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On  November 18th 1836, Sir William S. Gilbert was born. Probably best known for his collaboration with Sir Arthur Sullivan, he was also the author of the “Bab Ballads” and a writer of many comic plays, as well as a few serious ones.

As regular readers of this blog may know, I am huge Gilbert and Sullivan fan; but here I confess my appreciation is mostly for Gilbert. I have almost no understanding of music, though Sullivan’s seems quite good to me. But it is Gilbert whose work so fascinates me. As everyone who has heard them knows, his lyrics and dialogues certainly “bubble with wit and good humour“, but, even more remarkably: “winnow all the folly and you’ll find a grain or two of truth among the chaff“. Gilbert’s works, in my opinion, offer deeper insights into human nature than they are often given credit for.

On his memorial, Gilbert is called a “playwright and poet”. No doubt, he would laugh at the irony, for Gilbert himself hated the term “playwright”, preferring “dramatist”. But this unfortunate fact is made up for by the inscription, which reads: “His Foe was Folly, and his Weapon Wit”.

To me, that sums up Gilbert perfectly.

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So, there has been some controversy surrounding the above ad for Activision and Treyarch‘s new game Call of Duty: Black Ops.

What strikes me as ironic is that, for obvious reasons, they don’t actually show any people being seriously injured in the ad. The actual game, like many another video game released over the past two decades, is full of violent scenes that depict CGI figures that look like humans being shot and stabbed. And yet, I have to admit that I think this ad is more disturbing than the game itself.

What I can’t figure out, though, is why exactly that is. I guess it’s just because the people in the ad aren’t dressed like soldiers, and thus viscerally remind me of random terrorists or criminals rather than members of the military.

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As a follow-up to this post, I realized that I neglected to mention another President who made use of appearing on entertainment television, or at least was not hurt by it: Ronald Reagan.

Sarah Palin herself made note of this fact, arguing against those who say it’s not Presidential to star in a reality show by noting that Reagan had been an actor, and had appeared in some not-especially-Presidential films.

Fair point, I suppose. And Reagan, like Palin and unlike Nixon, had charisma, which made it seem acceptable. (I have a theory that all actors, even lousy ones, have high levels of charisma compared to the general population.) There is, it seems, little which charisma cannot overcome.

On the other hand, Reagan quit working as an actor in 1965, 15 years before he became President. As Peggy Noonan writes as a rebuke to Palin:

“Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president.”

These qualifications do seem rather more than Palin’s. (As an aside, it’s hard to imagine any artists-turned-union-leaders running for the Republicans nowadays.)

In the end, though, it goes back to the idea that our standards that have changed with time. Reagan was considered an intellectual lightweight in his day and age, as Palin is in the present day. Call me a pessimist if you like, but I believe this is due to a decline in what we expect of our politicians. If someone with Palin’s credentials had tried to run in Reagan’s time, imagine the reaction. P M Prescott‘s comment here says it very well: “The electorate is getting more and more into voting as fans of someone famous, even if it’s famous for being famous.”

And if Reagan’s charisma and celebrity overcame his relative lack of real policy credentials, then what is there to stop Palin’s charisma and celebrity from overcoming hers?


P.S. Incidentally, having read Noonan’s argument that Reagan’s time as SAG President helped him as a politician, I find that I cannot resist quoting these rather prescient lines of Ernest’s song “Were I a King” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Grand Duke:

“Oh, the man who can rule a theatrical crew,
Each member a genius (and some of them two),
And manage to humour them, little and great,
Can govern this tuppenny State!”

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Scientists are exhuming the remains of 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe in an attempt to determine whether he was poisoned. Some even suspect that it was Johannes Kepler, a sort of assistant of Brahe’s at the time, who killed him.

Frankly, I don’t even know enough about science to understand what clues they can hope to gain from examining what’s left of a guy who died in 1601. But it makes for an interesting story.

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They always seem to have a certain quality which saps one’s energy for doing things. This is not a bad thing by any means; but a very curious phenomenon. I seem to remember P.G. Wodehouse writing something characteristically witty about this fact, though I was unable to find it with a brief Google search.

I find that my mind has a tendency to wander on these days, which is quite interesting; only it makes blogging coherently, as opposed to just rambling like you see me doing now, rather difficult.

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Having apparently gotten bored of attacking Woodrow Wilson–or perhaps surprised by Wilson’s unresponsiveness–Glenn Beck has decided to turn his attention to George Soros, a wealthy businessman who funds various left-leaning activism groups.

Beck’s much-hyped two-part report supposedly “reveals” that Soros has a five-step plan for destroying countries. It is as follows, in Beck’s own words with my comments in [brackets]:

  1. “Form a shadow government using humanitarian aid as cover.”
  2. “Control the airwaves. Fund existing radio and TV outlets and take control over them or start your own outlets.” [Beck apparently believes that funding Media Matters, NPR and Huffington Post constitutes “controlling the airwaves”.]
  3. “Destabilize the state, weaken the government and build an anti-government kind of feeling in this country. You exploit an economic crisis or take advantage of existing crisis — pressure from the top and the bottom. This will allow you to weaken the government and build anti- government public sentiment.” [An old saying about pots and kettles occurs to me.]
  4. “You provoke an election crisis. You wait for an election. And during the election, you cry voter fraud.”
  5. “Take power. You stage massive demonstrations, civil disobedience, sit-ins, general strike, you encourage activism. You promote voter fraud and tell followers what to do through your radio and television stations.”

The first thing one can do with this is to ask just how much of it describes what the Conservatives do, but apart from that there is also the fact that all the other governments Soros has taken on in the past have been communist governments. That Beck, the man who fears that President Obama is a Marxist, conveniently  fails to mention that reveals–as if there were any revealing to be done–the dishonest nature of his whole operation.

Most of the criticism of Beck’s piece, however, has revolved around allegations that it is anti-semitic. Beck’s use of words such as “puppet-master” and  “blood sucker” to describe Soros, they say, call to mind Nazi propaganda.

The terminology is similar, there’s no doubt, as is the unbelievable and convoluted conspiracy theory. Still, it must be admitted that Beck never said Soros did the things Beck alleges because he is Jewish. Beck’s story is one of a supposedly evil man who happens to be Jewish, and I never felt like Beck was trying to insinuate anything else.

As Beck himself pointed out at the outset of his show, he [Beck] is a more hard-line supporter of Israel than is George Soros himself. For once, I think he’s not lying; this does indeed seem to me to argue against the charge that Beck is anti-semitic. Indeed, the vast majority of Conservatives/Republicans are fervent supporters of Israel, and more to the point, hard-line opponents of the Palestinians. There are exceptions, such as Pat Buchanan, but for the most part this is the case. So, why would Beck even want to encourage anti-Jewish feeling among his Conservative viewers? It appears to be inconsistent with practically everything else that goes on on Fox.

(One possible explanation is that Beck really is as insane as he acts. However, I doubt this because it’s hard to imagine he would even show up at the studio reliably were that the case.)

Frankly, I think that Beck’s problem with Soros isn’t that he’s Jewish, it’s that he funds Democratic-leaning stuff, and Democrats, of whatever religion, ethnicity, sex, and so forth, are viewed by Beck and most of the Fox news crowd as illegitimate, evil and generally undeserving of representation.

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Overall, it’s a very good game. The Bethesda and Obsidian collaboration delivered almost everything in New Vegas that I’d hoped for, so I’m quite happy with it.

A few issues: I felt like the story got kind of confusing towards the end, although in my experience Obsidian’s stories get much better on subsequent playthroughs as you pick up on subtle things you overlooked before.

Also, lots of bugs during the final battle, but if you save regularly it shouldn’t be a problem.

But all in all, I’d have to say it’s the best game to come out this year.

[UPDATE: Note that when I say “finished”, I mean I played through the main story line and completed it one time. Because there are so many ways to play through it, and so many sidequests, it would be inaccurate to say that I have come anywhere close to seeing everything in the game.]

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“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
  In Flanders fields.”

-Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. In Flanders Fields. 1915.
Although in the United States November 11 is a day to honor soldiers generally, it must be noted that the date of Veterans Day is the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. To many other countries in the world, it is called “Remembrance Day”, and places more emphasis on the World War I anniversary. Also, because of my own interest in that period of history, I cannot help but think of that war in particular. (The above poem was one of the most famous written in World War I.)
In many ways, it is grimly appropriate that it should have evolved from being a holiday in honor of those who fought in World War I to being one in honor of all who served. For World War I was an event that radically shocked people. I think that, more so than previous conflicts, it laid bare the horrors of war for all to see. I think people came to have a better understanding of how much suffering soldiers must endure, and why we must honor them for their sacrifice.

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“That amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth”–The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, by H.P. Lovecraft. 1927 [Emphasis mine]

“Two huge bubbles that emit gamma rays have been found billowing from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have announced.”–National Geographic, November 10 2010.

Then there’s also this matter to consider, which seems innocuous enough until you see the picture on this page.

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One of the stories on the NBC Nightly News tonight was about the fact that “Mr. Peanut“, the Planters Company mascot, would be “voiced” for the first time ever in a new commercial.

That was a story.

On the nightly news

A program which, I must point out, has only a half-hour time slot. (Which, when you factor in commercials, works out to about twenty minutes of time for actual content.)

It didn’t seem terribly important to me, but perhaps I am just a curmudgeon.