The Guild 5-18-2003 God Bless Art Linkletter

[BigWaveBetty]

Last week Art Linkletter was given the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Daytime Emmys. I saw him accept the award and at 90 years old he's still as sharp as ever. He made me smile all the way through his speech (no transcript online yet) and at the end he said there were two groups of people he liked to interview the most, kids and old people. Kids, because they don't know what they're saying and old people because they don't care what they say.

You gotta love Art, a great American! Here's a link to an interview he did with Human Events Online.

A Lunch With Art Linkletter
Television Legend Remembers Nixon, Reagan -- Speaks Out for Bush Tax Cut

[BigWaveBetty]

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[BigWaveBetty]

Good Morning!

[FoxGirl]

Good morning! It's gray and cool today. Just getting ready to have some breakfast.

[mountaineer]

Gray, damp and cool here, too, FG. I'm getting a little stir crazy, waiting for real summertime weather.

[Iowa Granny]

Cool and gray here, too. But the sun is trying to break thru, so perhaps we will have a decent day.

Gardening on the agenda for today. Tomorrow will be a Joint-Ritis Day.

[BigWaveBetty]

Here's a review of Blumenthal's book by Andrew Sullivan. Some snippets:

It has the tone and manner and piety of one of those "Lives of the Saints" books most Catholic school kids were once forced to read at some point or other. It’s not a memoir, or a history. It’s a Gospel.

If you were expecting a novelist’s treatment, this must be something of a let-down. Mr. Clinton is and was a fascinatingly complex, flawed, intelligent, charismatic human being. Few people got as close to him as Sidney did—at moments of extreme tension and drama. The potential for a real and vivid portrait of the man is great. And yet the picture we get of Mr. Clinton from this book is strangely blank. No foibles; no expletives; no tears; no wit; not a single memorable phrase; not even a fresh insight into the man’s psycho-sexual compulsions.

Just as, for him, there is no separation between church and state—i.e., between the interests of the Democratic Party and the interests of America—so, for Sid, the conceptofadistinctionbetween journalism and politics was and is meaningless. The only purpose for journalism is to assist the Democratic Party in its bid to get or to keep power. The only reason for writing anything was to promote this political agenda. The idea of "truth" or "objectivity," or authorial distance, or anything that set the writer apart from his political ends, was unintelligible to Mr. Blumenthal. That’s why so many of the attacks on him are unfair. His critics assume that he holds the usual liberal notions of what constitutes professional journalism, and has betrayed them. But he doesn’t and he hasn’t.

....Sid smelled power—and the kind of amoral tenacity he respected.

Once you realize this, everything else in the book is completely, utterly predictable. Its version of the tortured, tawdry, trivial decade of the 1990’s is so one-sided it’s almost comic. Reading this book is like listening to music on a Walkman with only one earphone in. Not only is Bill Clinton morally right, he’s close to politically flawless. All the facts of the Presidency are marshaled, sometimes with good narrative skill and smooth prose, to defend this assumption. There is not an argument as such in the book, if by argument you mean an attempt to grapple with an alternative worldview.

....Sidney never rethinks his loyalty, or re-examines Clinton’s character. He doesn’t even seem to realize that Mr. Clinton had betrayed the trust of their friendship to betray the trust of his marriage: "I had wanted to believe him, as the rest of his staff had wanted to, whatever our doubts might have been. But the uncomfortable truth now could no longer be denied. Throughout the already long battle since January, I had repressed whatever I felt about Mr. Clinton’s behavior on behalf of the larger political interest. What I felt mattered even less now. The battle over the past eight months was just a preliminary to an even greater one—a fight, it appeared to me, to the death."

....it’s just as revealing about the hollow moral center of Bill Clinton and Clintonism. The fact that the President and, more worryingly, his wife sought out this slightly nutty man as their confidant—a man whom they knew would never question them, never challenge them, never leave them—reveals the brittleness of their characters and the ruthlessness behind their sanctimony. They used him for his propagandistic skills and his fawning loyalty. They used him to drape their own modest but defensible record with the patina of world-historical significance. And they used him to lie to one another. Some people would find that demeaning. It tells you a lot about Sidney Blumenthal that he regards it as an achievement worth recording for the ages.

[BigWaveBetty]

Did you happen to see any of the dog and pony show the dims put on yesterday in Iowa?

Bob Graham has completely lost his mind.

Al Sharpton got more standing O's than anyone. :-)

[mountaineer]

From Page Six:

THE lesbian daughter of Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) is eager to rally the gay vote to get her dad elected president. Chrissy Gephardt is expected to be far more aggressive than Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary, in exhorting the lavender legions to pull the lever for her father. Roll Call reports that the Gephardt campaign is "very interested" in finding a media outlet to do an extensive interview with Chrissy, who is a social worker in the Washington, D.C., area.

Her sexuality has so far only been alluded to in a Boston Globe story about civil unions and in her biography on the Gephardt campaign Web site. Her story is now expected to be featured in an upcoming issue of People magazine. Gephardt spokesman Erik Smith said, "In a presidential campaign, a candidate's life is an open book." [So Howdy Doody wants his daughter's sexual practices to be an open book; wonder if he wants us to explore his finances quite so carefully?]

[mountaineer]

What about Kucinich? Earth to Denny! There's no sign of intelligent life on your planet!

Meanwhile, Clinton was at the Preakness yesterday, a guest of his girlfriend's father:

ALSO GATHERING attention at the rain-soaked oval was former president Bill Clinton. He was a guest of Magna Entertainment chairman Frank Stronach in the track's Turf Club and picked Funny Cide to win for all the right reasons.

''Out of deference to the junior senator from New York [wife Hillary Clinton], I have to pick Funny Cide,'' the ex-president said. ''But I don't think it's going to be a two-horse race. I think a long shot will get up for second.''

Clinton proved as good a horseplayer as his late mother was when Midway Road--at 20-1--scooted through the inside late to complete a $120.60 exacta underneath Funny Cide. The colt is owned by Will Farish, George W. Bush's ambassador to Great Britain. source

[BigWaveBetty]

[So Howdy Doody wants his daughter's sexual practices to be an open book; wonder if he wants us to explore his finances quite so carefully?]

We still don't know everything about Dick's beach house. And then there's the story that Dick and brother disagree about, the lovely tale of how Dick's dad tells him, if it weren't for the union we wouldn't have a roof over our heads. Dick's brother claims he never heard his dad say anything like that. That their dad was a die hard republican who hid his face in his hands upon learning his two sons were democrats.

Hey, you golfers becareful out there!

Lightning strikes twice for golfer

A golfer has told how he completed a round despite being hit by lightning twice within 30 minutes.

Pub manager Vincenzo Frascella, 50, of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, was struck on the 14th and 17th holes of the Orton Meadows Golf Course in Peterborough on Wednesday.

Both times bolts struck the tip of his umbrella as he sheltered during storms.

"It's one of those things where you don't know whether you're lucky to be alive or unlucky to have been hit. I actually think I was a bit unlucky," said Mr Frascella, a father of two who has a golf handicap of 25.

"The first time there was a flash and I felt it go down my arm. The second was a bit worse. It went through my shoulder blade. It was like needles going all the way from my shoulder down my arm.

"I carried on and finished the round. I didn't think too much of it to be honest. I haven't been checked out or anything and I haven't felt any ill effects.

"I won't tell you my score. It was a bad day. But I don't think that was anything to do with the lightning. I just had a stinker."

Mr Frascella said he had been told the chances of lightning striking a person twice were about three million to one.

He added: "It's certainly a day I'll remember."

[BigWaveBetty]

What about Kucinich? Earth to Denny! There's no sign of intelligent life on your planet!

Oh yeah, I figured that went without saying. :-) I think he came in second with the most standing O's.

I squeal with glee everytime one of these nine say, "Well you know, President Bush didn't get the most votes..." these dolts do know we don't live in a democracy, don't they?

The funniest part of the whole show IMO was how they went on and on about all the freedoms we've lost under the ruthless GWB and in the same breath screamed about all the new laws that must be passed to control the ever evil BIG BUSINESS.

Clinton proved as good a horseplayer as his late mother was when Midway Road--at 20-1--scooted through the inside

Yes, bill has definitely missed his calling.

[BigWaveBetty]

Lady Thatcher tells it like it is!

“For years, many governments played down the threats of Islamic revolution, turned a blind eye to international terrorism and accepted the development of weaponry of mass destruction. Indeed, some politicians were happy to go further, collaborating with the self-proclaimed enemies of the West for their own short-term gain — but enough about the French. So deep had the rot set in that the UN security council itself was paralysed.”

She spoke of her pride at the way Britain stood by America over Iraq: “Our own Prime Minister was staunch and our forces were superb. But, above, all, it is President Bush who deserves the credit for victory.”

Lady Thatcher said that she had “drunk deep from the same well of ideas” as her great ally, the former US President Ronald Reagan. Both instinctively knew what worked, she said, including low taxes, small government and enterprise. “We knew, too, what did not work, namely socialism in every shape or form. Nowadays socialism is more often dressed up as environmentalism, feminism, or international concern for human rights. All sound good in the abstract.

“But scratch the surface and you will as likely as not discover anti-capitalism, patronising and distorting quotas, and intrusions upon the sovereignty and democracy of nations.”

Lady Thatcher warned that America and Britain faced “a pervasive culture of anti-Westernism" that needed to be challenged. "There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it." Full story

[Iowa Granny]

I missed the Dog and Pony Show due to wedding of Hubby's neice.

Our papers are full of it this morning. I'll go check to see if the Presidential Watch site is updated yet (our webmistress does this all by herself, and it sometimes takes until midday to get all sources checked for the juiciest tidbits). If it is, I'll drag it back here.

[BigWaveBetty]

Former first lady Nancy Reagan, left, and Acting Secretary of the Navy Hansford T. Johnson share a light moment with uniformed crew members of the soon-to-be-commissioned aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (news - web sites), at a reception at the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles, Saturday, May 17, 2003. In a brief ceremony Mrs. Reagan was honored with the Navy's Distinguished Public Service Award, for providing a 'strong and dignified figure of American resolve and commitment' after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and for her sponsorship of the USS Ronald Reagan. Mrs. Reagan and Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) will participate in the ship's commissioning July 12 in Virginia. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

..

[BigWaveBetty]

Our papers are full of it this morning.

I'll just bet they are. ;-)

Your webmistress will be very busy chronicling all the juice, there was plenty of it. I look forward to seeing what she snips from Graham.

He accused the president of all kinds of nasty things and for some strange reason The Orlando Sentinel doesn't have one of his quotes. Hmmmmmmmm.

Could it be the Slantnel doesn't want reasonable dems to know what he's been spewing?

[BigWaveBetty]

So cute!

17-month-old AnFernce Negron waves flags and wears a tee shirt with a photo of his father, Marine Sgt. Jorge Negron, a member of the Supply Company with the 2nd Force Service Support Group based at Camp Lejeune, as he waits for his father to return to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, May 17, 2003. Negron was one of 300 Marines returning to the base from deployment to Iraq (news - web sites) during the war. The families were reunited with their Marines during the afternoon homecoming. REUTERS/Randy Davey

[BigWaveBetty]

Not cute at all.

Former Miss France Mareva Galanter wears high-laced shoes during red-carpet arrivals at the 56th International Film Festival in Cannes, May 17, 2003. The French Riviera town of Cannes comes to life during the 12-day festival with movie premieres, deal-making and parties. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

There was no view from the front, thank goodness.

[SuziQ]

Tomorrow will be a Joint-Ritis Day

Hey, Granny! Is that you on the commercial saying joint-RItis? ;o)

[BigWaveBetty]

Hehehe!

Donahue gets booed at N.C. State graduation.

[Iowa Granny]

Hey, Granny! Is that you on the commercial saying joint-RItis?No, when I'm not involved in activities that require gallons of Joint Ritis from which to recover, I'm busy sleeping it off. No time for commercials here.