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Urp.

Mommy woke up with a stom­achache today, so mommy’s going back to bed to clutch a pil­low and moan. For­tu­nately, mommy found some blog­gage for you first, because mommy knows you folks love blog­gage the way kit­tens love play­ing with string, and the way mommy likes refer­ring to her­self in the third person.

Any­one catch the speeches last night? If McCain doesn’t fire his pro­duc­tion designer, or who­ever is respon­si­ble for putting him in front of that green back­drop, he won’t get out of the gate. Some­one on another blog said it looked like a post-game presser, and that’s just about per­fect. He looked old, out of it and unable to get through a sen­tence with­out a third look at the ‘prompter. Even the chants sounded like they were started by a guy just out of cam­era range, hold­ing up a sign. Obama hits the ground run­ning with his rain­bow coali­tion of smil­ing young peo­ple — whom you could see! while he was speak­ing! because they were seated all around him! — and looked like Sec­re­tariat warm­ing up on Bel­mont Day.

Per­mit me to say: The con­trast was star­tling. Discuss.

Else­where:

The worst time to be a fea­ture writer is when a big hard-news story is break­ing. Every­one else is wad­ing through New Orleans, and you’re writ­ing a think piece on Whither the Cre­ole Restau­rants. A head of state is assas­si­nated, touch­ing off a shoot­ing war, and you’re gath­er­ing notes on whether the widow’s mourn­ing dress sent some sort of coded mes­sage to the insurgents.

Worst of all was post-9/11. Who gives a shit about a movie open­ing the fol­low­ing Fri­day? (Ask the peo­ple who made “Zoolan­der,” which I believe had that unlucky des­ig­na­tion, although it had other prob­lems as well.) I met some­one who had a book pub­lished that very day; it’s hard for him to dis­cuss it now with­out a wince. But fea­tures edi­tors sol­diered on, gamely try­ing to take the pulse of a freaked-out nation, search­ing for the shopping/fashion/culture angle. The Wall Street Jour­nal was par­tic­u­larly ham-fisted in that crazy time, as I recall. There was a piece on how expen­sive it was to cook your own meals — because every­one was stay­ing in after 9/11, cocoon­ing and recon­nect­ing with the neglected home fires — when a set of All-Clad cook­ware cost $900 and lemon­grass– and truffle-infused oils were some­thing like a mil­lion dol­lars a quart. Some­one had six friends over for din­ner, and it cost $700! The horror!

Well, OK.

Now that the econ­omy is in the tank again, but in a dif­fer­ent kind of way, these travails-of-rich-people sto­ries are pop­ping up again. You can’t really fault the big papers for run­ning them; who else is sup­posed to respond to all those Van Cleef & Arpels ads in the A sec­tion? They know their readership.

Here’s one from this past Sunday’s NYT:

The wealthy don’t gen­er­ally speak pub­licly about their finances, in good times or bad. It’s in poor taste, for one, and their employ­ers could fire them for talk­ing even a lit­tle. But peo­ple who pro­vide ser­vices to the wealthy — lawyers, art advis­ers, per­sonal train­ers and hair­styl­ists — say they are get­ting an ear­ful about their clients’ finan­cial anxieties.

Inter­views with the peo­ple who actu­ally see the bank state­ments, like divorce lawyers and lenders, say their clients are def­i­nitely liv­ing on less than they did a year ago, regard­less of how expan­sive the def­i­n­i­tion of “less” may be. Hair­styl­ists and pri­vate jet rental com­pa­nies say the wealthy are cut­ting back on lux­u­ries like $350 high­lights and $10,000-an-hour jet rentals. Even nutri­tion­ists and per­sonal train­ers notice a prob­lem. The wealthy are eat­ing more and gain­ing weight because of the stress.

I love those killer lit­tle end-of-paragraph lines, and details like these:

On a spring after­noon, a half-dozen hair­styl­ists to the very wealthy talked about how cus­tomers are stretch­ing their $350 high­lights and $150 hair­cuts to every eight weeks instead of six weeks. Some women are cut­ting out high­lights entirely, say­ing they would “rather be brunettes.”

Brave, brave rich peo­ple! Not afraid to make the hard choices!

Ted Nugent proves how far you can go after you flunk Comp 101:

Gather around, high school and col­lege grad­u­ates, and lis­ten good — real good. What I am about to tell you will help you immensely through­out the rest of your lives if you com­mit to prac­tic­ing Uncle Ted’s proven modus operandi for a qual­ity of life.

It’s full of the usual dipshittery:

Be intel­li­gently and effec­tively defi­ant. Defi­ance is the very spirit that gave birth to this coun­try when our fore­fa­thers fought against over­whelm­ing odds, signed the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and fired the “shot heard ’round the world.” Lock and load. Really.

Of course, when Ted had the oppor­tu­nity to fight against over­whelm­ing odds, lock­ing and load­ing all the while, he chose to poop his pants. I don’t think peo­ple can be reminded of this enough.

Think­ing of Ted Nugent makes my stom­ach hurt more. Back to bed.

Posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 8:34 am
in Current events, Same ol' same ol'.

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69 responses to
“Urp.”

  1. Kirk said on June 4th, 2008 at 9:18 am

    Yes, McCain def­i­nitely looked liked a drugged-up lunatic robot last night, send­ing a chill up my spine as I pon­dered the pos­si­bil­ity that his fin­ger could wind up next to the big red button.

    Tra­vails of rich peo­ple: The bank is fore­clos­ing on Ed McMahon’s $4.8 mil­lion Bev­erly Hills home.

  2. coozledad said on June 4th, 2008 at 9:27 am

    Nugent cor­rectly sur­mised that if he went to Viet­nam, his fel­low sol­diers would have promptly ended his career. Hell, they might have fragged him in basic training.

  3. MarkH said on June 4th, 2008 at 9:28 am

    Kirk, that’s just his MORTGAGE BALANCE! The house is alledgedly worth $6.25 Mil­lion. He and Coun­try­wide are “work­ing it out”. Appar­ently, he broke his neck some months ago and has not been able to do his endorse­ment work.

  4. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 4th, 2008 at 9:32 am

    Re: ral­lies and back­drops and such — But does it trans­late into vot­ing behav­ior? We said this about Kerry vs. Bush (or even to some degree Gore vs. Bush), that young peo­ple were mobi­lized like they never had been, new gen­er­a­tion hear­ing the call to pub­lic ser­vice, never-voted folks were com­ing in tidal waves to reg­is­ter and …

    … And come Novem­ber, they didn’t show. Some, enough to make lines in a few precincts which are still being hollered about as “theft” but the statewide num­bers in Ohio, and the elec­tion of Sher­rod Brown as sen­a­tor, show that the heart of the mat­ter was not dis­en­fran­chise­ment, but vot­ing pat­tern shifts. Lib­eral can­di­dates with a plan and con­crete, com­pre­hend­able pro­pos­als that mobi­lized crit­i­cal “get out the vote” con­stituen­cies got elected, and rock stars didn’t. Sher­rod Brown, Ted Strick­land, and Zack Space (all lib­eral D’s) got voted in with major labor sup­port and a mod­est but dis­tinct Repub­li­can swing to can­di­dates with a clue (hey, i helped with the lat­ter two).

    So don’t say that R’s stole votes in Ohio, because if they were, they did a hor­rid job of it. I’m just say­ing that peo­ple are *already* say­ing that with big arena ral­lies, if Obama doesn’t get a big vote, it will be because of elec­toral malfea­sance — but ral­lies don’t trans­late to vot­ing behav­ior. McCain seems stiff — heck, he is stiff — but lots of folk are reminded of cer­tain aspects of McCain’s story every time he looks stiff, and those are folks who vote whether it’s rain­ing or not.

    When the youth vote gets dis­ci­plined and focused, they’ll swing elec­tions, but that usu­ally takes about twenty years, by which time they’ll be a dif­fer­ent bloc than “the youth vote.” I’m just thank­ful that we don’t have a Boomer on the bal­lot this year!

  5. Jolene said on June 4th, 2008 at 9:45 am

    But that youth vote has been hap­pen­ing since Jan­u­ary, Jeff. I don’t have the data at my fin­ger­tips, but my rec­ol­lec­tion is that he won Iowa, essen­tially, on the backs of col­lege stu­dents and did so by get­ting them to return to Iowa for the cau­cuses even though some were still on win­ter break.

    Obama’s charisma is impres­sive, but even more impres­sive is the orga­ni­za­tion he has built and is build­ing. Remem­ber that, last sum­mer, Obama was behind HRC by 20+ points. He won, in large mea­sure, by plan­ning and prepar­ing to com­pete every­where rather than by assum­ing, as Hillary did, that the race would be over on Feb­ru­ary 5.

  6. John said on June 4th, 2008 at 9:50 am

    I’m just thank­ful that we don’t have a Boomer on the bal­lot this year!

    4 Aug 1961…doesn’t that fall within the Baby Boom range?

  7. Jolene said on June 4th, 2008 at 9:56 am

    I think demog­ra­phers gen­er­ally regard peo­ple born between 1946 and 1964 as baby boomers, so he’s just out­side that range.

  8. Kirk said on June 4th, 2008 at 10:06 am

    No, he’s just inside that range. A late Boomer.

  9. Jolene said on June 4th, 2008 at 10:11 am

    Right, clue­less me. Sorry.

  10. Kirk said on June 4th, 2008 at 10:14 am

    He still seems like a young feller to this boomer, though.

  11. alex said on June 4th, 2008 at 10:28 am

    Speak­ing of Nugent…

    The Illi­nois GOP tried to draft him for a sen­ate race a few years ago, the idea being that they’d try the Jesse Ven­tura woo-‘em-with-a-celebrity approach, as they couldn’t find a strong Repub­li­can can­di­date to run against another “rock star,” the one who’s now the pre­sump­tive Dem can­di­date for pres­i­dent. That’s right.

    Nugent couldn’t be had. So they got another freak, Alan Keyes, to car­pet­bag for that race. And you know the rest of the story.

  12. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 4th, 2008 at 10:45 am

    I’ve seen the Baby Boom defined asal­ways begin­ning with 1945, but end­ing with either 1960, 1964, and once, with some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, as Nov. 22, 1963. Since i was born three weeks after Barack, i’ve always been curi­ous about the whole Boomer/Boomeritis phe­nom­e­non, and tend to see it as end­ing with those a bit older than myself — and Obama has said the same thing.

    Just read a WaPo piece that breaks down the Obama team strat­egy, which used col­lege stu­dents as rapid deploy­ment staff to cau­cus states, but they don’t make up dra­mat­i­cally big­ger num­bers in the vote totals — not the way some of the cable TV pun­ditry would make you think:
    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​6​/​0​3​/​A​R​2​0​0​8​0​6​0​3​0​4​2​6​8​_​p​f.html

    Part of what i like about Obama is how he clearly is engag­ing more younger vot­ers, and that’s impor­tant (and i’m not mak­ing up my mind on Pres­i­den­tial vot­ing until i see the veeps for starters). But the younger vot­ers aren’t gonna give you vot­ing mar­gins in the gen­eral elec­tion — you have to get a broader base, which is why i point out Ohio’s Brown, Strick­land, and Space, who are Dems who won in Republican-dominated landscapes.

  13. LAMary said on June 4th, 2008 at 11:01 am

    I’m cranky today any­way, and read­ing about Ted Nugent hasn’t made my mood any bet­ter.
    Hillary was never my first choice, but I find the sex­ist crap about her, com­ing from peo­ple like Michele Malkin and Chris Matthews, as well as the jokes and heck­ling so offen­sive, so depress­ingly stupid.

  14. Joe K said on June 4th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    First off, the rumors of Ted Poop­ing to get out of Viet­nam are not true, and sec­ond, did any of you READ what he said. Go back click on the link and actu­ally read the text. I can’t really find fault in any­thing he said. If some Hol­ly­wood actor or east coast Lib­eral would say the same thing, you would be crown­ing them king. Work hard, work smart , never give up, set high goals, sur­round your­self with suc­cess­ful peo­ple, don’t look for a hand out,be adven­tures. Beats hell out of being lazy,whining, blam­ing some­one else, and think­ing every­one is pick­ing on you. Rush was right about one thing. I have yet to meet a happy Lib­eral.
    Go back read it again.
    Joe K

  15. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 4th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    Ah, Joe, i’ve met quite a few happy lib­er­als! Granted, i’m not happy about the same things they are oftimes, but they are happy. That’s like say­ing i’ve never met a con­ser­v­a­tive that isn’t uptight.

    Though i did get an email yes­ter­day from an old friend who said she’s ready to vote for McCain, but she’s sick of the cock­tail hour, gated com­mu­nity, where’s my dri­ver sort of GOPer, going on to say “the greedy 4-facelift Aspen/Phoenix/Orange County repub­li­can­ism is just awful. I need a break from it all, very, very badly.”

    I can sec­ond that motion, now or at the convention …

  16. alex said on June 4th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    No, Joe, you go back and read it again. But take an adult lit­er­acy class first.

  17. nancy said on June 4th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    From a July 15, 1990 Detroit Free Press profile:

    And he is equally proud that the Michi­gan Leg­is­la­ture this year pro­claimed him a “whole­some, tra­di­tional” man of “hon­esty, integrity, loy­alty and patriotism.”

    But Nugent wanted no part of Viet­nam. He claims that 30 days before his draft board phys­i­cal, he stopped all forms of per­sonal hygiene. The last 10 days, he ingested noth­ing but Vienna sausages and Pepsi; and a week before his phys­i­cal, he stopped using bath­rooms alto­gether, vir­tu­ally liv­ing inside pants caked with his own excre­ment, stained by his urine.

    That spec­ta­cle won Nugent a defer­ment, he says, although the Free Press was unable to ver­ify his draft status.

    I’d be hap­pier with Ted’s grad­u­a­tion advice if it was free of gram­mar and usage errors. Clichés are prob­a­bly unavoid­able at commencement.

  18. Sue said on June 4th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    Joe, I did read the arti­cle. The only thing I really noticed is that all the quotes were old, so maybe he’s grown as a per­son since then.
    But really, this happy, hard­work­ing lib­eral kind of objects to com­ments like:
    “Any­body that doesn’t think it is bet­ter to blow someone’s brains out than to be raped, deserves to be raped! If you don’t think your life is worth it then please go out there, don’t wear any under­pants and get RAPED!! Cuz you deserve it…” (WRIF-FM, Detroit, Nugent as guest D.J., Sep­tem­ber 23, 1991).“
    or
    “The pre­pon­der­ance of South Africa is a dif­fer­ent breed of man…They still put bones in their noses, they still walk around naked, they wipe their butts with their hands. And when I kill an ante­lope for ‘em, their pref­er­ence is the gut pile. That’s what they fuck­ing want to eat, the intestines. These are dif­fer­ent peo­ple. You give them tooth­paste, they fuck­ing eat it.” Detroit Free Press Mag­a­zine, July 15, 1990
    or
    He told Salon that he gets a “full preda­tor spir­i­tual erec­tion” from track­ing “bear, lions, coons, house­cats, escaped chimps, small chil­dren, scared women, and every­thing else that can be chased and/or hunted.”
    Per­haps I missed some­thing more subtle.

  19. brian stouder said on June 4th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    stow motch — utchee

    (first line of this post reminded me of the Every­body Loves Ray­mond, where Patri­cia Heaton’s char­ac­ter is work­ing Ray over about the way he pro­nounced the word ‘stom­achache’, when he read it)

  20. del said on June 4th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    Joe, Ted Nugent is an ass­hole and a bully. Period. He is funny though, I’ll grant that.

    And the Detroit News putting him on their edi­to­r­ial page? WTF? Of course, for the News he tones it down to broaden the GOP’s tent and opines, “Remem­ber Rosa Parks.” That’s richly ironic con­sid­er­ing his ear­lier pub­lic com­ments con­cern­ing Africans as “a dif­fer­ent breed of man” who “wipe their butts with their hands.”

    My 25 cent psy­cho­analy­sis — lit­tle Nuge is a nar­cis­sis­tic child who is not the bold bear he claims to be, but a fright­ened kid who got bul­lied. Maybe by a parent.

  21. beb said on June 4th, 2008 at 12:52 pm

    His­tory will judge Hillary (rightly or wrongly) on how she han­dles the fact that she lost. She needs to con­cede that it’s over then cam­paign to con­vince her fel­low­ers to vote for Obama. Because if she doesn’t there’s a good chance than McCain will win. And if McCain wins Hillary will be seen as just another Ralph Nader, a spoiler, a hater of the Demo­c­ra­tic party. It’s no longer about the sex­ism thrown her way by the media. It’s about whether she’s a Demo­c­rat or Hillary.

    Ted Nugent — can’t we talk about Was(Not Was) some more, instead?

    News that GM is cut­ting pro­duc­tion of large trucks and the Hum­mer comes as no sur­prise to me. GM let the Amer­i­can Axle strike run on for three months because the vehi­cles affected by the strike were mostly large trucks and Hum­mers. The strike let them run down the (exces­sive) inven­tory of those vehi­cles, sav­ing GM a lot of money. If Amer­i­can Axle had been mak­ing parts for pop­u­lar GM mod­els (are there any?) that strike would have been over iside of three weeks.

    I read an arti­cle some time back about the sad plight of the mid-list author, back when there were mid-list authors. One author’s book came out on the day the Gulf War started. Nobody any­where in the coun­try bought books that day. The next time around her pub­lisher dras­ti­cally cut her print run because her last book hadn’t sold well.

  22. Jolene said on June 4th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    “His­tory will judge Hillary (rightly or wrongly) on how she han­dles the fact that she lost. She needs to con­cede that it’s over then cam­paign to con­vince her fel­low­ers to vote for Obama. Because if she doesn’t there’s a good chance than McCain will win. And if McCain wins Hillary will be seen as just another Ralph Nader, a spoiler, a hater of the Demo­c­ra­tic party. It’s no longer about the sex­ism thrown her way by the media. It’s about whether she’s a Demo­c­rat or Hillary.”

    Have you faxed that mes­sage to Hillary? She doesn’t seem to be get­ting the point.

  23. Julie Robinson said on June 4th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    Wasn’t Scott McClellan’s book sup­posed to come out Mon­day? Seems like it would have been over­shad­owed by the end of the pri­mary sea­son. Seems like it was pur­posely put out in the book­store early so it could get lots of atten­tion in an oth­er­wise quiet news­cy­cle. Would any­one be talk­ing about it today if it had come out Monday?

  24. Danny said on June 4th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    To any­one who con­tin­ues to be shocked that the Clin­tons are putting their own inter­ests above every­one elses’(including their own par­tys’): Wow. I mean, wow! ‘Nuff said.

  25. coozledad said on June 4th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    Well, Ted’s right that there are broad cul­tural dif­fer­ences between geo­graph­i­cally iso­lated groups, but you have to view them the same way you look at the plumage of dif­fer­ent birds, oth­er­wise you may come up with con­struc­tions like “All the creepy neo-fascists who bagged the Viet­nam war are dif­fer­ent peo­ple. If you give them an oppor­tu­nity to play a gui­tar, they pre­tend they’re spank­ing their mon­key. Instead of using their wind­fall con­sist­ing exclu­sively of the pocket change of four­teen year old boys to edu­cate them­selves, they bur­row deeper into a bleak hin­ter­land of defen­sive stu­pid­ity. They don’t even bother to wipe their asses with paper, their hands, or any­thing else for that mat­ter, because noth­ing pleases them more than their own reek.“
    But I’m afraid in Ted’s case, this would qual­ify as a cor­rect anthro­po­log­i­cal assessment.

  26. del said on June 4th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

    Beb and Jolene — It’s not fair to lay the bur­den of Obama’s suc­cess in Novem­ber on Hillary’s shoulders.

    Some polls sug­gest that Hillary would be the stronger gen­eral elec­tion can­di­date. If McCain wins could Obama be faulted for being the Ralph Nader of 2008? I don’t think so either.

  27. Jolene said on June 4th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

    It’s true that he has to run his own race, del, but she is vio­lat­ing some pretty well-established norms of polit­i­cal behav­ior. When you lose, you make a con­ces­sion speech and then, if you care about the suc­cess of your party, you get on board. Here’s the outline:

    1. Thank supporters.

    2. Describe cam­paign as great expe­ri­ence that taught can­di­date about the great­ness of the Amer­i­can people.

    3. Acknowl­edge loss.

    3. Con­grat­u­late opponent.

    4. Offer to work to ensure Demo­c­ra­tic vic­tory in November.

    Things not to say:
     – won pop­u­lar vote
     – was best can­di­date
     – would be best president

    Things not to do:
     – Have cam­paign man­ager intro­duce can­di­date as “next pres­i­dent of the United States”

    See? It’s easy!

  28. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 4th, 2008 at 2:18 pm

    For all you Amy Wine­house fans here — http://​www​.timeson​line​.co​.uk/​t​o​l​/​n​e​w​s​/​u​k​/​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​4​0​1​6​5​27.ece

  29. nancy said on June 4th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    Books (and albums) are always released on Tues­days. It has to do with the UPS sched­ule that puts them in stores. Really.

  30. Catherine said on June 4th, 2008 at 2:56 pm

    Danny, are you sure that Hillary is purely self-interested? Please con­sider that maybe she is in fact think­ing of the party. My hus­band, who would love noth­ing more than a McCain vic­tory in Novem­ber, says that Obama’s nom­i­na­tion would be just another case of the Demo­c­ra­tic party self-destruction with a can­di­date who can win the pop­u­lar vote but can’t win the elec­toral votes (cf., Gore, Al and Kerry, John). I think he has a point.

  31. Joe K said on June 4th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    So Teds not per­fect, name some one who is.
    You all slammed him but I still say if that speech would have been given by Bruce Spring­steen or John Mel­len­camp or Mike Moore, you all would have been falling all over yourself’s. As far as what Ted say’s so what is not true?? I would rather my girls blow the head off of a rapist then try to talk them out of it! Read the speech again. What in the Speech don’t you agree with??
    I guess I don’t agree with the Gated com­mu­nity, Aspen liv­ing, limo, rid­ing Lib­er­als that think it’s ok to pay some­one multi –mil­lions to make a movie, but can’t under­stand when some­one runs a suc­cess­ful com­pany that employs peo­ple and he or she makes a mil­lion, that is bad?
    Enjoy the day,
    Time to fly
    Joe K

  32. brian stouder said on June 4th, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    are you sure that Hillary is purely self-interested?

    I sup­pose the word “purely” is the key; only scarey peo­ple are absolutely one thing or another.

    Still, I don’t think it would fur­ther any candidate’s cause, if it became known they were absolutely con­vinced that they (and they alone) could save their party from defeat and destruc­tion; and that there­fore any action they took in their single-minded pur­suit of power was not only jus­ti­fied, but indeed morally imperative!

    Beyond that, what Jolene said!

  33. Danny said on June 4th, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    Cather­ine, I sup­pose it is a remote pos­si­bil­ity, but one would have to assume that the Clinton’s assume that Obama is a really flawed can­di­date and there are sev­eral things work­ing agianst that notion

    1. The Repub­li­cans have really screwed things up and it seems that the time is right for the pen­du­lum to swing back the other way. The office of the pres­i­dency is ripe for the pick­ing for almost any but the most trag­i­cally flawed Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date. The Clin­tons and their back­ers know this too and I think it fuels a cer­tain bloodlust.

    2. Obama is get­ting bet­ter at clean­ing up his own messes. He finally spoke out against his rid­cu­lous pas­tor and then he quit that ridicu­lu­ous church. A late ges­ture for some, but not for most. American’s can be a for­giv­ing bunch.

    3. McCain has a lot of big ques­tion marks. Most of the con­ser­v­a­tive base is seri­ously con­sid­er­ing stay­ing home and going to bed early on elec­tion night. Any lib­eral base will be going Obama. I don’t know if there exists a cen­trist base big enough to pull off a McCain vic­tory. We have a fairly polar­ized country.

    All in all, it’s a pretty good time to be a Democrat.

  34. coozledad said on June 4th, 2008 at 3:40 pm

    The per­for­mance art on this site would make Andy Kauf­mann weep with jeal­ousy. Me? I’m sip­ping a latte.

  35. Jolene said on June 4th, 2008 at 4:06 pm

    I think the Clin­tons do assume that Obama is a flawed can­di­date. Here’s an inter­est­ing arti­cle from The Politico that makes that point. An excerpt:

    Obama is on the brink of Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­na­tion with­out con­fronting head-on ques­tions about his general-election hurdles.

    Why, ask many Democ­rats and media com­men­ta­tors, won’t Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton see the long odds against her, put her own ambi­tions aside, and grace­fully embrace Barack Obama as the inevitable Demo­c­ra­tic nominee?

    Here is why: She and Bill Clin­ton both devoutly believe that Obama’s likely vic­tory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naive Democ­rats just don’t see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps, in their view, won’t tell the story.
    .
    .
    .
    Rip off the duct tape and here is what they would say: Obama has seri­ous prob­lems with Jew­ish vot­ers (good­bye Florida), working-class whites (good­bye Ohio) and His­pan­ics (good­bye, New Mexico).

    Repub­li­cans will also ruth­lessly exploit open­ings that Clin­ton — in the gen­teel con­fines of an intra­party con­test — never could. Top tar­gets: Obama’s radioac­tive per­sonal asso­ci­a­tions, his lib­eral ide­ol­ogy, his exotic life story, his coolly aca­d­e­mic and elit­ist style.

    And, who knows? She may be right. But, right now, her opin­ion no longer counts. I’m not any kind of polit­i­cal insider, but, as I see it, her only choice at this point is whether to be con­struc­tive or to be part of the prob­lem. And even some of her sup­port­ers have been say­ing on national TV today that her actions since last night put her in the lat­ter category.

  36. Jen said on June 4th, 2008 at 4:06 pm

    Ted Nugent is a bit of an ass. But, like most over-the-top peo­ple (like Ann Coul­ter and Bill O’Reilly), I think that at least part of it is an act. After all, he isn’t a par­tic­u­larly incred­i­ble musi­cian, but he’s stayed in the spot­light all these years and made a lot of money doing it. The scary thing is that some peo­ple buy into ALL of it. Most who like him, I think, prob­a­bly take the good stuff and write off the bad stuff as over-the-top attention-whoring.

    My dad’s com­ment about rather hav­ing his girls blow the heads off rapists than try­ing to talk them out of it reminds me of some­thing my sis­ter once said in Sun­day School in high school. They were talk­ing about sex, and the teacher asked all the girls what they would do if they were in a car with a guy and he started to sex­u­ally assault them and wouldn’t stop when they told him, “No!” My sis­ter responded that she would beat him up. All the girls in the class were shocked, but I had to agree with her! So did the teacher, who was a very wise woman with a lot of com­mon sense.

  37. Sue said on June 4th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

    Jen: wow, that’s a heck of a Sun­day School you went to. Here’s what I learned in my Catholic equiv­a­lent: 1. The prob­lem is solved before it presents itself because good girls don’t get into cars with boys (not guys, boys); 2. Should you find your­self in a sit­u­a­tion involv­ing con­tact with a boy, make sure there is always some­thing with the equiv­a­lent thick­ness of a city phone book between you; 3. Rule of thumb for skirt height — if you kneel and the skirt is not touch­ing the ground, you deserve what­ever you get and you will be going to Hell, besides. I guess you could say I am not a big Nugent fan because I learned to spot idiocy early on.

  38. Danny said on June 4th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

    I am not a big Nugent fan because I learned to spot idiocy early on.

    Sure, I bet you’re just holdin’ a grudge cuz you couldn’t get con­cert tick­ets back in the day to the Cat Scratch Fever tour.

  39. coozledad said on June 4th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

    So that’s why all my dates wore the Man­hat­tan Phone direc­tory. I thought I was just attracted to telemarketers.

  40. Sue said on June 4th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    Bah. My husband’s brother went to high school with Ted’s brother. My MIL knew Ted’s mom from her hair­dresser. There’s a rock in front of Durty Nellie’s Pub in Pala­tine IL (my husband’s and my mother’s home­town) to honor Ted’s mom. We’re prac­ti­cally related. He’s still an idiot.

  41. Sue said on June 4th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    Coo­zledad, I now see why Nancy likes you best.

  42. LAMary said on June 4th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    Off sub­ject:
    Here’s a tip for job hunters. Don’t bring your two year old to the inter­view. I’ve two year olds and I’m not intol­er­ant of kids, but they don’t enhance the inter­view experience.

  43. nancy said on June 4th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    I don’t like him best. He just makes me laugh more often than most. That crack about forcible depor­ta­tion to Paraguay for the Bush admin­is­tra­tion made me chuckle for 15 minutes.

    I have some friends here who are seri­ous rock­ers, the sort of peo­ple who will pay a pre­mium to sit in the first five rows at an Aero­smith con­cert. And the last time they saw Ted, they walked out in phys­i­cal pain. They said it sim­ply didn’t qual­ify as any­thing remotely related to music at all. Sit­ting under a giant piece of indus­trial machin­ery would have been just as pleas­ant, and a frac­tion of the price.

  44. Catherine said on June 4th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    Danny, while I agree with you on points 1 – 3, I also thought all those things in 2004. That year was a les­son in not tak­ing vic­tory for granted, and never assum­ing that your oppo­nent has screwed up so badly that you can’t lose.

    I’m not say­ing that Obama is assum­ing he can’t lose. But I worry that many D’s feel that thing about the pen­du­lum so strongly that they might be over­look­ing some of the issues in the arti­cle Jolene quotes. I live in such a blue-state bub­ble (there wasn’t even an R can­di­date for the House on my bal­lot yes­ter­day) that I some­times find myself sur­prised by the rest of the coun­try, not to men­tion that pesty elec­toral college.

  45. Danny said on June 4th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

    I don’t like him best. He just makes me laugh more often than most…

    Can I be the one who makes you purse your lips the most .. or scowl? Pretty please!

    Yeah, Ted is short for Tedious. The Nuge’s music is very hard to lis­ten to. Like we were chat­ting abut a few months back, the only song that ever makes it into the ipod rota­tion is Stan­gle­hold because it’s a good hill-climbing song. Attitude.

    Mary, price­less tips from Mis­tress of the Obvi­ous. Heheh!

  46. joodyb said on June 4th, 2008 at 6:59 pm

    talk about your poop­ing of pants: if you were a repub­li­can in down­town st. paul last night, you might have done. many nights it’s inter­est­ing to be in this lit­tle capi­tol, and last night was cer­tainly one: the line from the X snaked to our bldg and blocks beyond, 1.6 miles, the excite­ment far and away eclips­ing 03 stan­ley cup play­offs (and that was some big 5hit — star­tri­bune came across the river to hand out free extras that day).
    as i looked out the win­dow, i thought, this is what the GOP will NEVER get, how to do this. it was the dia­met­ri­cal oppo­site of divide and con­quer. and HRC’s futile grand­stand­ing served only to delay Obama’s start time, thus allow­ing all of them into the capac­ity arena.
    HRC may be employ­ing some genius strat­egy, sure, but isn’t it a lit­tle insult­ing (!) of her to think peo­ple don’t see being an ahole albeit for a higher (party) cause is still being an ahole? and then, when it doesn’t go your way, either way, you can just say “See? I told you so.“
    Obama-Edwards!
    btw, the pre­dom­i­nantly Gen Y Obama throng included babies and great-grandmas (white ones!)
    ps: who in the hell is han­dling mcsane? what kamikaze team is let­ting him use such hack­neyed speechi­fy­ing on a compare/contrast his­toric (i don’t care what your per­sua­sion) night like Tues­day? and why doesn’t some­one get him a vocal coach? has he always been this whiny or was i just not lis­ten­ing, or is he just plain run­ning out of steam? he sounds older/crazier/more Grampa Simp­son than ever.

    about Tues­days, what Nancy said. like forever.

    and thanks, everyone.

  47. beb said on June 4th, 2008 at 9:30 pm

    The prob­lem for Hillary is that Obama won the pri­maries play­ing by the rules. It doesn’t mat­ter whether she thinks she would be the more elec­table can­di­date come Novem­ber, the party has spo­ken and she’s not the nom­i­nee. Refus­ing to accept the obvi­ous doesn’t help any­one. At the same time a recent poll finds that 1/3 of Hillary’s sup­ports say they will not vote for Obama. Since Hillary won by 49.9% (roughly speak­ing) that means about 1/6th of the peo­ple who voted in the pri­mary are either stay­ing home or vot­ing for McCain. That’s a big hole for any Demo­c­rat to climb out of. And that is why it is imper­a­tive that Hillary come out in sup­port of Obama and make the case that vot­ing for him in Novem­ber is the most impor­tant thing they can do.

    If Hillary had gath­ered the nec­es­sary deli­gates I would have expected the same thing from Obama.

  48. coozledad said on June 4th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

    If I had some con­nec­tion to Ted musi­cally it might help, but all I remem­ber is being ashamed to sing his lyrics in my high school copy band. It even made me sad when I was noth­ing more than a pair of swollen tes­ti­cles wrapped in anorexic teenager and boot jeans. But the mediocre gui­tarists loved Ted, and worse. Judas Priest, Frank Marino and Mahogony Rush? For­eigner?
    Music had jumped the shark com­pletely when it had the remotest chance of get­ting me laid, and it failed me utterly.
    Ted bet­ter watch his sorry ass, because I think I have a law­suit here. At least as good a case as Bork.

  49. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 4th, 2008 at 10:45 pm

    Nazareth, Cooze — Nazareth … “Hair of the Dog.”

    Rawk onnnnn …

  50. coozledad said on June 4th, 2008 at 11:00 pm

    Jeff: It just comes down to being in the gen­er­a­tion between the Bea­t­les and Brian Wil­son, and Elvis Costello and XTC. There’s always good music some­where, but that period required a pretty ardu­ous search.

  51. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 4th, 2008 at 11:08 pm

    And you find it on a Foghat album cover!

  52. Danny said on June 4th, 2008 at 11:28 pm

    There’s always good music some­where, but that period required a pretty ardu­ous search.

    I guess that is one of the rea­sons I grav­i­tated towards Prog Rock. And that is a whole ‘nother con­ver­sa­tion in not get­ting laid. You wanna see the girls exit the room? Put on some Yes, King Crim­son or Gen­e­sis (the early stuff). Heheh.

    Edit: But what about Floyd and Zep? Surely, they count.

  53. nancy said on June 4th, 2008 at 11:32 pm

    The ulti­mate room-clearer, in two words:

    Mahav­ishnu Orchestra.

  54. Joe K said on June 4th, 2008 at 11:47 pm

    Ok,
    One more time, we agree that Ted is Ted,I like some, but not all his music, Stran­gle­hold, great white buf­falo, and wango tango,are keep­ers I don’t think I would pay to see him play.Everyone seems to do noth­ing but bash the guy and make fun of his music. Thats ok, and I don’t think he cares. But the ques­tion is still unan­swered. What in the speech did you not agree with?
    Good night to all.
    Joe K

  55. coozledad said on June 4th, 2008 at 11:49 pm

    Danny, Nancy: I made that prog rock sojourn, and got my pathetic ass taped doing it. You can­not know.
    You can­not Know.
    I even tried to make amends later with a Bea­t­les style pop album (with ref­er­ences to Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, early Bowie).
    But the Gen­tle Giant squeezed through like blood under a door. I have a shoe­box full of CD’s , If you have some friends to tor­ment. They are free for the asking.

  56. coozledad said on June 5th, 2008 at 12:01 am

    And Mahav­ishnu. Nancy, the world is lit­tered with the shells of men who grav­i­tated to that crap. It was the equiv­a­lent of a bug-zapper for guitar-literate ston­ers. There were moments where I thought they’d got me, but for­tu­nately I was a singer, and ulti­mately too dense to climb aboard the spacecraft.

  57. Catherine said on June 5th, 2008 at 12:10 am

    Ah yes, the boy in col­lege with the waterbed and sur­round sound speak­ers play­ing Dark Side of the Moon. What Danny & Nancy said about clear­ing the room.

  58. coozledad said on June 5th, 2008 at 12:21 am

    Cather­ine: I think I roomed with that boy. His daddy bought the house so son could expe­ri­ence col­lege in it. The bastard’s a pro­ducer now. He can’t be hit­ting on too many cylin­ders, since he was one of the early importers of sensemilla. What am I say­ing? He tried to pro­duce our band, until a com­pe­tent engi­neer took over.

  59. nancy said on June 5th, 2008 at 12:28 am

    Late one night in the eighth decade of the 20th cen­tury, a group of young peo­ple is prepar­ing to drive north from Colum­bus, Ohio. Des­ti­na­tion, the Upper Penin­sula of Michi­gan. It’s a nine-hour drive, but some­one had to work until after dark, so they’re leav­ing at 10 p.m., and they have lots of pot. The snow starts around Toledo. Every­one dozes off but the dri­ver, who takes the oppor­tu­nity to slip in one Mahav­ishnu tape after another, or maybe it’s just the same one on auto-reverse. Peri­od­i­cally one of the back seat pas­sen­gers wakes up, looks out at the blow­ing snow, which per­fectly matches its aural equiv­a­lent on the stereo and asks, “Mark? Are you OK to drive?” Mark says he’s fine. For 500 miles.

    They arrive at their des­ti­na­tion, but more dri­ving is ahead. They need to push on to the Soo for some busi­ness; Mark has yet to sleep a wink. So they head out, now in broad day­light, the snow still blow­ing across the road, which runs as straight as a razor’s edge, Mahav­ishnu still on the stereo (“can’t we lis­ten to some Motown or some­thing?” the back seat asks. No.)

    Halfway there, Mark steps on the brakes, low­ers his head and peers through the wind­shield. “What? What is it?”

    “Oh, noth­ing,” he says, resum­ing speed. “It was just a mirage.”

    That’s Mahav­ishnu to me. Mirage music.

  60. coozledad said on June 5th, 2008 at 12:43 am

    I’ve been in that car many times. And I’m afraid I would have been the dip­shit who punched in “Happy the Man”. Espe­cially Crafty Hands. I am truly sorry.
    And then the Cocteau Twins hap­pened.
    Once a geek, always.…

  61. Terry WAlter said on June 5th, 2008 at 1:00 am

    I had a friend who bought a bar. I told him if he ever had trou­ble clear­ing the place out, I’d come sing Mor­ris Alberts’ Feeeel­ings.
    In regard to McCain, He looks old and he is old. I’m sure his time at the hotel didn’t help. I tend to go along with the pro­posal that he declares his one-termedness up front and choose some­one like Mitt Rom­ney as his Veep/successor.

  62. Dexter said on June 5th, 2008 at 2:35 am

    I was in Philadel­phia , last week­end in March, 1981, for the NCAA bas­ket­ball Final Four.
    Indi­ana and North Car­olina were sched­uled to play that Mon­day night for the cham­pi­onship.
    I was at lunch at a Russ­ian restau­rant with my trav­elin’ buddy, the place was full of suits hav­ing boozy lunches.
    TV on.
    “Rea­gan has been shot in D.C.“
    So another sto­ry­line was cre­ated.
    The huge head­lines were about a fallen Pres­i­dent, but the sports world had a game to address.
    Unlike what hap­pened twenty years later , when 9 – 11 shut down the sports world, most notably foot­ball and base­ball, the net­work heads decided that since Rea­gan lived, the game must go on.
    There was some neg­a­tive feed­back to this deci­sion, and I won­dered how the press on-site for the event in Philadel­phia felt, but the event pro­ceeded as sched­uled, with­out a hitch,and I had no prob­lem with it. It must have been dif­fi­cult for some sports­writ­ers —how much to say, if any­thing, abut their emo­tions. I sup­pose edi­tors cut most sen­ti­ment out.
    I was brought up that way; on Novem­ber 22, 1963, our high school bas­ket­ball game was played as sched­uled. Yes! I never for­gave those greedy prin­ci­pals for mak­ing us play that night, it was a cruel thing to do.

  63. Dexter said on June 5th, 2008 at 2:44 am

    Trapped in music hell, my take:
    I worked in a ware­house and the hill­bil­lies had boom­boxes stag­gered all over the work area, all tuned to the coun­try sta­tion.
    I hated coun­try music. I had a great, soft job, too…all I had to do was walk around with a clip­board and chart inventory…very easy, and I liked it.
    I was also slowly going insane as I envi­sioned myself with a sledge­ham­mer , smash­ing Zeniths all to hell, in sequence, right down the god­dam line.
    So I walked into the office and I quit and never came back.
    Now I love to lis­ten to Brad Pais­ley and Mont­gomery Gen­try, but only on Imus in the Morn­ing .(RFD-TV).

    A friend’s wife drove him to infi­delity (he said) with the con­stant play­ing of this cut on a vinyl record .
    She wore the record out and bought another one and did it all over again. So when she went on her Angie-jag, he went out and balled his friend’s cutie pie wife. Hell yes it hap­pened! It was the sev­en­ties, and that stuff hap­pened all the time.
    Of course it doesn’t anymore…does it?

  64. Dexter said on June 5th, 2008 at 3:09 am

    “
    Detroit Mayor Kwame Kil­patrick says the city will cel­e­brate the Red Wings’ fourth Stan­ley Cup in 11 years with a parade on Fri­day. It’s sched­uled to start at 11 a.m.” — from FREEP

    Time for a Vimeo report, Nancy? I was at the ’97 parade and it was a HOOT !

  65. coozledad said on June 5th, 2008 at 6:41 am

    Dex­ter: Coun­try music really has taken a nose­dive. I thought the alt-country and Dwight Yoakam swing would help, but then all the war fetishism and “deddy” songs started crowd­ing the good stuff out. But what the hell do I know? I really only hear it when I go to the feed store.

  66. Terry WAlter said on June 5th, 2008 at 7:27 am

    Ft. Wayne-Jim & Car­rie on the morn­ing radio show. “Well Car­rie, have you checked the wires lately; is there any news? The Red Wings won and there’s still no report of Detroit being burnt to the ground?” Seems like that would be like try­ing to light char­coal with book matches & no flam­ma­ble liquids.

  67. Terry WAlter said on June 5th, 2008 at 7:45 am

    Just read in Indy, rocks weigh­ing up to 15 pounds are being tossed from an I 65 over­pass. Three nights in a row,from the same bridge, same 2 hour period. Seems like with a lead like that, by the third night, they might have some­one lay­ing for them. But wait, there’s no money in that is there? Instead, an ISP spokesman calls for help from the pub­lic. The same pub­lic they’re run­ning around look­ing to extort money from for minor traf­fic offenses. Police ‘pro­tec­tion’ my ass, no won­der Indy has a crime problem.

  68. nancy said on June 5th, 2008 at 7:54 am

    The last time the Pis­tons won a con­fer­ence title, I could hear cel­e­bra­tory gun­fire com­ing from the west (Detroit). Last night, the Wings won the whole Stan­ley cup and all I heard was crick­ets. Make of that what you will, but I think it’s safe to say hockey is big­ger in the suburbs.

  69. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 5th, 2008 at 8:19 am

    The Lovely Wife and i had a very flex­i­ble organ­ist for our church wed­ding (’85) who worked “Round­about” into the pre-service music, and nei­ther of our par­ents fig­ured out why all our friends were crack­ing up …

    For those who dis­like both coun­try and Chris­t­ian con­tem­po­rary music, some­thing for you: http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​Z​f​s​3​B​JZxKkc

    For those at work who can’t click YouTubes safely, the hook of this music video is “Cle­tus, Take the Reel.”

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