Tag: Strong Opinionation

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Things I don’t want to hear again

I could do without hearing the following statements, ever again:

:: “It’s all part of God’s plan.” (Gee, when I was in management, I was always told that planning had to flexible. Joe Schmoe the manager at Pizza Hut has to be flexible, but God must execute every single detail in his plan, with no deviation? That make sense?! And why are we just cogs in some omnipotent being’s plan, anyway?)

:: “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” (Well, that horseback-riding accident didn’t kill Christopher Reeve, but I don’t think it exactly made him stronger.)

:: “God helps those who help themselves.” (Generally, I don’t like homilies about God wherein God is made to be a bit of a jerk.)

:: “God never gives us more than we can handle.” (Well, actually, he does. In fact, we have a word in our language for “that moment when God gives us more than we can handle”. That word is death.)

:: “We don’t negotiate contracts during the season.” (Way to go, Sabres!)

OK, I’m done.

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He must have forgotten to have his readers Google it for him.

Matthew Yglesias has yet another in a long series of utterances by Jonah Goldberg that fail to live up to facts about the world. I know, it’s not a news flash when Goldberg turns out to have his head squarely planted right around the location of his own colon, but sometimes it’s downright amusing.

Oh heck, while I’m at it, Kevin Drum’s got Glenn Reynolds being a damn moron too. Not a news flash either, since Reynolds is also a complete idiot. “If things go badly in Iraq”? By what possible intellectual gymnastics can people like Reynolds continue to convince themselves that things are going well in Iraq?

UPDATE: Well, let’s make it a Trifecta, shall we? Sadly, No has a nice quote from one of the indistinguishable idiots of Powerline:

E.J. Dionne argues that the “center” in American politics is moving towards the left. I think he’s correct, though we may be one major terrorist attack and/or recession on a Democratic president’s watch away from having to revisit that view.

Hmmmm. Sounds to me like the Right actually wants the US to get attacked, as long as a Democrat is in office when it happens! Isn’t that what that means? If what Glenn Reynolds says in his quote is fair game, why isn’t this a fair reading of Powerline?

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A Very Public Service Message

[Icky topic ahead]

OK, folks, as someone whose day job actually involves cleaning public toilets, let me say that this practice, as demonstrated by Tyra Banks, should be outlawed by Constitutional Amendment. (If you don’t want to watch the video, it’s the practice of “hovering” above the toilet seat so as to avoid making physical contact with it, on the deluded notion that the toilet seat is swarming with germs by the billions.)

First, “hovering” above the toilet seat does nothing to “protect” you from “germs”, since in a normally-maintained public bathroom, the toilet seat is not even close to harboring the most germs. In point of fact, if you go into the bathroom, do your hover thing, and then exit the stall by touching the stall handle with your hand, you’ve exchanged more germs by touching the stall or bathroom door by far than you’ve avoided by not allowing your delicate posterior to contact the toilet seat. And guess where the most germs are found? Why, on the floor — so if you dutifully put your purse or shopping bags or whatever on the floor, you’ve just picked up even more germs than by touching the door handle!

(And I’ll bet you toilet-hoverers go right from your hovering to handling shopping carts, right?)

And second, all hovering accomplishes, in most cases, is urine all over the toilet seat, which someone has to go in and clean up.

So stop hovering. All it does is make a mess and it doesn’t spare you any significant germ activity at all. Thank you.

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Movies, movies, movies

OK, I should comment on the revised version of the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest American Movies.

:: First, what the hell is an “American” movie, anyway? I’m befuddled by how Lord of the Rings can be considered an American movie. Is it because New Line’s an American company? Well, so what? Disney owns distribution rights to Studio Ghibli movies, so let’s get Princess Mononoke on the list.

:: Second, like Roger Ebert, I was wondering what happened to Fargo. When I first saw Fargo, my initial reaction was, “OK, it’s good. Not that good, but good.” But it sure stuck in my head, and now I’m of the “Yup, it’s that good” mindset.

:: Here’s a good article about the list that sums up some stuff. Before I get to the movies actually on the list, here’s a list of the movies that were on the original list but fell off this time around. I’ve bolded the titles whose fall from grace piss me off, for lack of a better term:

Dr. Zhivago
The Birth of a Nation
From Here to Eternity (Great, great movie.)
Amadeus (Ditto.)
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Third Man
Fantasia
Rebel Without a Cause
Stagecoach (My favorite John Wayne movie.)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The Manchurian Candidate (The original, duh.)
An American in Paris
Wuthering Heights
Dances With Wolves (I know, I’m alone in pretty much the entire world in thinking that this movie’s better than Goodfellas, but that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.)
Giant
Fargo
Mutiny on the Bounty
Frankenstein
Patton
The Jazz Singer
My Fair Lady (Yeah, I like West Side Story too, but I’ll take MFL over WSS any day of the month.)
A Place in the Sun
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

And next, the entire list, with occasional comment:

1. “Citizen Kane” (1941) (I know, iconic movie that was staggeringly influential. For me, it’s a “see it once and that’s about it” kind of thing.)

2. “The Godfather” (1972) (I’ve got to admit, I’ve never seen this all the way through and I have virtually no interest in doing so. I just don’t get the allure of mob stories, whether it’s this or The Sopranos or whatever. These aren’t honorable people, they’re not good people living morally within some kind of code, they’re bad people, and I’m just not interested.)

3. “Casablanca” (1942) (This should be number 2, for me.)

4. “Raging Bull” (1980) (Not a fan of boxing, either, really. I heard a comedian on TV once say something along the lines of, “You gotta wonder about a society that considers masturbation ‘self-abuse’ and boxing a sport.” I’m sure this is a great movie, but not a priority of mine.)

5. “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) (Best musical ever.)

6. “Gone With the Wind” (1939) (Three hours of my life I’ll never get back. I do not understand this movie’s beloved status.)

7. “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) (I’m buying this on DVD tomorrow. We’ve got it at The Store for eight bucks.)

8. “Schindler’s List” (1993) (Thank God this placed above Saving Private Ryan, which I consider staggeringly overrated.)

9. “Vertigo” (1958)
10. “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) (Top twenty? OK. Above Star Wars? Not on your life!)

11. “City Lights” (1931) (For me, a little Charlie Chaplin goes a long way. I’d have been fine with including Modern Times, and calling it good.)

12. “The Searchers” (1956) (Another one of those iconic movies that’s full of iconicky goodness and that I didn’t much enjoy watching.)

13. “Star Wars” (1977) (Number One, dammit. And I do not want any of what George R.R. Martin is smoking.)

14. “Psycho” (1960) (Not even close to my favorite Hitchcock movie. More icon than movie, for me.)

15. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) (No argument from me. Haven’t seen it in far too long. I adore this movie.)

16. “Sunset Boulevard” (1950)
17. “The Graduate” (1967)
18. “The General” (1927)
19. “On the Waterfront” (1954)
20. “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) (How can I have a sentimental streak as wide as I know my sentimental streak to be, and yet not like this movie? How can that be possible? And yet, ’tis true. Don’t like it.)

21. “Chinatown” (1974) (Heresy to say this is some circles, but Jerry Goldsmith never wrote a score as good as this again. Great film; haven’t seen it in far too long.)

22. “Some Like It Hot” (1959)
23. “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940)
24. “E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) (Yup.)

25. “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) (Should have been quite a bit higher.)

26. “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939) (Never seen the whole thing. I only mention it in light of the hilarious Mel Gibson remake from that episode of The Simpsons.)

27. “High Noon” (1952)
28. “All About Eve” (1950)
29. “Double Indemnity” (1944)
30. “Apocalypse Now” (1979)
31. “The Maltese Falcon” (1941)
32. “The Godfather, Part II” (1974) (OK, here’s a sequel. So why not The Empire Strikes Back?)

33. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975)
34. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937) (OK.)

35. “Annie Hall” (1977) (I just don’t get Woody Allen. And this movie beat out Star Wars for Best Picture. On that basis it is an evil, evil movie.)

36. “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957)
37. “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946)
38. “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948)
39. “Dr. Strangelove” (1964)
40. “The Sound of Music” (1965) (Fine by me. This movie is adored.)

41. “King Kong” (1933)
42. “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967)
43. “Midnight Cowboy” (1969)
44. “The Philadelphia Story” (1940)
45. “Shane” (1953)
46. “It Happened One Night” (1934)
47. “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951)
48. “Rear Window” (1954)
49. “Intolerance” (1916)
50. “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001) (OK, I got this list from the afore-linked Roger Ebert article. The show did not specify Fellowship, but quite properly identified The Lord of the Rings as a whole. Apparently I was wrong, and they just faded the title out because they couldn’t get the whole thing onscreen at once, which negates my point here. These aren’t three separate movies, and for the AFI to treat them as such is idiotic.)

51. “West Side Story” (1961) (Fine, fine film. Truly great. And I can name a dozen musicals I love more, and several I think should outpace it on this list.)

52. “Taxi Driver” (1976)
53. “The Deer Hunter” (1978) (Watched this in college when my roommate Chris had to watch it for a history class about the Vietnam war. This movie made me want to kill myself.)

54. “M*A*S*H” (1970) (Loved it.)

55. “North by Northwest” (1959) (Loved it. Need to watch it again.)

56. “Jaws” (1975) (Ditto.)

57. “Rocky” (1976) (OK, here’s the exception for boxing. Like this one. Don’t love it. It’s good.)

58. “The Gold Rush” (1925)
59. “Nashville” (1975)
60. “Duck Soup” (1933)
61. “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941)
62. “American Graffiti” (1973) (Haven’t seen this is far too long, either. I think it’s great.)

63. “Cabaret” (1972)
64. “Network” (1976)
65. “The African Queen” (1951) (OK, does Bogart get enough love as an actor? Just compare him in this movie to Rick in Casablanca. I’m thinking of that bashful grin Bogey does when he admits to Katherine Hepburn that his first name is “Charley”. There’s some range for you!)

66. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) (Well, duh.)

67. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966)
68. “Unforgiven” (1992) (This is when I realized that Eastwood wasn’t just the guy from Every Which Way But Loose.)

69. “Tootsie” (1982)
70. “A Clockwork Orange” (1971)
71. “Saving Private Ryan” (1998) (Sigh. The D-Day stuff is stunningly great. Everything after that? Meh followed by treacle.)

72. “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994) (Not nearly high enough.)

73. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969)
74. “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)

75. “In the Heat of the Night” (1967)
76. “Forrest Gump” (1994) (OK, I’ll admit to liking this movie. I don’t think it’s quite the indictment of the Left that many think it is, and I find it absorbing every time I see it. But still: it’s on the list and Fargo‘s not? I call shenanigans.)

77. “All the President’s Men” (1976)
78. “Modern Times” (1936) (As I said. This is legitimately great.)

79. “The Wild Bunch” (1969)
80. “The Apartment” (1960)
81. “Spartacus” (1960)
82. “Sunrise” (1927)
83. “Titanic” (1997) (I’ve blogged about this before in greater depth somewhere, but let me just say that I still don’t get the angry backlash against this movie that’s pretty much held sway ever since, oh, the day after it won “Best Picture”. Sure, the love story is pure melodrama, but there’s nothing wrong with melodrama sometimes, and all the stuff about the ship sinking is just amazing stuff. Great movie, in my opinion.)

84. “Easy Rider” (1969)
85. “A Night at the Opera” (1935)
86. “Platoon” (1986)
87. “12 Angry Men” (1957)
88. “Bringing Up Baby” (1938)
89. “The Sixth Sense” (1999) (Well…really? Top 100? It’s good, but…well, really? If this movie is on the list again in ten years, I’ll be shocked.)

90. “Swing Time” (1936)
91. “Sophie’s Choice” (1982)
92. “Goodfellas” (1990) (Meh.)

93. “The French Connection” (1971)
94. “Pulp Fiction” (1994) (OK, here’s my exception to my general antipathy toward movies with criminals as protagonists. But this is because of the film’s theme of redemption, when Jules realizes he must leave the life and “try real hard to be the shepherd”.)

95. “The Last Picture Show” (1971)
96. “Do the Right Thing” (1989)
97. “Blade Runner” (1982) (Sorry, but…no. Yes, its production design is amazing, but the story isn’t all that interesting, to me. I always find this movie uninvolving and kind of dull. Roy Batty’s final speech before he dies is pretty poetic, I’ll admit, but it’s preceded by two hours of “Meh”.)

98. “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (1942)
99. “Toy Story” (1995) (I think they picked this because it was Pixar’s first, as opposed to Pixar’s best. Finding Nemo is far, far better. So is The Incredibles.)

100. “Ben-Hur” (1959) (Yes! My favorite biblical or “sword-and-sandal” epic.)

And finally, here are some movies that haven’t made either list that, in my mind, damned well should have made at least one:

The Adventures of Robin Hood
The Sea Hawk
The Empire Strikes Back
An Affair to Remember (Oh, stop. It makes me cry like a little girl, and that’s fine by me.)
Superman
When Harry Met Sally…
The Music Man
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
As Good As It Gets
The Princess Bride
Say Anything (Shut up. It makes me cry like a little girl too.)
Pinocchio
The Iron Giant
Somewhere In Time (OK, maybe not. But it too makes me cry like a little girl.)
Bull Durham (Hey, wait a minute — there’s no baseball anywhere in the official list! What the hell–!)
Heavy Metal (OK, definitely not. But oh, my beloved Taarna….)

OK, I think I’m done now. We’ll revisit this in 2017, when this blog is beamed directly into your brain.

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This post contains pure, undistilled dumb. Handle with care.

Reading jaw-droppingly stupid stuff by people who really ought to know better is de rigeur in Blogistan, but I’ve got to note the staggering incidence of no fewer than three glaringly stupid statements from the last week or so. It’s like a Perfect Storm of Stupid. I’ve mentioned two of these already, but it’s just such an amazing thing to see such a concentration of idiocy out there, I figured I should gather them in one place.

First, there’s Mark Helprin’s idea that copyright should last forever:

Once the state has dipped its enormous beak into the stream of your wealth and possessions they are allowed to flow from one generation to the next. Though they may be divided and diminished by inflation, imperfect investment, a proliferation of descendants and the government taking its share, they are not simply expropriated.

That is, unless you own a copyright. Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to it, though taxed at inheritance, would be stripped from my children and grandchildren. To the claim that this provision strikes malefactors of great wealth, one might ask, first, where the heirs of Sylvia Plath berth their 200-foot yachts. And, second, why, when such a stiff penalty is not applied to the owners of Rockefeller Center or Wal-Mart, it is brought to bear against legions of harmless drudges who, other than a handful of literary plutocrats (manufacturers, really), are destined by the nature of things to be no more financially secure than a seal in the Central Park Zoo.

Sample response, from John Scalzi:

What would happen, almost inevitably, is that copyrights of any value (positively, negatively or ideologically) would be secured by a few large private repositories, who would jealously police any new content they believed infringed on their copyright portfolio. One suspects that most of these repositories would also be publishers themselves, who would publish on terms advantageous to them (i.e., works for hire and/or assignation of copyright to the publisher after the death of the author). If you don’t think it would happen, look at the actions of media companies today and the content protection groups they fund.

My feeling on copyright is that it should last for the life of the author, and not one second longer. Copyright expires as does the author. The sound of an author exhaling her last breath? That’s the sound of the public domain getting larger. Or at least, it would be in my world.

:: TIME Magazine’s movie critic, Richard Schickel, on blogs:

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity….French critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, a name not much bruited in the blogosphere, I’ll warrant….We have to find in the work of reviewers something more than idle opinion-mongering….They need to prove, not merely assert, their right to an opinion. ….At the recent Los Angeles Times Festival of Books [] blogging was presented as an attractive alternative — it doesn’t take much time, and it is a method of publicly expressing oneself (like finger-painting, I thought to myself, but never mind).

A representative rejoinder, from Lance Mannion:

Most reviewers of classical music are trained musicians, and most art critics have some training as painters. But the rest of us—and I get to include myself because, like I said, there are newspapers who’ve paid for my blather—got the job despite our credentials, or lack of them, not because of them. We were able to convince some editor desperate for copy that we could fill the space with words that would come together in a fairly intelligent fashion without getting the rag we’re writing for sued in the process.

Critics don’t have to be able to do the work they critique. They have to be able to appreciate the best of the work and be able to explain why and how what they’re writing about at the moment measures up or doesn’t measure up. In other words, they have to be a good audience and they have to be able to write well. They have to have good eyes, good ears, some experience using them, and a clear and snappy prose style, qualities that you don’t have to be taught, even if they can be taught, which is debatable. You don’t have to go to a special school, you just have to school yourself.

Exactly. Critics aren’t grown in gestation tubes until maturity, at which point they’re sprung from their nutrient-rich environments with their knowledge of film or literature or music or whatever already in place.

:: I mentioned the first two items here and here. The third, however, has gone unmentioned here, until now. Behold the stunning wisdom of Ann Althouse:

And why does reading even need to be a separate subject from history in school? Give them history texts and teach reading from them. Science books too. Leave the storybooks for pleasure reading outside of school. They will be easier reading, and with well-developed reading skills, kids should feel pleasure curling up with a novel at home. But even if they don’t, why should any kind of a premium be placed on an interest in reading novels? It’s not tied to economic success in life and needn’t be inculcated any more than an interest in watching movies or listening to popular music. Leave kids alone to find out out what recreational activities enrich and satisfy them. Some may want to dance or play music or paint. Just because teachers tend to be the kind of people who love novels does not mean that this choice ought to be imposed on young people via compulsory education. Teach them about history, science, law, logic — something academic and substantive — and leave the fictional material for after hours.

I would quote this rejoinder, but really, it needs to be read in full. Let me just note that Althouse reveals herself in all her malignant idiocy as soon as she states that reading literature “is not tied to economic success in life”. First, the notion that education should be nothing more than glorified job training is nauseating in the extreme coming from anyone, but coming from a professor should result in immediate expulsion from ever teaching anyone again. But second, last time I checked, the entertainment industry in this country was a pretty large source of economic activity, and the act of reading fiction is a pretty big factor there, isn’t it?

You’ll all pardon me now; I need to scrub away the stupid.

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Candy. Sweet, sweet candy.

A few days ago, John Scalzi mentioned his preferred brand of red licorice, a brand called “Red Vines”. He also mentions his apparently strongly-held belief that Twizzlers are substantially inferior. Now, he’s mentioned Red Vines before, but I’ve never been able to judge them for myself, since I can never find them here…until now. It seems that Target stocks them (alongside the Twizzlers, of course).

Now, I refuse to accept the notion that Twizzlers suck. I actually enjoy their waxy texture — mmmmmm, wax — and I like the flavor just fine. That said, I must admit that Red Vines are also very pleasing. The individual pieces are larger than Twizzlers, with the spiral pattern on the outside more sharply defined and with the Red Vines’ surface visibly rougher than the smooth Twizzlers. Thus, the “mouth feel” of the Red Vines is very nice, and the flavor is likewise different from that of Twizzlers. (I have no idea what specific flavor the Red Vines are supposed to approximate, but I don’t think it matters anyway, since no cherry or strawberry or any other red fruit occurring in nature tastes like a Red Vine.)

Where Red Vines actually do stomp all over Twizzlers is in the thickness of the pieces. Twizzlers are skinnier, with the hole on the inside being substantially narrower than in the Red Vines. In fact, I’ve noticed in recent years that Twizzlers seem to be packed together so tightly in their packages these days that the longitudinal cavity within each individual Twizzler is virtually sealed shut. With Red Vines, however, you can bite off either end and then look through the resulting licorice tube and see out the other end. And why does this matter?

Because this means that Red Vines can be employed as a straw for drinking Pepsi.

(A while back, I was at Vidler’s in East Aurora and found some spearmint flavored licorice. I liked it. Everyone else in the family hated it. Oh well.)

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Random Notes on TeeVee

Some thoughts on the soon-to-be-concluded TV season:

:: I watched Heroes sporadically during the first part of the season, but in our household, 9:00 pm is a tough time slot since that’s The Daughter’s bed time. I’ll probably acquire the Season One DVD set when it shows up.

:: I still love Scrubs, but the show’s starting to feel noticeably weaker to me. I suspect that the next season may well be the last.

:: Sure, Mr. Trump, that’ll preserve your dignity. I’ve actually enjoyed The Apprentice during its run. But I think this style of reality stuff is running its course.

:: Long-time readers know that I gave up on ER for good midway through last season (even after several instances of shark-jumping in seasons previous to that), but the other night I actually caught the last two minutes of this year’s season finale, and I nearly fell out of my chair laughing at the cliffhanger they came up with: Neela getting trampled at a peace rally. Wow, how far that show has fallen — a writer proposing a development like that in ER‘s first season would have been fired on the spot.

:: With Scrubs and 30 Rock on NBC and Grey’s Anatomy on ABC, I lost track of CSI for most of the year. Maybe I’ll catch the re-runs. Meantime, CSI: New York has gotten better after a rocky first year, and its finale episode was actually a good “action” episode. And CSI: Miami? It’s still the most fun of the CSI shows, in its gloriously campy way. Its season finale ended with a shot of David Caruso doing his iconic hands-on-hips, lookin’-at-a-violent-world-through-sunglasses pose from the roof of the tallest building in Miami. And why was he there? That’s the best part — no reason at all! There was nothing in the story to have Caruso go up there. They did it just because it looked cool.

:: Yup, my late-season replacement show curse remains intact. I liked Raines. It’s gone now.

:: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is gone, and thankfully so. What could have been a terrific series about the backstage machinations of a sketch comedy show instead became Aaron Sorkin’s monument to…Aaron Sorkin. If you ever watched The Apprentice, you saw Trump talking about himself and his projects: “When this building is completed, it will completely change the skyline of New York forever and will be the most beautiful building in the world!” And that’s the vibe that Sorkin created with Studio 60, whether he intended it or not: “I’m just such a good writer! I’m awesome! Look at my genius and bask within it, mere mortals!”

Oddly enough, Sorkin couched his show within a subtext of “Wow, does TV ever suck! What we need is a genius writer to save it!”, at a time when the quality of TV shows is probably better than ever.

:: Criminal Minds has a nice cast, but always depresses me.

:: I still enjoy House, but I think it needs a shake-up of some sort. Lots of this year’s episodes felt mechanical to me.

:: Law and Order? Who cares?

:: I still think Lost is boring.

:: A couple of weeks ago, Grey’s Anatomy had a two-hour episode where half the show was given to basically providing the pilot episode for the Addison Shepard spinoff series. This I actually liked. What I didn’t like about Grey’s this year? Well, I haven’t watched the season finale yet (it’s on tape), but if it ended with Izzy Stevens getting killed when she’s struck by an errant meteor from space, I wouldn’t complain. I loathe her character. I’m not too fond of George O’Malley, either.

OK, that’s all.

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Let’s not let this become a quadrennial event.

May 1, four years ago:

Today: Al Qaeda is getting stronger. The “surge” isn’t working yet. Four years into the War on Terror, terrorist attacks are sharply up. More than 100 soldiers in Iraq dead this month alone. Setting self-defense and self-policing aside, Iraqis are increasingly unable to reconstruct their own country. Four years after we “ousted” the Taliban, we’re still launching major offensives against them. American dead in Iraq outnumber American dead in the attacks on 9-11-01, with no end in sight.

Four years. There’s your legacy, Mr. President: a stunt flight, a banner, bombs, death, and failure.

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Ow! My credulity! It burns!!

Just a brief note about tonight’s episode of The Office: this show had better come up with a really convincing explanation of just how Michael avoids getting fired for this debacle. I often have trouble maintaining my suspension of disbelief regarding Michael’s ability to get away with some of the stuff he does, but tonight? The only people in real life who screw up this badly and keep their jobs work for George W. Bush.

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