WWW--I will always remember the Patrick Swayze of Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders, Donnie Darko, To Wong Fu, and yes, even Red Dawn (but only in a "camp" sense). He was a great dancer and actor. Today, Patrick Swayze died of pancreatic cancer, and my heart goes out to his family, I know where they're at right now.
I'll never forget the first time watching The Outsiders and loving his big brother character because he was just so good, so real. When I went and saw Red Dawn he was just as great, not that it's a great movie, but we all have bills to pay, and so did he. The next time you watch Red Dawn, play songs from the Violent Femmes' first album every time a character dies, I swear to God it fits, it works. I nearly got into a fistfight seeing that one at the theater because I couldn't stop laughing since the scenario in it could never have happened logistically, it's literally a campy science fiction movie by the very closeted John Milius, a guy who likes to play with army toys in his advanced age. He should run for office.
But besides his role in The Outsiders, I have to say that the pinnacle of Swayze's acting career was as a motivational speaker/evangelist/closeted pedophile in 2001's Donnie Darko, a classic that I believe paints a fairly accurate portrayal in many parts of how unpleasant the 1980s really were. Yet, he was one of the good parts, and I'll remember him always for it. There will never be another actor quite like him. There are watersheds in everyone's life, and this is one of them. You made a very drab life and world a little more interesting, sleep well. What a cool dude he was.
WWW--He was a demagogue, a player, a hater, and just one-of-many jackapes screeching in our collective-ear for the last 30+ years, ramming a failed and moronic rightist agenda down all of our throats. At the end of his very pathetic and partisan career as an ostensible journalist and political commentator for old and young fools alike, he outed an active CIA officer for political purposes, for the Bush II administration. That's not a columnist, a journalist, or even a talking head. That's a political mercenary who deserves no respect whatsoever, a hack like Tim Russert or former NYT journo, Judith Miller.
But you wouldn't know any of this listening to NPR today, those scions of ass-licking. I expected this since they're as predictable as a Rush Limbaugh monologue, but they were gunning for a new low today and their rush to the bottom was achieved. When NPR offers the same drivel as the rest of the mainstream media--which is generally free--why pay for it at all? Thankfully, few are, and jazz fans are going to have to deal--all 10,000 of them.
Whenever I feel the slightest twinge of guilt over never having contributed to public radio, it's days like this that remind me that it was always a good move. But NPR are hardly alone in this bizarre adulation of this not-a-man, this moron, this careerist slimeball. No, we shouldn't be mourning Robert Novak, we should be mourning the perfectly viable cancer cells that had to die with him, it's not fair. That he was intellectually bankrupt is a given. That he was annoying is a given. That he was a liar is a given. There's no reason to celebrate him anymore than it would have been when some clone-like apparatchiki died in the former Soviet Union. Good riddance.
Nixon's former counsel John Dean (no, not Howard Dean, former DNC chair) once told the late President Richard Nixon that, "There's a cancer on the presidency," referring to the Watergate burglars. He was far too optimistic--Nixon was that cancer. When thinking of the late conservative columnist it just brings-to-mind the obverse: "There's a Robert Novak on the cancer." Poor cancer. He wasn't a journalist, he was just some asshole powerful people gave a soapbox to, and for far too long. Thanks for reminding me that mortality's not so bad, Bob, thanks for the reminder (thanks God!). At least you die too.
And what should be his epitaph? We already know: Valerie Plame, and the fact that he did a hit-and-run on someone, went to the doctor, and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. That seems to sum-up the reactionary right. Finally, I and millions of others don't have to tell this asshole to shut the fuck up.
