Jonathan V. Last's Blog, page 5

Reasons Twitter is Awesome

Yesterday I was a shill for Rubio. Today I’m a shill for Trump.

Can’t wait until everyone moves on to Snapchat.

Jeb!

Went to see Jeb! this morning. Ugh.

The Ultimate No Labels Candidate

Here’s the Kasich piece. In a weird way, he could be running the same campaign, both policy-wise and stylistically, in the Dem. primary.

The Snows of New Hampshire

I’ve been in New Hampshire since Monday and it was fantastically warm–last night I was walking around in shorts and a t-shirt after going for a run. This morning, a blizzard rolled through starting around 7:30 and has dumped between six and eight inches of snow (so far). Weird.

Anyway, I’ve been doing the campaign thing and have written up some observations on Clinton, Trump, and Rubio. (I saw Kasich this morning and will have something on him in a couple hours.) The short version is: (1) Clinton isn’t the candidate she was in 2008; she’s gotten much worse. (2) Trump kind of looks like he’s mailing it in. (3) Rubio is the best political talent I’ve seen in 20 years of journalism. The only person close is the Bill Clinton of 1992.

Over on the Twitters, people seem upset by this observation and their response seems to be: “RINO! He’ll do amnesty!” Well, maybe? I don’t know. I’m not making any value judgments about what kind of president he would be, or how conservative he is in his heart of hearts or, or wether he’d go full-amnesty on January 21. I’m not a mind-reader or a cheerleader. My brief when I do these things is to try to be a reasonably careful and informed observer. And it looks to me like Rubio is a once-in-a-generation political talent who is likely to be the nominee and, if he is the nominee, is likely to beat Hillary Clinton by 5 points, at a minimum.

The trick is, that in order for him to do that, he has to put away Bush, Christie, and Kasich in NH. If he finishes above them on Tuesday, his odds of being the nominee go up even more. At that point, I’d probably put him at even-money in a three-way race with Trump and Cruz. As always, I’m not telling you that this is what I want or what I hope for or what I think is best for America. It’s just how it looks to me from being up close on this stuff.

My big bias is the general belief that candidate quality matters. (See my Romney 2012 belly-aching.) Not always and not everywhere. Events matter, macro-conditions matter, organization matters, etc. But I do believe that at the presidential level, a candidate with a significant VORP (either plus or minus) can be decisive.

So take that for what you will.

 

Suicide Squad Trailer

The new Suicide Squad trailer is out:

A couple thoughts:

(1) I can’t tell if this is DC’s Avengers or DC’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

(2) But how much more fun does this look than Batman vs. Superman Dawn of Justice Blooming of a Franchise? It’s not even close, is it? And is it a problem for Warner Bros. if Suicide Squad out-grosses Batman-Superman by, like, a lot?

(3) I never really liked casting Will Smith as Longshot because the Longshot character was always kind of feral and crazy, not charismatic and sympathetic. But it looks like they’ve just redrawn the character to let Smith be the moral center of the movie and I’m fine with that. Longshot canon isn’t sacred to me and this might be an improvement.

(4) Along those lines, I had kind of wondered what it would have been like in an alt-universe where Will Smith played the Joker. I’d still kind of love to see that.

(5) Prediction: Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn is going to steal this movie. WB will rush to get a Harley stand-alone movie out once they see audience reactions. And Robbie will be considered a giant movie star the Monday after the first weekend of release.

Alan Rickman, RIP

This little tribute to Alan Rickman is about as sappy as I get. One of my favorite actors, ever. I will always regret not having the chance to see him onstage.

Trump Creationism

Trumpism probably has a thousand fathers. But if you had to pin paternity on just one cause, who would it be?

Which is more dangerous?

The AI superintelligence of the future? Or the Facebook of today?

I reject your false choice.

(Yes, channeling Christine Rosen and Adam Keiper.)

 

 

12 Years a Droid

Here’s the final piece in my case for the Empire triptych: An extended examination of slavery in Star Wars. Basically, I don’t think Melissa Harris-Perry is crazy for seeing unsettling race problems in Star Wars. I just think she’s looking at the wrong characters–it’s the droids who are obviously a stand-in for the African-American experience.

Which makes the Jawas the most repulsive characters in the Star Wars universe. Because they’re slave traders.

Update: An email from reader Keith Rabenberg:

I have used for some time now a simpler method of provoking Star Wars fans.  At some point during a discussion of the movies, when someone refers to Chewbacca, I like to make a reference to “her.”  And then I go on to explain what a tragic figure she is: flying around the galaxy with that cad Solo, with whom she clearly was in love, and then having to watch him flirt right in front of her with the girl with twin hair buns, all the while being unable to express her emotions in English … hence the loud moaning and howling.

I’m always amazed at how strongly the Star Wars fans react, even when they know I’m just making fun: “Chewbacca is not a girl!”  They become even more agitated when I challenge them to prove I’m wrong.

Anyway, I find it entertaining.

I kind of love this.

Time to Retire from Twitter

Aimee Mann favorited a tweet last night. I’m done.