The Shadow That Was Dick Cheney

The big news today has been the passing of former Vice President (and administrative tone-setter) Richard "Dick" Cheney.

The best thing I can say about this was already said back in 2014:

Considering the former Vice President's recent hypocritical and vile comments about Obama's handling of the Iraqi mess Cheney left behind, about the prolonged history of Cheney's lies and distortions, about the thousands of lives broken and killed under his orders, there is only one thing to say:

Arrest the son of a bitch for war crimes and shove his goddamn criminality back into his goddamn face.

That's all that needs to be said now and forever.  No more television interviews.  No more speaking events.  No more book deals.  Send him to jail, put him on trial.  Make him answer for the torture regime, the lies about WMDs, the war-profiteering, the folly of waging two wars with massive debt and without end.

I also said a few things in 2013, when I reviewed Bush the Lesser's presidential tenure, noting how the real power in that White House flowed through and from the Veep's office:

So if Bush the Lesser was really a Passive-Positive at heart, something that Ivins points to, why was Dean so convinced that Bush was really an Active-Negative?

Because much of the Bush administration was a disaster of obsessive secrecy, reckless war-making, and abuse of powers that one regularly sees in an A-N administration.

Mind you, Passive-Positives preside over scandal-plagued tenures - Reagan's was chock-full, as was Harding's and Grant's - but for different reasons than an Active-Negative's such as Johnson or Nixon.  Pass-Pos' scandals are due more to the nature of such Presidents allowing their cronies free range to embezzle and indulge, whereas A-N's scandals stem from the President's own personal faults and obsessions...

It might help to understand that a Passive-Positive President is by nature too trusting of his allies and cronies: Harding is a perfect example.  It's often noted in a Pass-Pos administration the tenor of the office defined more by an underling or group of underlings (much like Franklin Pierce's seemed more dictated by his Southern Democrat allies, and Reagan's with regards to the Iran-Contra scandal).  With that consideration, also note that during Bush the Lesser administration we had the most politically-powerful VICE President our nation ever saw in Dick Cheney...

Cheney was different.  Cheney seemed to dominate Bush the Lesser's administration the minute he was given any authority by Bush, and that even began during the 2000 campaign.  Entrusted as a family friend of his father's, Bush put Cheney in charge of finding his Vice Presidential ticket balancer.  There seemed to have been a review process but in the end the selection was... Cheney himself, which puzzled people then but makes more sense when you look at Cheney more closely...

This was a man who was perfectly willing to tell a fellow politician on the floor of the Senate to "go fuck yourself."  Granted, this wasn't a full-on assault with a walking cane, but certain rules of decorum apply (you're supposed to save that for the parking lot).  This was a guy who told a fellow Secretary of Treasury that "deficits don't matter (regarding more massive tax cuts that even the Secretary felt were unneeded).  This is our due."

This was a man who chaired the secretive energy policy meetings.  This was a Vice President who had his office and had his friends in the Defense Department set up a competing "investigative office" to undercut CIA intelligence that didn't fit their "Iraq Has WMDs" narrative.  This was a Veep whose Chief of Staff "Scooter" Libby was indicted for his role in revealing the classified identity of a CIA agent whose husband had publicly questioned the WMD story.

This was a Vice President who used his unprecedented level of authority to ignore standard procedures on a regular basis.  When confronted by the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office - the ones who handle and store classified materials on a daily basis, mind you - about refusing to turn over materials starting from 2003 into 2007, Cheney did his best to eliminate that part of the National Archives altogether.  Cheney's argument?  As Vice President serving both Executive and Legislative duties (as President of the Senate), he was exempt (the "Fourth Branch" of government argument).  Basically claiming he didn't have to answer to anybody.  Not even to the President.

In short: Everything nasty, vulgar, illegal, and corrupt about the modern Republican Party evolved entirely from whatever dark template that spawned Dick.

That Cheney came to openly despise donald trump - his true heir to the Far Right regime Cheney engineered over the decades - is mostly due to how he viewed trump as too self-serving and stupid to be the Forever Dictator of a Republican-ruled America.

There are a number of obits today burying Cheney for the sins he'd committed while he sat in power, so I'll offer a number of links here so you can get a more informed understanding of how soulless that person was.

Mark Danner at Salon: Dick Cheney's Dark Legacy

David Frum at Atlantic: There Was Only One Dick Cheney All Along

George Chidi at The Guardian: Dick Cheney Remains Divisive In Death

Eoin Higgins at The Intercept: Dick Cheney Doesn't Deserve Your Heartfelt Eulogies

When you consider how the only one more hated was Henry Kissinger, Cheney is leaving a foul legacy indeed.

P.S. also sharing Stonekettle's simple observation on Bluesky:

Well, hell. Looks like I'm going to need to drink more coffee. Dick Cheney died and I'm going to need a full bladder for the funeral.

— Stonekettle (@stonekettle.bsky.social) November 4, 2025 at 8:44 AM

Just sayin', 2 liter bottles of Mountain Dew pass through much faster...

 

Smoke On the Altar, The Miter On This Guy. Francis, the Pope Who Lightened Up

Jesus. It felt like only yesterday I was making "Lighten Up, Francis" jokes.

Pope Francis passed away last night (via Scott Neuman at NPR):

Catholics across the globe are mourning the death of Pope Francis, remembering him for his humility, generosity of spirit, concern for the poor, and steadfast efforts to restore trust in the church after years of scandal.

Francis died early Monday in Rome at the age of 88, just one day after Easter Sunday. His death marks the end of a 12-year papacy that began in 2013 following the historic resignation of Benedict XVI — the first pontiff to step down in nearly six centuries.

You might need to refresh your memories about how eventful that transition was: Popes tended to rule the Church until dying, because you didn't want the whole "Infallibility" matter crop up if there are two guys - no girls allowed, damn them - running around with claim to that kind of power.

But Benedict was facing numerous scandals, some of which he couldn't resolve without compromising his own authority, and so handing off power to a replacement Pope was the third option available. To his credit, Benedict didn't seem to interfere with Francis' work in his retirement, so they avoided that problem in the long term.

Francis brought a more liberal - other than retaining the Church's conservative views on homosexuality - agenda to Catholicism that had been sinking into reactionary conservativism - in response to the Vatican II Reforms - since the reign of the long-lived Pope John Paul II. It helped Francis' cause that he was one of the more notable successes of a church serving to millions of Catholics across the globe.

Francis, the first-ever Latin American pope, once served as archbishop in Buenos Aires. In the Argentine capital, the government declared seven days of mourning and citizens gathered for a special mass at the city's cathedral, Reuters reports.

The pope also touched the lives of many Latinos around the world by communicating with them in Spanish. Hatciri Lopez, a lifelong Catholic from rural Johnston County, N.C., told NPR member station WUNC that Francis grew her faith...

Where John Paul II broke through as a non-Italian Pope in 1978, Francis went further as an Italian-descended immigrant to a Latin American nation, and expanded non-European representation towards Third World nations struggling with poverty and political oppression. When Francis spoke about the need to protect and support refugees, and promoted favorable immigration policies, he meant it.

One of Francis' last admonitions as his health declined was going after Vice President JD Vance - who converted to Catholicism in 2019 - and trump's anti-immigrant policies (reported by AP News correspondent Nicole Winfield via PBS News):

Francis took the remarkable step of addressing the U.S. migrant crackdown in a letter to U.S. bishops in which he appeared to take direct aim at Vice President JD Vance’s defense of the deportation program on theological grounds.

History’s first Latin American pope has long made caring for migrants a priority of his pontificate, demanding that countries welcome, protect, promote and integrate those fleeing conflicts, poverty and climate disasters. Francis has also said governments are expected to do so to the limits of their capacity.

The Argentine Jesuit and President Donald Trump have long sparred over migration, including before Trump’s first administration when Francis famously said anyone who builds a wall to keep out migrants was “not a Christian.”

In the letter, Francis said nations have the right to defend themselves and keep their communities safe from criminals.

“That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” he wrote.

Citing the biblical stories of migration, the people of Israel, the Book of Exodus and Jesus Christ’s own experience, Francis affirmed the right of people to seek shelter and safety in other lands and said he was concerned with what is going on in the United States.

“I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” Francis wrote. “The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality...”

It's a bit of dark humor that the Pope died just hours after meeting Vance in person to "exchange views" that clearly made it seem as though Francis wanted to pope-slap the fool before expiring. Comparisons to how Vance's visit to Francis mirrored Liz Truss' visit to Queen Elizabeth II before the Queen died were unavoidable on social media.

With that all said, what will be Francis' legacy? Alongside pressing the Western world to be more accepting of migrants, he also reportedly worked to appoint bishops and cardinals to reflect the diversity of a church catering more to Africa, Asia, and South America than ever before. While Francis remained opposed to gay marriage and gay adoption rights - to keep the more conservative internal factions in line - he did work to tone down the harsher rhetoric - opposing criminalizing homosexuality for example - and showed signs of setting a foundation of making the Catholic Church more amenable to gay rights with whomever succeeds him as the Capo de Capo uh Pontiff.

Francis had to deal with a lot of the fallout from earlier papal reigns such as the sex abuse and coverups - and a simony scandal thrown in - but he notably recovered the Church's reputation to at least a grudging (re)acceptance on the world stage. His personal reputation leaves behind a man known for his dedication to science, humility (he lived a spartan, simple life even as Pope), humor, and above all that Christian virtue of Grace.

And now?

Now we get to see if that movie Conclave got it right.

P.S. De Chelonian Mobile.

The Passing of a Good Man

His health had been failing for a long time, he'd been in hospice, and his wife Rosalynn had passed away earlier so there wasn't much else for former President Jimmy Carter to hold onto. It still hurts to hear this afternoon that Carter passed away (via Kathy Lohr at NPR): 

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, died Sunday at age 100. The Carter Center announced he died in his hometown of Plains, Ga.

Carter was president from 1977 to 1981, but he was perhaps more famous for the life he led after leaving office. Carter was one of the biggest advocates for peace, democracy and international human rights.

James "Jimmy" Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains, Ga., on Oct. 1, 1924, and spent his childhood on a farm just outside that tiny southwest Georgia community. His father was a peanut farmer; his mother, "Miss Lillian," was a nurse. He was the first president of the United States to be born in a hospital.

Just saying, my twin brother and I were born in Albany, GA just down the road from Plains. We both grew up considering Jimmy as a neighbor. I digress.

Growing up on the farm, Carter learned the value of hard work and determination. He qualified for the U.S. Naval Academy and became an engineer, working on submarines. But Carter resigned from the Navy in 1953 after his father died.

Back in Plains, he was elected to the Georgia Senate and became the first Georgia governor to speak out against racial discrimination.

A lifelong Democrat like most Southerners at the time, Carter was a political unknown when he began a national campaign in 1974 and was first referred to as "Jimmy Who?"

But a grassroots effort changed that, Hochman said. "He would campaign on the street corners and go to radio stations. Nobody knew who he was except that he was running for president."

Carter's friends and family from Georgia, called the Peanut Brigade, traveled to New Hampshire, Iowa and all over the country talking to voters and campaigning for Carter, the dependable Southerner who wanted to be president.

During the campaign, Carter told audiences, "I'll never tell a lie. I'll never make a misleading statement. I'll never betray the trust of those who have confidence in me, and I will never avoid a controversial issue..."

Carter won in a close election over Gerald Ford in 1976, happening at a moment where the national mood soured over Watergate, the failure of the Vietnam War, and an economy struggling between high inflation or bad interest rates. Carter's own administration grappled with the economic (and spiritual) malaise that worsened his chances at re-election, before getting blindsided by the Iranian Hostage crisis by 1979 that dashed any incumbent hopes for good.

What happened post-Presidency with Jimmy Carter was one of the greatest humanitarian efforts that Americans ever saw:

After leaving office, Carter became dedicated to promoting democracy, monitoring elections, building homes with Habitat for Humanity and eradicating disease in some of the world's poorest countries. In 1982, the president and his wife opened the Carter Center in Atlanta.

In an interview with NPR in 2007, Carter talked about his experiences. "And for the last 25 years, my life could not have been more expansive and unpredictable and adventurous and gratifying," he said.

In 2002, Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor some said he had earned a quarter century earlier when he negotiated the Camp David Accords. He ended his acceptance speech with a plea for peace.

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children," Carter said...

When I did the year-long summaries of Presidential Character back in 2013, I ended Carter's review rather abruptly without going into the graceful post-Presidential work he committed. I wasn't too sure back then how to properly phrase the many good deeds - the work towards world peace, moderating elections at home and abroad to promote democracy, building homes for families with Habitat For Humanity, fighting disease in Africa like the near-eradication of Guinea Worm - and I was kind of worried even back then if I said anything positive like that I might jinx him to an early death (his health had been failing for some time. Getting into your 90s will do that to you).

The thing about Carter was how genuine were his efforts to do the right thing. He fought against segregation in a Deep South state, he committed to advocacy for human rights over power plays on the international stage, he promoted his Christian faith through good works instead of beating everyone's head with a thick Bible.

Carter never once promoted himself at the expense of other people. He never worked to take millions of dollars for himself, giving instead to his charities. He never crowed about his successes unless it was to celebrate and honor the hundreds if not thousands of fellow volunteers and allies who worked with him.

If there was any person on the planet in the exact opposite of the - you know what, shouldn't even name-drop that orange guy here - it was President Carter.

God Bless the man, who served his post-Presidency in ways that other former Presidents would envy: with hard work, diligence, respect from others, and the love of a grateful nation.

I want to leave you all with a clip from Saturday Night, back in the days of Carter's tenure, with Dan Ackroyd portraying him. This may not have been the real Jimmy Carter but it honestly reflects the man himself: caring for others, well-versed and intelligent, and a huge Allman Brothers fan:

“Right, you did some Orange Sunshine, Peter. Everything is going to be fine, you’re just very high and you’ll probably be that way for about five more hours. Try taking some Vitamin B or C complex. If you have a beer, go ahead and drink it. Just remember, you’re a living organism on this planet, you’re safe, you’ve just taken a heavy drug. Relax, stay inside, and listen to some music. Do you have any Allman Brothers?”

All flags to half-mast, America, for the passing of a not-too-great President and the best ex-President we will ever know.

Gone Too Soon, Zandar

Interrupting my NaNoWriMo writing project to note that a fellow political blogger passed away this weekend.

Zandar over at his own blog Zandar Vs. The Stupid had been a serious and dedicated Left-leaning blogger who shredded on the idiots - often Far Right Republicans - who deserved it. He was a regular at Crooks & Liars' daily roundups. Balloon Juice and other major blogsites quoted him. I have him on my Links page, but to my shame I never quoted or linked to him (I should have, his snark was far superior to mine).

And then John Cole tweeted yesterday that he hadn't seen anything recent from Zandar - who publishes at least once a day - and then word got out through the blog's Comments section from Zandar's dad that he had passed away.

Eventually, ZandarDad found the login to the official site and posted this notice:

Good morning. This is Zandar's Dad. I am sorry to tell you that he passed away over the weekend, peacefully in his sleep. Fortunately, his computer was on and open to this page but I don't know if I will be able to post again. This blog was Jon's passion. He was an ardent advocate for justice and for our Democracy. He was brilliant. He was funny. He never stopped believing in our country but he never stopped fighting the "stupid" and there was plenty of it for him to fight. He was thrilled with KY reelecting a Democratic governor, and he posted up until Friday, but he was feeling sick over the weekend and when he went to bed Saturday night, he thought that he would feel better when he woke up, but he never did. 

I posted a few replies to his recent posts, hoping to get the word out, before I located this page. As I said, this blog is his pride and joy. In many ways, it is his legacy. He greatly appreciated all of you who read the blog, who posted, and who supported ZandarVTS financially. If you are inclined to make a financial donation in his memory, the chosen organization is the American Heart Association, but the BEST thing you can do to honor Jon's memory is to VOTE like your life and your Democracy depend on it, because they do. 

It is horrifying how fragile and brief a human life - any life - can be on this world. Going to bed and not waking up... it's just... shocking.

And this just happens everywhere: Across war zones like Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan and Syria and dozens of other places; Across places of natural disasters like the earthquakes in Turkey and the hurricanes in Mexico; Across homes throughout the world where somewhere, sometime, some little tragedy will take place.

It makes you wonder if anything we do on a daily basis - not just the blogging but our work, our play, our quiet moments - really has an impact on life as a whole.

Will we remember Zandar, his wit and his exasperation aimed at the folly of the twisted and the cruel? Will we look back at him, his works?

I've wondered once or twice before if the blogs we create stay up after we die. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Jon Swift (the one who inspired Batocchio's annual memorial), so many others have had their blogs shut down apparently by choice by the surviving families. I'm not sure what the blogsite providers' - this one is Blogger - policies are regarding inactive blogs, if they time out after a few months or years.

It'd be nice if there was an archive of sorts, something to convert all the pages of postings and shuffle them into a recovery backup folder on a server, to ensure the words we bloggers put out there - our rants, our reviews, our attempts at humor and poetry - don't disappear into the ether. 

Zandar's legacy would be for the rest of us to Vote, and vote against the stupid which is the current Far Right Republican efforts. But his memory now resides in the words on a blog that may well fade into time... 

One Sentence Statement about the Passing of Pope Benedict XVI

There is a Circle of Hell dedicated to those who betrayed their position of office, there is a Circle of Hell for priests and bishops and Popes who allowed pedophiles and rapists to attack the children and families of their own parishes, there is a Circle of Hell for those who lied against the victims, there is a Circle of Hell for those who covered up crimes for the sake of power and money, and so there is a Circle of Hell tonight for Pope Benedict XVI who died knowing full well that thousands of young women and men of his own Catholic Church had their lives broken or destroyed all so he could be Pope.

Suspicions About A DeSantis Ally

This was something unsettling happening this weekend in Jacksonville, Florida: A DeSantis political ally and fundraising supporter found dead of a suspected suicide (via Ryan Dailey for news channel WCJB): 

Kent Stermon, a Jacksonville-area businessman and member of the state university system’s Board of Governors, was found dead in an apparent suicide Thursday night, law enforcement officials confirmed on Friday.

Stermon was found “deceased, alone in a locked vehicle” in the parking lot of a post office in Atlantic Beach by a post-office employee, an Atlantic Beach Police Department report said.

“There is no suspected foul play. The investigation is being worked as a suicide,” a news release from the police department said.

According to the report, Stermon had been sought as a missing person by the sheriff’s office shortly before he was found deceased. Stermon apparently took his own life amid an ongoing probe by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office...

Stermon was president and chief operating officer of Total Military Management, a logistics company that enables “Department of Defense qualified transportation service providers to better serve the military marketplace,” according to its website.

A politically connected figure in Northeast Florida, Stermon --- who was named “citizen of the year” by the sheriff’s office in 2016 --- was part of the host committee for the 2020 Republican National Convention in Jacksonville.

Stermon also was a donor to Gov. Ron DeSantis and served on his transition team in 2018. Stermon contributed a combined $53,250 to DeSantis and his political committee Friends of Ron DeSantis between 2018 and 2022, including a $25,000 contribution to DeSantis’ committee on Nov. 30, 2021.

DeSantis appointed Stermon to the Board of Governors in March 2019. Stermon served as chairman of the board’s Audit and Compliance Committee.

This was a connected guy making money off of government contracts, with his hands in a lot of Republican activities. Notice the quid pro quo of DeSantis putting Stermon on the Board of Governors overseeing our state university system.

Just what exactly were the law enforcement investigating Stermon for?

The Politico website has something to note, not official of course (reported by Matt Dixon):

Waters said that because the investigation remains active, there is “limited information available to release at this time.” The Florida Times-Union reported, citing unidentified law enforcement sources, that authorities were examining allegations of sexual misconduct.

When I heard the news about Stermon, my first thought was "Is any of this tied to the Joel Greenberg/Matt Gaetz matter we've been waiting years on for resolution?"

Last we heard anything major about that ongoing scandal was back in 2021, when Greenberg agreed to plead to six major charges the feds had out of THIRTY-THREE (!) possible, in exchange for Greenberg giving more details about any other illegal activities tied to his county and state-level work with other politicians (hint: Republicans) and business figures (hint: also Republicans).

It's been almost 18 months waiting, but this December the feds finally put Greenberg away, with the judge sentencing him to 11 years in prison. Prosecutors argued for a relatively lighter sentence on Greenberg because he had given them useful information about other state-level figures - the numbers bounce between eight to twenty-five other suspects - involved in the sex trafficking investigation.

With Stermon under similar investigation when he took his own life, I am pondering if there's a link here.

I'm also wondering about this week's other state scandal of the "Don't Say Gay" hypocrite State Rep. Harding getting charged with acts of wire fraud involving COVID-19 bailout funds that Greenberg was also committing.

I'm still waiting for Matt Gaetz to face these moments. Gaetz was tied to so many of Greenberg's antics - and Gaetz has shown so much bad behavior on his own related to these matters - it's impossible to believe he will walk away from any justice here.

Give us that wonderful Saturnalia gift of Gaetz in a perp walk, people.

The Queen We Saw

Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl/
But she doesn't have a lot to say/
Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl/
But she changes from day to day

I wanna tell her that I love her a lot/
But I gotta get a belly full of wine/
Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl
Someday I'm gonna make her mine, oh yeah/
Someday I'm gonna make her mine...

-- "Her Majesty," The Beatles

What, you were expecting "The Queen Is Dead" by the Smiths???

I have to be seen to be believed.
-- Her Majesty, herself

Her Majesty Elizabeth, Second of Her Name, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and her other realms and territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, Auxiliary Mechanic in the Home Front during World War II, Whovian Fan Number One, passed from this earthly realm today and sent much of the world into reflection about one of the most extravagant and eventful lives ever lived.

Nearly every publication out there will have tributes aplenty, but I'm finding this one by Tom McTague from The Atlantic to be spot on:

...She was the product of ancestral inheritance but was more popular than any of her prime ministers and remained head of state in countries around the world because of public support. She was in a sense a democratic Queen, a progressive conservative, an aristocratic multiculturalist.

Queen Elizabeth was a constitutional monarch, not a political leader with real powers, and one who was required to serve an ever-changing set of realms, peoples, institutions, and ideas that were no longer as obviously compatible as they had been when she ascended to the throne. The Queen’s great achievement was to honor the commitment she made to an imperial nation and its empire as a princess even as it became a multiethnic state and a Commonwealth...

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born on April 21, 1926, as a princess to not simply a king but an emperor. She became Queen to a multitude of realms. A child of empire, European supremacy, and the old order—even the old faith, Anglican Christianity—she came to see it as her solemn duty to represent all the peoples and religions of the Commonwealth.

This duty created friction during her reign, but it made her different from any other European monarch and, paradoxically, kept her modern. A great irony of Queen Elizabeth II is that the most penetrating criticism of her reign came not from the republican left but from the nationalist right, parts of which saw past her image of continuity and tradition to the deep change that her rule actually represented...

In retrospect, it was absurd to think that the Queen could be both British and global, sharing herself equally among her various realms. How can one person be Queen of the United Kingdom one moment and Queen of Australia the next, as well as head of a Commonwealth? In time, the practical reality revealed itself—the Queen was primarily Queen of the United Kingdom.

From 1952 to her death, she would meet 13 of the 14 U.S. presidents elected in that time (Lyndon B. Johnson being the exception). She did so as Britain’s head of state—in effect, Queen of the Old Country hiding in imperial clothes, representing a state that, in U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s infamous put-down, had lost an empire but not yet found a role...

Yet successive British governments knew which direction they wanted to go in. In Africa, for example, Britain, unlike France, encouraged its former colonies not only to become independent, but to become republics. The loss of the empire was seen as a price worth paying for greater influence, and the Queen supported recognition of African nationalism. In 1960, when British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan remarked in a speech from South Africa that the “wind of change is blowing through this continent,” signaling the inevitability of decolonization, Elizabeth “took the unusual step of indicating her personal approval of Macmillan’s words,” Murphy records. Shortly after the speech, Macmillan received a telegram with a message from London that “the Queen was very interested and much impressed by the Prime Minister’s speech.” Four years later, the process of decolonization in East, West, and Central Africa was largely complete...

In some senses, Queen Elizabeth II leaves an ambiguous legacy. She stands above almost all of Britain’s British monarchs, but was one who oversaw a drastic shrinkage in the monarchy’s power, prestige, and influence. Such a legacy, however, does not do the Queen justice...

The Queen’s role in the Commonwealth might have been a device to hide the reality of the British empire’s decline, but she did not believe so. The irony is that in doing her duty to this imperial shadow in the same way she did her duty to Britain, she was better able to symbolize a modern, multicultural Britain and the world of the 21st century than logic might suggest was possible for an aristocratic European princess. Indeed, she is more popular in many African Commonwealth countries today than the former white dominions, which may soon choose to become republics and long ago stopped seeing themselves as British...

Looking back on her reign, it is clear that the age of Elizabeth really was golden: an age of extraordinary prosperity, European peace, human rights, and the collapse of Soviet tyranny. Queen Elizabeth II—the Queen—was one of the great symbols of that age, though not a creator of it, a servant rather than a master. But if her legacy is anything, it is that symbols and service matter, even as what they symbolize and serve bend and bow to meet the new reality.

If I could contribute to those thoughts: When we appraise the legacy of this queen Elizabeth the Second, we will note how she bookends the reign of the First Elizabeth, who presided over the rise of England as the foundation of a United Kingdom (as Wales, Ireland, and Scotland were slowly drawn by politics and wars to merge together) and the birth of the British Empire. Where the first Elizabeth saw its beginnings, the second witnessed - and took part in - the end of empire, replacing it with a more democratic nation-oriented Commonwealth.

It's not a clean legacy, obviously: the sins and bloodshed of colonization over the centuries do not wash off easy, and places like India and Pakistan have not forgiven some of the damage done. After I wrote this article, I've seen more angry reminders from the First Nations of Canada of how they suffered under the Residential Schools that brutally "re-educated" tribal children and caused a lot of abuse. 

But Elizabeth strived to respect the new nations spun off from colonial rule, and oversaw transitions that for the most part led to stable, functioning governments. It allowed her to retain devotion from post-colonial countries that have otherwise dismissed European political dynamics for their own. It doesn't excuse the lack of apology and reparations, I know, but it explains a little why the condemnations were intermingled with the condolences.

Elizabeth's own reputation across the world is more popular than her nation's. The glamour of royalty - where she herself was never glamourous a person compared to movie stars or the Kennedys or her daughter-in-law Diana - combined with her constant public persona of Duty Personified gave her a personality both regal and comforting. Nations that had nothing to do with the British Empire came to see her as THE Queen. Even in America, where we pride ourselves on tossing off the yoke of British tyranny - take that, Farmer George! - there is/was a lot of Anglophilia when it came to QE2. We Americans recognized her more than we recognized (or respected) the Prime Ministers who actually ran the UK.

Queen Elizabeth was the face - literally for 70 years! - of a royal institution that had outlasted nearly every other monarchy. It survived through an age of rampant republicanism, having endured constant calls by those who sought to dismantle the Crown as a political force and replace it either with an elected presidency or all of the power granted to the parliamentary system. Even the staunchest critics of royalty fell silent when the question came up whether to end Elizabeth's rule: She was too popular to toss to the curb and they knew it.

Which is why her passing can very well be the end of an age. Not just her Elizabethan (Second) Age of British glory, which stood firm against Nazis and Communists, and gave us the Beatles and Monty Python and Harry Potter and other cultural milestones that will stand the test of time like Shakespeare. With the death of Elizabeth II comes the reality that her singular gift of keeping the Commonwealth united will soon end.

Even before today, there were member nations - especially in the Caribbean, led by Jamaica - openly discussing a switch to a republican form of government with their own elected heads of state. Whether they may even stay in the Commonwealth with other nations is up for debate. The situation with Brexit - where the United Kingdom itself is struggling with trade woes and economic stability - has placed strains on how the Commonwealth operates, and may not survive for long unless serious reforms take place... and the current Tory Parliament isn't looking at serious reforms. The respect for the Queen was pretty much the one thing keeping it all going. And she's gone.

Elizabeth lived and died as mortal as any of us, but she took on a role - Wearing the Queenly Mask - that required her to sacrifice moments of personal happiness for a nation's - and the world's - greater good. And it was on that mask that the rest of us across the globe projected our hopes, our fears, our ambitions, our mockery, and more. Not everybody loved her, nor the idea of monarchy. Whatever we needed of her, we saw... but it was a question of whether we could believe what we saw. In the end, her devotion and duty convinced most of us she was real. 

Gorbachev, Accidental Breaker of Wheels

Daenerys: Lannister, Targaryen, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell: they're all just spokes on a wheel. This one's on top, then that one's on top, and on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground.

Tyrion: It's a beautiful dream, stopping the wheel. You're not the first person who's ever dreamt it.

Daenerys: I'm not going to stop the wheel, I'm going to break the wheel.

-- Daenerys' famous "Break the Wheel" speech from Game of Thrones. Tyrion didn't realize she meant she was going to wipe out all the warring Houses completely.

We had just witnessed last December the anniversary of the Fall of the Soviet Union, a monumental historical moment at the beginning of the 1990s that had ended more than 80 years of political division that affected Europe and the world.

One of the architects of that historic moment, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, just passed away yesterday, and in such moments those of us who follow history and politics are going to need to pause and reflect on the impact a man like Gorbachev had on the great march of humanity.

There is some irony to consider when thinking of Gorbachev as one of those Great Men (and Women) of History, the individuals who rise to the challenges of a crisis and affect the world with tough decisions and glorious outcomes. Because what Gorbachev accomplished - an end to a Cold War that could well have ended in nuclear fire, the breaking up of East/West divisions in Europe to allow for a more unified continent to emerge under more peaceful, conciliatory conditions - were things Gorbachev didn't plan on doing.

Gorbachev didn't mean to end the Soviet Union. His importance to human history is totally by accident.

As I wrote in my take on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the USSR:

It would take a book - no, a library full of books - to go into how the Communist Utopian ideals of the 19th Century gave way to the revolutionary violence of Lenin's overthrow of Tsarist Russia, and the steps towards corruption - the rise of Party elites, the rise of Stalin to place all power into autocratic rule, the buildup of party bureaucracy that calcified Soviet society, the Greed of elites that always threatens every economic system we know, and everyday state-sanctioned brutality that dulled the Russian population into despair - that created by the 1980s a Soviet empire incapable of maintaining itself without serious reforms.

With respect to Gorbachev, it was that need for reform that led to his rise to high office in the first place. Problem was, the reforms that were needed most - honesty from leadership, cracking down on party corruption, curtailing the high costs of maintaining a war footing in a 40-year-long Cold War that included policing their own Eastern European "allies" (occupied territories, really) - were reforms that Gorbachev's own party couldn't abide.

During all of Gorbachev's early steps to fix a broken empire, the Soviet Union was hit hard by the reality of their own corruption causing for example the meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor, exposing not only their engineering failures but their political failures to respond effectively to crises. The empire itself came to an end when Gorbachev freed the Eastern European nations to decide their own policies to enact local reforms: Instead, nearly every nation from Poland to Bulgaria to Czechoslovakia to Hungary to East Germany broke off from Soviet influence as their Communist regimes collapsed with mass uprisings and protests overthrowing them...

Whatever ideology Gorbachev was trying to use to keep the Soviet Union itself intact wasn't sticking. The push for Glasnost - open transparency of the political bureaucracy - and Perestroika - economic reforms to shift away from Communism to a more Socialist model - met with pushback by lower rungs of the system that preferred the corrupt status quo...

Gorbachev was, to his credit, sincere in his calls for reform and willingness to liberalize in more humane ways. He was reluctant to apply force, refusing to fall back on the traditional power moves of Russian leaders to brutalize the population into submission. There were attempts to impose force here and there, but they gave way to acts of compromise. Gorbachev was genuinely trying to lead the Soviet Union... it was just that empire didn't want to go where he wanted it to go. The Soviets were so calcified by their corruption they chose Death By Incompetency when the inevitable coup attempt by old-liners that took place in August 1991 failed through sheer cluelessness by the plotters.

Anne Applebaum over at the Atlantic shared some of the same observations (paywalled):

The one time I saw Mikhail Gorbachev in public was on November 9, 2014. I can pin the day down because it was the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. We were in a very large, very crowded Berlin reception room, and he was sitting at a cocktail table, looking rather lost.

Gorbachev had been invited to this event as a trophy, a living, breathing souvenir of the 1980s. He was not expected to say much of interest. The fall of the Berlin Wall had happened by accident, after all; it was not something Gorbachev had ever planned. He had not set out to break up the Soviet Union, to end its tyranny, or to promote freedom. He presided over the end of a cruel and bloody empire, but without intending to do so. Almost nobody in history has ever had such a profound impact on his era, while at the same time understanding so little about it...

Real change had to wait until the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe of April 1986. News of the accident was initially hushed up, just as bad news was always hushed up in the USSR. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were allowed to march in the Kyiv May Day parade even as radioactivity spread silently across the city. But the scale of the disaster finally convinced Gorbachev that the real problem with his country was not alcohol, but its obsession with secrecy. His solution was glasnost—openness—which, like the anti-alcohol campaign, was originally meant to promote economic efficiency. Open conversation about the Soviet Union’s problems would, Gorbachev believed, strengthen communism. Managers and workers would talk about what was going wrong in their factories and workplaces, find solutions, fix the problem...

But once glasnost became official policy, once Soviet citizens could talk about whatever they wanted to talk about, then factory efficiency was not their first choice of topic. Nor did they want to rescue the sinking ship of socialism. Instead, there was an explosion of debate and discussion about the past, about the history of mass arrests and mass murders, about the Gulag and Soviet political prisons. Historical accounts, memoirs and diaries that had been hidden in desk drawers raced off the printing presses and became best-sellers. Newspapers printed stories of sleaze and mismanagement in the economy, politics, culture, and everything else. Calls for the creation of a different kind of society, a more democratic society, a more law-abiding society, began immediately. The economists whom Gorbachev had silenced started openly talking about the end of central planning. Poles, Czechs, East Germans, Ukrainians, Balts, Georgians, and others then inside the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself all began talking about the end of the empire too. Contrary to the retrospective Putinist historiography now prevalent in Russia, the glasnost era was a creative, exciting, hopeful time for millions of people, even millions of Russians.

Gorbachev seemed bewildered, and no wonder. Having lived much of his life at the top of the Soviet nomenklatura, he never understood the depth of cynicism in his own country or the depth of anger in the occupied Soviet satellite states, most of whose inhabitants rejected even the reformed communism of his youth: They didn’t want the Prague Spring; they wanted to join Western Europe. He never understood the depth of the rot inside Soviet bureaucracies or the amorality of the bureaucrats. In the end he wound up racing to catch up with history, rather than making it himself...

If we speak of Mikhail Gorbachev anymore, it was how he was both a victim of circumstance - put in charge of an empire caught in a death spiral no one could have stopped without mass violence - and a good man who ultimately refused to use violence to keep himself in power. He did see the need to cut back on the arms race between Soviet Russia and the United States, leading to the "trust but verify" disarmament treaties with Reagan and Bush in the late 1980s, which reduced the likelihood of Nuclear Armageddon and one of the truly great strides towards world peace we've seen in our lifetimes.

He himself was not remembered fondly in Russia after his fall from power and his retirement/exile from the international stage. If Gorbachev still had any fans or acceptance, it was in the European states - like Germany, who invited him to that 25th anniversary as gentle "um, thanks" gesture - who felt relief from the end of a nuclear stalemate that had their continent as a giant bullseye.

Most of what happened after he ended the Soviet Union and walked away isn't entirely his fault: The rise of an autocrat to dominate a still-corrupt Russian federation seemed like an eventuality even back in the 1990s. Historians and sociologists who were still paying attention were dropping warning signs of how the government wasn't fixing its corruption and that the population were receptive for another "strongman" to rise up. The difference in world-views between Russians and the rest of Western culture when it comes to democratic norms never improved, and even Gorbachev seemed unable to understand what "democracy" could really do.

Gorbachev didn't want to end the Soviet Union, but he was the one who had to end it. It may not have been the legacy he wanted to leave the world, but it was for the world a good legacy to leave behind.

Damn You 2020 (The Hero Gotham Needed)

I found out this morning that Tom "Tiny" Lister passed away likely from COVID-19 complications.

NOOOOO DAMN YOU 2020!

If you watched movies since the 1980s, you can't miss him. He's the tall scary-looking black guy with unexpected gravitas (via William Hughes at AVClub):

Tom “Tiny” Lister Jr. has died. Although he gained some acclaim from a short-lived wrestling career in the WWF in the early 1990s, Lister was best known as an actor, contributing his unforgettable physical presence to literally hundreds of TV shows and movies across a 30-plus-year career. As the villainous Deebo in the Friday films, the no-nonsense president in Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, and a nameless, noble prisoner in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Lister intimidated, elevated, and impressed in equal parts. Per Variety, he died today after reportedly displaying symptoms of COVID-19. Lister was 62...

And in the meantime, well: Lister worked. His 200-plus-role resumé is a laundry list of small roles made much harder to forget by the man performing them: A Klingon in Star Trek: Enterprise here, a brief turn on Nash Bridges there, a major role as one of the demonic brothers in Little Nicky over there. (His political role as “Galactic President” in The Fifth Element might not be entirely clear, but the gravitas he brought to the part certainly was.) And that’s the point: It’s not that Lister was big, or that he had an intriguing face. (He was born with a detached retina in his right eye, giving his gaze a distinctive mien.) It’s that he was able to project certainty in a way few other actors could, and practically never with so few words...

All of which brings us to The Dark Knight, and one of the most memorable (if small) roles in Christopher Nolan’s entire superhero trilogy. As the prisoner who rejects the Joker’s attempt to turn a ferry full of Gotham City inmates into one of his sick social experiments, Lister’s character—identified only as “Tattooed Prisoner”—stands right at the heart of Nolan’s film. Intentionally invoking the “scary black man” tropes that unfortunately defined what could and should have been a far more varied career, Lister projects calm—even a bit of seduction—into the request for the prison officials to hand over the deadly remote. And then the real performance comes through just as powerfully, as he calmly chucks the device through the window, weary contempt visible on his face. It’s a small performance, a blip in a movie that stretches to sometimes histrionic heights. But like the man giving it, it was also deceptively huge...

That last bit has to be put in context. Throughout the movie, the Joker had been playing a game of Sadistic Choice, forcing his victims to make decisions they normally would not commit - often with a gun or bomb threatening their lives - to prove the Joker's point that humans are bastards willing to turn on each other once the mask of civilization falls away.

I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!

It culminates in a point where the Joker has threatened the entire city of Gotham itself, forcing residents to flee on ferries on which the Joker's mooks had hidden bombs on two of them. Because the police under Gordon's (battlefield promotion) authority as Police Commissioner was worried Joker's plan would involve breaking out criminals to unleash chaos on the city, one of the ferries was commandeered to transit the worst of the worst. The second ferry was filled with scared civilians ranging in income, ethnicity, gender, and age (families are prominently shown).

The Joker stalls the ferries in the middle of Gotham Harbor, and issues his next "joke" (his ultimate step to prove himself right about the darkness in people): The detonator for each ferry's bombs are on the other boat. One ship has to turn the key on their detonator to blow up the other ship by midnight, otherwise the Joker detonates both ships. If the ferry filled with prisoners overwhelm the guards to seize their switch, they blow up innocent lives. If the ferry filled with families are terrified enough that the other ferry will jump first, they blow up criminals but must live with the guilt that they themselves became killers. Either way, the Joker wins.

The civilian ferry goes through the process of rationalizing their guilt by going through a quick vote on whether to do what the Joker wants. While the majority vote is clearly in favor of saving their own lives, nobody at first is willing to do it. Even the ferry captain holding the detonator is openly pondering "we're still here, the other boat hasn't done it yet" implying hope that he won't have to do the deed.

Meanwhile on the prisoner ferry, the prisoners are rioting but held at bay by the guards while the warden trembles holding the detonator. When it seems like the prisoners will risk getting shot to get at the switch, the scariest-looking of them (Lister) stands up and approaches the warden. Not even the guards aim at him, terrified at his approach.

You don't want to die, but you don't know how to take a life. Give it to me. These men would kill you, and take it anyway. Give it to me. You can tell 'em I took it by force. Give it to me, and I'll do what you shoulda did ten minutes ago.

When I heard him say that in the theater first time I saw the movie, I sat upright and nodded. I understood exactly what Lister's character was going to do...

Meanwhile back on the civilian ferry, a frustrated businessman stands up and declares he's willing to make the hard decision nobody else on the boat wants to make. This is a clear contrast to the black criminal who just made a moral decision to spare the civilian ferry. The businessman makes a lot of bluster about doing it, but with the detonator in his own hands he finds he can't cross that line himself, and quietly puts the switch back in its box.

The Joker, watching all of this from a nearby skyscraper, was eagerly waiting with a captive Batman to see the fireworks. He was genuinely convinced both ships would be blowing the other up by the midnight deadline. The laughing grin fading into confused disappointment is one of the great moments in an already great movie. The Joker was finally confronted by two things he could not comprehend: That innocent civilians had hope that the worst would not happen; and that hardened prisoners can have moral compasses seeking atonement.

In that moment, Lister's unnamed prisoner - moreso than the businessman character - was the moral hero Gotham needed.

It may be a small scene, just mere minutes in an epic film, but Mr. Lister's understated, important performance in a key scene in a movie that will be watched and praised forever will echo through the ages. 

RIP Mr. Lister sir.

 

DAMN YOU 2020 (RIP Sean Connery)

Just saw this morning reports that actor Sean Connery passed away.

The Scottish actor was best known for his portrayal of James Bond, being the first to bring the role to the big screen and appearing in seven of the spy thrillers.

Sir Sean died peacefully in his sleep in the Bahamas, having been "unwell for some time", his son said.

His acting career spanned five decades and he won an Oscar in 1988 for his role in The Untouchables.

Sir Sean's other films included The Hunt for Red October, Highlander, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Rock.

DAMN YOU 2016 2020 for taking my childhood celebrities from us!

I first remember seeing Sean Connery here and there in snippets of any of the Bond films playing on rerun on the evening television matinees, but I really saw him first in a theater in the movie Time Bandits, playing Agamemnon as a king with surprising depth and humanity:

And charm. That quickly became the thing I noticed watching the films he made. There was a level of self-confident whimsy to himself that seeped into most of his performances, not just as a not-so-secret British agent but also as Robin Hood, or a Chicago beat cop, or a professor of archaeology.

Connery came to stardom in the early 1960s, working in bit roles in the late 1950s before getting lead roles in stuff like Darby O'Gill and the Little People (no really) in which he caught the eye of movie producers looking to cast the first James Bond in Dr. No (no, REALLY).

Trying to explain how Connery not only filled the role of Britain's greatest fictional spy but defined the style and charm of fictional Cold War spies across the genre would take books to spell out. He portrayed Bond as a man who wouldn't be out of place at a tuxedo gala nor a Jamaican beach bar, able to flirt and bully his way into any office, any dining room, any bedroom. Someone with an upper class sense of judgment - look at his snobbery over wine and fine cuisine - but a middle class determination to get his hands dirty and get the job done.

His personality didn't fit the literary appearance of Bond, but writer Ian Fleming acknowledged the influence Connery had by changing Bond's biography to fit Connery's own (giving Bond a Scottish background, for example).

Connery achieved an effect few other actors get to make: creating from his own cloth the cultural and memetic traits of a character - "Bond, James Bond" - who achieves legendary status. Nimoy did with Spock, Basil Rathbone almost did it with Sherlock Holmes (although Jeremy Brett in the 1980s took that title away and kept it for good). Every other actor who followed Connery in the role - George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig - faced stiff comparison to how Connery did it. While Moore, Brosnan, and Craig were able to achieve their own takes, they still had to match up to the overall panache that Connery brought to the role.

Post-Bond, Connery struggled a bit in the 1970s with meaty roles in more dramatic films - The Man Who Would Be King so-starring his best friend Michael Caine, for example - but didn't hit box office success until the 1980s and 1990s during the action movie craze as a man in his fifties and sixties fighting battles more suited to men in their thirties... and yet pulling it off because of that charming self-confidence that underlined every role.

Not to mention sticking to a Scottish accent in his dialog even when playing a Russian submarine captain:

People still bought it because SEAN FREAKING CONNERY.

It did get ridiculous towards the late 1990s when he was still getting cast in roles of an action hero with romantic interests played by actresses in their thirties or even twenties, a case of age bias that questioned how Hollywood would keep casting older men with younger women. His real-life womanizing and open talk about slapping women also revealed a man with a "macho" sense of personal honor that went too far into justifying violence towards women in the worst ways.

But Connery was a brilliant actor, not necessarily someone trained for Shakespeare but capable of impressing and enticing audiences to root for him. Someone who did on-screen present male role models of determination and skill, and in some moments genuine emotion and gravitas.

These were some of his best moments:

(Note: I will go to my grave arguing that Connery should have won the Best Supporting Oscar for Last Crusade over Untouchables)

Also, the man pretty much brought Scottish kilts back to sexy.

Summon the pipers! We have a Scotsman down!

All British flags to remain at half-staff until 11/007 presumably.

DAMN YOU 2020 (RIP Eddie Van Halen)

GODDAMN YOU 2020 WITH ALL THIS CELEBRITY DEATH, MAKING 2016 LOOK LIKE A PARTY RIGHT NOW.

No. No no no. I saw the news while wrapping up things at work this afternoon. Eddie Van Halen died of cancer today (via Stephen Thompson at NPR). NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

In a band known for its instability — due in part to a rotating cast of lead singers that most notably includes David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar — Eddie Van Halen and his brother, Alex, remained constants, appearing on 12 studio albums that reached across five decades and sold tens of millions of copies.

No matter the singer, Eddie Van Halen's high-flying guitar sound — heavy on tapping, with both hands on the neck of the instrument — was deeply influential, but also hard to imitate. He grew up obsessed with Eric Clapton, only to himself become a lodestar for generations of guitarists.

To explain how hard this hits: Dudes, I am a wild white boy who grew up in the mean streets of suburbia, off the shores of the Gulf Coast in North Pinellas County, where 98 Rock was our oracle and hard blistering guitar noises our tonic.

I am not exaggerating to say in my day, in that place, the bands you listened to were Led Zeppelin and Van Halen. The Tampa Bay area was/still is a heavy metal Mecca. Half the garages between Palm Harbor to Gulfport had 15-year-olds teaching themselves "Eruption."

My teen years was spent listening to that music, between Halen and Hendrix and Zeppelin and AC/DC (and also Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, U2, the Police, the Hooters (yes, they were a band)... I have diverse taste). Driving back and forth on Gulf-to-Bay, windows down, blasting "Panama" or "Everybody Wants Some!" Well, okay, I didn't cruise all that often, but I knew guys and gals who did.

Christ. CHRIST GOD NO. This has been a shitty year for celebrity deaths just like 2016 and now I'm getting sick just thinking of the similarities...

In the meantime, I need to regroup. I was planning on a Bruce Springsteen album ranking this month but now, forget it, I gotta give my respects to Van Halen... (breaks out the CD collection) Huge heads up: I may be one of the few people who ranks Women and Children First as the band's best album.

I leave you with this legacy of the Van Halen juggernaut:

Whose side did you take, Halen or Roth? A shibboleth for a generation. I took the diplomatic approach: I bought and listened to Van Hagar (5150 and OU812) and Roth (Eat Em and Smile and Skyscraper). I have no idea what Van Halen was doing from Balance onward, but I ended up siding with the band. 

Oh crap, just watching that Airheads clip... Lemmy died a while back. Oh GOD HAROLD RAMIS DIED TOO. DAMMIT I'M CRYING HERE.

Superheroes Shouldn't Die 2020 Edition: Wakanda Forever

(Update 8/31: Thank you again Batocchio for the link to Crooks&Liars Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please do click on the link below to John Lewis' eulogy as well, thank ye)

2020 is starting to suck in ways that even 2016 never thought of.

T'Challa died! (well, the actor):

...(Chadwick) Boseman is well known in our realm for playing T’Challa the Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but famously also played Jackie Robinson in 42, along with roles in Draft Day, Gods of Egypt, Marshall, and more...

I just wrote this last month, covering the passing of Civil Rights icon John Lewis:

There's a saying in pop culture: Representation matters. It's why little girls look up to giant posters of Wonder Woman and cry when running into Gal Gadot (it's why getting a Wonder Woman movie made period since the superhero movie boom of the late 1980s was a big f-cking deal). It's why not just African-Americans but Africans looked to Black Panther as a role model since the 1960s when Lee and Kirby created his character. It's why the push for Asian heroes to get introduced into the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is front-page news.

After Black Panther movie came out, there were serious efforts to get the Wakandan salute done properly in the real world:

photo from Jose Luis Magana (AP Photo)

Comic books, it should be noted, is a place where legends are formed and cultures shaped. The best tales, the best heroes, become larger-than-life figures who can inspire and motivate. It's not that Superman can lift cars over his head, it's that Superman can show up on a ledge next to a teenage girl and talk her down from suicide. It's that Captain Marvel can stand up after all these men knock her down with the awareness she doesn't have to prove a damn thing to them. It's that Black Panther can defend an African nation - all of Africa in some stories - from the scars and damage of colonization to build a better future.

This is a huge passing. Boseman was poised to carry the Marvel Cinematic franchise into the 2020s, playing a character whose legendary status is on par with Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, in some places even Superman. Representation matters. Black Panther is a global hero, and the actor playing him helps build that identity in ways that any replacement actor will struggle to achieve (look to how hard it is to find someone to fill Christopher Reeve's iconic take on Superman, or filling Leonard Nimoy's role as Spock).

Also lost in this passing is a good person, who had been fighting colon cancer (stage 3, which is serious) while starring in a string of movies - not just Black Panther and the Avengers movies, but played Thurgood Marshall in a biopic and in a Spike Lee Da 5 Bloods Vietnam War tale - since 2016. Boseman was an actor with range, pathos, and wit.

If anything, Boseman helped confirmed the folly of white people and potato salad forever:

"Ah Hell Naw, Karen, keep your bland-ass potato salad to yourself!" "In the face!"

/crying

Not All Heroes Wear Capes. This Hero Wore a Tan Trenchcoat While Carrying Whole Nations Across Bridges

Last night, a superhero of American history passed away. Via Calvin Woodward and Desiree Seals from AP News:

John Lewis, a lion of the civil rights movement whose bloody beating by Alabama state troopers in 1965 helped galvanize opposition to racial segregation, and who went on to a long and celebrated career in Congress, has died. He was 80.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed Lewis’ passing late Friday night, calling him “one of the greatest heroes of American history.”

“All of us were humbled to call Congressman Lewis a colleague, and are heartbroken by his passing,” Pelosi said. “May his memory be an inspiration that moves us all to, in the face of injustice, make ‘good trouble, necessary trouble.’”

Lewis is from that pantheon of civil rights activists who lead - always from the front - marches and rallies, often into the path of brutality and attacks by the white authorities who wanted to keep the United States segregated and keep Blacks poor and broken. His best-known moment came in 1965, when he was part of a freedom walk to Alabama's capital Montgomery calling for the right of Blacks to vote, when the police came down violently as the march crossed the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge:

At age 25 — walking at the head of the march with his hands tucked in the pockets of his tan overcoat — Lewis was knocked to the ground and beaten by police. His skull was fractured, and nationally televised images of the brutality forced the country’s attention on racial oppression in the South.

Within days, King led more marches in the state, and President Lyndon Johnson soon was pressing Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. The bill became law later that year, removing barriers that had barred Blacks from voting...

As the Sixties gave way to the Seventies, Lewis had relocated to Atlanta and got into politics, going from city council to U.S. Congressman by 1986. He remained in office until his death, a strong and fierce reminder of the fight for the right to vote and the ongoing fights to uphold the American ideals of Liberty and Justice For All.

In that role, Lewis moved into the ranks of legend and hero. His biography and civil rights struggles were translated into a series of graphic novels, starting with March, a three-volume set with a sequel series titled Run. The books' popularity exists beyond the comics shops: it's becoming required reading at schools and colleges.

With that, Lewis got invites to comic-cons, not a place for history and usually a place for gaudy outfits, oversized costumes showing off the likes of buckets of Batmans, waves of Wonder Women, bevvies of Black Widows, and Plethora of Deadpools. It's called cosplay.

To promote the second volume of March, Lewis decided to cosplay... and showed up in the tan trenchcoat he wore as he crossed the Pettus Bridge. Via Michael Cavna at the Washington Post:

And so, on Saturday, the civil-rights hero made his return to Comic-Con, this time to support “March: Book Two” alongside Aydin and the trilogy’s artist, the Eisner Award-winning Nate Powell. And this time, Lewis indeed chose to cosplay.

Trench coat? Check.

Backpack? Check.

And inside that backpack were even a couple of books: the first two volumes of the RFK Award-winning “March.”

Upon landing in San Diego, Lewis had decided to dress up as his 25-year-old self — the young man who, on the road to Selma, Ala., led 600 civil-rights marchers peacefully across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, at the foot of which the nonviolent protestors were beaten and tear-gassed by state troopers, many on horseback. Attacked by nightstick, his skull fractured, Lewis bled that day for the cause. He told me: “I saw death. I thought I was going to die...”

And there, as the three “March” collaborators arrived at their Saturday panel, was not just a large, eager audience, but a grouping of schoolchildren down in front. Lewis told Comic Riffs two years ago that a motivating factor in writing “March” as a graphic novel was to reach the next generation — to have them, through art, intimately witness the emotional and physical toll that the path to freedom took, from sit-ins to freedom rides.

A local school teacher who had tickets to the San Diego Comic Con - THE con, the one every comic fantasy scifi geek hopes to attend once in their lives - brought his kids to see Lewis, to pass along the experience of the Civil Rights era, to learn the history and be touched by it.

When it got time to end the panel and get Lewis back to his celebrity booth, an agreement got hashed out to let Lewis lead the kids in a walk of their own.

He walked an army of kids around the convention hall. not into the face of racial violence but a teachable moment how a movement can move people, across conventions as much as bridges and cities.

From the Washington Post article, credited to Top Shelf Productions

There's a saying in pop culture: Representation matters. It's why little girls look up to giant posters of Wonder Woman and cry when running into Gal Gadot (it's why getting a Wonder Woman movie made period since the superhero movie boom of the late 1980s was a big f-cking deal). It's why not just African-Americans but Africans looked to Black Panther as a role model since the 1960s when Lee and Kirby created his character. It's why the push for Asian heroes to get introduced into the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is front-page news.

John Lewis lived as a hero in a trenchcoat. He walked the walk, and showed younger generations the path to walk as well.

Lewis walks into legend now, sadly at a moment when this generation and the ones younger than us need to march against the police violence and political tyranny that's growing worse.

Time to march like Lewis.

CHEWIE! What a WOOKIE! RIP Peter Mayhew

Just as I was getting off work tonight, I heard breaking news that Peter Mayhew passed away.

You might remember him as this:

CHEWIE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Let us all now remember the Wookie With the Lookie.

Things I Remember About Bush The Elder 1924 - 2018

With Bush Sr's. passing yesterday, this has been a day of reflection and pondering.

His was the Presidency of my college years, and the first election I voted in. So there's a lot of significance in this for me looking back at what I recall (more than the Character review I made about five years ago).

• I voted for Bush as President. Yes, in hindsight voting for ANY Republican feels blasphemous. But in 1988 as a college freshman I couldn't really recognize the damage - on social issues and public health issues like the AIDS crisis and the Drug War - being done. And a lot of the REALLY BAD stuff the Republicans would get into came during the 1990s under darker leadership by Newt Gingrich and others.
• Bush on foreign policy was one of the more competent Presidents we had, overseeing a serious transitional moment with the collapse of Communism, the opening of Eastern Europe, and political power shifts across every continent.
• Bush *was* quick on the trigger finger when it came to troop deployments, border clashes, and straight-up war. People seem to forget we sent in armed forces to overthrow Noriega in Panama in 1989 on what turned out to be sketchy reports. There was also the first Persian Gulf War/invasion of Iraq in 1990-91 where U.S. mishandling of Saddam - our government saw him as a useful opponent against a hostile Iran throughout the 1980s - allowed that dictator to invade Kuwait and disrupt the local balance of power. Towards the end of his term, Bush sent troops into Somalia as a peace-keeping force to help the citizenry during a famine caused by civil war... but doesn't leave in place an agenda or pull-out strategy, leaving it to Clinton.
• Bush did attempt bipartisan dealing with a Democratic-controlled Congress... by agreeing to tax hikes that went against the Supply-Side dogma of many Republicans who came to power during the Reagan years. It actually triggered an intraparty revolt by Newt that drove out moderates (RINOs) and led to the current monstrous party leadership running the GOP now.
• As a political campaigner, Bush was a nasty piece of work, relying on slander and mudslinging even in the 1960s as a Texas Congressman. The Willie Horton attack ads of the 1988 Presidential campaign was a new low - even compared to the harsh "Daisy" ad LBJ ran against Goldwater in 1964 - and essentially opened up a new era of dirty campaigning that has darkened our electorate since (and it's a tactic his own sons Dubya and Jeb rely on far too often themselves).
• Bush *did* preside over major achievements such as the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a major Immigration Reform act (something the modern GOP would never touch), a key Civil Rights Act protecting workers from discrimination, overall reductions in nuclear weapons across the globe...
• Oh, and he gave Dana Carvey good reason to earn a paycheck on Saturday Night Live for 4 straight years.

Seriously, message received.

Respectful: The Passing of John McCain

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act I)

So the news came tonight that Sen. John McCain, former Presidential candidate in 2008, primary challenger in 2000, passed away from the brain cancer that plagued him his final year.

Much of McCain's biography - the reckless youth of being a Navy family brat, the wartime pilot shot down over Vietnam and tortured as a POW, the years of Arizona politics from Congressman to Senator to Presidential hopeful - will get rehashed elsewhere, here I need to speak to the personal feelings I have for the man and for the Republican Party he tried to lead for the last twenty or so years.

Back in those days, before I turned Apostate, I tried being a Republican along the moderate lines of an Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt. By 2000 that meant following McCain, who presented himself as a Reformer with regards to elections/campaigning and other issues (although on key GOP issues like abortion and tax cuts he remained devout). I followed McCain because the alternative was George W. Bush (aka Bush the Lesser), and by 2000 I had no love for the Bush family at all. Jeb in particular - pandering SOB who fell assbackwards into the Florida governorship in 1998 - had earned my personal hatred for a hundred lifetimes.

But I truly believed McCain was genuine, a possible chance at getting a Republican candidate who had the charm and political will to make effective changes. I was angry at the party sabotage of his South Carolina primary, and I regretted the fact that by the time I was in the streets of Ft. Lauderdale waving McCain signs that March that McCain had to suspend his efforts.

I will still argue - for all that I know today about McCain and all the other possibilities between then and now - that if McCain had been the GOP nominee in 2000, our nation would have been better off than the disaster that ended up being the Dubya years.

I lost a lot of admiration for him during the 2008 campaigning, when he kept pandering to the GOP deep-pockets and kept making grandiose promises that ended up being staged phoniness. I still can't believe he stood up David Letterman on the excuse of responding to the Economic Meltdown of 2007-08, only to end up getting caught on-camera preening for yet another Beltway talking head show. Why did you sink that low, boss?

But there will be moments that stick out for me, the moments when he tried to speak to our better angels during a bitter 2008 campaign, when the Far Right media was going out of its way to fearmonger about Obama. In a place and in front of people who could have turned against him, McCain spoke well of his Democratic opponent, tried to speak to a "respectful" position that tried to make it clear that while Republican and Democrat may be on opposite sides of an argument we were all still Americans:

"No, ma'am. No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about. He's not (an Arab). Thank you."

He respected others. At the end of the day, despite political pandering at times, despite sticking to agendas that were oft-times partisan, McCain kept the Faith. He kept the Faith about America and about fellow Americans and did what he could to keep his party base from going off the rails into the pit of race hatred and worse.

That and the fact McCain had a level of self-deprecating humor that made him a decent Saturday Night Live host.

It's a damn shame McCain died knowing full well the current bastard in the White House took the dark and easy path of racial pandering, the path McCain refused to take. In the end, McCain was willing to risk the loss of 2008 to retain his own integrity, an integrity the cheater in 2016 never had.

There was little love lost between McCain and trump: McCain the military man who suffered as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam, trump the goddamned draft dodger who had the discourtesy to insult McCain for being a "loser" who got caught and tortured. This is how our nation is right now: the worst possible man with political power, likely mocking the more honorable soul whose passing will be better remembered. If anything, McCain will have the last laugh: Obama was invited to speak at McCain's funeral, not trump.

I shook McCain's hand once. It might have been 2005 (maybe 2004), and it was before he broke my heart in 2008. While working at the University of Florida, I came across a setup in the Reitz Union grass plaza for a graduation ceremony and found out that he would be the honored speaker. I took a seat along one aisle, not realizing it would be the aisle where the parade would head to the stage. So there I was completely surprised and shaking his hand and telling him I voted for him in 2000 and he smiled and nodded and that was about it.

McCain will likely be the last Republican I will ever respect, even just a bit, even through all the disagreements I eventually had when he surrendered enough of his identity as a "reformer" for party power in 2008 and afterward.

I grew to regret what had happened, partly despairing that a lot of it was because his Republican Party kept sinking into that racist fearmongering morass, and that rather than reform it or abandon it to retain his honor he sank with it. But in some respects a Great Man has passed, possibly the last one who tried to save something that didn't want to be saved.

I am looking up in the sky tonight for comets. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.