Here’s a distinctive article about how Mitt Romney’s hair is his most distinctive feature:
By far his most distinctive physical feature, Mr. Romney’s head of impeccably coiffed black hair has become something of a cosmetological Rorschach test on the campaign trail, with many seeing in his thick locks everything they love and loathe about the Republican candidate for the White House. (Commanding, reassuring, presidential, crow fans; too stiff, too slick, too perfect, complain critics.)
It may be his most distinctive feature, but not distinctive enough for me. In fact, I never really noticed it before.
I think Romney’s most distinctive feature is his lack of distinctive features. His most distinctive feature is a handsomeness that looks like a computer-generated amalgam of handsome men, creating a generically handsome man of a certain age.
I have a simple method: it almost doesn’t matter. Just get a good turkey and the rest will follow. A bird will be dry or moist, tasty or bland, depending on its nature more than on the cooking method you use.
Within reason, of course. The principle holds true as long as you cook it according to any of the generally accepted, tried and true methods. I’ve used somewhat lower longer heat and somewhat higher shorter heat, basted it more and basted it less, covered it with cheesecloth or not, and haven’t noticed any patterns—except that, since you bathe it in gravy and cranberry sauce anyway before you eat it, even a piece of bland dry turkey meat ends up tasting not so bad in the end.
The whole point is really the rest of the food, isn’t it? I’m a sweet-potato-sans-marshmallow gal, as well as a proponent of the pumpkin-pie-can-be-easily-dispensed-with school. Pecan pie, on the other hand, is a must-have, despite the fact that it packs in about 1,000 calories a bite.
Commenter “kaba” offers a nice summary of our present situation:
We have a president who neither knows or understands anything about the country he is supposedly leading. Despite what his birth certificate might say he is an alien in any meaningful sense of the word.
We have a Congress, both houses and both parties, who worry more about the next election than the next generation. They refuse to lead and won’t get out of the way so others might.
We have an American public who think that federal spending should be cut. Except, of course, for that particular program or programs from which they personally benefit.
There is plenty of blame to go around. And our heirs will rightfully curse us one day for allowing this to happen.
Is this one of those cases where the sequel will be better than the original?
Or will it just go down the rabbit hole? The NY Timesis doing its best to assure that, with an article whose thrust is to pooh-pooh the new emails’ significance. Its first sentence is typical of the MSM coverage of Climategate I, as well, “The anonymous hacker who…”
Anonymous”? Yes. But “hacker”? We don’t know; most of the speculation I’ve seen has always been that the release of the Climategate emails was an inside job.
Barry Peterson is a man facing a dilemma (the video can’t be embedded, so you’ll have to watch it at this link). His beloved wife Jan has early onset Alzheimer’s, and she now lives in an institution where he visits her—with his new girlfriend.
Before you judge him too harshly, please watch it. My mind says he promised “till death do us part” and that he is a traitor to those vows. But my heart cannot condemn him. There is no good answer to this human tragedy.
Jan Chorlton Peterson was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at 55, only five years ago. Before that, she was a journalist and television news personality (as is her husband). From the clips of them as a couple you can see how much in love they were, and from the old videos you can tell she was an exceptionally beautiful, sunny, and charming woman.
Funny thing, she still is, although her memory is terrible and she doesn’t even know that Peterson is her husband when he comes to visit her, despite the fact that she seems to know he’s someone she loves (in the clip this segment begins at 5:00). Like Clive Wearing (whom I wrote about here), her personality, her “Jan-ness,” still seems intact despite the huge deficits—for now.
But that’s quite different from being able to share the life she and her husband used to live. He’s lonely, and now he’s found someone to fill the gap. He says Jan would want this, and I suppose he knows her best, although I wonder.
If Peterson were a conventionally religious man it would be simpler although not necessarily easier: what he’s doing is wrong, and he would know that, although it wouldn’t necessarily keep him from doing it. Perhaps he’d divorce her so he wouldn’t be committing adultery, but somehow that seems wrong, too.
As I said, there’s no good answer to this human tragedy.
I wish, though, that he was more like Jimmy Hales, featured in the following video. But not everyone is able to be so noble and so selfless. Of course, this couple is much older; that helps, too, although it’s never never easy. But as Hales, says, it’s a labor of love. Truer words were never spoken.
Notice, also, how towards the end of the video, Jimmy speaks of prayer; he seems to be a religious man. And note how the newscasters watching the story get all choked up.
I have debate fatigue, myself. I’ve become convinced that the main function of these debates is to collect the largest possible assortment of gaffes with which to (a) destroy each front runner in turn; and then (b) create sound bites against the eventual nominee. It may only be political junkies watching now, but the MSM and later the campaign ads can use all this material as fodder for negativity.
On the other hand, best to find out now who can survive the onslaught and who can’t. If you can’t stand the heat—get lost!
No, of course I don’t watch the Kardashian reality show or follow much about them. But I do follow the mindless entertainment of “Dancing With the Stars,” and the Kardashian known as Rob has impressed me with his progress as a ballroom dancer, and the heaps of fun he seems to be having out there.
So mock me; what do I care? Last night I had fun, too, watching Rob in the finals. He was a surprising first-place finisher with the judges, and this free-style was one of the reasons. If you think it’s easy for a non-dancer to take a woman and spin around this fast, holding her horizontally behind his head (starting at 1:24), you’ve got another think coming (not to mention the bravery his partner showed by choreographing the move in the first place):
Just to show you the sort of progress he’s made in ten weeks, here’s Kardashian’s first performance on DWTS, a Viennese waltz. He already had the grin, but his awkward, stiff dance skills left an awful lot to be desired, and his partner wisely kept the choreography very simple:
[NOTE: This seems to be my day for writing about 24-year-old male scions of well-known celebrity families. Rob, like Ronan Farrow, is 24.]
[ADDENDUM: Looking again at the clip of Rob’s first performance, I’m struck by the fact that there’s one ability he had from the first (besides the grin): a natural and attentive connection and eye contact with his partner. That’s important in any sort of couples dancing, and it’s hard to teach and harder to achieve unless it’s a given, as it is with Rob.]
Why do I say he’s lucky? Well, he could have inherited father Woody’s looks, but instead he strongly takes after mother Farrow.
In addition, his original first name was Satchel, but when his parents parted ways, that was dropped in favor of second name Ronan, an improvement (what is it with these celebrities and their penchant for giving their kids strange monikers?)
But his achievements are only partly luck (having a good brain); they’re mostly a combination of luck plus a lot of hard work: he’s a prodigy who graduated from college at 15 and Yale Law School at 21 and has done quite a bit in the short years since, and has just been named a Rhodes Scholar. Yes, he seems to be politically liberal (no surprise there), but his work has been mainly in the field of human rights in the third world and especially the plight of children in Africa.
So, who does Ronan take after? Neither parent was much of a scholar, although he’s clearly following in his mother’s footsteps in his interest in Africa and children. But it’s father Allen who was a prodigy of sorts, although not the same sort as Ronan. Did you know (I didn’t) that Woody Allen was already a professional joke writer, making more money than his own parents combined, when he was still in high school? And that by the age of 19, a college dropout, he was writing scripts for such well-known TV personalities as Ed Sullivan Show and Sid Caesar, who paid him the princely salary (this was in 1954, remember) of $1500 a week?
Ronan even seems to possess the moral compass that his father lacks. Here’s the son on the subject of the union of his father with Soon-Yi Previn, Farrow’s adopted daughter and Ronan’s half-sister:
He’s my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent… I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.”
Despite Ronan’s lifelong access to money and fame, it could not have been easy when his parents split up when he was five years old and fought a highly visible and bitter custody battle over him. I say “when his parents split up,” because they never divorced—because they had never married, although they’d had a relationship for twelve years, and one biological and two adopted children. I wouldn’t have placed much money then on the chances of Satchel/Ronan turning out this well.
It’s almost Thanksgiving. And that means that Christmas, Chanukah, and whatever other holiday might suit your fancy are all coming up much sooner than you think.
This post is to encourage you to feel their hot breaths on your neck and solve all your gift-giving dilemmas by turning to that online colossus, Amazon.
And if you use those widgets on my right sidebar to click through for all your Amazon purchases (now and at any other time of year) you will also be giving a small but still not insignificant gift to neo-neocon (it adds up, folks), and all without spending any extra money! What could be more wonderful?
This announcement will appear at my blog again a few times between now and Christmas, as a gentle yet mercenary reminder. And notice that Black Friday deals have already begun at Amazon, even prior to Thanksgiving and the actual Black Friday.
What’s more, you can get free shipping with a free trial of Amazon Prime for a month. Why not time it for the holidays?
The two mainstream political parties in America have grown more bitter and more extreme.
Oh, I know there have been even more divisive times in American history. After all, I hear tell there was a Civil War a while back. But in my lifetime at least, the parties have morphed from two groups with somewhat differing opinions who seemed to be able to work together at times to two groups who cannot do so any more.
Case in point: the not-so-super-committee and the debt crisis. There is a crisis, no party has total control, therefore some sort of compromise is required, and we don’t have one.
This is the way it’s been for some time.
I bet quite a few of you are saying “Good! To tyrants I will give no quarter!” And indeed, there’s something to be said for a federal government that must move slowly and ponderously. But sometimes government needs to act, and then paralysis and intransigence is not good, and the ability to “come, let us reason together” would be helpful.
What’s going on? I’m not sure, but to the best of my recollection it was some time during the mid-90s that things became more polarized. The impeachment of Clinton did not help, nor did the rabid nature of the opposition to President Bush in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq War. The internet may be part of it, escalating matters.
Another factor is that, as Congressional districts have been re-drawn to make them safer for one party or another, candidates have not been required to appeal to the middle, and the makeup of Congress has become more extreme on each side. I also read somewhere (can’t find the source right now; sorry) that the growth of airplane commuting has meant that fewer members of Congress regularly live and socialize in Washington DC, and therefore they don’t get to know each other better and can remain sworn enemies.
But part of it is that the public is angrier and less tolerant of compromise and more demanding of perfection. I’ve seen this even within each party. In fact, Jonathan Chait—a man with whom I don’t usually agree—wrote about this yesterday in relation to liberal Democrats’ anger at Obama. But I see a similar thing operating among Republicans; just switch the parties (and eliminate the example of Obama) in the following quote, and it would serve pretty well for the other side (except for the “dancing-in-the-streets-delirious” part; that’s not a Republican tendency):
Here is my explanation: Liberals are dissatisfied with Obama because liberals, on the whole, are incapable of feeling satisfied with a Democratic president. They can be happy with the idea of a Democratic president””indeed, dancing-in-the-streets delirious””but not with the real thing. The various theories of disconsolate liberals all suffer from a failure to compare Obama with any plausible baseline. Instead they compare Obama with an imaginary president””either an imaginary Obama or a fantasy version of a past president.
It seems as though nearly everybody has morphed into Peter Finch’s character in “Network.” He used to seem extreme, but now he’s run-of-the-mill:
