December 1, 2017--Boxers or Briefs?

Back in the innocent 1990s, compared to these days, it didn't take much to shock. For example, during a 1994 town hall sponsored by MTV, out of the blue President Bill Clinton, while talking about a national crime bill, was asked if he wore boxers or briefs.

It wasn't so much the question that was shocking but the fact that he answered it!

Clinton laughed and, as usual wanting to be all things to all people, confessed, "Usually briefs."

But then yesterday, when checking in with MSNBC to see which new people by midday had been outed for sexual harassment (Russell Simmons and Garrison Keiller) there was a report about the campaign for attorney general of Michigan.

Candidate Dana Nessel appeared in my new favorite political ad of all time. He message was clear--we need more women in positions of authority.

In the ad she appears on screen with her words also appearing behind her in hypertext--

She begins with a list of men who have recently been accused of sexual misconduct--Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, and Michigan congressman John Conyers.  She vows that if elected she will not "sexually harass my staff."

She continues--

"If the last few weeks have taught us anything, it's that we need more women in positions of power, not less. So when you're choosing Michigan's next attorney general, ask yourself this:  

Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting? Is it the candidate who doesn't have a penis?"

No need, I suppose, to offer an answer to her rhetorical question.

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.

August 31, 2015--MTV Video Music Awards

For some inexplicable reason I stayed up very late last night to watch the MTV Video Music Awards.

I am not the best reporter about things popular musical, so take take this for the very little it's worth.

To tell the truth the only people I ever heard of before the show were Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian. The later, Kim, isn't even a musical person far as I know except she's married (I think they're married) to someone named Kanye West, who seems to be important for various things except for what he was wearing---a rumpled outfit that was last seen on a hospital orderly.

They were sitting in the first row, seemingly side-by-side, which the host, or hostess, Miley Cyrus, who wore at least a dozen outfits with progressively less fabric, kept making a big deal about. There appeared to be bad blood between them though toward the end, with me more than half-asleep, Swift gave him, Kanye, what appeared to be an MTV lifetime achievement award of some kind.

Which led to him, Kanye, making a speech that lasted for what felt like at least half an hour, most of the time taken up with him scratching his shaved head with the microphone. Not one word of which I understood. But that's just me.

Now sitting side-by-side, wife Kim and bad-blood-new-best-friend, Taylor, seemed to be enjoying what he was saying since they clapped continuously and appeared to have tears running down their Cover Girl makeup (a sponsor along with Trojan ribbed condoms).

Then, toss Nicki Minaj into the mix, apparently more bad blood between her and Taylor Swift, and it all began to make sense.

The whole thing seemed to be about skinny white girls and more full-figured black girls with exceptionally large tushies.

It looks as if Taylor Swift doesn't go anywhere without at least a dozen such skinny-white-girl "friends." They reminded me of the midget Michael Jackson used to take with him wherever he went, including the MTV Awards, where, also ensconced in the first row, he would sit with the little fella on his lap.

Kim and Kanye and Niki, I forgot to mention, travel with possess of their own--bulky black guys.

It became clear that there have been all sorts of feuds with poor Taylor in the middle of them. Kanye, I think, was saying that he regrets having snatched an award from Taylor a couple of years ago that he felt should have gone to his Rubenesque best friend Beyonce. Racism he claimed at the time. Skinny white girls versus more voluptuous black girls.

But he sort of really didn't say that, Rona clarified for me (she too was for some reason was still awake). To her hearing he still sounded defiant. 

I also failed to mention that much was made of his, Kanye's, wife Kim's butt. This made things complicated because she's a white girl but has a butt about the same size as Nicki's. Posteriors being the show's sub theme. And it's not just because she's pregnant and Kanye smoked a reefer, he reported, before turning out of the show. Maybe that's why he didn't have time to change his scrubs.

Miley, on the other hand, is quite another story. 

Time for me to go back to bed. Right?