JOHN MC CAIN - THE OLD WAR HORSE
You know, it's really funny how the generation born under the most "liberated" political conditions in the late sixties and early seventies, grew up to be so politically reactionary. This is despite the fact that they have never known a Democratic President who wasn't strong on foreign policy. Mostly this generation has never known a time when a Republican President was not At War somewhere in the world. But this generation also never knew of a time when we didn't have computers or electronic video games, or a time when America had any "exestential crisis". They have lived their whole lives thinking that the hyper patriotism of today was always normal, and that there was EVER a time when we actually worried about "Civil liberties violations of citizens". John Mc Cain was on CBS yesterday and spoke of Assad and the Syrian crisis and puzzled why this situation - - more than any other, should be something we seem to be completely ignoring. If ever there was a case for some sort of invervention this would be it in my oppinion. Mc Cain of course believes that ANY talk of a withdrawal in Afghanistan - - EVER it seems (ten years is not long enough for a war) any hint of withdrawal at any time in the future would be viewed by the Talliban as a sign of weakness. Of course now the tea party regards John Mc Cain's nomination in 2008 as a mistake because he was too liberal and failed to represent the rank and file of the Tea Party which, by the way, did not even exist them.
THAT EIGHTIES SHOW - THE MINISERIES
I think we should do a TV mini-series called “1981” or something. It would be a pure propaganda piece and part sitcom and part dramatic. It could be a whole season if the mini-series catches on. The plot goes something like this. There is a married man and woman with three kids. The father is a closet homosexual and they just discovered a new undiscovered condition that’s incurable condition they’ve called GRIDS for gay related immune deficiency sidrone. He’s got one son who’s just been in the military but agreed to commit himself to the Reserves knowing he’d never be called up. There is a line about Saddam Hussein being bombed by Israel to take out their nuclear facility and jokes are made about “He sounds like a fairly dangerous fellow, maybe our government should send over a hundred thousand ground troops and remove him from power”. Someone else says “That’ll be the day” and they all have a good belly laugh over that one. There is a teenage daughter going into her senior year in high school. Her father just paid for her to have an abortion because “He wanted to insure that her future was not endangered”. There are also passing reference to how much health care costs for the entire family. We open in the summer of 1981 and she spends a lot of time at the water slides and someone says ‘I don’t trust those things. One of them malfunctioned last week. I think it’s just a fad that will never last. She also spends a lot of time at the beach and one paler girlfriend says “I spent two hours out in the sun and got a sun burn” and meanwhile everyone else on the beach is really dark. And the other girl says “It’s just a sun burn it will be over in a day or so”. And there is a lot of stuff about Reagan and the Air Traffic controllers and breaking up the Union. And people at work talk about the ongoing baseball strike and ‘How all these Unions just have too much power now anyway”. And the father has a sister who had a boob job in the ‘seventies and was a porn star for a while, but now she’s married to a man who has “found Jesus” and listens to a Gene Scott personage on TV who smokes a cigar. And he says that Cecil Rhodes is dangerous because he believes in applying principles of the Sermon on the Mount to one world government. And the husband of the sister listens to Dylan but his friends tell him that “Bob Dylan was doing a lot better stuff five or six years ago” and reefers to “Serve Somebody” as a piece of crap. Meanwhile this guy is a gun nut and is planning to move to Idaho. His wife (the first guy’s sister) lost her job and her medical care. And the fundamentalist husband says it costs less to live in Idaho and goes on a rant about gun rights and how you can no longer smoke in a business office, “It’s positively uncivilized”. And some other guy mentions a hunting accident where one guy accidently shot another in the face. And there is a lot of stuff about Jerry Brown and the Med Fly crisis. And there is talk of the other three Beatles now reuniting to do a Beatle album in John Lennon’s honor, and speculation as to whether from now on Yoco Ono will be the one we look to for new albums. And there are rants about how Mental Insane people routinely get off for major murders, and pretty soon Charles Manson will be getting out of prison because “He’s already been in ten years, and that’s a long time by today’s standards”. And there are lady head shrinkers talking about how impotency is purely a psychological and not a physical ailment. And how wives should ask their husbands for permission to have an affair to “explore their sexuality”. And all the talk show radio programs are flaming liberals and argue things like Reagan’s tax cut for the rich from 70% to 50% and someone says it will stimulate jobs- - and the host mentions how the economic statistics for the month of July 1981 were very adverse and joked about the Market headed tword six hundred on the Dow Jones Industrials. And there are the usual “Voodu Economics” references. And there are debates about the Brady Bill, and some people express the opinion that they think the “Moral Majority” itself contains the seeds of evil. And there is stuff about the Granvill letter on stocks, and how it has been proved correct lately with the gloom and doom. And The lead guy in addition to a son in colleges and a daughter, also has a younger son just becoming a sophomore and is into punk rock and listens to Adam and the Ants, and the Dead Kennedies and the Clash the Cure and Susie and the Banchees and Oingo Boingo and early U2 and the Ramones and Blue Oyster Cult even. And his father told him he could sniff glue or aerosol cans to get high but just don’t use marijuana because that’s an illegal drug. And there is stuff about the computer revolution and video games like Space Invadors and Asteroids. And there is stuff about computerized typewriters that automatically retype documents to reset the margins and the spacing - - and Lotus 1-2-3. And there is talk of the IBM PC when it comes out in September and real 5 ½ inch floppy disks and how they hold 386 Kilobytes of information, and how they can be programmed to “play music” by beeping out a simple tune in BASIC, and how wonderful DOS BAT files are. And I guess there a few Star Wars references. There is stuff about the planetary alignment in early 1982 and the end of the world, particularly after President Mubarek is shot in early October. And the son who was in the Army wanted to get a paying job originally but Reagan closed down the Jobs program- - just as unemployment was Rising. And he takes an economics course where the teacher says by the time they are their parents age the minimum wage will easily be eighteen to twenty dollars an hour “if present trends continue” and most likely more than that. And there are references to Hi Fi magazine and turn tables and styluses and such. And perhaps a few big video cameras are brought out. And there are references to how Alexander Haig has been running the country since Reagan’s shooting and maybe it isn’t the real Reagan any more and besides “He’s awfully old to be President. He’s seventy now - - how long can he last?” And the main leading man falls into despair knowing that he has an unknown incurable ailment but he can’t talk about it with anybody because to even admit that you’re a bi-sexual would be too horrible to contemplate. And then the guy’s own wife loses her job and she, too loses her medical insurance. And meanwhile the bills are piling up. And interest rates are so high the real estate equity is dropping in their house because they had to pay “triple digits” over a hundred thousand for their home back in the “real estate bubble” and he says “How could I have paid over a hundred thousand for that home?” And there are numerous reference to rich people who have “six figure salaries”. Like I say you could end the TV mini series with “The conclusion of all of this has yet to be determined” or something.
ODE T0 MIKE WALLACE
They had a tribute to Mike Wallace for the full hour of Sixty Minutes. The first segment was mainly interviews of political and criminal figures. The second portion was interviews with celebreties, including that famous pianist with the funny accent and the sense of humor and how he played like he was “possessed”. And there was Mel Brooks and how Mel kind of “took over the interview” himself and was the only person I recall who could Dominate Mike Wallace. Mike was nice to Tina Turner. Mike was born Myron and was slated to be an Attorney but then he got a role in 1941 as the radio announcer for The Green Hornet, and his carrier was off and running. He did numerous fluff bits on early Television, and did advertisements for Philip Morrice I believe. But he lost his nineteen year old son Peter in 1962 who fell off a mountain, and then Wallace decided he needed to be more “meaningful” and went to work for CBS news. Of course Wallace got in arguments with the Sixty Minutes producer. That show started in 1968. And Moorley Safer, of the people still alive, knew him better than any other. Mike got into a lot of arguments and at times squabbled over who would do which interview. When he was with John Erlichman he rattled off this whole series of crimes and Erlichman just looks at him and says “is there a question in there somewhere”? He accused The Ayatola of being “nuts” because Sadat had said he was but the guy refused to translate. He faced down Vladimir Putin on the political Corruption. He got Malcolm X to admit that “Basically I am a dead man already”. And he also faced down small time swindlers and big time hoods who murdered people. He interviewed a chief instigator of the Mi Lie Masacre in 1969. In his later years he backed away from these “confrontation pieces” out just to embarrass small time crooks, but learn little new information. Mike Wallace always tried to make it clear that he had studied up on every issue and asked well placed questions and expected real answers. Mike could not even invision the idea of a Retirement. He thought “reflection on life” was pointless. And in that observation I am sympathetic. He had a bout of Depression and became a poster boy for Depression and once took sleeping pills in 1986. That was a pretty good year to try it. L986 was a pretty sucky year for me - - particularly the second half. At age 93 when he died he never really showed his age till close to the end. He always had that Jack Webb personality - - like an investigative cop.
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