Eric The Blue

Newt ascendant; Hinderaker dismayed

With the Republican presidential nominating contest having taken another hairpin curve, it's time to check in with Power Line.  What do the boys make of it?

Here is John Hinderaker last Thursday evening, analyzing the CNN debate wherein Newt ripped John King a new one:

Newt Gingrich fell short because he didn’t dominate. Newt is very smart, and is a master of the one-liner. But tonight, while he performed well, he failed to outshine his competitors. Mitt Romney, in particular, was just as effective as Gingrich, at times more so, as when he accepted responsibility for being successful. My guess is that Romney won the South Carolina primary tonight. We will soon know whether that prediction is correct.

I'd say he underestimated the fat prolix little wanker named Gingrich.  He appears to have known it himself the next day, Friday, when, revisiting the previous evening's debate, he wrote:

. . . for the moment let’s just focus on the allegations by Newt’s second ex-wife that hit the press this week. Apart from all the other good reasons why Gingrich will never be President, Marianne Gingrich’s sensational allegations snuffed out any possible hope that Newt can beat Barack Obama in 2012. 

[Snip]

Newt makes matters worse by trying to have it both ways. He won’t discuss Marianne’s claims; instead, in last night’s debate he lashed out at the media for publicizing them and at John King for asking about them. The audience of rabid Republicans ate it up. But at the same time, Gingrich implicitly acknowledged how devastating his ex-wife’s stories are by asserting that they are “false.” By calling her a liar, he put her allegations into play. Which claims, exactly, are false? Presumably not everything she said in the ABC interview; then, what? Anyone who seriously thinks that Gingrich can run against President Obama in the fall without both 1) being dogged by such questions, and 2) being turned into a laughingstock, is, in my opinion, delusional. 

I love the dismissive reference to "rabid Republicans" and the final epithet, "delusional," which is also the title of the post.  John, these are your people!  He turns to the question of electoral viabililty:

It is painful to contemplate the extent of the GOP wipeout that would follow a Gingrich nomination. Would Newt carry a state? Wyoming, maybe? South Carolina? The Republican Party could kiss its hopes of retaking the Senate goodbye, and likely would lose control over the House, giving Obama carte blanche to devastate the country for another four years.

Oh, my!  Having miscalculated Newt's appeal to South Carolinia Republicans, he is now off his tether on a related matter.  The concentration of delusional wing-nuts in the general population, and their geographic dispersion, is sufficient to put Newt over the top in perhaps a dozen states.  But, at a high level, I think John's right: if Obama were to carry 38 states, that would be ten more than four years ago, which would put him well north of 400 electoral votes--a landslide for the incumbent during bad economic times.  What can be said about an opposition party capable of such a feat?  Moreover, Gingrich would likely be toxic at the top of the ticket.  He corroborates the misgivings of swing voters regarding the Republican party.  But, then, which of the-Republican presidential candidates doesn't?

John is silent on the obvious weaknesses of Romney.  The poor guy is flummoxed by the utterly predictable call for him to release his tax returns.  He's a manifest trimmer who will never be able to explain why, if Romneycare was good for Massachusetts, Obamacare must be repealed to save the republic.  He's a Mormon and a past supporter of abortion rights.  According to exit polls in South Carolina, Gingrich defeated Romney, 45% to 9%, among the quarter or so of the electorate who said that the religious beliefs of the candidates mattered a lot to them.  Since these are John's people, maybe he could explain the appeal of swingin' Newt Gingrich to the good Christian ladies and gentlemen of South Carolina.  It's certainly not an advertisement for Romney's vote-getting prowess.

John is up with a new post today, "Congratulations, Newt," that's somewhat mellower in tone, like Shakespeare in The Tempest.  Not that he's gone entirely soft on Newt:

So, congratulations to Newt, and on to Florida. Let’s just pray that Barack Obama’s second term didn’t start today. If Gingrich does get the nomination, this may turn out to be a year in which Republicans more or less ignore the presidential race, ceding Obama his second term, and focus instead on trying to hold the House and, if possible, picking up a seat or two in the Senate, along with doing the best we can in state races where the wipeout at the presidential level doesn’t swamp all efforts to elect Republicans.

I'm not sure that the details jibe with what he said two days ago about how Republicans, if they nominate Gingrich, can "kiss hopes of retaking the Senate goodbye." Since there are currently just 51 Senate Democrats, plus two independents who caucus with them, it seems that someone able to contemplate the Republicans picking up two seats could muster one more ounce of optimism.  It's not as if his calibrations are uniformly, meticulously fine.

But, you know what?  I'm going to put in a good word for John.  He's distinguishing himself from the Gingrich enthusiasts, who, I agree, are delusional.  Moreover, if the only sin is to bore, then John and all the rest of the brawling R's are as favored by God as they imagine.

Netflix and Newt

While Newt Gingrich trod upon John King with cold feigned fury, we were enjoying "Moneyball," concerning Billy Beane's effort to make the Oakland A's champions on a dime after they lost Johnny Damon, Jason Isringhausen, and Jason Giambi to free agency in 2001.  You are carried away by the best theme ever invented--the poor plucky underdog waging battle against the New York Yankees and other overlords.  Beane's no-names with high on-base percentages won 20 games in a row in 2002 before bowing to my Twins in the first round of the playoffs.  In the cold light of day it seems crazy that a movie about the 2002 Oakland A's makes hardly a mention of Miguel Tejada (the league MVP) or of Barry Zito (winner of the Cy Young award).  It wan't only the no-names, and the Twins aren't exactly overlords.  I'm just saying.

You don't have to wait till morning for Newt's case to look a little thin.  When he said that his friends of the time would all attest that he never asked his second wife to make room for more, John King should have asked how his friends could know.  Were they spending as much time at his house as he was?  Also, it's more than a little rich that one of Clinton's impeachers should appear outraged over being asked about his marital strayings.  He's a fat little wanker, but I hope he wins South Carolina, so that the internecine games can continue.

Bridesmaids; and other mediocrities

"Bridesmaids," the Judd Apatow-produced box-office hit, was our most recent Netflix rental.  We all know that grossout scenes of overfed, overdrunk young men vomiting in slo-mo are hilarious.  How about when nubile young women who've had a bad meal are similarly afflicted?  Only to a degree.  I think the movie overstays its welcome, and the ending, in which the main character gets together with the likable fellow she's been pushing away, screams: Focus-group tested!

Speaking of mediocrity, what about the arguments against gay marriage?  Yesterday's Star Tribune treated us to "Why should I accept same-sex couples," by Dan  Nye, of Edina.  He has six questions he wants people like me to answer, forthrightly and civilly.  Here's no. 1:

Were our ancestors all dumb and bigoted because they thought homosexuality was wrong?  Some may think that accepting homosexuality is innovative and progressive, but others say abandoning our previous norm may be presumptuous on our part.  In other words, our ancestors might have been right, and we might be wrong.

Our ancestors weren't right about everything, Dan.  The earth isn't at the center of the universe, chattel slavery is a moral abomination, ditto for laws banning interracial marriage, and the Clinton tax hike was not a jobs killer.  Is it too much to ask for a logical argument?

Here's no. 2:

Don't our sexual organs exist for reproduction?  How does homosexuality square with that?

And our eyes exist for vision.  I'm not sure why it follows that homosexuals must not be permitted to marry.  Men who "shoot blanks" are allowed to marry.  Couples who meet at Sun City mixers can marry.  Still waiting for a coherent argument, Dan.

No. 3 has a lot of words.  Here they come:

It is no secret that the human sex drive is a lot stronger than is needed for reproduction.  Do we just give in to those desires, or do we try to control them?  The ancients told us that controlling our physical desires is one of the things that distinguish us from the beasts.  Sexual desires, if not controlled, easily lead us into trouble.

Completely off point.  Suppose I were to acknowledge that all this tic-tac-toe stuff is true.  Why would it follow that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry?  Still waiting for a coherent argument, Dan. 

It's soon time for me to start watching televised football, so here's a quick run-down on the second half of Dan's case.  No. 4 says that, as pederasty is bad, so is homosexuality.  No. 5 introduces the term "prevalent homosexuality," which "will not work in society."  No. 6 says that homosexuals will likely all go to hell, so those who would coddle them "may be doing indescribable harm."  He concludes with a portentous challenge:

If all you have is name-calling, you have no valid position.  If truth is on your side, answer these questions in a civil manner.

Poor Dan.  He seems to think that his being a moron and a bigot requires everyone to take him seriously. 

Republicans in New Hampshire

A couple observations, on the day of the New Hampshire primary, concerning the contest for the Republican presidential nomination, if an outsider may speak of it.

1. Romney is benefiting from being perceived as unlike the others.  That could change if Huntsman finishes a strong second to him in New Hampshire.  Then there would be in the field an "alternative Romney" as well as all the "nonRomneys."  If the comparatively sane part of the Republican vote is split, then there would be a better chance for the winner of the loco subprimary to challenge Romney, so that we could all enjoy the internecine competition into the spring.  This scenario is, in Obamaland, devoutly to be wished.

What qualifies as a "strong second" for Huntsman?  Reaching rearward, and pulling something out of the orifice back there, I'd say within ten points.  Paul, who has a plausible claim to being unlike the other nonRomneys, appears to be the main obstacle to Huntsman finishing second.  It's also possible for Huntsman to finish such a distant second--like, say, the "one" in 2-to-1--that it doesn't matter.  If the headline is "Romney wins big," and he then wins South Carolina and Florida, too--fuggedaboudit.

2. There is a kind of tension among the Republicans that might be described as conflicted feelings about "big government."  They rail against it when the issue is the economy, taxes and spending.  On other matters, however, they are themselves what they refer to as "statists."  National security?  There can't be enough government.  Abortion?  All the talk about "freedom" comes to an end.  In one of their most recent debates, Romney took aim at a Supreme Court decision from the 1960s (Griswold) holding that states cannot bar the sale of contraceptives to married persons.  I had not thought this was one of the Court's controversial decisions but it was a point on which Santorum was eager to agree with Romney.

Paul, unlike the other nonRomneys, is not a cafeteria libertarian.  His consistency does not necessarily show the libertarian philosophy to advantage.  He would not stop people from using contraceptives.  He would also withdraw from the world stage, stop regulating business, fire a quarter million federal workers, end unemployment benefits, rescind civil rights legislation, and probably disband the National Institute of Health.  There is a reason governments are instituted among men.  Without them, we live in a state of nature where, according to the philosopher, life is "nasty, brutish, solitary, and short."

I'll be voting for Obama, warts and all.

UPDATE 9:30 p.m.
The headline is "Romney wins; Paul a distant second."  At this point, the identity of the second most likely Republican nominee is something of a mystery.  There's some talk about the turnout, which is not particulary high. 

Scatological

Internet down at our house!  Aided by a strong imagination, I could almost make out the sighs as legions of distraught readers, clicking on "Eric The Blue" in their "Favorites," discovered no new morsel day after tedious day.  And methadone won't help.  My sympathies!  The problem has now been solved by my technical advisor, who doubles as worthy spouse.  In tough times, you need people who can function at a high level in a variety of roles.

While I was offline, Romney won the Iowa caucuses by eight (8) votes over Rick Santorum, who, in a display of linguistic virtuosity by political journalists, was said to be "surging" 12,674,386,525 times.  More recently--while I was typing the above first paragraph, in fact--I heard him (Santorum) on the radio asserting that today's good jobs news should be attributed to rising confidence triggered by optimism over the prospect of Obama's imminent defeat.  An alternative view might suggest itself to members of the reality-based community but let us not intrude on the wishful thinking of a man momentarily enjoying the sun.  Besides, cheeriness is a political virtue.  Reagan loved to tell the story about the boy who thought a few tons of manure was a sure sign of a pony. 

Yet you will be forgiven by me if, having paid some attention to the Republicans vying for their party's presidential nomination, you come 'round to the conclusion that sometimes what appears to be a very large wagon load of shit is composed of just a single substance that is, in fact, shit.

Netflix: "Please Give"

This one made it into our queue because several years ago, when we still were "going out to the movies," we saw "Friends With Money," directed by Nicole Holofcener and starring Catherine Keener as one-half of an affluent married couple ruining the views of their neighbors, and the character of the subdivision, by putting a vertical addition on their house.  "Please Give" is also directed by Holofcener and features Keener, who is now one-half of an affluent married couple who have bought the neighbor's Manhattan apartment so that they can knock down the dividing wall and make their own living quarters roomier soon as the ninety-something inhabitant dies.  In both movies, the Keener character is afflicted with guilt--to the extent that, in "Please Give," she reads the ads for volunteers, and even goes to a couple of interviews.  But assisted living centers and schools for mentally handicapped children are not for her.  She has no talent for good works. When she offers cash to a slightly scruffy black man standing on a sidewalk, he explains that he's just waiting for a table.

It's not only the neighbor whose death will help her prosper.  She and her husband, played by Oliver Platt, have a used furniture store full of pieces purchased from estates being administered by harried survivors too eager to get on with their lives to make counter offers.  The least she can do is grocery shop for the nonagenarian, which brings her into contact with the old lady's granddaughters, one of whom is nice and one of whom isn't.  Her husband sleeps with the bad one.  The nice one has a notably flattened affect, like the house-cleaning maid played by Jennifer Anniston whose friends had money in the earlier film. Toward the end, the good one gets a nice boyfriend, Platt and the bad one break it off, and everyone comes together for the funeral of the old lady.  As if that may not be enough to cheer you up, in the very last scene Keener reconciles with her troubled teen-aged daughter by buying her a very expensive pair of blue jeans.  

"Thank you," says the girl.  "You're welcome," Keener replies.  Then dark screen, roll credits.

The movie has its moments, like when the good granddaughter, an x-ray technician specializing in mammograms, tells her nice boyfriend that to her breasts are just "tubes of potential trouble."  I think Amanda liked the movie more than I did, and I'd recommend it. 

Chaucer

 Geoffrey Chaucer was born into the growing English middle class, in London, most likely in 1343.  His father was a prosperous wine merchant, and in the normal course of things Chaucer might have been expected to follow a similar life.  But while still a young teenager he was sent to work as a page in the household of Lionel of Antwerp, son of the current king, Edward III, and brother of John of Gaunt.  Thus began his distinguished service, which would last for the rest of his life, to the ruling English nobility.  Much of what we know of his life comes from the governmental record.  He served in positions of increasing responsibility until, as a young man, he was a trusted diplomat carrying out foreign missions of considerable importance and sensitivity.  He married a woman, Philippa, who belonged to the household of Edward's queen.  Everything in the record suggests that he was highly esteemed by his royal employers.  He was the recipient of a succession of grants and annuities, which, upon the succession of a new king, were always confirmed. 

When I think of what is known of his life, and put it next to what I know of his poetry, I think of Chekhov, the son of a serf who went to medical school and worked as a doctor while writing some of the best stories and plays of the 19th century.  Chaucer started higher, and crossed a boundary higher up the stratum, but the circumstances of their lives made both men intimate with a wide range of humanity.  One may detect in Chekhov's fictions the bedside manner of a good physician--intelligent, sympathetic, but sufficiently detached to guard against false judgments; and in Chaucer very similar qualities of mind and character might be associated with the sensibility of an accomplished diplomat. 

His two greatest works are Troilus and Criseide, a narrative poem of some 8000 lines that he completed in about 1385, and the Canterbury Tales, the composition of which seems to have consumed his leisure time beginning in about 1386 until 1400, when he died.  The completed portion reveals a plan to compose well over a hundred tales--two for each of the 29 pilgrims on the way to Canterbury and two more for each of them on the return trip to London.  We have 22 completed tales and two unfinished fragments.  If we work out the ratio of finished to projected, it comes to only about one-fifth, but the universal judgment has been that in the Canterbury Tales "there is God's plenty." 

Some day I will read the Troilus, which is often regarded as a forerunner of the modern psychological novel.  Now, Chaucer obviously did not think of himself as a medieval writer endeavoring to give us a foretaste of modern masterpieces.  Nevertheless one recognizes why it's tempting to say such arguably silly stuff.  For example, in the Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner, a lost soul who is aware of his own depravity, will put some readers in mind of Dostoevski's anti-heroes.  But there is in Chaucer no hand-waving; the almost unbearably affecting portrait of a villain is achieved by means of a detached restraint that I tried to suggest by invoking Chekhov.  Here is E. Talbot Donaldson doing a better job of it in a single sentence:

He understands both the high and the low, but he remains curiously detached from both, and it is detachment, perfectly balanced in his poetry by sympathy, which distinguishes Chaucer's art.

And the Pardoner is just one of 29 pilgrims. Even in its one-fifth finished form, the Canterbury Tales stand as a sprawling human comedy wherein all stations and aspects of life receive vivid, entertaining treatment. Donaldson, again, on the characterization of one of the Pardoner's 28 fellows, the Prioress:

Chaucer shows us clearly her inability to be what she professes to be, a nun; shows also the inadequacy of what she thinks a nun ought to be, a lady; and shows the great human charm of what she is, a woman.

So we have the Pardoner and the Prioress.  I've written recently about Chaucer and the fabliau, here.  Kittredge, one of the great Chaucerians, was the first to point out that a series of tales--most memorably those of the Wife of Bath, the Clerk, and the Franklin--form a "marriage group" in which pilgrims advance, criticize, and rebut, by the stories they tell, each others' views on proper matrimonial relations.  As free-standing fictions, the individual tales are brilliant, but in their relation to teller and auditor they also build up the gallery of complex psychological characters.  In his artistic powers and many-minded mastery of the whole human scene, Chaucer reminds us of the only English poet greater than he.  Kittredge, at one point pausing in his explication, says that here is an instance of Chaucer "touching the garment of Shakespeare": it's hard to remember the particular occasion.

Stingo and me

Stingo, the narrator in Styron's Sophie's Choice, says that the prospect of spending an hour alone with the Brooklyn white pages aroused in him a sense of anticipation almost erotic in its intensity, such was his attraction to words on paper.  I don't have it that bad but I have it bad enough to know what Stingo's talking about.  This morning, I was off from work so that spouse Amanda could keep a 9:30 gyno appointment without having to drag along three bundles of proof that all her parts were there and functioning as of nine, four, and one year ago.  The message I had published on our intranet attendance tracker said "in around noon."  When Amanda got home earlier than I'd expected, I put George Lyman Kittredge's Chaucer and His Poetry into my backpack and caught an express bus before 11.  Suddenly it was clear that I would have almost an hour alone with Kittredge and Chaucer in the corner of a skyway coffee shop between the morning and noon rushes.  Medical devices that measure the rate of various physiological processes would have testified to my excitement, could I have been hooked up during the bus ride.  And the actual event did not disappoint.  The skyways were mostly empty, the coffee shop vacant, and Kittredge coming up to where he discusses how, in what he calls "the marriage group," different Canterbuy pilgrims are by their tales responding to the views expressed by the Wife of Bath, "one of the most amazing characters that the brain of man has ever yet conceived." 

I know, I know, I am a dweeb, but permit me my enthusiasms because when have I ever knocked yours?Unless you are a Republican volunteer or a devotee of some other exotic creed, never.  We are all just trying to do what Dr Johnson called "filling the vacuities" of life.  Have mercy on us.