The Ugly Frenchman

The term Ugly American gained notoriety some years ago when it was generally used to refer to overbearing American tourists who didn't know how to properly conduct themselves overseas, especially in the postwar years when visiting the "more sophisticated " European countries, such as France (which of course we Yanks and our British friends saved from having to Sprechen Sie Deutsch forever).

Although France is inarguably a great place to see, the experience there is often spoiled by having to deal with the locals--sort of an entire population of Ugly Frenchmen, many of whom are rude and arrogant, not to mention guilty of the most disgusting habits such as "irregular" bathing, letting dogs poop up the sidewalks, revering Jerry Lewis, etc. But these sociological or cultural differences represented mostly harmless quirks (unless you're in an elevator with a Parisian on a hot day) until this week when mon dieu we Americans, in our simpleminded pursuit of justice, managed to offend the entire French nation.

Our sin? We dared to arrest a powerful French politician and (until yesterday) head of the International Monetary Fund, one Dominique Strauss-Kahn, known in his home country as DSK. Considered a leading (Socialist!) candidate to defeat President Sarkozy in the next election, DSK who was arrested for raping an African immigrant chambermaid in the Sofitel Hotel in Manhattan, recently told a French interviewer that his three main obstacles to becoming President were his wealth, his love of women (twice divorced and quite the alleged serial seducer) and his Jewishness.

At least in New York City , there haven't been any accusations of anti-Semitism in his jailing. But his sleazebag American lawyer (infamous for representing sleazebag celebs like Michael Jackson) has come up with a number of defenses trying to secure bail for DSK, while trying of course to shift blame to the victim,. Let's try consensual sex, a lunch date DSK had with his daughter (at the same time?), a set up by Sarkozy's people (using an uneducated 32 year old from Guinea??), etc. Gotta love his lawyer's imagination.

But putting all that aside, the real revelation has been the attitude of many Frenchmen, including portions of their media. How dare we uncivilized Americans march DSK in a photographed perp walk, lock him up in Rikers Island with "scum", offer him "bad food" and so on? In France, the high and mighty aren't treated this way. A discreet payoff --l'affaire is forgotten. TNB had almost forgotten just how Ugly Frenchmen could be until their media revealed the name of the poor victim--something we generally don't do here. Who's Ugly anyway??

Well Handled Sir

On Saturday evening April 30th, during what turned out to be the most satisfying week of the Obama presidency, the President appeared as is customary, at the annual White House Correspondents dinner. Despite what he and relatively few others knew was scheduled to occur within 24 hours in Pakistan, Obama appeared extremely relaxed as he positively skewered the "carnival barker" Donald Trump, windbag self-promoter and would be presidential candidate. Obama addressed the Donald, sitting grim faced in the audience, by stating how "impressed " he was with his presidential credentials, citing the tough decision he faced, no doubt keeping him up nights, as to whom to fire from his failed men's cooking team, before settling on hapless Gary Busey. Obama told Trump, with more than a hint of sarcasm , "well handled, sir".

As a fitting irony, the next night just as Trump's idiotic "reality" show Celebrity Apprentice was droning on to its climax it (and all other TV fare) was interrupted for the President's dramatic announcement of the killing of Osama Bin Laden. So in one weekend, Trump was shown to be totally irrelevant, which of course he always was.

Subsequently as more details became known about the operation, it finally put to rest (or should have) this idea put forth by the GOP (Grossly Obnoxious People) that Obama was some sort of indecisive wimp, unlike his cowboy predecessor whose apologists of course rushed to expound that it was really Bush who deserves most of the credit (?). Of course, since Obama is black it's not possible in the minds of an unfortunately sizable minority of Americans that he could possibly be effective (see: the birther nonsense).

In reality Obama is cautious and thorough whereas Bush was prone to rush to judgment (see: Iraq). TNB is very glad that we have this high quality individual as our President.

Well handled, sir!

Is it 2012 Yet?

Just when everyone (even Chicago area residents who just selected mayors, etc.) thought that the rest of 2011 might provide a needed respite from electioneering and politicking, there are some sure signs of Spring in an odd numbered year--the next election cycle is starting. It's "almost"2012 to politicians-- albeit so far without the repetitive, negative TV ads, flyers and robo calls--but don't be surprised to see them earlier than ever next year (or maybe as an early Christmas present). As this is being written, President Obama, with no primary opponent to worry about, is in his hometown of Chicago for 3 fundraisers, one featuring star Bulls guard Derrick Rose (also a hometown boy). And while his first two+ years in office have been somewhat rocky, Obama's reelection chances as of today don't look all that bad when you consider the probable Republican field.

Mitt Romney Dull is probably a compliment for Mitt who when governor of Massachusetts presided over a health care plan eerily similar to the much despised "Obamacare". BTW, did you notice that the GOP (Paul Ryan) proposed super-severe budget contains certain elements of that very same health care bill? What would hypocrisy be without politicians?

Mike Huckabee His appeal is mainly to "good ole boys" from rural areas and other simple minded folk. Wait a minute--the latter could be a majority of Americans . Ouch!

Newt Gingrich Possibly would face some searing "character issue" questions concerning two wives he dumped while each had medical problems. Also, he's not very personable, which of course is important if one hopes to get elected (see George W. Bush).

Sarah Palin Also has questions of character. Main appeal is to the "ignorance is bliss" (or blissfully ignorant) crowd which sadly (see Huckabee) is a voting bloc to reckon with.

Michelle Bachmann Sort of Sarah without all of the personal warts. Don't dismiss her so fast.

Donald Trump Riding to the rescue to save the party from the other mediocrities, the Donald has emerged as a viable candidate, despite the fact that his program largely consists of reviving the worn out "birther" issue and as any other great con man might do, totally obfuscating his qualifications (his string of failed businesses, his cheesy unreality show, his "style "which would no doubt go over well with world leaders, etc.). If he's being taken seriously by Republican voters the President can relax a little.

Unpredictable

In our society we are used to attempting to predict the future. Most obviously, the weather is predicted practically to the hour, if you care, and with the aid of modern technology usually the short-term (say 24 hours) forecast is reasonably accurate but as far as the say 7 day prognosis well, who really remembers it seven days later? Certainly not the weatherman.

High tech aids, however, aren't of much use for predicting most other events that significantly affect us. Even TNB in his (mostly tongue in cheek) 2011 forecast, published less than three months ago, utterly failed to sense that the following was going to occur before the first quarter of the year was over:

• The upheaval all across the Middle East and North Africa with a lot yet to be written. Will Gadhaffi go? Will he get asylum anywhere? Will Saudi Arabia be next? What will happen in Iran? If you read or hear any "expert" analysis on what's likely, forget it. No one knows (maybe the Shadow, for those of you old enough to understand).
• The earthquake, tsunami and resultant nuclear disaster in Japan. Sure the nuclear facility was built on a fault (practically all of Japan is) but to have such a "perfect storm" of events occurring would have surprised and baffled Nostradamus.
• The firing of Charlie Sheen from his top-rated TV sitcom Two and a Half Men. Charlie has been nothing but unpredictable of course but to witness such public self-destruction could not have been foreseen. And lest you think that his inclusion in this list trivializes it, who has gotten more attention-- Hosni Mubarak, Japanese Prime Minister Kan or that fascinating bad boy?

BTW, in TNB's defense, he did correctly predict Rahm Emanuel's election as Chicago mayor (OK--it was a slam dunk) but is still waiting for the rest of that prophecy to come true. Still no word on when Chicago City Hall will be moved to Manny's Deli but with David Axelrod back in town, still sounds like a good guess.

I'm Truly Truly Sorry

Have you ever noticed that no matter how irrational, offensive or downright mean an utterance might be when made by a politician it's readily "cured" by the perpetrator offering an effusive apology, sort of like saying "I'm truly truly sorry". How heartfelt or genuine the apology is, or for that matter whether it's been drafted by some hack spinmeister or not is irrelevant. As long as the media reports how sorry the person is, everyone quickly moves on. Well, not everyone--TNB is watching! He doesn't accept "I'm sorry" that easily. Consider:

• Right-wing idiot Glenn Beck had some tall explaining to do after he likened the political activism of Reform rabbis to Islamic extremism. When last seen, Beck was at his dentist having a portion of his foot extracted from his mouth.
• Redneck Georgia GOP Congressman Paul Broun "deeply regretted" not confronting a man (later investigated by the Secret Service) at one of his rallies who asked Broun "who's going to shoot Obama?" Broun, who for several years has compared the President to a Gestapo officer and worse, said that he was too stunned to react. Maybe he's a closet Ku Kluxer [that could be an oxymoron].
• Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun belatedly and grudgingly apologized for falsely accusing one of her minor Chicago mayoralty opponents of being strung out on crack for the past 20 years. In this case "I'm sorry" didn't suffice and Braun sank to a dismal 4th place finish, with more members of her African-American community (deeply embarrassed by her remarks) voting for winner Rahm Emanuel rather than her. BTW-- Rahm's election is the first (maybe the last) of TNB's New Year's predictions to come true. But, as forecast, he might still move Chicago's City Hall to Manny's Deli.

Non-politicians, who don't have to face the voters aren't always so quick to offer their mea culpas. Troubled (to say the least) Charlie Sheen has not and probably never will take back the rant against his producer that caused Two and a Half Men to be cancelled by CBS. His rant included some barely veiled anti-semitic cracks about the producer. But apparently being a total sleaze in the entertainment world can be part of someone's "charm". Of course, do you remember Mel Gibson?

A Sucker is Born

A famous saying, rightly or wrongly attributed to master 19th century showman P.T. Barnum is of course "There's a sucker born every minute". Extrapolating that to today's population would more accurately state "There's a sucker born every few seconds" or whatever. But the pithy observation is probably even more valid 100+ years later. Consider the following recent high profile examples.

The debacle at Sunday's Dallas Super Bowl, whereby at least 400 patrons whose temporary seating (planned so that the total attendance might set an alltime record--it didn't) wasn't ready and who had to watch on television from an inside club room, resulted in these individuals being promised by the NFL a refund of triple their ticket's face value plus a free ticket to next year's Super Bowl. Nothing so unremarkable until you consider that such face value was $800 or $900 [some paid a lot more to legitimate ticket scalpers, or"brokers"] and counting the cost of travel, etc. many of these people might still not come out even. But the "sucker" element is in the face value itself. For marginal seating and views in a 100,000 seat stadium, people (i.e. suckers) were willing to shell out such sums! We're really in a recession? Maybe for the unlucky bottom 10-20% but apparently there are myriad thousands who whether they can really afford to or not, are caught up in the Super Bowl hype. Suckers indeed.

BTW, wasn't the perfect epitome of Texas size braggadocio gone amok with all the problems Dallas had in putting on the event, seeing George W. ("Mission Accomplished") Bush smugly sitting in a VIP seat?

Anyway, another sucker magnet has been the troubled $65 million Broadway extravaganza Spider- Man Turn Off the Dark. After months beset with mechanical issues, injuries to actors during performances and innumerable delays, the nation's theatre critics finally decided to review the show, although its official opening has been postponed yet again to March 15. The reviews ranged from "incoherent" to "a mess" to "a candidate for the worst musical in history" and you get the picture. But will this sink the show? Probably not--despite generally poor word of mouth to date and extremely high ticket prices up to $270, the show has been selling out and TNB wouldn't bet that this won't continue. One could argue that's it's the intellectually snotty critics vs. the comic strip loving "real Americans" such as TNB's "hero" Glenn Beck who has allegedly seen and loved the show 4 times [maybe he's an investor]. However, isn't this just a perfect instance of another several hundred thousand suckers being ripped off?

Make that a sucker born every millisecond.

News of the Day

As most of us in the Midwest and Northeast settle in for an oncoming vicious winter storm, thus causing airports, schools and businesses to declare a snow day for Wednesday, February 2, readers of this blog need to make sure that they're totally up to date on all of the news of the day, with of course TNB's accompanying analysis which is required to really understand what's going on:

• STATE OF THE UNION-- In addition to the "odd couples" caused by Senators and Representatives seated not by political parties but by the new rules of civility (McCain next to Kerry, etc.) we were treated to the Tea Party response. Rep. Michelle Bachmann sort of delivered her incoherent remarks while gazing to her right. No matter, she appears to have been tutored by Sarah Palin, in a classic example of dumb and dumber.
• TURMOIL IN EGYPT-- In another case of "but he's OUR dictator" (see Saddam Hussein with whom we sided in Iran/Iraq war in 1980's) it appears that the U.S. is going to let Hosni Mubarak float in space while hoping that his successors will be gracious enough to continue to accept $1.3 billion in aid from us.
• CHICAGO MAYORAL RACE -- At the end of an eventful week in which a bogus residency issue concerning frontrunner Rahm Emanuel saw him kicked off, then restored to the ballot, he was upstaged (sort of) by fellow mayoral candidate and former Senator Carol Moseley Braun, who falsely accused a minor opponent with "being strung out on crack for the past 20 years" and then took two days to apologize, thus further tarnishing her already shaky credibility.
• OSCARS-- After nominations were announced and all the pundits weighed in, it appears that the race for Best Picture will come down to an old fashioned historical drama The King's Speech and a new fashioned historical drama The Social Network. Probably will depend on who's doing the voting--admirers of the British royal family or admirers of the Internet. [TNB actually liked best the hallucinatory ballet movie Black Swan which has no historical significance].
• SUPER BOWL -- For Chicagoans the upcoming game is anticlimatic. The controversy over QB Jay Cutler's knee injury and toughness totally overshadowed how poorly the Bears played but it's way more fun watching Jay's knockout girlfriend going to dinner or shopping in LA with him anyway. Besides Chicago is getting Obama confidante David Axelrod back; soon to be seen at Manny's Deli. Life is good.