Well, at least we have a better idea now why Michele Bachmann left Congress. It appears to be because she was training for the pulpit. “We in our lifetimes potentially could see Jesus Christ returning to earth and the Rapture of the church,” the Most Reverend Ms. Bachmann said during a radio interview, or sermon, or whatever it was exactly. "We see the destruction, but this was a destruction that was foretold.”
And who precisely is the cause of the coming Armegeddon? Oh, tosh, c'mon, folks, seriously now, who do you think? "We are literally watching, month by month, the speed move up to a level we’ve never seen before with these events. Barack Obama is intent," she intoned. "It is his number one goal to ensure that Iran has a nuclear weapon.” Of course, it's Barack Obama's fault. For a guy who was only a community organizer, he's certainly got a whole lot of power. At least now, though, we know why so many on the radical Religious Right most likely consider him "the Dark Lord." The only thing I don't understand is why that hasn't become an open talking point in the conservative media and House floor. After all, the Truth Shall Set Them Free. By the way, it will not likely shock you to know that the name of the radio show Ms. Bachmann was on is End Times. So, perhaps this was nothing more than knowing her audience. Or really just a case of -- literally -- preaching to the choir. In case her finger pointing wasn't clear, though, Ms. Bachmann made her point as blunt as she could from her bully pulpit. “Any nation that accepts God and his principles is blessed, and those who push away are cursed," she spaketh. "That’s what we’re seeing happen to the United States. We will suffer the consequences as a result.” Now, obviously, one could refute all this with fact and logic, including that things are really all that bad if the nation was actually crumbling. After all, unemployment is down, the budget deficit is down, new jobs are up, health coverage is up, Israel is actually our strong ally in the Middle East, and the very point of the negotiations with Iran is to block them from having nuclear arms and creating a peaceful resolution, rather than push all nations into a cataclysmic war. One would think that that latter is more in line with the Prince of Peace's thinking, but then fact and logic have little place in the kind of sermon Ms. Bachmann and her minions prefer to spew. Instead, though, rather than dive into a fruitless debate, I prefer to ponder a simple, basic question about what the radical Religious Right have been trying to pawn off about what Ms. Bachmann reminded us: Jesus Christ pushing away the faithless and cursing those nations who don't accept Him as their Savior. If what she and they are saying is true, that Jesus will annihilate any nation who forsakes Him -- why then hasn't He wiped Iran off the face of the earth already? As well as Iraq, and Syria, and Afghanistan? And for that matter, all the Middle East...including Israel, since they certainly don't even remotely follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. That's almost the very point why there is an Israel. And we haven't even gotten to China and Russia. For that matter, I'm hard-pressed to think of any nation in the world who, as a nation, makes it law that all its citizens must follow the teachings of the Christian religion and adhere to the New Testament, rather than a secular constitution. The closest I can come is the Vatican, and they aren't really "a nation" in the United Nations kind of way we think of countries. So, why put all the blame on the United States for its heathenism, let alone lay it at the poor feet of President Obama? None of the world is the way the radical Religious Right wants it to be. Which, alas, may be what bothers them so much. To be clear, this isn't a debate here about whether the United States is "A Christian Nation" (tm). Since it's nowhere in the Constitution, which is the basis of all law in the country, after all, and therefore remains a debating point solely in the minds of the Believers, who prefer to ignore the First Amendment -- which one would think is hard to miss, being first and all -- we'll leave that for radio shows like End Times to discuss among themselves. Instead, we'll just return to my original question. If what Michele Bachman is preaching in her sermon and other like-believers insist, that Jesus Christ will curse and destroy all nations who don't accept His principles as law -- why does the entire Middle East still exist? What is Jesus waiting for? They haven't followed His teachings there for the 2,000 years since He was born. He's certainly had more than enough time to catch on.and make up His mind. He couldn't have missed the Crusades or Inquisition. They were in all the papers. But then, maybe He has made up his mind. Maybe Jesus Christ knows precisely what is going on in the world -- that's a pretty fair bet, and most especially a certainty to those on the radical Religious Right -- and He has made up His mind. And what He decided is that He's okay with it. Live and let live. We are all our brothers keepers, and sisters. And whatever a person believes about God is between that person and...well, God. And everyone else should just butt out and mind their own business, and not pretend to play God. Besides, if God had wanted mankind to listen to Michele Bachmann, He'd have made her president. Not a guest on End Times.
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This is a joyful performance from the BBC Proms concert in 2010 of “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid” by Stephen Sondheim from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. On its pure surface level, not knowing any of the principals involved, this is simply a treat to watch. The reason it caught my eye, though, is because the main burly performer with a beard is Simon Russell Beale, who is one of my dad’s three favorite stage actors from my folks’ trips to London. (The other two are Michael Gambon and Henry Goodman. So, he has pretty good taste...) Most people here probably don't have a clue who Simon Russell Beale is. (Not that it remotely proves anything, but the London newspaper The Independent has called him "the greatest stage actor of is generation.") Beale is an acclaimed and hugely versatile actor whose great-many roles include starring in Hamlet and Macbeth at the National Theatre, starring in Uncle Vanjya at the Donmar Warehouse, playing Iago in Othello at tte National Theatre, and also playing in musical comedy, as Dr. Pangloss in Candide at the National Theatre, and King Arthur on Broadway in Spamalot. If you saw any of the Hollow Crown series of Shakespeare "Henry" plays from the BBC, shown on PBS, he won a BAFTA Award for supporting actor playing Falstaff. In addition, as the song develops, the last singer to come on near the end is the great opera star Bryn Terfel (who my dad and I saw in Sondheim's Sweeney Todd at the Chicago Lyric Opera -- a role he reprised last year that was shown on PBS, opposite Emma Thompson. . Making this all the more fun for the live audience there is that the song is written in a way that gets the audience to keep thinking it’s over, and then keeps adding verses – and adding performers, which is part of the joke in the show. Just to complete the record, the second performer in the number -- who starts out alone on stage with Beale, and who you see below -- is Daniel Evans, who starred as Candide in that same, aforementioned production which included Simon Russell Beale, so this is a "reunion" of sorts. And the third performer is Julian Ovendon, who has an extensive career on the stage and TV, but is probably best-known to audience as Andrew Foyle, the son of Chief Inspector Foyle on Foyle's War, and as Capt. Von Trapp in the live-British TV production of The Sound of Music that aired on PBS. (Well, it was live when it originally aired in England...)
Last Monday, I wrote about former Vice-President Dick Cheney's quote about how the burden that President Barack Obama is leaving for whoever his successor is. Well, actually, I left out the quote, saying that I didn't care, down to the tiniest particle of any known substance...adding that there hasn't been enough gall created since the beginning of time for me to care about what Dick Cheney has to say that's critical of others about the burdens of an Administration left to presidential successors.
It turns out that Jon Stewart had a similar reaction but took the opposite tack. For Stewart, he didn't care either what Dick Cheney had to say, but there were limits, and the former Republican VP had gone after. And so, on Thursday, he responded this way. Magnificently. Oh, that Stewart fellow will be missed. I heard the strangest radio ad this morning. I was listening to one of the classical music stations, KMZT, and this ad came on that was one of those high-energy commercials we hear all the time when a TV network is promoting their line-up for that night.
The overly enthusiastic announcer was telling us that there were 10 great reasons to watch CBS tonight, And those 10 great reasons included included brand news episodes of a bunch of shows, including Two-and-Half Men, which struck me as very odd, because the program had its series finale two months ago. But even odder, was that one of the other shows on tonight was The Crazy Ones. And I thought, wait, what's The Crazy Ones, ohhh, it that the show with Robin Williams?? No, it couldn't be because -- mind you, this was all rushing through my mind in about a second, because -- then the announcer went on with even more enthusiasm than before, "...And that stars Robin Williams! Did I mention that it stars...Robin Willams?!! Yes, Robin Williams!" And then the announcer zipped along with equal enthusiasm for the rest of tonight's schedule. And by "tonight," I mean April 20, 2015. Eight months after Robin Williams committed suicide. (And two months after Two-and-a-Half Men went off the air, as well.). So, when I said, "the strangest radio ad," I really meant it. The only thing I could think of at the time was that sometimes shows have some un-aired episodes, and since we're in re-run period they figure it might be a good time to either just dump them and give them higher visibility amid the competing re-runs. But even that didn't make sense, because if you're going to air an episode of the late Robin Williams' cancelled series, you're probably going to do it in a way to make it seem special with a tenderness. Not oblivious to reality and just send it out as one more "wacky thing" from the wacky guy. Even TV networks never strike me as that clueless. In fact, they're actually pretty smart about promoting the bejeepers out of something that has the slightest promotional value, if they have their mind set to it. It's the sort of thing that if CBS oddly decided to put on an un-aired episode of the show, they'd make sure the announcer slowed down, and lowered his voice to be as emotional and oh-so-deeply sincere as possible to tell us about tonight they'll be a very special episode of Robin Williams in his final, never-been-seen performance. Not a wacky, "And starring Robin Williams. Did I mention that it stars...Robin Williams? Yes, Robin Williams!!" As I said, very, very strange. And it got even stranger because I decided to check the CBS schedule tonight -- and none of those shows are airing tonight. Not Two-and-a-Half Men. Not The Crazy Ones with Robin Williams. A totally different schedule. The best I can figure is that somehow KMZT had a CBS ad to air, and somehow they either were sent or had in their archive an old ad from nine months ago, and it didn't get checked, or just automatically got played as scheduled. But even that's odd because I listen to the station a lot and don't particularly remember them airing an ad for the CBS primetime schedule before. (It's possible, and I don't listen to the station all day, and enough time has passed that I could have forgotten it. Though an enthusiastic ad like this really stood out.) Anyway, it doesn't appear that CBS will be airing these 10 great reasons to watch tonight. Or even 11, since they excitedly gave us a bonus reason... What's going on with KMZT is another matter entirely. There's a terrific and long interview with Jon Stewart, written by Hadley Freeman in the London Guardian. He talks about the reasons that went into his decision to leave The Daily Show, as well as discussion the show itself and his movie Rosewater, which he's in London promoting. There's also some interesting biographical discussion of his early life.
(By the way, if you haven't seen Rosewater -- and most people haven't -- it's really quite good. Unfortunately, his distributor really did an awful job getting the film out. There were no screenings of it during Awards Season, and it even took Netflix a long while to make it available. But the screenplay is smart, and moves along pretty well, and there are some very good directorial touches, most especially for a first-time director.) The article is titled, "Why I Quit The Daily Show, but that's a bit deceptive. He does talk about it at length, but it's not like there's some Great Revelation, just a general discussion of how his thinking led him to the decision. And most of the article is about many other things. Anyway, you can read the interview here. This week's contestant is Scott Hollopeter from Grand Blanc, Michigan. I didn't get the composer style on my first guess, but...it was my second guess, at least. As for the hidden song, though -- I could hear where the song was , but just couldn't get it. Then, near the end I took a stab at the only thing it sounded like, and...to my my shock (because it was not a well-known song), I was right. I'm sure there will be people who've never heard of the song, though enough will have. Ultimately, though, whether or not you know it, it''s a very nice piece to listen to.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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