According To Metag:www.phonogram.us,2011:/blogs2/dpdc//12011-09-23T17:38:44ZMovable Type 3.35A Walk In The Parktag:www.phonogram.us,2011:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1152011-09-18T18:32:08Z2011-09-23T17:38:44ZI have, for now, given up on Moveable Type and installed WordPress over on my site. I stilt ink MT is very good and maybe the best blogging engine, but it’s terribly complex and, at this point, I’d need to...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
across the street on WordPress. See you there. —Priest ]]>
The Fourth Acttag:www.phonogram.us,2011:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1132011-04-26T15:07:37Z2011-09-18T18:36:11ZI’m not sure who decided screenplays are written in three acts, but that’s what we’ve all become conditioned to. Of course, in television, there are four acts because of the commercials, but the beats are about the same—beginning, middle, complication,...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
I’m not sure who decided screenplays are written in three acts, but that’s what we’ve all become conditioned to. Of course, in television, there are four acts because of the commercials, but the beats are about the same—beginning, middle, complication, ending. In life, it’s good to know there are indeed second acts. At my advanced age, well into my forties now, I presume I am in my third if not fourth act, which has things moving at a brisk pace while we pause for this message from Depends.
I actually keep forgetting about this part of my life. It’s like I ran away to India and live in an Ashram with some Maharashtra natives who have absolutely no clue about STEEL or QUANTUM & WOODY. And you live there long enough, you yourself begin to forget.
I need to completely re-code this website (including this blog which is a spam magnet). The enormity of that task is enough to keep me from doing it. It would probably take me three to six months if I did it a little at a time, and time is simply not my friend.
There was no decision made to stop posting here. I stopped posting, I think, not because I had nothing to say but because I had nothing to say on this particular topic of comic books or super-heroes. I am simply not in that line of work anymore. Nobody chased me out, quite the contrary. I just woke up one morning and didn’t want to do it anymore. I still like the art form but, for the most part, do not care much for the business and, increasingly, know less about it.
And it’s not like I can post anything here about my personal life because (1) who cares, (2) my neighbors tend to copy things off this blog and pass them around (yes, my life is a Seinfeld episode), (3) other family and friends and British writers use this blog to cyber-stalk me, and posting here becomes an invitation for more stress and nuttiness.
Most writing I do these days I do for me. My most recent project, “1999” for Platinum Studios, went really well editorially but Platinum’s business problems delayed it well past our ideal 2009 publishing date (there was a ten-year gag integral to the plot), and the delays turned into my waiting for a bus that simply wasn’t coming. No offense to anyone at Platinum, every one of whom went out of their way to make this right, but getting that property back felt like rescuing my children from a burning house. And when you get used to being virtually unemployed for eighteen months, you have increasingly less incentive to run out and sign new contracts. I will likely publish “1999” along with “Zion,” my completely unpublishable (my agent’s words) novel on my own, making a whopping ten cents off of those properties, at some point. When you take money out of the equation, all that’s left is the fun stuff, what some people call “joy,” though it’s been so long since I’ve experienced it I’m no longer sure of the spelling.
I do, however, feel a CSI:Miami rant coming on, so expect that likely in the next week or so. For reasons too long to go into now, I’ve been watching this series on DVD and am both fascinated and repulsed by it.
As with my filthy garage, I can only walk past the horror so many times before finally losing my mind. It’s possible I’ve lost my mind long ago, but lately this site has been a peculiar eyesore. I should fix it or take it down. I don’t have much of an ego about myself or this part of my life, but people entering Act Four are usually thinking about legacy. It’s nice to have something, somewhere, that speaks for you, that tells your story from your point of view and in your own words. So, on some level, I suppose the site, abandoned in orbit for a long time, now, actually serves some purpose and is, therefore, worth the, oh, month and a half it would take me to actually re-code it properly (assuming I did that all day; figure times six if I just worked on it a day a week). Which I’ll probably do, if only because I’m sick of looking at it, now.
I spent long moments searching for some glib greeting to old friends I’ve vanished on, but can’t find something clever that also expresses how deeply I appreciate each one of you.
Dwayne & The Gangtag:www.phonogram.us,2011:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1142011-04-25T15:31:40Z2011-09-18T18:36:26ZAnd speaking of Dwayne… in case you haven’t seen it, my main essay about Dwayne and Milestone Media is here....priesthttp://digital-priest.comhere.]]>
Giantstag:www.phonogram.us,2011:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1122011-02-25T13:58:06Z2011-04-26T15:08:14ZThere are few men I've known whom I've admired more than Dwayne McDuffie. Few men whom I have learned more from or wanted to be more like. I am so grateful for his friendship, for having known him, spent time...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
There are few men I've known whom I've admired more than Dwayne McDuffie. Few men whom I have learned more from or wanted to be more like. I am so grateful for his friendship, for having known him, spent time with him, laughed with him, fought with him, worked way past midnight with him. Iron sharpeneth iron, scripture tells us, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. In a tough business full of struggle and competition for fleeting moments of achievement, there simply wasn't a more talented creator, a more staunch ally or fearsome foe. There's bound to be a lot of jokes about Dwayne being a giant in the industry. He was a giant outside of it too. I can't begin to describe the inestimable loss Dwayne's passing represents to our work and our lives.
Dwaynetag:www.phonogram.us,2011:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1112011-02-24T17:59:56Z2011-02-25T13:59:37ZI literally just heard minutes ago. I am beyond words. Be back when I can…...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
I literally just heard minutes ago. I am beyond words. Be back when I can…
Trek 3.0tag:www.phonogram.us,2009:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1102009-05-11T16:30:43Z2009-11-22T23:32:33Z(No Spoilers) They got the Romulans wrong. Again. The last Star Trek film, Nemesis, which killed the franchise, made the Romulans stupid. Made them stupid Roman Centurions who get hoodwinked by a piece of bad casting Tom Hardy as Shinzon,...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
(No Spoilers) They got the Romulans wrong. Again. The last Star Trek film, Nemesis, which killed the franchise, made the Romulans stupid. Made them stupid Roman Centurions who get hoodwinked by a piece of bad casting Tom Hardy as Shinzon, a supposed clone of The Next Generation’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Regrettably Hardy, the actor playing Shinzon, couldn’t credibly stand in the same room with Patrick Stewart, the wonderful Shakespearean actor who played Picard for two decades, so the whole “clone” notion never worked, not from frame one. Had they cast Stewart to play his own clone, we’d have just watched the fifth or sixth Next Gen movie, but astonishingly poor choices were made all around and here we are with this energetic and fun reboot. Make no mistake about it: Star Trek is a fun movie and well worth seeing. But is it really Trek?
As with Nemesis, this new Star Trek places a rogue Romulan at the center and then gets the Romulans completely wrong. The entire point of Romulans are that they are liars. That they say one thing then do another. Duplicity is their stock and trade. It is, ultimately, what makes them interesting. TV Show Romulans rarely, if ever, raised their voice. They spoke with an even, calculated tone while never taking their eyes off you. They polarized whatever room they might have been in. They were thinkers moreso than warriors, and they used their intellect to nefarious purposes.
Here, as in the awful Nemesis, the producers made the Romulans simply stooges. Every Romulan in this film is a stooge who screams and snarls and beats people up. Wrong. Romulans don’t beat people up. They outsmart people, manipulating them into beating themselves up. So, right away, I realize this is yet another Star Trek film produced by people whose understanding of Star Trek never makes it far below the Trek epidermis: the bare basics of what the phenomena is about. And, what’s the big deal? many will ask. The big deal is this: the difference between a film and a franchise is how deep the rabbit hole goes. In Star Trek, a fun but ultimately empty-calorie fetish film, that rabbit hole is fairly shallow.
Gene Roddenberry’s hopeful future was not there. It was implied, perhaps taken for granted, but it was not evidenced in any meaningful or significant way. That future—one in which poverty, disease, war, hunger, and most human vices have been eliminated—was what made Star Trek rise above most other science-future spaceship serials. This is something director J.J. Abrams either didn’t realize or didn’t care about. Hope was a huge component of Star Trek, and Abrams left hope on the cutting room floor.
The show also has heart disease. It’s a very clever film with very interesting performances, but the film has no beating heart at the center. Zachary Quinto, whose most compelling reason for being there is his uncanny resemblance to Leonard Nimoy, plays Spock as if he’s never seen a Nimoy performance. Quinto’s Spock is so uninformed—lacking the charm and pristinely calculated wit of the original—that every time he opened his mouth I was disappointed. The Spock we’ve come to know over 30+ years (unnervingly echoed by Tim Russ’ coolly disciplined Tuvok from that awful Lost In Space Star Trek show) would never order Kirk out of his chair (a funny line, but decidedly Not Spock). Thus, Spock’s ongoing conflicts about his divided lineage simply ring hollow: the young actor simply cannot bring Spock home for me, and I’ve been waiting a very long time (thank goodness the real thing appears in two extended cameos).
Worse: Chris Pine’s Kirk cannot hold the center of the film. He simply lacks the gravity of William Shatner’s chronic self-absorption, which informed Shatner’s performance as James Tiberius Kirk. Bruce Greenwood, as Captain Christopher Pike, simply mops the floor with Pine in every scene they share together, upstaging the younger actor with Greenwood’s meaty dimension as an actor and his character’s father figure to the young Kirk. As ridiculous as it was, I actually bought Pike promoting Kirk to first officer, largely on the strength of Greenwood’s performance.
Kirk himself, however, is completely missing from the film. Abrams seemingly capriciously banned Shatner (in both body and spirit) from the production. It felt deliberate. It felt mean. And it tinged my enjoyment of what is certainly a great movie. The whole film felt Anti-Shatner if not Anti-Kirk. It felt hostile to Shatner. With no hopeful future and such unspoken hostility toward Kirk, is it Trek?
Pine plays Kirk as though he’s never heard of William Shatner. I frankly do not know anyone alive over the age of 30 who can *not* do a Captain Kirk/William Shatner imitation. Most every other member of the cast (except Zoe Saldana, who plays a terrific character called Uhura but who lacks the quiet strength and discipline of Nichelle Nichols) seems to have used the original characters as the foundation for their performances. They certainly went their own way and made the characters their own (perhaps most successfully, Simon Pegg’s very funny Scotty), but Pine seems to have deliberately abandoned Shatner. Coupled with the choice to not cast Shatner even in a cameo (the plot re-shuffles the continuity deck so efficiently, no explanation of Shatner’s walk-on would have been necessary), that I’m left to conclude the producers wanted a Shatner-less Star Trek, which is to miss the joy of Trek entirely.
As annoying and occasionally overblown as Shatner’s performances can be, it is those very qualities which make Spock Spock and McCoy McCoy. The new kid was simply too generic, a pale echo of Tom Cruise’s Maverick from Top Gun (including an homage to Maverick’s arrival at the air base on his motorcycle: Cruise stops briefly, watches the jets, then kicks his bike into high gear, heading for the air base. This is re-created, almost note for note, here in Trek).
The casting, therefore, is out of balance. Pine’s groping, generic Maverick Lite is no Kirk. Not even close. Not even a hint, an echo, of that note in the symphony. So the triad of Spock, Kirk, and McCoy simply does not work, here. Spock’s arguments with McCoy seem strained and flat, missing the fire of Deforest Kelley’s seeming disdain for Nimoy.
Worse, at no point does Kirk save the day. He performs heroic acts but he is not a hero. At no point do I ever feel like he was in any real peril, and the Kobayashi Maru “no win” scenario never plays itself out in the plotline.
The film goes out of its way not to reimagine Kirk so much as to banish Shatner, as if Shatner’s ghost might hold back a new franchise. What might hold back a new franchise is the thinness of the new premise, the performances being satire once removed, and the *lack* of a Shatner at the center. Quinto’s Spock’s lack of charm (not to mention his lack of Nimoy’s classic baritone) doesn’t help. This film could easily have tipped over into the realm of a Saturday Night Live sketch. As is, it teeters on the brink.
There weren’t enough shots of the Enterprise, Abrams again missing a crucial point that the Enterprise herself is a major character in the franchise. We get, at best, fleeting occasional glimpses of the ship’s exterior, and we’re left blinking and wondering what this version of the ship actually looks like.
Ben Cross turns in a simply dreadful performance as Sarek, Spock’s father. The part was played for decades by the inimitable Mark Lenard, who passed away in 1996 Lenard’s Sarek was Spock without the compassion. He was all discipline, and Lenard’s performance had a through-point of self-loathing for Sarek’s obvious compassion for his half-human son, and anger at his son for causing Sarek to so obviously display that compassion. Anger which, in wonderfully nuanced layers from a brilliant actor, humiliated Sarek. Cross’s befuddled, doddering, single-note performance fairly insults the richness of that memory. I mean it, every time I saw Sarek in the film I winced. Ouch.
Finally, God was not in this movie. Not that He specifically needed to be, but Star Trek not only had an innate sense of hope, but was fairly evangelical in Kirk’s sense of faith. If not faith in a specific Judeo Christian God, but faith in the bright future for mankind and, ultimately, the universe. Via his trademark, halting speeches, Kirk routinely pondered the big questions and gazed out at the stars. Whether deliberate or not, he came across as a man of faith, and that hopeful optimism is what made Trek Trek. Most all of that is missing from this new Star Trek, which seems much less concerned about the hopeful future, hitting the action beats squarely while forgetting to give the film an actual soul.
There’s really not much here for young people except action and a gratuitous scene of Uhura in her panties. It was an unnecessary titillation that demeaned the actor’s otherwise terrific performance and something Nichelle Nichols, the original Uhura would *never* have agreed to. The one major female (and black) character in the film, and they made her take her clothes off. The major reboot performances are only interesting if you’re familiar with the originals, which these performances vaguely echo without actually measuring up to. Eye candy, lots of fun, but not enough depth to make the film compelling, no lessons learned, no questions pondered, no hope extended to us. As fun a way to kill an afternoon as any, and I suppose the film will rake in lots of cash. But, for this Trek fan, it serves manly to underscore just how great the original was.
Life According To Maddietag:www.phonogram.us,2008:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1092008-12-19T02:49:07Z2009-04-07T17:35:44ZA visitor came to my office at Marvel and, finding the door locked, knocked. The door opened about eight inches to a hard stop at the foot of my assistant editor who scowled through the opening, “What.” Material would then...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
A visitor came to my office at Marvel and, finding the door locked, knocked. The door opened about eight inches to a hard stop at the foot of my assistant editor who scowled through the opening, “What.” Material would then be passed through the opening with the door locking securely thereafter. And that was the only way I ever got any work done around there. Thank God for Adam Blaustein.
I didn’t know Maddie Blaustein. By the time Adam became Maddie, we were orbiting different planets. There was absolutely no animosity or falling out, more like a falling away, with my moving in new directions and living far from New York. So I wouldn’t be able to tell you much about Maddie, who passed away this week, but I can share an awful lot about Adam. These are just a few highlights:
I’d known Adam for at least a year before it even occurred to me to hire him. He was working as a framer at an art supply store a few blocks from Marvel, and I routinely had things framed for the office. When my assistant, Keith Williams, went freelance, I remember whining to Adam about the politics of replacing him. I caught a lot of grief for hiring Keith, who was black, some people figuring that’s why I hired him—which wasn’t true. I’d interviewed a bunch of writers and one artist. I hired Keith because he was an artist, because he could circumvent the at-times arduous production delays by closing the door and doing things ourselves. I was a writer, I didn’t need another writer in the room.
While waiting on my framing job, Adam suggested himself for the AE position, and I actually tried to talk him out of it. It paid next to nothing and it was often thankless work. I may have been one of the least popular editors at Marvel Comics in the early 1980’s, and I rightly assumed the immeasurable maturity level of most Eds working there at the time would invite hostility toward Adam. If he actually wanted a career in comics, being my assistant was probably not the best way to go.
But, surprise, this Blaustein guy was a comics fan who knew the universe. He became my assistant and, ultimately, one of my best friends. He married my wife’s best friend, and for awhile it was one of those sickening sitcoms with the two guy best friends and the two girl best friends.
He had amazing insight and depth of character and was a constant source of personal and professional advice. He had a great place in Jersey City, where we could climb up on the roof at night and watch the most spectacular view of the New York skyline you could imagine. He got arrested once for carrying a dull sword on a New York subway. That sword is in my house, now.
We tended to close bars even though neither of us drank. Some of the best times of my life, the very best, occurred with Adam riding shotgun on some night adventure in lower Manhattan.
We usually patrolled the Marvel offices armed. We had full-scale, official-weight replica model Colt 1911 automatic pistols tucked into our waistbands, which Marvel VP Mike Hobson would have to routinely explain to the uninitiated straights he routinely entertained next door. We wore ties. My, how that was hated, too. Of course, they weren’t real ties. They were Morris Day ties—skinny ties that are laughably out of fashion these days.
When Congress passed the bill making Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday a national holiday, Marvel chose not to observe that day. I pulled out my checkbook and wrote Adam a check for his salary for the day, and we closed the Spider-Man office—Adam drawing a defiant Spider-Man “black power” fist (in black symbiote costume, of course) and adhering it to our window.
The one time I ever borrowed money from Mark Bright was to loan it to Adam so he could take Golda—who later became his wife—out on a date. Golda, my wife’s best friend, was a Haitian American who, once they were married, was regularly harassed at department stores for presenting an Amex card belonging to “Golda Blaustein.” This is stuff you just can’t make up.
I bought one of the first Apple Macintosh computers, an odd little thing that came with something called a “mouse.” Adam and I stared at it for about an hour, wondering how on earth to work the thing. I knew MS-DOS fairly well, but had never seen a GUI and certainly had never seen a mouse. Reading the instructions, which said “point at an element on screen using the mouse,” I picked the mouse up, placed it flat against the screen. The thing didn’t work, and I grew frustrated, handing the manual to Adam with the mandate: figure out how this thing works. Which he did. And later taught me hw to use it.
We were, it seemed, loathed by other editors. Mainly because Adam really wasn’t a guy who took crap off people. I didn’t take much crap, either, but I’m pretty sure I took more crap than Adam did. Some people didn’t like him because they didn’t like me and couldn’t woo him over to their clique. Some didn’t like him because not only was he not in the clique but he thought cliques were stupid and said so.
Many of the editors called our office, “the Robo-Office” because I bought an answering machine and hooked it up in there (this was pre-voicemail). We were openly scoffed at in editorial meetings for needing “a computer and an answering machine”—two things no working editor today could conceive of being without.
Adam once made Peter David jot down scenes from his comic book plot on flash cards. Over lunch, Peter ran through the plot, with Adam routinely plucking out “Peter Scenes”—usually moments of brilliance ruined by Peter either not trusting the readers to get it or congratulating himself on his brilliance—out of the deck and tossing them on the floor. By coffee and desert, Peter had a leaner stack, “There ya go, Go write that!” We both loved Peter. We both thought Peter was brilliant, and felt awful about the manhandling we, well, really, I, had to do Because The Boss Said So.
He had great hair. “So, let me get this straight,” I said to him, “you... wash it, then let it dry.” That’s all he ever did to it. Back in those days I had Morris Day hair, meticulously layered and time-consuming to maintain. This guy rolls out of bed, washes it in the shower and heads to work with it wet.
We mainlined coffee. We played jazz cassettes on a high-end stereo—not a boom box—in the office, next to a chaise lounge, beach ball and palm tree. The Spider-Man office was the coolest editor office in the joint, which also tended to invite ridiculous criticism from the other editors. But, if the joint was cool, Adam was a huge part of that. He was the sharpest, hippest, cigarettes-and-coffee guy you’d ever meet, which geeks like me tended to find threatening. A gifted mimic, he’d have me in stitches, at times entertaining the freelancers who routinely dropped anchor in the Spider-Office.
We moved apart in later years, which I’ll take the blame for. After my divorce, my reclusive tendencies took firm hold as I drifted out toward Pennsylvania and ultimately Colorado and out of comics altogether, losing track of a lot of friends along the way. I’m deeply saddened I could not be there for Maddie toward the end, but I have great expectation and hope for Maddie to be, finally, at peace, enraptured in love.
Hopetag:www.phonogram.us,2008:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1082008-11-11T16:24:30Z2008-12-03T18:11:21ZThe euphoria experienced around the world was not really about Barack Obama. It was not even about the historic significance of a black man being elected president of the United States. The weeping and rejoicing, shown in clips from metropolitan...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
The euphoria experienced around the world was not really about Barack Obama. It was not even about the historic significance of a black man being elected president of the United States. The weeping and rejoicing, shown in clips from metropolitan cities to primitive villages around the globe, was for America. For an end to the oppression and tyranny the Bush administration has come to represent. The world has no idea whether or not Barack Obama will, in fact, be a good president. And, internationally, Obama’s race is of much less concern than is his policies as America remains one of increasingly fewer places in the planet still struggling with issues of its own identity and grappling with its own childish immaturity concerning skin color. While our domestic reaction is certainly a mixed bag of emotions posited by our individual visceral responses to Obama’s race, the matter is of mostly peripheral concern to the international community, where the outsized reaction to a political contest in America is much less about race than it is about tyranny, justice and competence; about America’s soiled image and its place in the world. The tears and shouts of joy from Bangkok to Sydney to Paris to Milan have very little to do with the color of Barack Obama’s skin. It is, instead, a collective sigh of relief that America’s wrongheaded investment in the Bush Doctrine had come to an end. That America would once again become the shining beacon of moral integrity and the global standard bearer for human rights, a proud legacy the current administration cashed in during years of inept prosecution of uncertain goals.
This has been an administration which has behaved much more like a fascist regime, legislating against its own citizenry, stripping away our civil rights while exponentially increasing the powers of the presidency. A presidency with no accountability, a government which locks up anyone it wishes as an “enemy combatant.” A government that creates hateful places like the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay and the torture center at al Ghareeb. An arrogant presidency which naively and childishly calls other nations “evil” and whose inept pursuit of a man who took 3,000 American lives on 911 has now cost more than forty times as many innocent lives and created untold numbers of bin Ladens-to-come in orphans left crying amid the charred ruins of their lives.
We have no idea at all whether or not Barack Obama will be a good president.
But Obama has a quality George Bush (and, based on his campaign, John McCain) does not: the possibility of being good. Domestically, we are so starved for leadership, for uncorrupted, unselfish, mature vision, that even the possibility of Obama being good at the job is enough to earn our vote. Some of us voted for a black guy. Some of us cast a vote against Sarah Palin—whose vanity, intellectual bankruptcy and blind adherence to right-wing policies she herself has little understanding of made her likely and probable ascension to the presidency a significantly worse threat than even a literal third Bush term. Some of us voted for change, as the unprecedented, mean-spirited and unfocused nature of the McCain campaign mirrored the worst aspects of the current president. But, my guess, is, the vast majority of U.S. voters have simply tired of the childish, selfish, empty rhetoric and failed policies which perpetuate and exploit divisions between us. In the midst of serious threats to our very existence as a nation, our most experienced and, therefore, most trusted candidate chose to scare us instead of reassure us. Chose to divide us instead of unite us. Chose to play ridiculous blame games and place a completely incompetent person whose executive experience was dwarfed by her inability to grasp even basic policy next in line for the presidency. John McCain’s vision for America was him running it. He laid out no coherent plan for moving forward and presented no opportunity or incentive for us to come together as a people. He was not reassuring, he was scary—made all the more scarier by his advanced age, questionable health, and Sarah Palin waiting in the wings. McCain's sad stumbling through the trees did not allow him to see the forest: in the larger picture, he ran a campaign of hate and fear. At a time when America was desperate for leadership and reassurance, John McCain resonated the emotional viscera of the current administration. He felt like more of the same, despite claims to the contrary. And America had finally had enough of that.
In that sense, the election of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America represents globally what it has strived to represent domestically: hope. Hope is not a guarantee. Hope is about potential. And, yes, we’ll take that.
Obama Backlashtag:www.phonogram.us,2008:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1072008-11-10T16:22:38Z2009-05-11T16:37:05ZThere’s tile on the Oval Office floor. Tile. Not the royal blue carpet we’ve grown accustomed to from episodes of the West Wing, but a glassy, polished opalescent tile with the seal of the president emblazoned upon it. And green...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
There’s tile on the Oval Office floor. Tile. Not the royal blue carpet we’ve grown accustomed to from episodes of the West Wing, but a glassy, polished opalescent tile with the seal of the president emblazoned upon it. And green striped lawn chairs. Well, at least they look like lawn chairs. How utterly disappointing. I hope Michelle Obama does something about that once she gets there. Yesterday’s Obama-Bush photo op was interesting only in the sense that everything this guy does—up to and including, literally, blowing his nose—just seems to fascinate America. With a reported 70% approval rating, Mr. Obama sat down with the president, whose approval rating remains somewhere in the 20’s. From all reports it was a congenial affair, likely with the president offering up his opinions and Obama saying, “yes, sir.” The president-elect has smartly distanced himself from the current president, reminding impatient voters daily that he is not yet president. The polices currently being pursued are those of the Bush administration, for which he wants neither credit, blame, nor responsibility.
But his posture does offer up an interesting observation: Obama Backlash is undoubtedly coming. Everybody (well, everybody who liked the guy) has some agenda, some cause, they want the new president to champion, and he has promised almost everything to everyone. The new president will be saddled with a complete mess, which might actually be fine Republican strategy—hand off the mess to the new guy then blame him for failing to fix everything in four years. But even rabid Obamaites will be disappointed in how long change actually takes. That, a year from now, America could still be in Iraq, could still be reeling in economic turmoil, would probably result in Obama Backlash when the new president proves himself to be only human. With a friendly congress (albeit divided by 535 individual agendas), we expect Obama to move quickly. But, the reality is, as big a mess as we appear to be in, I’m quite sure much worse news has been hidden under that gleaming tile or in closets around the West Wing. That bad news, no matter how bad it is, has been doctored by the politics. It remains to be seen if Barack Obama is an FDR (or even competent at the gig), but our hopes have been raised to unrealistic levels. Keeping hands off of Bush’s mess until it becomes Obama’s mess is certainly right thinking, but the new president really needs to prepare the nation to roll up its sleeves and put our collective shoulder to the wheel to fix this thing, instead of sitting back and expecting Obama to do it by himself.
The Guy With The Microphonetag:www.phonogram.us,2008:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1062008-11-09T16:21:04Z2009-03-14T01:16:52ZI find it ironic that black Christian voters overwhelming supported Proposition 8. I’m trying to find a way to explain the sad irony of an oppressed people making history by electing the first African American president while, at the same...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
I find it ironic that black Christian voters overwhelming supported Proposition 8. I’m trying to find a way to explain the sad irony of an oppressed people making history by electing the first African American president while, at the same time, opposing one of Obama’s key positions: his inclusivity and acceptance of same-gender loving people. Obama abhors gay bigotry, and yet his most ardent supporters overwhelmingly backed the California constitutional amendment by some 70%. These folks apparently reject the notion that any denial of civil rights can ultimately be used as a weapon against they themselves. That the language introduced to argue for the ban on gay marriage is identical to language once used to ban interracial marriage was either inconsequential or unknown to them. Nutty claims that gay marriage somehow undermines the sanctity of straight marriage is totally ridiculous. First: whatever you consider sacred is, therefore, so. If you consider a navel tangerine sacred, it is so. For you. But don’t rally the neighbors to force the local grocer to commit to handling tangerines differently.
I’ve never understood this fascination about what people do in their bedrooms. I mean, if you take sex out of the equation, gay people are, well, people. Just like everybody else. So why do we get so mad when we think that, retiring from our day, some people will be sharing a bed with folks of the same gender? Why do we even *care*? The notion of gay marriage being a threat to straight marriage is ridiculous. The sanctity of marriage was undermined and trashed by *straight* people. These days, people treat marriage like it is the same as dating, people having “starter” or “trial” marriages—all of which I find offensive, and all of which undermines the sanctity of the institution. People, so committed to one another that simply dating is no longer enough for them, who fight for the right to be married, who risk their livelihoods and, in many cases, their personal safety if not their lives in order to marry—I can’t imagine in what way that kind of dedication undermine the institution of marriage. But, to be blunt—who cares? I mean, seriously, why do I care what other folk do?
Personally, I don’t affirm gay marriage. I don’t believe that’s what marriage is about. But, like navel tangerines, that’s *my* belief. I don’t feel some compelling need to force people to agree with me or to live their lives the way I do. Moreover, there’s a terrible and slippery slope that begins with the denial of anyone’s civil rights. It’s quicksand: the more we do it, the easier doing it becomes. That people can’t see the connection between Prop 8 and The Patriot Act and FISA and Jim Crowe is utterly stunning to me, demonstrating how poor a job we do at educating our children, ourselves, not only about why America is great but about how easily the freedoms we take for granted can be stripped from us.
The religious right is most especially troubling because of the uniformity they demonstrate in falling in step behind religious leaders. It amazes me that they can’t see the connection between radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr and James Dobson, a comparison which will no doubt offend many of the faithful. But an extremist religious nut is an extremist religious nut. The goal and expression of their nuttiness differ, but the formula is the same: blind adherence to the guy with the microphone. You round up a random sampling of Christian conservatives—I mean, just grab 'em off the street—and most could not tell you, in any coherent way, why they hate homosexuals. Most would deny they hate anybody, but the expression of their faith, is, in effect, hatred. Some may quote a scripture or two, but most will just hand you a, “Well, the bible says…” and then ramble off Focus On The Family talking points. The overwhelming majority of these folks, and black Christians alike who supported Prop 8, are lemmings. They don’t read. They don’t question. Their main education about such matters comes from the guy with the microphone. And he, himself, is often just as uninformed as they are.
The notion that God is so weak that He needs our help to enforce His law is, literally, blasphemous. Beside the fact we are no longer under The Law but under Grace, something the religious right routinely seems to ignore as they go about their Old Testament methods of smiting the infidels. Regardless of what you believe, there is no biblical model—none at all—for Christians oppressing others or denying them their rights. Jesus never organized a boycott or urged His followers to vote down a ballot amendment. He never backed a political candidate or attempted to force Himself or His views or His values on anyone. Instead, He said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” He told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Christians attempting to change or build the kingdom of the world in the name of Jesus really need to fundamentally asses whom it is they’re following. This is behavior Christ, in word and deed, clearly denounced. Which leads me to believe the lemming law: that the vast majority of Christian political activists—of any ethnicity—get their information mainly from the Christian right propaganda factories. For, if these folks actually knew Jesus, or, failing that, actually bothered to *study* Jesus’ life and His words, they’d find an enormous gulf between the things they do and the personal example of the Man they claim to follow.
These religious folk who want to run around banning things: if they really want to uphold the sanctity of marriage, they should get a vote passed banning divorce. Jesus condemned divorce while saying nothing at all about homosexuals, and yet the divorce rate among Christians is nearly identical to that of non-Christians. Supporting Prop 8 on religious grounds is, therefore, hypocritical on so many levels, not the least of which is that the biggest threat to the sanctity of marriage—according to Jesus Christ—isn’t gays, it’s DIVORCE. Go ban THAT, and you’ll get my attention.
Palin's Anatomytag:www.phonogram.us,2008:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1052008-11-01T12:44:14Z2009-03-13T17:04:58ZIs it possible a President McCain will finish his term without suffering serious illness? Of course. But the statistics of his type of skin cancer suggest otherwise. It is extremely likely a President McCain will, at the very least, be...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
Is it possible a President McCain will finish his term without suffering serious illness? Of course. But the statistics of his type of skin cancer suggest otherwise. It is extremely likely a President McCain will, at the very least, be forced to undergo grueling and debilitating treatment at some point during his first term. Palin continues to refuse to release her own medical records, the only of the four major candidates to do so. Her refusal fuels ongoing speculation that baby Trig is, in fact, Palin's grandson and that Palin's daughter is pregnant for the second time, rumors a release of Palin's medical records would immediately put to rest. A young, vibrant woman of 44, the only reason we can immediately suspect for her to refuse to disclose her medical records is the fake pregnancy. This is how politically un-smart this woman is, to either try and hide something the pubic will inevitably discover or, even worse, to fuel public doubt simply by being an onion. This is not a person I'd want sitting across a conference table from Vladimir Putin.
Obama Night Livetag:www.phonogram.us,2008:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1042008-10-22T16:11:03Z2008-11-24T19:06:09ZThe new rumor is Obama may go on SNL Nov. 1. If they have any sense of humor at all, they'd have Obama come on and administer CPR to the moose....priesthttp://digital-priest.com
The new rumor is Obama may go on SNL Nov. 1. If they have any sense of humor at all, they'd have Obama come on and administer CPR to the moose.
2000 Daystag:www.phonogram.us,2008:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1032008-10-20T19:40:57Z2008-12-01T19:21:58ZShiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on Iraq's parliament Saturday to reject a U.S.-Iraqi security pact as tens of thousands of his followers rallied in Baghdad against the deal. The mass public show of opposition came as U.S. and Iraqi leaders...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on Iraq's parliament Saturday to reject a U.S.-Iraqi security pact as tens of thousands of his followers rallied in Baghdad against the deal. The mass public show of opposition came as U.S. and Iraqi leaders face a Dec. 31 deadline to reach agreement on the deal, which would replace an expiring U.N. mandate authorizing the U.S.-led forces in Iraq. (AP) The conflict with al-Sadr is especially troubling considering the cleric is principally responsible for the success of the U.S. troop surge which has substantially reduced violence and increased stability in Iraq. The surge—which is the main Republican reference point to the Iraqi war—is generally considered a success and that success is generally attributed to General David Petraeus and, more reluctantly, to President Bush. But the success of the troop surge is not merely or entirely a military success, but a political and strategic one. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward states in his book, The War Within: A Secret White House History, that a ceasefire by the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army militias, the Anbar Awakening in which Sunni fighters allied themselves with US forces to fight against al-Qaida, and a US assassination campaign against extremist leaders played the largest role in the drop of violence. Should al-Sadr withdraw his cooperation, it would undermine the political claim that the Iraqi war, now virtually banished from the headlines, is, essentially, behind us. A claim made 2000 days ago tomorrow by President George W. Bush, who, standing beneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner, declared that major combat operations in Iraq had been competed.
Much as conservative politicians like to crow about the success of the surge, the Iraq war dates back much farther than January of 2007. Four years before, in fact, to March 20, 2003 and President George W. Bush’s inexplicable rush to war, despite Iraqi dictator Sadaam Hussein’s all but turning himself in—agreeing to virtually all U.S. demands for disclosure and monitoring of Iraq’s weapons programs. Four thousand U.S. casualties, thirty thousand U.S. wounded, a half-trillion dollars and counting, and two thousand days since the president’s aircraft carrier grandstanding later, there remains no coherent exit strategy, no game plan, and the hasty negotiations for U.S. forces to remain in Iraq threaten to unravel the “surge” the GOP have been crowing about for months; a strategy Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has acknowledged only cautiously and at some distance, heeding the words of the strategy’s architect Petraeus, who described the situation in Iraq as “tenuous” and “reversible.” He later said in September that, “I don't use terms like ‘victory’ or ‘defeat’... I’m a realist, not an optimist or a pessimist. And the reality is that there has been significant progress but there are still serious challenges.”
Isalute our brave men and women who have sacrificed so much in the name of freedom, hoping fervently for the day when war will become obsolete, and our sons and daughters may be welcomed home.
Moose Pot Pietag:www.phonogram.us,2008:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1022008-10-20T19:37:26Z2008-12-03T18:12:40ZJohn McCain is now appearing in a soft-sell ad that is virtually ripped off of the “fireside chat” ads Barack Obama has been running. Gone are the Matrix-style dark, scary graphics and ominous music, replaced by McCa sitting in a...priesthttp://digital-priest.comPalin on SNL was hilarious, but I’m not sure it helped her, certainly not with her base. I think, at best, it may have stopped or slowed the bleeding, Palin demonstrating she can take a joke. NOT going on the show was certainly hurting her. But, net-net, I think the libs are still not feeling Palin, and support for her among moderates in her own party seems to be in freefall. OTOH, anything that doesn’t patently harm Palin is a net win for her. Having some fun, albeit at her own expense, was likely thought to be a no-lose proposition for her. I really enjoyed the dancing moose—seriously, it was hilarious. Lorne Michaels has GOT to be voting Republican.
Dave Letterman ate John McCain up Thursday. Ate him up. Dave has been phoning it in for years, now. But his evisceration of McCain proved what I’ve believed all along: Dave is usually at his best when you piss him off. Dave revealed a real depth of skill in interviewing I’ve not seen from him in quite some time as, these days, he kind of sleep walks through it. But he was sharp and relentless, and better than any network interview with McCain I’ve seen. Amazing.]]>
7 AMtag:www.phonogram.us,2008:/blogs2/dpdc//1.1012008-10-15T19:34:53Z2010-07-01T15:25:57ZReasons Priest won’t ever live in New York again: Morning in Colorado. View image...priesthttp://digital-priest.com
View image
]]>