Finally! The steaming pile of insect politics I've been waiting for!

I saw that the NY Post hated it — "'SNL’ somehow screwed up the VP debate fly" — but I — an intense fan of the Jeff Goldblum version of "The Fly" — think it's truly great:

 

That guy in the Post objected to the use of Jim Carrey as Joe Biden combined with Jeff Goldblum — characterized it as "this strange, aspiring 1980s East Village performance art piece." I'll just guess he doesn't know the movie "The Fly." How can you have missed "The Fly"? And I mean the Jeff Goldblum "Fly." Nothing against the Vincent Price "Fly." That's also great. But come on, if you're going to review American satire, there's a certain baseline of experience you need to have in your brain. 

Kudos to "SNL"! Every one of the actors did a fine job and the material was even politically balanced. The only thing I'd change is the color of Kate MacKinnon's lipstick. She played the moderator Susan Page in pretty bright red lipstick, but Susan Page had on a color that made me laugh:

Just a little missed opportunity. They perked Susan Page up a bit. And Kate MacKinnon is already way perked up compared to the hilariously dull Susan Page. Anyway... other than that — excellent. Thanks, "SNL"! 

ADDED: Here's the very best thing in "The Fly" — the part about "insect politics" (and by they way, Kate MacKinnon would make a great Geena Davis, if the Geena Davis part had found its way into the sketch):

 

"Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects... don't have politics. They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first... insect politician. You see, I'd like to, but... I'm afraid, uh... I'm saying... I'm saying I - I'm an insect who dreamed he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake... I'm saying... I'll hurt you if you stay."

("SNL" did not use the "insect politics" material.)

Herman Cain has died.

My son John collects articles on the subject and gives a warning about Cain's Wikipedia page — "when I checked it today it had been vandalized with disgusting photos."

ADDED: Here's a tweet that has a screen shot of disgusting text put up at Wikipedia.

Jon Stewart, we're told, flipped out when the one black writer on "The Daily Show" criticized him for using a "Kingfish"-type voice to make fun of Herman Cain.

Wyatt Cenac was the only black writer on "The Daily Show" back in 2011, when Jon Stewart took to mocking the various GOP presidential candidates, including Herman Cain. In an interview with Marc Maron, Cenac said:

"Oh no, you just did this and you didn’t think about it. It was just the voice that came into your head. And so it bugged me.... I've got to be honest, and I just spoke from my place... I wasn’t here when it all happened. I was in a hotel. And I cringed a little bit. It bothered me.... [Stewart] got incredibly defensive. I remember he was like, What are you trying to say? There’s a tone in your voice. I was like, 'There’s no tone. It bothered me. It sounded like Kingfish.'"

That is, Kingfish, the old Amos 'n' Andy character.

According to Cenac, Stewart "got upset... stood up and he was just like, 'Fuck off. I’m done with you.' And he just started screaming that to me. And he screamed it a few times. 'Fuck off! I’m done with you.' And he stormed out. And I didn’t know if I had been fired." Cenac went outside and "I was shaking, and I just sat there by myself on the bleachers and fucking cried. And it’s a sad thing. That’s how I feel. That’s how I feel in this job. I feel alone."

ADDED: I hadn't finished listening to the podcast when I wrote this post, but now I have. It's important to recognize that Wyatt Cenac came across over the course of an hour-plus interview as a very unhappy man. When he was a kid, his father was murdered. He is estranged from his mother, who, based on his description, seems mentally ill. He avoids any contact with her and feels that she's been like a "stalker" in his life. Marc Maron told him that he has "a chip on your shoulder."

The material about Jon Stewart must be understood in this context. Look at what Cenac said in the interview. It does not reveal how Cenac expressed himself, other than that he used the "Kingfish" comparison. We can gather that Cenac perseverated on the subject and felt that, as the only black person on the writing staff, he had to represent black people and not let them down. That is, he seemed powered by righteous energy, and it sounds as though, after he was listened to, he just kept going, insisting that a bit they wanted to do should be dropped.

How long did that go on? Stewart did listen and was respectful up to a point, a point at which he snapped. I wish I could see a full transcript. I suspect, based on listening to over an hour of a very revealing interview, that Cenac tried everyone's patience, had some heavy psychological issues, and that he had to be squelched as they worked on the material for their daily show. I think they did have some empathy for Cenac and they respected his voice. That comes across in even in Cenac's subjective version of the story. But they could not give him the power to veto sketches and to drag down all the energy as they faced a deadline.

Here's the segment that Cenac wanted to stop them from airing. In it, you hear the original mocking of Cain, Fox News's use of it to portray Stewart as racist (and Fox News said "Amos and Andy" before Cenac arrived at his opinion), and Stewart's response, which was a whole big jumble of old clips of him doing various voices (including Jewish, Italian, Mexican, German, Donald Trump, and gay):

The Daily Show
Daily Show Full Episodes,  More Daily Show Videos,  Comedy Central Full Episodes

ALSO: Based on the interview, it's hard to believe that Cenac has a career in comedy. He wasn't funny and didn't try to be funny. Recently, I listened to the Marc Maron's interview with Robin Williams, which was recorded less than 4 months before Williams killed himself. Williams was far more upbeat than Cenac and made many funny observations. I don't remember Cenac saying anything even faintly amusing.

"But 999 proteins were significantly more active in testicular tissue than anywhere else in the body."

"The cerebral cortex of the brain had 318, the liver 172 and smooth muscle zero."

IN THE COMMENTS:  Surfed reminds us of the old notion that men have 2 brains, and I said: "We always assume that the genital 'brain' is the lesser brain, but what if it's a genius compared to the brain brain?"

EDH said: "Vindication for those who thought Herman Cain's tax plan was 'the balls.' 999."

"We're all adults here, it's time we take our freedom back."

Fabulous slogan from ad — viewable at the link — for blu eCigs.

Most living Americans had never before seen a cigarette advertised on television - they were banned in 1971.

But the electronic cigarettes fall outside that law, since they contain no tobacco. That is just one way they fall into what one anti-smoking campaigner calls a regulatory "no man's land."...

Unless they make a therapeutic claim, for example that they can help people quit smoking, they fall in the cracks between federal tobacco regulations and rules covering drug devices like insulin pumps...

In the new commercial, Lorillard appears to have reached into the bag of advertising tricks that got previous generations of Americans hooked on cigarettes, tobacco industry critics say.

"It feels like what they're trying to do is re-establish a norm that smoking is okay, that smoking is glamorous and acceptable," says Cynthia Hallett, executive director of Americans for Non-Smokers' Rights.

Step back, nanny.

I'm waiting for the day when there will be legal THC-delivering eCigs. And here I am smoking a blu eCig. I've never been a tobacco smoker. So I think these things might be nice for people who want to play-smoke and have a bit of nicotine — which is a stimulant and a relaxant.

Nicotine appears to enhance concentration and memory... It also appears to enhance alertness.... Arousal is increased...  Pain is reduced... Anxiety is reduced...

Research suggests that, when smokers wish to achieve a stimulating effect, they take short quick puffs, which produce a low level of blood nicotine. This stimulates nerve transmission. When they wish to relax, they take deep puffs, which produce a high level of blood nicotine, which depresses the passage of nerve impulses, producing a mild sedative effect.

Anyway, watch the ad at the first link. When I showed it to Meade — who, like me, loved the "take our freedom back" slogan — he said that was the key to understanding the famous "smoking guy" ad for Herman Cain.

"We need a third party to save this country. Not Ron Paul and the Ron Paulites. No."

"We need a legitimate third party to challenge the current system that we have, because I don’t believe that the Republican Party... has the ability to rebrand itself."

Said Herman Cain, who would like the GOP to rebrand itself in the opposite way from what I'd like.

I voted for Romney even though I reject the package of issues that comes marked with the label "social conservative," Cain's favorite material. One reason I felt calm and distanced from the results of the election in less than 24 hours is that I only wanted about half of what Mitt Romney was offering, and I agree with Obama on the other half. Making the best of what happened is, for me, automatic. I support gay rights and abortion rights, to name the 2 most prominent social issues in this year's elections.

The linked article — at Salon — is a bit confusing, especially the last paragraph:

After the GOP’s crushing 2008 loss, there was lots of talk about a new third party. When the Tea Party emerged, this talk almost became a reality. Instead, the conservative activists opted for a hostile takeover of the GOP. It’s still very unlikely that Cain or anyone else could start a viable third party, but his comments underscore the cleavage within the conservative movement in the wake of the defeat last night.

I thought the Tea Party was about the economic issues — taxing and spending. Do the social issues belong in the Tea Party? Well, apparently they've seeped in. Were Todd "legitimate rape" Akin and Richard "something God intended" Mourdock Tea Party? I didn't buy the "War on Women" demagoguery, but those guys made the GOP look really awful — at least old-fashioned and dumb if not deeply sexist or scarily religionist.

Can we get a GOP with sound economics and a commitment to individual liberty?

When Satan set his sights on America, the place were he was "most successful and first successful was in academia."

Said Rick Santorum in that 2008 speech at Ava Maria University. I've lived in that purported stronghold of Satan for the last quarter century, so that caught my attention.

He understood the pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they're smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.

And you say "what could be the impact of academia falling?" Well, I would have the argument that the other structures that I'm going to talk about here had root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders in our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall.

And so what we saw this domino effect, once the colleges fell and those who were being educated in our institutions, the next was the church.

Interesting that he said "domino effect" while speaking at Ave Maria University and saying that Satan has reached into academia and the church. Ave Maria University was founded with the fortune that Tom Monaghan made selling Domino Pizza. Exactly how deep does this Satanic plot go? All the way back to Ypsilanti in 1960 when Tom and his brother bought that small pizza store. I have lived in Ypsilanti. I know Ypsilanti. I have seen the mark of the devil in Ypsilanti. The Domino's Pizza logo has 3 dots. They were going to add dots for each store that they opened, but they stopped at 3, the number of stores they had in 1969, when the logo was designed. The company headquarters is in Ann Arbor, the location of the University of Michigan, where I arrived in 1969. Was the Devil digging his hoofs into academia, beginning right there and then? I'm no expert at numerology, but I can't help noticing that if you take the 1 in 1969, grip it tightly, and knock the two 9s over, you get 666.

But here's where my blood ran cold. I said "Oh, Lord!" out loud. (Causing Meade to say: "Lord? The Dark Lord?!") I was reading on in the above-linked Wikipedia article on Domino's Pizza, and I came to this:

In 1998, after 38 years of ownership, Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan announced his retirement and sold 93 percent of the company to Bain Capital, Inc. for about $1 billion and ceased being involved in day-to-day operations of the company.

Bain Capital! The bane of our existence!

To say that something or someone is "the bane of my existence" means that the person or thing is a constant irritant or source of misery. As a cliché, "bane of my existence" has lost its edge to a large degree over the years...

But "bane" was once a very serious word.  The Old English "bana" meant literally "slayer" in the sense we now use "killer" or "murderer."  Early on, the English "bane" was also used in the more general sense of "cause of death," and by the 14th century "bane" was used in the specialized sense of "poison," a sense which lives on in the names of various poisonous plants such as "henbane" and "wolfbane."

Connect the dots, people! The dots. Not just the 3 dots in the Domino's Pizza logo. There were many more dots, but they withheld them from the logo. They didn't want you to see that many dots. You must struggle to see the dots before you can even hope to connect them. Bain/Bane Capital is reaching everywhere, into our pizza, into our university. It was Bain's billion that built Ave Maria University where Santorum came to deliver his warning about Satan in academia. And now we have the 2 men left standing. Santorum, who is warning us, and Romney — r omney/r money/our money — who is the Bain/Bane of our existence. We've lost Cain — Cain ≠ Bain — a man — her man — who rose like Ave Maria, out of pizza. But it was Godfather Pizza. God the Father's pizza, not the Satanic 3-dots pizza.

Connect the dots! Find all the dots and connect them, lest Satan's already successful plot further succeed, perhaps vaulting the baneful Romney to the Presidency! But, oh, you say, Althouse is herself an academic. She is swollen with the pride of smart people, and therefore vulnerable to Satan's depredations, pleased to offer up something new and different, tantalizing us with new truths, denying the existence of truth, playing with truth because she's so smart.

Close the box — that 3-dot box — on the melted cheesy atrocity. Move along, smart people. There's nothing see here. Look, over there. It's Mitt, that terribly handsome man. Hail, President Romney!

Cain to endorse Newt.

Today. They're saying.

Herman Cain is about to speak.

I guess that means I'm live-blogging it.

12:18 Central Time: I'm watching Fox News, and they're talking about what it will mean if Mrs. Cain is not standing by his side. But she's never standing by his side, so that won't me anything. If she is... well, that would be unusual.

12:29: Gloria's there!

12:41: "It hurts... We know that these false and unproved allegations are not true... I am at peace with my God. I am at peace with my wife. And she is at peace with me. And I'm at peace with my family. And I am at peace with myself."

12:43: "I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distraction, the continued hurt caused on me and my family, not because we are not fighters, not because I am not a fighter...."

12:45: "I am not going to be silenced and I am not going away." He has "Plan B: The Cain Solutions dot com."

12:46: I get the feeling Plan B is Sarah Palin mode.

12:48: Drudge: "No, We Cain't."

Cain "reassessing."

"We have to do an assessment as to whether or not this is going to create too much of a cloud, in some people’s minds, as to whether or not they would be able to support us going forth...."

It’s also taken a toll on my wife and family, as you would imagine... Any time you put another cloud of doubt, unfortunately, in the court of public opinion, for some people, you’re guilty until proven innocent. And so, the public will have to decide whether they believe her or whether they believe me. That’s why we’re going to give it time, to see what type of response we get from our supporters.

IN THE COMMENTS: mccullough has a theory:

I'm guessing that Cain asked this woman to come forward and tell about their affair so he could have an excuse to get out of the race.

He never had any serious intention of being President.

Herman Cain "made it very intriguing," says Ginger White.

"It was fun. It was something that took me away from my humdrum life at the time. And it was exciting."

I don't know if it happened or not... or what "it" even is, but... that description... it's the old adultery story, a routine story: It was exciting because it took me away from the routine. But, ironically, Ginger, that is the routine story of adultery.

"[Herman] Cain avoided some of the most heated moments of the 1960s, and he said his recollections of that era are hazy."

"He said he doesn't recall being aware of Dr. King, a 1948 graduate of Morehouse, ever visiting the campus, including a convocation during Mr. Cain's senior year at which Dr. King was the featured speaker and the glee club performed. Mr. Cain sang baritone for the glee club all four years at Morehouse."

Excerpt from "Herman Cain's Political Education," in the Wall Street Journal.

Some Morehouse graduates have criticized Mr. Cain for being disengaged from the civil-rights movement. Horace Bohannon Jr., who sometimes shared lecture notes with Mr. Cain as an underclassman and later became a follower of Stokely Carmichael and his "black power" movement, said he perceived in Mr. Cain a disdain for students who became more deeply involved in the turmoil of those days. "We were hellbent on changing this society and the structure of the South," he said. "There was sort of a resentment toward us by Herman."

But others from that era say that many students at the school focused on preparing for careers, and that some faculty members discouraged open participation in marches and similar activity.

"Most of the Morehouse fellows did not participate," said Wesley D. Clement, a classmate of Mr. Cain who is now an eye surgeon in Charlotte, N.C. "Your main target and goal was to prepare yourself for business and life. Not that we were ignorant of what was going on or didn't favor what was going on. But we were not involved in the things that some people would have called more radical at that time."

Cain "was showing us a candidate for the presidency of the United States desperately trying to retrieve a soundbite..."

"... and not even trying to hide the fact that he was trying to retrieve a soundbite. Because we're kind of all in on the game, and it is a game, right?"

Writes Peggy Noonan:

The reporter asked him if he agreed, in retrospect, with President Obama's decisions on Libya. Mr. Cain said, "OK, Libya." Ten seconds of now famous silence ensued. Then: "I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reasons." Another pause, and then: "Um, no, that's a different one."

He was saying: That's a different soundbite.

Later, with an almost beautiful defiance, Mr. Cain told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "I'm not supposed to know anything about foreign policy." That's what staffers are for. "I want to talk to commanders on the ground. Because you run for president [people say] you need to have the answer. No you don't! No you don't!"

But you do, Noonan says. For a GOP candidate to display comfort and even pride in how little he knows plays into the hands of Democrats, who love to argue that Republicans are "not really for anything, they just hate government." Why else would you "blithely dismiss the baseline requirements of a public office, as Mr. Cain does"?

The charge that Republicans just hate government carries other implications—that they're stupid, that they're haters by nature, that they're cynical and merely strategic, that they enjoy having phantom foes around whom to coalesce, like cavemen warming themselves around a fire.

Cavemen? Where did that come from? That seems unfair to cavemen (who were, I assume, very connected to reality and focused on doing what works). Anyway, you see the point. Republicans may favor limited government, but that requires competence too and they're going to lose the election if they don't realize that before it's too late.

"I call it flyspecking every word, every phrase, and now they are flyspecking my pauses..."

"... but I guess since they can't legitimately attack my ideas, they will attack words and pauses. I'm kind of flattered that my pauses are so important, that somebody wants to make a story out of it."

So says Herman Cain.

"I got all this stuff twirling around in my head," says Herman Cain, trying to talk about Libya.

It's an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters:


And here he is struggling with questions about public employee unions:

Gingrich picking up the percentage points that Cain and Perry are shedding.

He's up 5, with Cain and Perry losing 1 and 4 respectively.

UPDATE: In another poll released today, from CNN/ORC International Poll, Newt vies with Romney for first place: "24% of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say Romney is their most likely choice for their party's presidential nominee with Gingrich at 22%. Romney's two-point advantage is well within the survey's sampling error." Significantly, Romney's level of support is stable, while Gingrich is up 14 points since October.

How much evidence do you need? Analyzing the Herman Cain accusations.

Next, Glenn introduces the subject of race: What's with conservatives loving a black man? And what's with liberals' eagerness to destroy him? (The splice in the middle of this segment isn't censorship. Our phone connection failed, and we had to restart.)

"I’m thinking he would have to have a split personality to do the things that were said."

Gloria Cain.

"Herman Cain Played the Race Card, But Liberals Are the Ones Who Dealt It."

John McWhorter:

Liberals have not only failed to acquit themselves well with their self-righteous deployments of race allegations—they have encouraged conservatives to follow their lead. Conservatives, unsurprisingly, have acquitted themselves equally poorly. The clip of Clarence Thomas making his “high-tech lynching” claim looks worse by the year. The one from last week of Cain on Fox News—when asked whether racism is behind the charges, all he came up with was “I believe the answer is yes, but we do not have any evidence to support it”—now joins it as a quintessential demonstration of flabby reasoning and sociopolitical cynicism.

Read the whole thing.

"Speech-based 'lie detection'? I don't think so."

Mark Liberman excoriates the press for believing some guy who purports to know that Herman Cain is not lying.