Sunday, June 10, 2007

Attention, Sopranos Viewers...

You should've watched the Tony Awards, instead. Nothing happened there either, but at least it was well-choreographed.

• Posted at 8:11 PM · LINK

The Campaign Trail

Various folks who wish to be your next President are stopping by the offices of Google in Northern California and being interviewed in a slightly different context than the norm. A month ago, I linked you to a video of the appearance there by John McCain. I won't embed the videos here but you can now view similar chats with John Edwards and Bill Richardson. Each of these runs well over an hour and begins with samples of the candidate's political ads. Thanks (again) to Tom Galloway, who I think is in one of them asking a question.

If you get a chance, you might want to read this piece over at Media Matters, which essentially says that Carl Bernstein's new book about Hillary Clinton is a mess of contradictions and a bad attempt to construct a fictional Hillary and to then force the details of reality to fit that model. I have a friend who, whenever we talk politics, always leaps to the "character issue," discussing each candidate or elected official in terms of what kind of person they are. That would matter to me a lot more if I had any confidence that we really know that.

I tend to think we know a lot less about "the real Hillary" or "the real George W." than we think we do. To the extent we can get a sense of character and personal integrity, I think we only get it from extended conversations like these. We generally don't get it from books that — like many, including apparently Bernstein's — seek to cash in on the eagerness of certain book buyers to read bad things about a candidate they already don't like. And we certainly don't get it from these game show format "debates." I don't want to cast my vote for a guy based on how he can summarize what he'd do about Iraq in 45 seconds. In fact, I'm suspicious of anyone who can summarize what he'd do about Iraq in 45 seconds.

• Posted at 10:42 AM · LINK

Briefly Noted

Gary Sassaman reviews a new documentary about Jack Kirby. Which of course raises the question of why he has the DVD and certainly individuals who were interviewed for the documentary have yet to received their promised copies. Ahem.

• Posted at 1:09 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

The Tony Awards are on tonight, not that anyone will be watching. I thought I'd link you over to a memorable moment from the 1990 ceremony. Here's the backstory: An actor named Michael Jeter, whose life had hit rock bottom due to substance abuse, made an amazing personal comeback in that year's Broadway production of The Grand Hotel: The Musical. In it, he played a bookkeeper who was dying but still managed to perform an amazing, energetic dance number. In fact, here's that dance number as he performed it on the Tony Awards broadcast that year. The other man in the number is Brent Barrett and you'll have to forgive the shaky video image...

Immediately after that on the telecast came the category for which Mr. Jeter was nominated. Here's the video and you can probably guess who won. But you'll enjoy the audience delight and might be rather moved by the acceptance speech...

• Posted at 1:02 AM · LINK