumped a lot of things into plastic tubs and shoved them in a storage unit. Now that she’s getting over it, it’s time to liquidate!
There are hundreds of pieces- stamps and coins, watches, huge antique jewelry collection… and these. The minute I saw it I knew it should go here.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): It’s pretty stable for a Tech Preview.
Buddy H
@Melissa:
Burr is the murderer in Hitchock’s Rear Window. A fine performance.
Yes, you’re right! It recently played at a movie house around the corner from us. I’d never seen it on the big screen before, it was like watching a stage play.
Speaking of cast members, I think the young lady who played the dancer who waits for her mousy soldier to return home, is still living.
I also enjoyed the visiting nurse and her wisecracks.
raven
The Bitcoin Bowl should make all you techies happy!
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Do they pay the schools in Bitcoin?
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: I assume the Bitcoin people paid for the name rights not in bitcoins, but in cold hard statist fiat money.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I report you decide!
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: What are you Faux Noise?
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: I’m dazed an confused.
danielx
@jayboat:
That Wallace/LeMay ticket would be about white enough for the Tea Party. I’ve been despairing for the poor dears since Johnny’s death knocked out the Johnny/Edgar Winter 2016 (We’re White Enough!) exploratory committee.
Buddy H
Just saw a documentary on ancient Fiji. Narrator said at times of war women performed deles or wates – dances which sexually humiliated enemy captives and corpses. This was mentioned in passing; no further explanation or description was given. Very strange documentary.
shelley
The great Thelma Ritter. She’s also great in “All About Eve.” And she has a bit part in “Miracle On 34th Street” She’s the harried mother who’s surprised when Santa sends her to another store other than Macys.
NotMax
As if was in need of a reminder as to why I don’t very often give a real old-time thorough sweat inducing scrub to the painted fronts of the kitchen and pantry cabinets and also the parts of the walls which are Formica, got one anyway.
Repeatedly getting up and down the stepladder (actually a folding chair) takes a greater toll on the knees and the bad leg every year. Was going to take the plastic lens off the ceiling fluorescent fixture and give that its annual inside and out scrubbing too, but that ain’t happening today.
Whew.
raven
@NotMax: It’s a bitch ain’ it?
rikyrah
@Melissa:
that sitting in the dark, with only the burn of the cigarette to let you know that someone is in the room, is one of the creepiest scenes ever in cinema.
MomSense
@delk:
I really liked that series.
I got the Christmas flu. Thanks a lot, Santa. Have been watching Peaky Blinders, knitting, and drinking tea.
raven
@MomSense: Good show, no? There are some silly things in it but all-in-all it’s good. How do you like the contemporary music?
NotMax
@raven
You betchum, Red Ryder.
ultraviolet thunder
My evening: fly from Detroit to B’ham AL, Drive to Tuscaloosa, check into hotel, go to bookstore for another Paul Theroux book, shop for groceries, fix my own damn dinner (so sick of restaurants in college towns), log on and waste people’s time on BJ.
I’ll be back home maybe 01/02 or 01/04.
It’s cold back home. Might as well be somewhere else.
raven
@NotMax: I tweaked my back and the rack in the house we are staying in is killing me. I just asked the boss if we could leave now. She said no.
raven
@ultraviolet thunder: Pick up Rick Bragg’s Jerry Lee book!
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@shelley:
“What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end.”
All About Eve has a lot of great lines, and Ritter gets some of the best of them.
ultraviolet thunder
@raven:
That sounds interesting. I was out of stuff to read so I picked up Theroux’s book of essays because the last thing I read was Last Train to Zona Verde.
I like musician biographies. They’re almost always more fun than normal person biographies.
dopey-o
@Mike J:
Go to Digital River and download the Win 7 .iso file, burn it to a DVD and use it to repair / re-install Win 7. Here is a list of the available files. Yes, it is 100% legal to do this, as long as you have your license key. Just be sure you know which version of Windows 7 (Home / Professional / Ultimate / 32 bit / 64 bit. This info should be on the Certificate of Authenticity on a sticker somewhere on the case.)
and remember, friends don’t let friends run Windows 8!
Steeplejack
I have sort of fallen into the Doctor Who marathon on BBC. Not watching every episode, but catching one now and then through the day to fill in the gaps of my memory and spotty viewing history. Saw the end of the Rose era (excepting later guest appearances) and the start of the Martha Jones run. Now watching “Blink,” which I believe is the first appearance of the weeping angels.
NotMax
@raven
Ouchie. Maybe sack out on the floor?
raven
@ultraviolet thunder: Jerry Lee and Me
raven
@NotMax: It don’t matter, I’ll toss and turn, load the shit up in the morning and be home in no time.
brettvk
@Buddy H: Thelma Ritter, one of the great character actresses from Hollywood’s golden age.
MomSense
@raven:
I’m enjoying the music. Visually it is really interesting. It isn’t what I was expecting in a period drama and I appreciate that.
raven
How fan loyalty changed during the World Cup.
MomSense
@Steeplejack:
The weeping angels are terrifying.
raven
@MomSense: Yea, I think it’s cool too. The one this it and Boardwalk Empire do is the emphasis on disaffected WWI vets. I had never really thought that much about who the “gangsters” were but it makes sense.
ultraviolet thunder
@raven:
I read somewhere that he lives in Hattiesburg, Miss. I go there a few times a year.
I’m wary of bios of celebs who have somehow withstood decades of reckless behavior. Because so many didn’t make it. Gives me a sad.
PurpleGirl
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I usually skip one or two versions of Windows. For example, I used Win 95, then didn’t get a new version till XP and will probably not get a new Windows version until that Win10 comes out. It has kept me sane because I continue an OS that for me has been stable .
Bill Arnold
@danielx:
That’s a pretty scary ticket. (I was barely old enough to follow the three-way election (8), did not remember that LeMay was GW’s running mate.)
Question for anyone who was politically aware in 68: was it a scarier ticket that McCain/Palin? (McCain could have won if events had been a lot more in his favor, e.g. banking collapse deferred until after the election plus some other news cycles in his favor; I presume GW could never have won.)
raven
@ultraviolet thunder: I think it south of Memphis. He’s pretty straight forward about his christianity to the point that Bragg is warned about bad language and such. His religious upbringing is so crucial to his story and his music that I’ve enjoyed learning more about it. It’s interesting how the Pentecostals were against legal booze but tolerated bootleg hooch.
mclaren
@PurpleGirl:
Smart move.
raven
@Bill Arnold: I don’t really remember those two much, I was 18, couldn’t vote and shipped out in October.
Bill Arnold
@dopey-o:
In particular, friends don’t do tech support for friends who run Windows 8. (Though everyone has their price.)
Pogonip
@jayboat: Today I hit the jackpot. Mom had thread in every color you can imagine. Old thread (some actually made in the U.S.). Good thread, not like the crappy modern thread that breaks all the time and frays at the ends when you cut it off. And I am advised there are at least 100 more spools.
Also, as of today, we have officially made it through The Holidays (TM) without Mom. Various kinds of forms are still arriving in the mail.
Take note, folks: when you have a death in the family, you will hear from a lot of cemetery-plot salesmen. I can think of few jobs worse than cold-calling people who’ve just had a tragedy.
raven
@Pogonip: Reminds me of Paper Moon.
NotMax
@ill Arnold
LeMay’s ‘solution’ for Viet Nam, “Bomb ’em back to the stone age” was pretty damned scary at the time.
mclaren
@Buddy H:
I believe this is today known as “twerking.”
raven
@NotMax: The Eleven Days of Christmas: America’s Last Vietnam Battle has a lot of information about Bombs Away, good book.
mclaren
@NotMax:
Been there, done that.
Didn’t work.
Nota bene: check out a book or two about LeMay’s mass murder of Japanese civilians by incendiary firebombing in 1945. That’s really scary.
100,000 noncombatant men, women and children roasted to death in a single night.
Pure nightmare.
Bill Arnold
@mclaren:
The wikipedia article on LeMay is scary enough. Whew.
Lemay is said to have “remarked that had the U.S. lost the war, he fully expected to be tried for war crimes.”
Done for pretty much the same reason the Brits did night bombing of cities; they couldn’t hit smaller targets without unacceptable losses of bombers, and those shiny bombers, and their crews, couldn’t sit idle.
Bill Arnold
@Bill Arnold:
The wikipedia article on LeMay also has this interesting tidbit. Bold mine. This operation was not (as far as I know) a war crime.
danielx
@Bill Arnold:
Wallace was bad enough, but LeMay wanted to bomb the shit out of anyone and everyone who looked at the US of A sideways. He was the guy who turned the Strategic Air Command from a fairly half-assed military organization into a thing of terror, with hydrogen bomb-loaded B52s in the air 24/7. Mass murderer he was, also a ruthlessly efficient and highly competent officer. A committed racist for president and a military monster as vice president.
Yup, way worse than McCain/Palin.
Bob In Portland
Just because our economic war against Russia keeps on giving, look what American taxpayers just got.
MomSense
@raven:
I’m still haunted by the scene near the end of the 1st episode where Tommy has to deal with one of his fellow vets to avoid a war with the Italians and the vet says to Tommy “I died over there anyway. Left my fucking brains in the mud.”
Tommy
@Bill Arnold: Going to have to call you guys out on this. My grandfather, bless his soul, was a HUMP pilot. Go Google it if you are confused. Our military was trying to provide some aid. Sure a few might have been asshats. But more were trying to help.
I recall my grandfather made a ton of money. Told me he’d buy me a car if I graduated with honors from college. I told him the car I wanted. He just said “the japs shot me, I will never buy you that car.”
Howard Beale IV
@NotMax: The remake wasn’t bad, either. Sixteen Days was Good, too.
mclaren
@Bill Arnold:
I was alive at the time but not as politically aware as the adults around me. However, even to the adults, as far as I can recall, Nixon’s candidacy and eventual victory in 1968 didn’t seem anywhere near as scary as the McCain/Palin ticket because Nixon had taken exceptional pains to conceal his incredible sociopathy.
As just one example, historians now know that during the 1968 campaign Nixon was secretly conducting negotiations with the North Vietnamese to extend the Vietnam war so that he, Nixon, could politically benefit. This is a level of malevolent sociopathy, verging well into active treason, of which neither the general public nor even the allegedly savvy political insider pundits of that era were aware. I believe if this fact alone had been made public in 1968 with an appropriate amount of documentary evidence, it would have destroyed Nixon’s political career and may well have resulted in his arrest on charges of treason. Nixon was effectively aiding and abetting the murder of American GIs in Vietnam to grab power. No one knew this at the time, outside of a very tiny circle of extreme Nixon insiders. (Bebe Rebozo, Haldeman, Erlichman, maybe or two others.)
Moreover, at the time, Nixon sounded like a genuine expert on foreign policy and his pronouncements proved dazzlingly insightful and accurate. The problem wasn’t that Nixon was stupid or inept — he was an extremely smart and incredibly competent guy…Nixon simply did not give a shit about competence or reality if it got in the way of his political ambitions. Nixon was perfectly willing to do insanely destructive things, to take actions which were devastating to American interests and to the American people, if he saw some significant political benefit to himself, and if he thought he could get away with it without being discovered — or, at the very least, if he thought he could maintain enough plausible deniability to ride out the resulting political shockwaves.
Speaking as someone who watched the 1968 Democratic police riot live on TV at the time, I and everyone else was far more shocked and appalled by the unrest in the streets, what with the ’68 police riot coming hot on the heels of three summers of national race riots with cities burning and National Guard troops called out, than by Nixon’s candidacy. The guy was a complete chameleon, a true Manchurian candidate, incredibly skillful at hiding his fantastically toxic sociopathy from the public.
In that sense, reminiscent of Reagan — but Nixon was even more skillful than Reagan, because if you watched Reagan closely, I’m sure most of you noticed a moment in Reagan’s press conferences where a reporter asked him a question so inconvenient that Reagan’s mask of sunny geniality slipped and revealed the rictus of hate of a dull stupid lizard.
Nixon’s mask never slipped. Ever.
Compare with Palin. She spouted abject lunacy and toxic sociopathy like a firehose. Her mask hardly even fit well. Donald Hare calls the ability of high-functioning sociopaths to mimic normal human behavior “the mask of humanity.” Palin’s human flesh mask barely fit, whereas Nixon’s was absolutely airtight.
All I can say as a small kid was that I got the vague feeling of something disturbing and wrong about Nixon, but couldn’t put my finger on it. In retrospect, I think that was the same feeling of general disquiet some women got about Ted Bundy when he asked them out. But in general, most people simply found Bundy charming, just as most of the electorate found Nixon perhaps brusque and divisive, but a supremely competent and remarkably smart public servant.
It’s also well to recall that without blogs, the memory of Nixon’s eager participation in the McCarthy witch hunts along with the startling figure of evil Roy Cohn had sunk without a trace by 1968. I went through the entire 1968 campaign without ever seeing a single filmed or recorded excerpt from Nixon’s witch hunt days, which I think would be unimaginable today what with YouTube and blogs. The left fringe (papers like The Berkeley Barb) were very much on top of this stuff at the time and were thoroughly cognizant of Nixon’s toxic history as a hater and a witch hunter and a political divider, and I had glanced at that stuff, but without corroboration their charges simply sounded like wild fantasy at the time.
To give you an idea of how good Nixon was at concealing his sociopathy, people who listened to the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960 thought Nixon won the debate, while those who watched it judged that JFK won. Consider JFK’s remarkable charisma and intelligence, and you get some idea of how well Nixon was able to conceal his pathologies and dysfunctions.
Palin, not at all.
Perlstein’s superb book Nixonland goes into all of this. 1968 in retrospect seems to me like The Year of Hell, when the entire country blew apart — RFK blown away, JFK blown away, My Lai hitting the news big-time, the Chicago police riots, nationwide race riots… Nixon’s re-election frankly seemed like a minor issue in the midst of that.
Little did we know.
Bill Arnold
@mclaren:
What book is that excerpt about “Operation Meetinghouse” from?
[my reply crossed paths with your update]
mclaren
@Bill Arnold:
Sounds very similar to the unexpected fact that bombing Germany’s oil production facilties would have ended the war much earlier if it had been started earlier.
Complex networks have unexpected failure points. In retrospect, it’s hard to fault the Allies for not noticing these kinds of obscure weak points in networks as complex as the economy of an Axis nation. But it does raise fascinating “what if” questions, particularly in regard to what might have happened if America hadn’t needed to drop its atomic bombs…
Bill Arnold
@mclaren:
Enjoyed Nixonland.
Thanks for this, well said:
delk
@MomSense: Flu here too!
Just finished knitting my first mittens. My hubby gave them an A, I gave them a C-, lol. Next pair should be better.
NotMax
@mclaren
RFK was Cohn’s assistant. That would have been dragged out as well had he lived to get the nomination.
Nixon had ridden the anti-commie bandwagon to get into the Senate with his pinko-smearing of Helen Gahagan Douglas in ’50. Douglas, BTW, coined the nickname “Tricky Dick.”
Ruckus
@Bill Arnold:
It wasn’t as scary. Or as stupid. But some of that was because we generally didn’t know as much about GW that we should have. He seemed saner than he really was. So in the end we put off the really bad shit show a few years.
piratedan
@efgoldman: Maybe because some of us still think of ourselves as being “too young” to be one?
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
Then install XP and linux as a dual-boot and use Linux to go on the net, XP to run your other programs.
mclaren
@Ruckus:
There were some strong indications that Dubya was a deeply scary mook even back in the year 2000.
Source: “GW Bush Has Executed 131 Inmates – Many With Seriously Flawed Trials,” The Chicago Tribune, 11 June 2000.
I got a strong disturbing vibe off the Drunk-Driving Coke-Snorting C-Student during the presidential debates, based on his sadistically contemptuous sneer and his amazing disdain for facts (if memory serves, Bush dismissed many of Gore’s facts with the snide quip, “Well, I don’t have my calculator — heh heh — but that doesn’t sound right to me.”) but also on a substantial amount of disturbing info like the Chicago Trib article quoted above.
Nixon had served with reasonable distinction as Eisenhower’s vice president. The Drunk-Driving Coke-Snorting C-Student seemed pathological even in a state as extreme as Texas.
Also see articles like ” Bush avoided rehab after DUI: A former state official calls it “unusual” that the Texas governor received a waiver from the program,” Salon.com, November 2000.
Or the article “How The Bush Family Made Its
Fortune From The Nazis,” Rense.com, July 2000.
Or check out the article “Karl Rove: The Strategist,” The Washington Post, White House campaign 2000 series.
Lots of warning signs in early to mid 2000 if you were paying attention.
mclaren
@Bill Arnold:
The books & articles that LeMay Tokyo firebombing info came from are:
U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II: Combat Chronology. March 1945. Air Force Historical Studies Office.
Cortesi, Lawrence. Target: Tokyo. New York: Kensington Publishing, 1983.
Dyson, Freeman. (1 November 2006), “Part I: A Failure of Intelligence”, Technology Review (MIT)
Edoin, Hoito. The Night Tokyo Burned. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.
LeMay, Curtis, with MacKinley Kantor. Mission with LeMay. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965.
McNeill, David. The night hell fell from the sky. Japan Focus, 10 March 2005.
Rodden, Robert M.; John, Floyd I.; Laurino, Richard (May 1965). Exploratory Analysis of Firestorms., Stanford Research Institute, pp. 39, 40, 53–54. Office of Civil Defense, Department of the Army, Washington D.C.
Werrell, Kenneth P. Blankets of Fire: U.S. Bombers over Japan during World War II. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.
mclaren
For what it’s worth, yet more evidence now surfaces that the scientist Ivins was falsely accused and hounded to death by the FBI…leading to the conclusion that we still don’t know who sent the anthrax spores in those attacks in the year 2000:
Source: “GAO Analysis Highlights Lab Samples Excluded in Sloppy FBI Anthrax Investigation,” EmptyWheel website, 20 December 2014.
So as usual the law enforcement goons proved unable to find out who really committed the crime and just decided to pin it on someone and the hell with the evidence. Another Steven Hatfill scam, another Wen Ho Lee con job, another Richard Jewell testilying operation.
Why don’t we just shut down the FBI and replace ’em with a baboon trained to hurl darts at names in the phone book?