Here in the vast newsfromme blogging empire which just consists of me, we love a cappella singing groups. Here from South Korea, we have Jang Sang-in, Kang Soo-kyung, Jeon Sung-hyun, Kim Won-jong and — last but not least — Lim Soo-yeon. As a group, they perform under the name Maytree.
This is them on Vocal Play, which is the South Korean equivalent of The Voice here but with better sets and a bigger audience. As you can see, they made quite a sensation…
43 Republican Senators voted to acquit Donald Trump. Here's an analysis of their stated reasons, most of which I suspect are not their real reasons. I would think that in most cases, they assessed how mad Trump supporters would be at them if they voted to convict and how that might affect their political future…and they assessed how rough it would be on them to explain or defend a vote to acquit in the future and how that might affect their political futures…
…and then they decided which of two bad choices they were least afraid of at the moment.
This is the way I think most politicians — including many for whom I have voted — look at their options. What's right and what's good for the people are not immaterial (usually) but the deciding factor is self-centered. And yes, I know that's a cynical way to look at things but that doesn't mean it's wrong.
The new ABC News/Ipsos Poll says that 58% of Americans think Trump should have been convicted. That includes 88% of Democrats and 64% of independents.
A lot of folks online seem really troubled by only 14% of Republicans feeling that way. I think it helps to remember that people have all sorts of different barometers on politics and reasons for thinking the way they do. A year or three ago at an outta-town convention, I met a man who felt that Abortion was not only the Number One Issue but the only one. A POTUS who destroyed everything else in this country could have this guy's support if he also stopped Abortion. And I have an acquaintance who thinks the Number One issue is and always will be the price of gasoline. If gas prices go down, whoever's in the White House at that moment is a great President. End of discussion.
If you still think Donald Trump "won" because he wasn't convicted in the impeachment trial, read David Frum. He'll tell you how big Trump lost…and will continue to lose.
My buddy Charlie Frye does stuff like this all the time…
Jonathan Chait thinks a lot of prominent Republicans, including many who voted to acquit Donald J. Trump in the Senate, want to see him prosecuted. I think so too. I have as low an opinion of Mitch McConnell as anyone but you have to give the man this: He knows how to play politics and he has his finger on the pulse of his party. His after-the-impeachment-vote remarks seemed intended to incite not a riot but some serious prosecution of a president who is no longer protected by his office.
Trump has a lot of legal problems ahead. Chait lists some and here's a list from Politifact. I know some folks who say, "Oh, he never gets nailed for his crimes" but not that long ago, these same people were saying, "Oh, he never loses elections."
So clever of Mitch to delay the impeachment trial until after Trump was outta office so Senate Republicans could have it as close to both ways as possible. They didn't have to face the wrath of Trump-lovers by voting to boot him out but they could vote with him but say, "It's just because he's already out of office." Either way, it comes down to wanting to get rid of Trump but to keep as many of his supporters as they can.
And here's a real long article by George Conway all about prosecuting Trump.
Every sixteen seconds on Facebook (it seems), a discussion breaks out on some comic book forum about why on those rare occasions when Jack Kirby was called upon to draw a cover or a panel or anything of Spider-Man, his Spider-Man did not look like the Spider-Man drawn by Steve Ditko or John Romita. Some folks seem to think there must have been a reason apart from the fact that Jack was not Steve Ditko or John Romita. Hey, when Frank Sinatra sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," he didn't sound like Tony Bennett.
I don't really know why this gets discussed so much. All the times Jack drew Spider-Man collectively represent about one-eighty-jillion-thousandth of his career. But I keep finding myself discussing it on forums. A few years ago on a now-defunct forum I wrote a long essay on the subject and I just dug it out and thought I oughta post it.
Since this topic is of interest to only a limited number of those who come to this blog — whereas you're all fascinated by every single other thing I post here — I've put this essay over on its own page which you can reach here. Don't bother clicking if you don't care about this kind of thing. Some of us do, more than we should.
Here's four minutes of video shot on the Las Vegas Strip in 1983. Very little of what you see in this video is still there, especially the prices…
Yeah, Trump won by his definition of "winning." Even when he loses by any real-world definition, he wins by his. I think this guy's on his way down, down, down…but he's like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with his arms and legs both lopped off but still claiming victory. Trump has a lot of courtrooms ahead of him.
As we know, seven Republicans defied the wrath of party loyalists and voted to convict. Some of their statements are interesting and they're quoted in this article over at The American Conservative by Rod Dreher.
A smart journalist I know named Abraham Riesman has written a probably-controversial book about Stan Lee and it's being released this weekend. It's called True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee and you can order a copy here.
Full disclosure: I was interviewed for the book and answered a number of the author's questions but I haven't seen a copy of it and have no idea what I'm quoted as saying in it. I may not for a while. I'm waiting, as I often do with books for which I supply some help, to see if they send me a free copy. You might be surprised how often they don't. I certainly am.
I have however read this excerpt which is about the Stan Lee Media company, a firm for which I briefly worked. I've also read this article which summarizes what the book says about Stan's problems with his daughter and certain business associates, especially in his last years. I did not have the good sense to stay away from Stan Lee Media but I was smart enough to stay away from Stan's last years.
Anyway, stop writing to ask me if you should be a true believer in True Believer. I haven't read it yet.
As I've said on countless occasions, I have had an enormous range of mixed feelings about Stan Lee since I first met him in person in 1970. I almost felt like I knew him even before that from reading those comics. Not all of these feelings were/are positive. Some are but a few are sadly quite negative. And yes, I am still working on my huge book about Jack Kirby and no, I don't know when I'll be done with it.
But my conclusion is that the comics we know to be created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, not necessarily as 50-50 efforts and certainly not with Jack supplying only the visuals. I think Jack did a lot more than Stan — at least on the pages — and until fairly recently, got a lot less credit; likewise, Stan and Steve Ditko, Stan and Don Heck, Stan and Bill Everett, etc. The disparity in financial reward was even greater.
But that doesn't mean Stan did nothing or did nothing well. I have witnessed way too many Stan/Jack debates in my life and I think all are dead wrong if they lead to the conclusion that either contributed zero. This view has occasionally made me feel unwelcome on Stan Lee forums and in Jack Kirby chat groups. And just as I reject that notion, I reject the argument that neither would have amounted to anything post-1961 without the other. They were two men of extraordinary skills…just not the same skills.
A lot of folks don't want to hear about the battles and the quarrels and the screwings. They just want to enjoy the body of work…and I sometimes wish I could stop there. Instead, I think I'll stop here…for now.
As I assume you just might have expected and heard, a majority of senators just voted to convict Donald Trump. The vote was 57-43 with several Republicans voting that way either because they're very brave, very safe in their seats or very not running for re-election. Alas, it takes 67 votes to…well, you know how this works. Jon Stewart posted…
This impeachment highlights a fundamental tenet of our legal system. All Americans, regardless of status, are entitled to a speedy trial by a jury of your cowardly partisan sycophants and henchmen.
You have to wonder what's on the minds of those cowardly partisan sycophants and henchmen. I'm going to guess that ten or more figured they had two bad choices and they picked the one they thought would do them less immediate damage.
They might be right about that in the short run. But Trump is facing a lot of legal actions, both civil and criminal, which probably won't do his reputation much good. Wonder how many of those who voted to acquit today will try to hide behind, "I never thought he was a good man but I did think it was wrong to vote to convict anyone in an impeachment trial after he left office."
And here from 1968 is another one of those Kraft Music Hall shows with a cleansed-for-television Friars' Roast, this time of Johnny Carson. The dais includes Steve Allen, Dick Cavett, Groucho Marx, Ed McMahon, Don Rickles, Ed Sullivan, Flip Wilson, roastmaster Alan King and the then-mayor of New York, John Lindsay. Someone please explain to me the deal with Groucho's hair…
My man Fred Kaplan explains to us about the nuclear "football" that's supposed to accompany the President of the United States anywhere and everywhere he goes…and how the January 6th "insurrectionists" at the Capitol might have come close to getting their mitts on one. I dunno what they could have done with it if they had but that's not something that should be found out the hard way.
And William Saletan tries to figure out what Trump was calling for that day if, as his lawyers insist, he wasn't calling for them to do what they did.
The guy with the microphone above is Charlie Hill, a comedian I used to see often when I was hanging around The Comedy Store. He was pretty funny, fairly successful and well-liked by his fellow up-'n'-coming comics. I remember a comedian who was none of those things dismissing him as a "gimmick comic," Charlie's supposed gimmick being that he was "the first Native stand-up comedian," though back then we said "Indian" instead of "native."
I'm not sure where in Charlie's development I first saw him but as I recall, about 70% of his act was about the way his people had been treated in real life and on the screen. The other 30% was on topics anyone could hit and I guess that was to prove he could talk about something else. Either way, I thought he was pretty good.
He and comedians of like ancestry are the subject of a new book by my pal Kliph Nesteroff, who writes great books and articles about the profession of standing in front of paying customers and making them laugh. A few days ago, Kliph came by and dropped off a copy of We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans in Comedy, and that's an Amazon link via which you can secure a copy.
To be honest, I haven't finished it yet but I'm liking everything so far and I've liked everything else I've read by Kliph. You can read a nice excerpt of it here at the Esquire website. It'll make you want to read the whole thing.
I only watched about ten minutes of the House Managers yesterday making the case against Donald Trump. I'll balance it today by only watching about ten minutes of his defense. Overall, my view of the whole thing is the same as that of pundit Kevin Drum…
Republicans don't want to convict a president of their own party, but they also don't want to force their members to cast a vote implicitly approving of insurrection. So they groped around for some kind of technicality that would eliminate their dilemma and came up with the out-of-office dodge. This allows them to vote to acquit but to claim it was solely because of their deep commitment to constitutional norms.
One of the reasons Richard Nixon resigned when he did was to spare members of his party in the House and Senate from having to cast votes about his guilt or innocence. They knew that if they voted with him, they'd lose half their base and if they voted against him, they'd lose the other half. You can't get re-elected if you lose half your base.
Democrats have forced them to vote on Trump and almost all will vote to acquit. But they'll profess it's not because they thought he was guilty or innocent. In a way, I almost have more respect for the ones who'll make it clear they're not voting to convict because they love and support the guy.