Barbara Walters, RIP

This was exactly the kind of job more interviewers could have done and should have done more often. She was sometimes underestimated, often imitated, but definitely a trailblazer for women in tv journalism and an inspiration to many. 

Speaking Ill of the Ill-Starred Dead

 

There are people who find themselves appointed to unpleasant tasks and are called upon to serve, even in difficult circumstances, with zealous attention and exacting rectitude, to achieve a necessary goal with persistence and above all, honor. Ken Starr was not that guy.  And while one shouldn't speak ill specifically of the dead, I am not sure why I should stop a necessary conversation started while he was yet living.

He was, charitably, a nasty piece of work. 

He's most famous for dogging President Clinton and family and associates up until he came across an affair and dragged both the president and the 25-year-old intern through the most salacious interpretations of human interaction imaginable for partisan reasons. But he also defended Prop 8 and Jeffrey Epstein and ignored rape allegations at Baylor when he was president of the University.  He unironically defended Trump against impeachment in a way about as hypocritical as former impeachment manager Lindsey Graham. 

It's hard to imagine a person who took up for more horrendous things and yet (obviously) retained the respect of the larval creeps who managed to do stuff like get on the SCOTUS bench with his tutelage.  You know, like Brett Kavanaugh. 

If any of that sounds disrespectful to the dead, you should have heard what I would have said about him, alive. Probably even to his face with the appropriate lubrication. He had the opportunity to do an awful lot, and what he did was, well, awful. And a lot. 

On the Passing of the Queen

 

One isn't obligated to comment on the passing of every single meaningful personage, but in this case, I feel it should not go unremarked that while I didn't know her, I appreciate that her astonishing 70 year reign will feel like the passing of an era to so many among the 2 billion souls of the Commonwealth and elsewhere. 

Even hearing "God Save the King" seems jarring--and it seems like the royal formerly known as Prince Charles has accepted King Charles III because if he's gone by "Charles" for this long, how can you throw "George" or whatever on with one's coronation? It would be absurd.

I think the word that has echoed in remembrances that strikes me as awkward is "stability", If anything, Queen Elizabeth II represented a Great Generation face of the post-WW2 era of trying to move on. She wasn't responsible for colonialism, but represented the family that wrought the scars of empire on whole nations and was not, herself, the person who would ameliorate them. She maintained the face of the royal family and the duty to service of the state but did not essay to remake it.

Stability is a word that often means keeping up appearances. Maintaining a status quo.  Monarchs are not apt to be revolutionaries, and for my part, while I don't despise her for the sins of her ancestors, it only goes to show I am very white and my Irish ancestors left for the US a long while ago. I'm sure my distant cousins living through the Troubles would have felt differently and more personally about it. History has a bad habit of not judging people for what they failed to do when they weren't particularly expected to do it. 

As an American, I was able to view the Queen more as a character in a royal soap opera played out over the front pages of tabloids. I suppose that sounds seamy and I am not sure that isn't what the royals had coming. Randy Andy (who his mum covered for, and while love and duty are meaningful, so was his culpability), Charlie the Tampon, the dirty way they did Diana, Camilla the Homewrecking Vampire, Prince Phillip as a creature not unlike Fawlty Towers' "Major".  And Elizabeth, the resilient monarch, just keeping the whole rotting thing together. 

I toast, not the new King or the memory we have of his mother, but Archie and Lilibet, her great-grands via Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.  We in the US are supposedly shed of kings and queens (despite the coronation some want to push on a decrepit real estate magnate/game show host) and the idea of using human beings as a symbol just feels off to me. Maybe there needs to be a post-royal future--that what the family represents or is supposed to is just too batshit and stressful and they should just be healthy and work on themselves.  And the UK, etc. also moves on. Beyond an age of the romanticizing of personages based on their birthright, and on to something more meritocratic.  

These babies just got titles, but don't need them. I would like to believe we can move past such titles, as well. 

John Dingell: An Historic Life

Because John Dingell's life was so extraordinary as a witness to and participant in history and American politics, it feels weird to acknowledge him as a kind of great and feisty Twitter grandpappy--which is the way I will actually miss him. You follow some people on Twitter knowing of their contributions to politics or entertainment but come to admire them as people. I felt that way about the late Harry Leslie Smith, about Rose Marie, about Leonard Nimoy. I felt that way about John Dingell, who is his retirement took to social media and was a witty and incisive critic. It didn't obscure his congressional legend, it just reminded us he was still out there, sharp to the last. And still on the right side.

Recounting the life of John Dingell from his service record to his swearing in to finish his father's term in Congress, to his championing of universal health care, his participation in the passage of key environmental legislation, and his support for civil rights-- he tried to be on the right side. In his time, he evolved on LGBT rights.   He was outspoken about the collapse of our institutions and the lack of education about civics and history, and the fault that lay in the failure of government to always be truly representative. 

He was one of the good ones, and it is harder to know if we are sadder for his passing, than glad that we had him to begin with. 

 

Whether to Bury or Praise

There is something fortuitous in the historical placement of George Bush in wherever he happened to be in the course of his long life. He was fortunate in being born privileged, he was fortunate in surviving a brutal war. He was fortunate in politics, after a fashion. He married the love of his life, and one of his sons followed him in the White House. As lives go, it wasn't half bad. He was surrounded with admiration and love at the end of his life, and that's nothing to scoff at. We could all hope to do so well. 

He also benefited by being neither so wretched as Nixon or crass as Trump, and the halo of his dedication was in part burnished by the haplessness of his son's time in office, and the bar of doing politics had dropped to where service and decency, just by being part of one's make-up, were all that needed to be present to gloss over really harsh truths. But his record was mixed, and a pretty damn comprehensive blog post of the not-great bits was served by Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, & Money, so I'd say check that out for the stuff already said, and better than I would have, by him. 

As for me, I still simmer over 1988. This was the first presidential election I paid attention to, occurring after Iran-Contra, and in some way, my innocent soul thought Republicans should have been over, for at least this round. How in the world does a country accept Bush was "out of the loop" as a former head of CIA, and not think his principal job in taking office in the White House was to tidy up loose ends? I was all of sixteen and livid at the "pledge of Allegiance" nonsense and the entire crock of referring to Dukakis as an "ACLU card-carrying liberal" as if sticking up for the Bill of Rights was something to sneer at. Stupid wedge issue content (and maybe not the most competent campaign waged by Dukakis and Bentsen) dictated a win, and a pardon for several folks who participated in that debacle of literally extralegally arming a country that we considered a supporter of terrorism, to also extralegally support a faction in a war that wasn't any of our business. And cite the reason for these pardons as "patriotism". 

I still to this damn day don't know what American principles or interests were served by this thing. As with Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, it sits poorly with me as a violation of the concept that no one should be above the law. 

And the nomination of Clarence Thomas, whatever we think of his qualifications today or his sexual harassment concerns, was a slap in the face of civil rights legend Thurgood Marshall, whose seat he filled. As if this bland patrician looked on this black conservative, and gave no fucks for the vast difference in viewpoint but saw a certain blatant commonality, and rolled with it. 

I do not know the family or personally, any friends of George Bush. I knew I was slipping as a blogger when I tried to silver-lining the life of his beloved spouse. The War on Drugs,  and whatever crap example he set that made George W. Bush and Jeb Bush the politicians they were,  his poor response to the AIDS crisis, his feints to hardcore conservatism to try and obviate the claim he was a "wimp" which in some ways proved it--all stay in my memory as things that were part and parcel of his legacy, that should not be forgotten. 

And yet, in retrospect, he could have been so much worse. And he wrote lovely notes, and his family doesn't all suck, and his friendship with Clinton and Obama....? 

He was human, and we are all a mixed lot, and have redeeming features. He did his thing for charity, and I will allow I consider some of what people say about Carlyle Group and the defense industry and drawing arrows here and there from Halliburton/Dressher to the exploits in Iraq seems a bit paranoid. I can't dispute that the end of the Cold War would have been something difficult for any president to navigate. 

His family will bury him, and they can praise him as well. As well as can any of his loved ones. I am not in that circle, and I will tell the truth if I please. His civility was admirable. But we should not hurry to polish the reputations of those who have died when their legacies are still ongoing. And the stupid political postures of 1988 still resound in 2018. I can't shrug that off, or forget that Roger Ailes, who made Fox News, was one of his campaign advisors back in the day, and of course, the episode of peak Les Atwater--the Willie Horton ad. 

I am dry-eyed and unromantic about his legacy. We are here in it. And my Trump obit will definitely be even worse, come the day. I wish peace of mind to his surviving loved ones. (But not without clear memories.)

UPDATE: And just one other damn thing--he was for Brett Kavanaugh, and fuck him and his son and Brett Kavanaugh. But not the all the way, because none of them deserve the satisfaction. 

Margaret Thatcher, Dead at age 87

It seems like one should note the passing of Margaret Thatcher on a political blog, but I admit I don't have much direct experience of her politics and that, for me, she mostly existed in references as a shady harridan flitting through the type of music I listened to or as kind of a UK Reagan counterpart. Not especially flattering. I can bear a sort of respect for a woman exhibiting power and competence on the world stage and in the political imagination, but feh. I've always been of the opinion that it isn't just having power, but how it's used, that counts, and what I've seen and read leads me to view her more as a champion of inequality than of freedom. But I haven't much more to say about that.

Michael Jackson (1958-2009)--RIP

I was driving home from work listening to the Jersey guys on 101.5, just punching different stations. I was hoping to catch the weather, but they were joking about Michael Jackson being taken to the hospital with an apparent heart attack. Joking because, you know, it's a celebrity, and it was Michael Jackson, and he's, well, weird. And he had been pretty weird, for a long while.

Also, highly talented. Add to that, a little tragic. Make that, a lot tragic. But to the tabloids, mostly weird. I expect the coverage of his death is going to be no less weird than the coverage regarding his life. That's how it is.

I remember in 1983, Micheal Jackson wasn't really weird--he was hot. For people my age, a lot of us are going to remember Thriller as being one of the first albums we bought ourselves. I remember sitting on a bed with girlfriends singing along to it. I was probably right about the age where girls who really dig the Jonas Bros and Miley Cyrus are, now, with the exception that Micheal was actually good. His voice was compelling, his dance moves were almost extraterrestrial, his songs had verve....and in the age of videos, he set the standard of what a music video could be. "Thriller" was a musical movie short with brilliant choreography and effects. He was the King of Pop.

But there was always something just a little odd. Hyperbaric oxygen chambers to sleep in? His own zoo at his Neverland (how Peter Pan) abode/private theme park. Wanting to buy the Elephant Man skeleton?

But he kind of seemed to know what it was about--after all, he'd been in the spotlight since he was ten. An incredibly talented, but very young, vulnerable kid. In a big, sometimes dysfunctional family. So he knew about being in the spotlight, but he had maybe a little less of an idea about....being normal.

There are people who believe Micheal Jackson was a pedophile, and as for me, I can't say one way or the other. I just don't know. I would prefer to believe he was just a really confused person in some ways, musically gifted, but childlike and arrested in others. What I can say is, as certain things started making it clear he was a troubled person, like the drug issues and obvious frequent plastic surgeries, it seemed clear to me that this was a person who knew pain. And just like people say with genius sometimes comes eccentricity (apparently true with Jackson), it's also become axiomatic that people who've been abused sometimes do abuse. Life doesn't always make sense, and Michael Jackson's life kind of shows it.

When you look at his music and his performances, you see the brilliance shining through--the work and polish he applied to his natural talents. But sometimes there was a twist in that creativity. And while he had a great eye for staging his appearances (c'mon--he knew you knew who he was when he turned up in a surgical mask, or in some exotic costume), a look at his plastic-surgery-battered face seemed to suggest a deep insecurity. If half of what was said about him was true--he was a strange and even bad man. But the half that wasn't true doesn't say much about our gossiping culture. So let the man be--he's dead. I'll remember the artist.

When I saw this kind of anti-"Singing in the Rain" dance, I remember thinking it was angry, provocative, but jaw-dropping. It was like weaponized choreography.



Damn, but he could dance.