From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: Maureen Dowd and Brian Wilson

Posted on by

NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd may have written her most embarrassing column yet. And she’s written more than her share of embarrassing columns.

The thing is: Dowd likes Donald Trump. They’ve had personal conversations. So it makes a bit of sense that she wants to give him the benefit of the doubt. Still, her latest column, “Trump in the Dumps”, is quite surprising. 

Trump jumped into the race with an eruption of bigotry, ranting about Mexican rapists and a Muslim ban. But privately, he assured people [apparently including Dowd] that these were merely opening bids in the negotiation; that he was really the same pragmatic New Yorker he had always been; that he would be a flexible, wheeling-and-dealing president, not a crazy nihilist like Ted Cruz or a mean racist like George Wallace. He yearned to be compared to Ronald Reagan, a former TV star who overcame a reputation for bellicosity and racial dog whistles to become the most beloved Republican president of modern times.

After cataloging what she sees as the pros and cons of his candidacy, she ends with a bang:

Now Trump’s own behavior is casting serious doubt on whether he’s qualified to be president.

Now? As in this week?

Could it be that Dowd likes Trump so much and dislikes the Clintons so much that she’s seriously considering Trump’s strengths and weaknesses? And she’s still on the fence a year after Trump began campaigning?

But then it occurred to me that maybe her conclusion was ironic, a bit of understated humor. I usually don’t read Dowd’s column these days, given the silly stuff she writes, but she can be funny in a nasty sort of way. Perhaps she was merely having fun at Trump’s expense? I’d like to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I really don’t know.

In other news, Pet Sounds turned 50 last month and Brian Wilson turned 74 today. In case you don’t know, he’s the tall one with the Beatles haircut on the album cover. So, in his honor, here’s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” a few times.

First, the instrumental backing track:

Next, just the voices (right after the opening notes):

Finally, the finished product:

I said it was from the ridiculous to the sublime.

White Noise by Don DeLillo

Posted on by

DeLillo’s novel White Noise won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1985. I read it back then and enjoyed it, but also found it somewhat mysterious. I guess I didn’t know what he was trying to say. Having read it again, and enjoyed it even more, I’d now say he’s commenting on the strangeness and artificiality of modern America lives.

It’s the story of a Professor of Hitler Studies at a small liberal arts college, and the professor’s wife and children, and how they all cope or fail to cope with their confusion and fear. The centerpiece of the novel is an “airborne toxic event” that the family has to escape. But the most important aspect of the story isn’t the plot, or even the characters, but DeLillo’s wonderful language. Real people don’t speak like DeLillo’s characters, but it’s still great to see what they have to say. 

Who Is She Anyway? And What’s She Really Like?

Posted on by

With that devastating speech Hillary Clinton gave this week, lots of news about the scam formerly known as “Trump University”, and the end of the primary season only a few days away , it feels like a bubble has burst. Clinton will be the next President. Trump will spontaneously combust on live TV. Sanders will go back to being the junior Senator from Vermont (and if he keeps doing the Republicans’ job for them, be relegated to the Senate Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, Poultry, Marketing and Agriculture Security – that’s a real thing and someone has to go to their hearings).

Meanwhile, I found two more comments I left somewhere. They were both in response to articles about Hillary Clinton. The first had to do with her “likeability”. It was written by David Brooks, a nincompoop who suggested she tell us more about her hobbies: 

The Guardian published one of those “why women aren’t crazy about Hillary” articles this week. The women interviewed didn’t offer much justification. So I looked at the comments section. The level of vitriol directed at her was amazing. The comments were much more negative than the reasons people gave.

It’s reasonable to conclude that opposition to Hillary Clinton is more visceral than rational. The reasons don’t justify the dislike; the dislike generates a search for reasons. Mr. Brooks can’t explain the phenomenon because he’s only looking at her, not the people who dislike her so much.

The second may have been in response to that very article in The Guardian: 

[Some on the left think she’s much too conservative] and yet the Republicans think she’s a closet socialist who will take away their guns and destroy the economy. It’s so tiresome hearing Clinton depicted as a corporate whore, a pawn of Wall Street, when she’s actually a liberal Democrat who will govern to the left of her husband and probably to the left of Obama.

After all, she’s in favor of more Wall Street regulation, higher taxes on the wealthy, better childcare, abortion rights, fewer people in prison, immigration reform and less student debt. I wish she was less inclined to support military action and more even-handed regarding the Palestinians, but there is no reason at all to think she won’t pursue a liberal agenda when she’s President, even if it’s not as liberal as some of us would hope.

All these insults and talk about not “trusting” Clinton is simply a cheap and easy way to attack her without being specific about anything, while wrongly implying that she’s a Republican in sheep’s clothing (the Republicans certainly don’t think so).

Remember, it was “Slick Willie”. Nobody has ever accused Hillary Clinton of being slick.

“Nobody Ever Accused Her of Being Slick” could have been the title of an article in New York Magazine by Rebecca Traister, a self-styled former “Hillary hater”. The actual title is “Hillary vs. Herself”. If you want to understand who Hillary Clinton is, and what kind of President she’ll try to be, please read it.

Now, if she’ll only be as nice to the reporters who follow her around as she is to other people….

Hillary Makes Her Case and Lambastes Trump

Posted on by

Hillary Clinton delivered a speech in San Diego today during which she explained her national security priorities and showed Trump no mercy. And she did it while being totally “Presidential”. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that she is a serious person who is seriously qualified to be President. Here’s a brief summary of her remarks from The New York Times. It’s accurate enough but leaves out her argument that doing things like reducing income inequality and fostering human rights also contribute to our national security. 

You can see the whole speech courtesy of CSPAN. It’s beyond belief that any rational person could watch it and go away thinking Trump would do a better job protecting us than she would. If you asked them, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as Vladimir Putin, would agree.

We Can Happily Look Forward to More of This

Posted on by

Here’s part of a brilliant report from MSNBC on Trump’s attempt to explain where the money went:

So where does that leave us? Trump said he’d raised $6 million for veterans, but that wasn’t true. He later claimed he never used the $6 million figure, but that wasn’t true. His campaign insisted Trump had contributed $1 million himself, but that wasn’t true. Trump said he “didn’t want to have credit” for the fundraising efforts, but that wasn’t true. He said he and his team were vetting groups they’d never heard of four months after the fact, but that wasn’t true.

And as of yesterday, all of this, the Republican candidate insisted, is the media’s fault. Indeed, Trump thinks journalists should be “ashamed” of themselves for scrutinizing his claims that turned out to be wrong.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but in a normal year, in a normal party, with a normal candidate, this is the sort of controversy that could end a campaign. Legitimate presidential hopefuls can get away with some dissembling and the occasional whopper, but Trump was caught telling obvious falsehoods about support for veterans’ charities.

If this happened to Hillary Clinton, is there any doubt it would be the #1 issue in the presidential race between now and Election Day? That every pundit in America would use this as Exhibit A in their takes on why Americans just can’t trust the Democrat?

Unfortunately, there’s some truth in that last paragraph, although I think there will be less media criticism of Clinton’s “untrustworthiness” as we head toward November. I mean, even if you want to be “tough” on both sides or you have an ax to grind, how do you criticize Clinton for spilling a glass of milk when Trump makes a habit of firebombing dairies?