On Hillary's hint of Obama assassination today

Everyday, it seems, the Clinton campaign gets dirtier, more vile, and more despicable. Today continued this immaculate trend of filth, with Clinton summoning the horrible assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 as the reason she should stay in the race.

Get it? She should stay in the race because, just as Bobby in '68, Obama could be assassinated in June.

Read it if you don't believe me:

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."

When this primary race began in...January of 2007, I really, really tried to give Senator Clinton a chance. While a tad reptilian, she had always struck me as a brave, fiercely intelligent woman, and despite the numerous scandals and controversies that I knew of (Filegate anyone?), I made a conscientious effort to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt. What a stoopid decision.

And honestly, can we except this latest gaffe on Bobby as an innocent mistake? Just like Mark Penn's repeated comments on Obama's cocaine usage as a teenager was a mistake? Just like the campaign's constant murmur of Barack HUSSEIN Obama, or its equating of Obama to Kenneth Starr, or the leaked photo or Obama in Somalian garb was a mistake? Or, and this is my favorite, the inclusion of Osama bin Laden in a fear-mongering ad before the Pennsylvania primary was just a harmless, honest political point. Give. me. a. break.

This is one of the shrewdest, most cunning, and most heartless politicians of our time. Don't take ANYTHING for granted.

Oz

My latest obsession. Stunning.



(In case you're in the blue, 'Oz' was a HBO series that aired from 1997 to 2003. One of the best damn television series ever created.)

The irony of modern journalism

Modern journalism has become somewhat of a glorious, golden chestnut of irony. Journalism schools around the country, including the top-tier one I will be attending in the fall, stress the ethics and objectivity that should be present in good reporting. And they're absolutely right. As reporters, our job is to report. Pure and simple. Columnist interpret and editorialize, we consume and spit it back out, unharmed and unaffected.

But what I wonder is when this evolution occurred in the journalism world. The very existence of schools of journalism is due to one Joseph Pulitzer, the publishing magnet and number one rival of William Randolph Hearst. Pulitzer originally envisioned a school of journalism at Columbia College in New York, proclaiming in 1902, "My idea is to recognize that journalism is one of the great and intellectual professions; to encourage, elevate and educate in a practical way the present and, still more, future members of that profession." The school turned Pulitzer down flat, only to accept the money, a $2 million sum, in 1912, a condition of Pulitzer's will. How sweet of them (a note should be made: by that point, Missouri had established the first school of journalism in the world in 1908).

What is so interesting about this quote, however, is who it is coming from. Pulitzer, along with Hearst, was a first-class propagandist, a yellow journalist if there ever was one who brilliantly (and sadistically) blew up the truth and bended details to sell papers. Basically, those two were the Rupert Mudochs of their time, and it's no stretch to say that the Spanish American War was a direct product of their sensationalism.


With honest, reliable war time "documents" like this, who could think otherwise?

Yet the Columbia School of Journalism has an elegant statue of Pulitzer at its entrance, and each year, Columbia issues the famed Pulitzer Prizes to the finest examples of modern journalism. Even better, at the college level we compete yearly for the Hearst Journalism Awards Program, a competition that is often labeled the "Pulitzer" of college journalism. So, when did this great development occur?

But it is ironic, isn't it?

The curious beginnings of movement conservatism

Movement conservatism is a potent political force. As the chief political ideologies of Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, George H.W. Bush, and his baby boy Dubya, it has acted as the leading beacon of policy for the Republican party since the late 70s.

As a hard-left leaning liberal and passionate progressive, naturally I have been in complete disagreement with the various policies of the movement, namely, extreme tax cuts on the rich, ballooning budget deficits, high military build-up during peace-times, and a conscious effort to destruct the welfare state FDR worked so hard to construct.

But beyond the policy (which, obviously, sucks for about 99.9% of the American population), there is the true beginnings of the movement, which should trouble any self-respectful member of democracy and abolish any notions that George W. Bush is not a "true conservative."

Take, for example, William F. Buckley, the ostentatious and elitist founder of the movement. The creator of the conservative excrement The National Review, Buckley praised, among other things, Francisco Franco and his brutal takeover of Spain (in which he took over a democratically elected government), the right of white southerners to suppress blacks, or, inferior citizens, from voting, and, in the 80s when the AIDS epidemic broke out, Buckley supported tattooing homosexuals with the disease on both their arms and behind to "warn" others of the disease.

Add to that the movement's poster child, Barry Goldwater, who was an ardent anti-unionist and blatant supporter of McCarthyism, and you have the makings of the Bush administration: racist, homophobic, secretive, anti-democratic, anti-union, and shamelessly fear-mongering.

No wonder the politics of the movement have always sucked.

Sunset

The sun setting in Bartlett, IL, around 8 pm on a May evening. Sunsets do look nice, don't they?

Iron Man

Last week Saturday, I finally saw "Iron Man," a movie that has received a fair share of exclamation's in nearly every review I've skimmed of the film (remember, I refuse to read reviews of films I haven't seen).

So, does it meet the hype? Perhaps. I'll put it this way: instead of reinventing the super-hero film genre, director Jon Favreau merely offers a superior example of it.

Downey is, as can be expected, superb in the lead role as Tony Stark, but thankfully, we are spared what has become the "typical" Downey role of the smart, wise-cracking eccentric that everyone just LOVES. Ok, maybe that is Tony Stark, but the execution feels different this time around. The humor of the film, largely derived from Downey, is a breath of fresh air in the now suffocating seriousness of the super-hero films. From the soap-opera confessions in the "Spider-Man" films to the ultra-serious homosexual overtones of the "X-Men" features, directors seem to be forgetting that these films are based on comic books. No, I am not suggesting for a moment that comic books are incapable of confronting real world, but above all else, they are fantasies, and the movies themselves should, at least, preserve this sense of fantasy. It was a relief to see that "Iron Man" succeeded.

One final note on the special effects, which are the best I have seen in any modern day film. As opposed to recent CGI blow-outs--"Matrix Revolutions" and "Spider-Man 3" come to mind--"Iron Man" is appropriate and, more importantly, convincing. Favreau's achievements on this front alone justify a look at the film.

So, to conclude, does it match the hype? Yes, so go see it, if you haven't already.

What am I supposed to write, again?

Before I launch into the first of the many masturbatory excursions this hapless blog will nurse to a pulp, I should give a brief, brief, brief expository on why exactly I am starting this little wonder of technology.

It's a Wednesday afternoon, the sun is shining radiantly, and there is a gentle breeze blowing through my window, casting a faint air of humanity in my stuffy lair of technology, books, and iPods. Officially, I have been on summer break for a full week now, and while it has been one of the fucking greatest weeks of my life--more on that at later posts--I can't shake this irreconcilable feeling, this overwhelming sense of dread that this is one of the last, true summer vacations of my human existence. Think of it this way. I'm a college student. These are the years of my life where I am supposed to focus, buck down, and really concentrate on the small, sweaty details that compose middle-class American life, one of hard work, minimal vacation, and diminishing marginal returns. In other words, this is the second summer vacation of my college career, but after it concludes, I will only have two left. And then one. And then...well, you get the point. So I suppose I should grin, face the sunlight and make the most of it. Is this blog part of that? Perhaps...