With Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond movie, opening on Friday, there have been a plethora of spoofs and trailer mash-ups garnering hits online. The Daily Beast has picked its top 5 Bond vids, but it left a great one off the list.
Quantum of Bonds has it all, including a mean Pierce Brosnan impersonation.
A funny thing happened after Barack Obama got elected. Everyone suddenly liked John McCain. His concession speech, they said, was a return to the “old McCain,” the one everyone applauded when he bucked the system way back in 2000 and challenged Republican front-runner George W. Bush during the GOP primaries. Everyone liked that McCain, and said he had disappeared during the course of his 2008 campaign. The narrative went that his campaign had been hijacked, the candidate himself had been muzzled, and another ‘they’—Schmidt etc. al—were controlling the “real McCain” and twisting his beloved maverick image.
The lovefest for the “old McCain,” began with the Alfred E. Smith dinner, and continued with the Saturday Night Live appearance the weekend before the election, where it seemed he was willfully poking fun at his attention-starved, power-hungry Vice Presidential pick, Sarah Palin. He seemed to be saying to the lefty American public, we’re on the same side, you and me. The McCain image overhaul culminated with this week’s all-in-good fun appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, where he joshed and joked: “I’m sleeping like a baby. I sleep two hours, wake up and cry.”
Perhaps his reversal to the “Old McCain” was calculated. But i think we’re just as complacent. We want to remember the “old McCain,” not the one who dominated the campaign, throwing out invectives about socialism and Bill Ayers and all the other wag the dog tales of woe. I call this pre-emptive revisionist nostalgia—that is, nostalgia for an event that didn’t happen at all and for a time that isn’t even over yet.
Sarah Palin, just a few days ago, remember, was a dangerous pick, a terrible hatemonger, a fraud dressed in a $150,000 wardrobe. Faster than you can say “community organizer,” Sarah Palin was tarred and feathered by her own camp, derided for supposed ignorance about world affairs—not knowing Africa was a continent, or which countries signed the North American Free Trade Agreement—making all those arguments about sexism in the media suddenly valid. Faster still, she retreated to her home state and gave interviews with the local reporters, speaking competently about energy reform in complete sentences, properly using the English language. Her look suddenly lost the slick polish we had gotten used to—her hair was a little frizzier, less done, her clothes a little more frumpy, and Sarah Palin, suddenly stopped seeming like Cruella Deville, and was almost….sympathetic.
Did someone spike my drink?
It’s happening with the rest of the Republican guard, too. Bush’s open arm embrace of Obama’s transitional period is being viewed as supremely kind—”generous”— as if he has any other choice, given the state he’s brought our country into. Never forget, these are the final days of his presidency, and Bush wants to be remembered better than he is certain to be remembered—as a total, utter, failure.
Bush’s cooperation with the man who will be President is being hailed as a monumental achievement; likewise, the rest of his administration’s images are being getting softened with this post-electoral nostalgic glow. Condi Rice, once considered by the left to be as evil and as fiercely right wing as her boss, held a press conference, in which she essentially praised Obama’s win as an awesome achievement that made her very proud. You could hear the collective liberal swoon. Awwwww. How soon we forget, it was she who helped pushed the Iraq War to the American public. After she appeared at the Glamour magazine awards with a new, fresh updo, Huff Post readers gushed, “I’ve always admired her for what she has accomplished. I don’t care for her politics, but she’s a great role model.”
They say time heals all wounds, but the didn’t mention that it can happen in seconds.
Colin Powell, too, gets a pass. After four years out of the administration, he’s forgiven for his unfortunate WMD at the UN moment, and we look askance at what those actions helped bring, because he endorsed the right man.
Pre-emptive revisionist nostalgia might be a way to feel less hateful toward our current administration and help cleanse ourselves of our dark thoughts over the past eight years, but we should never forget.
Democratic Presidential Nominee, Barack Obama and his family on election night in Chicago, IL on Wednesday, November 5, 2008. (David Katz/Obama for America)
In a quiet and somber voice that carried the magnificent weight of the words being said, Charlie Gibson announced: “Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States The screen showed a shot of crowds going crazy in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles-all over the country. After two solid minutes, I jerked up from the couch where I was sitting with my roommate and said, “Wait, he won? It’s over?”
My roommates, who are also African-American, were shocked into silence and didn’t respond. For us, the immediate reaction wasn’t jumping and screaming-even though in the ensuing minutes, we heard car-honking and gleeful shouting from outside. We just sat, dumbfounded, staring at the TV set. I half-expected Ashton to jump out and say, “Ha, you just got punked!” But this was real. The American people had spoken, and they elected their first non-white president. I let the reality of this wash over me. A dream that had started more than two years ago had been realized with the softly spoken words of Charlie Gibson.
Two hundred years of history had been shattered and America had faced the ugly specter of its past, overcoming it. The election commentary covering Obama’s massive sweep over McCain, McCain’s class-act concession speech, the man-on-the-street interviews with everyone from a steel worker to Dr. King’s daughter, were all kind of a fast-forwarded blur that came to pause when Obama gave his victory speech to thousands of supporters in Grant Park in Chicago. For this, I got off the couch and, like a kid eager to watch Saturday morning cartoons, sat with my face six inches away from the TV.
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,” Obama started.
Yes, it was. I’m only 19, but I still didn’t expect to see something like this in my lifetime. It was just some kind of crazy notion that I had never even bothered to entertain until a few months ago. How could a nation that was built on slavery ever come together and elect a black president? It had been 143 years since the end of the Civil War and 44 years since the Civil Rights Act. A few decades ago, a man like Barack wouldn’t even have been able to vote, and here he was addressing millions across the globe as the de facto leader of the free world.
Change had come to America. All it took was “two wars, a planet in crisis, and the worst financial crisis in a century,” but it had happened. Filling with hope and elation, I soaked in every word of Obama’s speech. It rang of truth and captured the fierce admiration of the thousands who were in Grant Park that night. White, black, Hispanic, young, old, rich, poor-they were all enraptured. Out of every part of Obama’s speech, there was one sentence that resonated with me the most.
“This is your victory.”
Those four simple words summed it all up. For as much faith as I had in Obama and his ability to lead, that was nothing compared to the renewed faith and awe I had in the American people. The young, the poor, the minorities, all of the overlooked and disenfranchised segments of the population across the country, realized the strength in their numbers and the true meaning of a democracy, showing how “a government of the people, by the people and for the people had not perished from the earth.” Two wars and economic strife had awakened the sleeping giant that was the forgotten, apathetic voter.
“It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep…”
It was our victory.
So as I listened to Obama’s speech, my heart filled with a new kind of the hope for the American people more so than hope for Obama. The people had spoken and they wanted change, Obama was just the messenger. My only wish is that this awoken giant will not go back into its slumber, but remain vigilant, mobilized, and self-aware.
This was my first time voting and one of the few moments in my life where I felt part of something bigger than myself. What I thought mattered and millions of other young people came to this epiphany as they organized, as they rallied, and finally, as they voted.
As an African-American woman, I do not believe in voting for a man because he is of a similar race as myself (I say similar due to his bi-racial heritage). Race is an ever-present influence in our society and, therefore, influences the minds of most Americans. I cannot deny that it had maybe a 15-20% influence on my vote. According to this CNN article, 20 percent of those polled say that race played a factor—in Obama’s favor.
It’s hard not to want to make history for civil rights. Yet in all honesty, I think it is unfortunate how much race affected the election because I fear that, not only has it put lofty expectations on Obama now that he has won, but that these lofty expectations, if they are not reached, might set African-Americans back in the game of racial disparity. Michael Jackson (whom I adore) is an example of an African-American who fell fro grace. He was the King of Pop for over a decade. Then, two accusations (not even guilty verdicts) of child molestation tanked his career and have made him a nationally understood joke. I don’t want that to happen to Obama.
What if now that “we’ve” gotten “our” chance, it comes back in failure? Sure we’ve got one Black president, but it doesn’t guarantee there will ever be another one, especially if Obama doesn’t follow through on his promises. It is much more important to vote for a man on what he can do than who he is.
I await his actions as President before I can make any judgment as to whether or not this was a wise choice for America, as I would for any other President. I would like to see what he does about the looming Social Security problem and about our collapsed economy. The number of people of retirement age in this country will be in a one-third ratio with the workforce that is supposed to support them by 2020. This means less social security benefits for retirees or more taxes for the workers. This will be a huge economic problem that has not been planned for. This is in addition to the fact that future generations are going to be paying for the recent bailout, the economic future of America is grim. Obama plans to cut taxes for the middle class, but that might be completely offset by these future financial burdens. If he can truly turn our country around and straighten things out when it falls on these aspects, he will be a great president in my eyes, not just a great Black president.
Let’s not bail out the auto industry, too, writes Rich Lowry of National Review. Giants like GM and Ford have long mismanaged their empires, and the argument that the country can’t afford to lose 100,000 jobs casts Detroit automakers as job and welfare programs, he writes. Bailing them out would put us on track for a new wave of protectionism from free-market competition. And President-elect Obama has signaled he may be willing to do it.
On economic policy, Barack Obama’s not really about change. So holds Jonathan Weil at Bloomberg. The president-elect chose 17 people last week for his transition economic advisory board, and many of them ought not to be guiding his decisions on financial matters because they’ve got shady pasts of their own. One of them, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, was chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee when the bank “helped Enron Corp. cook its books.” There’s more.
Should the courts defer to the popular vote on Prop 8? Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Just, respectively the legal affairs editor and managing editor at The New Republic, have an on-going debate on the issue. The first two parts are here and here. In the third part, Rosen argues that when the Supreme Court’s constitutional authority over an issue is uncertain, as he says they are in the case of abortion and gay marriage, then it should defer to the people and to the Legislature. It’s a high-minded debate.
A black man is president; America no longer needs racial quotas, writes Ken Blackwell in National Review. Racial preference programs harm minorities, anyway, he writes. For example, a 20-percent minimum requirement for minority attendance at a school quickly becomes a 20-percent maximum in practice. Barack Obama has championed change and put forward a vision of a post-racial America, and that’s something everyone should celebrate.
What-next fest continues. David Brooks at the New York Times sees two camps in the struggle for philosophical control over the Republican Party: the Traditionalists, who want to cut taxes, cut big government, and restrict immigration; and the Reformers, who want to address inequality and middle-class economic worries and who tend to see global warming as a more serious issue. His prediction? The Traditionalists will win the near-term battle, but the outcome of the war is uncertain. Over at National Review, Deroy Murdock’s mantra: “What would Reagan do?”
What about Sarah Palin? She appeared in an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren yesterday, covering everything from the clothes fiasco to why she feels the McCain-Palin ticket lost. Part one is below. Part two is here.
