Open thread 11/3/22
Although they’re dancing together, the style is what Hines and not Baryshnikov specialized in. It’s hard to change styles, and Baryshnikov does a good job for a ballet dancer. But you can easily see the difference in training and approach. Going the other way – tap dancer to ballet dancer – is virtually impossible, except for someone like Tommy Rall who was highly trained and phenomenal in both styles (I’ve featured him here).
Bewitching sight! Thanks a lot, dear Neo <3
White Nights is a classic. I didn’t realize it was a Taylor Hackford film.
I would have thought that Hines would be very much taller than M.B. In the beginnings of the above scene it looks like about a 2 or 3 inch difference. IMDB lists their heights as 6′ and 5′ 7″. I noticed Baryshnikov is often a step closer to the camera which tends to equalize the perceived heights.
Neo, I am interested in your comments on the large shift by white suburban women in the polls. From the Wall Street Journal “The new survey shows that white women living in suburban areas, who make up 20% of the electorate, now favor Republicans for Congress by 15 percentage points, moving 27 percentage points away from Democrats since the Journal’s August poll.” Steve Hayward at powerline thinks this may be a reaction to the radical queer theory indoctrination in Government schools.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/11/what-are-the-pollsters-missing.php
Bob, waiting for Neo’s comments if she chooses to give them, I think it may be the radical queer theory indoctrination, but I suspect it’s more heavily the price of gas and groceries.
Here is a trailer for a new horror movie – from SNL of all places…
https://youtu.be/46WZfo1yFkI
Bob; Kate:
This poll indicates that inflation is the leading cause.
The change in the tennis moms voting is going to be a bunch of reasons –
– inflation (gas, food, eating out, baby formula, everything),
– loss of security for retirement (the 401Ks and IRAs loss of value)
– crime (no-cash bail issues, loss of police protection, how downtown now looks)
– impacts of illegal immigration (crime, drug deaths),
– education issues (CRT, queer theory, your kids are ours attitude),
– the insulting attitude of the Ds and media
The idea that we should all be concerned about Jan6th and climate change is ridiculous. Biden talks about the impact on democracy, yet we are organized as a constitutional republic so there are limits to the power of the federal government.
“Democracy” exists only at the local and state levels and I sometimes wonder about that status.
TommyJay:
I think both heights are exaggerations. I have stood next to Baryshnikov in ballet slippers and I estimate him as 5’4″ to 5’5″. Hines is often listed as 5’10”. Camera angles help even out the heights, too. And Hines slouches more.
I loved that movie, and I really loved that scene. Thanks!
https://vimeo.com/394958570
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQXrSELLSd4
https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/june-taylor
Neo has never critiqued June Taylor.
What a great room! Windows and skylight.
Neo,
Yes, I thought of the slouching after I wrote that. I loved looking at your old Tommy Rall piece.
Always enjoyed that scene. Two supreme talents together, great fun.
The stock market is continuing its declines. It whipsawed about 900 pts. on the Dow yesterday after conflicting messaging from the Federal Reserve yesterday.
The Fed is now looking at time lags in the data they analyze which suggests that they could be fearful of overdoing their interest rate increases. The market went up a little. Then chairman Powell said they are a long way from finished with rate increases and talked of the terminal or highest rate they will hit eventually. Somewhere in the 5 to 6% Fed funds rate, people wonder? The market then tanked. Down again today.
An interesting specific example of real economic troubles is the company Zoetis. They make pharmaceuticals for pets and livestock. They got hammered today because they missed on both the earnings and revenues they reported after the close yesterday and they adjusted future guidance downward. Why?
One might have thought that people taking care of their pets was relatively recession resistant. The problems the company cited were: Labor force problems in veterinarian clinics (hiring?), supply chain problems (still?), and foreign exchange problems. It is harder to make a profit selling products overseas with a strong dollar.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/strong-dollar/
Neo, here is what Hayward says regarding inflation and other explanations:
“As the Journal article explains, the shift isn’t just limited to congressional vote preference, but seems to be cascading down ticket. What explains this? The Journal speculates that the reaction to the Dobbs decision has worn off, and while this is possible, the longer you think about it the less persuasive it seems. What has changed since August? If anything, you’d expect the opposite: Democrats have intensified their anti-Dobbs messaging, which ought to reinforce the supposed pro-choice leanings of suburban women. Is it inflation? Inflation was just as bad in August, so this explanation is also less than fully convincing for such a large shift. Crime? Same thing.
The opinion polls all cite inflation and crime as the driving issues, but I’ve noticed some glaring omissions from the issue panels the pollsters have been using to identify the key movers of voter opinion: the COVID school closure hangover, and the cultural issues involved in public education today (especially “gender fluidity” and related enthusiasms of the cultural left). Virtually no poll asks any questions about these issues, even though they played a prominent role in the Virginia governor’s race last year.”
Bob:
I absolutely agree that the parent/school issues are big too. Just because inflation might be the first issue cited, and crime the second, doesn’t mean that those other issues aren’t important. It all has a synergistic effect.
As for why now, I think it’s a few things. The first is that it’s not temporary; these problems have gone on and on and on. The second is that people are probably taking a closer look at the GOP candidates and are surprised to find they’re not as bad or as extreme as they had assumed them to be – they’re simply talking common sense. The third is that pollsters may be using different proportions of Republicans versus Democrats than during the summer, and that can affect the results as well.
Hard to get passed the attack ads if you only watch the left news and local stations. Here in CO the ads are almost all about abortion, and we have on demand to birth abortion here. And we will stay Blue, sorry to say
I bumped into Hines at a Macintosh convention here in Boston in the late 80’s. I was going to invite him to dinner at our house but he clearly gave off “leave me alone vibes.” My wife would have been through the moon as a big dance fan. I remember him as being short. I’m not a tall guy either at 5’9”.
With that hair, MB looked like a kid.
Liz @ 1:21 pm has identified the issues, but I can’t help thinking this is the critical issue moving suburban moms back to the Republican party.
– education issues (CRT, queer theory, your kids are ours attitude)
Moms have seen first hand the decline of education with the lockdowns of the COVID era. And rather than focusing on helping their kids recover from the traumas of the past years– the education mafia have moved on to CRT and transgender madness.
Inflation looms large, then the other issues create the anxiety of keeping Democrats in power.
Richard Aubrey:
He was only 37 years old.
There are certain contemporary ideas/phrases which really irritate me, and one of them is “living your best life.”
Am I wrong here?
From the poll Neo linked: “The results indicate the demographic, which appeared to abandon former President Trump to help Democrats win the House in 2018 and the Senate and White House in 2020, may be turning away from Democrats as they feel increased pressure from high prices.”
Another factor may be at play. Those women that abandoned Trump in 2020 and voted for Biden the Uniter, that steady, middle of the road liberal have gotten the shock of their lives. As inflation, the recession and national debt have ballooned, deepened, and ballooned under Biden. That green grass on the other side dried up and is now a raging inferno.
Interesting question will be whether they’ve seen the error of their ways and will stick with Trump in ’24? That subject is going to receive electron microscope inspection in the next two years.
Brian E:
Yes, I think they feel betrayed by Biden.
Brian E. Do you think they’ll review their decision-making process?
Can’t speak for anybody but myself, but the ONLY thing I heard from this particular voting bloc was some variation of “mean tweets”. Policy, history, facts……zero.
Richard Aubrey– Who knows?
I hope they have had enough real-life consequences to rethink the relative harm of mean tweets vs. socialist/authoritarian intentions.
Two years may be the half-life of a soccer mom’s memory, so there’s that.
The left was beside itself when President Trump interrupted their march through the institutions gaining final control of the government. Biden is just a more senile version of Hillary, but the interlude set back their plans several election cycles. Had they known the American people might reject their vision– we would have seen the SC expanded and PR a new state by now. I guess they thought that maligning Trump and his supporters was going to be sufficient to scare voters into accepting their goals.
https://hotair.com/karen-townsend/2022/11/03/liz-cheney-pelosi-has-been-a-tremendous-leader-and-a-republican-majority-in-the-house-would-be-bad-n507781
I’d be fascinated to know what’s motivated Richard Cheney, Lizard Cheney, and Phillip Perry all these years.
Art Deco:
I think what happened to them is that their tragic flaw was and is ego. It is practically Shakespearean. They were used to being powerful and they think their decisions were right. They detested Trump, who was brash, rude, and declasse. Not their type at all. Plus, he said awful awful things about them. In this article I wrote about the awful things Trump said about Bush and by extension Cheney. They have never forgiven him, which is kind of understandable actually. So for them, it’s political and it’s personal. They hate him with a white-hot passion. Once they made that clear, and threw themselves into the fight against him when he was running in 2016, I don’t think there’s any turning back for them. They have to dig the hole deeper and deeper, and in doing so they become more and more bizarre and extreme. Liz Cheney utterly burned her bridges with the party. Now she has some sort of righteous saint complex as well – she’s the only one with integrity, and all the rest of the GOP have sold their metaphorical souls to the devil-like Trump. Therefore the only thing left for the Cheneys et al is to turn to supporting the Democrats in order to show how extreme their own anti-Trump virtue is.
neo.
Must be a raging need, considering how relaxing it must be to be rich and have no obligations.
Who’d pass that up?
Richard:
I guess people like Donald J. Trump, Joe R. Biden, Hillary Clinton, et al.
Not all of the candidates of 2008, 2012, 2016, or 2020 were independently wealthy, with little in the way of obligations, but most could have coasted in private practice.
Me, Me, Look at MMMEEEE!!!
?? Hines brother as well
Paul Pelosi was allegedly taken to the hospital, due to a hammer blow from illegal alien David DePape. If true, this seems like poetic justice, since Paul’s wife is Nasty Nancy, an illegal alien enabler.
Newstories relating to election fraud in the biggest cities in the frauded states “for” the fraudulent Xi-Den have been increasing — even if the State Media fascists don’t see them — and here’s ba good one to follow up on from Wisconsin: via Twitter
Dan O’Donnell
@DanODonnellShow (NewsRadio 1130)
·
17h ago:
“HOLY S***: Kimberly Zapata, the deputy director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission has just been fired for committing election fraud by obtaining fake military ballots and sending them to Assembly Elections Committee chairwoman Janel Brandtjen.”
Go to sleep. There’s no fraud — nothing to see — ignore the above — it never happened! Just more lies….(yawn)
Wonderful clip, Neo, thanks for posting. About the different styles. For me the most noticeable difference is in the upper body carriage of the two men. Hines does not slouch but his upper body is much more relaxed and integrated with his lower body movement whereas Baryshnikov has a more upright carriage and keeps his upper body still. The still on the post shows this very clearly in the shoulders of the dancers.
This post and seeing some clips of early 30’s Hollywood dance numbers got me wondering. When did dance training become widespread enough to field so much talent by the 30’s? Shirley Temple’s mother put her in dance class as a toddler, and Tommy Rall’s mother same at a bit later age. But I am curious about the generation before them. Was ballet/dance class the de rigueur activity for middle and upperclass girls in 1915 that it was in 1955? I have a hazy memory of reading that ‘dance’ was not quite respectable in the 19th century. When did that change? And more modern forms than ballet, where did one train them? Could you even get tap lessons in 1915? Or did all this marvelous talent come out of vaudeville?
Enlighten me please, Neo!
Plus, he said awful awful things about them. In this article I wrote about the awful things Trump said about Bush and by extension Cheney. They have never forgiven him, which is kind of understandable actually. So for them, it’s political and it’s personal.
He said worse things about John McCain. AFAICT, Meghan McCain and Ben Domenech haven’t been in a fury at 3d parties who have Trump’s endorsement. He dinged Heidi Cruz as well; I’m going to wager that for her husband, revenge is a dish served cold; in the interim, it’s business.
About the Bushes. They intersected professionally with the Clintons and the Obamas. In re the Obamas, they were ships passing in the night. Yet, somehow, Bilge if not Hillary managed to worm his way into the Elder Bush’s circle of friends and the public behavior of the younger Bush vis a vis Michelle Obama is downright creepy. There’s no reason for the Bushes to associate with the Clintons or the Obamas. (Unless I’m mistaken, the Carters keep their distance from the Clintons if not the Obamas). Yet, here we have scores of people unjustly jailed in DC, most of them people who probably cast a ballot for George W. Bush, and he not only says nothing about their mistreatment, he endorses it by comparing them to 9/11 terrorists.
The manager of a Jewish philanthropy which had been the recipient of donations from Ivan Boesky once said, “There are givers and there are users. He’s a user”. The Bushes are users.
I really don’t think this is about feelings. Most of what goes on in Congress is taking tax money from all of us and redistributing it to some of us. Many connected people on both sides of the aisle profit from this, inside and outside of office holders.
Someone like Trump, who thought government was for doing stuff instead of distributing taxpayer money, is an existential threat to people’s livelihoods. That’s why the Swamp crossed him at every turn.
In my neck of the woods the governor is planning to spend $800 million on homelessness. There is something like 20,000 “homeless” in Washington State (scare quotes because the definition is pretty expansive). That’s $40,000 per person if distributed directly among them, which is much more than I pay annually on the mortgage and taxes for my middle-class single family house. The $800 million is NOT being directly distributed to the homeless. It will be trickled down through government programs and contractors, all of whom will get a piece, and when they’d done that there will still be 20,000 “homeless”.
One initiative by one state government. Multiply by 50 states and add the Federal government.
The prospect of losing that cash flow is what is creating all this anger.
In my neck of the woods the governor is planning to spend $800 million on homelessness. There is something like 20,000 “homeless” in Washington State (scare quotes because the definition is pretty expansive). That’s $40,000 per person if distributed directly among them, which is much more than I pay annually on the mortgage and taxes for my middle-class single family house. The $800 million is NOT being directly distributed to the homeless. It will be trickled down through government programs and contractors, all of whom will get a piece, and when they’d done that there will still be 20,000 “homeless”.
Assisting vagrants in keeping body and soul together is a problem sufficiently circumscribed that it can be handled by private charity. The role of local government is in enforcing the laws on loitering and in providing extra security in those parts of the metropolis where emergency shelters are to be found. Policing is, optimally, a function of county government. The role of state government is to expand capacity in state asylums as needed and / or provide more funding for Medicaid-allied programs to finance long-term care in private asylums. More asylum space in the state prison system would commonly be advisable as well. There is no role for the federal government in addressing this issue. A co-worker of mine once said, “I like problems much better than I do issues. Problems have discrete solutions. Issues go on and on. Vagrancy is an issue.
Oh, yeah, the Homeless Industrial Complex is very real, and it is staffed with people who hate you, facist! They have well-paid jobs with excellent benefits, and the continuation of that depends on them not solving the homeless problem.
They’re also all seeing chiropractors for the repetitive-motion injuries they suffer from patting themselves on the back.
By end of Obama admin government was spending over 25k in anti-poverty programs for every person living in a household deemed under the poverty line. Note — much income redistribution is not done with anti-poverty programs.
I can’t find more recent numbers. We know that a welfare mom with three kids doesn’t get 100 grand. Dems have to find a way to pay all those get out the vote workers.
As for the acceptability of dance in the early part of the century, Minnie Pearl was a dance teacher after she graduated from a prestigious women’s finishing school/college. Unlike the character from Grinder’s Switch, she was a well-educated woman from a rich family who grew up in Centerville TN about 50 miles from Nashville. Her mother played organ at church so we can assume that there was nothing about dance that would have been considered inappropriate in rural Tennessee at the time. She took a lot of dance in school. Her years as a dance teacher would have been in the 30s.
@ Frederick > “The prospect of losing that cash flow is what is creating all this anger.”
That’s been pretty clear since 2016.
Well, that and revealing all of the illegal operations of the Obama administration (and possibly earlier ones).