Musing's musings

Let's try this one more time

I wrote this post (or one similar to it) last night. However, the new posting interface on TypePad is proving a little tricky to navigate. I finished the post, hit "Preview," read through it, corrected a couple of typos and changed a couple of words, hit "Preview" again, and then hit "Save"--just like I've done hundreds of times. But then the post disappeared into the ether. If that sounds a little too much like "The dog ate my homework" to you, perhaps the fact that it also happened to Wil Wheaton might incline you to be a little less cynical.

Anyway, I started to write about what a day of endings and beginnings yesterday was. I was at the end of a very long day, in which I'd gotten up at the usual time, gone to the office, slogged through a morning's work (and then some), gotten on a train, gone to Chicago to audition for Jeopardy!, come home, watched what turned out to be the last game of the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs (Go Red Wings!), and was looking forward to schlepping off to bed for a well-deserved rest when I stopped in to check e-mail one last time and decided to grab a quick look around the blogosphere, when I learned that Senator Clinton had announced her intention of conceding the primary election to Senator Obama this Saturday, and throwing her support behind his candidacy for president. A great way to end the day--until TypePad ate my post.

I do think it's a good thing that Senator Clinton is getting behind Senator Obama's candidacy. John McCain may be running for George W. Bush's third term, but that doesn't mean he's just going to roll over and play dead. The more ammunition we have against him, the less likely it is that we're going to wake up in McSame's World in two hundred thirty-odd days. Moreover, despite what I'm sure will be howls of anguished protest from Very Serious People all over the blogosphere and the punditocracy, I'm in agreement with the Metra employees I heard quite animatedly discussing the reasons why it would be a good idea for Obama to seriously consider Clinton as his number two.

What are some of those reasons, you ask? Well, as one of the conductors said yesterday, Clinton has a lot more foreign policy experience than Obama does--and given the way the Hedgemony has flushed our diplomatic standing down the toilet for the last eight years, we absolutely cannot afford to be falling down on that front any longer. Just remember what happened to the Boy Who Won't Be King Much Longer the last two times he went to Saudi Arabia to ask the oil sheikhs pretty please with a cherry on top could we have some more oil if you doubt me on that front. An argument the train men didn't make, but one which makes sense to me, is that Clinton and Obama are each strong in places, and with constituencies, where the other is not--or at least is not as strong. Again, the Republicans may be sliding down the razor blade of life (to borrow a phrase from Tom Lehrer), but they're not out of the game yet. The more votes we can bring, the more money we can collect, the more voters we can excite and energize, the harder the other side has to fight. And we don't want to give them even half an inch--or they'll steal this election, too.

"Dumb Dora" she wasn't

Brett Somers, perhaps best known for being Jack Klugman's wife and one of the perennial panelists on Match Game, has died, aged 83, after a bout with cancer. Ms. Somers brightened many an afternoon in my salad days with her acerbic wit and continual banter (usually in doubles entendres) with Charles Nelson Reilly (who also died this year, apparently without attracting much notice, considering this is the first I've heard of it).

As a long-time viewer of the show (and thanks to GSN, I can catch it again--and marvel at the schlockiness of the late '70s), I can also definitively state that Reilly sat to Somers's left, not to her right as claimed in the E! News piece linked to above. Considering that they posted a video clip of the show along with their obituary, I'm surprised at that gaffe.

Say whaaaa?

I was puzzled by the headline on this Reuters story, having already seen the poll results discussed elsewhere. The headline reads "Most Americans back Alito for Supreme Court," but if you actually read the story, the lead graf states that "Public support for Senate confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito grew slightly to 54 percent... (my emphasis)." I would not call 54% "most" of anything. It's barely more than half. "Most" is normally reserved for pluralities in excess of 75%--and BorkAlito is nowhere near that margin. Chalk that up as one more data point refuting the hypothesis that the media have a liberal bias...

And the hits just keep on comin'. I was dismayed to learn (from Bark Bark Woof Woof), upon returning home from a long day helping my mom wrap up loose ends after her mom's death, that NBC has cancelled The West Wing, effective at the end of the current season.

As I remarked in a comment at Bobby's place, I think NBC's timing stinks. If they wanted to cancel the show even before John Spencer's recent untimely death (as alleged in the AP story linked to above), they shouldn't have chosen to make this season all about the election of Jed Bartlet's successor. We spend all season working through one of the show's best story lines since creator Aaron Sorkin left, and then NBC pulls the plug on us as soon as we've hit the dénouement. That well and truly blows.

And frankly, I can't quite agree with Bobby's premise that The West Wing is "going out at or near the top of its game." For that to have been true (in my book, anyway), the show would have to have ended somewhere after the midpoint (but before the end) of the fourth season, when Sorkin was still writing it, and before introducing the whole kidnaping-of-Zoey story arc that led to the 25th Amendment arc that started the fifth season.

I bought the fifth season of The West Wing on DVD after exchanging a couple of duplicate DVDs I received for Christmas last year. I haven't finished watching all of the discs yet. In fact, I don't think I've watched more than the first one. Part of that has to do with the fact that life has been getting in the way of my TV and movie watching for much of the last year. But part of it has to do with the fact that there are fewer and fewer classically fabulous episodes of the show with each season that passes. The first two seasons are chock full of them: but I can't think of a single one that stood out from the fifth season (or the current season, the seventh and last--at least of those yet broadcast). The show hasn't lost its appeal for me, but it's definitely a shadow of its former glorious self.

The West Wing debate

If you've not yet watched this week's episode of The West Wing, you will definitely not want to follow me below the fold. If you have, c'mon in and let's talk about it.