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Palin, SNL, and comedy

The problem with Sarah Palin's SNL cameo last weekend (I call it a cameo because she did so little, unlike, say, Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Rudy Giuliani have done in their appearances on the show) isn't just that she was a prop, it's that she didn't commit to being a prop. Take, for instance, the Palin rap song Amy Poehler did during Weekend Update. A VP candidate singing a rap? Funny. A VP candidate announcing she's not singing a rap because it's inappropriate for someone in her position? Also funny. A VP candidate announcing she's not singing a rap because it's inappropriate for someone in her position, but then (and I shudder to type these words) raising the roof and doing the white man's overbite while someone else sings the rap? Not very funny.

You've got to commit. As Doctor Cox explains around 1:42 of this clip:

There was something familiar last night

In last night's debate, John McCain's hectoring, condescending tone kept reminding me of something. It wasn't until later that I remembered what it was:


At 0:52, Eddie Murphy makes the face that I imagine Senator Obama wanted to.

For the literal-minded

That one?

I'm glad to see I'm not the only person who heard John McCain call Barack Obama "that one" and thought, what the hell?

For the record, I would not object to Scarlett Johannson calling me "that one." Or simply calling me.

SNL on Scranton

SNL's take on Joe Biden's take on Scranton:

Scranton's take on SNL's take on Joe Biden's take on Scranton:

SNL parody jokingly calls Scranton 'the absolute worst place on earth'

Some of the comments on the article are entertaining, for reasons both intentional and otherwise.

Overcoached

Everyone probably has their own Sarah Palin debate WTF moment. Mine was her list of people supporting McCain -- Lieberman, Giuliani, Romney, Lingle. That's exactly what she said, those last names, without first names or any sort of context or story behind them. People probably know who Lieberman is, and most folks know Giuliani. Nobody knows Romney unless they were really paying attention to the primary campaign that he left in, what, February? And Lingle? Who the hell is Lingle? I am as hardcore a campaign junkie as you will find and it took me a minute to realize she meant Linda Lingle, the Governor of Hawaii, and not my undergrad political parties professor (who I can't imagine would be supporting McCain).

I almost wonder if she knew who she was talking about.

Decline and faceplant

Watching the ongoing train wreck that is the Sarah Palin candidacy, I have to wonder: Has any other VP nominee gone from Muskie to Quayle in such a short period of time?

Paul Newman

I'm pretty sure the only Paul Newman film I saw in a theatre was Nobody's Fool, and my attention was not entirely on the movie, as I was also trying to figure out if I was on a date. (I wasn't.) Even in my distracted condition, though, I recognized the sheer casual magnitude of Newman's talent. Later I enjoyed his performance in The Sting, and pointing out to comic geeks that he was Gil Kane's original "model" for Green Lantern.

Roger Ebert has a nice appreciation, and reposted an interview with Newman promoting Nobody's Fool. And now I'm going to do update my Netflix queue.

Time horizons

Roughly put, a time horizon is how far ahead one is planning: Next year, next quarter, next month. An important part of growing up is learning to think in terms of longer time horizons: You can't control what happens this week, but you can make long-term plans that will endure whatever roadblocks flare up. You can also avoid making short-term plans that will hurt you later: If I eat a third helping of dessert, it will taste good now but I'll feel sick later. If I buy that expensive thing I don't need, I'll enjoy playing with it but I won't be able to pay the rent. That sort of thing.

Looking at the McCain campaign, I'm pretty sure we've got a potential president whose time horizon goes to lunchtime tomorrow, tops. It's clear McCain had no endgame for his phony campaign suspension, he simply wanted to grab a bunch of headlines that afternoon. Same thing applies to Sarah Palin: No need to vet her record, the important thing is to pick somebody dramatic! And then that dramatic pick can't match wits with Katie Couric. But, hey, who can think as far ahead as three weeks from the announcement?

Palin the polar bear?

WaPo's Ruth Marcus on the under-noticed Sarah Palin-Sean Hannity interview:

The way she answers questions brings to mind -- I have Alaska on the brain, admittedly -- the image of a polar bear, jumping from rhetorical ice floe to ice floe, drifting some but eventually managing to get safely to dry land. No flubs, but you get the sense that she could plunge into the icy water at any moment. Palin has an odd tendency to use the same word twice in a sentence, as in, “The people of American realize that inherently all political power is inherent in the people,” or, about John McCain, “He can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.” Or, combining word repetition with another Palin verbal tic, word dropping, this about the economic meltdown: “Well, you know, first Fannie and Freddie, different because quasi-government agencies there where government had to step in because the adverse impact all across our nation, especially with homeowners, is just too impacting.”

Too impacting? Are Fannie and Freddie wisdom teeth?

All-Star Superman

The genius of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's masterful Superman epic is that they've taken the archetypal Superman -- the one who doesn't appear so much in comics and movies and cartoons as he does in your head when you're a kid absorbing all these things -- and made him the center of the story. This is a series that celebrates and ennobles every Superman story you've ever loved by distilling the purest essence of the character into four colors and twelve issues; it defines every character so perfectly and precisely that you wonder if there's anything left to say about them -- and then you remember the surprises each character has for us throughout the series. This, after all, is a book that, in its final issue, gives Steve Lombard, the Daily Planet sportswriter who makes a hobby out of bedeviling Clark Kent, a redemptive moment. He learns better and he changes and he tries to make amends. That's not just a grace note, it's an encapsulation of the theme of the book and meaning of the character: We can be better than we are, if we only try. And Superman can help us do it.

Palin thoughts, serious and otherwise

In no real order:

• As the father of a daughter, I applaud any breaking of the glass ceilings in our society. I am glad that a mediocre female politician has been given the same opportunity that a mediocre male politician would have had in the past.
  
• Palin is not really supposed to appeal to disaffected Clinton supporters or women; she's intended to appeal to the hardcore theocratic right-wing faction of the Republican party. These are the folks who have always been suspicious of or hostile to McCain, and he'd be certain to lose if they stayed home in appreciable numbers on November 4. The question now is whether Palin, who among other things is a creationist, tried to ban books as mayor, is lying about her opposition to the "Bridge to Nowhere" (she was for it before it was convenient for her to be against it), abused her office seeking payback against an estranged relative, and more, is sufficiently nutty as to alienate voters in the middle of the political spectrum.
  
• I suspect she is; in 2004, rallying the base was enough for Bush to eke out a narrow win over Kerry, but that base -- and Republican identification among the electorate -- is much smaller now than it was four years ago.
  
• As Lance notes, it is a mistake to assume Palin is a lightweight. On the other hand, I cannot listen to her without recalling Stuart's mom offering Beavis and Butt-head breakfast burritos.
  
• Imagine for a second that the Obamas had a pregnant unmarried teenage daughter. Now imagine the right-wing freakout over it. Go ahead. Get back to me when you stop screaming for it to stop.
  
• I really figured that Tagg was going to be the weirdest candidate's child's name in 2008.
  

Shocked, yes, SHOCKED

Isn't it amazing how Senator Clinton gave a speech last night that reaffirmed the core principles of her own campaign while criticizing the opposing party's nominee and expressing full-throated support for her party's candidate? Who would have thought that a smart, savvy, and tough politician -- and whatever criticisms I may have made of her during the primary campaign, she is all of those things -- would do exactly what she needed to do in her speech? It's almost like she's a smart, savvy, and tough politician or something.

Scranton

As I watched the prospect of Joe Biden as Obama's running mate get kicked around on cable the last few nights, I was struck by something I noticed during the endless death march that was the Pennsylvania primary. Namely, when did Pennsylvania, and Scranton in particular, become this magical land filled with "regular people"? I was a hardcore political junkie as a teenager -- to the extent that in 1990, my Sunday afternoons revolved around C-SPAN's weekly airing of campaign ads from around the country -- and don't ever recall hearing Scranton invoked as the heart and soul of "regular America." Was it after I left in 1992?

Unfocused linkblogging

Neat stuff I've run across this week:

• Wired profiles Neal Stephenson in advance of his next novel, Anathem.
  
• Take the McCain house tour!
  
• John Scalzi talks about the neurology of emotional reactions to written and visual fiction.
  
• Absolutely nothing has changed in the presidential race. Obama has a small but steady and significant lead. He has had a small but steady and significant lead for months.
  
• More than you ever wanted to know about the novelization of Gremlins, which I'm fairly sure I owned at one point in my preadolescence (which means it's got a good chance of still being in a box in my parents' basement).
  
• The Savage Dragon endorses Obama.
  
• Obama's reshaping the Democratic party.
  
• Bronze medal winners are happier than silver medal winners.
  

This sketch seems vaguely familiar somehow.

Edwards

The more that comes out about the John Edwards scandal, the more disappointed and disgusted I get. What goes on in a marriage is the business of the people in it -- but to act as recklessly and stupidly as Edwards did while running for president, in a campaign that placed Edwards' marriage to Elizabeth Edwards front and center, makes it more than just a private matter. Suffice to say that my support for Edwards was predicated on his not being terminally reckless and stupid.

The only other thing I have to say is that Edwards should consider this advice that was offered to Tom Delay a few years ago and follow the example of the British politician Jack Profumo:

In 1963, a British politician named John D. “Jack” Profumo became embroiled in a scandal when it was revealed that he was having sexual relations with a young woman who was also seeing a Russian diplomat widely acknowledged to be a spy. (The incident was dramatized in the excellent 1989 film “Scandal” starring Ian McKellen as Profumo.)

At first, Profumo denied he was involved with the young woman. But as the evidence mounted, he admitted the affair and resigned his position as secretary of state for war. The scandal rocked the conservative government, leading to the downfall of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

What Profumo did after his resignation is interesting. Unlike the young woman he had been involved with, Profumo didn’t write a book or try to capitalize on his behavior in any way. He maintained a public silence and went to work at a soup kitchen called Toynbee Hall, in London’s gritty East End. (His wife stayed with him and also devoted herself to charitable work.) Eventually, Profumo became the chief fund-raiser for Toynbee Hall. His contacts brought in millions. Independently wealthy, Profumo never accepted a salary from Toynbee.

Profumo died on March 9. Of course the obituaries mentioned the scandal, but all went on to say that Profumo had earned redemption. He was lauded for his service to society. Francis Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford and a well known social reformer who died in 2001, once remarked that he “felt more admiration [for Profumo] than [for] all the men I’ve known in my lifetime.”

There are second acts in American life. But you have to earn them.

Also note: Profumo started out cleaning toilets, and had to be persuaded to use his contacts to fundraise.

More Twin Peaks talk

ME: I even bought the soundtrack.

SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED: OK.

ME: And the Julee Cruise spin-off album.

SWMBO: I...see. (SWMBO sidles down the couch a bit)