Amazing "Pilobolus"

This is a very neat video, Pilobolus appearing on Conan O'Brien.





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Enough, Already!

Yes, Barack Obama won the election.

Yes, he is the first black President of the United States, and yes, that is an historic event about which all Americans are justifiably proud.

Yes, he is a dynamic presence whose “soaring rhetoric” inspires hope among his followers.

But please, people, get a grip!

Barack Obama is just a man. He’s not a god. He’s not the Second Coming. He puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like George Bush, just like Al Gore and John Kerry, just like Joe Biden and Dick Cheney, and, come to think of it, just like Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton.

He may be a great president. But then, he may be a lousy president: We don’t know yet.

He hasn’t been sworn in, and in fact hasn’t even been formally elected yet.

All the gushing praise of Oprah and the French; the miraculous one-day transformation of America from “pariah of the world” to its former station as the greatest country on Earth; the fawning TV ads from AARP and NFIB; just because a black guy from Chicago with mysterious past alliances and secrets about his past yet to be revealed, with less real-life experience to qualify him for president than any president in history, won the longest election in our history … It’s enough to trigger the gag reflex.

Please, America, slap yourself in the face; splash a little ice-cold water on it; pinch yourself. Try to see the rest of the picture.

The guy had lots of help in winning, not least among which is the immeasurable assistance of a corrupt and discredited mainstream “news” media who selected Mr. Obama a long time ago and worked tirelessly for his election, as we have learned from numerous sources, most recently the ombudsman for the Washington Post, and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who gets a chill up his leg when he thinks about Obama, and told the world that his job is to see that this presidency succeeds.

But Barack Obama has enormous problems facing him, like an economic crisis brought on by the actions of his own party, which, incidently, controls Congress. And the threat of Islamic terrorism, which his predecessor has done a marvelous job of keeping at bay for seven years. And an increasingly more serious situation regarding Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. And an energy problem no one has done anything about for 30 years. And, the normal set of domestic difficulties every president faces.

So, if you’re pleased that at long last we have a black president, fine. But you, and he, have to focus on reality now, and that is a much less pleasant topic that requires sober thought and real, as opposed to empty, leadership.

Check back this time next year for evidence of how well your guy is doing. By then there will be something substantive to judge.

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Classic Lines

Although you’d never know it from reading my stuff, I really appreciate a clever or artful turn of phrase. Sometimes, someone puts a string of words together in such a way that it is truly a wonderful thing to behold.

While watching a rerun of “M.A.S.H.,” one of the truly classic TV shows (darn, I’ve said “truly” twice in two consecutive paragraphs), I came across one of those classic phrases. It seems that in the absence of Maj. Frank Burns, one of the surgeons in the zany 4077^th M.A.S.H. unit, one Maj. Charles Emerson Winchester, III, was temporarily assigned to the unit, and was not (to say the least) happy about it.

Winchester was a New England Yankee snob (for those who have never seen the show), an arrogant and superior person, a person of culture who was totally repulsed at having to go to the 4077th, even for the intended 48-hour temporary period. A M.A.S.H. unit in the middle of nowhere was just too far beneath Chaaaaaaarrrrrles for him to bear. There were no gourmet meals and wine, no high culture like he experienced in his previous cushy assignment in Tokyo, and the “crudeness” of the rest of the 4077^th’s personnel, like his tent-mates Hawkeye and BJ, drove him nuts.

As fate would have it, circumstances deteriorated for Winchester, whose experience doing “meatball surgery” was traumatic, at best, and he ended up being permanently assigned to the 4077^th. Realizing he was stuck, but nevertheless being not only determined to get out of there, and also being his elitist, snobby self, Chaaaaarrrrles told Col. Potter, the CO of the unit: "Know this. You can cut me off from the civilized world. You can incarcerate me with two moronic cellmates. You can torture me with your thrice daily swill, but you cannot break the spirit of a Winchester. My voice shall be heard from this wilderness and I shall be delivered from this fetid and festering sewer!"

A classic line, for certain.

The Wisdom of Thomas Sowell

I have great admiration for Dr. Thomas Sowell. He is brilliant,

successful and has a way with words. He writes conventional columns most of the time, but occasionally he imparts his wisdom to us with “random thoughts on the passing scene,” excerpts from which follow:

Whenever I hear terrorists referred to in the media as "militants," it is a painful reminder that we have degenerated to the point where we no longer even have the courage to talk straight.

Does anybody seriously believe that "hate speech" prohibitions will be applied to Muslims demonizing Jews, to blacks demonizing whites, or to women demonizing men?

Few things are more scary than the number of people who rely on talking points, instead of weighing serious issues in a serious way.

The same people who think it was wonderful that the Warren Court forbad government to assign children to schools on the basis of race think it is terrible that the current Supreme Court has recently stopped local governments from assigning children to schools on the basis of race.

In politics, there are few skills more richly rewarded than the ability to misstate issues in a way that will sound plausible and attractive.

"Nations are like men in that they prefer a fuss made in their behalf to real services rendered." Although de Tocqueville said this back in the 19th century, it may help explain why the black vote today is so overwhelmingly for the Democrats, when Democrats have done so little good for blacks and so much harm.

In contrast with today's senators who try to get every Supreme Court nominee to pledge allegiance to Roe v. Wade, when Abraham Lincoln was considering nominees to that court, he said, "we cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it."

If the Democrats' presidential and vice-presidential candidates next year are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, most of the mainstream media will just gush at the image and the rhetoric of a woman and a minority -- and specific issues and track records will fade into the background.

A month doesn't go by without several offers to lend me money arriving in the mail. Where were these people when I was broke?

Many people who have never held a firearm in their hands are nevertheless convinced that the police fired too many shots in a confrontation with a criminal.

Many people who have never run one business for one day are nevertheless confident that they know corporate CEOs are not worth as much as they are paid.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.

There Is Talent, And Then There Is TALENT

A lot of people watch American Idol, and a lot of people like it. I watch it on occasion, but not regularly, usually toward the end of the cycle when the better singers are the only ones standing. There are a few truly talented people among all those wannabes, but not many. Even the winners sometimes are not top-flight talents.

In Great Britain there is a similar program, “Britain’s Got Talent,” with Simon Cowell as one of the judges, and Piers Morgan of “America’s Got Talent” as a judge, and a truly gorgeous lady named Amanda as the third judge. The following YouTube video shows one contestant on the British show that actually is a tremendous talent.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, Great Performances, Music

I’m So Tired …

Watching TV news the other day, with the incessant repetition of the same stuff hour after hour, got me thinking how tired I am of the same old stuff, and that flashed me to the scene in Blazing Saddles where Madeline Kahn, as Lili von Schtupp, sings a fairly hilarious song titled “I’m So Tired,” some of the lyrics of which are:

…

I'm tired,
Tired of playing the game
Ain't it a crying shame
I'm so tired
…

Anyway, one of the worst developments in news coverage is the 24-hour news cycle, made possible by 24-hour-a-day news channels like FNC, CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC. While these networks make it possible to find out what’s going on at any hour of the day—or perhaps more correctly, to find out what the networks want to tell you—there just isn’t enough important news happening most days to fill a complete day without focusing on a few stories and reporting them to death, or worse, use stories that really aren’t good stories, and worse still when networks create stories on their own or blow minor elements of a story up well beyond their actual importance.

Haven’t we heard about the tragic story of Anna Nicole Smith enough? Haven’t the media covered every possible aspect of that story, and didn’t they do it to death? Isn’t the same true of the Don Imus fiasco and the Virginia Tech tragedy? I’m tired of hearing, reading and seeing stuff about Brittany Spears Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, and now about Alec Baldwin. I’m glad Sanjaya finally got tossed off of American Idol, not because I don’t like Sanjaya, but because the story wasn’t worth all the attention it got.

Then, on the other hand, there’s the case of the Duke lacrosse players’ persecution. We had endless hours of that story for months; they covered it to death. But now that the North Carolina Attorney General has dropped all charges against the players, that story died in a few days.

Having worked in news journalism for nearly 20 years I have a good deal of insight into the way those people think. There is the drive to give people information, of course, although it is all too often tempered with the impact of some agenda, but frequently a major factor is the affect on viewers/listeners/readers. The news network people have an almost manic need to be first, and these days being first is most often a matter of seconds, and that produces some really weird on-air behavior, interrupting meaningful interviews with knowledgeable people, or cutting someone off in mid-sentence. It’s funny how when they are trying to be first, the news folk don’t mind putting scheduled commercial (hard) breaks on hold, but otherwise they do all manner of silly things to end segments on time for those scheduled breaks (see above).

Okay, I’m through ranting now.

And, if you’d like to watch and listen to Lili sing “I’m So Tired,” and I urge you to do so, here you go:

Technorati Tags: Journalism, Humor, Great Performances

A Stunning Performance

As many of you know, I am a musician and have been for 50 years. I love music; I love great performances, regardless of the genre. That means I like good rock, good jazz, good "classical," good gospel, good country ... well, you get the idea.

The video below is a great performance. I urge you to plug in your good speakers, or put on a headset and listen to this tune. Forget the words; forget the genre. Just listen to a truly great singer accompanied by a truly great pianist.




The tenor is David Phelps and the piano player is Anthony Burger, both outstanding musicians. The performance is from one of the Gaither Homecoming concerts titled "Christmas in the Country."

I invite and welcome your comments.