"'The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt' was a feminist triumph that reinforced her legacy as both a quote machine and an accomplished political actor."

"Betty Ford’s 'The Times of My Life' was a groundbreaking confessional that changed the country’s understanding of addiction. At best, a first lady’s memoir is an important historical document, intimately chronicling a White House administration and the powerful man running it. At worst — whoops, Nancy Reagan is calling in the astrologers again. So where does 'Melania' — a plain-black-covered book written by a woman who rightly assumes she needs no other introduction — fall into this pantheon? Let’s check: 'Over the next few months, we developed several items: the Fluid Day Serum, the Luxe Night with Vitamins A and E, cleansing balm, and an exfoliating peel, all priced between $50 and $150. In my meetings with chemists, I discovered the rejuvenating properties of caviar.'"

Writes Monica Hesse, in "In the pantheon of first lady memoirs, Melania Trump’s is something else/The dominant theme of 'Melania' is one of graceful grievance" (WaPo).

"What if we got more ambitious with the messaging and went after gun ownership itself?... Before you shut this down as Tipper Gore territory or just say no to Nancy Reagan 2.0..."

"... consider the effect of other big public service campaigns, which are especially successful when it’s clear the message comes down to saving lives... the seatbelt campaign... the “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” campaign... [the campaign against] cigarette use.... While in the pocket of the tobacco industry, Hollywood played a key role in glamorizing smoking, but then later, after paid tobacco product placement was banned, clamped down on the appearance of smoking on film and TV....  Sometimes, of course, a cigarette, like a gun, is key to a movie’s story line or characters. But the use of firearms onscreen can certainly be more intentional. Reaching for the gun in the course of storytelling isn’t always necessary. The best cinematic fight scene by far this year involved a weaponized fanny pack...."

 From "What to Do About Americans Who Love Their Guns" by Pamela Paul (NYT). 

 

They're still glamorizing violence! I would hate to see filmmakers pour their imagination into weaponizing more of the many ordinary objects that surround us. 

I'll bet you can think of some deadly household items you've witnessed over the years. Help me make a list. I'll start with the Roald Dahl/Alfred Hitchcock frozen leg of lamb. And the phone is ringing for Grace Kelly:

Jonathan Turley writes that he was "a tad naive in hoping that an academic discussion on the history and standards of it might offer a brief hiatus from hateful rhetoric on both sides."

Hate! Don't say that word! Nancy Pelosi is a Catholic, and she freaks out at the word "hate."

Here — at The Hill — is Turley's reflection on his sojourn before the House Judiciary Committee. It's almost entirely a self-defense, because he's being attacked for contradicting things he said in testimony when Obama was President and when Bill Clinton was President:

Despite 52 pages of my detailed testimony, more than twice the length of all the other witnesses combined, on the cases and history of impeachment, [Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank] described it as being “primarily emotional and political.” Milbank claimed that I contradicted my testimony in a 2013 hearing when I presented “exactly the opposite case against President Obama” by saying “it would be ‘very dangerous’ to the balance of powers not to hold Obama accountable for assuming powers ‘very similar’ to the ‘right of the king’ to essentially stand above the law.”

But I was not speaking of an impeachment then. It was a discussion of the separation of powers and the need for Congress to fight against unilateral executive actions, the very issue that Democrats raise against Trump. I did not call for Obama to be impeached....

In my testimony Wednesday, I stated repeatedly [as I stated in my testimony during the Clinton impeachment] that a president can be impeached for noncriminal acts.... My objection is not that you cannot impeach Trump for abuse of power but that this record is comparably thin compared to past impeachments.... ... Democrats have argued that they do not actually have to prove the elements of crimes.... In the Clinton impeachment, the crime was clearly established and widely recognized.... [W]e are lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger.... 

There should have been a witness who did take the position that the President can only be impeached for criminal acts. Turley took a middle position, and perhaps he demonstrates the dangers of moderation. He's drawing distinctions that his antagonists can fail or decline to see.

I see there's a column at The Nation titled "The Republicans’ Star Impeachment Scholar Is a Shameless Hack/Jonathan Turley’s testimony was so inconsistent, it contradicted his own previous statements on impeachment." Elie Mystal writes:

What actor did JFK want to play the role of JFK in "PT 109" — the movie about JFK's WWII heroics?

Hint: It was the same actor who was also asked — by Oliver Stone and later by Ron Howard —  to play the role of Richard Nixon. He didn't play Nixon because he "was not treated compassionately" — even though "I think I was on his enemies list, but I grew to feel sad for him." He didn't play JFK because he thought the script was bad, which it was...



The actor is Warren Beatty, who considered running for President himself.

In 1976 he declined to enter the New Hampshire primary against Jimmy Carter. “There has to be someone better” is what he says to those who have urged him to run.... [D]espite being a lifelong Democrat, Beatty liked the Reagans, especially Nancy. When he screened Reds for Ronald and Nancy, he remembers, the former-movie-star president told him, “It’s beginning to look like there’s no business but show business.”

Lots more great stuff at the link, which goes to Vanity Fair.

Did you hear that the Spanish media about the election involves astrology?!

Yesterday's "Meet the Press" had a panel discussion that began with the moderator Chuck Todd asking about criticism from "some Latino leaders" about the Clinton campaign's lack of outreach to Latino voters. There has been no Spanish language advertising. Todd turned first to Maria Teresa Kumar, the president and CEO of Voto Latino. "Are they slow? Are they behind?" This ensues:

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: The fact that Trump, is the Republican candidate, has actually given the Hillary campaign tons of media and Spanish media, so much so is that we have--

CHUCK TODD: The free media trumps everything--

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: The free-- no, but I mean to really crystallize it, there is a Latino astrologist named Walter Mercado that we've all grown up with, listening to in Spanish media. He has gone after anti-Trump. So the fact that she is so much media buy in the Spanish languages is good, it's fantastic. But her challenge is actually going to get the Latino millennials, the ones that are English dominant that may not be turning it on....

What?! Astrologist?!! We had to rewind. That just flew by, and she never elaborated her point. I'm going to assume that "go[ing] after anti-Trump" means going anti-Trump/going after Trump. What is this astrology going on in Spanish media? What on earth is the discussion in Spanish? I'd heard that it's different from what we're hearing in English, but... astrology? Oh, my. I hadn't heard about astrology in politics since the Reagan era.

The news from 1988:

President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, are both deeply interested in astrology, the White House spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, said today, and two former White House officials said Mrs. Reagan's concerns had influenced the scheduling of important events.... Mr. Fitzwater said Mrs. Reagan is particularly worried about the impact astrological portents can have on her husband's safety. But he declined to say exactly how Mrs. Reagan had used astrological information. And the President, answering a question at a photo-taking session, said, ''No policy or decision in my mind has ever been influenced by astrology.''...

Marcello Truzzi, a professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University, said he has collected evidence over many years documenting the Reagans' interest in astrology. ''I don't think Reagan is a truly avid astrological person, but I think if all things are equal, it has some impact on him,'' said Mr. Truzzi, who also heads an independent institute, the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research.... Professor Truzzi noted that President Theodore Roosevelt was an astrology buff, and that President Franklin D. Roosevelt quoted horoscopes....

Back to the present. Who is this Walter Mercado?



Oh! What did I see there:



Bill Clinton!

So what did Mercado say about el señor Donald Trump?



I'm sorry I'm having trouble understanding that. Plus, it's a year old. Here's an article from July in The Miami Herald: "Walter Mercado says Trump presidency would bring ‘total destruction’ of the world."

“I did a chart about what I see in the future and the present of this monster, this backwards person that can lead not only the United States, but the world, to total destruction,” Mercado said in Spanish. “He has no knowledge of politics and no knowledge of any type of diplomacy. He is a person that thinks money can buy anything and thinks that you can buy the conscience of all of humanity. The conscience cannot be bought with these policies that are so insulting and offensive to the human race.... I am totally, completely and absolutely in favor of Hillary, and astrologically, she is the better prospect,” he said. “God willing, the stars will align so that we will have the right president.”

Let's play Scrabble.

Presidential summer vacations were different in the old days, no?

I found that photo because I was searching for pictures of how Mamie Eisenhower dressed as I was listening to Tom & Lorenzo's new podcast, which looks into Hillary Clinton's fashion and the fashions of various first ladies. They call Mamie "frumpy" and have a lot of other things to say, including that Jackie was actually not all that great — she wore Chanel knockoffs — and Nancy Reagan was perhaps better — though emblematic of a fashion decade (the 80s) that feels so alien to us today.

As for Hillary Clinton's $12,000 Armani jacket, they say women's clothes are expensive, you should expect a wealthy woman to wear expensive clothes, and Hillary would be criticized if she did not put plenty of attention into wearing the right clothes (with lots of shapewear underneath). Not that they like the cut of the jacket. They don't.

They also talk about Michelle Obama... and her famously bared arms. That's why I loved this picture of Mamie's arms.

Are Mamie and Dwight really playing Scrabble? I think they're just posing. Who starts off Scrabble with 5 words like that?

ADDED: Here's a collection of photos of Presidents on their vacations, beginning with Grant and including the Eisenhower photo above.  And here's a collection of Presidents in their swimwear. My favorite:

George Martin — the brilliant producer who made The Beatles The Beatles we know — has died at the age of 90.

If there are death triads, he fits with Nancy Reagan, who made Ronald Reagan the Reagan we know. (Didn't she?)

The NYT has a lovely obituary, written by Allan Kozinn. Excerpt:

In the dozen years before he met the Beatles, Mr. Martin produced symphonic, chamber and choral recordings, jazz albums and a string of popular comedy records by Peter Ustinov, Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. In the 1960s, as the recordings he made with the Beatles rode the top of the charts, he also produced hits by other British Invasion acts, among them Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black, and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas. He later worked with a diverse roster of pop and jazz performers, including Ella Fitzgerald, the Bee Gees, Jeff Beck, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Paul Winter, Cheap Trick, America and Ultravox....

When the Beatles played “Please Please Me” for him for the first time... it was in a slow arrangement meant to evoke the style of Roy Orbison, one of their heroes. Mr. Martin told them the song sounded dreary, and insisted that they pick up the tempo and add a simple harmonica introduction. His suggestions transformed “Please Please Me,” which became their first big hit.

My son John — who has studied The Beatles more than I would have thought possible — writes:

George Martin wasn't just a great producer who happened to work with the greatest rock band of all time. There's a reason he's called the fifth Beatle, but even that honorific fails to capture what he really did. He didn't merely provide so many studio innovations that it's possible to pick out many Beatles songs where his effect on the finished product was at least as important as that of some of the actual Beatles. He radically challenged every preconception of what a rock band was supposed to be, in a way that didn't just change what the Beatles sounded like, but changed the next 50 years of music.

John quotes a passage from the Ian MacDonald book "Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties":

Lennon wandered into an antiques shop and picked up a Victorian circus poster advertising . . . a show put on by some travelling tumblers . . . in 1843. This appealed to his sense of the ridiculous and, when the new album [Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band] called for another composition from him, he hung the poster on the wall of his home studio and, playing his piano, sang phrases from it until he had a song. Taking it to Abbey Road, he asked George Martin for a "fairground" production wherein one could smell the sawdust — which, while not in the narrowest sense a musical specification, was, by Lennon's standards, a clear and reasonable request. (He once asked Martin to make one of his songs sound like an orange.) While The Beatles' producer worked more naturally with the conventionally articulate McCartney, the challenges of catering to Lennon's intuitive approach generally spurred him to his more original arrangements, of which Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! is an outstanding example. Using harmonium, harmonicas, and a tape of Victorian steam organs and calliopes cut up and edited into a kaleidoscopic wash, he created a brilliantly whimsical impression of period burlesque, ideally complementing Lennon's dry nasal delivery. Few producers have displayed a tenth of the invention shown here.

 ADDED: Here's George Martin explaining his work on "Please Please Me":



AND: Here's a whole 51-minute BBC documentary about George Martin:

"I always thought it was a little unfair how much she was made fun of for her 'just say no' campaign against drugs."

"I actually think the reminder that you can always just say no can be pretty effective."

I know, I'd been thinking about that myself, just last Saturday, the day before hearing that Nancy Reagan had died. I was blogging about a NYT column telling about women leaving the field of science because they'd received email expressing desire for an intimate relationship and couldn't figure out what to do about it.

These women had never, as far as I could tell, just said no — I'm not interested. The NYT author wrote of the women deciding "[p]erhaps... to ignore the first email," then getting further efforts at closeness from the man, after which "any objection on her part... would seem heartless." I said: "Why isn't it also 'heartless' to deprive this man of the basic information that he is not experiencing a successful response to his attempt to go on a date?" The column author spins out a nightmare: "On and on it goes, and slowly she realizes that he’s not going to stop because he doesn’t have to." I said: "Why is this smart woman so absurdly slow?"

There are, I'm afraid, a lot of people out there who need to be bonked over the head on a regular basis with the stunningly simple advice, "Just say no." It sounds crushingly stupid, but an awful lot of people — including very smart people — become stupid in social situations. These days, there's an effort to pick up the slack left by those who've forgotten the magic of "no," and they'd like to institute a system in which the failure to say "yes" counts as a "no" (and a silent sexual encounter becomes rape).

We wouldn't need such an oppressive, twisted regime if people kept in the front of their head the go-to advice: Just say no.

Nancy was, of course, speaking specifically about drugs...



... and the message looked really ridiculous to those who were already into drugs. I remember some comedian — perhaps Bob Goldthwait — doing a routine about the idea of Keith Richards attempting the "just say no" solution to his all-out addiction. But Nancy was — like most First Ladies — talking to children, and "no" is most effective when you say it early on — to drugs, to sex, to whatever it is you have a right to decline.

Which reminds me of my old motto. Nancy had hers. I have mine: Nothing is a high standard.

I couldn't find the old Keith Richards joke, so here's William S. Burroughs, "Just Say No To Drug Hysteria":

Ronald Reagan was "so smooth, so effective a performer” that “only now, seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there’s anything beneath that smile."

Wrote Donald Trump in "The Art of the Deal," and "Trump launched a political campaign that tore into Reagan’s record, including his willingness to stand up to the Soviet Union," Politico pointed out in an article last fall called "When Donald Trump Hated Ronald Reagan/The GOP front-runner praises the conservative icon now, but in 1987 Trump blasted Reagan and his team":

Advised by the notorious Roger Stone, a Nixon-era GOP trickster, in 1987 Trump took out full-page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post blasting Reagan and his team. In the text, which was addressed “To the American people,” Trump declared, “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.” The problem was America’s leading role in defending democracy, which had been fulfilled by Republicans and Democrats all the way back to FDR....

It's a day to think about the smooth rough, effective performer and what lies beneath that smile scowl.

Goodbye to Nancy Reagan.

The woman who called President Reagan "Ronnie" has passed away. She was 94.

"So let me close with Ronnie's words, not mine..."



Here's the text of Nancy's beautiful speech at the 1996 GOP convention:

But Ronnie's spirit, his optimism, his never failing belief in the strength and goodness of America is still very strong.... I can tell you with certainty that he still sees the shining city on the hill, a place of full of hope and promise for us all.

As you all know, I am not the speechmaker in the family, so let me close with Ronnie's words, not mine. In that last speech four years ago, he said, "Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will report that I appeal to your best hopes not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts, and may all of you as Americans never forget your heroic origins, never fail to seek divine guidance, and never, never lose your natural, god-given optimism."

Ronnie's optimism, like America's, still shines very brightly. May God bless him, and from both of us, God bless America.

Goodbye to Shirley Temple.

Here's the NYT obituary, with some of the details of the life of the greatest child star of all time and perhaps the most loved actress of all time. My mother taught me to love her in the 1950s when I was a child — my mother, who had loved going to the movies when she was a child during The Depression, when Shirley Temple movies were coming out and making people happy.

I watched so many Shirley Temple movies on our big black-and-white TV. They were on all the time — "Captain January," "The Littlest Rebel," "Curly Top," "The Little Princess." So many of the movies I saw as a child were Shirley Temple movies on TV. I was never taken to a movie theater with my parents, so I didn't see a movie in a theater until I was old enough to go without an adult. Movies were part of television, and there was Shirley in her childhood prime. She had a TV show — "Shirley Temple's Storybook" — where we saw her as a lovely adult woman, introducing a filmed fairy tale each week.

I've written many blog posts about Shirley Temple over the years, and I'm going to extend this post with some links to them.

January 29, 2014, blogging about the State of the Union:

"Shirley Temple is there," I said, spotting Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and being unfair to Shirley Temple, whose ringlets — as I do an image search this morning — look artlessly subtle and not at all like Debbie's headful of boing-y springs. Incredible what women can do to themselves and still be taken seriously.

June 20, 2013, blogging about Paula Deen's getting into trouble for the notion of a slave-themed wedding with "a bunch of little n-----s..."  like "in the Shirley Temple days," where "they used to tap dance around":

[O]bviously, there were all sorts of problems with the way black people were depicted in old Hollywood movies, let's at least get it clear in our minds what the movie reference is. There was a 1935 Shirley Temple movie called "The Littlest Rebel," and here's what it looked like when Bill Bojangles Robinson (playing the slave "Uncle Billy") danced. He's not tap dancing "around" — as if slaves dance around while working — he's giving a performance at an elegant affair — as a soloist, not in "a bunch." And he's not in shorts and shirt-sleeves. He's wearing long pants and a vest and a jacket. So Deen's mental image of what went on in the bad old days of Hollywood is itself an embarrassing distortion.

February 6, 2013, "My duck does a wonderful trick. My duck can lay an egg!" A sweet clip of Shirley, presented a propos of the "'Signs that people are tired of thinking about politics,' which highlighted the Washington Post article about the amazing fact that a bird laid an egg. And who better than Shirley Temple to epitomize the desire for distraction from politics?"

August 27, 2012, the topic was the desire for a movie that "helps me be a nicer person, not a sharper arguer":

I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with a movie that oriented me toward greater niceness. I can think of movies that might help you become a better person, but it's usually in the sense of becoming bolder, more independent, more resolutely opposed to evil and oppression. But nicer? Can you think of a movie in which the central character, someone you identify with, is especially polite and the politeness isn't basically something he must overcome in order to succeed.

A-ha! The answer: Every Shirley Temple movie.

April 28, 2012, somehow the top of Obama's gaffe about "clinging to guns and religion" led to Shirley, after some lady reminded somebody of Jane Withers, as Withers' appeared as an adult in the 1960s in ads for Comet scouring powder, and I said:

When my mother saw those Comet ads, she's always exclaim about how mean Jane Withers was to Shirley Temple. She was the child actress who was most emphatically not Shirley Temple....

Withers played the role of a girl who was mean to the most lovable child who ever lived, and therefore she became — in my mothers mind — the mean girl, indelibly, no matter how many sinks she scrubbed clean.

April 29, 2009, a controversy over a photographic presentation of teenaged Miley Cyrus looking overly sexualized led me to show you this clip of Shirley Temple as a toddler playing a seductress. It's simply astounding by today's standards:



April 9, 2007, I have "A profound movie experience... watching one of the first movies I ever saw... Perhaps the second movie I ever saw in my life -- the first was 'The Little Fugitive" -- was the Shirley Temple movie 'Captain January.'"

And speaking of influences, I can see how much this influenced me. Shirley is angrily defiant as she stands up to the prissy female truant officer who doesn't like the feisty attitude she's learning from the men. The truant officer wants to put her in an institution, away from Captain January, the kindly lighthouse keeper who found her after a shipwreck.

You should be taken home and spanked! What kind of man is this Captain January to allow you to run around?

This is some heavy dialogue for a young child to hear. (Shirley has just been looking at a picture she thinks is her dead mother and has tried to sing the song "Asleep in the Deep.")

Helen: How can anyone sleep in the deep?
Capt. January: That's the long last sleep, Star.
Helen: Does everyone have to die?
Capt. January: Yes, everyone does.
Helen: Even you and me?
Capt. January: Yes, when the time comes.
Helen: Do you think we'll make it till Christmas?
Capt. January: Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if we did.

Yes, Shirley reminds you of death, then tries to cheer you back up with Christmas and short term hopes.

April 23, 2004, I write my first (and best) Shirley Temple post, telling the story of "The Hagen Girl" — the movie she made with Ronald Reagan — complete with shot-from-the-TV-screen stills:

It's bad, but awesome. Ronald Reagan comes to town, hears people gossiping about him, and doesn't like it..... The gossip is all about how Mary Hagen, played by Shirley Temple, is an illegitimate child and the father is Reagan. Shirley was the most adorable child ever, but here she is as a gorgeous teenager:

Read the whole story at the link. I'll just tell you that Ronald Reagan rescues the suicidal Shirley from drowning — complete with pictures of Reagan diving into the raging river and Shirley looking "modern and fabulous" while wet — and in the end he tells her — so Reaganesquely — "It's what you are, and where you're going that really matters."

April 24, 2004, the day after that big Shirley-and-Reagan post, I posited a question for which you'll see no answers at the link, because I didn't have the comments on back then. You might find this a particularly interesting question today, what with all the recent talk of Woody Allen's depredations and travails:

So if a teenage girl goes for a year believing an older man is her biological father, but then finds out it was just rumor, is it okay to marry him? I mean in a conventional family-oriented movie. That's what happened in "That Hagen Girl" (discussed... with pictures, yesterday). Ronald Reagan was none too happy with the role of the father figure and begged for a rewrite in which he doesn't end up marrying Shirley Temple.

Reagan's misgivings about the script were borne out when the film had its first preview screening. After he rescues Temple from her suicide attempt, he admits that he loves her. But when he said the words on screen, the preview audience screamed "Oh no!" almost in unison.

So they recut it, so people wouldn't scream in horror! But that only made it an inexplicably sexless marriage.

Those who are pushing outrage over ousting Maria Conchita Alonso from "The Vagina Monologues"...

… remember "Veterans Boycotting 'The Butler' Over Jane Fonda's Portrayal Of Nancy Reagan."

Don't be hypocritical!

"Cabbed up to Jerry and Mick’s apartment for Christmas lunch."

"Jerry’s pregnant sister Cyndy just married Robin Lehman, and so everybody was happy. Jerry’s mother was there. Jerry had an apron on that when you unzippered it a big cock came out, so I was taking funny pictures of that, her cooking a turkey with a cock in her hand."

From "The Andy Warhol Diaries," found as I search for "Christmas" in my Kindle books. Kindle conks out after it finds 100 of whatever it is you are searching for, so all I can say is that Christmas appears more than 100 times in Andy's diary, so it's not as though that was the only one I could find. I am responsible for selecting that. But I'll give you another one. This one has Nancy Reagan in it. The year is 1981:

"Here’s a first look at the unlikely casting but uncanny resemblance of Jane Fonda as former First Lady Nancy Reagan."

"Alan Rickman plays President Ronald Reagan... The pic stars Forest Whitaker as White House butler Eugene Allen whose career spanned 34 years there."

President George W. Bush escorting Nancy Reagan at the funeral for Betty Ford.

Photographs ##1 and 14 in this slideshow.

AND: Bush has an intense 7-minute conversation with Hillary before the funeral begins. Meanwhile, Nancy sits silently on his other side, and Michelle sits silently on Hillary's other side. Bush, hanging with the First Ladies... and giving all his attention to Hillary.

"I know that Ronnie would be thrilled and is thrilled to have all of you share in his 100th birthday."

"Does it seem possible?"

"It’s a big shitty world, and it gets shittier by the minute."

A nugget from the newly revealed letters of J.D. Salinger. Don't you hanker for more heaping mouthfuls of that?

He had 2 children,Peggy and Matthew.  At restaurants, Peggy had "a double portion of shrimp cocktail, dessert, and milk, with a pickle on the side, if available," while Matthew ate "lamb chops, almost exclusively."

He didn't like us too much: "Murder in my heart, daily, hourly, incessantly, and you ask if I feel as nasty as ever about planetary affairs. … How ready this wretched planet is for the bomb or more Nancy Reagan."

Imagine having such a troubled relationship with other people that you fixated on the idea of a nuclear war that would end it all, not just for you, but for everyone.

IN THE COMMENTS: Seven Machos says:

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is what my kids like to eat at restaurants and what my lousy view of the world is like, and how I am occupied with thoughts of murder, and all that John Wayne Gacy kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

When Chief Justice John Roberts was a vox clamans in terris... about Michael Jackson.

"I recognize that I am something of a vox clamans in terris in this area, but enough is enough. The Office of Presidential Correspondence is not yet an adjunct of Michael Jackson’s PR firm. 'Billboard' can quite adequately cover the event by reproducing the award citation and/or reporting the President’s remarks. (As you know, there is very little to report about Mr. Jackson’s remarks.) There is absolutely no need for an additional presidential message. A memorandum for Presidential Correspondence objecting to the letter is attached for your review and signature."

Ha ha ha. What a character! The wise Latin! The voice of a terrified clam!

And later:

I hate to sound like one of Mr. Jackson’s records, constantly repeating the same refrain, but I recommend that we not approve this letter. Sometimes people need to be reminded of the obvious: whatever its status as a cultural phenomenon, the Jackson concert tour is a massive commercial undertaking. The tour will do quite well financially by coming to Washington, and there is no need for the President to applaud such enlightened self-interest. Frankly, I find the obsequious attitude of some members of the White House staff toward Mr. Jackson’s attendants, and the fawning posture they would have the President of the United States adopt, more than a little embarrassing.

It is also important to consider the precedent that would be set by such a letter. In today’s Post there were already reports that some youngsters were turning away from Mr. Jackson in favor of a newcomer who goes by the name “Prince,” and is apparently planning a Washington concert. Will he receive a Presidential letter? How will we decide which performers do and which do not?

A newcomer who goes by the name "Prince." Yeah, don't want the Prez bowing down to bogus royalty.

And I love the resistance to ad hoc decisionmaking and the demand for neutral rules of general applicability. Put that man on the Supreme Court!

Equal justice under law.

And still more Roberts vox clamans in the White House:

I recommend that no such letter be sent. The Jackson tour, whatever stature it may have attained as a cultural phenomenon, is a massive commercial undertaking. The visit of the tour to Washington was not an eleemosynary gesture; it was a calculated commercial decision that does not warrant gratitude from our Nation’s Chief Executive. Such a letter would also create a bad precedent, as other popular performers would either expect or demand similar treatment. Why, for example, was no letter sent to Mr. Bruce Springsteen, whose patriotic tour recently visited the area? Finally, the President, in my view, has done quite enough in the way of thanking and congratulating the Jacksons, and anything more would begin to look like unbecoming fawning.

Patriotic? I see the dawn's early light of a non-neutral rule.

Undoubtedly, Roberts was thinking of the song "Born in the U.S.A.," which was popular at the time. Yet a close reading of the text — as opposed to an empathetic response to the sound of the repetitious refrain — would show that it's not at all patriotic, something conservatives seem to have had a hell of a time figuring out:

[T]he widely-read conservative columnist George Will, after attending a show, published on September 13, 1984 a piece entitled "A Yankee Doodle Springsteen" in which he praised Springsteen as an exemplar of classic American values. He wrote: "I have not got a clue about Springsteen's politics, if any, but flags get waved at his concerts while he sings songs about hard times. He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seems punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: 'Born in the U.S.A.!'" The 1984 presidential campaign was in full stride at the time, and Will had connections to President Ronald Reagan's re-election organization. Will thought that Springsteen might endorse Reagan, and got the notion pushed up to high-level Reagan advisor Michael Deaver's office. Those staffers made inquiries to Springsteen's management which were politely rebuffed.

Nevertheless, on September 19, 1984, at a campaign stop in Hammonton, New Jersey, Reagan added the following to his usual stump speech:

"America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts; it rests in the message of hope in songs so many young Americans admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about."

The campaign press immediately expressed skepticism that Reagan knew anything about Springsteen, and asked what his favorite Springsteen song was; "Born to Run" was the tardy response from staffers.

Just picture Ronnie and Nancy out riding through mansions of glory in suicide machines, chrome-wheeled, fuel injected and stepping out over the line. Did you know Washington, D.C. rips the bones from your back? Well, I guess it does!

***

By the way, Michael Jackson and John Roberts were/are both Hoosiers. I love Hoosiers. Nobody has to be ashamed of being a Hoosier:

"Hoosiers do all right. Lowe and I have been around the world twice, and everywhere we went we found Hoosiers in charge of everything.... Lincoln was a Hoosier, too. He grew up in Spencer County.... I don't know what it is about Hoosiers... but they've sure got something. If somebody was to make a list, they'd be amazed... We Hoosiers got to stick together... Whenever I meet a young Hoosier, I tell them, 'You call me Mom.'"

Astrologer arrested.

"Astrology is taken seriously by numerous Sri Lankan politicians."

***

Yes, yes, I know, don't be smug...

Caption contest!