Category: Uncategorized
Folklife Festival 2007
As noted last year about this time, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival is my favorite annual event in Washington. Today, I made my annual pilgrimmage and had that moment of grace I described in last year’s post. This year, the cultures presented were the Mekong Delta, the Commonwealth of Virginia and Northern Ireland. As one might expect, the highlight was the music performed in the Northern Ireland performance tent.
The genius of this festival is the way the Smithsonian Folklife Center plucks local musicians out of their natural habitat, in this case presumably a circuit of Irish pubs, and brings them to Washington to delight and surprise us. This year, it was a band called Four Men and a Dog that brought down the house. I’m not sure which of the players is considered the dog, but they had the performance tent rocking.
What I love best about the festival is the spontaneous dancing that occurs. People strolling along the Mall hear music and are drawn to it. Next thing you know, they are on the dance floor, sometimes dancing with strangers. I truly consider those moments of grace and it happens every year.
Check it out in this longish (3 minutes) and somewhat poor quality video I took and edited. Hang in there for the shots of the dancers. As you can see, inhibitions are left at the door. There’s the old guy who leaped from the crowd and did a poor imitation of Irish step dancing right in front of the bandstand, a younger guy with similar pretentions, a very smooth couple who clearly know how it’s done and the children scampering in betweent the larger dancers.
Beautiful.
Impeach Cheney
“The legal precedent set by Cheney would justify a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to kidnap American tourists in Paris and to dispatch them to dungeons in Belarus if they were suspected of Chechen sympathies.”
And he concludes with this:
“In the end, President Bush regularly is unable to explain or defend the policies of his own administration, and that is because the heavy intellectual labor has been performed in the office of the vice president. Cheney is impeachable for his overweening power and his sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law.”
It is genuinely scary the things that this administration has done to the country. And the precedents they set will be enshrined in our government if Congress doesn’t act.
Let’s hope they have the courage to do so.
In Defense of PR Experts
I am proud to work for what I consider the premier public relations firm in the world. We are an extremely ethical firm and are the best in the business at any comminications challege an organization might face. One of the best parts of my job is that I get to dabble in other people’s business, professions and avocations. But I am always acutely aware that what we do is explain what they do. We don’t do what they do. But it sure is fun learning what they do.
One of my all-time favorite clients was the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. I believe we provided great communications services and came to understand the enormous complexity involved in keeping planes from bumping into one another on the ground or in the air. But after four years working with the association, I had no illusions that I was qualified to manage air traffic. That is why I take no offense that my friend John Carr uses the term “PR expert” as an epithet in his current post on the Main Bang.
Which brings me to the current administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. Like me, she’s a PR person. But unlike me, she thinks she can run our nation’s air traffic control system. After almost five years on the job, we have impirical evidence that I’m right and she’s wrong. On the other hand, I actually had more experience with air traffic control than she did going into her job. I even visited the tower at Dulles Airport. And, more importantly, I really like all the air traffic controllers I’ve met and many of them like me. That certainly distinquishes me from the current administrator.
So, maybe I am more qualified that I thought. In fact, maybe I’m just the guy for the job of FAA Administrator. Yeah, that’s the ticket, Bill Black, FAA Administrator! I like the sound of that. So, stand aside John Carr, what this country needs is a qualified PR expert to be FAA Administrator and, therefore, I’m throwing my hat into the ring.
Click here to vote for me! While you won’t find my name, just click on “OTHER.” We’ll fill in my name later.
Welcome Main Bangers!
It’s been pretty quiet here at the Preferential Option. While I do admit to giving John Carr the idea of starting a blog, I have preferred to blog away in obscurity. John has taken his blog to places I could not have imagined when I suggested he start one. He has actually had an impact on peoples’ lives. I stand in awe of his accomplishments.
For me, I mainly use this blog as an opportunity to vent my rage at the Bush Administration, for which my loathing knows no bounds. But I’ve also tried various and sundry new blogging techiques. You’ll see in the previous post that I’ve figured out how to create and post little music videos. I’m so excited about that, it even distracted me from Bush bashing, albeit temporarily.
So, feel free to look around. While I wasn’t expecting company, you are certainly welcome. And now I will feel an obligation to post more frequently, in case you choose to come back.
For those of my readers not coming from the Main Bang (Hi, Mom!), here’s a link to the post I’m responding to here.
Thanks, John.
Gettysburg Part 2
God, I love Macs. Here’s a music video I created of my trip to Gettysburg on Tuesday of this week. Done in less than a day.
Gettysburg
Just came back from a business meeting in Gettysburg that included a tour of the battlefield. Part of the meeting was “Leadership Lessons from the Battle of Gettysburg.” Very cool and informative. Here’s some video I took out the window of the bus as we traveled along the line that the Union held on the third day, looking across the field where Pickett’s Charge took place. Watch and listen:
Spear chucker???
I was watching Fox News’ Sunday morning news show. Brit Hume was commending on Fred Thompson for President. He described the campaign finance reform hearings that Thompson chaired and was bemoaning the fact that he was buffaloed by Sen. John Glenn who he described as “not your typical spearchucker for the Democratic Party.” He obviously meant “spear carrier.” But the word rolled off his tongue in a way that suggested it was not the first time he’d used the racist term.
Wonder of Juan Williams had a sidebar conversation with him after the show?
The Worst
I often try to think back to Vietnam and ask myself whether today’s situation is really worse than Vietnam. It feels a lot worse, but that may just be because it is now and memories fade. Many of the atrocities, both real and mataphorical, that outrage us today, also occurred during Vietnam. Bad or deceptive intelligence, threats against consitutional rights and torture were part of the bill of particulars against Johnson and then Nixon. Of course, in Vietnam, there were 55,000 dead and we’re only up to 3,500 now. But still, why does this feel so much worse.
Well, one reason is that it was so predictable, which makes it even more tragic. You would think that the experience of Vietnam would have educated us at least enough to avoid the same mistakes again. Of course, Bush learned nothing from Vietnam, except maybe how to use connections to avoid any inconvenience visited upon himself.
But the real reason this is worse is because the misbehavior during Vietnam was wrong and those doing it knew it was wrong. They truly believed that the constitutional violations, the torture and the skewing of intelligence was necessary for some great good. But they also knew that, if it came out, they’d be screwed.
On the other hand, this crowd is actively trying to institutionalize the misbehavior. They are advancing consitutional theories that justify Presidential authority beyond all precedent. While they have tried to hide their activities, when caught, they seek to justify them under the unitary executive, which is another name for fascism.
That’s why it’s worse. Past “crimes” were always pretty much understood to be crimes. These crimes are portrayed as patriotic duty. In this way, they are trying to change the country into something different than what it was. As I read recently somewhere, Bush and Cheney gave an oath not to proect the American people or the physical boundaries of the United States. Their oath was to protect the Constitution. An oath they have violated repeatedly and continue to do so.
God Save the United States of America. That’s what it will take, I fear, for us to survive the next 18 months.
Bye, bye Bill
Bill Richardson is toast. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He has an earthy appeal, a regular guy candor that makes him seem like a straight shooter. I know people who’ve worked for him and one of his closest advisors is a guy I know well and respect.
Then he appeared on Meet the Press. John Dickerson of Slate magazine takes him apart for his performance and he makes a good case. But, for me, it was the question at the end where Russert referenced the fact that he had claimed to be both a Red Sox fan and a Yankees fan. And he had the quotes to prove it. Here’s the end of a tortured explanation:
GOV. RICHARDSON: I, my favorite team has always been the Red Sox.
MR. RUSSERT: You’re a Red Sox fan.
GOV. RICHARDSON: I’m a Red Sox fan.
MR. RUSSERT: End of subject.
GOV. RICHARDSON: End of subject.
MR. RUSSERT: You better get rid of this book.
GOV. RICHARDSON: Oh, no! I’m also a Yankee fan. I also like…
Forget it! He’s dead to me.
Rep. Artur Davis
Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) is my new hero. He participated in a debate on the Lehrer News Hour last night with Rep. Dan Lundgren (R-CA) focused on Monica Goodling’s testimony on the DOJ issues before the House Judiciary Committee. Davis was awesome, articulate, knowledeable and reasoned. Lundgren was his typical, toady self. Lundgren dismissed her admission that she used political criteria in hiring attorneys at Justice as some kind of minor infracation that should be forgiven because she admitted it. Can you imagine what Lundgren would be saying if the same set of facts applied to Janet Reno’s Justice Department?
But Davis nailed the issue and it’s worthing reviewing the entire session. But I found this to be the killer quote:
“Another quick point. If Monica Goodling acknowledged that she used political considerations with respect to the hiring of career AUSAs, then how can we not believe that political considerations were probably used to select the U.S. attorneys? It’s a state of mind. And if you’ve got that state of mind and your administration has that state of mind, I don’t think it just fades out.”
She said she might have applied politics to hiring at the Department more than 50 times. And we’re supposed to believe that politics played no part in the US Attorney firings??
Come on!
