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Home » Open thread 8/12/2026

Open thread 8/12/2026

The New Neo Posted on by

I was fortunate enough to see the original on Broadway as a young child, and I still remember it:

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Open thread 8/12/2026 — 20 Comments

  1. Wiz-consin tocsin:

    https://instapundit.com/816184/

    Unsurprising blurb:

    I read about it … magical votes showed up at the last minute to help Crowley.

    Funny how that happens when the Democrat establishment wants it to.

    Democrats gotta democrat…

  6. Barr, re Wisconsin primary results.

    I read that half of the memory sticks used to collect and tabulate populous Milwaukee County’s election results were without voter data.

    Given their history with voting “irregularities”, I’m doubtful that it’s really over.
    The winners in any close race remain in doubt.

  7. You’re right.
    Gotta wait at least à week or two before all those votes trickle in.
    (Gotta save “Our DEMocracy” doncha’ know…)

  9. If memory serves, the stage production always had Julie Andrews. Audrey Hepburn got the nod for the film because Jack Warner thought she’d be be a better money maker than Andrews, though she didn’t have the voice for it (her singing was dubbed).

  10. Trump has reportedly confirmed he won’t run for a third term. I never doubted he would be barred from doing such a thing, but I have always harbored the faintest suspicion he might be crazy enough to try.

    I am both sad and relieved at the certain dimished relevance of Trump. I voted for the man three times, and the first time felt like a horrible game of Russian roulette. Though I am happy with the realignment he has sparked…I don’t care for every day feeling like we are living an episode of The Apprentice.

  11. I loved the movie (it was loverly!), but if I had a time machine, I would somehow like to figure out a way to put Andrews in both My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins that year.

    There were other cross-over connections I hadn’t known about before.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Poppins_(film)

    Julie Andrews, who was making her feature film acting debut after a successful stage career, was given the prime role of Mary Poppins soon after she was passed over by Jack L. Warner and replaced with Audrey Hepburn for the role of Eliza Doolittle in his screen adaptation of My Fair Lady, even though Andrews originated the role on Broadway.[25][26] … Disney considered actor Stanley Holloway for the role of Admiral Boom, but it went to Reginald Owen, due to Holloway’s commitment to My Fair Lady.[28]
    Andrews also provided the voice in two other sections of the film: During “A Spoonful of Sugar”, she provided the whistling harmony for the robin and she was also one of the Pearly singers during “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. … During the “Jolly Holiday” sequence, the three singing Cockney geese were all voiced by Marni Nixon, who regularly sang for actresses with substandard singing voices. (Nixon later provided the singing voice for Hepburn in My Fair Lady and played one of Andrews’s fellow nuns in The Sound of Music.) Andrews later beat Hepburn for the Best Actress Award at the Golden Globes for their respective roles.

    Andrews also won a Best Actress Oscar for Poppins.

    If she had been in both films, somehow, which role would have been the winner, or would she have been awarded a tie?

  14. Re: Hong’s loss in Wisconsin primary

    Vox has an article titled “Francesca Hong lost. Here’s what it means for progressives.”

    As Vox tells it, the Democrat leaders decided that Hong was too radical to win, so in the midst of much candidate chaos they maneuvered Crowley back into the race, threw their support to Crowley (à la Biden/Sanders in 2020), and Crowley squeaked out a win against Hong.

    Democrats call that democracy.

    However, Vox also played a version of “Republicans pounce” with a twist:
    ___________________________

    Republicans, meanwhile, were happy to take advantage of the mess to try to build momentum for Hong, who they saw as a weaker opponent. A group associated with the Republican Governors Association spent over $3 million on “attack” ads to help elevate her profile with Democratic primary voters.

    –Vox, “Francesca Hong lost. Here’s what it means for progressives.”
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/francesca-hong-lost-here-s-what-it-means-for-progressives/ar-AA29VW3t
    ___________________________

    So, if I’ve got that straight, Republicans were trying to help Hong win by running attack ads.

    Karl Rove lives!

    Maybe. I’m sure those ads were also part of the general all-out Republican strategy in 2026 to hang Democrats by the DSA label.

  15. The movie version of “My Fair Lady” was so popular that it was immediately satirized in two different episodes of “Gilligan’s Island.” (In “My Fair Gilligan,” the Howells decide to adopt Gilligan and give him the manners of a rich person. In “And Then There Were None” — which also referenced “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” — Mary Ann appears in a dream sequence as an Eliza Doolittle-like Cockney flower girl whose transformation into a lady is incomplete. That’s the one where she says, ” ‘E taught me to walk and to talk and to dress like a regular LADY! ‘E give me real CLASS, ‘e did!”)

  16. I already knew the music and lyrics were good. The video showed me the choreography was also good. A five minute view showed me why My Fair Lady lasted years on Broadway.

    During my senior year in high school I saw two performances in NYC. One, an off-Broadway show. I also went with a class to see Man of La Mancha. I rather liked it. The reaction a classmate had was rather interesting.

    He also liked Man of La Mancha. He told us how annoyed he was at a classmate sitting next to him who laughed and laughed throughout the performance. What was interesting was that he was usually the one criticizing and mocking. His middle name must have been Hypercritical-Argumentative. The shoe was on the other foot this time. He who mocked didn’t like someone mocking something he liked.

    Decades later, I did some Internet searching. I found out that not only had his father been a Communist, he had been an employee of the CPUSA—an operative— for a number of years. He left the Party after Nikita’s Stalin speech in 1956. The Feds later tried to get him to name names and convicted him over his refusal to do so. The Supreme Court later overturned his conviction.

    That helped explain why my classmate was so argumentative, so tense. No matter how his parents tried to hide the political situation from their children, some of the tension involving his father being a CPUSA and later ex-CPUSA had to have seeped into the atmosphere at home.

  19. Nipping the leakers inside the DOW is a greater priority, not jokes between Rubio and Kennedy.

  20. Easily the best musical ever (granted, they had a good start from Pygmalion). And Julie was the best popular singer of my lifetime. I can never forgive Audrey Hepburn for taking the role. As I understand it, Cary Grant refused, saying it was Rex’s. (For once, the Academy Awards earned my respect.)

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