Steve Fey's Live From Las Vegas!

Watching Al Gore these days is an interesting experience. I’d seen him on a few TV shows in recent years, but I got my first good look when I used his movie An Inconvenient Truth as part of a course on environmental science I recently taught. I’m not going to debate the merits of the movie’s content in this post. Instead, I’m going to talk about how Mr. Gore appears in the film, and in his TV appearances, and now again at the Academy Awards (it really is a good documentary, which opinion I share with even some of those who pooh-pooh the theory of human caused global warming.) Al Gore, now that is, has a good sense of humor, is well-spoken, can get his point across without sounding like a pedantic ass (like some political candidates I won’t mention at the moment), and basically comes across as the sort of person you’d like to get to know better. Which begs the question of just who was deciding how he should act when he was running for President?
Maybe it was because he didn’t really want the job, and who could blame him for that, but he put a lot of time and effort and money into trying to get it, so I doubt if that’s the case. Still, I’ve seen bathmats with more appeal than his persona on the campaign trail. Apparently, since he isn’t running for anything these days, and since he’s back to pushing an agenda he picked up in college decades ago, this is Al Gore. I’ll tell you, Mr. Bush is lucky that Al Gore never ran for President, because if he had, none of us would have ever heard of My Pet Goat, or at least not in the context we’ve come to know. I’ve heard speculation as to how much worse it would have been if Gore had been President at the time, but you know, maybe he’d have read the intelligence reports? I’ll bet that he at least wouldn’t have rejected the intelligence left over from Clinton’s years just because it came from Clinton. But, even if the worst had happened, was it really so hard to figure out to invade Afghanistan? Would Al have invaded Iraq? Well, we’ll never know, but things would have been different for Mr. Bush, that’s for certain.
I noticed a similar phenomenon when Bob Dole came out as just a person rather than a candidate. He pitched Viagra, he told jokes, he was generally a likeable guy. On the campaign trail he came across a lot like, well, a lot like Al Gore on the campaign trail. Obviously, not a good way to come across if you want to get elected. If Bob Dole had run, we’d never know who Monica Lewinsky is, and we’d know nothing whatever about Bill Clinton’s personal life. There’d have been no idiotic impeachment and trial, even. But Bob Dole, like Al Gore, never has run for President. Instead both of them ran under the disguise as whatever that is their respective teams of advisors told them to be. What that is, of course, is wooden stick figures that nobody likes. Maybe we should bring them both up on charges. Dole for allowing that BS in Clinton’s second term to happen, and Gore for allowing the Iraq mess. Maybe that would convince future candidates to, for Pete’s sake, just be yourself. If you can’t be yourself and get elected President, how in heck do you expect to do the job?
To all candidates out there, including those not yet announced, I say, please consider what I say seriously. We’ve had enough posturing idiots to last the rest of this century at least. Come on, be who you are, not who they tell you to be. If you can’t do that, just drop out now and save us trouble. Okay?

Labels: Politics

There was an article in the local excuse for a newspaper the other day about how some people who buy cheaper models of Mercedes then buy the emblem from the top of the line model and affix it to their vehicle. I’m not making that up. Even from our newspaper, there’s usually no blatant lies being delivered, so I’m pretty sure it’s true. And that is pretty pathetic, isn’t it? But wait, that’s not all!
Some of the people who actually bought the top of the line model are now upset with the dealership for selling the emblems. They are demanding that the dealer cease and desist this dilution of their status symbology. (I made that term up. Like it?) This, good heavens, makes the pathetic efforts by those buying the cheap Mercedes seem really sane. This is way beyond pathetic. In case somebody in either of these groups ever reads this, and yeah, like that’ll happen, right?, the truth is that if you’re a pathetic loser and you drive a top of the line luxury car, then you’re a pathetic loser driving a top of the line luxury car. Okay? Good. Just wanted to clear that up.
Besides, what possible reason would the dealer have for not selling those things? A dollar-fifty apiece to buy wholesale, fifty bucks when you sell one to a patsy. I tell you, that's just too sweet to ignore. Patsy.

Labels: Social Commentary

Back in Nevada we have our share of scandals. For instance, just the other day another defendant in a sordid strip-club scandal (no, it didn’t involve the ladies inside in any way) was sentenced, to seven years I believe, for his part in a scheme to bribe County officials to get them to write the law the way he wanted it written. I recently taught a course in the History of Nevada and now know that such things are an old and honorable tradition around here. The judiciary in the 1880s was, by all accounts, the best that the mining and ranching interests could afford. And last year the Los Angeles Times, those nosy liberals anyway, ran a series about judicial corruption in Nevada. We elect our judges. Like many Western States we are heir to the direct democracy movement of a century ago. Some aspects of that movement worked out reasonably well, but electing judges leaves them open to be bribed. But, hey, it’s worked for a century and a half, why mess with it now?
But the other day that other liberal rag, the Wall Street Journal, ran a story about the FBI investigating the governor. Supposedly they have some e-mails between a couple who are friends with the governor and his wife which imply that the governor was taking bribes. He was in Congress at that time, so we all know how ridiculous it is to charge him, a representative in Washington, with anything scandalous, but there it is. He’s denied the charges, naturally, and seemed to say that they FBI couldn’t be investigating him because they’d never told him about it. Sorry, Gov, but I don’t think they mentioned to Al Capone that they were after him for tax evasion, either. They don’t have to tell you they’re checking into you.
The thing is, this guy is a member in good standing of the conservative congress club, which is to say that he’s a part of a group plugging for “family values” and “a new ethical government”, or at least they were plugging those things at one time. Well, nobody says he was doing nasty things with teenage pages, but it is, nevertheless, yet another scandal involving a politician from Nevada. Oh, yes, there was this allegation from a woman shortly before the election that he’d assaulted her in a parking garage on East Flamingo. To be honest, I doubt that charge myself, but now here the guy is involved in some sort of under-the-table money allegations. Is this New Jersey, circa 1962, transplanted west? Is this the best government money can buy? (If so, we need to get our money back.) I’m not ashamed to be living here. In fact, I’m glad to be able to help clean this mess up. And it is getting cleaner.
Remember, those commissioners and the strip joint owner are in, or will be shortly in the slammer. Good for them, good for us. Somebody in the FBI has blown the cover off of another bribery scheme, if that’s what it was. They’re using emails, as seems to be usual, to bring down the offenders. That, it seems to me, indicates that our State is starting to join the rest of the country, in that corruption is mild enough to be interesting, but not severe enough to make us a laughingstock. Heck, the gambling industry is clean these days, why not the government? Is that too much to ask?

Labels: Politics

Greetings, everyone.

I hope you’ll forgive me for not posting last week. I traveled to Los Angeles for some elective surgery, and just wasn’t up to the rigors of typing. Sorry. But, that’s over, and this week’s regularly scheduled post will appear above shortly, if it isn’t there all ready.

Labels: Info

I read a lot about personal responsibility, and have been seeing a lot about it for years. The conservative movement started out saying it was all in favor of personal responsibility; those damned liberals were all about tax and spend to solve problems. Remember? I see snide remarks about it, little jokes, such as the one I saw in a humor mailing I received yesterday, where the tag line for a story about health in Britain was to the effect that, if it required personal responsibility, they were all going to die. Politicians, pundits, TV commentators, the guy in line at the supermarket all like that phrase, “personal responsibility.”

Now I can’t claim to be any kind of a Christian, because I’m no way going to do what Jesus said to do and give everything away to the poor. I’m not nuts about visiting people in prison, either, and tending the sick is best left to professionals. But one thing Mr. Nazareth said seems to me to be pretty germane to this topic. That is that you should take the beam out of your own eye before complaining about the mote in your neighbor’s. True, that does seem to argue for ‘personal responsibility’ but it also argues for tending to your own issues and letting other people tend to theirs. The fact is, there are reasons for things like income tax, and welfare, and other things that those who whine most about ‘personal responsibility’ claim to hate. For example, income tax keeps the gap between rich and poor from getting so big that the poor see nothing wrong with simply taking it from the rich at gunpoint. Let’s see, has there been an increase in crime lately? Hmmm. And welfare keeps the streets from being impassible due to the tragically poor clogging them up by sleeping in them and begging on every corner. Is there a homeless problem where you live these days? Hmmm.

Well, maybe if everyone could be responsible for their own welfare things would be better. In fact, I’m sure they would. Things would be better if people signaled lane changes, stopped for red lights, and didn’t speed through school zones, too. It seems to come back to some sort of Idealist vision of reality combined with a healthy dose of fear about the future that leads someone to start spouting about “personal responsibility.” I’ve ranted about those topics before, if you’d care to search this blog for the postings. Now I’ll just assume that you’ve read them and say something like, ‘well well, events seem to be developing the way my theory would predict. Hmmm.’ Okay, so I won’t do that. But I do wish that the personal responsibility crowd would take a hint from me, if they don’t like Jesus, and for Pete’s sake, take their own advice.

Labels: Politics