Cobb

Poll Tax My Ass

Now I remember what was on CNN last evening when I went to Friday's. It was a poll to see whether or not people believed it was unconstitutional for polling workers to ask for ID when people go to vote.

Well you should know that this is one of those long lingering boogie men that haunt the minds of your more loopy civil libertarians - that it echoes of the racist discrimination of the Jim Crow South. Now there was some constitutional amendment, I think, or other such federal case that was made out of this matter, and it had gone to the back burner, rather like interracial marriage. But of course like interracial marriage, some people just never get over their poor home training.

Now I don't know much about the average level of self-esteem in the average African American but I've seen paranoia in action. Don't laugh. It's a sobering thing. I've also seen racial profiling up close and personal. In fact, I've experienced my share. So believe me when I tell you that it is not far from consideration that the very idea of being asked for ID at a voting booth is liable to move people into diatribe mode about setting the race back to slavery days. With any luck, my lighting rod will pick up such very arguments. (If not I'll google a blog or two and trackback).

If I were a Baptist preacher in Los Angeles, I would offer the following sermon:

You know I'm right.

On the Bradley Effect

The what?

Some pundit somewhere has to take credit for inventing a term I never heard of before, and my parents worked for Bradley. It has to do with the skewing of exit poll data due to an overabundance of white guilt. Lord knows that Shelby Steele is going to use this one.

So we're in deep prognostication horse race territory and nobody gets paid to say "I have no idea why", so the crazy theories are hip deep. Explaining why the exit polls showed Obama leading in New Hampshire and actual ballot count saying he loses is the order of the day. Thus the Bradley Effect theory. When they get on TV or in front of a reporter, they want to look enlightened. Yes my neck may be red but I voted for the colored fellow. They say. But in fact, they voted for the white one.

I'm taking all of these screwy theories with a grain of salt. I just wanted you all to know that. I expect somebody is going to write a PhD thesis in American studies on the 57 varieties of racism suffered by poor Barack before this year is over. I just wish everybody would stop being so surprised that he wins and surprised that he loses. There is no predicting. There are just results and armchair punditry.

But just in case, I've got to come up with a cool meme too.

Cookies

Master Sargeant Mac

Happy Hour is not so happy when you're a 24 year military man.

For half the hour, I drank down my Lynchburg Lemonade splitting my attention three ways between the men at the opposite corner, the bank of TVs and the uniform. I couldn't decide which was more interesting between them and my own private Idaho, and the lemonade wasn't potent enough to make me oblivious. For 10 bucks, it should have been a much better drink, but that's the way they serve them at Magic Johnson's Fridays in Ladera Heights. Too much ice and a straw.

The men at the opposite corner were three and certainly older than me. They wore dark suits and ties these three black gentlemen. One of them eyed the newspaper and then began to dialog with the other two just out of earshot. I usually go over to that corner, but tonight for some reason I did not. I hadn't noticed that they were there or I would have gravitated. It's what I'm supposed to be doing at happy hour, finding older businessmen who drive Porsches. Nobody else knows anything I want to know most of the time and I still don't know enough about the Lakers or the Patriots to be good company to anybody else. So I eyeballed them trying to figure out if they were attorneys, ministers or insurance salesmen. It was very difficult to tell, I don't often see black men in their fifties wearing suits in groups of three. To their right was another black man. He wore a gold tank watch and thin, mid-length dreads. He would join in, periodically to the inaudible conversation. The men were drinking conservative cocktails but also had full glasses of red wine. The man in dreads nursed a beer. I guessed they were talking about Obama and turned to the televisions.

There was CNN and ESPN and two other channels. The sports channel was in end of year mode, so I watched the best dunks of the year as they counted them down with large numbers in star graphics. If you've seen one slam dunk, you've seen them all. At least that's how it feels when there are interesting people around. The closed captioning on CNN rolled black blocks across the top of the screen. Nothing registered. Were they talking about New Hampshire? A dead hiker's body? I could never keep my eye on that TV long enough to figure it out. Slam dunks were more interesting.

The Uniform was four stools to my right at the very end of the bar under the bank of TVs. I looked long enough to tell he was Air Force. Something about his dark green camo didn't seem right. I didn't know Air Force wore dark green camo. Maybe he was a phony. The waitress shot him a strange assed salute, the look of consternation on his face showed me he was probably for real. He was ringing out and putting on his hat but not making any motions towards the door. I finished my drink and walked past him to the bathroom checking his boots as I walked by. Yeah he was for real, I read his stripes and somehow I guessed he was a master sergeant. It's possible that he was either that or technical sergeant, I can't remember if there was a chevron above, but there were definitely two stripes below the star.

I returned from the restroom determined to buy him a drink and say something pleasant and/or encouraging. It turned out that the latter was easier than the former. It took about five minutes of convo for him to confide that he'd just lost two men, and that's why he was in happy hour in this, one of the wealthiest black suburbs in America. He gave me a pound for recognizing and started telling me how people look at him like he's an alien from another planet. He said wasn't quite sure which kind of person I was at first, but was glad I understood and thanked me. I told him about one of my best buddies being an AF mechanic - worked on F-15s. Above his last name - I'll call him Mac - He had an Airborne pin on his lapel.  He said he'd like to talk about his work but he can't - maybe in two years. I told him that I have all kinds of buddies in aerospace. I know the drill. My guess is that he works B-2s, but I didn't bother to ask. So I offered to buy him a drink. Only the waitress wasn't having it.

Mac wasn't exactly pissed off at first. There was no telling how long he had been there but the barkeep told me that he wouldn't serve our Tanquerays. Huh? He shook his head. Don't they understand? I work for the country. I do my job so you can do your job. I nod. He didn't have anything to prove to me, but the waitress said - well, she didn't say and that was the problem. Her attitude was rather lackadaisical and it was clear that she was determined not to give him any props. All she gave him, which I had noticed earlier, was a glass of water which he was ignoring. So evidently there had been some drama before I arrived on the scene. Mac explained that there was another waitress involved who took his not wearing a wedding ring to mean more than it did. "You're wrong". Mac got in her face. If she thinks he's drunk she should call the police and see how that goes. This was getting interesting. Mac seemed to think that he could get Magic on his cellphone, or Channel 5, but he didn't appear drunk at all and he wasn't losing his cool. "I came here because I've got stuff to deal with, I serve this country and this is what I get." It occured to me that perhaps I had some duty to lend an ear and to find a bar where the staff was a bit less dainty. This being California, I was at a momentary loss. Still I urged Mac that we should just raise up, and I headed out the door.

Two minutes later, we were rehashing his gripe outside. He had served for 24 years and he'd never seen anything like this. He was determined to get some satisfaction. I was losing my patience. I understand that he ought to get some props, but I think he was making too much out of the judgment of one waitress. I had the feeling that he really needed to get some stuff out, and for my own selfish reasons, one of them being this blog and the other that I just buried somebody last week and have yet to cry about it, I was trying to get him and me drunk somewhere more appropriate. It was not to happen. The waitress came outside. I told Mac that I'd go get a coffee from the Starbucks next door, and so I got myself a tall mocha.

By the time I ambled back outside, the two of them were still at it. I stood out of earshot over with the cigar smoking brothers I used to hang with, sorta, three years ago. They have their own varsity jackets now. They are B.L.A.Q. Smoke. Story for another day. One of them wore a retired Army cap, he too stole periodic glances towards the drama between the two uniforms at TGIFridays. One woman in a red uniform. One man in a green one. The conversation amongst the smokers drifted to the recent conflict in the Straights of Hormuz. Interesting for sure, but certainly not deadly. My man was hurting and I myself was conflicted. How much business is it of mine? I know my gut. I'm compelled to stop fights and even arguments that might lead to conflict. I felt that Mac's problem was my business. I've been the guy who needed a drinking buddy on many an occasion. I looked up and Mac was now explaining himself to the bouncers - the waitress was gone. It never got loud, it never got heated. A fair amount of handwaving. A little bit of hands on shoulders. Not much nodding.

A minute later, Mac was headed towards the parking lot. He was on the cell. I was just about finished with my mocha and so I headed to the Transporter. I was done, but I figured I'd drive past him to see if he still wanted that Tanqueray. Oddly enough, he was now walking back towards Fridays. I honked at him because he was on my passenger side. He gestured dismissively with his hat and turned away before I could call out to him. Huh. So it's like that? I spun out and headed home. But before I could get to the freeway, I thought better of it. Maybe he didn't realize it was me. Maybe he was coming back to look for me. All I could think of was the two dead guys on his mind, it's not about me. So I headed back.

Nobody knew where he went. Not the smokers nor the bouncers. Sgt Mac disappeared into the night. And so it goes, another dissonant moment.

There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood is an extraordinary movie, more in the way it is acted and the way it sounds than anything else. That's probably not saying much to a director who probably wants to hear that it looks fabulous too. OK yeah well it does. But in a subtle way - almost too subtle to be noticed against the powerful drama of the story of the unforgettable character Daniel Plainview.

In some ways, this is the kind of story you might believe would be made about the head character of HBO's Deadwood. You know, the ugly corrupt owner of the brothel. But to be a brothel owner is something of a mediocrity, which is in the end, the failing of all of HBO's dramas despite their fascinating writing and compelling casts. Who cares about the self-doubts of a mafioso? Well, the answer quite plainly are those people at whose level of power he approaches in their own moral ambiguity - in other words Hollywood producers, actors and directors. The little millionaires. In some ways, this movie is on that same scale. Surely the producers of There Will Be Blood made promises and created their own town as moviemakers, just as Daniel Plainview did as an oilman.

This is the story of the hardest hard-scrabble rock picking prospector who figured out how to make money from digging under the man-killing earth. As he rises in success and fame, he is revealed by degrees to be a misanthrope, a man who takes great pains to conceal the fact that he has little concern for the mass of humanity and moves sharklike through them because they happen to greatly desire the one thing he knows better than anyone else - how to get oil out of the ground.

He is haunted by the fact that simple men who do not match his cunning or ruthlessness often block his path, and the story is about how he manages the precarious balance between hatred, greed, co-dependency, and social acceptability. He is a man who seduces and then exploits everyone but a precious few, those he needs most in order to keep the oily shark of his soul swimming forward.

I have not read Upton Sinclair, and I thank my lucky stars that I didn't or else I might have been irredeemably Leftist. I can recall asking on occasion what book did I need to read to understand America - the most important book of all. And I can remember hearing time and time again that it was Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle". I was fortunate enough to read Howard Zinn as a full-grown man instead of an impressionable collegian. And so armed with that skepticism I approached this film knowing that it was based on one of Sinclair's books. But the film itself was so masterful that it was easy to sink all of the messages into the character of Plainview. In otherwords, this is not a metaphorical film. It didn't have to be historical. It was exactly what it needed to be: the story of a driven, fascinating, megalomaniac who was born of days when you could order goat's milk at a bar and when literacy came from the Holy Bible and nowhere else.

The music in this film was extraordinary. It just so happens that I watched Cool Hand Luke this week too. Very much the same way Lalo Schifrin raised tension with seemingly incongruously modernistic music against a rustic background, the score for There Will Be Blood has a stark, dramatic, relentless quality that overcomes the need for dialog.

There are visuals burned into memory from There Will Be Blood. There are no clippy montages. The film takes its time in ordinary action that would be cut from lesser films. We don't get to guess what happens off camera and make assumptions in our minds. The camera follows every moment. Horses walk through trees. A man runs after his boy into the dark and returns with him, panting. An oil derrick burns in the evening and black smoke drifts towards the western sunset. Grubby fingers write pencil marks onto graph paper and a design emerges. A body in a grave is face down in water and the digger kicks in the leg caught on the grave wall. A man facing away from the camera is snoring on the floor and another man tries to awaken him - the camera doesn't change angles. A man meets his son after an absence, the camera stays 50 yards away from the embrace. It is such an unusual movie to see that it makes most other movies seem somehow rushed and undone.

Daniel Day Lewis owns the film of course. His Plainview is unromantically honest, a man of little pretense. A man who simply is a force, whose economy with words allows for no flattery. He is unconcerned with his fate and drinks himself to sleep, yet will not abide the insinuation that he has mismanaged his personal life. Plainview has no personal life, his family doesn't exist, and yet it is the only value he honors outside of his business dealings. There is only his son, H.W. whose deafness robs Plainview of a confidante until a stranger comes claiming to be Plainview's half-brother. Plainview feels betrayed by both in the end, and betrays them back. He is the man without trust, he is the man who believes that God plays dice with the universe.

There Will Be Blood is another contemporary film that serves to entertain us by bringing us in close tactile proximity to the earth. It is perfectly designed for the majority of us urbanites with DVD players and jobs that rarely cost people their lives. It allows us to touch raw nature and raw lives and raw betrayal and raw ambition all born of the earth. It is a dusty, oily, gritty film in which fresh faces suffer hardships we rarely do. A girl is beaten for not praying. A baby's bottle nipple is sterilized with whiskey. A laborer is dragged from a drill hole having been crushed by falling machinery.  This is not, however, a costume drama. It is something of a slow motion psychological thriller. We watch a man consumed by ambition bulldog his way through life, a pugilistic king, a semi-gracious Machiavel, a man among men who cannot enjoy a moment's joy that doesn't serve his own purposes. Daniel Plainview is, in many ways, just as uncivil as the earth, just as oblivious to his own nature as nature is. He is as predictable as the tides, and as deadly and unforgiving as the deep. He is the very extension of earth, the God of Oil, and There Will Be Blood is his myth.

Obama's Gore Problem

The word I haven't heard in all of the horserace commentary yesterday, and I heard a lot of it, was 'superdelegate'. Thanks to a thoughtrul reader, I have been hipped to the scam. It's the very kind of thing that Democrats would not let go of in 2000, controls to the popular vote.

A superdelegate is essentially a delegate to the Democratic nominating convention that doesn't need to be bound by the results of the primaries and caucuses. It's the Democrat's own little electoral college. So what if Obama won the popular vote in Iowa, the superdelegates from the state don't have to commit to him. This means that despite the fact that Obama won the delgates and popular vote (by not such a big margin as you think), Iowa still isn't in the bag for Barack. Check out this "As Iowa is concerned: "Out of 45 delegates available,  Obama 16,  Clinton 15,  Edwards 14.  That's it."

Now that I've saved 50 bucks (which I would have gladly paid), I think it's time to get real.

Denzel Does it for the Children

After having watched Denzel Washington's 'The Great Debaters', I think I'm going to have to review all of the Deep South danger movies. And of course I'm going to have to watch this one again. It ain't Mississippi Burning.

Part of the reason I need to watch it again is because of something Doc told me about the film that wasn't actually in it, but deeply implied in his interpretation. There were words coming out of his mouth that I expected to hear from DW but they never came. It's rather weird.

Doc's enthusiasm for the film is stratospheric. He came at me at 100 mph telling me that this should be mandatory viewing for every highshooler in America. That's rather odd because half of the film's import from my perspective was its demonstration of how much learning is explicitly book learning. But his real kicker was that he saw the great lesson was that this film showed how much education was not all about 'trying to be white' but saving one's own righteous mind. We've gone through the Acting White debate several times here and elsewhere. I seem to recall that there was broad consensus that acting white is a media hyped phenomenon sustained only by crackpots and idiot rappers. Doc wasn't part of those debates, and yet it's a bit surprising that would be his big takeaway.

This movie out-beed Akeelah for the same reason it was glib in many respects, playing fast and loose with history. It was a costume drama with words cranked up a notch for dramatic effect. And all of that became perfectly clear when Denzel's Tolson used the infamous Willie Lynch document as a device to keep his students out of his personal life and on the proper side of the student-teacher divide. Holy heavy-handed hammer of hyperbole, Batman! All the while he was saying this, I thought he might end it in tears speaking of his own father, which was the line of questioning that led to his soliloquy, but no such luck on that. The ability to get to the breathtaking descriptions of black humiliation and death at the hands of redneck townies and pig farmers is part of the Debater's bludgeon, but also the ability to convey some unmitigated family values crowds out the subtlety.

Me, I really liked the family values overflowing from this flick in retrospect. After all it is, without question, aimed directly at the hearts and minds of parents with kids in middle school and high school. At least I hope you all understand that going in. Because if you think it's going to be what the marketing of Denzel as Tolson and Forest Whitaker as James Farmer Sr. might suggest, you're in for a rude awakening. There is no great moment between the two - there are inklings of it, but it's nipped in the bud real quickly.  Going into the theatre I was almost expecting something on the level of A Soldier's Story. No such luck, and strike two.

So it's a good thing that I never finished reading (until now) Mark Anthony Neal's review and critique, because it might have soured me even more. DW is bound to make some bucks with this triumphant Negro flick, which he must. As James Farmer Sr says in the movie, much to my surprise and delight since it's exactly what I tell my son: You do what you must do, in order that you may do what you want to do.

Is it a good film? Oh yeah. The montage is actually pretty damned good. So a thumbs up for that. The juke joint and gutbucket blues authenticity is damned near perfect. I could only find one glaring slipup in that regard, which was that the ramshackle tents on the side of the road during the opening all had the same consistency of fabric. I'm trying to determine if there is any such mangrove swamp in Texas but I'll leave that alone. There was a scene in which the redneck sheriff whipped out his handkerchief and wiped his sweaty brow, but they thankfully cut that stereotypical shot to a half second.

This film is a weeper, and the climactic scene at Harvard is electric, spine-tingling and quite brilliant. I don't think I've ever seen any debate filmed better. I got Dead Poets Society for XMas and I'll get back to you on that. I got the distinct impression that they may have used the actual texts, or at least some substance of the arguments from the actual debates. I can't see how the estate of James Farmer would have it any other way, even though it wasn't actually done at Harvard.

One thing is clear is that this was an actor's movie. Denzel got some sterling performances out of his young charges. What rings so absolutely true about the film is how exactly their age and temperament these young actors seemed. That is what sets this film apart from any other of its sort. There were no gratuities in their characters. Better than any basketball, or football, or swimming movie, these were fully three dimensional young folks. I would say they were the best young black characters on film since...Sarafina! With two short stops for Finding Forrester and Antwone Fisher. These three young actors (Nate Parker, Denzel Whitaker (I kid you not) and Jurnee Smallett) have raised the bar.

I'm wondering if and when and how a more seriously intellectual film about serious intellectuals such as Tolson are going to get done. If Washington has decided that this is the level of filmmaking he will engage, then we're rather stuck aren't we? As I've said, he's got his own American manhood thing to do which seems to preclude him from doing more. Since we compare him to Russell Crowe, we should ask where is Denzel's equivalent "A Beautiful Mind"? But we also compare him to Bruce Willis, and so we have to say it ain't gonna happen.

All those are gripes from me as Cobb, not me as DaddyMan. DaddyMan is definitely going to take his kids to see this flick and I think it's going to hit them in the right place in their young minds. This film is for the kids. Thanks for that DW.

The Workbench

Fabrication d'une lampe triode
Uploaded by F2FO

This video is the coolest thing I've seen in a very long time. When I retire, I'd love to do stuff like that all day.

Andrew Olmstead

I never heard of him while he was alive, but he must have been somebody. He's done a damned fine job from beyond the grave.

As passionate as I am about personal freedom, I don't buy the claims of anarchists that humanity would be just fine without any government at all. There are too many people in the world who believe that they know best how people should live their lives, and many of them are more than willing to use force to impose those beliefs on others. A world without government simply wouldn't last very long; as soon as it was established, strongmen would immediately spring up to establish their fiefdoms. So there is a need for government to protect the people's rights. And one of the fundamental tools to do that is an army that can prevent outside agencies from imposing their rules on a society. A lot of people will protest that argument by noting that the people we are fighting in Iraq are unlikely to threaten the rights of the average American. That's certainly true; while our enemies would certainly like to wreak great levels of havoc on our society, the fact is they're not likely to succeed. But that doesn't mean there isn't still a need for an army (setting aside debates regarding whether ours is the right size at the moment). Americans are fortunate that we don't have to worry too much about people coming to try and overthrow us, but part of the reason we don't have to worry about that is because we have an army that is stopping anyone who would try.

Soldiers cannot have the option of opting out of missions because they don't agree with them: that violates the social contract. The duly-elected American government decided to go to war in Iraq. (Even if you maintain President Bush was not properly elected, Congress voted for war as well.) As a soldier, I have a duty to obey the orders of the President of the United States as long as they are Constitutional. I can no more opt out of missions I disagree with than I can ignore laws I think are improper. I do not consider it a violation of my individual rights to have gone to Iraq on orders because I raised my right hand and volunteered to join the army. Whether or not this mission was a good one, my participation in it was an affirmation of something I consider quite necessary to society. So if nothing else, I gave my life for a pretty important principle; I can (if you'll pardon the pun) live with that.

So can I.

Federal Spending 2007

Just in case you forgot.

From Marginal Revolution.

Best and Worst of 2K7

Best Movie
The best movie has to be, without question, No Country for Old Men. In fact, I say it's the best Coen Brothers movie ever, beating out Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing and Fargo.

Best New Tech Blog
I'm going to give a tip of the hat to High Scalability.  It's fairly rare that people who do webstuff understand serious database technology.

Worst Presidential Candidate
That would go to Mike Gravel, who started off very loud, even for a crank, and then just went out with a whimper. He has been reduced to saying a mere 39 words on the death of Bhutto. That's so weak.

Shallowest Celebrity Scandal
That would have to be the dog thing with Ellen DeGeneres. That was such a heart wrenching drama I just... just kidding.

Heinous Crime of the Year
I'd say the West Virginia torture case. It's one thing to go postal then take yourself out, but the pathology of kidnap and torture is at a completely different level of evil.

Heartrending Moment of the Year
That would be the Mississippi River Bridge collapse.

Uplifting Sports Moment of the Year
Brett Favre's TD record.

Jumped the Shark in 2007
Britney Spears

The Big Thing Everyone Forgot in 2007
Hezbollah in Lebanon

Hottest Product of the Year
iPhone, hands down. Even people who hated it couldn't get enough news about it. I'd say it narrowly outperformed the last Harry Potter book.

Joke Butt of the Year
That would be Larry Craig. 'Wide stance' my ass.

Rant of the Year
Nobody comes even close to Jim Cramer going apeshit. You have NO IDEA! 

Sizzler

Thermohaline Collapse

I reawaken the Biome category of futurist ecological scenarios with this mathematical framework for predicting dramatic global climate change, meaning something like 5 whole degrees on average.

Download thermohaline_collapse_challenor.pdf

I don't forsee this happening, the extent to which our atmosphere would have to be flooded with CO2 within the next hundred years would be very drastic. This seemed to be a big meme four years ago, but I think folks still talking about CO2 footprints don't have any clear idea how big a foot it'd have to be.

Cutting to the chase:

                                         

Years	P(THC<5 Sv)	P(THC<10 Sv)
50	0.0035	0.0280
100	0.0039	0.0274
150	0.0046	0.0248
200	0.0023	0.0176
250	0.0028	0.0174
500	0.0022	0.0176

Pretty slim.

Fifty Bucks

There's got to be a bathroom conversation something like this, going on all over America:

Randolph Duke: Pay up, Mortimer. I've won the bet.
Mortimer Duke: Here, one dollar.
Randolph Duke: [chuckling] We took a perfectly useless psychopath like Valentine, and turned him into a successful executive. And during the same time, we turned an honest, hard-working man into a violently... deranged, would-be killer!
Randolph Duke: Now, what are we going to do about taking Winthorpe back and returning Valentine to the ghetto?
Mortimer Duke: I don't want Winthorpe back, after what he's done.
Randolph Duke: You mean, keep Valentine on as managing director?
Mortimer Duke: Do you really believe I would have a n****r run our family business, Randolph?
Randolph Duke: Of course, not. Neither would I.

You know this is from Trading Places, that classic comedy from the 80s. By the way, if you're listening Emmett of the Unblinking Eye, this should have been in your top male bonding films list. Not to mention 'The Defiant Ones' that also didn't make the list.  I wasted twenty minutes listening to the busy signal that day calling into the show.

Anyway, I have placed a fifty dollar wager against the hopes of Obama in New Hampshire. That is to say I have promised Deet, my infatuated Obama-loving brother, that amount if Barak takes the NH primary. As I've said before, I like the idea of Obama taking the Democrat nomination away from Hillary. If she wins, it's going to be 2000 and 2004 all over again, and the Red vs Blue will continue to be the paradigm and we in the GOP are going to have to face a stereotypical decision - one that will be less thoughtful than one with Obama as the opponent. Of course I expect Obama to lose, ultimately because I think he's a geopolitical novice and experimenter despite the fact that he has come correct about as often as he has eaten his shoe. Ultimately, he'll be responsible in the world, but his mandate is just all backwards.

All that said, I hate the Clintons so much. I'm really going to love watching them squirm, and I'm really fascinated by how the Dukes of the Democrats are going to spin this victory.

This Was the Moment

Obama wins Iowa. Good for him.

Huckabee wins Iowa. So what?

I heard Obama's victory speech on the radio and boy was he pumped. He sounded like the man who just won the Boston Marathon ready to predict winning the LA Marathon - telling the streets in the next town to submit. But that's the kind of confidence winning in Iowa give presidential candidates, and Obama is ready. He sounds like a very good winner. Of course I don't take the symbolism of his victory quite as seriously as the chanting crowds, nor should he.

As for Huckabee, one commentator got it right. Every vote for Huckabee is a final vote for Giuliani. Huckabee, best described as a 'pro-life Jimmy Carter', has proven that the hardline conservative vote is not invincible. Nobody but nobody in the GOP expects Huckabee to do much of anything after this. In fact, they are defying him. I'm riding that wave of defiance.

My Own Emotionalism

When the candidates first announced, I was the first one to go to bat for Mitt Romney. I still don't think that there is anything he has said, when I pay attention to his actual words, that I disagree with. Yet I disagree with the candidate as a person. I think he looks and sounds like a JC Penney catalog model. I cannot imagine him drinking dark beer. And that is what has turned me off to him.

There have risen some more substantive criticisms of Romney with regard to the actual way he decided to defend his religion, but for me these messages have come too late. I've already written him off and decided to support Fred Thompson. And yet now, as the races and quips and pundits get various parts of my attention, Fred doen't turn me on fire either.

In some ways it doesn't matter. I will vote for whomever becomes the Republican nominee, so long as it's not Huckabee or Paul. Their negatives are real for me. But on the top four, I think emotion will play the bigger role than reason.

I do pay attention to what David Brooks says on most occasions, and I like his assertion that some conservatives would rather win control of a losing party than lose control of a winning party. The Corner today is buff with the scoop on infighting - Republicans who hate Republicans. Yeah it's true. But we absolutely despise Democrats, so we'll live with the hate - like we always do. It brings us to McCain.

McCain
To tell you the God's honest truth, I trust McCain more than just about any of the big four to be President. He has huge negatives in the party precisely because he has demonstrated the ability to forge coalitions in Congress that gets legislation done, despite strongarm party-line tactics. I actually like that in a President. It's precisely the thing I believe Obama cannot do, and it's what I mean when I say Obama is too junior. McCain is dead right on the war and on foreign policy and we know that. What's new today is the revelation that McCain is very likely to call on Phil Gramm when it comes to economic policy. That, my darlings, is a coup. What do I think about McCain Fiengold? I was shocked that he got it done, and I applauded it. Anybody who thinks it's a blow to free speech is smoking crack. We've got 2 year campaign seasons. People hate on McCain because he gets irritated by certain challenges, and yet he gets the important things right. That may sound like Bush in theory, but McCain has a defter touch. And he never appears sleepy or stupid.

Romney
Romney makes certain people crazy because he triangulates. So? it shows that he can be reasoned with. I happen to think he's probably a lot less flexible than he appears. He talks a good game, but you can hear when he runs out of steam and isn't ready to pursue an intellectual question to the extent of his intellect. When things run off script, I think Romney runs in circles.

Giuliani
There's something basic about Rudy that I love, and something else about him that I don't trust. Actually, it's the same thing. It's his cocky confidence and his ability to take control and get very focused on delivering something. I heard him on the radio the other day answering rapid fire questions with aplomb. He has all the answers, this guy. And when he doesn't he repeats himself well. Of all the candidates, Rudy is the best communicator. Eventually, you know exactly where you stand with Giuliani, the problem is that it probably doesn't matter much to him. He picks sides, he plays favorites, he knows how to manipulate the system. He's extraordinarily presidential and most likely the most capable executive of the bunch. Is he ever wrong?

Thompson
All I ever hear about Thompson is that "he doesn't want it" badly enough. It seems to me that he's going to have to convince people that the other candidates are bad for the country, because he's not leading on charisma. Of the four, I honestly think that Thompson is the wisest and the guy who will calm the nation down the most. It's true that I like him, but I don't like him enough to dislike the other three as President.

With all these guys, the real challenge is that we have to guess what kind of things will hit and hope they have the right stuff to deal with it well. If the world goes to hell, which one do you want at the wheel of the American handbasket?

Mood Indigo

Sweeping The Electronic Front Porch

Happy New Year!

My daughter, The Sprite tells me that it's an old Chinese tradition to sweep the house and get the evil spirits out. I've heard some folks change the welcome mat on their front porch. Well let me update some of that. I've got to take care of The Terabyte, so you might as well take care of yours.

Now go change your passwords. You know that you need to do it. Don't put it off. Also, double check to see that your virus software is up to date, and backup your hard drives. Clean up all those old programs you're never going to watch on Tivo. Delete 'em now.

Mail back that Netflix movie that you've been sitting on. Go through your old XBox games and get ready to trade them in. Change your ringtone. Change your screensaver. Change your desktop wallpaper. Delete all that crap off of your thumb drive. Wipe the dust off your laptop screen and for God's sake take some Lysol to your keyboard. It's disgusting. Use some alcohol and a q-tip or some WD-40 and clean off all the toe-jam between the keys.

Check to see when your domains are going to expire. And that old one that you've got parked? Nobody's going to buy it. Give it up. Completely re-do your iPod. You've been listening to the same playlists for too long. Re-rip your favorite CDs. Go ahead and use the highest bitrate, you deserve it. You've got all those movies sitting in your My Documents folder, go ahead and upload them to YouTube.

Update your Orkut profile, and your Plaxo, and your Last.fm, and your LinkedIn. Redesign your My Space page, and quit accepting friends that you never talk to. Decide on one email service and stick to it. You're driving people crazy. Buy a new case for those disks you've got laying around, and put real descriptions on them. Reprogram your radio presets. Get fresh batteries for your remote.

Set the time on your VCR. Readjust your graphic equalizer - put a little more treble in your life. Enable your WEP encryption, you're really not serving the public, just the porn downloader next door. Put some new ink cartridges in the printer. Synchronize your calendars. Check off your todo list and archive your old mail folders. Burn some files to disk, you know which ones, especially that list of Christmas card addresses it took you so long to find again.

Upgrade your browser. Try a new font. Change the picture of your login icon. In fact, change the song associated with your login and your power down. Buy a new power strip and stop using those three prong converters. Make sure the strip has a fuse. Put some more icons on your Quick Launch. Add some del.icio.us links. Twitter less. Change the background picture on your phone. Give your phone a real bluetooth name.

Wrap up those power cables and put them in the garage. Throw away that modem, you know you're not going to use it, but do hold on to that extra ethernet card. Put the DVDs back into their proper cases and stack them in the bookshelf, not on top of the TV. Give your old bluetooth headset away. Don't worry, they'll find the right charger for it.

Last but not least, think of all those emails you passed around last year. Did they bring you good luck or not? I leave that decision to you.

Managing Fame

If you don't know me by now,
You will never ever really know me.
-- Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff

I can't decide whether or not it is good for me to be famous. But my preliminary conclusion is that it is bad, primarily because fame is something you cannot manage. That is, fame for the average person is bad because the average person cannot manage it. But for the celebrity, fame is good.

Sunday, I took Boy up to Six Flags Magic Mountain. The best ride there is called Tatsu. We waited in line for 2 hours before we got our thrill on. During that time, we were chatted up by Michael and Suzanne. Michael is in Hollywood, he's an actor and producer and it wasn't 10 minutes before he handed me his card. Suzanne is a train the trainer at JPL, I got hers too. It was a cool and wide ranging conversation about everything from 50 meter objects hitting Mars, rodeo poker, pilots in North Carolina to NASCAR family dynasties to the movie Four Brothers to hoodies with eye-holes. We also talked a lot about the software and film industries. What I love and hate about Hollywood folks is that they are dysfunctionally over-sociable. Every conversation comes back around to The Business, and that's how people in entertainment get work. Parties are marketing opportunities. It permeates your life. And so I get their business cards and websites and IMDB listing quickly, as opposed to conversations with normal people In which  I never get such information.

Hollywood folks are prepared for stardom and fame. They have a way of living on the very edge of it, of being teased by it, of nursing it. They see it in a different way, I think, than the rest of it. And the ones who survive have to manage it well. Similarly, I have had to manage fame in being a notable blogger and on-air personality. I pay very close attention to how I'm known, why I'm known and most importantly, how I would deal with the possibility that I could become very well known. So when I talk about identity, I pay close attention to how I have changed mine as an online persona over the years, and how actors and celebrities have a close or far distance from the way they are known.

An actor has become a different thing, I think in our society. The discipline has been transformed over the 20thC, as has the nature of celebrity and fame. It has to do with the pervasiveness of media and the extent to which an actor is perceived as being authentic. I'd like to use the term 'actor' almost interchangeably with 'agent'. Not agent as in talent agent, but more like secret agent. An actor is a person but an actor has a role. An actor's credibility, his fame comes from the success of portaying that role. The success accrues to the root person for something that may or may not have anything to do with who the person actually is. The actor, unlike an agent, does not set out to deceive his audience against their interests, but the efforts are similar. It is a confidence game.

Nulan has an interesting take on being in the world but not of the world, and I immediately think of subversion of hegemony. Subversion is not implicit in living off the grid, but the matter of the social contract is deep within the presumptions of dropping out or participating in some subculture or alternative lifestyle. There are inevitable political costs to social independence.

This brings me back to fame and identity, belonging and the social contract. How much does fame help or hinder? People want to claim R Kelly. People want to claim Benazir Bhutto. Name recognition and the familiarity with an accepted credible act is the currency. Both Kelly and Bhutto know how to parlay and manage that fame regardless of the acts of the person. They are big enough to compartmentalize and they manage that well. They get the benefit of a doubt. They are influential enough to merit a double standard, which they have earned in the eyes of millions.

I think this is a unique skill that is being brought forth in contemporary times - to have legends and multiple titles and mythologies associated with one's persona. I always look towards myth and the history of kings and rulers in anticipating the things that wealthy and powerful people in America will expect for themselves, some portion of which will trickle down. We didn't always, in the broad middle class, have credit but the expansion of the American economy meant that would come. So manipulations of identity are coming down the pike to American whales, and then to the upper-middle class.

My association with Hollywood folks will help me understand the vicissitudes of fame management and my tech background will help me understand what's up with managing virtual selves. It should be an interesting combination. I'll be blogging on it this year.

The Last Radio Show of 2K7

Did a News & Notes with Farai yesterday.

Is R Kelly Our Kelly?
Hells no. Then again I'm not speaking for all of America, as much as I'd like to. What I would have liked to have said about R Kelly is that there is something emotionally crippled hanging onto him. The fact that he has not been tried has given people some reason to believe he is innocent. I don't believe he is. I didn't see The Tape and I'm not ever going to, on purpose. I'm not one in favor of media executions but the dude is hinky. You don't accidentally get accused of child pornography.

The thing I see explaining the phenomenon of R Kelly's continued support among some elements of  African America has to do with a sort of emotional underdevelopment. In my Big Mac analogy on the air, I suggested that folks who take fast food too seriously may do so because they don't know how to cook. If you are a good cook you can take the Big Mac or leave it. You can provide for yourself. Similarly if you could never express the emotions of "I Believe I Can Fly" on your own, then you need that song. If you cannot communicate your love to someone without the use of some commercial radio song then there's something wrong.

As I said on the air, there is implicitly something missing in the lives of any young girl that could call their relationship with R Kelly 'love'. That's real Daddy Love. More emotional cripples flocking together to call what they have...well who knows? What we do know is that justice delayed is justice denied and some kind of willful blindness has been keeping Kelly out of court for six years. It's not like he's up in Tora Bora. Get him in front of the jury. Now.

Additionally, I would note that I met Jasmyn Cannick and her family at the studio. Nice folks. I'm pretty sure I've had terse words for Cannick in the past basically about the aesthetics of her blog, but as usual, and I suppose it always bears repeating, I'm in a battle of ideas and aesthetics, and on that battleground I take few prisoners. But I'm always happy to meet people, because I love people. 

It turns out that aside from being a Kwanzaan, Cannick is Old School Hermosa Beach. I first moved there in '88, but I knew that back in the day Hermosa was something of a ghetto. Around WW2, oilfield workers made their primary residence in Hermosa where the houses were smaller and the rents cheaper. It was a primarily black and latino 'hood until it gentrified almost completely. Cannick's fam was there when there were about 3 black families in the whole of the joint. (I happen to know that the Martins where there in the 60s and 70s, and there's got to be at least one other family we don't know). Cannick is perseverance in my book.