I assume there will be football.
Archives for 2014
Print the Narrative
Norm Ornstein’s piece on why right-wing nutjobs are getting tonguebaths from the DC Press Corpse is worth a read:
The most common press narrative for elections this year is to contrast them with the 2010 and 2012 campaigns. Back then, the GOP “establishment” lost control of its nominating process, ended up with a group of extreme Senate candidates who said wacky things—Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Sharron Angle—and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in races that should have been slam dunks. Now the opposite has happened: The establishment has fought back and won, vanquishing the Tea Party and picking top-flight candidates who are disciplined and mainstream, dramatically unlike Akin and Angle.
It is a great narrative, a wonderful organizing theme. But any evidence that contradicts or clouds the narrative devalues it, which is perhaps why evidence to the contrary tends to be downplayed or ignored. Meantime, stories that show personal gaffes or bonehead moves by the opponents of these new, attractive mainstream candidates, fit that narrative and are highlighted.
The other day, The Washington Post carried a front-page profile of Joni Ernst by feature reporter Monica Hesse. The piece was particularly striking—a long, warm, almost reverential portrait of a woman candidate charming Iowans by doing it “the Iowa way”—no doubt, an accurate portrayal by a veteran journalist. Hesse did suggest, in passing, that Ernst has taken some controversial positions in the past, such as supporting “personhood,” but emphasized that she has walked them back. Not mentioned in the piece was Ernst’s flirtation with one of the craziest conspiracy theories, or her comments on dependency—or her suggestion that she would use the gun she packs if the government ever infringed on her rights.
Via Kevin Drum.
The Scorpion and the Frog
Hey mistermix — How about a rant on Andrew Cuomo and his creation of the Women’s Equality Party to undermine the Working Families Party in New York. What a douche-bagel.
This week, I happened to get a bored-sounding, unenthusiastic call from someone I’m sure was a paid caller, on behalf of the Women’s Equality Party, encouraging me to vote for Cuomo on their line. That’s just one example of how Cuomo is putting money behind the WEP, and he’s also pissing all over the WFP in the process:
“It empowers women in a way that has never been done. It’s almost amazing when you think about it,” Cuomo said. “We’ve formed every kind of fringe party for every kind of reason. We have Democrat, Republican, Green, Red, White, Blue, Working People, Working Short People, Working Tall People. We’ve never had a women’s party. This is the home of Seneca Falls. Let the women make their voice heard.”
For those of you missing your Cuomo decoder, that was Mario’s Kid calling the WFP a fringe party without even stooping to name them. It takes a pretty big asshole to do that, but we all know that Andrew is the gaping interstellar void of all known assholes, so he’s up to the task.
That said, if real Democrats in New York want to get mad at someone, Cuomo isn’t the guy. The idiots in charge of the Working Families Party, who took Cuomo’s worthless IOU in return for an endorsement that handed him the Governor’s office, are the ones to blame here. They’re like the frog in the frog and scorpion fable, except that in this case the scorpion stung the frog after they got to dry land.
Leaving the unpleasant subject of the Cuomo the lesser aside, the New York Democrats’ strategy of concentrating on women will have an interesting test in my local State Senate District, 55. In this race, first-term Senator Ted O’Brien, the rather uninspiring but competent Democrat who won his seat after Republican failer Jim Alesi retired, is facing former sports go sports broadcaster Rich Funke. Funke has a few problems, including some sexist Facebook posts, a campaign manager who was arrested in a prostitution sting, and communications director who thinks that tweets bemoaning the lack of mammogram coverage for men are funny. More substantively, he’s for restrictions on abortion and won’t support the Women’s Equality Act in the New York State Senate. Both men are well-financed, so my house has been bombarded with leaflets and calls, and I understand that both have had big media buys. The Democratic literature has been almost entirely aimed at pointing out Funke’s failings on women’s issues, and touting O’Brien’s much better record. The calls are all for my wife, and there are a lot of them. Siena has polled the race a couple of times and O’Brien is trailing Funke, but their polling record is spotty. I’ll report back next week on this race, because it is an interesting test of a well-financed effort by Democrats to make an appeal directly to women.
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Survivors
From loyal commentor Max:
First it was really dry for about two months (which finished off my regular basil) and then it got fairly dreary and wet, but we’re still going here. I was going to send a picture of these I took this morning but a bee popped in this afternoon and I had to get it.
These just keep going, even though it seems to have gotten too dry for them.
The bugs like to eat the petunias but one of them keeps thriving.
The peppers keep coming…
And the compost pile tomatoes (which started accidentally growing from seeds that survived the first composting) keep producing.
And here’s a slightly older pic…
Which I turned into salsa for the pork tacos!
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Rainy, dank & windy here in New England (“but at least it’s not snow”). Gives me an excuse to delay the last mowing, and spend some time clearing shelves in the garage to put away the garden gear for next year…What’s going on in your gardens this week?
Late Night Minor Horrors Open Thread
"If activist and perennial presidential candidate Ralph Nader is any bellwether for the progressive Left…" bye http://t.co/LrZ8ae5taM
— edroso (@edroso) October 30, 2014
Open Thread
Your host is a very bitter man about a certain football game and some hideous coaching decisions that were made. We’ll leave it at that.
Trying to think happy thoughts.
Pens are killing the Sabres, at least.
Open Thread: “The Movie That Won the Internet”
Caitlin Kelly (who doesn’t seem to quite “get” the nerdlove), in the New Yorker:
“The Princess Bride” has found a special place in the pop-culture pantheon, but it was not an easy or straightforward process. William Goldman’s screenplay floundered in development, passing from studio to studio and from director to director until, finally, it was taken up by Rob Reiner. When the movie opened, in 1987, it didn’t tank at the box office, but it didn’t take off, either—the kind of mediocre performance that dooms most movies to three-for-ten-dollar bins at drugstores. But in the years that followed “The Princess Bride” found new life on VHS, slowly accumulating an audience whose enthusiasm for the story and, especially, for the many quotable moments, that would make “Princess Bride” a cult classic.
Those quotable moments are also the reason why the movie’s fame has been amplified in recent years by the Internet, which specializes in distilling a movie to its catchiest phrase or its most sharable GIF. People found plenty of material in scenes like the epic Battle of Wits between Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) and the masked hero, Westley (Cary Elwes), and Peter Cook’s “mawwage” ceremony. The movie is so eminently quotable that, in 2012, ESPN analysts spent a whole episode of “NFL Kickoff” referencing it as many times as they possibly could—a moment that was itself shared and lauded online for days. In a new book about the making of the movie, “As You Wish,” Elwes (or perhaps his co-writer, Joe Layden) writes, “Looking back I only wish the Internet had existed in 1987. I suspect that social media would have raised awareness of the film’s unique quality and helped propel it to blockbuster status.”…
At least among the geeks of my acquaintance, I think it was the impromptu, bricolaged sketch-dramedy style that made Princess Bride one of our favorites. We liked it the same way we liked Saturday Night Live — even if you didn’t care for a particular actor or bit of business, you knew there was going to be something totally different within five minutes. And, of course, when it first appeared most movie fantasy was aimed at a marketing department’s idea of a not-very-imaginative five-year-old, so those of us who collected Fritz Leiber and Evangeline Walton paperbacks were willing to embrace anything more sophisticated than Disney and/or Hanna-Barbera on the screen…
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