Impersonation fun with Kevin Spacey

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s one of my favorite actors, Kevin Spacey, doing some nifty impersonations. I cannot stand unctuous interviewer James Lipton, but I’ll grit my teeth and bear with him in order to watch Spacey quick-change into each persona.

He sets the body language and physical mannerisms of the face first, before he speaks. Spacey sometimes seems to be using a recording of the person’s actual voice, so close does he manage to match it (note in particular the sound of his Al Pacino):

[NOTE: Yes, I know, I know: Spacey’s a big old liberal. I still like him.]

Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Partiers, and the Republicans

The New Neo Posted on by

So.

Christine O’Donnell has won the Republican primary in Delaware, handing Mike Castle a defeat. In a way, she also handed a defeat to the Republican establishment itself, serving notice that the usual rules do not apply this year, and that being anointed by the party not only does not have the usual clout, it’s more akin to the political kiss of death.

I’m not happy that she won, for the simple reason that I don’t think she can win the general (see this for some of the accusations that will come her way). And it’s the general I care about, not the internecine intra-Republican battles that her victory represents.

What profit if conservatives win the battle but lose the war? Mike Castle may have been a RINO of sorts, but he was only a half-RINO or semi-RINO who represented a vote against Obamacare. And he was very likely to have won the election against his Democratic opponent Coons, whereas O’Donnell is very likely to lose. That’s what’s called a Pyrrhic victory.

I know the purists among you say, “so what?” It’s an old argument, one we’ve had here before, and one we’ll probably take up again. Back in May of 2005 I wrote:

I don’t think that conservatives really have a death wish for the Republican Party. It’s that the extreme wings of either party are just that: extreme. As such, they tend to be inherently less practical, less willing to compromise, and more inclined towards ideological purity and purges.

But that’s not the whole story. I have become convinced that the purists believe that their ideas are so inherently logical and so obviously right (as in “correct”), that if the electorate were to just listen to candidates articulating those positions properly, even in blue states (with the possible exception of Minnesota and Massachusetts, so deeply blue as to be indigo) the scales would fall from voters’ eyes and they would elect the conservative candidates.

Back then the situation was different; the Republican Party was not in the ascendance. Now it is (look at what happened in Massachusetts, one of the two states I mentioned as being the bluest of blue). The electorate is now so upset with the political establishment on both sides that it is possible—although unlikely—that even a candidate as extreme as O’Donnell could win in blue Delaware. But the problem is that not only is O’Donnell extreme, she is also very flawed as a candidate.

It is the opposite of the situation in Massachusetts last winter. Back then we had a Republican nominee, Scott Brown, who was articulate, savvy, likable, and with very few skeletons in his closet (and those were rather attractive ones, such as his nude-ish magazine layout years ago in his modeling days). His opponent Coakley was a poor and arrogant campaigner who helped him out by committing a series of gaffes that offended even the Democratic voters of Massachusetts. Plus, Brown was no extremist; he was Republican-lite, and not really that much of a stretch for Democrats in the state to vote for.

Couldn’t the Tea Party in Delaware have come up with someone better than O’Donnell to carry the conservative flag against Coons? I don’t know, not being familiar with internal Delaware politics. But at any rate they did not, and O’Donnell is the candidate we have. And of course it is possible that she could even win, with the electorate feeling as angry as it does, and her proven ability to come from behind. Stranger things have happened.

If I were in Delaware, I’d cast my vote for her in the general. But I wouldn’t be all that happy about it.

[NOTE: The national Republican Party is refusing to give O’Donnell money because they don’t think she has a chance (probably also because they don’t like her). You might recall that the same thing happened to Scott Brown, who didn’t seem to suffer a bit from the problem because a big internet campaign was launched to support him. It may be somewhat harder to get the same thing going for O’Donnell, but we’ll see. ]

Those good-bad study habits

The New Neo Posted on by

This NY Times article discusses some research on good study habits that indicates that several of the time-honored recommendations don’t hold water. Apparently it’s better to switch venues rather than stick to one tried-and-true setting, and to vary subject matter rather than focus on a single skill at a time.

I’m not surprised. I was an excellent student in my day, but I was a poster child for bad study habits.

I was a nightowl and procrastinator. I abhorred silence, needing a radio or TV for company, and sometimes even a friend on the phone. My desk was just a storage bin for paper; I did my real work sprawled on bed or floor. I took frequent restless breaks for food and drink. And I was a notorious last-minute crammer for exams.

The latter was my particular specialty in college, via the mechanism of the all-nighter or even the multiple sequential all-nighter (not recommended). With a laser concentration enhanced by the knowledge that it was the last possible opportunity, I would absorb the material in one big gulp, the better to spit it out the next day.

As for exams, as soon as the bluebook was on the desk before me and my poised pen was energized by the word “begin,” I entered a zone of focused intensity. Time seemed to both stop and move at lightning speed as I became an automaton, watching my pen write words that seemed to flow without any special will on my part. Almost before I knew it, the exam would be over.

A week or two later I’d received my bluebook back, with the addition of professorial commentary and a grade. I’d read what I had written with interest, as though seeing it for the first time.

Not bad, I’d think. Not half-bad. But who was it who’d written it?

Polling: how go the Independents?

The New Neo Posted on by

A new Quinnipiac poll highlights some recent trends on hot-button issues such as illegal immigration and the Ground Zero mosque. On most of the questions, there is a huge disconnect between Republicans and Democrats.

This is unsurprising; it’s the stance of Independents that is of most interest, because as Independents go, so goes the nation. And for the most part right now, Independents are going with the Republicans. That there is the story.

Look at the data. On question 9, approval/disapproval of Obama’s handling of the oil spill, Independents are where you’d ordinarily expect them to be, about evenly split between the Democrat and Republican positions of approval and disapproval. But on most of the other policy questions, including several concerning illegal immigration, and on whether Ground Zero mosque is a good idea and approval of how Obama is handling it, Independents stand on the Republican side of the equation.

However, staying true to their descriptive title, Independents don’t always side with the Republicans. On questions related to Islam in general, such as whether in its mainstream—as opposed to extremist—form it is a peaceful or a violent religion, Independents are squarely with Democrats.

The trend seems pretty clear, and it may indeed be the difference that makes a difference in the 2010 election: on policy questions, Independents come down fairly consistently on the Republican side of the equation. Seven weeks from today, that has a good chance of translating into Republican victories at the ballot box.

Looking back: 9/11 coverage

The New Neo Posted on by

The 9/11 anniversary is now over for another year. To mark the day, I went to YouTube and watched videos of the original coverage. Although I’d seen some of it before, I realized that a great deal of it was new to me.

That’s because—as I noted in a previous post—on 9/11 I was staying at the home of friends who didn’t have a TV. It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that I got to one, and so I never saw the original early coverage. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m struck by how long it took the newscasters to figure out what might be happening that day.

At first they thought it was an accident, which is somewhat understandable. But even after the second plane hit, when the fact of terrorism should have been unmistakable, they seemed reluctant to mention it or credit it for the dreadful events that were transpiring. On CNN, for example, the leading theory was that something was wrong with the general navigational system that was sending planes on a beeline for the World Trade Center.

This idea should have been preposterous even at the time. Not that navigational systems can’t go wrong. But to be flawed in a manner that caused two planes to go for a particular target? And on such a gloriously clear day, wouldn’t the pilots have seen the towers and avoided them, no matter what the systems were telling them?

It’s easy to criticize now, knowing what we know. In a way, it’s astounding that the newspeople were able to keep their wits about them enough to make any coherent statements at all; I probably could not have done so. But that’s what they’re paid for, to be professionals. And for the most part they managed to keep on an even keel despite the shock of what they were seeing.

But they demonstrated a curious naivete about terrorism. Perhaps some of it was a result of their hesitation to cast blame without knowing for certain, in case they were later found to be in error. And some of it was probably a failure to appreciate the depth of the hatred that fueled terrorism, as well as an underestimation of the cleverness and creativity terrorists can muster. Probably the relative ineptness of the earlier 1993 attempt to bring down the WTC towers lulled them—and many others—into a false sense of security.

Another thing that struck me now is that, in the YouTube comments section for some of the videos of the day, there are quite a few teenagers who were young children at the time of 9/11. Nine years is long enough for a child to almost grow up, long enough to go from nine years old to eighteen. A number of them remark that although they were too young back then to understand what was happening, now they finally do.

And it struck me that those who are even younger will have grown up with 9/11 always having been in the background as a given. Much as my generation didn’t know a pre-nuclear era, they will have no memory of a pre-9/11 world. Beautiful clear days on which airplanes, piloted by malevolent killers, come out of the blue (literally) to slam into buildings and cause huge bursts of orange flame that kill thousands of people and collapse some of the world’s tallest buildings, will not be shocking to them. It will be the way things are.

On the “Republicans are racist” card

The New Neo Posted on by

Gerard Alexander has an article at the WaPo describing the history of the perception that Republicans are racist, based on the so-called Southern strategy:

This reading of the conservative movement presents problems of logic and history, relying on assumptions that fall apart on close examination. First, it assumes that Republicans depended on white Southerners to become politically competitive in the 1960s. Second, it assumes that Republican presidents from Nixon forward swayed these voters by giving them the policies they wanted. Third, it assumes that the modern conservative policy agenda is best seen as racially motivated. Finally, it assumes that conservative positions on recent controversies are just new forms of that same white-heartland bigotry.

These assumptions are badly flawed…[T]he GOP presidential majority and much of the party’s modern policy agenda were forged not in the racial heat of the 1960s South, but first in the 1950s and across the country.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) recently argued that race did not play a central role in the partisan shift in the South, saying the transformation was led by a younger generation of Southerners in the post-segregation 1970s. But the best evidence that things other than race mattered most in the shift was that it was an even older generation that moved to the GOP in the peripheral South. By the time Lyndon Johnson reportedly remarked that the Civil Rights Act would deliver the South to the Republicans for a generation, the GOP had already won nearly half the region’s Electoral College votes three times in a row.

Alexander goes on in that vein. But although I think he is correct that some of the thinking behind the “Republicans=racists” accusation follows the sort of reasoning he is critiquing here, most of it does not. Most of it appears to be a reflexive and opportunistic response that is more strategic than anything as well-thought-out or historically aware as arguments about the Southern strategy and how it worked. Most of it is just a habitual way of attacking Republicans that is sure to make a great many liberals nod in agreement.

The question is whether it is going to work any more with the large segment of the American public that liberals (and conservatives, for that matter) ordinarily need in order to win elections: Independents. My guess is that liberals have overplayed their hand on this one. I suspect that their use of the race card against almost all objections to the policies of Obama, our first black president, has caused a backlash because it is so obviously an overuse of the race card strategy.

One of the reasons is that a great many Independents also happen to dislike Obama’s policies. They happen to agree with the Arizona law about illegals, and with the idea that a truly sensitive iman would know better than to build a mosque so close to Ground Zero. They know it is highly possible to hold such views for reasons that have nothing to do with racism. And they resent the constant harping on the topic, and the transparent political motivations behind it.

[NOTE: Scott at Powerline adds that Alexander is working on a book explaining the history of race and the Republican Party. Promises to be interesting.]

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a previous post of mine that touches on these subjects.]

9/11: nine years

The New Neo Posted on by

Nine years. So much has happened since then that it seems as though we’re a different country now.

And not a better one. For a while it seemed the legacy of 9/11 would be a unity of purpose, a stunned togetherness. But not only was that illusory, it was deeply so.

I’ve been reading and reflecting on some of the stories of that day, tales of horror and tales of near-miraculous survival. Here’s one of the latter that I’d nearly forgotten, as told by the protagonists in their own words:

Let’s have a giviak party

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back I wrote about the slimy fermented soy product known as natto. Well, as a public service, I’d like to introduce you to another revolting food: the Inuit delicacy known as giviak.

I confess that I’ve never eaten giviak. But I was introduced to it—in the imaginative sense, that is—many years ago, when I first read Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen’s informative Book of the Eskimos.

Unfortunately, I can’t locate my copy, so I won’t quote Freuchen on the matter. This will have to do (and you may thank me for not offering Freuchen’s even more graphic and evocative description):

A giviak is an Inuit delicacy, made by stuffing a whole sealskin with whole raw auks, and letting it ferment underground.

First you need a dead seal with an undamaged hide. With your flensing knife, reach in through the seal’s mouth and carefully separate the carcass from the skin and blubber. Pull the seal carcass out of the skin, through the mouth, without breaking the sealskin.

Then stuff the dead auks – feathers, feet, and all – into the sealskin. Sew up the mouth, and bury the bloated skin. During the summer months, the seal blubber on the inside liquifies, melting slowly into the dead birds. Fermentation occurs. Months later, dig it up.

Bring the giviak to a party. Guaranteed fun!

To eat one of the little birds from the giviak, hold it by its feet, and eat the feathers first by shucking them off with your teeth. Then crunch up the rest of the oily, delicious morsel — bones included. The heart and the coagulated blood inside it are the best part, with a texture and taste reminiscent of the finest cheese — according to Peter Freuchen in his book “My Life in the Frozen North”.

Warning: In Inuit culture, refusing to eat what is offered you is very insulting to your hosts!

A giviak bears a certain resemblance to the Scottish bagged meal known as haggis. But—never having tasted either—I think giviak sounds as though it wins the disgust sweepstakes, hands down. However, these dishes are/were greatly beloved by the groups that originated them, as this excerpt from “Address to a Haggis” by the great Scottish poet Robert Burns attests, in a burst of culinary chauvinism [a handy guide to the meaning of the poem is at the link]:

…Is there that ower his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi perfect scunner,
Looks down wi’ sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him ower his trash,
As feckless as a wither’d rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit:
Thro bloody flood or field to dash,
Oh how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his wallie nieve a blade,
He’ll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.

Ye Pow’rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if Ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis!

Or a giviak.

[NOTE: I actually Googled for images of giviak, and found a couple. I refuse to link to them, but I will say they were very, very, very disturbing.]