Elmer Gantry, POTUS

Barack Obama presented himself as the high-minded guardian of the nation's very soul when he ran two years ago (seems like a thousand by now.) He wouldn't just fix the economy; he would drive all the evil-doers out of the temple of American politics, using scornful rhetoric and his deadly Obamaeye.

Amazingly, this all-too typical product of Chicago politics was believed by millions, including more than a few conservatives who really should've known better.

No surprise, perhaps, then, that Obama's turned out to have more in common with Richard Nixon than Billy Graham, as Rich Lowry notes:

Obama made a high-minded, ethical politics absolutely central to his appeal, and yet hasn’t betrayed the slightest reflex to deliver on it...

It [the WH political team] certainly has nothing to fear from the reliably house-trained attorney general, Eric Holder. He has opened a flimsy criminal inquiry into BP to abet the White House’s shame-and-blame campaign, but would be hard pressed to investigate White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel even if $100,000 showed up in his freezer...

H-t: Miriam's Ideas.

UPDATE: Numerous mistakes corrected.

Follow me on Twitter! (at your peril)

If there's no new "content" here on my regular blog, or even my baseball blog, you can always check my Twitter site, where my wry observations on the human condition (and booger jokes, as Dave Barry would say) are featured with some regularity.

Also, I steal stuff from people with actual talent.

An aside-it's sad when you have to use spell-check to fix your rendering of words like "baseball", "featured", and "regularity". The Internet is turning us all into idiots-me faster than most.

Duke Ellington/Cat Anderson-"The Opener"

Duke and band, from what looks to be about 1960, featuring the great (and vastly under-rated) Paul Gonsalves on tenor sax, and a skyscraper-high solo from Cat Anderson on trumpet.

Notice how much Cat swings before he ever plays a high note. In context, his upper-register work is fun, but Cat never came close to matching Maynard Ferguson's huge upper-register sound. Of course, over about double C, nobody really has a fat sound, and that extreme register is just an effect, though an entertaining one, if done with control.

Duke tried to recruit MF for his band, more than once-imagine Cat and Maynard in the same trumpet section!


Another in a long series on great trumpet players.

If Larry King wrote this blog

(Another in a series).

• Two words for Tipper Gore: I'm available!

• I can't decide which is more compelling-the NBA Finals matchup between Boston and LA (didn't know Cousy was still playing!), or the impending World Cup test between Botswana and Congo. Those Africans know their "football"!

• Sure, Pres. Obama can't fix that pesky Gulf leak, but watch me try to fix my dentures in the morning-now that's a real adventure!

• I still think I have better taste in ice cream than my extremely tight childhood bud Sandy Koufax. 

• "Sex in the City 2" may be a flop, but three of the four women in that bunch remind me of five of my eight ex-wives.

• I hear that new Joan Rivers documentary features her tasteful, Earth-saving, "green" approach to timeless beauty. And Joanie is still the funniest gal in show biz, I don't care what Carson thought.

• Say what you will about George Lazenby, I still think he was the best Bond. What a hunk!

• I've taken up Pilates, I have a Kindle, I have a widescreen TV, so everything's up to date in King City...but what's this Internet thing? Is it for hair care, or what?

Art Linkletter/Lucille Ball, 1965

The obvious thing to say when somebody like Art Linkletter dies is that nobody under 40 probably has the slightest clue who he was.

It's also true, no doubt. Here's the once ever-present Art interviewing the equally once-ubiquitous Lucille Ball, whom I guess that under 40 crowd may know of, because "I Love Lucy" is still, amazingly, being re-run-and is still funny. Of course, Lucy is funny here, too, once she gets past a little initial nervousness.

Lucille Ball, nervous in front of a camera? Yup, a little.


I think Lucy's elaborately coiffed hairstyle would probably run you a couple hundred bucks today. Kudos to Lucy for saying The Dick Van Dyke Show, my own favorite of all time, is her favorite program.



H/t: About Last Night.