Hanging on a pole, or was until I took it down today.  It kind of feels like a joke, a trolling of the “progressive”, a mocking of minor gestures of solidarity as activism… but if it were… it sure would be a slight one…  And, (sic)…

NO ONE SHOULD BE TOLD WHAT TO DO WITH THERE BODY!
SHOW YOUR SUPPORT NOW.  WEAR GREY.  DON’T LET ROE V. WADE GET OVERTURNED
PROTECT THE FUTURE RIGHTS FOR ALL WOMEN!
WOMEN HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE WHAT WE DO WITH OUR BODIES!
PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS BY WEARING GREY!

In other political pamphleteering news, I haven’t seen a new anti-Trump throttling jammed into the free boxes of the WW or PM or whatever.  But today I did see someone tossed in a paper declaring “Protect Free Speech”, and a stylish image of a hand holding a smart-phone device with “infowars.com” written on it.  So the fights continue.

So.  When bringing up the television series of Bill Cosby, how do you or do you even acknowledge the giant elephant in the room?

This article on the “future of multi camera tv sitcoms” decides it has to…

Multi-camera was the ideal medium for an age, not yet concluded, of shows built around stand-up comedians, used to working before a live audience: Redd Foxx (“Sanford and Son”), Gabe Kaplan (“Welcome Back, Kotter”), Tim Allen (“Home Improvement,” the current “Last Man Standing”), Freddie Prinze (“Chico and the Man”), Bill Cosby (despite the failings of the man, it’s pointless to deny the power of “The Cosby Show”), “The Bernie Mac Show,” and more recently, with various degrees of success, Whitney Cummings, John Mulaney and Jerrod Carmichael, in shows all named for their leads.

I suppose it’s the listings that do it.  Cosby jumps right at you.  I do have to wonder if they couldn’t have put in a stronger qualifier, though — “the failings of the man” — which could cover minor issues as well as major ones, and granted I wouldn’t be explicit in specifically referencing his failing, but maybe we can up to “heinous crimes”.

And then on to a new edition of Art Linkletter’s “Kids Say the Darndest Thing”, and the history of that franchise…

CBS brought the idea back with Bill Cosby hosting a 1995 special and then a full series, which ran from 1998 to 2000.

Executive decision made somewhere in editing that the people can read through it effortlessly, without a “Yeah, I know” thrown in.

Stacey Abrams has announced that she is not running for the Senate.  And she continues to eye the presidency.  Which is a shame, if you have any inclination toward the Democratic Party over the Republican party and have any inclination toward electing someone with top electoral experience into the presidency over someone who … lost a close race.

In the meantime, we’re getting into some odd gender politicking…

When Wallace, though, played a clip of Stacey Abrams telling Hallie Jackson that she was not ruling out a run for the Democratic presidential nomination, Wallace said if anyone else joined the race, she would want it to be Abrams. “She’s an all-star, and and what she’s talking about seems to me something all the Democrats should be talking about.”
Then, of course, Rick Stengel had to cut her down and say, “Gee, I don’t know why she didn’t run for Senate…” MAYBE BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T WANT TO RUN FOR SENATE, RICK. *cough* Sorry.

Yeah, well…  Schumer may still be on her in recruitment.  Probably a little slyly.  Someone needs to want to run for the Senate, don’t they?  But there’s a suggestion here of “Don’t tell the Women what they can do!”, and “Break that Glass Ceiling” — where the idea of a double standard (did anyone tell Beto not to run?  Well… kind of.)

I note the closest analogy, at least for me, is West Virginia not elected Congressional candidate Richard Ojeda, enjoying the greatest jump of Democratic voting percentage from Republican (or was it Trump?) votes of any candidate in the 2018 cycle, even if it does land on a double point loss — who jumped into the presidential race.  My thought — “Can’t he run for Senate instead?”.  This does have the problem, of course, where his West Virginia Trump cross-over vote politics will not sit well with the Democratic Primary voter — even if he finds himself in an oppositional framework against Trump, it’s not the National Democrats’ oppositional framework, and the only way lots of Democrats will be able to stomache the idea of him is by pointing out “Hey!  It’s West Virginia!” — but then again, looking at Abrams’s comments (credits everything on Trump’s victory with ‘Russian interference’, basically) gives me questions about her.  Ojeda wisely dropped out, before the counting of candidates began, and I don’t know his future plans.

The cover story of Strange Adventures #60… circa 1955

begins with a splash page where Napoleon Bonaparte looks on at a street parade in Christopher Columbus’s honor and thinks…

“So Columbus thinks he’s more popular here in the twentieth century than I — Napoleon Bonaparte!  Well, I’m going to prove he’s wrong!”

Indeed.  Columbus was more popular in the twentieth century than Napoleon.  Now in the twenty-first century — it’s maybe a coin toss.

I noted at some cafe or other a pin pricked notice for a lecture from a bunch of… Maoists apparently…  against “Post-Modernism” and Identity politics at the university.

And they’re on against the Frankfurt School… (Take that Herbert Marcuse!)… cultural marxism, getting into the way of the non cultural marxism.

The lecture tour was had, and reported on by the house organ of wsws.  They try for class solidarity, but I imagine they’ll have to — like everyone else– figure out how to split apart as you thread the needles on identity politics and “victim-ology”… like, when identifies are indeed victimized.  (Joey Bishop is of the working class, ain’t he?)

They do take their stand with the beleagured professors who exposed the problems of cultural studies.  (Surprised by the tone of “bastards who are in it for the lols” response I’d see about them.  Probably shouldn’t be surprised, though… agendas are set full stance and all.)  Maybe there’s hope on the far left yet.

I mostly quit reading the Portland Mercury once “One Day at a Time” passed on.  And though there’s nothing much different in the replacement, the latest edition has a political point worth commenting on.

The pool of democratic presidential candidates may need just a little more chlorine now that former vice president Joe Biden formally announced his candidacy after months of speculation, including several weeks where his history of handsiness and hair-sniffing seemed like a big deal, and people were like, “Women are recklessly accusing Biden of stuff that isn’t even bad, according to me, somebody who wasn’t there, and it will damage his reputation FOREVER!” Yet straight out the gate, Biden is leading in the primary polls against several candidates who have never been accused of inappropriately touching anyone. That’s weird!
To be clear, I’d vote for an un-housetrained basset hound over Trump in 2020, so whatever. The first caucus isn’t for 10 months. A lot can change. John Edwardswas a frontrunner once, too. (BTW, did you know that John Edwards, who fathered a child with his mistress as his wife died of cancer, is now back to being a successful lawyer? Another life ruined by allegations of sexual misconduct… NOT. *snaps*)

We’re in a land where the politics of the liberal cohorts of twittersphere and various points of a liberal communisphere don’t match the general Democratic electorate.  With Biden we have women photographed in the Biden compromised pose horrified that it’s being used against him, and Biden offering a mea culpa of passing standards.  (I wonder how Angela Merkel woulda done with Joseph Biden.)

As we were the problem with the Democratic primaries — sure.  There’s thirty or so people running.  All goddamned politically flawed — whether by my standards or by the general electorate.   At the moment I’m a shrug with a “Biden’s as good as any”.  At least in his weather vane role he hasn’t made the mistake Kamala Harris has as she maneuvers from her role of super-prosecutor in the age of attempted prison reform to land on the “Prisoner Voting Rights”.  (Skipping from the right to the left to meet Bernie Sanders, before seeing she has to retreat.)

John Edwards was never a frontrunner.  If he ever lead in the polls in 2008, it was for, like, a day.  Overall, he was always a distant third behind Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  In 2004, he emerged after Dean’s slide as a Nation magazine approved second placer — The Nation now able to look past his fervant support of the Iraq War as he steered over to stumping about poverty.

More to the point, I don’t really know why he shouldn’t be back to successful private lawyering.  His sexual misconduct is not of the sort that afflicts (go down the long list that includes Bill Freaking Clinton).  He had a private affair, and not here with a subordinate (Clinton again).  A dickish private affair, sure — which I suppose precludes him from being popular enough to win any elected office or serve in a function in an elected official, but nothing criminal.  I don’t even know that “sexual misconduct” is the proper word for it, unless everything becomes bad in the same way.