Did Newt drink the bong water?

I do love George Clooney.

And I figure that,  as a very happily married woman of a certain age, it's okay for me to make such a bald statement about one of our last true actor/superstars. I mean, Mr. Clooney not only delights on screen as an actor, he gets malaria trying to help the people of Sudan. And then best of all in my mind, rather than acting all brave and self-sacrificing in the interests of fueling his celebrity, Mr. Clooney makes light of  illness, saying, "I guess the mosquito in Juba looked at me and thought I was the bar." 

Two men who don't need to be identified, right?

Okay, so why have I suddenly confused the WMRA blog with a fan magazine? Especially since George Clooney, being a dishy and talented actor and a persistent advocate for the people of Sudan, is hardly news, right?

Because of his refreshing honesty and his astonishing lack of hypocrisy when asked in a recent Newsweek interview, if he was interested in running for elected office . . .

 . . . despite occasional overtures from the California Democratic Party, Clooney has rejected the constraints of conventional politics. “I didn’t live my life in the right way for politics, you know,” he said, sitting outside the Central Pub in Juba, scarfing down pizza. “I f--ked too many chicks and did too many drugs, and that’s the truth.” A smart campaigner, he believes, “would start from the beginning by saying, ‘I did it all. I drank the bong water. Now let’s talk about issues.’ That’s gonna be my campaign slogan: ‘I drank the bong water.’?

For me, that kind of forthrightness (in spite of the offensive crudeness of Mr. Clooney's reference to his well-publicized girlfriends) was like a long, cool drink of water. Here's someone who lives squarely in the public eye who, like Popeye, is comfortable admitting openly that, "I am what I am."

Speaking of forthrightness, the Obama administration finally put its policy where its campaign rhetoric was. As reported yesterday in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President Obama, in a striking legal and political shift, has determined that the Defense of Marriage Act — the 1996 law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages — is unconstitutional, and has directed the Justice Department to stop defending the law in court, the administration said Wednesday.

Hooray, again, for lining up what you say with what you do. Hooray for forthrightness!

Newt Gingrich made the news in the forthrightness department yesterday as well.

Caption from New York Magazine article:
Gingrich and his current wife.Photo: John M. Heller/Getty Images

New York magazine reports the story this way:

Someone Asked Newt Gingrich About All Those Affairs He’s Had

If Newt Gingrich is going to run for president, as it appears he will, he better gird himself for questions like the one he received last night during a forum with University of Pennsylvania students. As reported by Politico: 

Isabel Friedman

"You adamantly oppose gay rights ... but you've also been married three times and admitted to having an affair with your current wife while you were still married to your second," Isabel Friedman, president of the Penn Democrats, said to Gingrich. 

Not to mention the affair he had with the woman who would become his second wife while still married to his first! Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt. 

"As a successful politician who's considering running for president, who would set the bar for moral conduct and be the voice of the American people, how do you reconcile this hypocritical interpretation of the religious values that you so vigorously defend?" 

After trying to shame the questioner — "I hope you feel better about yourself," he told her — Gingrich basically answered that he can't reconcile it, and he hopes the voters don't mind.  

“I've had a life which, on occasion, has had problems,” he added. “I believe in a forgiving God, and the American people will have to decide whether that [sic] their primary concern. If the primary concern of the American people is my past, my candidacy would be irrelevant. If the primary concern of the American people is the future ... that's a debate I'll be happy to have with your candidate or any other candidate if I decide to run." 

Don't ask Newt about the past! It's totally not important at all! 

The exchange made UTube, which is, in my opinion, one of our society's great defenses against hypocrisy.

So call me crazy, but didn't Newt Gingrich just kinda admit (metaphorically) that he'd drunk the bong water?

George Clooney and the Bush tax cuts. . .

Last week, a package arrived from Picador publishing bringing me a book with George Clooney on the cover.  

The American is a reissue of Martin Booth's strange little moralistic thriller previously published as A Very Private Gentleman. George Clooney is on the book's cover because he made the book into a movie that is due for release on September 1.

Any thriller good enough for George Clooney to film (Charlie and I had just watched him in the truly impressive Up in the Air), is good enough for me to read. So I dove into The American and shortly (page 32) came upon this little gem:  

It is better to change the manner in which a man perceives the world than it is to change the world he perceives. Think upon this.

I did think upon it, which got me thinking about how this country's elected officials recently landed us in two seemingly un-winnable wars, as well as a deep economic recession. And yet now we appear to be somehow considering revising our opinion of these past policies into something we should consider giving another run around the track. Martin Booth's little gem of a two-sentence paragraph got me to wondering if we are revising our opinions of the policies themselves, or just having our perceptions revised by political speak.

Take the Bush Tax Cuts (or BTCs as I plan on referring to them from now on).

To extend or not extend, that is the question. The BTCs expire December 31st, which means Congress has a mere 5 months to decide -- not a lot of time in the slow-grinding wheels of American government.

President Bush signs his $1.35 trillion tax cut on June 7, 2001, at the White House.   SOURCE: AP/Ron Edwards

Every Sunday, for fun, The Washington Post offers us a different "Five Myths: A challenge to everything you think you know." Last Sunday,we got  Five Myths about the Bush Tax Cuts by economist William Gale, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Dr. Gale offers what seems to be a pretty balanced take on what the BTCs have done, and might do for the economy, if they are extended, by arguing that the following five assertions about them are bogus.  1) Extending the tax cuts would be a good way to stimulate the economy; 2) Allowing the high-income tax cuts to expire would hurt small businesses; 3) Making the tax cuts permanent will lead to long-term growth; 4) The Bush tax cuts are the main cause of the budget deficit; and 5) Continuing the tax cuts won't doom the long-term fiscal picture; entitlements are the real problem.  

Dr. Gale, of course, has no horse in the midterm election race. He has everything to gain by educating us about good economic policy (he is an economic scholar, after all) and nothing to gain (our votes, for example) by simply changing our perception of bad economic policy. And it does seem that when it comes to extending or not extending the BTCs, one has to be better for the economy than the other.

But our politicians inhabit a parallel universe where what is alleged to be true appears to depend upon what  they think their supporters want to hear. The Democrats pretty much (though not exclusively) want a big part of the BTC's axed (the part they term "tax cuts for the rich") in order to help shrink the deficit; while Republicans pretty much want the BTCs left intact (it's the economy, stupid); saying that we can afford these tax cuts, even though we can't afford to extend unemployment benefits. Why is this? According to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, "There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue."

Oh dear. Where's the beef? i.e.the truth?

Back to the movies. . . In Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) famously whispers to whomever Kevin Kostner plays: "If you build it, they will come."  Might our politicians be hearing a similar voice whispering, if you say it, it is true?

It is better to change the manner in which a man perceives the world than it is to change the world he perceives. Think upon this.

So, you got any thoughts?