This blog is dedicated to the memory of David Weintraub, who took on insidious astroturfers and won.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Timely Information


I just retweeted our good friend Bernie Sanders. You'd think cable news would finally wake up and see that the Bernie/Hillary story is the most intriguing. They are wasting a lot of time on Trump and that other race. They are acting like Ronald Reagan is the current president, not Obama. They have yet to evolve with the exception of some MSNBC hosts and I imagine Amy Goodman into taking seriously Bernie's story.

We could use some European-styled Fourth Estate to go with substantial relief for poor and middle class human beings.

I am mailing this in because I'd rather not always feel obligated to doing the world's homework.

Here's a CNN link titled, Bernie Sanders ratchets up knocks on pro-Clinton super PACs.

That's from yesterday. It's where I found the tweet.

I'd rather be watching Bukowski or even tweeting Brock some good-natured, well-deserved venom.

New York (CNN)Bernie Sanders may not want to go after Hillary Clinton directly, but his presidential campaign has shown over the last two days that it is are more than happy to punch back against the world of pro-Clinton super PACs.

What a bunch of looooosers. I can understand slobs like us with unfortunate edit or non-proofread material, but not CNN.

And have you ever noticed the comments at Yahoo? They are just a tad too skewed. I will repeat that I think there is a lot of paid fakery going on, i.e. astroturf.

It looks like this is more bad news for Hitlary and is backfiring in real time.

Keep an eye out for the political operative astroturf saying that Bernie is attacking the Democratic Party and has no moral standing to run as a Democrat.

Bernie is an intellectual which is rare to find in politics. One of his key platforms is to get rid of the Super PACs. He has been more than fair to Hillary refraining from making character attacks. This has gotten extremely interesting. Hillary just threw over an 85 m.p.h. cheeseball with no movement to Bernie "Big Papi" Ortiz.

If the media can show any professionalism at all, Bernie Sanders should have decent odds of winning the nomination.

43 comments:

Tokyo Shemp said...

This is Bernie with a campaign ad or whatever they are called. It's pretty good. It's funny how Hillary on the other hand openly admits she is cynically going to show us her spontaneous and sincere side.

https://t.co/OfnSwyGEfk

donkeytale said...

Here is the clearest exegis yet of the donkeytale crooked line through connected theory of history. Remember, to most shallow people, #OWS represented failiure....

"On 17 September 2011 a group of protesters occupied Wall Street. Their unpolished campaign sought to draw attention to financial inequality. To healthcare issues. And to the problem of student debt.

If that sounds familiar, it is because four years on, Bernie Sanders’ own campaign has highlighted many of the same grievances. It is no coincidence. In 2015 many of the protesters who cut their teeth in the Occupy encampments are now campaigning for the Democratic candidate.

“There’s 50 million people who are impoverished here in America,” said Stan Williams, an Occupy Wall Street stalwart who is now co-organiser of African Americans for Bernie.

“He talks about the 99%. He talks about the 1%. So a lot of the things he talks about resonate with me.”"

And Socrates, please note: this Stan Williams guy happens to be an African American feeling the Bern.

donkeytale said...

Linky thingie:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/17/occupy-wall-street-protesters-bernie-sanders

Funny, I too saw about 10 minutes of the debate, with the sound off, before falling into a dogmatic slumber until I woke early morning hours to wax poetically in the other thread.

My impressions were as follows:

Trump's best asset are the funny faces he makes.

Dr. Ben Carson is a tall, nice looking man whose pleasant looks seems to match his genteel persona and professional bona fides.

Carly Fiorina looks more like my conception of a female presiditzial candidate ---by far--- then Gramma Hillary.

No one else on stage passes the test for presiditzial-looking candidates.

And no, Mr. fried internet addict scoring at home, none of these observations are endorsements for any of the GOP candidates.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Nate Silver is garbage, period.

He cites Dave Weigel as a prime time source. Weigel is garbage.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hillary-clinton-is-in-a-self-reinforcing-funk/

Tokyo Shemp said...

Forget about issues. Forget about democracy. That is Nate Silver.

donkeytale said...

OK, Cornel, so you attack the person and pay no attention to the facts presented in the article? Beware the fake leftist trap my friend. If you keep falling into it you wil be wearing the brand before long.

This article seems accurate to me. Hillary has gotten mostly negative MSM press and Bernie has gotten nearly 100% positive MSM press.

Both seem richly deserved and appropriate. Can you actually point to substance as opposed to name calling and then there could be a discussion break out.

As I have been saying for years to counter fake leftist bather (and primarily from fairleft by the way), the media is neither the problem nor the solution. In fact, the MSM (not counting the pundits) generally gets the story right. The media is rotten and corrupt no question. But the media is nothing more nor less than a reflection of the rotten and corrupt world it inhabits. The media doesn't lead. The media doesn't elect candidates.

Cable news is garbage. It hyper reflects and repeats ad nauseum. Watching it will lower your IQ and taint your perspective. It is only good when a breaking disaster strikes and even then it turns human tragedy into a generic commodity and kills both spirit and soul.

But I'm not grokking this Silver hatred.

It seems unbalanced especially as it is devoid of content and filled with character assassination. See the Daily Beast article on West. Your matching it here, I'm afraid.

Now that said, I'm not all that interested in what Silver has to say until the primary season begins and the polling starts to harden around certain candidates. He has a blog to fill and whether I agree with him or not (and I don't--I think he's missing the populist insurgency element on both right and left that will make establishment party endorsements not meaningful or even harmful this time around) this shooting of the messenger means nothing.

Taking on the media is like trying to nail jello to the wall. It is boring for one, and it doesn't matter for two.

The media is not the problem with respect to politics.

The medium is the conspiracy yes.

But that is an entirely different matter and more all encompassing of the new totalitarian social reality hardwired into SOCIAL MEDIA.

The Nate Silvers, the content providers themselves, scarcely matter. They tend to cancel each other out.

Silvers' polling analysis has been prescient for two straight presiditzial cycles and his lack of bloviator bias has been refreshing to me.

Maybe the polls will misread the mood this time as happened recently in England and Silver's analysis will be wrong. Time will tell.

donkeytale said...

Daily Beast article, you are matching WEST here, I'm afraid.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I love you man, in a Budweiser ad kind of way, but you contradict yourself a number of times in the above. Welcome to my world.

I thought the Daily Beast article was good. Maybe you mean a followup link you gave? NY Mag or something? That I thought was an ad hominem expenditure.

I have found something to keep me busy. Yes, the cable news people are atrocious. Fox is a no-go from the start. With CNN it is okay until one realises they are fairly right wing. MSNBC is the best, but even they can be attacked as the MS-DINO Network minues lovely and talented Rachel Maddow.

You should know better than most that all media is taking this sucker in regards to a sports analogy. There is not much of anything about real issues and contrasts between the candidates.

It's fine and daddy for more enlightened-than-thous like ourselves, but I am very tired of the stupido demographic. No, not Latinos; stupid people all across the board having nought to do with race or gender.

At least it will not be my fault if Hillary wins. I wash my hands of all the loooosers who plan on voting for her.

Anyway, I have to add subtitles to a couple movies. It is keeping me busy. It is busy work. No, it has no intrinsic value or oopsies, it does. I am doing this for a French movie starring Jean Gabin and Josephine Baker. The latter was an amazing African American woman who had to go to Europe to get some decent roles. I do what I can.

It is quite the bitch. I am adding over 1,000 subtitles one at a time.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I disagree that the media cannot be attacked. They have become a conglomerate. There is something like six corporations who own nearly everything. They are part and parcel of the oppression that knowledge and awareness has proven to be the truth and which needs to change pronto here in the year 2015 of the Jesus God era.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Oh, you mean I am like West posing and having lost my original intent of critical theory with good links.

Yes, I have hit another blogging wall.

I thought we did quite well from June to your Cornel West masterpiece. That should keep the peanut gallery busy while I regroup. Maybe you can pound out a masterpiece every week or two to keep us above click-bait waters.

Tokyo Shemp said...

A lot of my best stuff has been put on Twitter. I think I'll cut back there as well to allow said peanuts the time to catch up to the greatness.

Tokyo Shemp said...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

"New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent"

People can look deep into the internet's archives and will find that this was my scoop. I've been talking about the Hal Turner program ever since it first emerged.

Not "paranoid fantasy."

Two words: prescient greatness. Make that three: vindicated.

Let's just end this post with a bunch of words: kissing one's hand and making love to the mirror.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I have done the impossible and have figured out how to convert a notepad full of subtitles into the format youtube wanted. ZouZou starring Josephine Baker and Jean Gabin is now available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRhs_W6ZBeo

I have another one, but the thing is off for timing. That will be a hassle to fix, but easier than copying and pasting one subtitle at a time. I'll just have to figure out how much it is off and adjust every fricken subtitle.

I am trying to get us non-paying reader customers through giving out freebies within freebies. It is anti-gravity medium for edutainment purposes. It is a tier above infotainment.

donkeytale said...

Subtitling is a noble endeavor. We illiterate peasants who understand English as a second language especially as we are born and raised in the US of A-Holes would never know the wonders of foreign film without it. In fact there was a long period of time when I was a fake cinephile that I didn't consider English language films as truly artistic.

That notion held sway until I was blown away by Scorcese's King of Comedy, a strange film that few people enjoyed when it was released and even fewer grokked.

Or maybe it was the auteur classic Easy Money?

In any event, I spent a good deal of my sleepless early morning hours pondering the question you raised about the media. The role of the media n these gunked up times deserves a serious a serious and solemn debate. It is a complex idea, as it was in McLuhan's time only moreso today with the advent of the world wide spider web.

One thing I can say it is beneath your worthy intellect to say "the media sucks, period" or Nate Silver is garbage and I bring it up only as a gentle reminder to you not to fall into Fake Left territory as an emotional response to your love of all things Bernie.

Seriously, the media is not the problem. If anyone has a media problem it's Hillary. Yes, Trump has gained the most from his expoitation of the media but I can't really find fault with the media for being used. The media is a reflection. They have duly helped fuel Bernie's rise by giving him what I consider to be quite a bit of positive press while most of the Hillary press has been negative. This is Silver's point and I agree with it, that the media creates a feedback loop. It reflects the people's mood back to the people. Are they biased for Bernie and against Hillary? While there is always danger in over generalising I believe it safe to contend that the mood of the people towards Hillary is trending negative while the Bern campaign is generally seen as a positive even by people who don't like him.

Besides which, the message is not the medium. Remember that. The message is kinda sorta irrelevant and it changes as events happen and the mood of the people shifts.

If by media you mean cable news then I wholeheartedly agree. But even here, I believe there is a different take necessary for cable news rather than then say print media.

Cable has to fill 24 hours of airtime. By nature this is impossible to do without producing huge wads of bloviated garbage for pubic consumption.

In fact, the people who tend to complain the most about cable I believe are the ones who watch it the most. You see that it is gigantically repetitive, brain deadening and a waste of time.

So why watch it so much or at all? My belief is that cable news is meant to be watched in no more than 60 minute intervals maybe twice a day. Even that is too much for me. I never watch it. In fact my cable package is so basic in includes zero cable news. I get C-Span (which I never watch) and the old timey "majour" broadcast networks (ditto, except sports events--and even then irregularly) because these things come free with my high speed internet connection.

I have always consumed news by reading the paper, which I do nowadays wholly online and only if it's free.

I am willing to have a discussion regarding the relative value of media, its corporate ownership structure (actually the media has always been corporately owned but I grok your point, today it is owned by business conglomerates with a political agenda---but again that is a reflection of the globalised world we live in---everything for the most part is conglomeratised as predicted in 1916 by Lenin who foresaw the rise of imperialist, global capitalism in 1916).

Bernie says the media sucks because that is meme that appeals to his fake left voting bloc. However, it is just as meaningless when he says so as when fairleft says so or you say so.

OK. The media sucks. Now what?

donkeytale said...

In fact, the King of Comedy itself said a lot about the mass media. It turns out in the end that Rupert is indeed a star. Why? Definitely not because the media foisted him on the public. Quite the opposite. They refused to give him any opportunity until he took matters into his own hands, paid the price legally and transformed himself into the beloved celebrity of his earlier fantasies, while remaining the same lovable schmuck throughout the entire process.

donkeytale said...

Think O'Malley. Does he deserve as much airtime as Trump or Bernie or Hillary?

You may say yes as a matter of basic fairness. But the media isn't responding to him because the people aren't responding to him. He's not news in any sense of the word. Maybe he takes his guitar act on TV and catches infotainment fire and then guess what? People will respond to him and in turn he will get more nmedia attention and gain more popularity and so on and so forth (IE, Silver's feedback loop theory).

Fiorina is another case in point.

Look at Carson. He gets very little MSM attention that I can see (although maybe he does get more time on Fox News which could explain his rise in the polls) and yet he is gaining ground on Trump even though he basically is just a nice looking well regarded physician who doesnt say or do much politically speaking. Sort of the anti-Trump of non-career politicians.

donkeytale said...

As if more confirmation were needed, we see another vindication of donkeytale prescience. All minour blather aside, the imperialist US and the imperialist USSR are indeed allies at the end of the day. I got thrown out of Moon of Alabama for arguing this point when there take is of course Putin good Obama bad or some moralistic nonsense that was spoonfed to them by RT and SANA.

Thank god you haven't decided to take your media dislike to RT. I hope I never live to see the day you begin quoting Pepe Escobar, although he is probably a Bernie fan too.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/19/us-russia-in-talks-rival-military-operations-syria

Tokyo Shemp said...

There are a multitude of technical issues which make uploading to Youtube anything than a piece of cake. But that is the beauty of free stuff. People do the best they can and anyone complaining is not being realistic nor grateful. It can be very time consuming.

Moderating comments for The Intruder was driving me nuts. It was my Peeder Political Flesh Feast moment. He was providing a free speech cage for all the super-banned. For a long time I was checking in for stupid yahoo, blatant racist comments. Why would I need to allow them? Taking free speech to a let it all ride end results in a form of oppression.

The Black religious woman was the final straw. Idiot white supremacist remarks were a quick fix with the scrub brush. This woman was upset with the excessive use of the N word. She thought it was unnecessary. I tried to explain that it was a different time. When we were younger suck was a swear word and it was racist to use the word boy.

This wasn't Tarantino being a racist dickhead.

We can debate on anything, whether it is on the concept of moderating or the nuts and bolts of the mass media.

Yes, it cannot be reduced to absolute stereotypes.

I agree completely with your analysis of American cable news. It is repetitive and banal.

I think it followed the MTV formula. They used to show music videos. The Beatles and others pioneered the art form or perhaps took it farther than every before from as long as video and sound have become one.

I fixed the subtitles for ZouZou, but they are not perfect and people can go to Hell Villa for the holidays if they blame me for it. I was probably relying on subtitles made by a Japanese kid studying abroad in France.

It is an important film not because it is that good. It is a run of the mill script with a bit of crime drama with music, dancing, and romance. Fred Astaire made some good ones like that. I had never heard of Josephine Baker. Gabin is okay. He was the French man's John Garfield. The story is Josephine Baker. The story is American racism which forced this talented Black woman to go overseas.

And I can't simply go back to Youtube and keep tweaking the subtitles. It doesn't let me once they are published. It's a long, boring, technical story. All amateurs of any milieu can provide is the willingness to improve and not be incompetent on purpose.

Tokyo Shemp said...

The King of Comedy was a screenplay Marshall McLuhan could have written if screen writing had been his craft.

I agree with you on the reflection schtick but only to a degree. The Sanders campaign to go with your prescient analysis of OWS and lets add in Anonymous and TeaNuts shows that regular guys, gals and wingnuts are not being represented. This is called a legitimation crisis.

Citizens United is a joke. Bernie is fighting Super PACs. This is just one issue. Hillary co-opts this schtick despite being on the move to amass $2 billion dollars. Hillary was against gay marriage a mere couple years ago. I can keep going.

Nate Silver and creeps like him do not cover the issues. They keep reinforcing the idea that the coronation cannot be stopped.

Those late night talk shows were grotesque. Sure, your boy Johnny Carson had major skills and was funny. But you know what, "Hitler made a mistake."

I loved King of Comedy. I also liked some of the Garry Shandling Show. Larry David took it all up a notch. Curb Your Enthusiasm is a much better show than Seinfeld and that makes sense. Kudos to that guy for having so much success later in his career.

Fernwood Tonight was a classic and pioneered this kind of critique through content existing within the medium. SCTV from Canada took it up quite a number of notches. One would be better off watching episodes of that than King of Comedy which limited itself to critiquing late night variety/talk shows.

We are of course talking about the cult of personality which is as strong as ever.

donkeytale said...

LOL. Silver covers the probabilities, the horse race as it were, not the issues. That doesn't make him a creep. Viewing elections as horse races is as old as elections and as long as Silver keeps nailing them he will be worth reading. He was prescient as shit in 2008 and specially 2012.

I believe you are succumbing to his schtick that the party insiders still have a lot of clout in deciding nominees and therefore Clinton remains the favourite. However, this is blaming the messenger for stating herstorical truth that you don't want to hear. In fact, elsewhere I read that Silver gives Trump merely a 5% chance at teh GOP nomination. Love him or hate him he's putting his number out there just like I am, only he has something to loose if he's wong.

And I don't believe he is factoring in that this may be a different kind of election where you throw out the history or at least modify it a bit for the insurgent mood among both left and right, not to mention young and black.

donkeytale said...

I remember Fernwood Tonight. Early 70s. It played the states in syndication on the local channels in LA. I think it came on either same time or after Carson. Martin Mull? The greatest thing to me about Roseanne is that she hired Mull off the scrap heap in the 80s when her show was on top and made him the gay owner of the diner. She also hired Bonnie Bramlett off the scrap heap, also an early 70s icon of "Delaney & Bonnie" fame, and made her one of the waitresses at the diner. That was a great show not least because it was all about the blue collar white working class milieu, something generally unseen on TC since All in teh Family.

And of course, you didn't really mean that the King of Comedy limited itself to critiquing talk shows? That's like saying Hamlet limited itself to critiquing the Danish monarchy.

I'll give you the fact that the Talk Show was all fake chumminess. Carson himself was know to be a not very good guy in real life, an anti-social introvert who had to fake the friendliness on his show. This was show biz in that era. Probably still to this day.

The Fernwood show was a spin-off of Mary Hartman (also syndicated not network if I recall accurately). Both were produced I believe by your hero the 70s sitcom king Norman Lear. Both were better than all of his network schtick as I recall, which were overrated and tooo ideologically Captain Obvious preachy, except for the Jeffersons which was saved mostly because of the greatness of the actors, especially George and the goober white neighbor foil.

donkeytale said...

Read this yesterday from the SI vault, circa 1965:

""As soon as I retire, I said to myself, I'm going to belt Red," Jim Loscutoff, who now coaches at Boston State, said one day last month, "but I admired the guy, I respected the guy. He's a fantastic guy. I learned a lot about psychology from Red. He knows exactly what to say to each ballplayer. He knows you can't say anything derogatory to Russell because he'll pout. You couldn't criticize Cousy or Ramsey, either. We could be losing a game by eight points and nobody would be doing anything wrong but Heinsohn and Loscutoff. Auerbach and Russell get along because each knows just what kind of a guy the other is. Russell knows Auerbach isn't a person who would appreciate being stepped on. I learned a lot from him. I find myself using a lot of his terminology."

"Poor kids," said Loscutoff's wife.

"Like my wife would say," Loscutoff said, "Red's a diamond in the rough."

"In fact," said Mrs. Loscutoff, "Red's wife told me that."

"When you get down to serious coaching. Red's the best," says Bill Russell. "He's versatile, intelligent, astute, flexible and he has me on the team. He's made the most out of it. He's getting the maximum out of me. In order to be successful, you've got to believe in yourself, which is commonly known as egotism. Red's an egotist, just like me. He's a human being. He has his successes and his failures. He keeps his failures to a minimum—he tries to get along with me."

"I admire Russell because he's smart enough to understand me," Auerbach says. Indeed, the maintenance of the sometimes strained symbiosis of Auerbach and Russell is, by and large, responsible for the Celtics' good fortune. Auerbach had never won a championship until Russell joined the Celtics late in 1956, and of the 19 games Russell has missed during the past nine years, Boston has won only six."

http://www.si.com/nba/2015/09/18/red-auerbach-celtics-hall-of-fame-bill-russell-bob-cousy-si-vault

They don't quote guys like Elias Canetti in SI anymore, or pretty much anywhere AFAIK.

donkeytale said...

The racial epithet problems you are experiencing could very well be karmic payback for your own gratuitous critiquing my use of ironic racial epithets like "in spades."

My useage is no different from Twain's or Tarantino's for that matter (although I hold my nose to mention overrated hack Quentin in the same breath as the immortal Sam Clements).

although I do recognise your critique of me was satirical and done mainly for ratings.

donkeytale said...

Yes, indeed, the Larry Sanders Show was one of those rare TV shows I actually watched back in the days I had all the cable channels.

Also, caught some of the Larry David thingie and agree it was grateness, although a bit derivative and repackaging of the basic early Woodman schtick. You can't watch it and not notice the schtick theft although it doesn't detract from the experience because David is herlariously more abrasive and ass-holier than thou that Allen.

That one I caught one time at a friend's house who had them all DVR'd.

Same with the Better Call Saul show which I watched a few episodes with me daughter when she was recuperating from a minour surgery a few months ago.

That show is pretty good although I never saw a minute of Breaking bad to which Saul is a prequel I gather.

I'm done.

Let me just say the presiditzial thingie is barely out of the gate and we haven't even hit the clubhouse turn yet. Pace yourslef. Long ways to go.

And I still think we will see JoJo Whiteman Biden before long which will add another dimension to the nominating process.

donkeytale said...

Sanders takes NH and Iowa, Biden splits the minourity votes just enough to put Bernie over the top or close in the SEC states, Cali, NY, Texas, etc.

The delegates are proportional its not winner take all like in the big race. I see Biden as increasing the Bern's chances to 50-50.

And if Biden-Warren catches fire you have Lizzie in 2020 and the conservative GOP wing plus the DLC will be vanquished once and for all, at least vis a vis teh Whitewash House.

Now I'm really donne donne.

donkeytale said...

The Saul thingie is on target critique of the thoroughly corrupt society we find ourselves trapped within, especially vis a vis the criminal justice system.

But again, like King of comedy and Hamlet, not to mention Jesus, the specific plot vehicle of the legal profession opens to a much broader social critique and expands to universal truth.

donkeytale said...

Correction: Hartman and Fernwood, mid 70s. Weird times for me personally as a lumpen prole. Moved to Boston in late 76. Somehow my memory fixed this show in earlier times but the mental picture I hold is actually from later times in the 80s, so what do I know.

Ah, the encroaching senile years. Thanks to the infotainment Industrial Complex one no longer needs a mind as long as one can remember how to Google..


Triple F done

donkeytale said...

I see myself lying in a nursing home in Colorado clutching my bong for dear life and begging the nurses aid to light it for me....then give me some oral sex while she's at it.

Then I'm kicked out and into the streets for the final denouement. They will eventually find my frozen corpse somewhere in teh Rockies...

donkeytale said...

Loscutoff is funny.

Mrs. Loscutoff is even funnier.

donkeytale said...

Jungle Jim, like Russell, a Bay Area product. Thankfully, still alive and hopefully still cracking people up along with his wife.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Loscutoff

donkeytale said...

The gratest player of alltime, bar nun:

"At USF, Russell became the new starting center for coach Phil Woolpert. Woolpert emphasized defense and deliberate half-court play, concepts that favored defensive standout Russell.[13] Woolpert's choices of how to deploy his players were unaffected by issues of skin color. In 1954, he became the first coach of a major college basketball squad to start three African American players: Russell, K. C. Jones and Hal Perry.[14] In his USF years, Russell used his relative lack of bulk to develop a unique style of defense: instead of purely guarding the opposing center, he used his quickness and speed to play help defense against opposing forwards and aggressively challenge their shots.[13] Combining the stature and shot-blocking skills of a center with the foot speed of a guard, Russell became the centerpiece of a USF team that soon became a force in college basketball. After USF kept Holy Cross star Tom Heinsohn scoreless in an entire half, Sports Illustrated wrote, "If [Russell] ever learns to hit the basket, they're going to have to rewrite the rules."[13]
However, the games were often difficult for the USF squad. Russell and his African American teammates became targets of racist jeers, particularly on the road.[15] In one notable incident, hotels in Oklahoma City refused to admit Russell and his black teammates while they were in town for the 1954 All-College Tournament. In protest, the whole team decided to camp out in a closed college dorm, which was later called an important bonding experience for the group.[14] Decades later, Russell explained that his experiences hardened him against abuse of all kinds. "I never permitted myself to be a victim," he said.[16][17]
Racism also shaped his lifelong paradigm as a team player. "At that time," he has said, "it was never acceptable that a black player was the best. That did not happen ... My junior year in college, I had what I thought was the one of the best college seasons ever. We won 28 out of 29 games. We won the National Championship. I was the [Most Valuable Player] at the Final Four. I was first team All American. I averaged over 20 points and over 20 rebounds, and I was the only guy in college blocking shots. So after the season was over, they had a Northern California banquet, and they picked another center as Player of the Year in Northern California. Well, that let me know that if I were to accept these as the final judges of my career I would die a bitter old man." So he made a conscious decision, he said, to put the team first and foremost, and not worry about individual achievements.[18]"

The inventor of the blocked shot and perhaps more importantly, the 'help' defense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Russell

donkeytale said...

Now I'm really dunn.

4 F dunne

Tokyo Shemp said...

You're awfully mum about Silver wetting his pants with the British elections. What did he whine, "The polls failed me?"

"Hitler made a mistake."

A masterpiece is a masterpiece is greatness, yes, whether it has all the intricacies of a Dickens' novel or if it is a one liner improvised in a movie as in the quote above.

While you have articulated well the greatest of the greats created by Norman Lear, methinketh you are downplaying his greatness a tad. Good Times was not bad. It's too bad J.J. took over center stage. It's quite unfortunate James Evans moved on from the show and it became a negative reinforcement for some ugly stereotypes. Maybe Good Times has been unfairly attacked. I see it as similar to M*A*S*H*. Once Colonel McLean left followed by Trapper John, that show was on fricken fumes, and then especially once Frank left.

That isn't Lear, however.

Maude was greatness, period!

According to IMDB, Norman Lear just turned 93. Good for him. And Jon Voight is still taking names and kicking arse at age 75. Old codgers like us could still have a lot of juice in the tank.

I'm skimming through Lear's credits. He is listed as a creator of One Day at a Time. That wasn't greatness, but if you are a fan of Roseanne, that show brought respect to the single mom raising kids. It was definitely about humble, middle class values.

Fernwood Tonight and Mary Hartman came out around the mid to late 70's.

Sanford and Son was a good show. That is another one that was hurt when the lead quit or left.

I would have to rank Norman Lear towards the top for television greatness.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I got to read the Red Auerbach article from the S.I. wayback vault. That was very good. People should read it for themselves. It shows how a great coach does not have to be set in his ways and that it's okay to improvise, reflect, share the glory, etc..

Belichick is also hated for his greatness, as back then people were very much hating on Red and his cigars and basically for his non-stop success.

The old Celtics were the Tiger Woods of their decade. No one could touch them. I don't think that will ever be matched. Jordan came close and barely made it over half-way to what Russell did. Yes, it was different times with less teams. I suppose Ben Hogan had that kind of winning formula too.Tyson had it for boxing. And your beloved UCLA Bruins basketball had it.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Okay, Better Call Saul is a 2015 t.v. series starring Bob Odenkirk. I'm not seeing it listed yet on Odenkirk's page. It has a huge rating of 8.9, almost perfection. I may have to start watching that one. Thanks for the heads up. They say it's a prequel. That his name was Jimmy McGill before changing to Saul Goodman. I have always liked Odenkirk.

I watched almost the full first season of Breaking Bad then gave up, same with The Wire. They are both great shows, but it started to become the same greatness. I am full into Ray Donovan. It doesn't hurt that the Boston accent is greatly featured, though looking at the actors, I don't believe even one is from Boston. The New York guy Bunchy seems to do the accent the best. The actors from England and N. Ireland seem to struggle at times. Voight nails the accent. But even that show will reach a point where the actors and writers figure there is nowhere to go with this.

That happened to Nurse Jackie.

I figured out subtitles and am finding some mundane pleasure in doing the busy work to put this French flick together. It is really good. It's called Liliom and will be available on the Harold Diddlebock page in a few days or up to a week, but I'm getting it done.

Not everything has to be rushed. There doesn't have to be an endgame. I appreciate your advice to chill out getting my panties in a bunch over the election or perhaps anything.

You are probably even correct that even if Bernie falls short, not saying he will, there will be a good chunk of field position attained. The question for prosperity would be how much before his time was Bernie Sanders?

I go back and forth on Biden's influence. He seems to take about an even amount of votes from both Hillary and Sanders. But who knows? The polling is nuts. Especially with the Republicans. Fiorina is doing well all of a sudden. But she is a financial loser. She claimed Trump has become bankrupted four times. He denied it. There was never any resolving to that discrepancy. Either way, whoever it is be it Ben Carson, Rubio, Trump, Carly, or any of the other creeps, it will take Hillary being arrested for her not to become President or Bernie will beat whoever the R's vote for. I can't see Biden having a real chance. You say it is still early, but I disagree. It is less than a month to the first debate. Soon it will be holiday season, then New Year's. Then the delegates will finally be up for grabs.

Now if you mean we are jolly old ancients of days (h/t Watts who I see stole that from Isaiah or God), and that this implies each day is a cosmic undertaking of epic proportions, then yes, we are still in the fourth inning. We are still at Fenway Park where a lot of runs can be put on the board in the blink of an eye.

The last couple days have been nice. I stopped watching cable news. I have even stopped looking at any kind of news. Being a news junkie is not what it used to be or perhaps never was. It is an attack on the brain! It sucks out one's life juice.

I think being spiritual is much more important than being a keyboard warrior. It took me many blog miles to come to this self-realisation.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I saw that on Loscutoff. He said when he retired, he'd then be able to give Red a well-deserved sock to the mug. Then there was something about Mrs. Jungle Jim saying Jim loved Red or something. Then yes, Mrs. Loskie quipped that was what Mrs. Red said. That was a great article. It had good mileage.

I guess in a way that is the ideal life, to do something one loves and to do it well, to live a dignified life. All jobs should provide a base of income that enables one to live dignified. Hopefully Bernie wins and other progressives win across the country, so we can start fixing the country.

Do we value work or not? Is it communistic to ensure that everyone willing to work can work? I don't think so. It's called humanity. It's called only using what we really need or a bit extra. It's called being left alone by police. It's called peace in the valley. It's called not knowing how to wrap this up, so I can move on with my life which sort of means getting back to fixing the subtitles for my people.

Yes, a bunch of folks are going to be very happy when Liliom is ready. There is a pure joy one experiences through helping others. There is a different way to live than most go about it. It is a better way, in fact the only way if we are to heal as people while stopping the madness which is exploiting the planet, its resources, and all the people.

This is why I want the goose bumps. I want Bernie to win so badly. I think this could be a fantastic, historical development. Election reform is extremely important. The Red Sox got rid of the Bambino Curse in 2004. We need to get rid of the Amerikkka Curse by any means necessary. Win or lose for Bernie, the struggle will continue. But it may just be a whole lot easier if he wins. This is why I tend to get a little verklempt when looking too closely at social reality. My roots are kumbaya. I am going back to my roots and nature. I daydream quite a bit, but I'm not the only one. Imagine if I didn't lift ideas from others and play word games? The world would live as one and by any means necessary, we'd get through the night, and it'd be all right, all right, then done, done.

Cue up Armstrong's "What a wonderful world."

Tokyo Shemp said...

posterity, not prosperity -- sorry.

donkeytale said...

"I daydream quite a bit, but I'm not the only one. Imagine if I didn't lift ideas from others and play word games? The world would live as one and by any means necessary, we'd get through the night, and it'd be all right, all right, then done, done."

LOL. You crack me up. When you're funny you're very, very funny. The article on Red was a revelation not so much what it revealed about Red but the level of literacy of the sportswriter.

Literacy is basically a lost art in the news business. I guess it is everywhere,, which is likely why Twitter has eclipsed the soapblox milieu.

Maybe playing for field position is a better football metaphor than moving the pile an inch at a time. But that's approximately what I meant. Win or loose Bernie has already done something magical. He is the right man at the right time or maybe I should say the left man at the left time. Think back 10 years ago and liberal was a dirty word, much less an electable one. Obama changed that calculation at the federal level. Now the times demand the bern. It is all a procession, a passing parade.

I have always been a believer in the times make the man. I dont believe in the great man theory of historical development. I just believe in me Yoko and me. And that's reality.

It is a long and winding zeitgeist and we are only in the beginning of what I want to feel forever.

donkeytale said...

I thought I did make reference to Silver and the British elections in fact awhile back and also recently.

There was a big to do about the polling there being very off, not just Silver. I don't grok the gotcha style of blogging but I admit sometimes I resemble it meslef.

Silver earned his spurs. Maybe he should have stayed at the NYT where he probably was surrounded by smart people and good editorial assistance. I don' really get the need for all these smart MSM-alternative types like Ezra Klein, Silver and Greenvault needing to start up websites. The sites don't really satisfy like the guys themselves did at their respective newspapers where they were just pieces rather than the whole pie.

Now Silver has an entire website to fill up and he's in charge. Could be a Peter Principle moment or maybe his relevance has ended. His 15 minutes are up.

I don't really care about him that much. I'm sure as we get closer to the real action his schtick will be more widely considered and maybe his methodology will fail in 2016 like it did this year in the British. Time will tell.

donkeytale said...

As for Belichek, I do subscribe to the great QB theory of NFL history.

Behind every coach stands a great QB. Brady made Belichek. Tom Landry won title after title with Staubach but once Roger was gone he was done winning champeenships.

Tons of examples. The greatest coach of them all left Green Bay and Bart Starr, went to DC and did nothing.

Jimmy Johnson went to an Aikmanless Miami and flopped.

donkeytale said...

I also don't get why Ron Brynaert doesn't have a gig at the NY Observer at the very least.

I loves me sum Ron.

Eagerly awaiting his next appearance on VITB.

As a matter of fact this is where we completely differ:

I pretty much love everyone.

Especially females. I even love those Fox News blonde Barbie babes. Trump. Satan.

Rich man poor man.

donkeytale said...

Paid fake.

Useful idiot.

Disinformation Agent.

Infotainment Agent.

First of course, I love meslef.

Self love is as necessary as jerking off. Actually, I guess they are the same when you get down on it.

get down on it.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I know what you mean about a basic drop in talent and/or skills for professional writers, especially for sports writers where it is most obvious for old-timers.

There was a time when sports met society and fell in love. It was so successful, that even women started watching and absorbing sports infotainment. While Title IX also played a symbiotic role, it was the writers who could turn sports into part and parcel of the human conundrum whom made sports interesting to a larger swath of demographics including women.

Bernie has done that for Western European styled socialism. I liked what you wrote above. You are able to do to politics what great sports writers did for sports. They were writers, period, who just so happened to be in the sports milieu. You are a great writer who just so happens to have devolved into BubbleBoy freak status despite having lived the preponderance of your life in the grand ole opry space of fresh air alongside a more dignified, humble allotment of infotainment, or entertainment as it was once labelled.

Yes, a lot of the greats would not be considered as great if it weren't for their significant others. You can take your insight to other detailed levels. Who would the great coach be without the great offensive and defensive coordinators? Who would Tuna Parcells have been as a coach without Belichick taking care of one half of the football field?

As Red needed Russell, Bill needed Red just as much, and both of them needed the rest of the lads to build an endgame greater than the sum of its parts.

Phew on your concession that moving a pile a few inches is not what any leftier than thou wants to hear. It is a brutal concept. It is similar to Black Lives Matter saying Bernster is a great guy and it sounds good, but we are getting assassinated in the streets by pigs.

Moving the pile a few inches to them might mean a Don Lemon candidacy in a decade or two, but what about my prime, Mick?

You're a bum rock is no different a reply than saying after the cop beats you up, your wage is being bumped up from $7.50 to $15/hour.

I get that part. I just didn't get the part where Bernie said all lives matter (he didn't) or where it's not obvious Hillary has been a bad person for race and class issues (she has).

Hasn't Nate Silver already been exposed as a blowhard within this very election cycle?

Yes, I brought up the British voting a while back to make it known that Nate Silver is not God. And you did concede a bit back then. Yeah, we have hit an agreement point on Nate Silver.

I also like your idea of how these small or big fish in big ponds are not better off branching out and creating their own milieus. Greenwald even took it a nasty step further by joining forces with Omidyar. The Intercept is garbage. A few of their writers have strong military contacts, i.e., they are paid fakes or might as well be due to conditioning.

I have only linked to The Intercept so folks can get a closer looksie at Snowden documents.

The Peter Principle is a great concept. Doc Rivers is the current leader for that form of incompetence. He needs to stick to coaching. He has made some awful moves as a general manager.

We don't need new institutions, say something like anarchy or libertarianism. We don't need a new form of police or wtf. We need new policemen who are going to abide to the Constitution.

This ideological battle has been going on for the longest time. Malcolm X until his conversion went with the any means necessary schtick. M.L.K. was kumbaya or something. By the end they had joined forces. For that, they were assassinated.

If by gotcha blogging, you are referring to say the Hillary Super PAC attacking Bernie as a Chavez/Castro PuppetBoy infiltrator, then yes, you are correct. I think it comes down more to truthful versus dishonest blogging and/or content.

Free speech should also not equate to who has the most money. The key variable should be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but a schtick based on truth.