Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 144

Sherman's Mark

Little white kids re-enact the Erin Andrews-Richard Sherman ("best quarter in the game") interview.

These Boots Made for Dreaming

With son in L.A. now, and still frigid in NY, more apt than ever.  The typically odd Nancy Sinatria re-make.   And below that, Nance does "Hotel California."

Forget Bieber, Let's See THIS Mug Shot

Hack right-wing writer and "documentary" film director Dinesh D'Souza have been indicted  . He is "accused of illegally directing associates to make contributions to a Senate campaign committee that totaled $20,000. He then reimbursed those individuals for the contributions, prosecutors say.
Though the candidate isn’t identified in the indictment, NBC News has confirmed that it is Republican Wendy Long, who lost the Senate bid in a landslide to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.  He faces two years in prison.

Here's statement from his famed lawyer Benjamin Branfman:

"It is important to note that the indictment does not allege a corrupt relationship between Mr. D’Souza and the candidate. There was never a corrupt agreement of any kind, nor was there any request made that the candidate take any action or refrain from taking any action as a candidate, or as a US Senator, if her political campaign were to have been successful."

--G.M.

CNN Dumps More Than 40 Journos

From email just sent to me by Financial Times:

CNN has laid off more than 40 senior journalists in its newsgathering operation – including a pregnant producer who was two weeks away from giving birth to twins – as part of a reorganisation of the business under Jeff Zucker. 
The cutting of production and editorial staff at the Time Warner-owned group comes as Mr Zucker tries to re-establish CNN as the dominant force in 24 hour cable news, a crown it lost several years ago to Fox News Channel.
The lay-offs at CNN and HLN, its sister network, were concentrated in Washington, Atlanta and Los Angeles at the end of 2013. CNN declined to comment on the laying off the pregnant news producer, who worked for the company for more than a decade, saying it could not comment on individual employees.
Full story (but pay wall).

--G.M.

Drag Racing

Forget the Biebs, this is the real thing, from London.  -- G.M.

Left Behind: Parental Leave in the USA

I very much love and miss my stepdaughter Jen, who decamped for Europe almost a decade ago and is now a full-fledged PhD--and mother of grandson Jules. But much as I long for them to live in the States, I have to acknowledge that the US falls miserably short when it comes to support systems for family life. As Bloomberg reports, "the US and Papua New Guinea are the only nations out of 185 that don't provide or require a paid maternity leave. That lack is one reason the U.S. is falling behind other advanced countries in the share of women in the workforce." Women working in countries such as Germany (where Jen now lives; German mothers can take up to a year off from work and still receive 67 percent of their pay) and Spain surpassed the U.S. over the two decades ending in 2010.

Is there hope for the bill introduced last month in Congress that would enable workers to take a partial paid leave of up to 12 weeks for the birth or adoption of a child, and for serious health conditions affecting themselves or family members?  It took nearly 10 years' debate to get unpaid leave passed back in 1993, despite the research on how parental leave is an economic boon.  “When women have access to paid leave after the birth of the child, they are more likely to return to work, to the same employer, and at the same or higher pay level. We’re one of the only countries on the planet that doesn’t already offer this. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

Bloomberg quotes Sarah Jane Glynn, associate director for women’s economic policy at the Center for American Progress:  “When women have access to paid leave after the birth of the child, they are more likely to return to work, to the same employer, and at the same or higher pay level. We’re one of the only countries on the planet that doesn’t already offer this. It’s kind of embarrassing.”  --B.B.

Abe Said, Where Do Ya Want This BIlling Done?

[image error] NYT looks at new fed scrutiny of secretive political group of conservatives in Hollywood, Friends of Abe (that's Lincoln, not Vigoda) based on claims that they have abused tax status by extending aid to such stellar candidates as Herman Cain.  Among key founders of group was Gary Sinise, and other members include Kelsey Grammar and Jon Voight--but rest of list top-secret.-- G.M.

The Purity of the Essence of 'Dr. Strangelove'

Continuing my 50th anniversary tribute to Dr. Strangelove (see long-unseen original trailer and a behind-the-scenes-doc): Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and more recently the scary epic on nuclear dangers, Command and Control, has blog piece just posted at The New Yorker on how nearly everything in that fanciful film was...true.   People forget: "Although 'Strangelove' was clearly a farce, with the comedian Peter Sellers playing three roles, it was criticized for being implausible. An expert at the Institute for Strategic Studies called the events in the film 'impossible on a dozen counts.' A former Deputy Secretary of Defense dismissed the idea that someone could authorize the use of a nuclear weapon without the President’s approval: 'Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.”

And yet we now know:

Half a century after Kubrick’s mad general, Jack D. Ripper, launched a nuclear strike on the Soviets to defend the purity of “our precious bodily fluids” from Communist subversion, we now know that American officers did indeed have the ability to start a Third World War on their own. And despite the introduction of rigorous safeguards in the years since then, the risk of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear detonation hasn’t been completely eliminated.

And the Soviets even developed a kind of "Doomsday Machine" and, as in the film, did not tell us about it.  Looking back:

Despite public assurances that everything was fully under control, in the winter of 1964, while “Dr. Strangelove” was playing in theatres and being condemned as Soviet propaganda, there was nothing to prevent an American bomber crew or missile launch crew from using their weapons against the Soviets. Kubrick had researched the subject for years, consulted experts, and worked closely with a former R.A.F. pilot, Peter George, on the screenplay of the film. George’s novel about the risk of accidental nuclear war, “Red Alert,” was the source for most of “Strangelove” ’s plot. Unbeknownst to both Kubrick and George, a top official at the Department of Defense had already sent a copy of “Red Alert” to every member of the Pentagon’s Scientific Advisory Committee for Ballistic Missiles. At the Pentagon, the book was taken seriously as a cautionary tale about what might go wrong. Even Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara privately worried that an accident, a mistake, or a rogue American officer could start a nuclear war.

Thus:

In retrospect, Kubrick’s black comedy provided a far more accurate description of the dangers inherent in nuclear command-and-control systems than the ones that the American people got from the White House, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media.

--G.M.

J.C. Visits Sarah Silverman

For a heart-to-heart about women's reproductive rights.

Beethoven and the Ukraine

Several weeks ago I posted a video here that captured the first night of the mass protests in the Ukraine--featuring thousands singing the "Ode to Joy." This, of course, illustrates the theme of our new, acclaimed film "Following the Ninth"--which follows the Ode and the Ninth Symphony arund the world as it is used in protests and other social gatherings.  Now here's a little video of a small group Ukrainians in D.C. singing the "Ode"--with the words of the Ukrainian national anthem. As they write, "This is not a new anthem for Ukraine - this is in the tradition of playing Beethoven's brilliant 'Ode to Joy' during revolutions as a symbol of the invincible human spirit."  Another vid. --G.M..