On Moonlight Bay

From On Moonlight Bay

You might want to start out with a good intellectual rinse this morning by going over to my links and reading the top several posts from I Blame the Patriarchy.  Such clarity of thought will improve everything you do today.  I've been finding the ongoing political news so gray and annoying that I've just had nothing much to say.  I spent my evening watching an Esther Williams movie, followed by a Doris Day movie.  As Libby said, watching the former, which was choreographed by Buzby Berkeley, was almost an LSD trip.  Ms Williams bounces from guy to guy in a kind of haphazard way, but saves the day by diving from a trapeze dangling from a chopper some 40 feet in the air above a phalanx of waterski-ists being pulled behind probably ten boats at top speed.  The next scene, when they ski through a mangrove swamp, was a cut.  Whatever else one might say of Ms Williams, she did her stunts for real, pretty much.  At least so says the literature.  For that matter, I'm pretty sure Doris knocks down the milk bottles at the fair and gets that triple on her own dime.  She's got an arm, and she can definitely sing.  I do kinda wish Anita O'Day had gotten the breaks Doris got--but maybe Anita's life of art music was a more lasting contribution to the culture--a culture that seems to be dissolving on the pavement unfortunately.

This brings me to Mr. Gingrich.  Or to the media's ability to continue to treat the Newt as a real serious thinker no matter what he does, ever.  How is it possible that he can say that anyone who uses his plain clear assertion that the Ryan Budget is "right-wing social engineering" in an ad would be lying.  How can he possibly say that.  Or, since of course it is sadly true that we humans are capable of saying that two plus two equals five.  How is it that after Mr. Newt's statement, he still--STILL--gets on the Sunday political talk shows, pontificating further.

Mr. Gingrich is actually being played by Jonathan Winters, that must be the explanation.  This absurd faux "perfesser" somehow snows the whole main-stream media, no matter what the hell he spouts, from stupid all the way to utter contradiction.  He's still the political intellectual.  Which makes "On Moonlight Bay" a serious political commentary on that moment when America sends its young men off to die in war.  They're all sitting in the troop train, singing.  It's just a camping trip for big boy scouts.  I actually enjoyed "Moonlight Bay," but I did think about "Since You Were Away," made only six or so years earlier, when America was at least more realistic.  Maybe once the war was over and Korea arrived, along with the Rosenbergs and Joe McCarthy, people just had to look away.  It's understandable.

Immediate update:  sheesh, I go over to see what Driftglass is talking about today, and find the following quote from "The Hill," taken directly from the lips of Newt yesterday:
“I’m not a Washington figure, despite the years I’ve been here,” Gingrich said.

Q.E.F.D.