I know there was a lot of soul-searching and hand-wringing over the Democrats employing the "Nuclear Option" in dealing with judicial and presidential appointments. I wish it hadn't happened. But it also seems like it sort of had to. The Republican Party had pretty much broken apart the concept of governing by majority rule, which has long been the cornerstone of...well, pretty much all democracies in history.
One senator, David Vitter (R-LA), he of the hiring prostitutes, was even throwing around words he seemingly didn't understand, like "dictatorial." In reality, what the Democrats did was take a vote and pass a rule change by majority, which is the pretty much the exact opposite of "dictatorial." One may hate what got voted on, but it wasn't even remotely dictatorial. It was democratic, with a small "d." I also know that Republicans have said that Democrats will come to regret this. And the truth is that they may. I have no doubt that the GOP will use it one day when they're in power in the Senate. But what Republicans have to understand is that if this Nuclear Option hadn't passed, then Democrats would have used against them the unrelenting filibuster the next time Republicans were in a position to do anything. So, the GOP should think twice about being so fast to condemn, and might even find themselves grateful. Republicans also claim in "outrage" that this vote was a desecration of the history of the Senate. But the reality is that the Senate has changed its rules throughout its history. The concept of cloture, in fact, the votes needed to end a filibuster, isn't something that dates back to the beginning of the nation. It's less than 100 years old, having come into existence in 1917 when Woodrow Wilson wanted to find some way to not have his running World War I as Commander-in-Chief stymied at every turn by filibusters. In fact, if people are all that concerned with tradition, the world "filibuster" isn't even in the Constitution. The simple shocking statistic is that in the history of the United States, half of the filibusters that have taken place have been during the five years of the Obama Administration. If anything points to abuse of power, that may be it. But going further, one other statistic may point out the problem Republicans caused by themselves -- Yesterday, not long after the Nuclear Option passed, Richard Toronto's nomination for a federal judgeship was finally voted on. Mr. Toronto had been nominated a year-and-a-half ago, and Republicans had been blocking it. Yet when at last the vote came to the floor, he passed by a vote of -- are you ready? -- 91--0!!! Not a single Republican voted against him...despite blocking his nomination for 18 months. That means their only issue was not with the nominee, but that they didn't want to pass anything offered by the President of the United States, Barack Obama. That is no way to run a government. That is no way to run a democracy. And so it changed. I wish it didn't have to. But the Republican Party pushed itself over the cliff. If there are ramifications from it in the future, that's life, that's democracy. Some of those ramifications may well be galling, to both sides. And both sides will learn to leave with it. And hopefully prosper.
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Here's Roger Miller's acceptance speech in 1985 when he won for writing the score to Big River. It was a big deal for a few reasons, which is why you see him so particularly happy and appreciative. First, of course, he was such an unlikely choice to write the music and lyrics to a Broadway show. Though a very successful songwriter and performer, most notably the great song, "King of the Road," it was not only for country music, but often off-beat country music, hardly the stuff of Broadway, particularly at the time. Also, it was extremely rare for a popular singer/songwriter to write a Broadway show. It's much more common now (Cyndi Lauper won just last year, for Kinky Boots), but as far as I know, it might even have been the first time it had been done -- at the very least the first done such a person had won the Tony. But most especially, he'd hit hard times, largely due to having had a drug problem, which took him out of the mainstream for quite a while. And he'd been at the top of that stream, even having a popular national TV variety show. So, it was all the more a stretch when producer Rocco Landesman contacted him about writing the show's score -- and turned into a great triumph and return for him. In the video, by the way, that's Landesman who you'll see Miller give a bear hug to on the way to the stage. Presenting the award is George Hearn, who the year before had won the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical with La Cage aux Folles. (I've edited the video of the full ceremonies down to this presentation, and it should work fine, though I've had glitches testing it. For some bizarre reason, it sometimes jumps to a collage of end-images while playing over some singing from somewhere in the show. But -- if it does that, there appears an easy, inexplicable fix. Just go to the lower-left corner where you'll see a circular refresh-arrow. Click on that, and All Will Be Well. I hope. Well, enough of that, let's find out. Curtain up...) Before emptying my Junk Mail folder, I skim it to see if anything important had gotten blocked by accident. This morning, I saw an email with the subject heading, "Hear ladies scream in bed." I have the "From" column fairly narrow, so all I could see there is that it was sent by "Enlarge wi...", but alas I couldn't see the rest.
Yes, of course, we all have a pretty good idea what they were suggesting be enlarged, so though men could hear ladies scream in bed. But I have another thought, I think that was either a trick to get me to click or that the "From" line said in full something like, ""Enlarge windowpanes Company." And that instead of what one was expecting when clicking on "Hear ladies scream in bed," what you'd get when clicking was audio recordings of -- "Will you get out of bed already?!!" "If you think I'm bringing you breakfast there, hell will freeze over first, Mister!!" "Look at you!! Still laying there like a fat lump!" "It's your baby, too!! I gave birth to it, YOU get it to stop crying!!" "Haven't you showered yet?!!" "Do you have any idea how disgusting that looks?!!" "Mow the lawn already!!!" "Do you plan to ever get a job, or are you just going to lay there forever??!!" "She's my mother, you have to be there for dinner!!" "Oh, for God's sakes, stop snoring!!!!!" I believe I officially hit the big time! A Sarah Palin admirer on Twitter just chastised my article about the former half-term governor for "spreading ignorance." (To be fair, it's possible that he may have been praising me.) My favorite part though may have been how he phrased it. I wrote back, gee,, why in the world would he possibly think I would be insulted by that? Unfortunately, Twitter only allows 140 characters, so it was impossible to reply how I really wanted to. Like, say to him that I took it as a big honor that someone who describes himself on his homepage as a follower of Sarah Palin and therefore clearly knows so much about spreading ignorance would single out my work. I also wanted to ask him how he knew that a full half of my readers were alienated by criticism of Ms. Palin? Personally, I would have put the number far lower, but he apparently has different polling data. In addition, I wanted to explain that without knowing his standards for alienating others, it wasn't possible for me to be insulted by a total stranger. I considered, too, about replying that my job wasn't "devoted" to spreading ignorance but that it was just a lucky byproduct -- but I had the sense he might take that the wrong way. Also, I thought about simply just answering his question, and saying that, no, I didn't see my job as spreading ignorance, and that I was happy to help clear that up for him. I also decided to not say that, given how he also described himself as a Green Bay Packers fan, I wasn't surprised at him being a follower of Sarah Palin and bewildered by the world. But being a Packers fan, I figured he wouldn't get it, and thought it best to just stick with politics. I intentionally did leave out that the correct spelling is "you're," since as someone who often makes typos, I felt that unfair. Besides, with this being Twitter, he might have just been saving one character. So, in the end, I just went with, gee, why would he possibly think I wouldn't be insulted by being accused of spreading ignorance and alienating half my readers? Not to my shock, he didn't get the sarcasm, and instead actually answered my question. Again, so many things to answer, and so few characters allowed. So, I left out saying that I had a feeling that people who were admirers of Sarah Palin saw anyone to the left of Attila the Hun as a "radical left winger." I also wanted to ask him to name three things that Sarah Palin had accomplished in her entire career in politics, up through quitting halfway through her term as governor. But that seemed a better thing to save for a latter tweet, if needed.
Instead, I chose to be thoughtful and just go with straightforward, and explained that he had missed the point of my previous note, saying "No, what I meant was that after you intentionally tried to insult me, why would you think I shouldn't be insulted by that?" Alas, he never answered. Yet I still feel honored. The other day, I was writing about John Goodman and talked here about him in the musical Big River, based on Huckleberry Finn, which I'd driven down to San Diego to see with my friend Adam Bezark in its pre-Broadway tryout at the La Jolla Playhouse. The show had with a score by the great country music legend Roger Miller, and I embedded audio of Goodman's song as Pap Finn, "Guv'ment," but thought it would be nice to show a bit of the musical. This is from the 1985 Tony Awards, when Big River won Best Musical. It's a medley of two of the better songs, "Muddy Water" and "River in the Rain," both song by Daniel Jenkins as Huck, and Ron Richardson as Jim. I always liked the staging of the river and how they blended the raft into it, and you'll get a sense of that here. Worth noting is that the company joins them for a reprise at the end, and as the camera pans, you'll be able to spot newcomer John Goodman, as he's starting his career. It comes at the 4:21 mark -- you'll see an actor playing Mark Twain, dressed all in his white panama suit, and three people to his left (your right) is Goodman. But let's head down to the waterfront as Huck and Jim have to rush to get away... I've written quite a bit about an up-and-coming filmmaker, Jessie Kahnweiler. (You can read the first piece here.) Well, as I often say, I tries nots to steers ya wrong. Ms Magazine has a very good interview with her, about her latest short film -- which I wrote about a month or so back.
The film (which she stars in, wrote and directed) is controversial, and not for everyone. But me, I was impressed, for it being bold and generally very funny -- in a dark, "I can't believe she's doing this" way. While laughing on the outside, it's about how when a woman is raped, she keeps that rapist with her wherever she goes. The article has the short film embedded in it, so you can see it there. |
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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