When I walked into the office Monday, people were clustering around a computer to watch what they thought they would never see: Hillary Clinton with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes.
A woman gazing at the screen was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys watched it over and over, drawn to the “humanized” Hillary. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. “We are at war,” he said. “Is this how she’ll talk to Kim Jong-il?”
Another reporter joked: “That crying really seemed genuine. I’ll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand.” He added dryly: “Crying doesn’t usually work in campaigns. Only in relationships.”
How would you know?
My dad, 87 and going strong, grew up in an era where he never saw or heard an airplane unless he traveled to do so. My first record player, given me by my grandmother, played her Jolson 78s; by the time I was old enough to shop for myself they had been relegated to the area behind the counter, where they stood in brown paper sleeves, being ignored. Now there's 600 vinyl albums in my basement I'm too lazy to transfer to mp3s, and my dad flies to Vegas whenever he feels the urge, without having to hand-crank the flivver to get to the airport. So why is Maureen Dowd still at the Times? There's plenty of room for incoherent crackpottery on the blogosphere, and there must be some equivalent of Behind the Counter and Out of the Way at the Times, at the very least.
And maybe they could devote her space to covering issues or imparting information or something. Just kidding. I'll bet K-Lo could handle the increased workload as well as Kristol does.
600 78s! You are a god of vinyl. Transferring such a collection to CD is more than labor; it is sacrilege. Even Tim McGraw, who is too young to know what he's saying (or so a wise man once told me), likes the "pops and clicks" of old media.
ReplyDeleteI don't read MoDo, but I think the news from New Hampshire is bad, though I doubt that the sentiment that produced the tears--it was probably eye liner that slipped from where it had been applied.
Dear me, no, it's 600 33s. I wish it were 78s, but even grandma's Jolsons are gone with the wind, or more accurately, gone with the fact that while she was in the early stages of dementia, and behaving exactly as my mother is now, my mom let her help with packing up the house after the divorce. I had two thousand baseball cards, not an exaggeration--partly an inheritance from some older kid who grew out of them, partly as a result of my dad being a baseball nut. All gone. You name a valuable card from say '51-'67 and I had it.
ReplyDeleteAnd now I weep for the collection of vintage comic books that I had inherited and foolishly left "in the way" when I went to college. All gone.
ReplyDeleteBut all those LP's... no shame regarding them? I posted previously about how nice it was to purge my collection of vinyl by junking certain indiscretions with all the verve of a Byzantine emperor erasing the memory of a predecessor fallen into disfavor. I so never liked those, honest!
Even 600 33s is impressive, even if not divine. I barely have two feet still in possession, although some (for instance Patrick Sky's ruckus Songs that Made America Famous) seem unlikely to ever make it to the iTunes Store.
ReplyDeleteEven so: http://www.wirz.de/music/skyfrm.htm
ReplyDeleteWow, where's that credit card?