Tag Archives: Joe Biden

12.22.19
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The Purity Test

Nothing’s clean Howard.  But we do our best, right? 

 – Ava Gardner to Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004)

This is all I could think of during and after the latest Democratic presidential debate this week.

That in speaking this one truth, the fictionalized Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) managed to coax a fictionalized and very seriously obsessive-compulsive Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) out of  the prison of his own room and his own twisted thoughts and virtually back to real life in the superb Hughes/Hollywood biopic The Aviator.

Side note: Has Kate Beckinsale ever looked so glamorous??

Would that we had our own Ava Gardner-like figure – living or dead – to shock us all, the American electorate, back into the filth and messiness of our present reality in time to face the upcoming 2020 election cycle.

Someone who could remind us that because this world is so dirty to some degree we, every last one of us, also are unclean.

But someone who might simultaneously assure us that true cleanliness, i.e. purity, is merely an intellectual construct, one especially ill-advised when our very world is about to be engulfed and devoured by a snarling, larger than life orange Cookie Monster of our own creation.

We may need to seek alternative measures #CAROLANN

Yes, I’m talking about Trump and which mud-stained gladiator on that stage will lead us through the mess of human blood and excrement he’s gonna spew everywhere as we try and pry his cold, wet hands off  the levels of OUR power.

And sure, this is all a tad too purple prose metaphorical.

Yet what are we to make of all that supposedly serious talk on that debate stage.  All that posturing about wine caves, no big money donors, grit to stay the course, I’m safe because you know me, I’m a revolutionary because I’ve always been (Note: Just what year WAS that revolution, other than 1776?) and I’m a billionaire/millionaire who’s an innovator simply because I got rich?

Or the I’m gay, female, a person of color or am/have actively always supported the struggles of ALL of the former (and any of those not mentioned), many of whom are also my friends?

Remember my BEST FRIEND?

Not much when I drive around town and see Orangetheory Fitness Centers spreading like wildfire in my neighborhood, and not merely in a non-metaphorical way. If this doesn’t stop we might all soon be turning orange, and not in a good or fit way.

Again, too many metaphors, I know.  But desperate times call for…well, you know… anything that could possibly convince you.

It is worth noting that all the above bold-faced phrases on that debate stage were uttered by our much-ballyhooed gladiators the day after our Orange One was finally impeached by OUR U.S. House of Representatives.

He is known to be pro-coal

As the always fictional Elliot Ness was advised in the 1987 film, The Untouchables:

You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.

Yeah, another movie reference can’t hurt.  Unless it’s one where I get to confess I’m so exhausted from listening to our gladiators get so stuck in the fly paper of fine print that I may have to hate watch Cats (2019) simply as a palette cleanser.

The reviews are in!

On second thought no, not even on a screener – which, by the way, has not yet come in the mail.

All of this is to proclaim that even though yes, we need to fix health care, end global warming, get out of endless wars, address racism and the lack of opportunities for minority and poor populations, get money out of politics and………. nothing is more urgent than getting a quite literally unhinged, corrupt, crazy person out of OUR White House.

*except Mike Pence

His mental state is not metaphorical but pretty much accepted fact, even among many of his congressional supporters privately.  What is metaphorical but no less true is that the 2019 color of that House he lives in is no longer White but….well, take a guess.  (Hint:  The first letter rhymes with NO).

Talk about unclean, filthy and unsafe.

So here’s the deal.  You and I have each have our favorites, my fellow gladiator followers.  But let’s try to get beyond the Biden, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, Yang, Klobuchar, Yang, Booker, Castro, et. al of it all.

I’ll always love you Kamala

The future of the country and democracy is at stake and we don’t live in a perfect one, and certainly not a perfect world.  So rally behind those you feel the most passionate about but do not, repeat, DO NOT spend 2020 in your own personal dreamland when YOUR House is being engulfed by non-metaphorical orange flames.

Evergreen meme

If Biden is not your first choice but he gets the nom, find a way to get REALLY PASSIONATE about him.  Like you did about the guy or gal you dated when the dysfunctional choice you really wanted didn’t show up or merely screwed you over.

Ditto Bernie

Ditto Elizabeth Warren

Ditto Mayor Pete

And in the so far less-likely second tier:

Ditto Amy Klobuchar

Ditto Andrew Yang

Ditto the billionaires Bloomberg and Steyer

Ditto Julian Castro

Ditto Corey Booker

Except Tulsi. Move to Canada for Tulsi. #present

This also goes for all of the above or unmentioned  as possible vice-presidential candidates.

You and I and anyone else we can find on our dirtiest or, well, very less than unclean street corners, need to do this because if we don’t we will be losing A LOT more than the election.

Which is a lot LESS than has been lost already.

Elvis Presley – “Clean Up Your Own Backyard”

11.24.19
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The Glory of Denial

Denial just ain’t a river in Egypt.   — Mark Twain

What a week!

A gaggle of witnesses in the impeachment hearings of Electoral College POTUS Donald J. Trump sat before the House Intelligence Committee all testifying to essentially the same thing.

That thing is that Trump explicitly or implicitly threatened to withhold many millions of dollars of previously approved military aid to the Ukraine unless its new president agreed to investigate Joe Biden, Trump’s chief Democratic rival for re-election in 2020, for corruption.

sighhhhh

Then, an even bigger gaggle of other candidates competing for the Democratic nomination against Biden, who, you might remember from the previous paragraph, is STILL the leading candidate vying to compete against Trump to become the next Electoral College (and maybe even Popular Vote) POTUS, stood on an Atlanta debate stage on one of those evenings trading verbal barbs, sincere looks and well-thought out albeit pre-scripted arguments, in support of themselves.

Maya Rudolph as Kamala on SNL is your Christmas present 2019

Though most of them were ostensibly aimed at each other what they all were really targeting was a growing national and international audience waiting with bated breath to see which of them will become THE lucky gladiator chosen to face Trump in a virtual death match at the Hillary Clinton Coliseum of Public Ridicule to become not only leader of the US but King, or Queen, of the Free World.

Can you even stand it?

That was a rhetorical question.

It’s difficult to be an American citizen right now and go for even a single day where the subject of Trump, impeachment, Democratic candidates and the ubiquitous expression of quid pro quo doesn’t come up somewhere or at some time.

Even if you choose not to discuss it, you will doubtless be in some coffee shop, office building or household where it’s the prime subject or find yourself dragged into a discussion or gibe simply because you’re in the vicinity of something or someone determined to make their own remark, get your goat or simply express an opinion that makes you want to set your hair on fire or eat a package of Ding Dongs.

Or both.

We’ve all been Liz Lemon since 2016

If you participate in any of this too often it begins to feel like abuse, often self-abuse.  But ignore it for too long, e.g. more than a day, and you feel like a partying extra at the Kit Kat Club in the movie version of Cabaret.

Speaking of movies, there is a brilliant one out now from famed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar called Pain and Glory.  It is a semi-autobiographical tale about a film director in chronic pain who turns to smoking heroin as a means of denying both the medical and psychological challenges in his life, only one of which is getting older.

See you at the Oscars Antonio!

It is a deep, riveting metaphor for the lives we are all living now, despite how much critics, audiences and award givers will prefer Joker, Marriage Story, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and even Knives Out.  Heck, after the week we’ve just had a spoof of an Agatha Christie film like Knives Out with James Bond-ian Daniel Craig as the 2019 bumbling version of Hercule Poirot enduring the bitchy bon mots of a stylish rich boy played by Chris (Captain America) Evans, sounds preferable to this American citizen.

CHRIS EVANS IN A SWEATER! CHRIS EVANS IN A SWEATER! #swoon

Still, despite the glorious denial escapist entertainment offers and fulfills, it is that very critique the Almodovar film cautions us about glorifying in for too long.

To deny the reality we are living by whatever means available to us is okay for a while.  Most people don’t die from a brief encounter with their drug of choice, be it heroin, big screen entertainment, a chocolate cake cleanse or even a small string of indiscreet online sexual encounters instantly regrettable the following morning.

… or a Billy on the Street Netflix Marathon #elenaforever

But a wise filmmaker like Almodovar warns us with Pain and Glory that escape and denial will only get us so far.  Go down that road for too long and you will lose not only your focus but your health and your moral center.  Yet he also assures us that to simply continue as we are and not try something else, some new means of escape, is to remain stagnant in our miseries.

It is only through our journeys to throw enough stuff up in the air and explore an alternate road that we get insight and, hopefully, wisdom into who we are and what we’ve lost, or actually gained, in the process.

Wait… isn’t this the plot of Frozen 2???

Each event in its entire story is a metaphor for the risks and benefits of trying something new, and the costs of denial when we refuse to admit that merely going down a new road where we pick up a few pieces of gold, or golden wisdom, is no excuse for throwing the rest and best of US, nee our lives, away.

If ever there were a movie for this week and our Trumpian times it is this one, not a biopic offering life lessons from Mister Rogers or a whodunit about the kind of cartoonish, unsavory characters that are all too recognizable when we turn on our TV news shows of choice and gawk at our favorite partisan heroes and villains in Washington, DC. Certainly there are pleasures to be had in the above two films as well as many other diversions of choice.

but but but.. JAMIE LEE!!!  #knivesout

But now is not the time for any of us to revel too long in the glory, and the glory of denial, that they offer.

Especially not after the week we’ve just had and the ones that are inevitably coming ‘round the bend.

Randy Rainbow – “He’s Just a GURL Who’ll QUID PRO QUO!”