‘‘Soldier Field is a sacred Chicago landmark that honors our veterans and, as mayor, Gery would be very careful to protect that,’’ said Brooke Anderson, spokeswoman for candidate Gery Chico. ‘‘He would be open to exploring creative ideas that could attract sponsors while preserving the Soldier Field name and stadium to give soldiers the respect they deserve.’’
But Rahm Emanuel, Carol Moseley Braun and Miguel del Valle are adopting the same hard-line stance as Mayor Daley, who insisted the stadium name remain untouched for his support of a $587 million renovation of Soldier Field in 2003.
Teams with stadiums names like "Giants Stadium" and "Cowboy Stadium" are in a much better position to cash in. But maybe it's better to have a name that can't be swapped for a sponsor's name, like Lambeau Field. Then you're not tempted to scramble for the money and end up with a horrible name like "Mall of America Field at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome," which really is the name of the place where the Vikings play. You're Vikings. That's your image. Legendary conquerors... traipsing around the mall with Hubert Humphrey. What a picture!
And I love this grandiose term "metrodome." There are metrodomes, stadiums, and fields. Notice the inverse relationship between grandiosity and greatness.
ADDED: I'm just noticing that Minnesota inserted "field" into its ridiculous new name that still contains "metrodome." Make up your mind. Interesting that the big corporation wanted to associate itself with the old-fashioned charm of "field," while the politician's name is stuck with the overinflated term "metrodome." And I do mean overinflated, because remember how it collapsed? And it's a good word to associate with Hubert Humphrey, since he had quite a large dome of a head.
It has nothing to do with football, but on the subject of Hubert H. Humphrey — Hubert Horatio Humphrey — and names, this is always hilarious:
And as long as I'm descending into Humphrey-related YouTube hell, there's this:
From an op-ed the NYT chose to publish in the wake of the Gabriel Giffords shooting. Please add this to the pile of evidence that the NYT aspires to be the newspaper for soft-hearted, soft-headed women.
Reagan recovered... in time for the "Morning in America" election of 1984. And so we naturally forget those days when he seemed doomed to be the fifth consecutive president to leave office a failure, rather than the first since Eisenhower to complete two terms and leave more or less respected. (I was kind of shocked to learn of the magnitude of Reagan's slump myself, although I was alive and politically aware at the time.) He recovered not because of his message or his political operation... but because the economy recovered.
Personally, I find the collated list pretty much of a joke. It reflects the partisan passions of the moment, not anything resembling a serious verdict of history.
But it was predictable that the list would be ridiculous, because of the methodology:
All [43] bloggers were allowed to make anywhere from 1-20 selections. Rank was determined simply by the number of votes received.
So, if everyone put Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama on the list, he'd come out as the worst person in American history. (The expression "of all time" highlights the silliness of the list. When in history do we start having "Americans"? 1776... 1787... or thereabouts. There were no terrible Americans in the Middle Ages or ancient times. Saying "of all time" makes you sound like a bombastic know-nothing. (It's an expression we've been using jocosely, chez Meadhouse, ever since this happened.)
In fact, only 25 of the 43 put Jimmy Carter on their list, and that was enough to put him at #1. Obama was second with only 23 selections. They're easy to think of, so they got on a lot of lists. (Surprisingly few, actually.) More obscure but more evil Americans were less likely to come to mind, but would probably have raked in votes if the surveyed bloggers had been given a list to chose from.
So, tweak the methodology. Have 2 stages where you first take suggestions for who should be on a list, then have the voters pick however many they want from the list. If I have to pick 20, I may need to pad it out with individuals who aren't really that bad. Or give everyone 20 votes and let them pile the votes on their choices in whatever proportion they want. You could dump 15 votes on Obama and 5 on Carter, for example.
By the way, oddly enough, my name appears in the first comment over there at Right Wing News:
What an [sic] spectacularly ignorant list. I'm a progressive, and I could do a better job of being a right-wing butthole than the people who voted.....
Michael Moore over Upton Sinclair or Lincoln Steffens? Jane Fonda over Paul Robeson? Not one member of the Warren Court? Not Theodore Roosevelt? Where's Daniel Ellsberg or Seymour Hirsch-- or Julian Assange?
This is why we make fun of your lack of intellect, folks-- you can't even identify the people who've done the most damage to your belief system. It would be as if progressives compiled a list of the most vile and bigoted conservatives in history and picked Wally George, John Schmitz, Ann Althouse and Orly Taitz.
... whoever they are.
If you click over to Bainbridge, you'll see his comments on each of the individuals on the RWN list. Bainbridge also makes his own "Worst Americans" list, with a decided emphasis on traitors. He puts Aldrich Ames and Benedict Arnold at #1 and #2.
Now, for some reason he puts Paris Hilton at #11. Huh? I guess he thought there had to be a female on the list and that was the best he could do. He called her the "personification of the celebrity obsessed culture." Isn't the obsession with celebrities the fault of the people doing the obsessing? (Let's take responsibility for our own faults. It's the conservative way, I've heard.)
In an update, he defends his #11 selection of Hilton "as one of the earliest examples of how it is now possible in our culture to be famous merely for being famous without having any significant merit or worth."
Earliest examples? Earliest examples??!!! If Paris Hilton seems like an early example, you might not know so much about history. The definition of "celebrity" as someone who is "known for his well-knownness" appears in a book that came out in 1962 — "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America" by Daniel J. Boorstin.
And how about giving Paris Hilton credit as an entrepreneur? You try creating a compelling character out of yourself and making money out of that product? The fact is, she's a model and an actress, and the way she annoys people like Bainbridge and seems dumb and pointless is part of the fabulous image-product that has sold so well.
In office for barely two years, Obama entered the survey in the 15th position - two spots behind Bill Clinton and three spots ahead of Ronald Reagan.
Obama got high marks for intelligence, ability to communicate and imagination, but his score was dragged down by his relative lack of experience and family background.
Yeah, they marked him down because of his humble beginnings. He should have been higher.
George W. Bush is at 39th place: "a steep drop from 23rd place, which is where Bush ranked when he entered the survey after his first year in office." He got marked way down for his low capacity for compromise. Plus he was the second-to-the-dumbest President. Harding was the biggest dunce.
The linked article is in The Daily News, which also has a poll asking readers to pick "the best president of your lifetime." The Democratic Party choices are getting nearly all the votes, with Barack Obama the biggest winner at 37%. The Republican choices can only scrape together 6% of the votes total, with Reagan hogging 5%. George W. Bush gets 1%. George H.W. Bush is left off the list, but the so is Jimmy Carter — would anyone say Carter? — and there is an "Other" choice, so it's balanced.
I'll redo the survey here, for what it's worth. I'm including all the Presidents but only going back to Carter. A lot of us are older, but it's screwy to have some of us voting for guys that other readers can't vote for.
Presidential reading backfired on Jimmy Carter.... In the summer of 1979, with the economy struggling and the presidency shaken by the Iran hostage crisis, Carter delivered his infamous speech proclaiming a "crisis of confidence" in America. It became known as the "malaise" speech and is widely regarded as a major political mistake. The address, written mainly by adviser Pat Caddell, was inspired by Christopher Lasch's best-selling book "The Culture of Narcissism." Lasch had come to the White House for a dinner about six weeks before the address, and his ideas apparently stayed behind. Two days after the July 15 speech, Carter fired several Cabinet members, adding to the sense of drift that seemed to define the era. (In 1993, during the fourth season of "The Simpsons," Springfield unveiled a Carter statue; the inscription at the base read "Malaise Forever.")
First, the obligatory foray into YouTube:
Anyway, did you read Christopher Lasch's "Culture of Narcissism" back in the 1970s when it was a best seller? If it was such a best seller, why didn't America appreciate Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" speech? I just watched that speech again at the link. I heard it in real time back in 1979. I must confess that it appealed to me at the time, but it's scarily bizarre by present-day standards.
Here's the spiffy, non-lugubrious way we talk about narcissism today — a fun-loving article, not a scolding, depressing book.
And we were talking about smiling. Do you use that tremendously effective device, the smile? It's hard to get by just upon a smile, but it could work as part of a repertoire. Here in Wisconsin, the smile is deployed. And go to Indiana. You'll find some heart-melting smiling amongst the Hoosiers.
But what of people who don't rely on smiling? There are places — maybe places where they call Wisconsin and Indiana "fly-over country" — where people not only don't try to get by just upon a smile; they don't smile at all. And they mistrust those who do rely on smiling. Do you think those people are surly? They think you are unsophisticated. For example, Dick Cheney doesn't smile. Oh, yes, he does!
Uh! Wow. Now, I need to rethink this. Hmmm. Not sure I know what to do with that smile. Don't try to get by just upon that!
“[W]e are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe.... Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society.”
Obama wanted to smile at the whole world:
But it's hard to get by just upon a smile.
You can become President just upon a smile... and not much more. But then what do you have?
You're not the world's nice guy. It's not a cocktail party. It's real, and we're the United States.
"As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.
“He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core Al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war."
Hell, I wouldn't have even cared - while two white folks are all concerned and ready to point the finger at,...who? What? History? Spare me.
I, too, am joining everyone else in voting for Jimmy Carter - not because I actually saw him, but because I live in the here and now, and not somebody else's past.
From the same article — with juicy bits from a new book about Bush:
For a commencement address at Furman University in spring 2008, Ed Gillespie wanted to insert a few lines condemning gay marriage. Bush called the speech too "condemnatory" and said, "I'm not going to tell some gay kid in the audience that he can't get married."...
Laura Bush... "was secretly a Democrat for all intents and purposes, though it really wasn't much of a secret."
Lots of people who voted for Obama believed that his election would reflect the extent to which Americans had moved beyond racism. That was part of why some people voted for him. Little did we realize that it would turn every criticism of the President into an occasion to make an accusation of racism. Racism is revolting, but so is the notion that we aren't allowed to criticize a President!
Jimmy Carter's supremely sleazy accusation requires a solid, sound rebuke. It is an effort to place the President of the United States beyond criticism.
Imagine if, before last year's election, someone had argued: If a black man becomes President, anyone who dares to criticize him will be called a racist.
1. I would have viewed that argument itself as racist. If that is really true, I would have said, then it means that we have to vote against the candidate because he is black, since it is not acceptable to have a President who can't be criticized.
2. I would also have said: It is racist to say that it's racist to criticize a black President, because you are being patronizing and you are saying that a black person needs to be coddled and protected in some special way that doesn't apply to white people.
Jimmy Carter is doing something that, before the election, he would not have revealed that he planned to do. It is a low and despicable political move that he should be ashamed of.
And since demanding apologies is all the rage, let me say that I would like the wizened old husk of a former President to beg our forgiveness.
