Friday, July 21, 2006
Reality TV
(jb)
It's hard to be the child of the famous or accomplished. You can never really measure up (certainly not in your own mind), but you can pull them down - one way or another. 'Greatest Generation': face your spawn.
Baby-boomer Extraordinaire - Professor G., Historian:
Yes, people aren't naturally suicidal; they have to be convinced!
Meanwhile, on another channel:
Immortal words worthy of a Thomas McJefferson, or a James Madisonson. Better History Through Marketing.™
[UPDATE: (via Digby):
It's hard to be the child of the famous or accomplished. You can never really measure up (certainly not in your own mind), but you can pull them down - one way or another. 'Greatest Generation': face your spawn.
Baby-boomer Extraordinaire - Professor G., Historian:
"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away....
There is a public relations value, too. ['too'? -ed] Gingrich said that public opinion can change "the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message then, he said, is "'OK, if we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"
An historian, Gingrich said he has been studying recently how Abraham Lincoln talked to Americans about the Civil War, and what turned out to be a much longer and deadlier war than Lincoln expected.
(...)
".....I'm a historian. I don't do anything new. I just imitate. I guarantee you there are 60 or 70 Democrats, if their districts thoroughly understood their record, they'd lose this year even though people aren't happy with Bush. Because people aren't suicidal. ..."
Yes, people aren't naturally suicidal; they have to be convinced!
Meanwhile, on another channel:
"[The war in Iraq is] like after Katrina, when the secretary of homeland security was saying all those people weren't really stranded when we were all watching it on TV," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.). "I still hear about that. We can't look like we won't face reality."
Immortal words worthy of a Thomas McJefferson, or a James Madisonson. Better History Through Marketing.™
[UPDATE: (via Digby):
“[W. Bush] was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade ... if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”
