Netflix’s infinite riches include a series of 4 dvds of the complete Beckett. Neither of us has ever been a big Beckett fan & I keep falling asleep (surprise surprise), so I suspect we will stop with the first; sometimes I wonder how people decided to keep going during those years. (Scotus wondered why we were doing this during the holidays – it seems more a mortification appropriate to Lent.) To wake up, I trawled the humor sites & brought some links back.
The fifties were also a time when conventions were all male & a chance to get to the big city. Iowahawk shows us Chicago before most Chicagoboyz were born, but when people knew how to party. 606 makes an appearance, if 666 does not.
On a more contemporary note, Zucker offers a short comparison often made here as well. But dropping an allusion doesn’t make us laugh (if sadly).
Iowahawk also reruns What Happens in Davos Stays in Davos to welcome Eason Jordan back to Iraq.
The Iowahawk item is excellent. Chicago was a rowdy town. The idea that the 50s were all squeaky clean until the hippies came along to invent sexual intercourse and gettin’ high is amply rebutted by this material. The GI generation partied harder than most, they just didn’t do it on the grass at the public parks. They also built the suburbs, the interstate highway system, Strategic Air Command, jetliners, business computing, the Ford Mustang, and other achievements beyond anything the Baby Boomers will ever accomplish.
The Zucker video is clever but inadequate.Easy enough to dismiss Baker et al, but what then are we to do about Iraq and the mess
we are in? thge White House seems inclined to send in some 30 thousand additional troops. Will this accomplish anything? My view is that we are in the middle of a massive struggle between Shia and Sunnis, and like Hamas and Fatah, we can do little but let thembattle it out. Would you want your son ordaughter killed for these armed crazies?
I agree that the Zucker video is facile. However, it seems to be intended mainly to counter the Baker committee, and I think it does an OK job of this.
WRT more troops, we shall see. I am skeptical that sending more troops is a good idea. Certainly it’s not enough by itself. It might help if combined with a new strategic commitment to respond directly to Syrian and Iranian subversion in Iraq and to suppress the Al Sadr militia.