William Holden…

was born on this date in 1918. Holden was nominated three times for the Best Actor Oscar, winning for Stalag 17 in 1954. His other nominations were for Sunset Blvd. and Network. Holden is probably as well known for his portrayal of Hal Carter opposite Kim Novak in Picnic and as the leader of the demolition team intent on destroying Alec Guiness’ Bridge on the River Kwai.

Chris Rock

“A black C student can’t run no f***ing company. A black C student can’t even be the manager of Burger King. Meanwhile, a white C student just happens to be the president of the United States of America!”

— Chris Rock. HBO. Tonight.

Say hey!

“All true, but I can’t agree that No. 661 wasn’t a big deal. I don’t care if you’re swinging a bat or driving on the Bayshore Freeway: Passing Willie Mays is always a big deal.”

— King Kaufman at Salon on Barry Bonds.

You’re fired

From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles TImes:

On the final episode of “The Apprentice” on Thursday night, Donald Trump told winner Bill Rancic, “You’re hired.”

Rancic, of Chicago, had a choice of jobs — general manager of the Trump Plaza in Chicago or general manager of the Ocean Trails Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes.

He picked the Chicago job.

“I definitely breathed a sigh of relief,” Mike Vandergoes said with a laugh. He became Ocean Trails’ general manager only a month and a half ago. He had been the director of golf until getting a call from Trump telling him he was promoted.

The last thing Vandergoes wanted was a call from Trump saying, “You’re fired.”

Emily…

was born in Oakland, California, very early on this date in 1972.

Imagine if you will the ideal teacher. What would they be like?

Intelligent. Sensitive. Caring. Prepared. Hard working. Above all, enthusiastic.

That’s her.
Journey.jpg

Historical precendents

The two presidents who lost the popular vote, but won the election, and that then ran for re-election and lost were John Quincy Adams and Benjamin Harrison. (See item directly below.)

And what do that Adams and that Harrison have in common otherwise?

John Quincy Adams was the son of President John Adams. Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison.

And George W. Bush — what does he have in common with them?

A landslide?

Blogger DHinMI at Daily Kos tells us Why Kerry Could Win In A Landslide. It’s a long posting, somewhat rambling, but with several key points, some of which are:

Harrison & Hayes: Only two Presidents lost the popular vote, and both lost the next election. [NewMexiKen notes that John Quincy Adams lost the popular vote to Andrew Jackson and lost the next election. Hayes did not run for re-election.]

• Only one other president presided over four years of net job loss–Herbert Hoover, who lost by 17 points and 413 electoral votes.

• The effect of governors is debated, but most people accept that governors probably give their party’s candidate an extra 0.5%–1.0%. Depending on who’s doing the targeting, there are 19 states that are mentioned as battleground states: AZ, AR, FL, IA, LA, ME, MD, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, OH, PA, TN, WA, WV, and WI. In 2000, 12 of these states had Republican governors, 5 had Democrats, and two governors were independents. This time around, 13 of those states have Democratic governors, and only 6 statehouses are controlled by Republicans.

• Kerry may not be exciting, but he’s highly disciplined and unlikely to make a serious gaffe.

• Rove has shown his tactics over the last five years, so the Kerry campaign has a better idea of what to expect.

Read the whole analysis.

People are funny

Fifty years ago there was a radio, then a television show called People Are Funny. It was a quiz show of sorts, but when the contestant failed to answer the question as a penalty they had to do something foolish — like wrestle in jello, play with spaghetti, or try to register at a hotel claiming a trained seal was their girlfriend.

It occurs to NewMexiKen that we have turned into a fulltime People Are Funny. Perhaps that silly program placed subliminal messages in our mothers’ minds while they were pregnant. As a result, we now have Fear Factor, Jackass, or news stories like the one that follows, where reality is stranger than any stunt.

A Bad Week for…

Censorship, after prudes demanded that the owner of a Tennessee gardening supply center cover up its collection of classical-style nude statues. Owner Angie Langford fashioned velvet bikinis for the $99.95 lawn ornaments, and now customers are flocking to the store and buying them up. “They are pulling up the tops and looking underneath,” she said. “They wonder what we’re hiding.”

From The Week Magazine.

Scary

Did anyone else notice the hint from Trump last night that some of this season’s apprentices might be back among the 16 new Trump-wannabes? Omarosa’s was one of the faces they flashed.

Charlie Chaplin…

was born in London on this date in 1889.

The American Masters web site from PBS has a profile of Chaplin from which the following is excerpted:

Charlie Chaplin was one of the greatest and widely loved silent movie stars. From “Easy Street” (1917) to “Modern Times” (1936), he made many of the funniest and most popular films of his time. He was best known for his character, the naive and lovable — Little Tramp. The Little Tramp, a well meaning man in a raggedy suit with cane, always found himself wobbling into awkward situations and miraculously wobbling away. More than any other figure, it is this kind-hearted character that we associate with the time before the talkies. …

Chaplin’s slapstick acrobatics made him famous, but the subtleties of his acting made him great. While Harold Lloyd played the daredevil, hanging from clocks, and Buster Keaton maneuvered through surreal and complex situations, Chaplin concerned himself with improvisation. For Chaplin, the best way to locate the humor or pathos of a situation was to create an environment and walk around it until something natural happened. The concern of early theater and film was to simply keep the audience’s attention through overdramatic acting that exaggerated emotions, but Chaplin saw in film an opportunity to control the environment enough to allow subtlety to come through.

The TIME 100 essay on Chaplin includes this:

Chaplin.jpg

Never a formal innovator, Chaplin found his persona and plot early and never totally abandoned them. For 13 years, he resisted talking pictures, launched with The Jazz Singer in 1927. Even then, the talkies he made, among them the masterpieces The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Limelight (1952), were daringly far-flung variations on his greatest silent films, The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928) and City Lights (1931).

General Grant

Worthwhile essay on The Two Lives of General Grant by Larry McMurtry in The New York Review of Books. It begins:

The grim Apache leader Geronimo, during the long years of his captivity at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, occasionally taunted his captors by reminding them that they had “never caught him shooting”—that is, taken him in battle. General (later President) Ulysses S. Grant, during long years of being photographed—in the field, at home, in the presidential mansion—might have taunted photographers in much the same way: they never caught him smiling and they rarely caught him clean. His great, fallen Captain, Abraham Lincoln, inspired photographers; Grant merely wore them down, as he had, in time, worn down Lee. There is one photograph, taken on Inauguration Day in 1869, just as Grant is about to become president, when he appears to be clean and sober, though not happy. Perhaps Julia Dent Grant, his formidable wife, had concentrated her efforts that special day in seeing that her husband had his shirt correctly buttoned and his tie tied, neither of which would likely have been the case in day-to-day life.

Put Grant in a fresh uniform and within half an hour it would look as if he had fought the Battle of the Wilderness in it. In uniform or out, Grant rarely seemed at ease, neither in his clothes nor in his skin. His penchant for casual, if not ragged, garb is never better illustrated than in the famous passage in his Personal Memoirs when he goes, at last, to meet Lee at Appomattox Courthouse…

The article continues at The New York Review of Books.

What he said

From Electablog* Campaign News with all the Carbs:

John Kerry should absolve George W Bush of anything and everything done or not done before September 11. Kerry should give a major address in which he says enough is enough. Yes, the 9-11 Commission is vitally important. But there is plenty of blame to go around. Kerry should explain that the only people who need to apologize for 9-11 are the ones who planned and supported the attack. Yes, we desperately need the recommendations of the 9-11 panel and yes, the person in the Oval Office should be judged closely on how efficiently the much-needed reforms are implemented.

But we need to let W off the hook.

John Kerry needs to send this loud and clear message of absolution because every minute spent debating the memos and the clues and the hints and the mistakes and the vacations, along with every moment the press spends asking the President if he thinks he should apologize for 9-11, is ultimately a good moment for the Bush campaign.

George W Bush will not lose this election because Sept 11 happened under his watch. But he may very well lose this election because of what he’s done since.

And every moment that the public and the press are not focused on this period (during which we’ve seen false bravado, a march to an optional war, questionable strategies and leadership related to that war, a wedge driven between us and some of our closest allies, a clinging to secrecy, repeated attacks on those who even hint at criticism or disagreement, the mistake of tax cuts during a time of war, an unwillingness to admit mistakes or take advice, an unwillingness to level with the American people, a totally unclear strategy for the future, etc) is a lost moment for the Kerry campaign.

And there’s not a moment to lose.

Chris Rock

As the father of a baby girl, Chris Rock discovered that his main job is giving her a healthy first impression of men. If she grows up to be a stripper, he’ll know he failed.

“You got to keep her off the pole!” Rock advises at the top of his voice.

This Saturday. HBO.

Jackie Robinson…

appeared in his first major league game on this date in 1947. He went hitless but scored the winning run.

The front page of the Pittsburgh Courier, once the country’s most widely circulated black newspaper, illustrates the significance of that day.

Click on image to enlarge.