Category Archives: Popular Culture

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

The Midsummer Night’s Dream

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Is it the end, after four and a half long years, and not just a midsummer night?

You may remember the plot. Titania, queen of the fairies, has been placed under a spell by Oberon with the help of the mischievous Puck. It has caused her to fall in love with a cloddish man named Bottom, who has in turn been placed under a spell that has turned his head into that of an ass. Later on she receives the antidote that magically undoes the spell. Looking at the creature she formerly adored, she is now not only repelled, she wonders how it was that she could have ever been so thoroughly fooled:

TITANIA: My Oberon! what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.

OBERON: There lies your love.

TITANIA: How came these things to pass? O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!

We in this country have had many kinds of presidents, good and bad, beloved and detested. But have we ever before had a president whose career and persona have been based to such an enormous extent on a carefully constructed narrative that in turn rests on weaving a spell over a charmed public? And was the antidote finally administered last Wednesday night, at the hands of that not-so-very-Puckish guy, Mitt Romney?

Let’s hope so. For those of us never bought in, it’s been a long nightmare.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

The President’s Character

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…exposed:

Barack Obama is a narcissist and a sociopath, with the skills of persuasion that children abandoned by their parents learn as a survival mechanism. In the adoring light of the liberal media, Obama reflected power and self-confidence — so long as he was in control, and stood in front of the teleprompter. The real Barack Obama is the one who cowered in the Oval Office protected by his Praetorian guard, who declined to hold cabinet meetings or meet with Republican leaders: McBama surrounded by the weird sisters, Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice and Michelle. Obama’s greatest strength always has been his greatest weakness, potentially a catastrophic one: he manipulates so effectively because he has a compulsion to be in control. When he knows that he is not in control, Obama is paralyzed. Absent last night were the easy rhetorical flourishes and rock star pose of 2008.

As I wrote earlier, that’s the Obama I’ve always seen, but I think that the contrast with Romney opened up a lot of eyes anew.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Jay Leno

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Who know he was such a racist?

When you’ve lost Jay Leno, what does it mean?

[Update a couple minutes later]

Between this and SNL, I’m wondering if it means that the suits at NBC have decided it’s OK to go after the White House? [Googling…]

OK, though GE is no longer a majority shareholder, I wonder if this has something to do with it?

But let’s assume the rumors are true. What reason would Immelt have for abandoning the Obama campaign?

“Back when he agreed to advise the Obama administration on economics, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt told friends that he thought it would be good for GE and good for the country,” Gasparino writes in the New York Post. “A life-long Republican, Immelt said he believed he could at the very least moderate the president’s distinctly anti-business instincts.”

And although GE has greatly benefitted from its relationship with the U.S. government, gorging itself at the federal subsidies trough, Immelt is apparently dismayed that he can’t “fix” the president’s anti-business stance.

“…Immelt doesn’t think he’s had…much luck moderating the president’s fat-cat-bashing, left-leaning economic agenda of taxing businesses and entrepreneurs to pay for government bloat,” Gasparino writes.

To put it simply, Immelt has allegedly given up on the idea that he can move the left-leaning president towards the center, according to Immelt’s friends.

“The GE CEO, I’m told, is appalled by everything from the president’s class-warfare rhetoric to his continued belief that big government is the key to economic salvation,” Gasparino reports.

Another rube who’s caught on.

And Comcast may not care.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Silent Spring

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Fifty years of junk environmental science.

[Update late morning]

More thoughts from Ron Bailey:

In Silent Spring, Carson crafted a passionate denunciation of modern technology that drives environmentalist ideology today. At its heart is this belief: Nature is beneficent, stable, and even a source of moral good; humanity is arrogant, heedless, and often the source of moral evil. Rachel Carson, more than any other person, is responsible for the politicized science that afflicts our public policy debates today.

It’s certainly not for the better.