Terra Incognita

A great story by the great McClatchy about a great actress portraying one of the great newspaper columnists of the last half century.  Kathleen Turner looks the part and has the same raspy voice that the late Molly Ivins had.  It’s played sold-out in Philadelphia so far, but maybe Turner can take the play and tour nationally and do well.  Hal Holbrook has done the same thing for decades with Mark Twain.  He’s another actor that looks the part and sounds the part.

Molly Ivins was a character in her own right.  She had incredible wit, but she had compassion, which is not “in” at the moment in politics (the whole controversy about supreme court justices having “empathy” is one example).

Comcast has done something that’s made me rise from my blogging absence to complain:

They have decided to create a cable channel called “Right Network” whose mission is “to entertain, engage, and enlighten Americans who are looking for content that reflects and reinforces their perspective and worldview.”

Doesn’t Fox News do that already?  I think that some degree of reflection of ones views in the media is a good thing, but that word reinforce doesn’t smell right to me.

One of their programs is called “Running,”  which follows five people as they run for congress.  And all five are running as Republicans.  The first, Ari David, is running against Henry Waxman in California’s 30th congressional district.  He offers little in the way of new ideas and spends his “what are my qualifications” talking endlessly about how evil Waxman is.

Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, is also featured as he ran for the Republican nominee for Senate in Arizona against John McCain, although since then he’s dropped out, so it will be interesting to see how it looks on the show.

Clint Didier is also featured running as a Republican in Washington state against Democratic incumbent Patty Murray.  As is Dr. Donna Campbell running against Lloyd Doggett in Texas.  Finally, Jim Gibbons in Iowa is running against Leonard Boswell.  He seemed like the most reasonable of this bunch until I looked at the bottom of his “according to Jim” piece on his website in which he says “I’ve burned the boats!  I’m attacking the island!  Let’s take our country back!”

Each of these examples are Republicans running to unseat Democratic incumbents or in one case to replace a more moderate Republican as the nominee.

Another show is “Right to Laugh” which showcases young conservative comedians because apparently comedy shows elsewhere don’t show this stuff.  Whatever.  I just hope it’s funny.

Finally, there’s “Politics and Poker” in which people sit at a table, play poker and talk politics.  That sounds like an okay show, except they seem to be playing in some guy’s dinning room rather than at a bar or something like that.  Andrew Breitbart is one of the people sitting at the table and he says during the promo that his business model is based on how bad Barack Obama is.  And he wants the media to be fair when reporting on conservatives.  How cute.

What other shows will be on this network?  I don’t know.  It will launch in the summer of 2010.  On basic cable?  Or more expensive cable?  Nobody knows.  Hopefully it will be on more expensive cable so everyone who watches can get HBO and watch GOOD tv for once.

But what if the Tea Party is just a passing fad?  Something that burns out after a while?  What will happen then?  The people at “Right Network” should have a strategy for something like that.  Fox News, after all, started as a critical network until George W. Bush became president, then it decided it would be Bush’s biggest supporter.

Here’s my last question: CAN’T ANYONE DO ANYTHING WITHOUT A POLITICAL THOUGHT IN THEIR HEADS ANYMORE?!  I mean what’s next, Republican and Democratic housing?  Republican and Democratic silverware?  Republican and Democratic cable plans?!?!

Rush Limbaugh is selling his New York apartment for $14 million.  And a preview of what a bedroom looks like?

(from CNN/Money)

Limbaugh said he would sell the apartment after NY Governor David Patterson proposed a “millionaire tax” in 2009.

Lex at Scholars and Rogues has a snarky piece about the Louis XVI-inspired furniture in the apartment.

My new favorite famous last words.

Last week, Esquire magazine had a moving piece about Roger Ebert’s battle with cancer that has taken away his ability to speak, eat or drink (Ebert has more at his blog).  The refrain throughout the piece is that Ebert doesn’t remember the last words he spoke.

And early on in the piece there’s this passage:

He looks surprised that he can’t remember. He knows the last words Studs Terkel’s wife, Ida, muttered when she was wheeled into the operating room (“Louis, what have you gotten me into now?”), but Ebert doesn’t know what his own last words were.

Ida passed away ten years ago.  Studs followed in October 2008.  In his last interview, a week before his death, Studs had a few memorable last words as well:

The idiots! They label Saul Alinksy – the great neighborhood organizer – as a subversive! He’s been dead for 35 years and he was honored by the Catholic Church! He’s no subversive. Neither is Bill Ayers! That Sarah Palin – you know, she’s Joe McCarthy in drag!

And

Obama can’t be a moderate! He’s got to remember where he comes from! Obama, he has got to be pushed!

Keith Olbermann can polarize.  Especially when he gives Special Comments.  When he started giving them they were special because they were strongly liberal when cable news was overwhelmingly conservative.  Over time they became less and less special, and I thought they had lost their specialness when he began giving two “quick comments” every night on his show.

But this comment is gut-wrenching.  His comments on health-care reform have always been personal for him – he lost his mother last year, having a moving memorial to her on his show, and his father has been in intensive care for the last six months.  But this one is especially gut-wrenching.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I’m fascinated by the region surrounding the Himalayas.  I’ve already mentioned the blog Field Force to Lhasa which printed the letters from Cecil Mainprise while on an expedition through Tibet.  The idea was that each letter would be posted on the date it was sent, so if a letter was sent on May 7, 1903, the blog would post that letter on May 7, 2009.  June 12, 1904 would be posted on June 12, 2010 and so on.  I also pointed to the Orwell Trust, which was doing the same thing with George Orwell’s diaries from 1938-42.

The Indian blog Varnam recently had a three part series about an Indian spy and an English tea planter dramatically crossing paths in Kashgar at the height of the Great Game.  The story is like out of a Kipling tale. (part 1, part 2, part 3)

For printing a word in the paper I’ve never seen before:  “Dyspeptic.”  Additional props for the alliterations later on in the piece: “chaotic quarreling and reckless rhetoric.”  I’m also pleased that the Times is willing to question one of its own (it is owned by News Corp which also owns Fox News which employs Sarah Palin as a contributor).

Just asking.

Bill Waterson, the man who drew “Calvin and Hobbes” for ten years is famously reclusive.  Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer had an interview with him.  He doesn’t regret ending the strip when he did and says that people still connect with the characters in it because he ended it at the right time.

Very funny.  Very true.