In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Somewhere in his book The Strangest Way, a Catholic apologetic he wrote while a professor at the Mundelein seminary, Bp Barron notes a remark by Norman Mailer about Richard Nixon, that Nixon always seemed to have a little Nixon on his shoulder whispering in the big Nixon's ear telling him how to behave, advice like, "Now look sympathetic"; "Now smile." Bp Barron said no matter how you feel about Nixon, this was a good illustration of the divided self: there's no room for authenticity; you've always got to be gauging how you're coming off to other people. (I've kept looking for this in my copy but so far have been unable to find the specific reference. If anyone knows where it is, I'll be delighted to update the post here.) But this brings out other associations for me. Mailer covered Nixon in at least two books, Miami & The Siege of Chicago and St. George and the Godfather , which were about the 1968 and 1972 election campaigns. ...

The one absolute no-no in 21st century etiquette -- surpassing all others, I think -- is to ask whether a transgendered person has had their plumbing repaired. (I assume "repaired" is the correct word, since the assumption is that the original plumbing, though functional, was incorrectly installed.) In one of the consummate gaucheries of our time, the UK Daily Mail has nevertheless asked this about the transgendered Ivy League swimmer Lia Thomas . Sharing a locker room with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has become a point of contention for some of her University of Pennsylvania teammates, who feel uncomfortable changing in the private space with someone undergoing gender transition, the DailyMail.com can reveal. 'It's definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women,' one swimmer on the team told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview. Lia has told her teammates that she dates women. While Lia covers herself wi...

I've always been more or less aware of photos on the web of Hunter Biden posing with the big guy, often with their heads pointed in the same direction and very similar smiles as though they're in on some big joke. It's almost as if they're trying to be Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in some kind of dance routine. But looking for one to illlustrate posts in the last few days, I've come across others, like the one yesterday and the one above here that are just plain creepy and even verge on softcore porn. Here's another: Compare it to this well-known photo of Anderson Cooper and his husband: But heretofore, the usual questions about the big guy went more to photos like this: I ask which photo is creepier, the one just above or the one at the top? They both show a troubling lack of boundaries, but the sexier ones with Hunter are clearly posed, deliberate, and probably even taken by a professional photographer in a scheduled shoot. Or actually, given that Hu...

It seems like there's more and nore -- or maybe less and less, dependiong on how you look at it -- to the whole Ukraine kabuki: President Joe Biden's failure to nominate an ambassador to Ukraine more than a year into his presidency is raising concerns among U.S. officials and regional experts as Russia moves closer to launching a full-scale invasion. "President Biden has undermined the U.S.-Ukraine relationship by failing to even nominate an ambassador to Ukraine—it is a dereliction of duty and contributes to the instability we're seeing unfold today," Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, told the Washington Free Beacon. . . . Regional experts say diplomacy through social media is not helping the tense situation. A qualified American ambassador would have been able to reassure Zelensky in person and prevent a public disagreement with the White House that many saw as a boon for Russia. "It is a horrible ...

Let's look at the conventional media narrative here: Vladimir Putin, AKA Darth Vader, is threatening Planet Ukraine, part of the Rebel Alliance, with the Death Star. Princess Leia, AKA Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has sent an urgent message to Obi-Wan Kenobi, AKA President Brandon, begging for his help against the Empire. The suspense now, although not canonical to the original Hollywood version, is whether Obi-Wan, 79 years old, is either too senile or too irresoulute to respond. Got it? Except that even an updated version of the Star Wars salvation history isn't going to explain how things are actually turning out. President Zelensky, AKA Princess Leia, appears not to be on the same page with Obi-Wan at all: Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov told reporters on Tuesday that Kyiv considers – and intelligence reports from the West agree – that “internal destabilization” caused by panic over a potential further Russian ...

Yesterday I started thinkng about Biden and Ukraine vis-a-vis Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. I realize the circumstances are only very generally equivalent, but they do represent rare and potentially consequential direct confrontations betweeen the US and the Soviet Union or its successor. My conclusion yesterday was that in 1962, Khrushchev was a weak leader with backing that turned out to be unreliable, and he was badly played by Kennedy, who had speechwriters who'd studied Cicero in Catholic school, a highly effective media operation, and a telegenic persona. It didn't hurt that he lived with his family in London from 1938 to 1940 and saw Winston Churchill at close hand. No matter there was a behind-the-scenes deal whereby the US removed missiles in Turkey that were an equivalent threat to the Soviets, that wasn't public, and Kennedy came off as the young, resolute, dynamic Leader of the Free World. From a domestic political standpoint, his handling of the c...

It seems to me that the Ukraine situation could potentially work out for Biden the way the Cuban missile crisis worked out for Kennedy. According to this article , President Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis significantly contributed to his strong overall job approval scores. From the fall of 1961 until the spring of 1962, his approval ratings held steady at almost 80 percent (table 10). They then slowly, but steadily, subsided, dropping to a low of 61 percent in mid-October 1962. The Cuban missile crisis then pushed approval up to 74–76 percent from November 1962 to January 1963. Should Biden manage to appear strong and decisive and then manage to look as if he'd forced Putin to back down in some way, he'd achieve a reset -- though as the link points out, Kennedy already had high job approval, well above Biden's. On the other hand, Putin isn't Khrushchev, who was in power for about a decade before being removed, while Putin has been de facto c...