Ramblin' with Roger

The rich are not like you and me. They’re rich.

The yacht buyers in New York state got a tax break.

The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages… will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical to their best interests. — Rothschild Brothers of London communiqué to associates in New York June 25, 1863

Is it me, or has the blatant disregard for the lesser people economically in the society, to the advantage of the well-to-do, become more painfully obvious of late? Of course, it’s been around a long while in the United States; I’ve seen the Gilded Age mansions. But in recent decades, income inequality is not just on the rise, but in full gallop mode.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on April 9, 2015. Among the topics she talked about was the inability of our federal government to lower the interest on student loans – the outstanding debt jumped to $1.3 trillion in 2014 from $1.2 trillion, an increase of $100 billion in one year – because the Republicans blocked it, citing that the Congressional Budget Office does not use “fair-value accounting” to measure risk. But for reasons she explains, this is a bogus argument.

Moreover, if the crushing burden of student loans were lifted, these people could be buying houses, and other goods and services, stimulating the economy. Meanwhile, the financial industry is getting loans at or close to ZERO percent interest, so they’re doing just fine on even a modest return on investment.

Lots of examples of the double-standard of making the poor prove they’re worthy of government benefits, such as Kansas getting ready to prevent welfare recipients from going to swimming pools and the movies.

SamuraiFrog wrote this recently: “It goes like this: you don’t get a say in how other people live their lives. You just don’t. Even if it involves your precious tax dollars and the (on average) $36 a year of it that goes to food stamps. You have no problem with the $870 a year you pay for corporate tax subsidies, but the thought of a poor person being able to buy a steak or a cupcake fills you with rage? Ridiculous.”

Interestingly, the best example of the absurdity of this attitude, well dubbed as scapegoat economics, comes from The Onion, a parody site that tells a great truth.

Here’s the thing: being poor sucks. The payday loans, higher interest rates, the immobility to get to work. I was working on a reference question recently, and I recognized that those rent-to-own places are toxic, where the poor can pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa. Moreover, because of depressed wages, there are plenty of folks who are working but need public assistance anyway.

Meanwhile, the yacht buyers in New York state got a tax break in the budget just passed at the end of March 2015, because, as state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos noted, “Blah blah blah trickle-down blah blah.” Indeed, the rich get government handouts just like the poor. Talk about your entitlement programs.

Congressional Republicans find the need to try to end the estate tax, which affects the heirs of the top 0.2 percent.

So what to do about it? I want/need to ponder on that. Probably will write another blog post, sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, this has been running through my head: Money Make The World Go Round from the movie Cabaret (1972).

Happy Income Tax day?

Arthur writes about Hillary Clinton entering the race for President (no surprise), and dealing with Big Money.

The IRS — A Love Song. John Oliver. And Michael Bolton.

N is for The Night They Raided Minsky’s

To this day, I know the lyrics to the verse of “Take 10 Terrific Girls (But Only 9 Costumes)” by heart.

I had mentioned one movie in this blog possibly more than any other, save for Annie Hall, but never a formal post. So here it is.

The Night They Raided Minsky’s is a movie that tells about, as Rudy Vallee put it, the info seen above. It was broadly based on the book Minsky’s Burlesque by Morton Minsky (with Milt Machlin).

I saw this movie with my friend since kindergarten, Carol, and her friend Judy when I was 15 in 1968. Quickly, I developed a mad crush, unstated, for Judy, who I would never see again. The film was rated M, a precursor for PG, though with about two seconds of nudity, maybe it’d be PG-13.

Though I did not know it at the time, it was a troubled film. I did know that Bert Lahr, best known as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, “died before shooting was finished.” This was also the film debut of Elliott Gould, who would soon star in the movie version of MAS*H.

“The first cut was, by all accounts, dreadful.” The head of the studio reportedly said: “In all my years in film, this is the worst first cut I’ve ever seen.” Fortunately, film editor Ralph Rosenblum, who would later edit extensively for the directors Sidney Lumet and Woody Allen, including on Annie Hall, worked his magic. “His ‘save’ was detailed in his fine book When The Shooting Stop…The Cutting Begins.”

[Director William] Friedkin, who would be best known for The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973), “wasn’t around for any of the post-production, having moved on to his next film.

“The original idea from producer Norman Lear [later TV producer of All in the Family, Sanford and Son, and much more] was that he wanted this old-fashioned musical… to have a New Look. Just what that meant or what the New Look was supposed to be, nobody quite knew.” Luckily, Rosenbaum pulled it off.

I MIGHT have forgotten this film – I still have not seen it in 47 years – except for one thing. My grandfather, McKinley Green, was a janitor at what was then WNBF-TV and radio. When an album was removed from the radio station’s playlist, Pop got to bring them home and give them to his grandchildren.

When he brought home the soundtrack to The Night They Raided Minsky’s a year or two after the movie’s release, I glommed onto that LP immediately.

“The score for Minsky’s was written by Charles Strouse, who’d already written several Broadway shows, as well as the score for the film Bonnie and Clyde. The lyrics were by Lee Adams, with whom Strouse had written the Broadway shows Bye Bye Birdie; All-American; Golden Boy; It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s Superman; and others.”

To this day, I know the lyrics to the verse of “Take 10 Terrific Girls” by heart.
Take 10 Terrific Girls (But Only 9 Costumes) – Dexter Maitland.
This song showed up on the Muppets, sung by Statler & Waldorf.

Other songs include:
You Rat You – Lillian Heyman.
Perfect Gentleman – Norman Wisdom and Jason Robards.
The title song by Rudy Vallee.

But my favorite scene may be wistful What is Burlesque with Norman Wisdom and Britt Eklund.

Watch the last eight minutes of the film – in German, with that aforementioned brief nudity.

Here’s the late Roger Ebert’s review.

Writer Mark Evanier is MORE of a Minsky’s buff than I. He recently noted this piece of trivia involving a magazine. He discussed the failed Broadway-like musical from 2009. And way back in 2001, he mentioned how the movie was edited for television broadcast.

ABC Wednesday – Round 16

Baseball bans, Edward Snowden, and other things

Geoffrey Lewis was the classic character actor.

The new Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred is revisiting Pete Rose’s lifetime ban from baseball. Clearly one of the greatest players in the game, with more base hits than anyone, Rose was banished from the sport by the late Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti for wagering on baseball.

But as the Wall Street Journal noted: “The rules were put in place to prevent cheating, not betting. And cheating is something that no thinking person, then or now, has suggested Pete Rose would do.”

While he’s at it, I’d like the commissioner to reexamine the story of Shoeless Joe Jackson (pictured), who batted .375 with perfect fielding in the 1919 Chicago White Sox in World Series, yet was caught up in the “Black Sox” scandal.

“In 1921, a Chicago jury acquitted Jackson of helping to fix the Series, but Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first Commissioner of Baseball, went against the ruling and banned all eight players including Joe Jackson from baseball for life.” I have never been convinced of his guilt. In other words, I say it AIN’T so, Joe.

If either one of those happens, I would suggest that the Steroid Era players, prior to 2004, when the baseball policy was quite unclear, ought to get due consideration for the Baseball Hall of Fame: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and the others.

“Where do we strike the balance between personal freedom and national security — and how do we even get people to care?” Watch John Oliver Meets Edward Snowden. The folks at Politifact fact-checked what Snowden said and they gave it a rating of Mostly True. And speaking of whom, NYC officials removed a Snowden statue secretly installed in Brooklyn park, but it was replaced by a Snowden hologram.

Stan Freberg was a comedy legend, a skilled voice actor, a genius of American advertising, and more. Just go to Mark Evanier’s site, and search for Freberg; you’ll find several articles, plus links to even more. Also, listen to Wun’erful, Wun’erful. Stan Freberg died on April 7.
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Geoffrey Lewis was the classic character actor. If you look at the massive list of his TV and movie appearances, you might say, “Oh, he’s THAT guy.” This is telling: he played two DIFFERENT characters on the series Mannix, Mission: Impossible, Cannon, Police Woman, Lou Grant, Little House on the Prairie, and The A-Team; three on Alias Smith and Jones, and Barnaby Jones; and FOUR separate characters on Murder, She Wrote.

The only show I ever watched where he was a regular was Flo, a spinoff of Alice, and that was 35 years ago. Jaquandor linked to a spoken word performance. Father of 10 children, including actress Juliette Lewis, Geoffrey Lewis also died on April 7.
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Richard Dysart was a star of the TV show L.A. Law, which I watched religiously. But he had a string of other notable performances on stage and in the movies, as well as TV. He died on April 5.

The Curse of Canaan (or Ham)

The explanation that black Africans, as the “sons of Ham”, were cursed, possibly “blackened” by their sins, became increasingly common during the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries.

When we were investigating some aspects of black history this year at church, I was intrigued by the fact that, for a time in the mid-17th century, slavery based on race wasn’t really codified in the United States. There were white indentured servants and black slaves, but the former were often given ever-changing terms of servitude, making them functionally little better off than slaves.

In the 1670s, Bacon’s Rebellion “demonstrated that poor whites and poor blacks could be united in a cause. This was a great fear of the ruling class — what would prevent the poor from uniting to fight them? This fear hastened the transition to racial slavery.”

The status of blacks in Virginia slowly changed over the last half of the 17th century.“The black indentured servant, with his hope of freedom, was increasingly being replaced by the black slave.” So why bother with indentured servants who, after 7, 18, or 21 years [would have to be freed], when you could have Africans serve their lifetime, and serve in perpetuity through their children?

But HOW was the idea of permanent black enslavement developed? In part, from the Bible. Specifically from Genesis 9, starting with verse 18. After Noah has too much wine, “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brethren outside.” Noah curses Canaan (not Ham) to be the lowest of slaves “to his brothers,” specifically to Ham’s brothers, Japheth and Shem.

From the Wikipedia:

While Genesis 9 never says that Ham was black, he became associated with black skin, through folk etymology deriving his name from a similar, but actually unconnected, word meaning “dark” or “brown”…

The explanation that black Africans, as the “sons of Ham”, were cursed, possibly “blackened” by their sins, was advanced only sporadically during the Middle Ages, but it became increasingly common during the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. The justification of slavery itself through the sins of Ham was well suited to the ideological interests of the elite; with the emergence of the slave trade, its racialized version justified the exploitation of African labour.

Read Black Slavery as the “Curse of Ham”: Bible Truth or Racist Apologetic?

The notion that blackness is equal to sin, used to “prove” black people’s “natural” inferiority, and lack of moral character, also shows up in the Book of Mormon, published in the 1820s (2 Nephi 5:21):

And [God] had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people, the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them. And thus saith the Lord God; I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.”

Sometime in the last few years, a good Christian woman, who reportedly has studied the Bible carefully, indicated, more or less out of the blue, that I was descended from Ham. Yet, in spite of my “cursed state,” the love of Jesus Christ was still available to me. Circumstances warranted that I had no opportunity for reply.

THIS is my reply: lady, your “Biblical history” is BS.

MOVIE REVIEW: Cinderella

The short before Cinderella was Frozen Fever, a sequel to the massively successful movie, with most of the original cast.

This was to have been a family outing a couple of weeks ago, to see the new live-action adaptation of the story Cinderella but we were all, in turn, under the weather. Finally, it’s school vacation week, the film is about to leave the Spectrum, so the three of us, plus a friend of The Daughter finally get to see this Disney film.

At some level, the Wife and I wish we had seen it sooner, for while it reviewed reasonably well (85% positive), it’s always the thumbs down that the mind remembers.

Truth is, I’m not sure we NEED another Cinderella film at all. Still, it looked quite fine, the sets, and lovely costumes, and the production design. Director Kenneth Branaugh does a decent job with pacing this. One of the better scenes was the deconstruction of the carriage, shortly after midnight.

One of the complaints was that there was a lot of death in this film. Hey, there’s ALWAYS death in a Disney film from Bambi’s mother to (Finding) Nemo’s mother. In fact, one gets to actually get to know Ella’s mother (Hayley Atwell, Agent Peggy Carter in the Marvel TV show), and feels sad when (CAN THIS BE A SPOILER?) she dies. Often in the Cinderella narrative, she’s quickly, or already, dead. This narrative was a good choice.

Her father (Ben Chaplin) spends enough time with his daughter (Lily James, Lady Rose MacClare from Downton Abbey) before he decides to remarry. Cate Blanchett is, unsurprisingly, masterful as the stepmother, and we get a sense of why she’s so wicked. Her daughters (Sophie McShera, Daisy Robinson Mason from Downton Abbey; and Holliday Grainger, who has played villains Lucrezia Borgia and Bonnie Parker) are far more ugly inside than out.

That Ella meets the prince (Richard Madden, Robb Starkin in Game of Thrones) before the ball makes the narrative less the “Suddenly, their eyes meet, and they fall in love” of other iterations. It’s a bit more empowering without being too heavy-handed.

My favorite character may be the captain of the guard (Nonso Anozie from Game of Thrones), but there were other nice performances, by Stellan Skarsgård as the Grand Duke, Derek Jacobi as the King, and especially Helena Bonham Carter as the somewhat dipsy Fairy Godmother. Oh, the mice were good too.

The short before the film was Frozen Fever, a sequel to the massively successful movie, with most of the original cast, but none of its joy, unless you like the one joke, which is about booger snowmen. I was going to say it left me cold, but I was forbidden from doing so.