Paul Newman RIP; Silver Chalice; Pier Angeli

Paul Newman passed away yesterday. Check My Way for a detailed bio and film history.

Rather than focus on his "activism" or his awards, I will mention only one film, "The Silver Chalice." Silver Chalice was unique even in its own day (1954) and especially today. Chalice was a Christian based film, set in ancient Rome (Nero's reign) and telling the story of the chalice that had been used by Christ at the Last Supper.

Paul Newman in Silver Chalice


It has been years since I saw the movie, but I recall the plot as a fictionalized account of how the chalice was lost. Another theme of the movie involved power and how those who obtain power can become consumed by their own importance and lose perspective.

Silver Chalice - 1954










The movie also starred Jack Palance, Lorne Greene, E.G. Marshall, Natalie Wood (in a small role) and other notables (including Pier Angeli whose bio is itself a fascinating story).

Pier Angeli with then husband Vic Damone


My Way described the role briefly in its obituary:

Newman started in movies the year before [1954], in "The Silver Chalice," a costume film he so despised that he took out an ad in Variety to apologize.

Newman may have despised the movie, but we can celebrate it as we mourn the passing not only of Newman, but of an era in which movies with a Christian theme could exist.

Biden chokes up over dubious story; Rocky Bleier; Art Rooney

Near Pittsburgh today, Joe Biden told the story of how Rocky Bleier delivered footballs to his children after the family's tragic car crash in December 1972:

After the December 1972 crash, Biden had been keeping vigil in the hospital for his sons, but left to buy them a Christmas tree a couple days before Christmas.

"I came back and they, they looked like they had lighted up like Christmas trees. My one little boy was in traction and the other little boy had a seriously fractured skull and they were happy, and they each had separately, they had footballs in their beds," he said.

Biden paused for about 10 seconds in the Greensburg Salem High School gym to compose himself and the crowd applauded.

"I said, 'Guys, where'd you get the ball?' and they said 'Daddy, Rocky Bleier gave it to us,'" Biden said, again to applause.

Steelers' founder Art Rooney Sr. — Dan Rooney's father — sent Bleier to Wilmington "without any fanfare, without any announcement, without anything other than his incredible decency," said Biden, again wiping away tears.

There are two problems with this story.

(1) Rocky Bleier wasn't famous in 1972. He wouldn't become a starter for another 2 years. He gained 17 yards in 1972. His autobiography would not come out until more than 2 years later.

(2) "a couple days before Christmas" in 1972, Rocky Bleier was 300 miles from any Delaware hospital sitting on the bench in Pittsburgh during the Steelers' first ever meaningful playoff game. The playoff game in question was the scene of the "Immaculate Reception," one of the most famous plays in NFL history.

12-23-1972 - Somewhere on the sidelines, Rocky Bleier sits "a couple days before Christmas" in 1972 [instead of driving to Delaware to deliver footballs]


Even if Biden will claim to have been off a little in the date, it is doubtful that the Steelers would dispatch any player for an all-day errand while preparing for their first important playoff game ever.

Even without these problems, this story sounded a little too Edwardsesque.

Bush doctrine; Sarah Palin; Charles Gibson; Monty Python; Chris Muir [Day-by-Day]

The video below depicts the moment in the Palin - Gibson interview in which Gibson tried to trick Palin by asking whether Palin agreed with "the Bush Doctrine" - without naming which of the many "Bush Doctrines" about which he asked. It was Gibson that ended up with egg on his face.





Many thanks to Chris Muir at Day-by-Day for this idea.

9-14-08

Charles Gibson; Sarah Palin; editing; MSNBC anchors; status of "new media" revolution

It is now no secret that ABC heavily edited the Gibson-Palin interview to distort her answers and leave out key information. Mark Levin posts the transcript with the edited portions. See also LGF.

This episode and other recent election related news occurring on or near the fourth anniversary of Rathergate forces me to ask what effect Rathergate has really had on the MSM/DNC.

Consider the following. In the past few weeks, we have seen a merciless MSM/DNC attack on Sarah Palin that was best summarized by Mark Steyn last week:

a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix, comparing her to Islamic fundamentalists, Pontius Pilate and porn stars, and dismissing her as a dysfunctional brood mare who can't possibly be the biological mother of the kid she was too dumb to abort

Consider also that MSNBC was recently forced to remove two of its anchors from election coverage because the coverage was too blatant even for NBC's taste.

The MSM/DNC appears more partisan and hostile than ever.

Do these recent MSM/DNC activities indicate that the new media revolution is a failure? Was Rathergate in vain?

In July 2005 (in the midst of the Guantanamo nonissue), I predicted that the MSM/DNC would grow even more hostile and bitter as it struggled to forestall the revolution:

But in the meantime, the MSM/DNC has become and will become more vicious and partisan than ever. . . . From now on, we can expect that in the aftermath of every new scandal, the MSM/DNC will spare no effort to justify whatever blunder some MSM/DNC outlet has made. If the Washington Post says that the sky is purple and the blogosphere takes a different view, every Democratic politician will hire skywriters to spread purple smoke throughout the atmosphere. The consequences to the MSM/DNC of doing any less will be another huge loss like Rathergate. We should be prepared for Guantanamo type battles every time we point out another MSM/DNC blunder or lie.

July 3, 2005

Recent events have been predictable. It was predictable that the MSM/DNC would not easily allow a popular conservative uprising to prevent the Messiah from becoming President. It was predictable that MSM/DNC would use every available tactic to achieve its ends.

But this time, not only do we have the tools to fight back and expose the truth, our base (and others) know where to go to find the truth. When we see a clumsily edited interview on television that just does not seem right, we know that we have many options for discovering what really happened.

And it is working. The MSM/DNC is much more widely recognized as biased. Palin's popularity continues to grow despite these efforts. Even UPI is predicting a possible backlash.

NBC's removal of Matthews and Olbermann resulted from pressure from Republican delegates at the RNC convention. Chants of "NBC!" "NBC!" during Palin's speech allegedly unnerved NBC officials to the point of taking action. (They can withstand cries of general media bias, but they do not like to be singled out during a highly viewed nationwide address.) Much as it did in 2004, direct action by the conservative base forced out well known MSM/DNC anchors. The MSNBC affair, much more directly than the Palin, coverage points out that new media and conservatives have the power to fight back.

We should not be disheartened simply because the old media has not reformed itself four years after Rathergate. We knew it would remain our enemy. We were not trying to reform the MSM/DNC. Instead, we have been educating the general public and providing alternatives. To that extent, the revolution has worked. While our enemy grows more desparate and vicious, we grow stronger. Keep exposing the lies and we may not have to care how biased the MSM/DNC is for very long.

Scrappleface responds to Obama's "McCain can't e-mail" commercial.

Before Youtube removes this video on some pretext, I thought I had better post it here in a different format. H/T Scrappleface.

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

A conventional launch strategy for a little-known vice-presidential nominee might have involved "manipulating" the media into running umpteen front-pagers on Sarah Palin's amazing primary challenge of a sitting governor and getting the sob-sisters to slough off a ton of heartwarming stories about her son shipping out to Iraq.

But, if you were really savvy, you'd "manipulate" the media into a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix, comparing her to Islamic fundamentalists, Pontius Pilate and porn stars, and dismissing her as a dysfunctional brood mare who can't possibly be the biological mother of the kid she was too dumb to abort. Who knows? It's a long shot, but if you could pull it off, a really cunning media manipulator might succeed in manipulating Howie's buddies into spending the month after Labor Day outbidding each other in some insane Who Wants To Be An Effete Condescending Media Snob? death-match. You'd not only make the press look like bozos, but that in turn might tarnish just a little the fellow these geniuses have chosen to anoint.

Mark Steyn - 9-11-2008

Obama's Pennsylvania organizer spreads rumor that Bristol Palin's baby was fathered by a black man.

It looks like Explorations will have another smear to add to its list.

Remember the Obama Pennsylvania organizer that publicly accused John McCain of being a secret participant in the post WWII Nazi movement - and remaining so to this day? Well, he is back. And this time he means business. As I wrote in April:

A key Obama local volunteer/supporter (Darnell L. Williams) operates a large mailing list, is privy to Obama's campaign communications (and frequently forwards them to his mailing list), solicits donations for Obama, instructs the faithful on how to obtain tickets to upcoming Obama events, helps organize attendance at local Obama events and solicits volunteers for registration drives and campaign efforts in Pennsylvania and neighboring Ohio.

Today, this Obama organizer sent out a mass e-mail that contains the following:

http://www.blackbottom.com/watch.php?v=WdBJd9b9i8A&feature=active_sharing

This is going around the Black community from coast to coast, from Canada to Mexico. You may want to check it out. The truth will come out anyway in five months.

Darnell L Williams

The message links to a video in which a young black man claims to be the father of Bristol Palin's baby.

Apparently the Obama campaign thinks that it is somehow damaging to the McCain/Palin ticket to accuse the VP candidate's daughter of procreating with a black man. Barack Hussein Obama has thrown a lot of people under the bus in this election year. His former pastor, various supporters who show up at rallies wearing Islamic headress, his church, his white grandmother and others. But it seems a little extreme to throw his entire race under the bus. And since Obama himself is the product of a mixed marriage, isn't he throwing his own heritage under the bus by using the concept of mixed procreation as a weapon against Sarah Palin's daughter?

The Obama campaign must really be scared of Sarah Palin to use something like this. Having found no evidence of "Sambo" or bikini pictures, the Democrats have undoubtedly dispatched another team of lawyers to Alaska to investigate miscegenation.

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

Despite the fact that Hitler brought "change," promoted clean, energy-efficient mass transit by making the trains run on time, supported abortion for the non-master races, vastly expanded the power of the national government and was uniformly adored by college students and their professors, I gather that liberals don't like Hitler because they're constantly comparing him to Bush.

Ann Coulter - 9-10-2008

Sarah Palin; Obama; Lipstick; Pig; Another video we are not allowed to see

Here is the McCain commercial responding to Obama's "pig" insult. I understand that McCain was forced to remove this video from Youtube.



There is a reason Obama is so afraid of pigs.

At the debates, McCain and Palin should show up with pigs as part of their entourage. The gesture would make light of Obama's insult and it would provide other benefits.

Rathergate - four years later

Four years after the blogosphere exposed the forgeries that CBS used in its story about George W. Bush and the Texas Air National Guard, the MSM/DNC is no less relentless in its lies about Republicans.

The MSM/DNC has spread so many smears about Sarah Palin in little more than a week, it is almost impossible to keep track.

But we have countered every attack and will counter even more. Because Rathergate was about much more than Dan Rather, George Bush or John Kerry. Rathergate had less to do with typesetting, kinkos, superscript "th", or a "failure to authenticate" than it had to do with the future of information.

• Rathergate was about the ability of the old media to control the discussion (no matter what the issue).


• Rathergate was about the old media monopoly.


• Rathergate was about alternative sources of information.


• Rathergate was about the truth vs. the power of the old media.


• Rathergate was about a long term revolution.

Within months of Rathergate, Dan Rather was out of a job, and so was the President of CNN over an entirely different scandal exposed by conservative blogs.

During and after Rathergate, CBS News was discredited, and so was Newsweek over a different scandal in which bloggers presented the truth to the public.

Numerous other major news outlets would be discredited over lies in 2005 (and later).

The point is, Rathergate provided a boost that helped the blogosphere counter MSM/DNC lies from that point forward. Rathergate is a major milepost in the new media revolution. Rathergate is as important as Drudge's exposure of Monicagate.

We make a mistake if we think of Rathergate as merely a pleasant memory that serves no purpose today. Rathergate is a battle that must be refought every time that the MSM/DNC tells a lie.

The left continuously celebrates (and misinterprets) the anniversaries of its greatest victories - Watergate and Vietnam. We will hear about those events nonstop until the MSM/DNC disappears. We must celebrate our victories also, or the left will reinterpret history and remove Rathergate and other milestones from our collective memory.

As we fight the anti-Palin smears, Rathergate must be our weapon. Just as the left opposes our efforts in the war by linking all such efforts to Vietnam, we must remind the world that the MSM/DNC has no credibility because of Rathergate. We must serve notice that we will not allow the equivalent of forged documents to smear our candidates. We will not stand by as anonymous Rather-wannabes spread lies.

Only by building on the victories of the past will we enable those victories to mean something in the future.

previous -

Three year anniversary - personal recollections.

Two year anniversary - Rathergate legacy

One year anniversary - "shot heard 'round the world."

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Update - Rathergate in light of September's events.

Quote of the day - Jonah Goldberg [Palin, Alaska corruption]

She got her start as a PTA activist and “hockey mom” who took on the corrupt Alaskan political machine. Unlike Obama, who played ball with the notorious Chicago machine, Palin took dead aim at the bosses of her own party.

Jonah Goldberg

Sarah Palin; Sambo; bitch

The latest (?) smear is that Sarah Palin referred to B. Hussein Obama as a "Sambo" who beat the "bitch" - Hillary Clinton. The same people are spreading this rumor who would not entertain the thought that Hillary Clinton called someone a "F---- Jew B-----" and who called Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele a "Sambo."

[I place a question mark after "latest" because there will be 10 more smears by the time I hit the "publish" button.]

As Michelle Malkin wrote, "[f]or every nutball blogger who spreads it, there should be 50 to defuse, debunk, and beat it down."

The left does not even care that this smear will be widely disbelieved. They are playing to their base. The leftist base operates outside the realm of human civilization. They exist only to destroy civilization and so foul the political process that they will win even if they lose. There is nothing more important to the left than maintaining an energized, unreasoning, rampaging, destructive base. To the left, credibility pales in comparison to having such a base.
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update - Saturday night -
If you are an idiot searching Google for dirt on Sarah Palin, you have been suckered. Thousands of idiots were led here over the past week in a vain search for "Sarah Palin bikini photos." Now, hundreds more are being baited here in a vain search for evidence that Sarah Palin once said "Sambo." Next week, I may bait you back here to find evidence of some other frivolous accusation. But the fault is yours. If you were not desparate to elect an indefensible candidate, you would not be so afraid of Sarah Palin that you would chase every wild goose.

Sarah Palin rumor scorecard.

Here is a scorecard for the Sarah Palin rumors and MSM/DNC lies. H/T "Explorations."

"Know Enough?"; banned Obama video; William Ayers; Weather Underground.

I know I am late to this issue, but this is the Obama video you are not supposed to see because George Soros' lawyers have intimidated TV stations away from broadcasting it. All of the leftists who protested the Bush administration's attempts to spy on Al Qaeda are quite happy to stifle dissenting opinions and intimidate TV stations.

[The left and John Kerry did the same thing in 2004 with the "Stolen Honor" video. Don't let the MSM/DNC convince you that Obama is somehow "fighting back" or pursuing a different strategy than Kerry.]

Quote of the day - Rudy Giuliani

"When they [the Democrats] gave up on Iraq, they gave up on America."

Rudy Giuliani - 9-3-08

Quote of the day - Pat Buchanan

Where Obama has poodled along with the Daley Machine, Palin routed the Republican establishment, challenging and ousting a sitting GOP governor before defeating a former Democratic governor to become the first female and youngest governor in state history.

Pat Buchanan

Quote of the day - UK Times [Sarah Palin]

At the age of 10, Sarah Palin got her very own bunny rabbit. Which means to say that she crouched down in the grass outside her family home, aimed her shotgun and blew its furry little head off. That's how things work in Alaska. You kill stuff. You freeze it. You turn it into stew.

UK Times

The leftists are not human; Hurricane Gustav; Michael Moore; Don Fowler; John Spratt

By now, it has become widely known that the Democrats have celebrated the coming of Hurricane Gustav during the Republican convention. Redstate posts a video of DNC Chairman Don Fowler joking with Representative Spratt about the upcoming devastation and how this supposedly proves that God favors the Democrats.

Michael Moore also enjoys the prospect of hurricane destruction during the RNC convention. See more here.

Two years ago I wrote of the dehumanizing effects that MSM/DNC politics have created for all of us:

But we should remember what separates us from the totalitarian movement that is the MSM/DNC. The very reason we oppose abortion, that we opposed the murder of Terry Schiavo, that we oppose the use of stem cells from murdered Ukrainian infants, etc. is that we value the very concept of humanity. The reason that the MSM/DNC favors those things is that totalitarians must dehumanize their would-be subjects in order to rule and control. Proud, strong, faithful, happy humans cannot be ruled. Cattle CAN be and WILL be ruled. A world in which anyone's life becomes disposable for the sake of political advantage is a world tailor-made for totalitarians.

To the left, human beings are just cattle or inanimate objects. If a hurricane has to destroy and disrupt thousands of lives in order for the left to win an election, then so be it. The millions fleeing across the southeastern U.S. are mere chess pieces in the political calculations of the left. The left can not conceive of individuals and the importance they place on their own lives, safety, health and security. The left can not see anything beyond their own desire for power.

This is the same attitude that could justify mass purges, starvation and devastation from the Stalin regime in the 1930's. This attitude allowed both (1) the perpetrators to commit these atrocities and (2) the left in this country to cover it up.

This disgusting spectacle should give us all an indication of what type of "change" the left has in store for the rest of us should they ever achieve total power.