A crazy election can always get crazier

Utah is a true red state, Republican to the core. I’m a Utahn, but I’m a Democrat, which can be lonely. The reason for the strong Republican streak is the Mormon Church, whose leaders are overwhelmingly conservative. Although I have lived amongst these Mormon Republicans and right-wingers, even I can sometimes be surprised by how weird it can get politically 'round these parts.

As I write this we have a couple of weeks to before the general election, and polling in Utah shows a remarkable split in voter preferences. Since many Mormons hate Trump and also hate Clinton they have come up with an alternative. The results of the poll showed Trump at 29%, Cliinton* at 26%, and third party candidate Evan McMullin at 30%. Incredible!

Have you ever heard of Evan McMullin? No? Neither have I. McMullin is listed on his info page (go to the link) as a former CIA operative, a former Mormon missionary in Brazil, and a former refugee resettlement officer for the United Nations. Whew. That's quite a résumé. If it is true. We can check on the UN job and the Mormon mission, but the CIA doesn’t give out information on their operatives, current or former. I get from what information I can glean that Evan is one of those guys who make a big deal out of “religious liberties,” which I always interpret as being anti-gay. Religious conservatives are still bound and determined to put those religious “liberties” over the Constitutional rights of other citizens.But there can be a backlash. Religious liberties being invoked to discriminate means that I can choose not to do business with the discriminators. Most of the rest of the U.S. doesn't have to worry about Evan...I understand he is only on the ballot in 11 states.
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It probably doesn’t do a bit of good to call out Trump for his bad qualities, because members of the Trump Cult really don’t listen. I’m sure most Trumpets aren’t sitting in front of programs analyzing Trump’s more egregious defects. They are probably out showing off their latest t-shirt!

Oh, how cute! They’re both “matchy”!

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Something I was expecting during the primaries has happened just weeks before the election. It is news of Trump’s “Grab 'em by the pussy” remarks and the women who are coming out to accuse him of taking various sexual liberties with them. Anyone who has followed Trumpְ’s history over the past twenty years is probably well aware that he is a roué. For you Trump fans who don't know what a roué is, it is a “debauched man, especially an elderly one.” If you also don’t know what debauched and elderly means, well, it means he is a dirty old man.

Once again the impact is not as great as I thought news of this sort would be. We have seen candidates in the past suddenly drop out of the race because of disclosures of sexual affairs (Herman Cain in 2012 is one example...and does anyone remember Gary Hart?) But Trump? Maybe his cult members think it is a badge of honor that he feels free to belong to the 4F club. (You remember that from junior high, don’t you? Find 'em, feel 'em, fuck 'em, forget 'em. That is just Trump in a nutshell.) As I write this on Saturday, October 22, 2016, I just saw news footage where he says he is going to sue every one of those women who make such claims about him being obnoxious, sexist, and grabby. He makes a lot of threats, doesn’t he? I have had bullies for bosses who made a lot of threats, also, and usually it’s a bluff. Trump wants to get into expensive lawsuits which he will probably have to settle with $$$? Fuhgeddaboudit!

I got my crystal ball out of storage and summoned the genie in the ball to tell me what will happen after Trump loses the election. (Not "if" but when.) The genie told me that after a decent interval (maybe after President Clinton’s inauguration), Melania Trump will file for divorce from Donald J. Trump on grounds of mental cruelty over his philandering and multiple adulteries, and exposing her to public humiliation. I bet she didn’t know a lot of this about his pussy-grabbin' past until it came out publicly, because I doubt he would have confessed any of it to her. After all, she wasn’t part of his "locker room talk” group.
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*I believe Clinton polls that high not because people like her, but because they voting against Trump. I doubt any support by Utahns will make much difference. Six electoral votes? Maybe if it were a really tight, down-to-the-wire election. The last time a Democratic presidential candidate won in Utah was 1964, when Utah voted overwhelmingly for Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater. (The election also gave us one of our finest governors, Calvin Rampton, a Democrat, who had three terms in office.) Those were also the days before the right-wingy-dingies took over our congresspeople and senators and the Utah State government.

A Weird Tales ghost story: “Professor Kate” by Margaret St Clair

This time of year my mind turns to ghost stories.

“Professor Kate” was written by Margaret St Clair, a prolific author working in the pulp magazines, mainly science fiction and weird fiction. She lived with her husband in Berkeley, California, and they became Wiccans. Both she and her husband were successful writers, and of Margaret author Ramsey Campbell has said, “she is yet to be fully appreciated.”

This short tale is from Weird Tales, January 1951. I found the scans in the Internet Archive. The contents were originally copyright © 1950 Weird Tales.

The heaviest heavy — the brief, brilliant movie career of Laird Cregar

Laird Cregar had a three-year career in Hollywood during the World War II years. He was a large man, 6'3" tall and weighing over 300 pounds. He was noticed in his first part, and soon became known for his villainous roles.

As you will read in this article by Barbara G. Jackson, Cregar was not satisfied with being the bad guy, and went on several crash diets to slim down for more traditional leading roles. Alas. It was the dieting that killed him. (Remind me to show this article to my doctor next time she suggests I "lose a few pounds.")

The article appeared in Monster Fantasy #3, August 1975, and is Copyright © Mayfair Publications, Inc.

Probably Cregar’s most famous role is that of Jack the Ripper in The Lodger. The full movie is available on YouTube. As always, YouTube giveth and YouTube can taketh away. If you encounter a black screen, well, sorry about that, but it is not my fault. You might be able to find it from other sources, including DVD.

Age catches up

Yesterday I helped my neighbor cut down some trees and trim some bushes. The trees we cut down were on my side of the fence, but the branches were growing over his roof. So I agreed to help take them out.

When we were done I told him I was feeling every day of my age. I am younger than him, but not by much. He's 73 and I have yet to crack 70. Barring a heart attack from heavy labor I might just make it. I went inside my house, took a couple of Aleve and assumed a supine position on my couch. I picked up a book to read: THE QUESTIONABLE MAD, one of dozens of paperbacks with reprints from old issues of MAD. Flipping the pages I came upon a feature I am very fond of, “If Comic Strip Characters Were as Old as Their Comic Strips." In 1962 when I read it in MAD #72, I was a lad of 15.

So the satire made me laugh, as it always does when I see it. I believe my laughing is now more from familiarity with the aging experience. Obviously when I was 15 it was funny that comic strip characters who never aged would become old. But me becoming old was never considered. I never saw myself as — yeccccch! — a senior citizen. And yet, here I am.

Written by Earle Doud, illustrated by Wallace Wood. Copyright © 1962, 1967 E.C. Publications, Inc.

Life Magazine: four great American artists of the 1930s

Since its beginning in 1936, Life magazine was an ongoing chronicle of American life, including popular culture. They also gave dignity to fine artists of their time by giving them not only space, but rare color pages. Color pages in magazines in the 1930s were very rare, so it put special emphasis on the artwork.

I found these articles on artists published within a very short span of time in 1937, in four issues published in October and November.

Contents of this posting are taken from scanned editions of Life at Google Books.

John McCrady (1911-1968). An artist from the South, he did a lot of paintings featuring African-Americans. McCrady studied under Thomas Hart Benson, an artist whose work was hugely influential. 

James Daugherty (1884-1974). Daugherty became a Newbury and Caldecott winner with his work in children’s books.

Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) was a popular illustrator and printmaker.

Paul Sample (1896-1974). Sample learned to paint after being hospitalized for tuberculosis.

American Television Crime

I’ve been watching Netflix, specifically the first season of American Crime, and I have watched half of the episodes from the second season of Narcos, the saga of the brutal reign and eventual downfall of narco trafficker, Pablo Escobar.

I watched a horror/science fiction series, Stranger Things, a series created for Netflix, and on HBO I have just completed watching The Night Of.

That’s a lot of TV watching, made possible only by having a lot of time to myself. My wife won’t watch crime or horror, so as the old saying goes, somebody has to do it, and it might as well be me.

Timothy Hutton, Felicity Huffman and Lily Taylor of American Crime.
American Crime has the benefit of 12 episodes to tell its interlocking (yet not over-complicated) story, giving each of several stories enough time to unfold, and to showcase the abilities of an extremely talented cast. I began watching it because of actors Timothy Hutton and Felicity Huffman as divorced parents of a son and his wife murdered in a home invasion. As parents they have an image of the murdered couple which over the course of the show becomes unraveled when truth emerges. But it is made even more pertinent by the actions of the rest of the cast.

It is grim, but not oppressively so. Like all good stories, there are echoes of Shakespeare, especially in a modern-day equivalent of Romeo and Juliet. That is, if Romeo and Juliet were meth addicts.

John Turturro in The Night Of.
The Night Of matches the drama of American Crime, but also has the benefit of John Turturro. He plays a lead role along with an actor I am not familiar with, Riz Ahmed, a Brit playing a Pakistani-American.

Turturro’s character’s particular affliction is allergies, and specifically a bad case of eczema. If not exactly comic relief (unfortunately, I have been plagued at times by the same condition, and it is not funny), it’s at least original.

Wagner Moura as Pablo Escobar
Narcos is a series that may not be as appreciated by people who don’t like stories told in another language (Spanish), with English subtitles. Because of my hearing problems I routinely use closed captioning so it’s no problem to me, but it can be an impediment. Especially if you are like a family member I know, who can’t read fast enough to keep up with subtitles.

Escobar was like a feudal lord of another time, defending his realm with near absolute impunity. It was his ability to carry on his lucrative business of supplying cocaine. He also didn’t mind getting his hands dirty with killing, which adds that extra touch to his narcissistic personality. Besides Escobar, there are American DEA agents, trying to catch or kill Escobar, and are finding it extremely difficult in a land where Escobar has a king-like presence amongst loyal “subjects.” (Not to mention unlimited funds for bribery.)

Kid cast of Stranger Things.
A different kind of crime is Stranger Things, a mini-series that has gotten good reviews, including a surprise (for me) from The New Yorker. I watched Stranger Things, although I thought it was a bit of a slog getting through it.  I found it derivative, a mash-up of old Stephen King stories. Others have noticed the same thing, but apparently don’t see anything wrong with it.

Asif Ali, Rhys Darby, Brooke Dillman
I am also a hypocrite, depending on the ability of the show to carry off being derivative, Wrecked, a comedy which just completed its first season on TBS, is like Lost as seen in a funhouse mirror. It has a superb cast, including Rhys Darby (“Murray” of Flight of the Conchords), and the incredible Brooke Dillman. This is one show that my wife would actually watch with me. We are looking forward to more, promised for 2017.

The Trump philosophy: Baffle ’em with bullshit

I don’t believe anyone has ever won an election by claiming to be able to run a business; government and business are not the same thing. Sure, leadership skills apply, but the two things are 180 degrees apart.

Trump is the latest guy to claim that he can run the country because he can run a business. Even if running a business made one successful in government, it is not clear how well Trump runs his businesses. Several of them have gone into bankruptcy, but is that because they performed poorly or a strategy to cheat creditors? To run a country one can not be just a boss and order people to perform tasks. It is a whole different skill set, which involves a lot of politics and compromise with other politicians, and I believe compromise is a four-letter word to Trump.

Trump has steered around the subject by coming up with outrageous things that a president should do, build a wall, keep a whole group of people out of America, and on and on. An article on Trump by Michael Kinsley in the November 2015 issue of Vanity Fair pointed out “Trump is just the latest among a series of business types who think they should run the counry because they ran a company. Remember Ross Perot? This year there are two, the other being Carly Fiorina, who ran Hewlett-Packard — ran it into the ground. Business people are an odd category of citizen to look to as a populist deus ex machina. True, they usually have some practical business sense and experience, which is not worthless. But their lives are different from those of people who are hurting, and increasingly so. Trump’s business experience has been in real estate, professional celebrity, gambling casinos, and creative bankruptcy — not the kind of experience that is useful as president.”

Barry Blitt from Vanity Fair

Note that I said Trump has steered around the subject. He also steers around whether he is a true conservative. He just makes outrageous statements, and conspiracy theories he avers are aimed against him. I would call that chaff, the stuff they dump out of jet fighters to fool enemy radar. If Trump keeps claiming the system is rigged, that does not explain what he will do with the budget deficit. If he deflects comments on his shady business dealings with paranoid stories about reporters and news organizations, then how does that answer any questions of dealings with hostile nations? It doesn’t, but for some reason his followers love this sort of stuff, about which W.C. Fields presciently said: “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit.”

Trump would not have been able to pull off his campaign so far had it not been for the absolute disarray of the Republican Party. They fielded the worst group of candidates I have seen since I started paying attention to such things in 1964, when the Republicans ran another group that failed to keep Barry Goldwater from the Republican disaster that year

Trump claims to be a conservative, or does he? I don’t remember if he has actually claimed that political philosophy. Frankly, since he can change opinions in the same speech, even within the same sentence, it is hard to know what his political philosophy is. In the article, “Trump Wrongs the Right” by Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru from the October 19, 2015 issue of the conservative National Review, they state: “Trump . . . makes a terrible champion for Republicans, and expecially for conservatives. By the standards we typically use to evaluate candidates — their records, their views, their popularity with the general public, their character — Trump should be dismissed out of hand. No . . . candidate [is] so obviously deficient in all of these respects.”

After more excoriating of Trump, his character and lack of conservative values, the authors unfortunately fail to read Trump’s future as a Republican candidate:

“Trump is unlikely to be the Republican nominee and will probably not be a serious threat to Republicans as a third-party candidate next year.” [Emphasis mine.]

In the same issue of National Review Rich Lowry showed up on Trump’s own radar and this was the result: