Too Smart For My Own Good, by Michael Davis – Straight No Chaser #250
January 6, 2012 Michael Davis 5 Comments
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a million times, I know good people. What I haven’t said as much is I know smart people.
I know smart people.
I’m a smart guy. I mean I’m a real smart guy. I know that. You know how I know that? Because I’m clever enough to know just how smart I am.
Give it a sec…
As a smart guy who knows how smart I am it’s sometimes difficult for me to see just how stupid I can be sometimes.
Give that a sec…
Sometimes the smartest people can’t see what’s stupid because they are just too smart.
When I was in negotiations with Motown Records to run their film and television arm, Motown Animation & Filmworks, I received a call from my hotshot big time entertainment attorney at around 2am in the morning.
I was married at the time so a woman calling at 2 in the morning and asking to speak to me was already a pretty stupid move on my part even though I was an innocent bystander.
It’s important that you remember that my lawyer at the time was one of the most powerful attorneys in the entertainment business. She’s STILL is one of the most powerful attorneys in the entertainment business, she’s just not my lawyer anymore.
Now-before you think I’m without a hard core, kill your momma and take your kids representation, know this, I’m still represented by one of the most powerful attorneys in the entertainment business.
So there.
My then lawyer calls my house at 2am and my then wife hands me the phone with a ‘this better be a cousin telling you someone’s dead’ look on her face.
“Hello??” (I said hoping it was a cousin calling me to tell me someone was dead)
“Michael, its Susan (not her real name) we have a HUGE problem!”
“What’s up?” (WRONG! I should have told my wife; “It’s my lawyer” before I said, ANYTHING. See? STUPID!)
“I’m looking at the latest contract from Motown, it’s a deal breaker!”
“Why?”
“Because they have a Key man clause in this contract!”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means if you designate someone as a key man and that person acts in a way that Motown disagrees with they can cancel the agreement and demand all monies they put towards the joint venture back!!”
“What?”
“It means that if you hire someone and appoint them key man, if that persons screws up for any reason Motown can kill the division and you are responsible for any monies Motown has put towards it”
“What?”
“You could owe Motown millions of dollars if your key man fucks up!”
THAT I got.
Now understand that my wife is staring at me while I have this conversation and she is NOT happy. It’s 2am, I’m talking to a woman she has no idea who that woman is and I’ve got this look of despair on my face.
On top of that all she heard from me was, Hello? Why? What’s that mean? What? What?
That sounds really fishy. Fishy like I got some girl pregnant or fishy like this is a woman I’m seeing at work (which would had been some feat because I worked from home) that kind of fishy.
FISHY is not a good sound when you are married to woman of color…she was Cuban.
What?
I know if she was on the phone with a man at 2 in the morning and all I heard was, Hello? Why? What’s that mean? What? What? I would have been THAT Negro and.
White people, ask somebody black.
So, I finally manage a very lame, “It’s my lawyer.”
“At 2 in the morning?”
Think fast…
“It’s only 11 at night there.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
So, now I’m back to the HUGE problem of my deal going south, my DREAM deal going south…or was it?
“So let me get this straight. If I name someone key man and they do something, anything that Motown does not like then Motown can kill the deal and I may owe them millions of dollars?”
“Yes. It’s a deal killer.”
“Then I won’t designate anyone a key man.”
Silence.
“Oh, OK. Did I wake you?”
“No, you woke my wife, she woke me.”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow! Bye!”
My wife turns to me and says, “Your lawyer’s not that bright is she?”
She was wrong, my lawyer was not stupid she was freakin brilliant. But for some reason, she could not come up with my solution, which seemed to me painfully oblivious.
As you all know, I hated the GOP. I mean I hated them. Yes that’s hated as in past tense. I’ve realized over time that I have a LOT of conservative friends and I like and in some case love my conservative friends. So I can’t hate the entire GOP because I like and respect my friends who are conservatives.
My friends are good, decent, smart people.
But maybe just maybe they are so smart they can’t see how dumb most of the GOP candidates are. Hey, I’m a smart guy I do dumb things from time to time. Is it too much of a stretch to think that my friends don’t see that Herman Cain is a lying womanizer? Or perhaps they are just too smart to see that Ron Paul is racist?
Could it be they are so shrewd they don’t know that Rick Santorum is fucking crazy? He and his wife kept the body of their stillborn baby with them so they could sleep with it then introduce it to other family members?
OK-losing a child is a horrible thing. I am NOT making light of that and I never would no matter how I felt about that person…
But…
That is fucking CRAZY with a capital C.
Oh yeah, he also said, “America was a great country before 1965.”
WHAT THE FUCK?
A white man in FRONT of a cop punched my mother in the face in 1965. The cop threatened to arrest her. Why did she get punched in the face? She went to help the white guys little girl after she fell off a curb into the street.
Before and during 1965 my mother could still be lynched in certain parts of this country.
“America was a great country before 1965.” May not be a big deal to some white people but to black people (except Herman Cain) it’s fucking crazy.
“Germany was great before 1945.” You think my Jewish friends would like to hear that from a Presidential candidate?
So, maybe my Right Wing friends are simply too smart to see the forest because they are looking at the trees.
I’ve been there, we all have.
Shit, I was just thinking; America was a great country before trees.
Doug Abramson
January 6, 2012 - 1:21 am
Don’t forget that former Senator Man-on-Dog does not want to help black people by giving them all of the white people’s hard earned money as welfare. Forget what he might have meant,two terms in the Senate and he didn’t learn how to phrase things so he wouldn’t sound racist. What the hell is wrong with the people in Iowa that voted for this schmuck?
Brandon
January 6, 2012 - 1:26 am
Sleeping with a dead baby is sick with a capital S. It seems that the GOP is fine with anything thier candidates do. Obama can’t walk his dog without that being un American according to Fox news.
Bill Mulligan
January 6, 2012 - 5:51 am
Yeah, you know what, I’ve known folks who had to deal with a dying child and it would never in a million billion years occur to me to question something like this. It probably is a lot more common than you think. I would suggest making sure that the people you are talking to have not gone through anything like this before opining on what constitutes crazy grieving vs approved by people who should be minding their own business style grieving.
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Can’t stand Santorum. if he gets the nomination I’ll gladly cast my second vote for Obama.
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That said, this hopefully short lived meme on Santorum’s dead child will hopefully be abandoned, forgotten, and if remembered at all, it will be with a sense of shame at not knowing when a line has been crossed. If one has to dirty one’s sense of decency to beat someone then maybe you’re on the wrong side.
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I love you dude, but this is just wrong.
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Other sites have linked to this: http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancyloss/sbsurvivingemotionally.html which gives advice on how people can handle stillbirths (which the Santorum child was not–he was born alive and died 2 hours later). Introducing your children to their dead sibling is not as weird as some think it is. Or maybe it is. To them. They should no more consider mocking someone who does otherwise than someone like Santorum should consider calling someone cold and heartless for NOT spending time with a dead child.
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Sorry to get on a soapbox but this whole thing has really saddened me. I’m seeing friends act in ways that I am almost 100% sure they would be appalled to see in others if it were directed at people they like.
Damon
January 6, 2012 - 8:26 am
As one of those conservative friends I’ll be EXTRA smart and not take the bait on this one . . . but your post did remind me of this commercial. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYxz6cluskQ
Mike Gold
January 6, 2012 - 9:55 am
When you say “White people, ask somebody black,” well, MOTU, as I recall you ARE somebody black.
Setting up a play date between your living kids and the corpse of your dead kid isn’t sick, it’s major league Olympic gold medal winning CHILD ABUSE, and this, alone, should cost the brain-damaged bigoted motherfucker the election.
Bill, this is not grieving. This is insane, dangerous behavior. There is no excuse for it — not grief (which I know a lot about), not religion, not nothing. It is child abuse. It is crossing the line. It is insanity. People who do this should not be allowed to keep children, let alone be president — of the Mystic Knights of the Sea, let alone the United States of America.
Mocking them? Fuck them. They should be in prison.
This nation was great before these assholes took over in 1994.
Russ Maheras
January 6, 2012 - 10:16 am
It always amuses me when Democrats act like the Republicans are the only party that embraces weirdos, crooks, racists and idiots.
The fact is, if the guy or gal has the right key ideology blocks checked off, none of the above really matters to the pundits of either party. I will hereby create another term right here and now and call it the “ideology halo effect.”
MOTU — In regards to very smart people and uber-achievers, sometimes, as you clearly demonstrated with your story, the gifted assume their gift extends to every situation.
Obviously, it doesn’t.
In high school, my grades sucked. I went to Lane Technical High School in Chicago, which was one of the largest and most elite public schools in the country. In fact, because attendees had to test to get in, it was a geek mecca which was touted to have produced more PhD holders than any other high school in the country. But since I was sure I was going to a career comic book artist, I was also a slacker and a coaster, and I ended up being a “five-year man” who barely got out of the building with a diploma and a GPA of about 1.025.
So when I started going off-and-on to the chess club meetings after school my freshman year, the gifted and the scores of uber-achievers surrounding me thought I’d be easy pickings. Needless to say, I wasn’t. At one point (my junior year, I believe) I tried out for the Lane Chess Team — a team that was always at the top tournament levels in the region every year — and when the competitive elimination process all was said and done, I had earned a spot on board #5 (there were 10 board positions on the team). My success was short-lived, however, because I soon found out that because I did not have a “C” average, I was disqualified from the team.
The point is, however, I had to wade through a whole bunch of “Lane Brains” to achieve what ended up being only a moral victory — but it was a victory nonetheless. And I’m sure, after that year’s team selection tounaments were over, some of those future PhD candidates were scratching their heads, trying to figure out what the heck had just hit them.
Bill Mulligan
January 6, 2012 - 10:26 am
Sorry Mike, you’re just wrong. I hope nobody you care for goes through it and makes a similar choice. If it does happen i hope you will be more circumspect with your opinion.
George Haberberger
January 6, 2012 - 11:55 am
“Bill, this is not grieving. This is insane, dangerous behavior.”
But sewing someone’s mouth shut, pumping them full of chemicals and putting them in an expensive ornate box so that everyone can come and stare at them is perfectly normal. Yes it is. But why?
My step-daughter was pregnant with twins. One didn’t make it. The baby who was stillborn had a name and a funeral a picture of him is on my step-daughters dresser. It is not a pretty picture but he existed and lived long enough in the womb to allow his brother to be viable.
Santorum’s actions may look wrong to you but he wanted his children to know they had a brother if only for a couple of hours.
MOTU
January 6, 2012 - 12:21 pm
I get it. I said I was not making light of the situation but clearly I have touched a nerve in some and that was not my intent.
His actions are crazy to me but I’ll admit people react to grief differently. Like I said- I get it and it was not my place to go there.
MOTU
January 6, 2012 - 12:56 pm
George,
I’m sorry for your lost.
Bill Mulligan
January 6, 2012 - 1:21 pm
MOTU, thank you sir.
George, as our esteemed host said, my condolences. I’ve been relatively blessed so far but I have a nagging fear it’s been a setup for a lot of bad…and I don’t know if I can handle it. And it’s something I’d better get a handle on because in life you either live long enough to suffer loss or…yeah.
Mike Gold
January 6, 2012 - 2:08 pm
George, I share the feelings and sentiments about the loss of your grandchild. It’s a horrible thing to go through; I’m still unsuccessfully trying to cope with the sudden death of my wife. It’s finally getting through to me that I won’t.
In the context of these feelings, the routine burial routine is indeed ghoulish. It’s a tradition I don’t particularly care for when it’s my choice, but a decision I respect when others make it. It’s not on the same level as arranging for a play date with your kids living and dead from a disgusting man who equates gay marriage with bestiality.
When Linda died, Adriane and I respected her desire to be cremated. No funeral, just a wonderful memorial service in Mike Raub’s backyard with friends from all over the nation, indeed world. It was a good time. Not a fun time, but a good time. We shared memories and, yeah, had a few laughs.
Our wedding, which was held 18 years earlier at the very same venue, was a lot more creepy. An old CIA friend who we thought might have been dead in Africa crashed the gig. My oldest friend brought a genuine John Wayne Gacy clown painting to the affair, after having posed with it in front of the White House. Some thought that to be in bad taste.
But there’s a difference between a painting and a dead baby, and between the celebration of a marriage of two very, very closely linked minds and the sad death of a newborn child.
In my opinion.
George Haberberger
January 6, 2012 - 2:59 pm
MOTU, Bill and Mike,
Thank you for your condolences but I didn’t tell that story to get sympathy or even to change anyone’s mind about what Santorum did. I merely wanted to point out that every way our society deals with death can be viewed as weird by those not close to it.
MOTU
January 6, 2012 - 3:07 pm
Bill,
I appreciate it but no thanks necessary. In retrospect I broke my own rule-which is live and let live. I’ve got a long list of things that creep me out about how certain people live their lives but I’ve always said, do what you do just don’t expect me to do what you do or even care about what you do.
There was something about that story that just rubbed me the wrong way but that’s my problem. It has nothing to do with me so I should have let it go.
1965 thing does have something to do with me and I think (now…duh) it would have been a stronger piece without the baby reference.
See? Stupid.
MOTU
January 6, 2012 - 3:18 pm
Russ,
I’m amazed at the dumb, stupid and downright ridiculous things I’ve done in my adult life. “What was I thinking?” at one point in my life that should have been tattooed on my forehead.
BUT…
There comes a time, as you illustrated in your post, when the fog lifts and you see things clearly and address them accordingly-I’m convinced that some people come through that fog and simply refuse to admit they could have been wrong.
THAT’S dangerous.
Mike Gold
January 6, 2012 - 4:22 pm
George, I understand that. We’ve got a strange, unique sort of family here at MDW and we’re gonna share this stuff. Reaction to the death of a close loved one is very difficult; I’ve been getting along with mine with the help of my friends. To quote the soon-to-be-underemployed Martha Stewart, “It’s a good thing.”
MOTU
January 6, 2012 - 4:52 pm
Mike,
It’s a rare day when I don’t think of Linda. I’m sure you don’t miss a day at all.
Love you dude-in a non brokeback way. 😉
Russ Maheras
January 6, 2012 - 5:01 pm
MOTU — Yeah. Mentally or physically gifted people with hubris are often their own worst enemies. Their greatest strength is often their ego and confidence, but if they cannot mentally adjust under pressure or when the unexpected happens, or if they have denial issues, it can also be their greatest weakness.
Russ Maheras
January 6, 2012 - 5:26 pm
Mike — At my weekly get-together with my pals in Burbank last night, I was talking to an animator friend and found out he lost both of his parents during a two-week stretch in 2004. The death of someone close is hard enough to deal with as it is, I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for him to deal with two major blows like that in such quick succession. Ditto with losing one’s spouse. My thoughts again go out to you, my Midwesterner-turned-East-Coaster pal.
MOTU
January 6, 2012 - 6:46 pm
George,
I’m sure no one thought you told that story to get sympathy. The thing is-many of us in this tight community of, whatever we are 😉 have lost someone and it takes a certain kind of person to share that kind of lost. Along with our heart felt empathy there’s a big heaping of respect.
I have not changed my mind about how I feel but I should have drawn the line at some point regarding how people deal with tragic circumstances.
MOTU
January 6, 2012 - 6:55 pm
Damon,
The link you sent was funny-but it brought back a not so great memory. An ex-girlfriend once picked up an phone extension just as I was saying; “I love you” to someone.
“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING TO??”
She screamed into the phone…
It was my cousin she was 9-my girlfriend refused to believe it and refused to let me prove it to her.
Bitch.
Mike Gold
January 6, 2012 - 7:47 pm
Thanks, Russ, my Midwesterner-turned-West-Coaster pal. But Chicagoans never really leave Chicago.
MOTU, you played a very big part in making my last year with Linda wonderful. I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart.
This is one hell of a group we’ve got here.
Reg
January 6, 2012 - 8:15 pm
Mike said…”This is one hell of a group we’ve got here.”
And I say (albeit swapping one H word with another)… WORD!
Coz it’s a fam!
MOTU
January 6, 2012 - 8:51 pm
Cyber group hug!
Reg
January 6, 2012 - 8:56 pm
Made up of a megalomaniacal patriarch, cantakarous and cranky old fart of an uncle, sweet, yet disarmingly sassy and fresh knitting aunt, hot yet chaste sist…ummm, make that kissing first cous…3RD COUSIN…and host of crazy relatives.
MDWP!
Whitney
January 6, 2012 - 9:49 pm
We’re kinda like the Waltons, PG13…
Bill Mulligan
January 6, 2012 - 10:01 pm
How many places can I go to where I can go from mad at people, to sad for people, to proud of people, all in less than a day?
It’s hard to do in an election year but lets try to appeal to the better angels within us. The Olbermanns, O’reillys, Becks, Schultz’…they can’t be better than they are and if we let them drive the narrative it will be ugly and we will all get dirtied with it.
Not saying we can’t or shouldn’t mock our political geniuses when they screw up and do or say things that are stupid, hypocritical or reveal the contempt most of them have for us. I would have very little to say on facebook if that were the case. But I’m trying very hard to ask myself, before I toss brickbats at someone I don’t like over something they say or do whether I would be willing to do the same if it were one of the increasingly few I like (or at least the ones who agree with me on something). I’ve got friends who posted every Tea Party protester they could find who had a misspelled poster but treat actual crimes at the OWS protests with cheerful dismissal. I have friends who claim to be furious when the media unfairly targets one of their guys but have no problem twisting something the president says to give it the worst spin possible.
Whatever they gain in the process they lose something more.
MOTU
January 7, 2012 - 12:32 am
Well said Bill.
MOTU
January 7, 2012 - 12:35 am
Mike,
I just did what any real friend would do. It was about time-I owed you one ever since you put your neck out for me at DC over Shado.
And I bet you thought I forgot. 😉
MOTU
January 7, 2012 - 12:41 am
Reg,
You make us sound like a horrible sitcom.,,which would be a HUGE hit on FOX!
We’re like a Dysfunctional Cheers. Hey-we can call it ‘Dysfunction’ the tag line could be ‘Where everybody calls you names!’
Eh??
Doug Abramson
January 7, 2012 - 3:09 am
A dysfunctional Cheers? I’ll be Norm. Point me to my stool and get me a drink!
Martha Thomases
January 7, 2012 - 6:01 am
Wait, are people going to start getting along with each other now that I have something to add? Am I already too late to this party?
In any case, http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/01/05/peter-wehners-selective-culture-of-life/
Bill Mulligan
January 7, 2012 - 8:50 am
“TBogg” employs a common logical fallacy in that link–Poisoning the Well.
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http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/poisoning-the-well.html
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AND ion for the person he is disagreeing withe throws in an invitation for the person he is disagreeing with to “a bag of salted dicks and chokes on each and every one of them.”
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So pretty much a perfect example of what I would argue should be avoided…but I doubt rational discourse gets linked as much as echo chamber ad Homimem.
Bill Mulligan
January 7, 2012 - 8:54 am
That paragraph above, the one that reads as though I suffered a stroke while writing it should be “AND he throws in an invitation for the person he is disagreeing with to eat “a bag of salted dicks and chokes on each and every one of them.”
.
It’s only 11 am and I’ve managed to type “eat a bag of dicks” twice. This is going to be a great weekend.
MOTU
January 7, 2012 - 4:05 pm
Bill,
I’ll see your ‘eat a bag of dicks’
And raise you ‘eat a bag of dicks & ‘eat a bag of dicks’
I want a great weekend also!
Bill Mulligan
January 7, 2012 - 6:06 pm
But are they SALTED dicks?
Mike Gold
January 7, 2012 - 8:32 pm
Dry roasted. High blood pressure. Be considerate.
MOTU
January 8, 2012 - 12:19 am
I can’t believe I’m engaged in a back forth dialogue a about dicks. It is indeed 2012 the end is near.
Dry roasted???
Doug Abramson
January 8, 2012 - 2:13 am
Gives a whole new meaning to jerkey.
Bill Mulligan
January 8, 2012 - 7:40 am
Annnnnnnd Doug wins the thread. A years supply of turtle wax and Rice-a-roni (the San Francisco treat) (now available in new Salted Dicks flavor) is heading your way.
Mike Gold
January 8, 2012 - 10:55 am
MOTU: It’s a White thing.
MOTU
January 8, 2012 - 2:11 pm
Salted Dick Rice-a-roni the San Francisco treat!!!!
THAT (with apologies and much kudos Doug) wins the thread!
THE SAN FRANCISCO TREAT???? SALTED DICKS?? ROTFLMAO!!
Bill Mulligan
January 8, 2012 - 6:34 pm
You are a man of influence. Make it happen! Just give me a small slice of the pie. then we go to my big million dollar idea…
Ok, you beat it out of me. What do people love? Their cats! Believe me, I have 6. I’m married to a cat person, which makes me a cat person.
And what do cats love to eat? Tuna? Beef? Really? How in the holy hell could a housecat ever take out a cow? How would a cat and a tuna ever cross paths?
Mice! That’s what they love. The great taste of mice. And yet I defy you to find any mouse flavored cat foods.
So we raise mice. Lots of them. It’s easy, they reproduce like the vermin they are. This would be a GREAT job for stay at home moms and the unemployed. Then we turn them into catfood, which would seem to me to be a fairly simple process of utilizing a modified coffee grinder or something–we’ll let the engineers work that out.
A nice bright can design with a cartoon mouse–maybe a Tom & Jerry tie in?–and the can’t miss slogan “A Tail in Every Can!” This will fly off the shelves!
Ok, I can already hear some namby pamby knee jerk complainers whining “But mice are cuuuuuute!” Bullfeathers! There’s a whole section of your grocer aisle devoted to various ways of killing mice, whether by horrible chemicals, skull crushing coiled springs or hideous glue traps where the creature just lays pinned to the floor, slowly starving to death, praying that someone with a ball-peen hammer shows up. If I were seen bludgeoning a cow to death in my front yard the cops would get called but if someone sees a mouse and I kill it with a broom I’m Hero Of The Block. So spare me the crocodile tears.
You can be the spokesman if you like, the Colonel Sanders of mouse flavored cat food. I am a simple man, just send the residual checks
Steve Atkins
January 8, 2012 - 9:26 pm
Bill – I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. Mice, in addition to having no shoulders, are nice. Rats, on the other hand, carry away kittens and small children (in jars? I dunno. Never heard of such before). Rats are to be hated. Mice are to be tolerated, so long as they are not bothering you.
But they will, won’t they, Bill? For you are a mouse-hating maniac! lol
Mike Gold – I am very considerate to your need to not eat anything worth eating. 🙂
MOTU – Would I win if I made a THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN reference about how unsalted dicks make people choke?
Now, if everyone is quite finished violating my Trademark, I am late for the rehearsals of my band….The Salted Dicks!
Vinnie Bartilucci
January 8, 2012 - 9:36 pm
That Santorum baby story has derailed more than one policital conversation – just ask Alan Colmes.
I think everybody has to admit there’s a difference between “Not What I Would Do” and “Not Right”, and move on.
Now some of the stuff he’s been saying about gays, THAT Ain’t Right. What you do in your house is your own business. And if Mister S would remember that, we might stand a chance of getting some shit DONE.
So IOW, no chance.
Now, the 1965 comment…
That’s one of those things that if all you hear if the first line, it’s REAL easy to jump to where the MOTU did, and rightly so.
But a lot of people would think “Well, the air was cleaner, there was better music on the radio and funnier shows on the TV, there didn’t seem to be as many perverts oming after our kids – damn things WERE better!” Wouldn’t think of race at all. Of course, wouldn’t think about advances in medicine, technology, stuff like that either.
OK, I did something I don’t usually do when I comment on stuff – I went and watched the speech.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rick-santorum-america-was-great-country-19
He was responding to a statement that Obama made in which he discussed the creation of welfare and other assistance programs. Obama said. “We are a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further – we would not be a great country without those commitments.”
Santorum was disagreeing with the idea that America would not be a great country witout Welfare. So when he said America was a great country before 1965 he’s right. America did a lot of great things before 1965 – kicked ass in two world wars, advanced technology, improved the standard of living for a lot of people, and generally became the place you wanted to come to if you wanted to succeed.
He was NOT saying that America was a BETTER place before 1965. He was saying that America was a damn great place, then. And taken in the macro scale, it was. Yes, race relations were in shit shape. But America was a place people were lining up to live in, and was in general a place of prosperity and opportunity.
Now here’s the thing – similarly, Obama was NOT saying that before 1965, America was a shithole. He was saying that as great a place as it was, if we had chosen to do nothing about helping the poor and/or unemployed, we might have given up a bit on our greatness. And in that, he too is correct. It was a compliment to the country, patting it on the back, proving how great it was by choosing to help the poor.
Santorum did what every politician does – take what your opponent said, and twist into something to benefit you. He took what was Obama’s kudo to the USA and turning it into a dig, and made it sound as if he was saying America sucked until we started handing out free money. Andthen railed against THAT comment, the one that he could argue with. Because who can honestly argue with the idea that by helping the unfortunate, it makes us a better, more caring country?
And so now, the other side is taking Santorum’s statement and spinning it to suggest that he’s saying that America was BETTER in 1965, and then stopped. Which, again, he didn’t.
Did Santorum intend to imply that things were better in 1965? I’m betting no. Did he not exactly hope people woudn’t THINK he meant that, and agree with the inference he didn’t imply? Who knows?
Bear in mind, this makes Santorum no less batshit-insane, or at least no less batshit-insane than any of the flock of loons than are fighting for the Republican perch.
Mike Gold
January 8, 2012 - 9:57 pm
Sanatorum is so batshit his very presence on teeve makes Bruce Wayne constipated.
MOTU
January 8, 2012 - 11:00 pm
Vinnie,
I still see the 1965 comment as hurtful to African Americans. If he was responding something he should have made that CRYSTAL CLEAR in his response. I watched the speech it’s not clear and it’s RIPE for a sound bite.
Pat Buchanan said that the 1965 comment was meant to say 1965 was the year we became mired in Viet Nam. WTF? NO one in the GOP will own up to it being any way racist and maybe it wasn’t but it sure as shit sounded like it was.
With Rick Perry’s ‘Nigger Ranch’ and Ron Paul’s ‘95% of Black men are criminals’ what are black people to think when another GOP candidate says that America was a great country before 1965?
Doug Abramson
January 9, 2012 - 2:38 am
“…who can honestly argue with the idea that by helping the unfortunate, it makes us a better, more caring country?”
I have a whole bunch of relatives, of mine, to introduce you to Vinnie;and not all of them are the ones from Arkansas and Tennessee.
Russ Maheras
January 9, 2012 - 2:19 pm
For the record — Santorum swiped his “signature sweater vest” idea from me, and not vice versa.
I’ve been wearing sweater vests (with no tie) as work attire pretty much every day for the past 12 years or so, and when I started, finding a sweater vest at a men’s clothing store or a men’s section at a department store was damn near impossible. Now you can get them almost anywhere. My wife used to tease me about sweater vests, and getting excited when I actually found one, because you’d never see anyone else wearing them. Now, I only half-jokingly say to her, “See? I started a national trend!”
MOTU
January 9, 2012 - 4:20 pm
DAMNI
LIKE sweater vests. NOW I can’t wear them anymore…wait a sec…if I and other Black men wear it then Santorum will take it off faster than HE can say “I hate Gay people.”
HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE…EVIL LAUGH.