November 20, 2017--Stupid

What do the following have in common?

Harvey Weinstein
Louis C.K.
Roy Moore
Al Franken
Mark Halperin
Bill Cosby
Kevin Spacey
Anthony Weiner
Gary Hart
George H.W. Bush
And, of course, Bill Clinton &
Donald Trump

Obviously, they all are among the best known sexual predators.

But in addition to using their power, wealth, and fame to exert sexual power over women and men (actually, boys), they are also stupid. 

This in no way is meant to humanize what they did, or allegedly did, but to indicate that while engaged in dastardly behavior they also were just plain stupid.

Let's begin with Gary Hart. Recall, back in 1987 he was the Democratic frontrunner and was expected to win the nomination for the upcoming 1988 election. His potential opponent was George H.W. Bush who was Ronald Reagan's Vice President. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

It was suspected by many in the press that Senator Hart liked to fool around. He vehemently denied that and, incredibly, challenged the press to try to catch him at it.

Among other things, to do so, they proceeded to sift through his garbage. It was a pre-digital time and this was considered state of the art in the surveillance business.

They didn't find anything incriminating but quickly a photo turned up of him on the fantail of a 83-foot cabin cruiser. On his lap was a women other than his wife (see picture below). She was Donna Rice who, after being identified, before becoming an advocate for internet security, was the spokesperson for No Excuses jeans. The boat was aptly named--and I'm not making this up--Monkey Business.

This qualifies as just plain stupid and when all was exposed ended Gary's political career.

Briefly, since I mentioned him, the first president Bush appears to have a penchant for patting attractive young women on their bottoms while he poses with them for pictures. Confined now to a wheelchair and physically declining, he confessedly continues to engage in what his family is attempting to excuse as the sort of charming practice older Waspy gentlemen are prone to. Perhaps, after a long career in public service, entitled to.

Everyone else on my list of miscreants has their signature interests--Louie C.K. confessed that he masturbates in front of women; Weinstein cavorts around hotel rooms in a bathrobe and nothing else; Weiner posts selfies of his junk on the internet; Roy Moore is only interested in underage girls; Cosby drugs and then molests women; Bill Clinton likes oral sex from his pizza delivery intern; and Donald Trump, well, Donald Trump, boastfully told Billy Bush and Howard Stern that he likes to grab women's (euphemism) genitals. 

In every case, disgusting behavior and really stupid stuff.

Just Friends, They Claimed

January 20, 2016--What's Playing in Somalia and On Reunion Island?

I love my Netflix.

I know there is current controversy about their ratings--the company is coy about them, which suggests they are not as high as advertised. The concern about the truth is not academic or about the truth itself but about Netflix's valuation--how much it is worth and how justifiable is its current lofty stock price.

I don't care about that except that I do have an investor's interest in the so-called FANG stocks. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. I do not at this point in my life believe in owning that many shares of individual companies, preferring broad-based securities funds, but I do own a decent amount of Amazon stock, am thinking about buying more, and am considering making an equivalent investment in Netflix.

After all, boldly last week, the CEO of Netflix announced that they are making their streaming service available in 190 large and small countries from China to Somalia.

And just yesterday Netflix announced that they are signing up surprising numbers of subscribers in many out-of-the-way places.

Now people from Madagascar to Reunion Island can catch Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards.

"They must have pretty good Internet connections," CEO Reed Hastings joked the other day when he learned that the Reunion Island folks were among the first to subscribe.

Now Netflix is scrambling to dub their shows in dozens of languages to keep up with the already burgeoning demand.

I remember back in the day, when nation-buidling still seemed to some like a good idea, that the thought was that if we could help bring versions of Western democracy to underdeveloped places such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya young people especially would clamor for MTV and once they could tune in all would be well in the world.

We see now what that culturally imperialist and naive strategy has yielded. Among other things--ISIS.

Now here comes Netflix.

To some in Yemen, seeing the evil Kevin Spacey character, fictional U.S. president Francis Underwood ensconced in the White House, will feel that what they believe to be true about our actual president is in fact true.