What happened tonight at the White House Correspondents Dinner... many said Barack Obama outdid Larry Wilmore on the comedy front. Barack delivered a fine performance-- skewering Hillary Clinton, by imagining myself pulling down a much of Harriet Tubman's ($20 bills) by taking Goldman Sachs money for delivering speeches after he leaves office. Barack has been to eight of these events and his experience showed nicely. He knows the journalists well but chose to make most fun of his own kind, politics and politicians, and that focus gave his remarks a certain modesty and self-deprecation. Wilmore, had to find another tact, and made fun of the journalists in the room. He highlighted the struggles of news outlets, the dying print media and brainless CNN reporters, and that proved a trickier endeavor. Wilmore attempted to add comic intensity, but often sounded mean-spirited. Nothing could be further from this comedian's true colors, Larry Wilmore is by nature an easygoing, amiable personality.
Truthfully, I think Larry Wilmore is too cerebral a comedian, more a comedy writer than a rough and tumble standup, to perform the role of emcee at a Roast. Wilmore strongest performance actually occurred in a non-comic vein when he lauded President Obama's amazing achievement, proving a black man capable for the biggest leadership role in the world.
Wilmore's comment came toward the end of his performance. Wilmore, approximately the same age as Obama, reminded us that years ago many did not believe a black man capable of playing quarterback much less leader of the free world. I found Wilmore's tribute to Obama more significant that any joke could ever be. Wilmore embraced the real truth of Obama-- a miracle in our lifetime, the game changer of an African-American president-- and did a great service in that moment.
Wilmore struggled to get an edge to his performance-- but he seems more capable of provoking thought and quiet laughter in his cerebral comic style. The material was there but maybe the standup's anarchic personality, the ..."I don't give a damn 'cause I just walked in off the street" persona is not a natural pose for this nuanced comedian. Wilmore has great comedic skills but the assignment works better for the Stephen Colbert type performer, full of piss and vinegar and loving the attention and the spotlight. We were lucky to have the selfless Wilmore on hand to deliver thanks to Barack Obama, a more important task than "killing" the audience with laughter.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Thursday, April 21, 2016
How We Got Into Vietnam (David Halberstam)
Finished "The Best and The Brightest" book by Halberstam on Vietnam. I'm glad I got to the end. He talks about LBJ's failed decision-making on Vietnam. LBJ looked to the past and the Cold War to try and understand Vietnam:
"The forces at work in the fifties were very real to him. If Jack Kennedy was a man who knew more about where the sixties were headed but whose intellect preceded his courage, who stepped forward gingerly, then Johnson was more a man of the past. He reacted to what he thought the country was; the country which twice defeated Stevenson for the Presidency, where the powerful people on the Hill seemed primarily to be hawks, where the dominant figures of journalism were proud survivors of the worst of the Cold War, and where American universities had also given willingly, too willingly in fact, of their talent and support to the Cold War." (p. 592)
And here is how LBJ got us so deeply involved in the war, using his astute political skills, for subtly escalating the War, while missing the boat on the sixties revolution brewing and about to explode:
"That would all come later: perhaps another politician might have sensed it, if not clearly identifying the change. But Lyndon Johnson did not sense it, rather he sensed that he had position on everybody else, he had control of the center, he had moved all opponents to the extreme. He had handled the Congress, signed it on without really signing it on: he had handled the press by slicing the salami so thin that they are never able to pin him down, and he handled Ho by making it seem as if Ho were attacking him at Tonkin. He was using force but using it discreetly, and he was also handling the military. They were moving toward war, but in such imperceptible degrees that neither the Congress nor the press could ever show a quantum jump. All the decisions were being cleverly hidden; he as cutting it thin to hold off the opposition." (p. 593)
This poses some interesting questions for me on how public policy lurches forward-- often based on the prevailing, conventional wisdom, based on the leader's beliefs about his peers and what they will find acceptable, as rational behavior. Of course, our Vietnam policy does not appear rational in retrospect, but LBJ operated within the paradigm he knew and had experienced.
What do we believe now-- based on a present-day conventional wisdom that is actually totally inaccurate and misplaced? People think we need to get industry back to America? Is there any likelihood of that? How might our energies and resources be used to improve the situation in our country? I'm sure there is much confusion on the subject, and some of our unlikely Presidential candidates (Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders) have risen because of confusion around where the country should be heading. Not sure any of the candidates has proposed anything of substance. Mainly its emotion-- Make America Great Again, Stop the 1%.... Obama has kept a cool head. He didn't come out with a "New Deal" or anything on a grand scale. I doubt there would have been support for that kind of thing in this environment. The candidates kind of imply that they will achieve something on a grand scale. That seems unlikely.
"The forces at work in the fifties were very real to him. If Jack Kennedy was a man who knew more about where the sixties were headed but whose intellect preceded his courage, who stepped forward gingerly, then Johnson was more a man of the past. He reacted to what he thought the country was; the country which twice defeated Stevenson for the Presidency, where the powerful people on the Hill seemed primarily to be hawks, where the dominant figures of journalism were proud survivors of the worst of the Cold War, and where American universities had also given willingly, too willingly in fact, of their talent and support to the Cold War." (p. 592)
And here is how LBJ got us so deeply involved in the war, using his astute political skills, for subtly escalating the War, while missing the boat on the sixties revolution brewing and about to explode:
"That would all come later: perhaps another politician might have sensed it, if not clearly identifying the change. But Lyndon Johnson did not sense it, rather he sensed that he had position on everybody else, he had control of the center, he had moved all opponents to the extreme. He had handled the Congress, signed it on without really signing it on: he had handled the press by slicing the salami so thin that they are never able to pin him down, and he handled Ho by making it seem as if Ho were attacking him at Tonkin. He was using force but using it discreetly, and he was also handling the military. They were moving toward war, but in such imperceptible degrees that neither the Congress nor the press could ever show a quantum jump. All the decisions were being cleverly hidden; he as cutting it thin to hold off the opposition." (p. 593)
This poses some interesting questions for me on how public policy lurches forward-- often based on the prevailing, conventional wisdom, based on the leader's beliefs about his peers and what they will find acceptable, as rational behavior. Of course, our Vietnam policy does not appear rational in retrospect, but LBJ operated within the paradigm he knew and had experienced.
What do we believe now-- based on a present-day conventional wisdom that is actually totally inaccurate and misplaced? People think we need to get industry back to America? Is there any likelihood of that? How might our energies and resources be used to improve the situation in our country? I'm sure there is much confusion on the subject, and some of our unlikely Presidential candidates (Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders) have risen because of confusion around where the country should be heading. Not sure any of the candidates has proposed anything of substance. Mainly its emotion-- Make America Great Again, Stop the 1%.... Obama has kept a cool head. He didn't come out with a "New Deal" or anything on a grand scale. I doubt there would have been support for that kind of thing in this environment. The candidates kind of imply that they will achieve something on a grand scale. That seems unlikely.
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Life At the Speed of Light
McLuhan said we get messages from satellite transmissions careening around the globe at the speed of light. That is the new reality.
Check out the article from Slate online magazine entitled-- "Is Facebook Live Video The Future Or The Latest Social Media Fad"
Mr. Zuckerberg knows that the faster moving process races around the slower media and will defeat the slower moving programs. TV defeats movies, Online media defeats newspapers. So getting you face-to-face, literally, with your Facebook friends is the place he is headed.
Marshall McLuhan makes life easier. He is the Oracle of Toronto!
See-you,
John
Check out the article from Slate online magazine entitled-- "Is Facebook Live Video The Future Or The Latest Social Media Fad"
Mr. Zuckerberg knows that the faster moving process races around the slower media and will defeat the slower moving programs. TV defeats movies, Online media defeats newspapers. So getting you face-to-face, literally, with your Facebook friends is the place he is headed.
Marshall McLuhan makes life easier. He is the Oracle of Toronto!
See-you,
John
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