I learned today that Jay-Z and Beyonce got a tour of the Situation Room and that people are naming their kids “Mason” because some lesser Kardashian did so. I don’t really know anything about the Kardashians. They sound like one of the tribes on the Game of Thrones. Which one of the Kardashians is the Mother of Dragons? I’m waiting for Mason Kardashian to lead his armies against Stannis Baratheon and Priestess Melisandre. But when I get really depressed about the state of American politics, I remember this:
Yeah, that’s Sammy Davis Jr. (not Sammy Davis Junior Junior) stumping with Tricky Dick in 1972. This shit has been going on for a while now. Some celebrities are smart and sincere. Others are inexplicable, like Dennis Miller. The only constant is that our political discourse is stupid. But I think it’s getting worse.
Kardashians? Weren’t they some creepy-greedy alien from Star Trek TNG/Deep Space 9?
Not sure why anyone would want to know anything about their romantic lives. Guess that would be ST:OMFG,TMI!
Voyager
All you need to know about the Kardashians is the patriarch is Bruce Jenner.
Jenner was a fine enough decathlete and won some Olympic gold medals.
But he translated that into a Wheaties box and a decade plus of endorsements and self promotion back in the 70s.
That became his life skill.
And he married into the Kardashians and he has gifted that skill to the family. They are famous only for being famous.
Kardashians are supposedly Armenian.
Not a lot to like about polls like these:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/us/politics/poll-sees-obama-gay-marriage-support-motivated-by-poli
tics.html?hp
It screams outlier to me based on the gender breakdown, but still. It seems inexplicable to me that the catastrophic nature of the GOP’s policy for women’s health and safety, etc. is going to require so much work and effort to publicly reinforce over and over and over the next five and a half months. Fuck politics. Seriously.
I seem to remember that Will Rogers had a cordial relationship with FDR, but I don’t think there was a Situation Room then, and the White House (the building itself) was starting to fall apart. (Truman would later move out so that it could be renovated from the ground up.) So I would say that Rogers and FDR were as chummy as Nixon and Sammy Davis and Elvis, or Obama and Beyonce and Jay-Z.
Which is to say: this shit really has been going on for a long time.
Booman – have you read book The Fourth Turning? It provides a good argument for the notion that yes things have been getting worse in public discourse, and that they are likely to reach a peak of badness before they get better (within the next few years). And that this is a historical pattern that’s happened several times already.
No, I haven’t read that book.
An excellent book and an intriguing theory. First look in the used bookstores for the book “Generations”. The Fourth Turning is the sequel. I bought my copy in a remainder shop for a buck nine years ago when I was unemployed.
The generational differences in child rearing discussed in The Fourth Turning provide a plausible explanation for the personality differences in each generation.
Good stuff. Boo they are by Neil Howe who has done stuff with Bro Phil for decades now. Pretty sharp guy and has an insightful way to view the world
I didn’t know Sammy D stumped for Dicky Trick–it’s surprising given how big a JFK supporter Sinatra was. I thought the whole Pack were more or less in the Dem camp. That’s fairly depressing.
They got in big trouble when Bobby Kennedy went after the Mafia. Sinatra had convinced several Mafia chiefs to contribute to the Kennedy campaign. They felt betrayed and forced Sinatra to work six weeks at their Villa Venice roadhouse in Suburban Chicago without pay to reimburse them. Sammy came along with Frank and also worked there free just out of friendship. This story is from William Brashler’s book.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Step. Away. From. The. TV.
Seriously, you are hurting yourself.