A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Friday, January 16, 2009

Goodbye to All that

I don't have much to say about Bush's farewell address that the bloggerati hasn't already said, except to observe that the thing from the speech that got sound-bit the most was his claim to have made "tough decisions." But really, was there one thing the Decider decided that wasn't promulgated by Dick Cheney, the neocon cabal, the oiligarchy, and the Christian reich -- uh, right?

As usual, Rachel Maddow said it best:



Watching this again, I'm struck by what I like best about Rachel: her tone of informed and impassioned irony. I think Jane Austen would have loved her. I even like the way she talks out of the side of her mouth, the opposite side from the one Dick Cheney talks out of.