Posts - December 2008

Whenever I hear the phrase “President-elect Obama” I immediately set it to the tune of the words “Solidarity Forever” from Billy Eliot.

Instead of

Solidarity solidarity
Solidarity forever

I sing

President-elect President-elect
President-elect Obama

I just can’t stop.

(You can hear the original in this clip at about 1:59 and several times thereafter.)

It’s like eight years ago, when W picked Dick Cheney as his running mate and people were going around replacing the words “Slim Shady” with “Dick Cheney” in the Eminem song.

Prop 8: The Musical. Written by Marc Shaiman (seriously). Starring Allison Janney, Neil Patrick Harris, Darryl from “The Office,” Maya Rudolph, Barrett Foa, Sarah Chalke, John C. Reilly, Kathy Najimy, Margaret Cho, and Andy Richter, and others.

Has anyone been following this crazy political/constitutional crisis going on in Canada? Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper was re-elected several weeks ago, but he didn’t win a majority of seats in Parliament. He subsequently gave a response to the economic crisis that pissed a bunch of people off. Now three parties have formed a majority coalition to try to oust him. And one of those parties is the Bloc Québécois, the Quebec separatist group. So along with a economic and political crisis, the separatism issue is thrown in as well.

So, Harper was facing a vote of no confidence — and in response, today he suspended Parliament for the next two months! And he got permission to do this from the Governor-General of Canada! Who is appointed by the Queen! As in, the British monarch! As in, “Oh yeah, Canada isn’t really an independent country after all!”

What the hell is going on up there?

Here’s a Canadian columnist’s view on the whole debacle.

Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition. On December 5, 1933, at 5:32:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, fulfilling the requirement of ratification by 3/4 of the states and thereby repealing the Eighteenth Amendment. America’s nearly 14-year experiment with the nationwide prohibition of alcohol came to an end.

So drink up on Friday!

Nearly 10 years ago, at the beginning of 1999, the 50 State Quarters Program began. I bought a coin folder to collect the quarters of all 50 states. I was in my last year of law school and living in Virginia. Over the last 10 years I’ve moved eight times and I’ve taken that folder with me from place to place.

Last night my cheap umbrella broke, so on the way home I stopped by Duane Reade for a new one. It cost me a few dollars and 49 cents. As change I got two quarters and a penny.

And they were both Hawaii quarters, thereby completing my collection.

My coin folder has spaces for both Philadelphia and Denver mint quarters, but my quarters are all Philadelphia mint. I don’t care about the different mints — I just wanted all 50 quarters.

Of course, it turns out my collection is not complete, because last year Congress extended the program to cover Washington, D.C. and the five U.S. territories: the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Fortunately my coin folder has a bunch of empty spaces — I guess this was just in case we added more states after 1999?

A cast member of “My Three Sons” died on Friday: Beverly Garland, who played the second wife of Fred MacMurray’s character.

“My Three Sons” is one of the longest-running sitcoms in American TV history. Think of how much American culture changed between September 1960, when it premiered, and August 1972, when it left the air. The show changed a great deal as well, as that link shows: cast changes, hairstyle changes, black-and-white to color.

Anyway, while doing a YouTube search for the show, I found this bizarre TV commercial the cast did for Hunt’s flavored ketchups. Pizza-flavored ketchup? Hmm…

My previous post got me thinking about how much I love TV history.

When I was a kid growing up in the ’80s, I was really interested in old TV shows. My vision of the 1950s was filled with black-and-white nuclear families; my vision of the 1960s had Technicolor housewives with secret magic powers living in leafy suburbs. And everyone from the Cleavers to Major Nelson and his genie lived in classical American homes. There was no segregation or Cold War or Joe McCarthy, no Vietnam or civil rights marches: just tidy families resolving problems in 30 minutes or less.

One day when I was 11 or 12, I was at a shopping center with my dad. We were in one of those all-purpose stores like Wal-Mart, except we didn’t have Wal-Mart in New Jersey, so maybe it was Caldor? Channel? I was browsing through the book section when I saw an enormous paperback that caught my eye: The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh.

I was enthralled. I had no idea such a book existed! It had every show, in alphabetical order, with first and last broadcast dates, regular airtimes, cast lists, and several paragraphs describing the show. For each year it also had the prime-time fall TV schedule, top-rated shows for each year, and Emmy winners in the major categories.

I bought it right then and there. In the internet era, books like this are practically obsolete, but I still have my copy. They’re up to the ninth edition now, but I could never bear to part with my edition, for nostalgic reasons.

And if you want a great summary of TV history, here’s the introduction to the latest edition, including “The Eight Eras
of Prime Time,” and this list of the number of Westerns on TV by year:

Number of Westerns in Prime Time, by Season

1955–1956: 9
1956–1957: 11
1957–1958: 20
1958–1959: 31
1959–1960: 30
1960–1961: 26
1961–1962: 16
1962–1963: 13
1963–1964: 8
1964–1965: 7

My concept of postwar American history has become more complicated since I was a kid, but I still have a soft spot for the ’50s and ’60s and all that Atomic-Age TV stuff, and I still love TV history.

No wonder “Back to the Future” has always been my favorite movie and always will be.

How glitzy shoud Obama’s inauguration be? How much money should be spent? The New York Times provides historical perspective:

The most elaborate presidential inaugural parade took place during one of the nation’s biggest economic expansions. In 1953, in the postwar boom, the newly sworn-in president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, led a parade up Pennsylvania Avenue with 73 bands, 59 floats, 350 horses, 3 elephants, an Alaskan dog team and military vehicles. There were 25,000 marchers on foot; the entire parade lasted four and a half hours. It was deemed so excessive that subsequent parades were limited to 15,000 marchers.

Perhaps the most austere inauguration was in 1945, when the nation was still at war and Franklin D. Roosevelt, beginning his fourth term, was in failing health. There was no parade; he took the oath on the South Portico of the White House in a ceremony that lasted just 14 minutes. He wanted chicken a la king to be served for lunch to his guests, but his housekeeper said she could not keep it hot, and instead served cold chicken salad, rolls, coffee and cake, unfrosted. Wartime rationing meant no butter for the rolls.

It is safe to say that Mr. Obama’s inauguration will fall somewhere in between.

List of living veterans of World War I.

Every time I look at Rod Blagojevich, I think of William Devane. Anyone with me on this?

Vacant U.S. Senate seats are in the news lately. Obama, Biden, and Clinton are all leaving office; Illinois legislators are talking about passing a law to prevent Gov. Blagojevich from appointing Obama’s replacement; and if Ted Stevens had been re-elected, he might have been expelled, leaving a vacancy to be filled.

It all got me wondering why there’s no uniform method for filling a vacancy. Each state has its own law for replacing a senator; most states require the governor to appoint a replacement, but some states limit that power, requiring the replacement to be from the same party as the vacater and/or requiring the governor to choose from a short list. And some states don’t let the governor make the appointment at all, requiring a special election instead. This leads to lots of confusion; for example, many people thought that Sarah Palin could have appointed herself to replace Ted Stevens if he was expelled, but it turns out that Alaska requires a special election to fill a vacant seat.

So where did this craziness come from, especially given that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that states aren’t allowed to set term limits for their U.S. senators?

Well, I did some googling and it turns out that it comes from the Seventeenth Amendment. This is commonly known as the amendment that required U.S. senators to be elected by the people instead of being chosen by state legislatures. But the amendment’s second paragraph states:

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of each State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

So, although the people must eventually vote in special elections to fill Senate vacancies, state legislatures can empower the governor to fill those vacancies temporarily. Hence, state-by-state differences in how the process unfolds.

This has been another episode of “Answers to Questions You Didn’t Ask.”

(P.S. Here are all the state statutes and relevant federal statutes and constitutional clauses. Found here.)

The Twelve Composers of Christmas. Fans of classical music will enjoy this. My favorites are days 5 and 7.

What is it about a scandal that taints anyone connected to it, whether or not they were even involved?

Perhaps I just worry too much about people giving too much credence to wingnuts on the right. But still.

Look at Whitewater, where even though there was no evidence that Clinton did anything wrong, there was still this whiff around the whole thing, because people thought, well, if all these people are raising questions, there must be something to it.

There seems to be a perception that Obama is tainted by the Blagojevich scandal even though he and his transition team apparently refused to play ball with the governor. I’m trying to figure out why.

The only legitimate question I can think of — given that Obama’s team refused to enter into a deal with Blagojevich — is that if Blagojevich or anyone from his team even tried to play ball with anyone from the Obama team, then should the people on the transition team who were approached by Blagojevich’s team have gone to the U.S. Attorney’s office with the information? Did they? And if they didn’t, did they do something wrong?

Is Obama tainted because he endorsed Blagojevich for re-election two years ago even though there were corruption stories about him?

Look, lots of people during the primary season thought Obama was a gentle, idealistic naif who would be chewed apart by the Republicans. Few people thought he even had a chance of beating Hillary Clinton to the nomination. They were wrong. Obama has always been pragmatic and savvy.

On the other hand, some people thought Obama could walk on water and heal the sick. Obama encouraged this talk by giving amazing speeches and by holding himself to a higher standard, wanting to change the way politics is done.

But to get good things done in politics, sometimes you have to work with bad people. That doesn’t mean you have to make bad deals with them, but sometimes you have to at least work with them. In the last few days, Blagojevich has become radioactive, but he wasn’t two years ago, even if he was already being investigated at that time.

Obama is a politician. A Chicago politician. That doesn’t mean he or anyone on his team did anything wrong. But it does mean that sometimes you have to deal with scum, because the scum is there.

Does anyone else besides me sometimes keep editing their blog posts for 10 minutes after posting them?

Barack Obama was elected president 38 days ago.

He won’t be inaugurated for another 39 days.

We are not even halfway through the transition period yet. God, this is taking forever.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a theater buff:

These days Admiral Mullen throws regular dinners at his 19th-century home on a small naval compound near the State Department, where the walls are not hung with medals but framed show bills from nearly every Broadway show that he and his wife have attended.

Of course, it’s possible Mrs. Mullen is the theater buff and he just goes along for the ride. Either way, this is cool.

Someone has made a looped image of yesterday’s shoe-ducking. It’s so dangerously hypnotic that I didn’t want to post the image directly in my blog.

The name of the .gif file makes it even better.

Is chest hair making a comeback? (Try to count the number of ways the author tries to say “chest hair.”)

Apparently, the Adam Walsh case has been resolved.

One night when I was a kid, there was a TV movie on about the Adam Walsh case. My parents told me not to watch it, but I didn’t listen.

Six-year-old Adam Walsh’s mom takes him to a department store, leaves him alone for a few moments, and he disappears. She panics. She sets up a blanket and pillow in the family car in the mall parking lot in case he comes back. He never comes back. Later, the police find his body severed head.

I watched the movie that night, then got into bed and couldn’t fall asleep. I was terrified that people would come through my bedroom window and kidnap me. Then I had a nightmare.

I should have listened to my parents.

So yeah… Rick Warren.

I’ve gone back and forth on Obama’s decision to have Warren give the invocation at his inauguration. On the one hand, it’s just a speech. It has nothing to do with policy. On the other hand… it’s awful, awful symbolism.

Warren will give the invocation at an historic event where millions of people will be watching. This is a man who campaigned for Prop 8, the passage of which was the biggest setback for American gay rights in years. This just rubs salt in a very raw wound.

I think it was a rare tone-deaf decision. And it means one of two things, neither of which makes me feel good. Either Obama didn’t expect the reaction he got because he doesn’t understand what a bitter thing Prop 8 is for gay people, which reflects poorly on his empathy for us; or he did expect the reaction but thought it was worth taking the heat because Warren could be valuable to him in the future.

My guess is a little bit of both.

He didn’t expect the vehemence of the reaction. After all, it’s not a cabinet position — it’s just part of a ceremony. It’s not an enormous news story at a time when people are concerned about the economy and the auto bailot. In fact, when I first read about Warren giving the invocation, it was contained in a New York Times post that gave more prominence to Aretha Franklin’s participation.

And there was politics involved here. We must always remember that Obama is a politician. That’s not a slur against him — it’s just reality. Even FDR, one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century, was a politician. He didn’t lift a finger to advance the cause of black civil rights during his presidency because he couldn’t afford to alienate the southern wing of the Democratic party. You work with whom you have to work with in order to accomplish the greatest good for the greatest number of people. By most estimates gay people make up merely 4-6 percent of the American population. The Rick Warren decision makes me incredibly angry because I just happen to be among that 4-6 percent. But it still hurts to feel we’re expendable.

Including a gay marching band in the parade doesn’t really make up for it. Having Rev. Joseph E. Lowery give the closing benediction — he is apparently a friend to gays — helps somewhat, but on the other hand, as the head of the Human Rights Campaign states, “would any inaugural committee say to Jewish Americans, ‘We’re opening with an anti-Semite but closing the program with a rabbi, so don’t worry’?” Would Obama give a similar honor to a pastor who said that black people were inherently dumber than white people?

I admire Obama’s ability to be friends with everyone, to try to understand all points of view, to remain preternaturally calm. But sometimes it’s just too much for me. I don’t think he gets that not everyone can be as zen about everything as he is. Some of us are just human.

In the long run, this might not amount to much. If Obama gets rid of don’t ask/don’t tell; if, somewhere down the line, he works to get federally-recognized civil unions; if he speaks out forcefully for gay rights, rather than just giving us token recognition in one line of a speech — then I might forgive him.

Still — the invocation?

Bill Clinton was impeached 10 years ago today. Wow.

My latest obsession is the White House. The actual building. Last week C-Span ran a seven-night series, exploring its history, its staff, the day-to-day lives of the First Families, and tours of various rooms. They’re repeating it next week, if you want to catch some of it.

I’ve also been exploring an amazing website, The White House Museum, which is full of historical photographs of almost every room in the White House — the Residence, the West Wing, and the East Wing — as well as various features of the grounds, such as the pool, tennis court, and putting green. I think my two favorite rooms are on the third floor of the residence: the music room, with its raised balcony, and the solarium, which opens onto the promenade. (The third floor also contains the workout room — that page shows more of W’s right thigh than I really need to see — and a bunch of guest bedrooms.)

Finally — and coolest of all — there is this guy who is trying to create a computerized 3D model of the entire White House. He has completed the exterior and grounds and the Oval Office, as well as some other parts. He uses a free program called Google Sketchup. If you download Sketchup, you can play around with the models and navigate inside them. I can’t describe how amazingly awesome this is. It truly must be a labor of love.

So, in addition to the White House, Sketchup is my other new obsession. I’ve been playing around with it, and I’ve managed to create a pretty good replica of our apartment. (I’m still working on it.) I was even able to add some of our furniture, for which I found pre-made models in the Sketchup 3d Warehouse.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: God bless the internet.

On this Christmas Eve, Al Franken seems all but certain to become the senator-elect from Minnesota, thanks to a decision today from the Minnesota Supreme Court.

One year ago tonight, I saw Al Franken while walking down Broadway.

You’ve come a long way, baby!

In honor of Christmas, here’s a classic.

Today is my birthday. I’m 35 years old.

It feels like just yesterday that I turned 30. Now my thirties are half over. It doesn’t feel quite as bad to write that as I thought it would. I’m 35 today, but I’ve had 35 years to prepare for it.

The only downside is that nobody cares anymore what TV shows I watch, what websites I look at, what products I buy. From now on I’m invisible to advertisers.

Er, maybe that’s a good thing.

Anyway, I share a birthday with Louis Pasteur, Marlene Dietrich, Tovah Feldshuh, Gérard Depardieu, Cokie Roberts, and Sarah Vowell, and I was born on the exact same day as Wilson Cruz.

So happy birthday to all of us!

I’ve totally been geeking out about the White House lately. So the other day I went to Barnes and Noble and bought myself a birthday/holiday/whatever present: The President’s House, by William Seale. It’s a two-volume work about the history of the White House and the people who have lived there. It’s more than 1200 pages long and comes in a box that holds both volumes. And it’s utterly fascinating.

And detailed. John Adams, the first president to occupy the White House, doesn’t even move in until page 79.

So I am in total White House Geek heaven.

Here are the books I read in 2008, in chronological order. It’s interesting for me to look back and see the random paths and byways my mind traveled across this year.

The Votes That Counted: How the Court Decided the 2000 Presidential Election, Howard Gillman

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963, Taylor Branch

An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, Robert Dallek

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, Mark Harris

The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008, Sean Wilentz

Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

Arthur & George, Julian Barnes

Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever, Joel Derfner

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester

Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin, Nicholas Ostler

Introduction to Latin, Revised First Edition, Susan C. Shelmerdine

FDR, Jean Edward Smith

An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Rick Atkinson (gave up after 100 pages)

Churchill: The Unexpected Hero, Paul Addison

The President’s House: A History, William Seale (recently begun)