The New York Times endorses Barack Obama for president.
Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism
Just to recap...
21 August
I arrive in New York to start work Tuesday. First week of rehearsals would be Stacy and myself working with Seth and the production team before being joined by the rest of the cast . Thanks to a friend of a friend I am staying in a Master of the Universe type apartment over looking Central Park, 10 blocks down from my old neighborhood in Hell's Kitchen. Sign up for a month's unlimited classes at the Bikram Yoga studio, catch up with my NY pals and frequent old haunts in an attempt to maintain a autobiographical continuity.
Beginning of a working day usually involves some sort of catch up on what's happening in the presidential race.
Whilst in the UK, I caught a fragment of a broadcast chaired within some Christian context or other which involved questions on pro life and same sex marriages. I liked Obama's answers because although circuitous they fielded the questions. I felt McCain was direct, authoritative and crowd pleasing but he was anti-abortion and gay marriage so...for me, a pregnant gay teenager who wants to get married... no good! I subsequently heard their performances described as the professor vs the soldier. Googling for some specifics, I find this refers to an event on August 17th which was a forum of evangelical Christians hosted by Rev. Rick Warren at Saddleback church in Southern California.
When I arrived in the US the Democratic convention (25-28 August) was just about to start
I don't recall the moment that Obama received his Presidential candidate nomination but I do remember Joe Biden's Vice Presidential nomination on August 27th , partially because I had registered the possibility that Hillary Clinton might be up for it and didn't get it
29th August
The Republican Vice- Presidential nomination is announced. Enter Stage Left- Sarah Palin, Governor of Wasilla
I found McCain's clapping behind Palin funny and likened it to an over eager child. Later, I was informed that his arms are that way because of injuries received whilst a prisoner of war so I dropped the comparison. I also checked my amusement when I read the veteran's upper limbs referred to as 'pop n' lock arms'.
Walking to work the day after Palin's acceptance speech, I remember the cover of the New York Post picked up on her Lipstick on a pit bull line. In rehearsals, I heard that John Stewart had alluded to the Vice Presidential nominee's resemblance to Tina Fey. From that point on, like my stoner slacker pinko liberal tofu munching tree hugging colleagues, I went to the funsters to unscrew the saddle off the top of the 24 hour news cycle and give it a kinky sniff
I was struck by the Fox news pundit saying that Alaska's proximity to Russia qualified as foreign policy experience in international relations..an idea that had never occurred to me. I also loved Samantha Bee explaining that women will be voting "not with the big head but the little hood". I am still alarmed at the idea that there could be a move to overturn the Rowe vs Wade ruling, one of the few landmark legal cases I remember from Politics A level, that and Brown vs Education Board of Topeka
31 August
Mentor and goader Ken Campbell leaves us. Skyward ho!? My post on facebook
First... Funny walks, silly voices, farting about in disguises, Uncle Fred acting , Burmese joke telling, debilitating humour and the influence of the Three Stooges on American culture with particular reference to the Vietnam war... Last... a cheery chat about stuff over burgers at the Latitude festival... and all the matter above, below, around and beyond. There will never be another-
1 September
Watching a pundit slamdown on CNN, I suspect the network of keeping viewers hooked by using hyperbolic headlines promising reports on the destruction waged by Hurricane Gustav. Still...
Top work from Mr. Carville showing a picture of the city hall that "looks like a bait shop in South Louisiana"
It is interesting how one starts to develop a relationship with characters in the TV Political Scene and for me, the Republican party seems to produce cartoon baddies, ridiculously clumsy with their ill intentions
1-4 September
Republican Convention
Loving Samantha Bee getting Republicans to say "Choice" when discussing Bristol Palin's teenage pregnancy
At home in the apartment, my attention is hooked when I hear Palin surfing the booing of the convention crowd at the mention of Obama on the TV. Going back to my computer, I am cheered by The Best F#&king News Team Ever
9 September
"Boys, do you listen to nothing that I tell you? The real nature of the Universe in unknown and unknowable! Your problem is that your World-Reality Picture is based on half-ingested science!- These so-called Scientific Laws aren't laws at all! - They weren't given to some bearded gent on a Mountain Top!- They're mere observations on how it usually goes!- There's only one word in the English language which approximates the true nature of the Universe and that word is "OTHER"!- and every little once in a while THE OTHER WILL MANIFEST and it's good to around at those times, because if you've the courage- THERE MAY BE SOMETHING UP FOR GRABS!"
Furtive Nudist 1992
KC buried in Epping Forest
Read Jeni Barnet's record
Top interview on Theatre voice
Republican campaigners imply that Obama's use of the line "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig" was a dig at their Vice Presidential nominee. Man, this is so silly. Very happy to find some hard nosed British Satire on the Daily Mash "Obama Defends 'Creationist Psycho Bitch' Remark
11 September
Charles Gibson interview... oh dear!
I go to see 'HAIR the American Tribal Love-Rock Musical' in Central Park. Bit disappointed that the actors weren't more grungy but moved by audience joining the cast and bopping to 'Let the Sunshine in'.
Inspired to check back in with Timothy Leary who Nixon described as the 'most dangerous man in America'
TIMOTHY LEARY: (January 1996) When Nixon called me that, I was thrilled. The President of the United States, whom many Americans and the rest of the world thought was a crazed, psychotic danger, for him to be calling me that, I, that's my Nobel Prize, that's my bumper stick, that's my trophy on the wall.
12 September
Bill Maher accuses Wall Street Post journalist John Fund of cynicism. "A real cynic is someone like you.. who knows better but knows that the stupid people don't"
13 September
The clevers at SNL write a sketch for Ms. Fey as Palin as Amy Poeler as Hillary Clinton.
15 September
David Foster Wallace seems to have decided.... enough! and leaves us
'... there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.
'the point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.'
18 September
19 September
Quote from Lindsay Anderson on KCCML blog
"In the morning I feel about 50; then, depending on how the day goes, I might get down to about 22. When I'm directing on stage, I'm 43 and 32 when making a film because I feel less in control. Acting? Oh, then I'm 24, And when I'm on my own, I feel about 17 and think the world is all before me.'
21 September
ARRIVE IN OWENSBORO KENTUCKY
24 September
The Katie Couric interview Oh dear, oh dear!!
25 September
I'm with Stephen. Can't we take a break from all this politics and learn to love again?
26 September
Attend
Bluegrass is the experience, the history, the people, the performers, the business and the music. But that's not all... perhaps a more satisfactory answer is found not in the individual items, artifacts, films, panels, images, sounds and galleries that make up these exhibits, but in the people who walk through these halls, the way they respond to what they see and hear, and the community they create with each other and the museum. Together we are the music and the community we call Bluegrass. As Bill Monroe once said, " Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world."
First Presidential debate
29 September
ARRIVE IN DE MOINES IOWA
30 September
Go see Jim Reston talk to students at Drake's university.
Some random notes written on Embassy Suites Hotels paper
He opens by saying that apologies are not within the American psyche.
He explains that there is a misunderstimation that gnaws at him: that Nixon's crimes and misdeeds are trivial compared to those of George W.
What was Watergate? A criminal conspiracy operated out of the Oval office.
The Nixon/Frost interviews are a unique piece of prosecutorial journalism
5 articles of impeachment. 3 passed
on obstruction of justice
on abuse of power
on contempt of congress
2 failed
ICONIC MOMENTS DURING NIXON ADMINISTRATION
1. Vietnam war cost US 46,000 American combat deaths
2. Moratorium to end war in Vietnam Nov 15th 1969
3. US troops in Cambodia: Nixon TV address Apr 30 1970
4. Kent State shootings May 4 1970
5. Meeting Mao in China
6. Kissinger and Le Duc tho cease fire
7. Watergate break ins
8. Nixon farewell Aug 9 1974
Jim Reston's conversations with.
CHARLES COLSON: established Enemies list, proposal to bomb Brookings Institute and organized Plumber's Unit break in of psychiatrist Daniel Ellsberg's office
David Frost;Empty vessel, Confidante to the stars, Engaged to Dianne Carroll
Jim Reston's breakdown of the interview:
First Trap
Prosecutorial Journalism
(assumption that you are talking to a guilty man)
Obstruction of Justice
Journalistic courage
The second trap
coup de grace
Third trap
Good butcher
Oh my goodness
No, never
I have impeached myself
I AM SORRY
NIXON
'when you finally get down to it, it's a question of clemency''
Frost found himself adopting a father confessor strategy
Why did Nixon agree to do these interviews?
1.Money,
2.He thought Frost was a softy and
3. He was engaged in his memoires at the time.
Who could interview Bush today, deal with his pathological disengagement and penetrate the wall of platitude? Questions on Religion? Substance abuse?
What is going on when history moves into the realm of Art?
Will there be anything like this for Bush in the next 3 years?
How does a country bring a discredited leader to account?
Growing executive power/ Karl Rove's advice
MOTIVES: Bush' nobility
Stubborn wall of rectitude and self righteousness
Robert Mcnamara "The Fog of War"
1 October
Watch an interview with a woman who has written a book on Patriotic Grace (!). She has an Irish sounding surname and a studied calm I associate with Catholicism. So I did some searches on this Peggy Noonan. It turns out she sparked a little furor when she was over heard saying 'It's over' and that the Republican party always fucks up when it resorts to 'political bullshit about narrative.' A few 'Hail Marys' and a couple of 'Our Fathers' should clear her of the deed.
2 October
oh yes and The Vice Presidential debate.. not as embarrassing as one would have liked, darn it!! but I hadn't seen Biden before and thought he came across as a decent man.
5 October
Feel that I better learn a bit about this Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae thing. I had thought they were generic names for American's affected by the crisis...doh!
Luckily...
6 October
ARRIVE IN APPLETON WISCONSIN
Pick up a copy of Entertainment Weekly
On the way to Appleton Wisconsin Stacy gives me his copy of Newsweek. In it is an article by Sam Harris, writer of The End of Faith. I suspect his editor of sensationalism in heading the piece 'When Atheists Attack- A noted provocateur rips Sarah Palin- and defends elitism.'
The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere) economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security.
I wrote this section down on Residence Inn note paper so as to ponder
7 October
MSNBC Keith Olbermann in pugilistic anti-pugilism mode..
8 October
Michelle Obama's DS appearance brings a tear to my eye as she shakes JS' hand at the end of the interview. Bit weird. Something to do with the real possibility of a black first lady in the White House. Have we come this far?No?Yes?
Go to The Times They Are A-Changin' exhibition at the History Museum at the Castle and the AKA Houdini exhibit. Things that lodge...
Lynn Kellogg, the original Sheila Franklin, denouncing Hair as
"one of the primary openers of the Pandora's box of destruction that devastated my 60s- 70s generation, and through exponential expansion, every subsequent generation to the present"
Allen Ginsberg and The Fugs performing an exorcism over the grave of Joseph McCarthy
The Jim Crow laws in Wisconsin and the picture of Jim Zwerg beaten and bleeding
If Show Biz hadn't worked out for Houdini, he would have become a locksmith. Natch!
Second Presidential debate. Town hall stylie
10 October
Gayle Quinnell, a John McCain supporter calls Barack Obama an Arab at a campaign rally, October 10, 2008 in Lakeville, Minnesota. Thankfully, John McCain corrects her and takes away the microphone.
13 October
ARRIVE IN COLUMBUS OHIO
to be contextualised...
Crazy lady thinking Obama is an Arab
Mob mentality being fuelled by Palin's Obama 'palling around with terrorists' angle
14 October
Joe "the plumber" appears on the scene in Ohio
16 October
Lunch at Schmidt's sausage haus in the German Village.
And for afters.. a leedle fudge, Mr McCain?
nein danke x
17 October
Talk to theatre students at the Ohio State University. Get given a fantastic document on 'the professional aspects of the theater'. At last! An opportunity to find out what they are?
Go to the Wexner Center Galleries to see the Exclusive US Presentation of Andy Warhol Other Voices, Other Rooms
18 October
Walking to the theatre I listen to an interview with Robert Anton Wilson.
He makes mention of Carl Oglesby's "a multitude of conspiracies contend in the night" whom he ranks alongside Buckminster Fuller and Noam Chomsky.
Interestingly Carl Ogelsby makes a good case that the Watergate scandal was deliberately "leaked" by a Yankee coalition to drive Nixon out of the Whitehouse, Nixon being a representative of Western "Cowboy" money
I had mixed feelings when I heard that Palin was due to appear on SNL and indeed I felt sick when I saw her jiving to Amy Poeler's rap. I thought I detected real scorn as Amy P left the shot, but I think she was just in cha'rap'ter
And the next day..
19 October
Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama
A black republican giving the thumbs up to a black democrat
The Aries okaying the Leo
I am interested in what the G.O.P really stands for, partly because I have only just learned what the acronym stands for. What is the identity of this Grand Old Party if it separates church and state. Narrow minded right wingers whose true god is money? Misunderstood idealists?
20 October
ARRIVE IN HOUSTON TEXAS
George Orwell writes Animal Farm and 1984, critiques of communism. Just thinking...
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