Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets–Inaugural Edition

The inauguration was moved indoors because of extremely cold weather. What is your joke on hell freezing over?

Does this have any relevance today? “One left an encounter with Winston certain that Winston was the most interesting person alive; when one left a meeting with [Lloyd George] one convinced oneself of being the most interesting person alive.”David Reynolds, Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him.

I wonder if RFK, Jr., has been like me and thought that bacteria is the rear entrance to a cafeteria.

At least as defined by Mark Twain, the new president does not have good breeding, which Twain said “consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”

I am frequently struck by Trump railing about a problem that he considers caused by Biden when the problem also existed during Trump’s first term. But as a wise man said, “Among the things that enable a person to be self-satisfied is a poor memory.”

Now that Elon is on the scene, I wonder if what Abraham Riesman wrote in RingMaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America continues to be true. Reisman said that Vince McMahon may be Trump’s closest friend. McMahon “is said to be one of the only people whose call Trump takes in private, forcing his retinue to leave the room so the two old chums can chat in confidence.” Trump is a member of McMahon’s wrestling Hall of Fame. Will Elon enjoy the same access?

This is not just inauguration day; it is also the day to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. There must be a site somewhere where I can bet how many times, if any, Trump mentions MLK today. We tend to think that King gave his great “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, but the complete name of the rally was the March on Washinton for Jobs and Freedom. Six decades later, the demands of that day are still incompletely met. For example, the March was asking that the Fair Labor Standards Act cover agricultural workers. That act still only partly encompasses those who till and pick our food. The rally also sought to increase the minimum wage to $2 an hour. We fall woefully short of that today. Two dollars in 1963 is the equivalent of about $20 today, and the federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour. The minimum wage was $1.25 in 1963, which would be about $13 today. We would honor King if we at least thought about how we treat the working poor. (And we should remember that when King was murdered, he was in Memphis to lend support to a sanitation workers’ strike that aimed to change some of their horrendous working conditions.)

I am anything but a Trump supporter. I think many of his policies will do harm to this country, but I hope that I am wrong. Although not expecting it, I wish him success. There is much in this country that could use improvement. I could make my list. You, no doubt, could make yours. But instead, I give you what David Leonhardt said in Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream (2023):

“We live in the only high-income country that does not provide parents with paid leave. We live in one of the stingiest countries for daycare, preschool, and the resources devoted to children. A typical thirty-year-old man is not much more educated than his parents were. The United States remains the only rich country without universal health care insurance. American women are more likely to die in childbirth than women in many other countries. American babies are more likely to die, too. Income inequality is higher than in Western Europe, Canada, Japan, South Kores, or Australia. Almost two million Americans wake up each day in a prison or jail. Our children consider it normal to spend time at school preparing for a mass shooting. Our opioid death rate leads the world. Our roads are more dangerous than in other affluent countries, which was not true only a few decades ago. In 1980, life expectancy in the United States was similar to that in other high-income countries. We have become a grim outlier.”

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Trump has not been happy with the Republican National Committee. He proposed a person close to him to be the chief operating officer of the organization. He proposed another man close to him, an election denier, to be a co-chair of the RNC. And he proposed his daughter-in-law to be another co-chair. I wondered why there were two co-chairs, and I learned that the rules of the RNC require one male and one female co-chair. Say, what? I expected conservatives to become vocal, not about Trump’s seeking to control what is supposed to be an independent organization, but about this two-gender requirement. (Of course, the conservatives believe there are only two genders, so I am not surprised that there are not more co-chairs.) This reeks of affirmative action. This is an example of wokeism. Surely the co-chair requirement should be abolished.

What Margot Asquith said about David Lloyd George still applies to some today: “He couldn’t see a belt without hitting below it.”

At this time of year, my local movie theater plays Oscar-Nominated Live Action Shorts and Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts. I try to see these before the awards and make my own judgments about who should win. I recently saw the live action program. These movies are always well made with excellent production values. The credits seem just as long as for a full-length movie. I wonder each year who the audience is for these shorts. I am not aware that such shorts are shown commercially, or at least not enough to make back the amount of money that it must take to make them. Almost uniformly the five or so films are interesting, often with innovative stories. There is, however, one problem with the programs. I used to see movie shorts as a kid, sometimes in a theater as an interlude between the double feature. More often, I saw them on TV as local stations tried to find content to fill out their airtime. Often they were, or at least meant to be, humorous, such as instructional videos by Robert Benchley or The Fatal Glass of Beer featuring W.C. Fields. (Everyone should see The Fatal Glass at least several times in their life.) Humor, however, in the nominated live action shorts is in short supply. I guess to be nominated a film must be serious. The ones I just saw did feature one quirky film, but the others explored grief, tragedy, abortion restrictions, and teenage suicide. Each was remarkably good in writing, directing, and acting. Each was affecting — so much so, that I had troubled sleep the night after I went to the theater. I plan to see the animated shorts. However, to my surprise, some of them are also quite disturbing. One year before the final animated short was shown, a manager of the theater came out and said that all children should be taken out of the auditorium. The film was too disturbing for children. He was right. It had graphic nudity and graphic violence. I hope that is not the case this year.

I seldom believe in censorship, but sometimes a phrase that at initially seems fresh becomes so used that I want to have it banned. First on my list right now is “off ramp.” Second is “soft landing.”

“If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you. If you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” Don Marquis.