A Little Of The Old In And Out



(image via gizmodo)

In: Geeks. GTA IV. Iron Man. An "Avengers" follow up. The Yahoo!-Microsoft Soap Opera. What the fuck?! The stocks of the so-called "cool" adenoidal athletes, like Roger Clemens and Dennis "Id" Rodman is falling: -- And the geek shall inherit the earth (this week, at least). Geek concerns, geek tastes have invaded American pop-culture at bacterial velocity. Jon Favreau, the director and vision behind Iron Man, is, we cannot fail to note, a proto-comic book geek. And, no doubt, his film -- which cost over $200 million to make -- will be a mega monster-hit. Just like Sam Raimi's "Spider Man," which was also borne of a childhood of atomic wedgies, milk dud munching and thousands of hours of hanging at the comic book shop wondering if Wolverine's "healing factor" could save him in a drowning scenario.



(image via bentmagazine)
Out: That Clintonian Rhetoric. According to the shallow cable talk show narrative, Hillary Clinton is the sober, well-prepared policy wonk with a dose of "toughness." Let us, for a second, broach the subject of that storied wonkiness. Her gas tax, for example, is more "Boob bait for Bubba" -- to borrow from her predecessor, the deceased Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- than actual, implementable, effective policy. Michael Bloomberg, for example, noted (from TheObserver):

"Michael Bloomberg said giving drivers a break from the gas tax is 'the dumbest thing I’ve heard in an awful long time.' I asked him about it right after he delivered his executive budget at City Hall just now. He said, 'It’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in an awful long time from an economic point of view. I don’t understand why you think there’s any merit to it whatsoever. We’re trying to discourage people from driving and we’re trying to end our energy dependence. We don’t do that -- oh, and incidentally, we’re trying to have more money to build infrastructure. All three of those things go fly in the face of giving everybody $30 a year. The $30 bucks is not going to change anybody’s lifestyle. The billions of dollars that we would otherwise have in tax revenues can make a big difference as to what kind of a world we leave our children.'"

And that's not all. And with regards to Hillary's health care proposal, which is picking up steam in the industrial states? Not gonna happen. Hillary's alleged wonkiness notwithstanding, Senator Jay Rockefeller noted last week that any major health care reform legislation in 2009 is unlikely (more here). And, from Bestguesscommentary, "Lawrence O'Donnell points out, any new president's legislation must be acted upon in the first year of the new term, otherwise, history shows it does not happen." O'Donnell, or, as we like to call him L.O.D, used to run the Senate Finance Committee when he worked for Senator Moynihan, knows wherefo he speaks. Please tell us again how Senator Clinton is such the policy wonk ...



In: Bill O'Reilly. When did cranky suburban scold Bill O'Reilly become Media-Mr. Wonderful? Has anyone else noted how, magically, the grotyy Bill O'Reilly has gone from being a sort of laughable, bloviating joke -- a suburban, right-wing Geraldo to the journalism world if you will -- into, after Pennsylvania, a big old huggable teddy bear? The revolt of Ohio and Pennsylvania's "Joe Sixpack" has, it seems, lifted O'Reilley's "loofah (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment)." Senator Hillary Clinton, playing, as always, to the Lowest Common Denominator of the American electorate is going on his show, trying, no doubt, to appeal to his drooling, knuckle-dragger audience (Averted Gaze). As is -- we could not make this up -- Barbara Walters, on her media book tour gone steroidal. In a perfect world Bill O'Reilly would be relegated to the marginal media position of local right-wing radio. Alas, this is not that world.