Category: Media

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Amanda Cox Seeks a “Package”

What ABC could and did offer, instead, was an hour in prime time; teases of the interview on “World News”, the newly first -place morning show “Good Morning America”, “nightline,” and ABC’s local TV and radio affiliates.  Within the industry this is called the “package”. NY Times, February 12, 2013

The real package is, of course, Amanda Knox, who will enthrall millions of Americans on April 30 on ABC “News”. This is not news. It’s not journalism. It is the nauseous give and take of exploitation and titillation and scandal marketing. It is the news division committing incest with the entertainment division. The business of this entire process is not information or enlightenment or insight but how to disguise voyeurism as respectable information intercourse. We are all going to do the dance because we are happy to pretend to be appalled or sympathetic or curious or informed while   experiencing the thrill of dirty sex with a sexually vibrant young woman whose room-mate was murdered.

Amanda has a book to sell.

There is no personal experience so tragic or distasteful that the media are not willing to profit from it, nor women like Amanda Knox. But it will be packaged carefully. There will be some higher purpose given for the book, so readers won’t feel like they are expressing a prurient curiosity when picking it up at the bookstore. Let’s see– it’s a cautionary tale for young American women because she just doesn’t want anyone else to go through the ordeal she went through. Or a diatribe against the pernicious Italian justice system. Or let’s go with the Oprahfied version: “I just felt that it was time to tell MY story. There will be something about honoring the memory of her room-mate. There will be talk about who will play her in the movie. HBO or Hollywood? Can she sing? If yes, there’s always dinner theatre.

I do have a feeling she will eventually marry her body guard and go off somewhere and hide. She’s not made for this. The money is too tempting, but she’s not made for this and she may not handle it well.

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Oscars 2013

Jennifer Lawrence at the Oscars: was this a put on?

I think it was. And I think she will get away with it because she is young and bit dorky and funny. But it could not be helped: she has slimmed down, after complaining, last year, about how Hollywood wants everyone to look anorexic. Yes, they do, and you do. Whether she becomes even more successful depends on lot on how she chooses her next films. She could be the next Sally Field. Or she could be the next Sally Field.

Or the next Amy Adams, who must have the worst luck of any actress in Hollywood: she is one of a handful of really interesting actors around, but hasn’t yet found the break-out role that will define her career.

Poor Anne Hathaway: I doubt she’ll ever again, for sheer artistic interest, match the moment in “Brokeback Mountain” where she told Ennis, on the phone, what had happened to Jack, and made it beautifully ambiguous: did she know what was really up or not?

It’s pretty clear she did know– but it was wonderfully done.

No one gave a better performance in any film this year than Amy Adams did in “Junebug”.  I know for a fact you have never seen it: do so, now.

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Mumford and Sons

Roll away your stone,
I’ll roll away mine
Together we can see what we will find
Don’t leave me alone at this time
For I’m afraid of what I will discover inside
‘Cause you told me that
I wouldn’t find a home
Within the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal
And all the while my character it steals
Darkness is a harsh term, don’t you think?
And yet it dominates the things I see
It seems that all my bridges have been burned
But you say, “That’s exactly how this grace thing works”
It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart
But the welcome I receive with every start

I’ve tried and tried but I just can’t bring myself to love “Mumford and Sons”. A lot of people who know my taste in music have recommended them to me and suggested that they are not like most pop bands: they are serious. Their music has substance. They have energy and passion.

The lyrics of “Roll Away Your Stone” (above) give you a pretty good idea of what they’re up to. I think I like what they’re trying to do– inject some substance into popular acoustic based folk-rock– but it always sounds to me a little too self-consciously artsy and definitely pretentious. “I’m afraid of what I’ll discover inside” isn’t very startling, really, and isn’t a very compelling evocation of self-searching or grief or guilt or anything. “Fragile substance of my soul”? “While my character it steals”? As the lines follow each other, they go nowhere. As the images succeed each other in your head you should realize that they don’t have any connection to each other. When exactly did this character-stealing happen? What were you doing at the time? Who were you thinking of? The answer is, “a song”, “a song”, and “a song”.

The answers, in a great song, is something like “one night after I kicked Rosie out my apartment”, “masturbating”, “Lisa”. Or something like “but her reply came from Anchorage”.

There is nothing in the lyrics of “Roll Away Your Stone” that suggests any particular real experience or feeling– just something that sounds like a serious consideration of something that sounds like seriousness.

Oddly– and I mean that– it’s fairly typical of their lyrics. Something that starts off with a generalized image of soulfulness but never really connects to any real idea.

It’s empty in the valley of your heart
The son it rises slowly as you walk
Away from all the fears and all the faults you left behind

And “you forgave and I won’t forget”… what? What did she forgive? What did he do that was forgiven? What was forgotten? I don’t think they think it matters– I think they feel that the idea of forgiveness just floating out there is enough to move you. It doesn’t move me. It invites you to put your own experiences into that generalized statement but that makes it a weak song.  You can get the same idea on poster from “Successories”.

Everything I’ve heard from them is weak in the same way. Vague and unspecific and generalized and rather antiseptic and platitudinous. Compare it to:

Did I disappoint you?
Leave a bad taste in your mouth?  (U2)

The “bad taste in your mouth” is visceral and tart. Or:

I was down at the New Amsterdam
Starin’ at this yellow-haired girl
Mr. Jones strikes up a conversation
With a black-haired flamenco dancer (Counting Crows)

Specific place– the New Amsterdam–, specific girl– with yellow hair– and then you can go somewhere, the singer’s desperation for girls and success, his urge to throw himself at something and hope it sticks. Or…

There’s a note underneath your front door
That I wrote twenty years ago
Yellow paper and a faded picture
And a secret in an envelope

If Mumford and Sons rewrote the song, it would sound like this:

All your notes are under my doors
All my past thoughts expressed in words
I can hardly remember anything
Except my darkest secrets

So which is more evocative? More powerful? Is there any doubt? The Civil Wars song intrigued me immediately: what was the secret? Why couldn’t he give the message in person? What’s happened 20 years ago?  You don’t need the answers to those questions to be drawn in to the sense of regret, missed opportunities, and sorrow.

And just to rub my nose in it, Mumford and Sons puts out a video of themselves performing at the Red Rock amphitheater in Colorado and the audience is just jumping! Just jumping! Waving their arms and mouthing the words and just so consummately  rapt, in that choreographed fake “look at us whip the crowd into a frenzy” production style that I find more than a little distasteful.

You wonder where they are going with this. What’s the principle at work here– the crowd in a frenzy, interspersed with cuts of the band jumping and gyrating and demonstrating “passion” don’t you know, with the swooping camera work that is almost a sign of desperation: there is nothing on the stage that is interesting enough to obviate the need to make that camera move, to compel you to admit that there is something interesting here. This swooping camera! Why, a static camera just cannot capture the adoration of this bulging crowd of acolytes! Wait– there’s music.

Who’s more interesting than Mumford and Sons:

Bon Ivor
Dandy Warhols
Arcade Fire
Civil Wars
Ryan Adams
Brian Jonestown Massacre

Who’s less interesting:

Taylor Swift
Lady Gaga
Beyonce

Who is Similarly Lyrically Stunted

Tragically Hip

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The Sins We Know

“I couldn’t tell if that was you or the radio”. Keith Richards’ mom, shortly after he began learning the guitar.

I’m really not sure who said it first or if it was ever said first but it is no secret that a good strategy for a liar is to admit to the sins everyone already knows you committed, or which you don’t mind them knowing about, so that people will believe you when you deny everything else.

You need to remember this when you read “Life”, Keith Richard’s remarkable autobiography. He lavishly admits to everything– that we already know about him. Maybe he even throws in a few sins we’ve haven’t seen in the tabloids yet. He even admits to driving while stoned, risking his own and others’ lives. And he admits to being an asshole at times.

Well, what else is there?

Richards was an incorrigible drug user, of almost everything that was out there in the 1960’s and 70’s. He was arrested numerous times, occasionally prosecuted, but never served a prison term of any length whatsoever. I’m not sure he admits to why he didn’t serve a prison term. Well, yes, actually he does hint at the fact that he knew the right people. That he was privileged, because he was a rich, successful artist. One time, he called the owner of Dole Pineapples, whose daughter had taken a shine to him, to help evade a serious charge in Hawaii. Like magic, charges were dropped, and his stash was even returned, and everything was fine. If there is a problem with this, Richards doesn’t know it.

If he got into an argument with someone about whether he should be driving while stoned, he is always in the position of being able to say “fuck you, I don’t care what you think, if I feel like driving while I’m smashed, I will, and you can’t stop me.” Money is power– enormous power. What are the consequences to him if you don’t like him anymore because he might kill somebody on the road, or because he stole his son, Marlon’s, childhood away from him, or abandoned people, or introduced them to the drugs that later killed them? There’s nuance in everything and when you are Keith Richards, that’s all that matters– it’s enough. In the arc of that nuance, you can justify yourself.

That and the money.

 

Noted:

Keith takes more than a few shots at Mick Jagger. One gets the impression that he won’t mind, really, if Jagger takes a few shots of his own when his own inevitable biography appears. You get the feeling that Keith would think, fair enough.

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“No One Cares About These People”

Mr. Keane, in his Chronicle article, offered two major reasons the police lie so much. First, because they can. Police officers “know that in a swearing match between a drug defendant and a police officer, the judge always rules in favor of the officer.” At worst, the case will be dismissed, but the officer is free to continue business as usual. Second, criminal defendants are typically poor and uneducated, often belong to a racial minority, and often have a criminal record. “Police know that no one cares about these people,” Mr. Keane explained (NY Times, 2012-02-03)

And, I suspect, neither do you and I.

If you did, you would speak up, make your voice heard, vote for the progressive reformer, not the tough-on-crime conservative. But we don’t care about those people. Unless they are played by Morgan Freeman or Tim Robbins in a movie. Then we care a whole lot, because we really are good, decent people, and so is Morgan Freeman, and the fact that I just love him shows that I am not biased or bigoted. I judge people by what they actually do, not by which actor they look like.

And if the police lie in order to lock them up for a particular crime, it doesn’t really matter if they didn’t commit that particular crime: the important thing is that someone has been locked up for something.

Agencies receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence. (NY Times, 2012-02-03)

How small a minority are we now, those who think “these people” do matter? That they have souls and feelings and inner lives? We’re not popular, that’s for sure. We are an affront to the overjoyed multitudes who love punishment because they really feel that that is the only way to keep people from taking our stuff or hurting us. This conversation takes place at one level and they either hurt us or we hurt them and if you help them you are hurting us.

My wife and I are watching “The Wire” right now. It’s a gritty, realistic police drama set in Baltimore. The police in “The Wire” cover all shades of humanity, from the obese thoughtless bureaucrat to the passionate honest street cop. The behavior of the cops on this show– and their physical appearance (as on “Hill Street Blues”, another of a handful of credible police dramas) strikes me as consonant with detailed news stories about crime and justice. Deals are struck. The really bad guys, with smarter lawyers, get the light sentences while the poor loyal schmuck who served them bears the brunt of the criminal justice system. And the police, in “The Wire”, lie. Sometimes for personal gain or to cover up incompetence or corruption. Sometimes in a well-meaning effort to put the bad guys behind bars.

Noted

Yes, the police have a tough job. So do criminal lawyers, and farmers and miners and lumberjacks, and doctors and teachers, and those kids who pick through the trash heaps in India. Cry me a river. If you don’t want to be a cop because somebody thinks you should actually be required to obey the law, or control your temper, or risk your life to try to disarm a suicidal homeless man… then get out and do something else.

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Cheating

So why is it that Lance Armstrong is vilified for cheating at cycling but the news that Beyonce lip-synched at the inauguration provokes nothing more than a shrug?

Lance Armstrong used blood-doping and drugs to make it seem like he was a better cyclist than he really was. Beyonce used pre-recorded vocals to make her sound like a better singer than she really was
Lance Armstrong is probably not as good a cyclist as he looked. Beyonce is not as good a singer as she sounded. At least, not live. “Most people don’t care”. Okay, then let’s not keep a secret any more. Tell us before hand that you are not really going to sing. Tell us before-hand that you are going to dope. We’ll let you know if we want to watch.
Everybody does it. I just want a level playing field. You can’t expect me to sing and dance at the same time
Lance Armstrong not cheating is even more boring than Lance Armstrong cheating. He really doesn’t have any personality apart from his athleticism. A lot of elite athletes are like that. They have spent their entire lives consumed with refining their athletic skills. They don’t have a minute for politics or religion or literature or activism or charity. (The charities are almost always vanity projects handled by staff). That’s why the best commentators in sports are never the elite athletes (like Armstrong, or Gretzky, or Carl Crawford, or Lindsey Vonn, or Roberto Alomar, and so on). The journeyman players are always more interesting. Beyonce has never sung anything really interesting anyway. She is a diva, just as Lance Armstrong is a diva: it’s all about me. Look at me sing. Did you see it? Look at me! I’m a star.
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Music Industry Economics 101

Only about 1 in 10 signed bands make money for the record labels.

What does that mean? How can they possibly continue to operate with that astronomical failure rate?

It’s simple: they use a complex system of charges and counter-charges to bleed the successful bands of mo

ney to cover their losses with the unsuccessful bands.

Why is this allowed? Because artists are inherently random and disorganized and unconcerned about the legal implications of the agreements they sign with the record company.

And if you ever hear an artist say they are completely satisfied and happy with the deal they have signed you can be reasonably assured that they don’t understand it.

Not one bit of it.

See Tom Petty.

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The Mirth of Hollywood Money

(Paul Schrader says…)

In the case of Bringing Out the Dead, I was opposed to Nick Cage because the character I had written was about 27 years old and Nick can’t really, plausibly be less than 35 on the screen. I thought that this was really a young man’s thing going on here.

But it was a very tough story, in terms of Hollywood. Scorcese likes to take his time. He likes to spend money shooting. Last night they were doing a shot that I would do in a hour, and they were spending six hours on it.

That shows up on screen, but it costs money. So, a film that I could have made for 8-9 million dollars here in New York, they re spending 30-35 million. So financial justifications come into play, because you have to justify that 35 million dollars. Nick Cage, at the moment, gets around 20 million dollars a movie and he’s one of the highest paid actors at the moment. He s had a whole series of successes. But Nick read this and the idea of doing Schrader and Scorsese and a night in New York again – he agreed to do it for a million dollars.

That protected Marty. He knew that once he had Nick in his pocket for a million bucks, nobody would touch him. There wouldn’t be no studio interference, there wouldn’t be talk about changing the script, talk about having a different ending, or whatever.

So he opted to go with Nick, so that he could make the movie he wanted to make. If he went with an unknown, he would have had a lower budget or he would have had to make some script changes.

Paul Schrader, from an interview at Euroscreenwriters.

Some people don’t believe me when I tell them that I believe that the only reason Leonardo DiCaprio– the worst “name” actor of his generation– got a certain role in a “big” film like “The Revenant” was because his name, attached to a project, brings in millions of dollars of investment from the movie studios. Do I seriously think the movie studios would hire a bad actor for a good part in a movie by a great director because they want to ensure a return on their investment?

Well, when you put it that way.

Leonardo DiCaprio is not popular and famous because of his great acting ability.  He does something that always looks like acting but never actually is.  He grunts and moans and moves his mouth but he reveals nothing about the character he is playing that couldn’t be derived from a comic book drawing of him.  He certainly doesn’t reveal character the way Christian Bale, or Robert Duvall or Joaquin Phoenix or Meryl Streep or Cate Blanchett does.  He is popular because he projects the kind of anesthetized de-sexualized appeal of gay men that adolescent girls adore and don’t feel threatened by.  He and Andrew McCarthy and Johnny Depp and Elijah Wood and Tobey McGuire are better actors,  I suppose, probably, than the cast of “The Brady Bunch”, but they really aren’t in  the same league as the others I named.  Watch DiCaprio with the alluring Kate Winslet in “Titanic” and ask yourself this: if I was Kate Winslet in this scene would I be worried about what Jack Dawson might do to me?

It’s a giggle.  He’s completely harmless.

All right– a certain segment of the population says, “no, I wouldn’t be worried, because I would want Jack Dawson to make love to me”.  But that is because the entire scenario, a rich, cultivated, young British woman, offering, in 1910, to pose naked for a strange little American boy, in an exclusive cabin, in the first class section of a ocean liner, is preposterous.  I’m not saying you couldn’t make it work– a real writer absolutely could– but James Cameron doesn’t have even remotely the skill required to do it.   Unless you accept the rest of awful cartoonish melodrama of Cameron’s “Titanic” as worthy of seriousness.

But DiCaprio is immensely popular with a large segment of the movie ticket buying audience.  He is so popular that his presence in virtually any professional production guarantee’s tens of millions of dollars in revenue.  Thus DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover, as Howard Hughes, as Hugh Glass.  That’s why people refer to his character in the movie not as J. Edgar Hoover or Howard Hughes or Hugh Glass but as Leonardo.  Did you see when Leonardo fought with the bear?  Did you see when drew the portrait of the naked girl?  Did you see when he invented that big airplane?   Did you see when he nearly drowned?

And thus, Scorcese.

It is so common a practice, to give a prime role to celebrity actor rather than someone with real talent in order to lock in a big budget, that I look for it at the beginning of every big, serious Hollywood production, and even some independent films, even when the director is someone like Terence Davies, whose work I generally adore. We just watched his “House of Mirth”. Even with Gillian Anderson and Eric Stoltz in lead roles, it’s a gorgeous film, beautifully directed and scored; it’s thoughtful, delicate, subtle. And it has Laura Linney, a terrific actress, in the part of Bertha Dorset.

I really had no expectations about Gillian Anderson in the lead role. I thought, you never know– someone famous for her work on a slightly interesting but formulaic TV drama might turn out to be a good actress. Might. But she didn’t, and while it looks like she’s giving it everything she’s got and it looks like Terence Davies does wonders with what he’s given, she ends up reminding me of Lucy Ricardo.  And then you watch Laura Linney  for a few minutes and wonder why the hell she wasn’t playing Lily, and why Gillian Anderson was even in the movie. And the answer is obvious: Gillian Anderson was a huge star at the time the film was made (2000); she was a celebrity. She brought the money for an expensive movie.

She was at least serviceable in “House of Mirth” and the movie survived her shortcomings. Not so with Leonardo DiCaprio in “J. Edgar” or, ridiculously, “Aviator”. How far can Hollywood push the idea of using a celebrity to play parts for which they do not seem remotely suited? DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover?  Are you fucking kidding me?  As Howard Hughes?  Are you nuts?  Why not Churchill? Why not Jesus?

(Oh my god! I just discovered that they have actually cast DiCaprio as the lead in a remake of “The Great Gatsby”. Wow.)

Renee Zellweger as Brigit Jones? Can she even do the accent? Can she even handle a role that is as light as a feather in a film that consists mostly of gas?

Tom Hanks as anything? (Although, he is at least improving as an actor, as evidenced in “Cloud Atlas”.)  We all love Tom Hanks– I want him to be my neighbor.  But he cannot act.  Ringo is a better drummer than Hanks is an actor.

This is the Hollywood disease. Actors are chattel: an investment, a product to be promoted and placed where-ever opportune, and exploited for as long as possible, even when you have to have a 70-year-old romancing a 20-year-old.

Well, that’s not entirely unrealistic: I just a picture of 82-year-old Robert De Niro holding his 18-month-old daughter.

God forbid you should have to go through the expense of introducing a new actor, promoting him, getting him onto the talk shows and into the gossip columns, getting his picture out there, his story, his rugged perpetual 5:00 shadow. It’s an investment, like fork-lifts and aprons and saucers and pig-iron.

As for real acting: it’s something best left to young, independent directors to uncover, in young, unknown actors.   Watch the film “Winter’s Bone” with Jennifer Lawrence before she was famous.

Watch her now.

It’s sad.

 

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PBS’ Soundstage

When I was in college back in the 1970’s, the only decent music program on TV was Soundstage (earlier known as “Made in Chicago”), which presented relatively current, relatively serious artists like Harry Chapin, Arlo Guthrie, Gordon Lightfoot, and Emmy-Lou Harris, in a one-hour format, no commercial breaks, no light shows, no lip-synching.

Okay– so they also presented– geez!– Burt Bacharach and the Bee Gees. It absolutely blows my mind that the same minds that would put together a program like this for Emmy-Lou Harris would think it was a great idea to give the Bee Gees an hour of rapt attention. The Bee Gees were worse than mediocre. They were aggressively mediocre. Their mediocrity pounded you on the face and stuck it’s waxy fingers into your ears and wobbled your head from side-to-side to scream at you that there is not a single interesting thing musically or intellectually in any of this noise you are hearing.

But then again, in 1976 Lightfoot appeared on Hee-Haw to lip-synch “Sundown”.

Anyway, two or three of my favorite shows are on PBS: the News Hour which is about the only television news program that I watch without getting nauseous nowadays (I know I’m mean but even Peter Mansbridge looks and sounds like a pharmaceutical salesman– think about it– doesn’t he always seem about to ask, “and how often should the patient take this dosage, Mary?”) and “Frontline” (documentaries) and “Inside Washington”. And “Nova” can be pretty cool thought it can also get annoyingly breathless at times. And cheesy.

But mostly, when they need money, they present John Sebastian presenting endlessly recycled clips of “Do You Believe in Magic” or the Mamas and the Papas singing “California Dreaming” on Hullabaloo, in bathtubs, or Peter, Paul, and Mary doing their farewell concert to end all farewell concerts at Carnegie Hall. Over and over and over again. And over and over and over again. And over and over and over and over again. I don’t think they have done pledge week once in the last 20 years without showing Peter, Paul & Mary singing “Lemon Tree” or Pete Seeger doing “Turn, Turn, Turn” and John Sebastian strumming his autoharp and creeping me out with that harmless, aimless expression, grinning and looking folksy and trying to make you believe that the 1960’s was a happy place of delightful experimentation and joyful frolics in psychedelic meadows of unicorns and marshmallows.

When it’s not John Sebastian and the 1960’s, it’s Victor Borge, Perry Como, or Harry Belafonte. Who runs this network?

It doesn’t make sense to me. The average age of the PBS viewer must surely be sliding ever closer to the grave– they will, sooner or later, require younger viewers to survive the next round of Republican attacks. To attract younger viewers, they have to start bringing in musical artists like Leslie Feist, Arcade Fire, Royal Wood, Bon Ivor, Conor Orbest, Wilco, please, anybody from the last ten or fifteen years!

I am never not astounded that Lawrence Welk is actually still shown on TV, on Sunday, PBS.  Really?  Seriously?  Who is running this network?

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Mrs. President

“She has very much got his back,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime strategist, in an interview. “When she thinks things have been mishandled or when things are off the track,” he continued, “she’ll raise it, because she’s hugely invested in him and has a sense of how hard he’s working, and wants to make sure everybody is doing their work properly.” NY Times 2012-01-06

There’s a lot of euphemism in there– she’s “invested” in him. She wants to make sure everybody is doing their work “properly”. She might think things have been “mishandled”.

Without a doubt, Michelle Obama is a smart lady. She might even be very smart about politics, but we’ll never know because it’s not likely she’ll ever run for office and be elected by voters to have authority and do things. No.

She reminds me of Hillary Clinton, another very smart lady, who didn’t actually run for any office until 2000 (when she ran for the Senate in New York), but wielded considerable influence, especially on the Clinton’s failed health care proposals… You could say that their husband’s “appointed” them to a kind of “position”.

The part that concerns me is this: it appears Obama’s advisors would sometimes meet with him and discuss possible strategies and goals and policies and reach some kind of decision and then Obama would go home that night and have dinner and read stories to his kids and go to bed and the next day, he would announce that he had changed his mind.

It was obvious to his aides and advisors that Michelle had spoken.

A lot of people will read about it in People Magazine– and look at the flattering photography to go with it’s article on the first lady– and think, this is wonderful. What a wonderful lady. She’s so… so… invested.

Personally, I find it appalling. Here’s the reason why: Michelle didn’t attend the meeting and raise her issues and debate them and deal with opposing ideas and contrary facts like everyone else. She gets to have her say one-on-one with the President, a circumstance any other aide or advisor would kill for. No one to contradict your view of things. No one to point out something you missed. No one to raise facts and information that do not support your view. Just you and the most powerful man in North America.

If I was one of those aides and I had participated in a meeting in which we made our case for a certain policy or strategy and heard all sides of it and then found out, the next day, that Michelle Obama had changed the President’s mind, I would move to Chicago and run for mayor– that’s what I’d do. Especially if I was good at my job. Especially. But also if I was bad at my job. If I was more concerned with political success– getting re-elected–than with policy objectives.

The story is that the Obamas accepted the idea that they might not be re-elected in 2012. Initially.

Now, if I sucked at my job, I would just spend a lot of time sucking up to the First Lady.

The inconvenient truth here is that Michelle might have been right about some issues– she felt that the aides were too concerned with the political side of things– but we are also hearing about this through a filter. Yes, exclusive access to Michelle Obama, for a book. “The Obamas” by Jodi Kantor.

Michelle Obama considered not moving to the White House immediately at Inauguration, so the children could finish their school year in Chicago and take more time to adjust to life under the bubble– just like Mrs. Santos in West Wing!

They always tell you that that sort of thing is just not possible, that the Secret Service would have to shut down the whole block and search every neighbor entering or re-entering the neighborhood and that she wouldn’t be able to walk the dog anymore and blah, blah, blah.

They would have you believe that sophisticated Al Qaeda agents would spring from the sky in black ninja suits, smash through the windows, and snatch the first family and hold them hostage until America turned over a nuclear bomb so they could solve the Israel problem for once and for all.

This attitude towards security is what creates the hysteria around certain public people in the first place. Check other countries and you will find that few of them engage in this kind of psychotic delusion about the importance of politicians or celebrities. It’s not the product of the public’s attitude towards famous people: it’s the product of famous people doing everything they can to convince people they they are so unbelievably different from you and I that they must be treated as gods.

Even as Mrs. Obama dazzled Americans with her warmth, glamour and hospitality early in the presidency, she was also deeply frustrated and insecure about her place in the White House. NY Times

The New York Times announces to the world that Mrs. Obama — not Ms., of course– Mrs. Obama “dazzled” Americans. Well, sure they were: the New York Times told them to be dazzled and they were.

Well, what can you do? John Edwards gets a $400 haircut and it causes a sensation! Wait– the New York Times makes it sound like people are idiots for making a big deal about a $400 haircut. Maybe they are. Then again, maybe Edwards should have gotten a $35 haircut like most other women do. Maybe he should have announced beforehand that because he was now a contender, he would have to spend a ridiculous amount of money on haircuts. And shrug.

I don’t mean anything here to suggest that Hillary Clinton was not incredibly qualified for whatever government positions or non-positions she has ever held. Check her out in Wikipedia. I doubt that a more qualified woman ever ran for president.