This Is What We've Come To

The Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Harry Reid, had this to say today:

Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.

“Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying.

“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?"

I repeat:   the Majority Leader of the United States Senate.   Who, by the way, hasn't beaten his wife for ten years.   How do I know?   Some anonymous guy told me.   Do I know that it's true that he hasn't beaten his wife for ten years?   Well, I'm not certain.  

Soon, God willing, to be the Minority Leader.

Milton Friedman

Free to Choose.   Probably the Wealth of Nations of the 20th Century.   Here is Friedman at the height of his powers in the late 1970s, giving the nation a master class in free enterprise and human freedom generally.   This set the stage for Reagan intellectually, and we would do well to revisit Friedman's teachings as we try to dig ourselves out of four years of Obamaism.

More on Chicago Values

Archbishop Francis Cardinal George of Chicago has this to say in an open letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel:

People who are not Christian or religious at all take for granted that marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of family and, of its nature, for life. The laws of civilizations much older than ours assume this understanding of marriage. This is also what religious leaders of almost all faiths have taught throughout the ages. Jesus affirmed this understanding of marriage when he spoke of “two becoming one flesh” (Mt. 19: 4-6). Was Jesus a bigot? Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan? Would Jesus be more “enlightened” if he had the privilege of living in our society? One is welcome to believe that, of course; but it should not become the official state religion, at least not in a land that still fancies itself free.

Strong stuff.   And commonsensical.   It is one thing to be in favor of gay marriage.   It is one thing to be, while not in favor of it, not strongly opposed or, like the Regular Guy, more focused on other things as political priorities.   It is an entirely different and illogical thing to label people who disagree with the gay marriage agenda as bigots who are beyond the pale for the simple crime of espousing beliefs that nearly all Americans took as given until very very recently.

Double Standards at the Olympics

A Swiss soccer player has just been sent home for tweeting a marginally racist message about the South Korean soccer team.   (By the way, we are reaching the point where the twin pillars of youth communication in the Internet age -- snarkiness and political correctness -- are coming almost daily into conflict in the ethersphere of Twitter and Facebook.   You can't be edgy and transgressive and, at the same time, observe all of the proprieties modern liberalism demands.)

Earlier, a Greek athlete was sent home for a marginally racist tweet too.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese judo team can, with impunity, refuse to practice in the same gym with Israelis.   And the IOC refuses to give a moment of silence in memory of the Israeli athletes slain at the 1972 Olympics.  

I'd say "Shame!" but no one would listen.

Moonrise Kingdom

The Regular Women and I saw Moonrise Kingdom over the weekend.   Really fun!   True, it's a naive cinematic version of a children's book.  But, heck, I like children's books!   It's also very, very funny and sweet.   We need more of that, methinks.   (To make perhaps too large a point, I don't see anyone dressing up and going into a theater with guns blazing about a Wes Anderson film.   Yet Hollywood continues to pump out the nihlistic violence.)

On Romney's Trip Abroad

So far on his trip abroad, Romney has:

1. Supposedly committed a "gaffe" in describing accurately logistical concerns about the organization of the London Olympics.   As discussed below, that "gaffe" is daily being revealed as a prescient prediction by a certified expert on running an Olympics.

2. Given a rousing pro-Israel speech that has Palestinians calling him a "racist" (meaning he said the exact right thing).

3. Gotten the endorsement of the most famous Pole, Lech Walesa.

For my money, that sounds like a great trip.

Church at Bernau

The Regular Guy can't help himself.   Here is the Regular Son's latest painting... this is of a Catholic church in Bernau, Germany.   Pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Girl of the Day - Nyree Dawn Porter

An actress of whom I had never heard, Nyree Dawn Porter, played the character of Irene in the 1967 BBC series The Forsyte Saga, which the Regular Family is watching.   It's awesome... just a step below I, Claudius and Brideshead Revisited, but just as good as Upstairs, Downstairs.   Irene is the cold fish wife of the colder, fishier lawyer Soames Forsyte.   This is not a still from the late Victorian Era show, needless to say.

Priorities

A good GOP ad calling attention to President Obama's obvious priorities:

Can We Revisit the Romney Olympics "Gaffe" Yet?

When will the MSM apologize to Mitt Romney for calling his mild criticism of the organization of the London Olympics a "gaffe"?   Here's an article from the London Daily Mail talking about the ticketing scandal/fiasco at the Games, in which seats are empty and soldiers are being used, a la North Korea, to create the illusion of full houses.

And here's an article from CNN about the growing "storm" about tickets at the Olympics.

The Left's Bizarre Position on Chick-fil-A's "Homophobia"

Democratic mayors of Chicago and Boston have recently taken the position that they would, if they could, deny business permits to Chick-fil-A restaurants because the owner, Dan Cathy, is a conservative Christian who believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and who therefore donates money to promote traditional marriage and to argue against legalizing gay marriage.   As readers of the Regular Guy may know, gay marriage does not make it very far up the list of things I get exercised about; it's not an issue that I'm ready to go the mattresses about.   To me, when there are 70% of black children being born out-of-wedlock, and a smaller, but growing percentage of white children, the institution of marriage has greater problems than just two dudes wanting to have a pretend wedding.   And, frankly, my nearly universal experience of gay colleagues and friends and neighbors is that they are decent normal friendly people.   It's hard to demonize them, and I won't.

That being said, these Democratic mayors have taken a bizarre position, essentially saying that it is beyond the bounds of decent society for businessmen who happen to be Christians to espouse beliefs about marriage that, until very recently, were held by nearly everyone, and, until a month or so ago, were the stated position of the Democratic President of the United States, Barack Obama.   Does Rahm Emanuel really want to pursue the logical end of his argument -- that, for instance, the Catholic Church does not represent "Chicago values," and should be run out of town on a rail?   I doubt it.   And, to go further, when will Emanuel speak out against the rampant homophobia of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan?   Not very soon, I'll wager.   Most bluntly:   was Barack Obama in May 2012 someone who didn't represent "Chicago values" because of his position against gay marriage?   And, did Rahm Emanuel speak out against his former boss then?   If not, why not?

It is one thing to be on one side of a 50-50 argument about an issue, and to say that the other side is wrong.   It is entirely another thing, and bizarre, to be on one side of a 50-50 argument and to say that the other side has no right to even speak.   That's not what America is all about.

But then, the modern Democratic Party under Barack Obama has stood foresquare against so many traditional American values -- free enterprise, for instance -- that nothing surprises me anymore.

"You Didn't Build That" - The Deeper Context

A lot has been written about Obama's rant about Americans who own businesses -- the now infamous "you didn't build that!" speech.   And a lot has been written about the "context" of the statement, with Democrats trying to say he was just talking about the government's role in building roads and bridges so that businesses can get their goods to market, while Republicans point out that the context was even worse, with Obama castigating people who think they've made it because they were smart or worked harder than others.  The Regular Guy sides with the GOP -- the context really does make it worse.   And Obama's argument about how the government spends money on roads and bridges is a straw man -- (a) building tangible infrastructure is not bankrupting America, and no one is arguing against such expenditures; (b) spending money on entitlement programs is.   But the deeper context is not "just words," as Obama once said.   Consider the President's attempt to walk the statement back through a campaign ad:



What is Obama's mood here?  He is calm, friendly, smiling.   He is speaking softly.   Now contrast that with the "you didn't build that" speech:



I see a man who is angry, a man who has hate in his tone when he talks about Romney, or the rich, or businessmen who think they've made it because they are smart or worked hard.   "Let me tell you something... there's a lot of hard-working people out there."   The spite drips off those words.

Put aside how wrong this is as a matter of observing human nature -- there are actually a lot of lazy slobs out there who have failed because of their own failings, and there actually are hard-working people who have succeeded because of their own effort, and there really is a difference between working 0 hours a week while claiming a fake disability and mooching off your "baby mama" and working 100 hours a week to start a convenience store or a laundry in the inner city.   Put that aside.   Just as a matter of tone, this is off-putting to a lot of Americans, and, I suspect, to a lot of independent voters.   They liked the calm and unthreatening Obama, the hope and change Obama.   I don't think they'll like the angry, hateful, spiteful, demonizing Obama.   I know I don't.

And, somewhat more to the point, if you meet someone and know them casually in society and they seem like a friendly, soft-spoken person, but then you see them in a different context and they are screaming at their kids or their wife, or violently arguing with someone in their business... wouldn't it always occur to you that the real person is the angry one, and the fake is the soft-spoken friendly facade?  

That's the deeper context of Obama's "you didn't build that" comment.   It's the moment when the veil fell and we got to see the real Obama.   And it's not pretty.

Krauthammer Gets It Wrong For Once

Charles Krauthammer is one of the Regular Guy's favorite thinkers and commentators on politics, but I think he's got it dead wrong when he describes Mitt Romney's mild criticism of the security planning at the London Olympics as "dumb and gratuitous."   To the contrary: Romney is one of perhaps half-a-dozen individuals in the world who have run an Olympics.   He is a certified expert on the subject.  Therefore, he cannot simply give a bland "everything's fine," rah-rah opinion.   Here's why:  there really are problems with the London Olympics security.   If he says that everything's fine and, God forbid, it turns out to be a fiasco or, worse, there's a terrorist attack, that bland opinion saying "everything's fine" will be hung around his neck.   And, more generally, even if there isn't a big debacle, there will undoubtedly be stories over the next few weeks about logistical snafus, traffic snarls, etc.   Does Romney really want to be associated with having declared the planning to be great?   He has sold himself as the competent manager candidate.   That would make him look like he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Romney said the exact right thing.   He was honest.   There are problems with the London Olympics.   Krauthammer this time got it wrong.

Girls of the Day - All Brits, All the Time! (Helen Mirren, Kate Beckinsale)

Helen Mirren turns 66 today, Kate Beckinsale, 39.   We just last night watched Beckinsale in the movie version of Emma that came out a few years back (better than the Gwneth Paltrow version).   Two classy British gals.   But, for the important question:  who's hotter, a young Mirren, or Beckinsale?   My vote:  Mirren, hands down.

Girl of the Day - Laura Fraser of Breaking Bad

Not sure how big a character she'll be, but the nervous would-be mass murderer/loving mother Lydia, played by Laura Fraser, made a big splash in this week's episode of Breaking Bad.    I have a hard time seeing how the character survives, but we'll see.   "Mike" (Jonathan Banks) almost whacked her, then decided not to.

The Future is Now

Newsweek is apparently going to a digital-only publication.   We are reaching a tipping point where modes of getting information or entertainment of the past -- hard copy books, newspapers, magazines, TV news, broadcast television in general, in-theater movies -- are going to pass away like the dodo bird.   Within twenty years (maybe sooner), no one will even think of buying a hard copy of a book, a newspaper or a magazine, or watch a TV show at a specified time the broadcast network says it's "on," or go to a movie theater where, among other things, you have to be part of a crowd of people you don't know who might, oh, be carrying weapons.   Instead you will read and view everything on a handheld reading device/computer/phone, which in turn will interface with built-in wall screens in every room of your house wirelessly.

Newsweek is a lefty rag that was losing circulation because of its idiotic editorial policies anyway.   But that's not the only reason why it's dying.   Even if it were the best buggy whip magazine in the world, it's still rapidly becoming obsolete.

Recall to Nowhere

Wisconsin was the epicenter of national politics in early June when Democrats tried to recall Governor Scott Walker (and failed), and tried to recall State Senator John Lehman (and succeeded, flipping the Senate to a 17-16 Democratic majority).   Well, Democratic State Senator Tim Cullen has now resigned from the Democratic caucus, meaning that the Senate is back to being a 16-16 tie.

Why did we go through all that recall business?   Remind me.   

File This Under "Why Fewer and Fewer People Watch Network News"

By now you have heard of the epic failure of ABC News correspondent Brian Ross in reporting that a Jim Holmes living in Aurora, CO was a member of the Colorado Tea Party, only to recant hours later upon finding that that Jim Holmes was a fifty-something law-abiding citizen, while the perpetrator was a 24 year-old grad student.   Gabriel Malor provides useful context of the series of failed attempts by the MSM to pin violent acts on the Tea Party or conservative Republicans:

* September 2009: The discovery of hanged census-taker Bill Sparkman in rural Kentucky fueled media speculation that he’d been killed by anti-government Tea Partiers. In fact, he’d killed himself and staged his corpse to look like a homicide so his family could collect on life insurance.
* February 2010: Joe Stack flew his small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. The media immediately suggested that the anti-tax rhetoric of the Tea Party led to the attack. In fact, Stack’s suicide note quoted the Communist Manifesto.
* That same month, a professor at the University of Alabama, Amy Bishop, shot and killed three colleagues at a faculty meeting. The gun-loving Tea Party came under immediate suspicion. But Bishop was a lifelong Democrat and Obama donor.
* March 2010: John Patrick Bedell shot two Pentagon security officers at close range. The media went wild with speculation that a right-wing extremist had reached the end of his rope. Bedell turned out to be a registered Democrat and 9/11 Truther.
* May 2010: New York authorities disarmed a massive car bomb in Times Square. Mayor Bloomberg immediately speculated that the bomber was someone upset about the president’s new health-care law. The media trumpeted the idea that crazed conservatives had (again, they implied) turned to violence. In fact, the perp was Faisal Shahzad, an Islamic extremist.
* August 2010: Amidst the debate over the Ground Zero Mosque, Michael Enright stabbed a Muslim cab driver in the neck. It was immediately dubbed an “anti-Muslim stabbing,” with “rising Islamophobia” on the political right to blame. In fact, Enright, a left-leaning art student, had worked with a firm that produced a pro-mosque statement.
* September 2010: James Lee, 43, took three hostages at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters in Maryland. The media speculation was unstoppable: Lee was surely a “climate-change denier” who’d resorted to violence. Oops: He was an environmentalist who viewed humans as parasites on the Earth.
* January 2011: Jared Lee Loughner went on a rampage in Tucson, Ariz. Again the media knew just who to blame: the Tea Party and its extremist rhetoric. In fact, Loughner was mostly apolitical — a conspiracy theorist who, to date, has been judged too mentally incompetent to stand trial.

For me, I don't really consider these examples to be conscious propaganda.   Perhaps some of them are the result of the media's suggestiblity -- liberal Democrats might effectively plant a story of right-wing extremism as the possible source of violence, and then the MSM will run with it.   But I think in most cases the real cause of these serial mistakes by the MSM is simply that reporters like Brian Ross aren't very smart.   These are people who have lived their lives within a very small cocoon of the news/entertainment industry, and who for the most part now live within a very small cocoon of liberal elite New York/Los Angeles/Washington.   They have almost no experience being friends with normal Americans who run small businesses, go hunting and fishing, own firearms, go to 4th of July parades, have family members in the military, and who struggle to do things like send their kids to parochial school when the government is taking 30-40% of everything they earn.   They are strangers, not fellow Americans.   And so they are easily demonized.   Thus, when a demonic act occurs, it's easy to blame it on people who are already demons in your world-view.  

On the other hand, why should people like me -- roughly the half of America who are conservative -- watch a news program delivered by people who aren't very smart who hate me?   Doesn't really seem like a feasible business model for a TV network. 

Columbine Redux

A young medical school dropout has murdered more than a dozen people at a showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, and some are already trying to make political hay.   ABC, in the most shameful example, went on the air to report that the murderer had a connection to the Colorado Tea Party, only to have to recant minutes later when they learned that the gentleman they identified, though having the same name as the murderer, is a 52 year-old ex-law enforcement Hispanic, not a 24 year-old, as the suspect had already been reported to be.   Too good to check, as they say, so they ran with it, apparently suffering from the liberal elite belief that Tea Party members are psychopathic mass murderers waiting to happen.  

The reality, I'm fairly certain, is that the young man was suffering from manic depression/schizophrenia, and was simply very sick.   We will shortly find that there was nothing political whatsoever about this tragedy.  

Will that keep the media and the Democrats from exploiting it?   I doubt it.

Girl of the Day - More Elizabeth Bennett

More Jennifer Ehle, that is.   Here, a little bit older, but still just as scrumptious:

Birthday Today - Edgar Degas

Born in 1834.   Not in the upper pantheon of great artists, in my judgment, but, then again, we remember certain images and the style of Degas 150 years later, so he must have been doing something right.

The Port of Los Angeles

Outsourcing?   We used to call that commerce, the never-ending process of entering new markets or seeking out new trade partners or, back in the really old days, "exploration."   Importing and exporting.   Buying low abroad and selling high at home.   Normal, routine, everyday business.   That's what Obama has been demonizing when he lambastes Romney for "oursourcing."

In this context, Kevin Williamson has a terrific note on The Corner:

I spent this morning at the Port of Los Angeles, one of the world’s great industrial sites. If you believe as I do that the division of labor is the foundation of civilization — something without which we are basically very, very clever monkeys — it is indeed a place of wonder, a head-clutchingly complex operation through which vast amounts of goods and vast sums of wealth travel, bringing Americans that to which we have become accustomed, i.e., all the best that the world has to offer....

It is also a place at which one can see a great number of young men and women making a very good living loading, unloading, trucking, and tracking cargo containers marked MAERSK and CHINA SHIPPING. Watching them at work, I could not help but think of President Obama’s recent anti-globalization rhetoric and Harry Reid’s ridiculously Sinophobic poppycock, and wonder: Why do the Democrats hate Los Angeles? And California? And truck drivers? And crane operators? And the logistics industry?

Birthday Today - Rick Ankiel

Maybe the most tragic baseball career ever.   He was going to be the next Sandy Koufax.   Then he blew up in the most spectacular fashion in the 2001 playoffs, throwing, if memory serves, five wild pitches in a single inning.   Then he fought his way back to the bigs as an outfielder and power hitter.   In 2008 for the Cards he hit 25 homeruns and looked like he would become a star.   Then, for a time, he couldn't hit the curve ball.   He's managed to hang on, but is a part-timer only, now with the Washington Nationals.   He turns 33 today.   When he was 20, he struck out 194 batters in 175 innings, going 11-7.   It looked like he was going to the Hall of Fame. 

Again, tragic.   Rick Ankiel is also probably my favorite player ever.   Sports are funny that way.

Girl of the Day - Jennifer Ehle

The Regular Wife and I have been watching classic BBC series with the Regular Son.   We've been through Brideshead Revisited and I, Claudius, and now we're on to Pride and Prejudice.   So, inevitably, the wondrous Jennifer Ehle:

Sometimes You Miss It When the Something That Is Happening Is That Nothing Is Happening

It has occurred to me that there is an inherent contradiction in the Obama campaign in terms of its attitude toward "defining" Romney.   On the one hand, one of the major motivating psychological/emotional forces behind support for Obama in 2008 was that he was the "cool"/"hip" candidate, which only works if you paint your opponent as a "square."   That worked with John McCain -- no one would dare paint the war hero as a corrupted or corruptible sort, but you could paint him as a square.   And, on a certain level, that is how they've tried to play it with Romney.   He's a square -- you know, white-bread, Mormon, married to the same girl for forty-plus years, five white-bread sons, never a hint of sexual scandal, doesn't even drink.   You know:  square.   To be contrasted with the cool, hip, with-it Obama.

But they also recently have been trying to paint Romney, the square, the Dudley Do-Right, as somehow corrupt.   He won't reveal his tax returns.   What's he hiding?   The breathless innuendo -- is he a felon?  Why did he still sign  Bain SEC filings after he said he left to go run the Olympics?  Whispers, whispers, whispers.

The problem is that those two frames for the narrative don't really go together, do they?   Romney can't be both a square and a scheming wheeler-dealer.  

And, of course, neither narrative works very well anymore, because they both imply contrasts that either no longer obtain, or never did.   Romney the square is only contrasting if we assume that the mass of Americans still thinks Obama is hip or cool or exciting.   But they don't... he's an emperor-has-no-clothes bore.   You can practically see the eye-rolling when he launches into his canned teleprompter speeches.   People were once fainting.   Now they are looking at their watches and wondering if they can make it home in time for "Breaking Bad."

And the contrast of Romney as corrupt or dishonest really doesn't work unless Obama has a reputation for incorruptibility and probity.   But the mass of Americans don't think Obama is as clean as Caesar's wife; they think he's a typical Chicago pol.   They don't think he's honest; they know he's a liar.

So there are reasons beyond simply being false that the Romney as corrupt or dishonest narrative the Obama campaign has tried in the past few weeks won't work.   People may wonder about Bain.   They may wonder about why Romney won't release his tax returns.   But those things won't make them want to vote for Obama, because they won't make anyone conclude, against all evidence, that Obama is honest and selfless and good and true.

Anyway, the something that is happening in the title of this post is that nothing is happening in the polls.   The latest CBS/New York Times poll shows that, after weeks of pounding Romney with negative ads and hounding him about Bain and his tax returns, Romney holds a 47-46 lead in a poll of registered voters with a Democratic sampling of plus-6 (meaning that Romney is really way out ahead among likely voters if the 2010 even partisan split holds).   All that effort, and it hasn't moved anyone an inch.  

Girl of the Day - Elizabeth McGovern

The American-born wife of an English lord in Downton Abbey, Elizabeth McGovern was an ingenue in Robert Redford's first movie, the Academy Award-winning Ordinary People, playing Timothy Hutton's girlfriend.   Next she was in Ragtime, for which she was a Best Supporting Actress nominee, and one of my favorites, Racing With the Moon (although I haven't seen it now going on 30 years).  It seemed as though she disappeared for awhile, but she was mostly appearing on British TV because she had married a British movie director and settled in the UK.   But she was right in the Regular Guy's wheelhouse when I was just out of college and going to a lot of movies.   She turns 51 today.

Romney and Geithner

Just a thought on the Romney tax returns kerfuffle.   Isn't the Secretary of the Treasury and, hence, the supervisor of the IRS, Timothy Geithner, who famously failed to pay self-employment taxes in the early 2000s while he was working at the International Monetary Fund? 

Meanwhile, what could we possibly learn from Romney's tax returns?   Two things that we would undoubtedly learn is that he pays more in taxes each year and gives more to charity each year than most people earn in their lifetimes.  

But he's right not to release them -- Obama would just demogogue that there were years where he paid very small percentages (undoubtedly for tax year 2008 and 2009 because of capital losses, and perhaps other years because of carry-forward treatment of losses from the market crash of 2000-2002).  And the media would spend the next month picking them apart, exhibiting a curiosity they have never had for the details of Obama's past.

Finally, again, it bears repeating that a man like Romney has extraordinarily complex personal finances, administered through a blind trust which undoubtedly has a corporate trustee and a silk-stocking law firm and a Big Four accounting firm.   The notion that a man at that level would have anything untoward in his tax returns after all that vetting is ludicrous.

Propaganda Versus Fact in Campaign '12

 The level of propaganda that Hollywood is contributing to the Obama campaign this time around is astonishing.   Frankly, it walks the line between protected free speech and valuable under-the-table in-kind contributions to the Obama campaign by what amount to unregistered PACs.   Consider the TV shows that have made it to your home screens:

• Game Change - the unflattering HBO movie about the McCain-Palin campaign.
• Veep - the unflattering HBO series about a ditzy female Vice-President.

Both would have had to have been "green-lit" at a time when Sarah Palin was a potential Presidential nominee on the Republican side.   Accidental?   I don't think so.

Then consider these:

• Political Animals - the flattering ABC drama starring Sigourney Weaver as a female democratic Secretary of State who used to be married to a womanizing President (sound familiar?).
• The Obama Effect - a new (and apparently dreadful) movie about how Obama's 2008 election changed one black man's life for the better.

Again, Hollywood is using fiction to present the Democratic candidates and regimes as noble.

On the other hand, there is Paul Kengor's new book, The Communist, about Obama's mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a card-carrying communist/Stalinist journalist.   Or David Maraniss' new biography of Obama that pointed out so many falsehoods in his memoirs.   Or Stanley Kurtz' book about Obama, Radical-in-Chief, detailing his many connections to the ultra-left in Chicago.  

Do you think Kengor will even get a review in the New York Times?   Or an interview on Today?  

The mainstream media is serving the same function Goebbels served -- presenting noble falsehoods at the service of the regime, while suppressing embarrassing facts about that same regime.

Birthday Today - Jimmy Cagney

Born in 1899, Cagney, along with a very few others like Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, John Wayne -- a real pantheon -- were the heroes that dominated my youth in the 1960s through re-runs of their black-and-white movies.   For some reason -- OK, the obvious reason -- today's stars like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Tobey McGuire, Leo DiCaprio just don't have the same weight.   Doesn't it seem to say a lot that it's hard to imagine two or three of those 1930s and 1940s stars being able to kick the crap out of a dozen or so of today's nancy boys?   Doesn't Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible character look like a little boy next to Cagney's gangsters?

Anyway, Cagney, of course, was also a wildly talented tap dancer, here in a routine with the great Bob Hope:

Girl of the Day - More Daniela Hantuchova!

Five foot-eleven world-class tennis player blonde and with an accent?   That works!

Or:  it would work, if I weren't 53, short, balding, squatty, and married (very happily) to the Regular Wife.  :)