May 23, 2015

"Is David Letterman a nihilist? Or just Midwestern?/Why Rubio wouldn’t have a lock on the Hispanic vote..."

"Will Bill drag Hill down?/Bob: We’ve played right into ISIS’s recruiting narrative/Did Obama bungle Iraq and Syria?Ann and Bob debate the merits of Twitter."

That's the official listing of the topics — not exactly how I would put it — in this diavlog I did with Bob Wright yesterday.



That's the whole hour. I'm about to watch it, and I'll try to find some good, short snippets to entertain the video-averse among you. It's actually one of the topics in there: How people don't really want to watch video of any length!

ADDED: The argument that Rubio isn't the right kind of Hispanic:

39 comments:

traditionalguy said...

Loved the Chevy Chase fall routine.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I've learned recently that pr@n GIFs are wholly sufficient.

traditionalguy said...

Can't help but think who is Bob Wright to criticize Letterman's delivery. Wright has the worse delivery known to man.

chickelit said...

Wright called Althouse an "exotic blogger." That has dance connotations.

rhhardin said...

Technical note: room echos are okay in stereo but not in monaural.

Having a lot more dogs would help in sound absorption.

traditionalguy said...

Wright needs help from his friends. Hang in there with him, most interesting Professor.

narciso said...

the gap toothed weatherman from muncie,
was a cynic, like maher, stewart, et al, as such they only believe in conmen like Clinton and Obama,

narciso said...

yet ISIS grew when we retreated from our hardwon gains, the DIA told us this, in 2012

JSD said...

As they say; talk is cheap. Writing takes effort to organize and distill the point being made. It’s also efficient for the reader, who can decide to quite after the first paragraph, skim the piece or actually read it. Time is the only valuable thing in life and I don’t have that much to spare.

narciso said...

see here:


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/05/18/military-intel-predicted-rise-isis-in-2012-detailed-arms-shipments/

rhhardin said...

So Wright is against multiculturalism, that being the structural problem in Iraq.

Why is multiculturalism good in the US and universities?

narciso said...

the problem with Iraq, is the Sunnis have always felt entitled, beyond their numbers, from the Ottoman to the British Mandate, they lorded over all,
and yet they still developed the Golden Square, the Baath, and the Zarquawi network, to disenfranchise the growing
Shia and Kurd majority,

rhhardin said...

Audio conversations end with three ritual "okay"s.

The first is a proposal to end the conversation.

The second is a reply, agreeing. A continuing topic can be brought up, if there's a disagreement.

The third ends the conversation.

rhhardin said...

Watching vs listening : I heard this while scything the lawn.

Computer streams into FM transmitter.

FM radio upstairs, at low volume, is heard by a baby monitor, which transmits some much higher frequency copy to a baby monitor remote attached to my hat.

Thence I hear it while mowing the lawn.

It's on my hat so that body movement doesn't block the signal.

The relay from FM to baby monitor is necessary because a new religious FM station has taken over my FM frequency unless the receiver is closeby, which the scythe is not.

Probably thousands of listeners do the same thing, hence the listening instead of watching.

Deep State Reformer said...

I have never understood Wright's appeal. Whiny voiced little nebbish at best.

rhhardin said...

Wright doesn't credit the Democrat coalition with the terrorists in Iraq to overturn Bush for the disaster.

The Dems made clear that everything blown up would he offered as proof that Bush was failing and we should pull out.

So the defeated terrorists had a reason to continue. America will give up if we blow stuff up, even though it has no military significance.

The Dems in turn got to defeat Bush.

A business arrangement, nothing personal.

rhhardin said...

Did Letterman ever interview Teller?

rcocean said...

"Did Letterman ever interview Teller?"

No, he just roped him into doing a "Stupid Pet Trick" and jumping into a vat of Jello.

buwaya said...

That is a very annoying fellow.
I don't see why you put up with these dialogues.
Anyway, he is right about the Cuban-Mexican thing. Not necessarily for the reasons he thinks. There is a strong Mexican ethnic solidarity that would exclude anyone not Mexican. In fact there is a powerful regional solidarity that would limit how much pull even a Mexican candidate would have, if too aligned with one vs another. And then there is class and ethnicity within Mexico.
If anyone could make a good ethnic appeal, it is Jeb Bush, because he really does speak "Mexican", and especially his wife, who is vivacious, well spoken (in Mexican Spanish) and not only from lower class roots but from an " in between " region of rural Mexico (Guanajuato). She is the real deal, and from what I have heard, perfectly capable of making an effective populist message.

rcocean said...

"Why is multiculturalism good in the US and universities?"

To Wright anything that reduces the power of the oppressive American White majority is a good thing.

The Left looks on multiculturalism as a tool - not an end to itself.

rcocean said...

Its funny to see the Liberal/Left playing the "He's not a REAL Hispanic" game.

They're panicking, because Hispanics aren't like Blacks. They don't vote 80-90% Democrat year after year - no matter what. They actually think about who to vote for.

rhhardin said...

Wright is there to fix the Althouse podcasts, which otherwise are scatterbrained.

A man is a stabilizing influence.

narciso said...

no Jeb doesn't speak with a Mexican accent, quien te dijo eso, he spent the largest part of his career in Miami

rhhardin said...

Somebody described Princess Diana in a restaurant with her coat caught under the legs of her chair.

"Normally Princess Diana isn't known for physical comedy..."

J. Farmer said...

David Letterman was truly the last person to bring anything innovative to the late night genre. He had been phoning it in for years, but he has contributed an important comedic legacy. That said, I never for the life of me understood the comedic obsession with The Tonight Show beyond careerist self-interest. Carson seemed dull as dish soap. Conan is smart but overrated. Leno is underrated as a comedian. He is talented but dumbs down for a dull, middlebrow audience. Jawyalking (ripped off from the Stern show) is basically Jay shitting on his target demo.

narciso said...

well it was the original venue for musicians, comics, to become known.
what's wrong with middlebrow,

Ann Althouse said...

@rh

You could just get the bhtv podcast into a little iPod or phone and listen directly. As Bob says near the end of the episode, most of the bhtv consumers are getting it by podcast.

Ann Althouse said...

"The night before her fairy-tale wedding, the just-turned 20 Lady Diana Spencer gobbled everything in sight, got "sick as a parrot" (presumably to fit into her wedding dress) and then, at loose ends, tripped gaily downstairs at Clarence House to chat with the Queen Mum's elderly page. Spotting the old boy's bike, she hopped on and began peddling joyfully in circles, jingling the bell and singing over and over, "I'm going to marry the Prince of Wales tomorrow!""

J. Farmer said...

@narciso:

"well it was the original venue for musicians, comics, to become known."

Like I said, I can understand a careerist self-interested motive. Admiration for Carson is something I don't get.

"what's wrong with middlebrow,"

Nothing is wrong with it, per se. It's like jello, reliably satisfying but not something I am interested in eating given practically any other choice.

buwaya said...

I have heard Jeb put on the pochismo, yes he can do it. On Univision interviews he does Univision Spanish.

narciso said...

well now it's all snark, Fallon, Colbert, Kimmel, all the time,

rhhardin said...

You could just get the bhtv podcast into a little iPod or phone and listen directly.

Ah but it's all set up. Whatever is streaming goes to the baby monitor hat.

I just grab the hat if I'm going outside and continue to hear whatever is happening.

No downloading and transferring and file management is necessary.

One of my computer commands is

$ rdx.sh 11:59

which streams random (but time ordered) Radio Derbs (John Derbyshire) until exactly 11:59am; and then the radio timer turns on Rush.

I can be outside doing chores for all this happening.

rhhardin said...

Richard Epstein podcasts at

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/libertarian (weekly)

https://ricochet.com/series/law-talk/ (monthly)

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_featuring/richard_epstein/ (rarely but choose early ones first)

are podcasts worth fetching and listening to. They're all conversation interview form, which is necessary I think for Epstein to shine.

J. Farmer said...

@narciso:

"well now it's all snark, Fallon, Colbert, Kimmel, all the time,"

Haven't watched late night in years. Anything worth seeing will end up as a clip on YouTube. Craig Ferguson was good on The Late Late Show. Nerd love for Conan seems to have faded since he shipped off to basic cable. His best comedy is in his skits and remotes, all of which are accessible online. Interviewing so called celebrities who have all been through PR/publicist boot camp is dreadfully boring.

buwaya said...

Further point on Columba Bush - she does not look like an actress in a telenovela. She looks like the audience for a telenovela. Which are the voters they want to reach. Her sons do look like leading men in a telenovela, which is also valuable.
If Jeb gets the nomination, and if he has a clever media strategist in the Spanish media, they have the material for an unprecedented campaign targeted at Mexican-American voters. I don't know if Bush and his crew have the imagination, but the opportunity is there, as there has been only ever been trivial outreach to this population.

rcocean said...

Speaking of Howard Stern - did you know he had plastic surgery? Incredible. You have to wonder how ugly he was before it.

Shudder.

Deep State Reformer said...

Stern has a face made for radio.

Sal said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Writ Small said...

Like Althouse and Wright, I once lived in New Jersey. Unlike those two, I did make it to a live Letterman show.

Although Althouse says Letterman objected to joking about OJ Simpson, he made an OJ joke during that show's monologue. I was something about OJ announcing he was going to search for the real killer - one golf course at a time.

Other memories of that show in no particular order: A warm-up guy is there to ensure the laughs. As an audience member, you are not there to be entertained. You are part of the show and it is your job to laugh enthusiastically and often at the direction of the warm-up guy.

It is hard to see Dave during his monologue as the massive camera and cue card guy blocked many angles. I was forced to watch from the small studio monitors. The desk is far back on the stage. That intimate feeling you get on TV is completely lost on the live audience.

Lisa Kudrow looked gorgeous in person but average from the studio monitor. I glanced back and forth from the actress to the simulcast image of her to see her attractiveness fluctuate. Odd!

Lastly, a point Althouse and Wright missed about why Leno beat out Letterman over time. Leno imitated a lot of Letterman's bits in their first head-to-head year.