Whose Line Is It Anyway?

October 6, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

In a thread over at Scatterplot, Jenn Lena said à propos of Sarah Palin in the televised debate, “I really loathe this ‘folksy’ thing. I wish someone would help me to understand what it means–specifically, why it is viewed as a desirable affect/quality by some voters.”

So I did my hair up Tina Fey style, put on my Kazuo Kawasaki glasses, and responded:

Doncha think that just havin’ a plain ol’ mom with good ol’-fashioned commonsense in office is the best way to run the government? We’re in this big economic mess right now, but if we can just get rid of the people who’ve been in Washington for so long, except for mavericks like John McCain, and get some more new people in there, well, gosh, I betcha those mavericks will fix up this economy in no time. ‘Cuz those mavericks, they’re not interested in politics or winnin’ elections the way politicans are, they’re just interested in what’s good for our country. Jeez, I don’t know why you guys can’t see that.

That was Friday. The next night, SNL led with a send-up of the debate. Fey/Palin’s opening lines are so similar to my comment that I suspect Scatterplot may have a lurking reader among the SNL writing staff.

Fey’s part begins at about two minutes into the clip.



Here's the transcript:

FEY AS PALIN: Well first of all, let me say how nice it is to meet Joe Biden. And may I say, up close your hair plugs don’t look nearly as bad as everyone says. You know, John McCain and I, we’re a couple of mavericks. And gosh darnit, we’re gonna take that maverick energy right to Washington and we’re gonna use it to fix this financial crisis and everything else that’s plaguin’ this great country of ours.

LATIFAH AS IFILL: How will you solve the financial crisis by being a maverick?

FEY AS PALIN: You know, we’re gonna take every aspect of the crisis and look at it and then we’re gonna ask ourselves, “what would a maverick do in this situation?” And then, you know, we’ll do that.” (SHEwinks.)

Incidentally, the show did very well in the ratings.

Who's Famous?

October 3, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

These two women embracing – you don’t recognize either of them, right?


Yet they are two of the this country’s greatest sopranos of the twentieth century (or the second half of that century), stars of the Met – Roberta Peters and Teresa Stratas.

They are both now retired – Stratas (the one wearing the cap) is 70, Peters 78 – but even in their prime they could have walked down the street together and nobody would have noticed them.

I was thinking about fame as I snapped photos of them.* Actors in film and television, a handful of rock performers, and a few athletes – those are the only people famous enough to be generally noticed. Some of them need bodyguards. But people who are “famous” in other fields go out in public wearing a cloak of anonymity.

That’s certainly true of people not in the performing arts (writers, sociologists), but it holds even for performers outside of those few favored fields. Someone might be the greatest stage actor in the world, but unless she’s starred in movies or TV, not too many people will recognize her.** Great musicians – classical, jazz, folk – have their fans, but the paparazzi will never bother them. (The photogs in the picture abover were all people who had been invited to the reception.)

Randy Newman tells this story. When he goes to restaurants, he likes to sit with his back to the room. One evening he went out to eat with his wife and three kids, and his fifteen-year-old daughter, first to the table, took the seat he would have taken. His wife quietly said to the girl, “You know, that’s the seat your father likes to sit in.” Newman’s daughter looked at him, paused, and said, “You’re not that famous.”

The hard truth is that the kid was probably right.

* I took this snapshot at a reception following a New York Opera Society tribute to Stratas. My presence had nothing to do with any involvement in opera (I have none). It was just one of those accidents of New York geography.

** Once in the local grocery store, I turned, and there was Broadway star Bernadette Peters (no relation to Roberta) standing two feet from me. Nobody else seemed to notice her, and it wasn’t just New Yorkers trying to be blasé. They didn’t recognize her.

Women Demanding Answers

Oct. 1, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

A month ago, I commented that US journalists seem reluctant to press politicians for answers. They ask a question, the politician gives an evasive response, and on to the next question. Or they will allow the politician to speak in generalities rather than insist on specifics.

During the Obama-McCain debate, poor Jim Lehrer couldn’t get either candidate to say how he’d scale back his proposals given the straitened economic circumstances he was sure to inherit. Lehrer was too polite to say point blank, “Here’s the question. Are you going to answer it or not?”

For some reason, it seems to be mostly women who are willing to speak bluntly and demand answers. It took a stand-up comic on a chat show for women (Joy Behar on The View) to tell McCain to his face that some of his ads were lies. And it was Campbell Brown, questioning a McCain adviser, who demanded specific examples of Sarah Palin's commander-in-chief decisions.

Here’s Katie Couric trying to get Palin to say whether human activities are the cause of global warming.



Here’s a transcript in case the video doesn’t play:

Couric: What’s your position on global warming? Do you believe it’s man-made or not?
Palin: Well, we’re the only Arctic state, of course, Alaska. So we feel the impacts more than any other state, up there with the changes in climates. And certainly, it is apparent. We have erosion issues. And we have melting sea ice, of course. So, what I’ve done up there is form a sub-cabinet to focus solely on climate change. Understanding that it is real. And …
Couric: Is it man-made, though in your view?
Palin: You know there are - there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with now, these impacts. I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate. Because the world’s weather patterns are cyclical. And over history we have seen change there. But kind of doesn’t matter at this point, as we debate what caused it. The point is: it’s real; we need to do something about it.

At another point, Couric asks her which newspapers and magazines she reads. Palin is deliberately vague, but Couric asks twice for specifics.



Transcript:

Couric: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?
Palin: I’ve read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.
Couric: What, specifically?
Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.
Couric: Can you name a few?
Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn’t a foreign country, where it’s kind of suggested, “Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?” Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

Palin’s supporters have been claiming that the press is out to get her. If they are, asking her questions and letting her speak for herself may be the best strategy.

Who's Calling Who a Nazi?

September 29, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

Brendan Nyhan excoriates Tony Blankley for a Washington Times article accusing the mainstream press of being propagandists for Obama. Blankley writes:

This is no longer journalism — it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Volkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.)

This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples,

(Volkischer Beobachter was the official Nazi newspaper. Goebbels was the Nazi Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda .)

We can be outraged, but we can’t really be surprised. It’s Godwin’s law:

As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a
comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

It applies to other media, not just Usenet. Maybe it was Blankley, or maybe it was Rush ("feminazi") Limbaugh, or maybe it was my memory of William F. Buckley, Jr. on Firing Line, but I have the impression that people on the right are quicker on the draw here – more likely than liberals to whip out their Nazi weaponry. So I did a quick Google search pairing Nazi and Hitler with a few politicians. I figured that attacks on liberals would be more likely to invoke the big baddies.


I don’t know how Google’s algorithm works. I suspect the recent references carry more weight, hence the landslide victory for the current candidates, McCain and Obama. Even so, attacks on Obama were more likley to mention Nazis and Hitler than were attacks on McCain.

The big surprise was Bush. Only a relative handful of Internet writers paired him with the Third Reich. As recently as May, Bush himself was comparing Obama to those who had appeased the Nazis, so even though Bush was the one linking Obama to Nazis, articles about this incident would have turned up in a “Bush and Nazi” search.

In general, though, the data support my idea. Obama v. McCain, Gore or Kerry v. Bush. And former VP Al Gore, who hasn’t been in office or run for anything for eight years, still gets more Nazi/Hitler references than does current VP Dick Cheney.