Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Publishing, Hillary, and O.J.

Chris Rock is back hosting the Oscars this Sunday night. I’ve been advocating for that decision to be made since the night he debuted 11 years ago. Here’s my recap of his earlier performance. The linked item appeared roughly three months into the run of this blog. (Have I mentioned recently that chrismoeller.blogspot.com is older than both Huffington Post and YouTube?) This Oscars recap from February of '05 has also been chosen for selection in a book of these blog entries that I plan to self-publish later this year. Roughly 100 of the 1,743 overall postings will be included in the publication.

If I haven’t been posting a lot recently, it’s because I’ve been busy in the editing room-- editing, but not changing. In the book, we’ll recap my professional career in journalism, my unsuccessful run for state representative in 2008, my brief career in film, my personal journeys-- both physical and metaphysical, my occasional creative writing exercises, your favorite rants and mine on the St. Louis Cardinals, the royal family, and the Clintons. And, of course... for the kids, celebrity obituaries.

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Speaking of the Clintons, I don't get how I'm supposed to believe the claims of Hillary supporters that she is the most qualified candidate for the presidency in the history of that office. (Granted, her team has a lot of experience covering up history.) She has one term and change under her belt as a lawmaker (eight years, to Bernie Sanders' 26, for example), and an additional four years as a cabinet official. We're not really going to count her years as First Lady, are we? Beyond that, I'm pretty sure her only qualification is a law degree. Sorry, does that make me a "Bernie Bro" to point that out? I was never one of her mutually-alleged "Obama Bros" so maybe I'm safe from the Clinton mud machine.

Hillary only "got things done" as a Senator if you're counting her voting support for the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq War Resolution (based on the United Nations Security Council Resolution she admits she didn't read), the Keystone Pipeline, and the Patriot Act. And she should have been fired from her cabinet post after WikiLeaks documents revealed that the State Department, under her leadership, was employing our ambassadors to spy on their contacts on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency. That offense may have also warranted prison time, but for some reason, hardly raised an eyebrow. I guess it got covered in the mountain of exposed U.S. criminal activity around that time.

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Have you been enjoying the 10-part mini-series American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson on FX? I have. Episode four of ten is on tonight. The dynamic between the attorneys is the most enjoyable part. Shapiro, Cochran, Bailey, Kardashian, Scheck, Dershowitz, Clark, Garcetti, and Darden were heavyweight personalities for sure, but true heavyweights on this planet are John Travolta, Courtney B. Vance, Nathan Lane, David Schwimmer, Rob Morrow, Evan Handler, Sarah Paulson, Bruce Greenwood, and Sterling K. Brown.

They’ve been laying it on pretty thick with the Kardashians angle though. To say the least, Robert Kardashian’s daughters were very peripheral to the story of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, but we’ve seen several scenes in the series designed to remind you that the daughters of O.J.’s best friend would later become mega-celebrities in their own right. The most blatantly exploitative scene was a week ago when Robert K (played by Schwimmer) is recognized by O.J. media gawkers in a Hollywood restaurant, and then attempts to explain to his enraptured daughters why celebrity is not an end in life unto itself. “But why, Daddy?” they reply, collectively. The wrong word for scenes like this in American Crime Story is “cheesy.” But the right one, for sure, is “campy.”

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