The braggadocia of it all

It was an eventful Sunday with Ricky Gervais seeming to want to end his run of hosting the Golden Globes by offering his most acerbic and uncensored comments yet. He was merciless, but then that's what people love about Ricky. What can you say about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which awards Best Musical or Comedy to The Martian? I suppose because the soundtrack was principally derived from disco music of the 70s.

No sooner did the Golden Globe awards come to an end than we were dealt the sad news that David Bowie had died. Ridley Scott actually used Starman in The Martian, when Astronaut Mark Whatney wasn't playing Abba and the Ohio Players from a playlist left by Chief Officer Melissa Lewis. Not exactly the Mars David Bowie imagined back at the peak of the Glam Rock movement in the early 70s.

But none of this topped Sean Penn's published interview with El Chapo, which has received almost universal condemnation, including that of Marco Rubio, who found the Rolling Stone interview "grotesque," but considered it Penn's "Constitutional right." How Libertarian of Marco!

Actually, the secret meeting didn't turn out to be so secret after all, as the Mexican police has said that it helped them locate Guzman and bring him to justice over the weekend. The most wanted man in the world is in the process of being extradited to the US to face multiple charges, provided he doesn't escape from his holding cell again.

Ricky took a pot shot at Sean Penn in his opening monologue, as he is not one to let any breaking story go to waste. Gervais quipped, "I want to do this monologue, then go into hiding. Not even Sean Penn will find me. Snitch." Yea, one has to think El Chapo is not feeling very good about that interview right now, and either Penn and/or Kate del Castillo, who arranged the interview, could very well be on his shit list.

In the interview, Sean Penn showed a lot of sympathy toward Guzman, which is what has so many persons upset. After all, this is Mexico's most notorious drug lord, responsible for shipping vast amounts of heroin, meth, cocaine and marijuana into the country. However, El Chapo says it is all about supply and demand. He's just a businessman, not a killer. To which Mr. Penn said, "are we. the American public, not indeed complicit in what we demonize?"

It would have been best if Sean left the editorial comments aside. Regardless, this was a big scoop. Leave it to Sean to upstage events Sunday night with his outrageous act of braggadocio, as I believe Denis McDonough, the White House Chief of Staff, called it, although he might have been referring to El Chapo boasting of all the heroin he has shipped into the country.

The interview was far more noteworthy than the Golden Globe awards, which obviously needs to add Science Fiction to its category of Musical and Comedy. I'm sure either Matt Damon or Leo di Caprio, who also won a globie for his survival tale in The Revenant, would jump at the chance to star in a movie about El Chapo, but they would have to fight Sean Penn for the role.

For those who might remember, David Bowie did team up with Sean Penn back in the 80s, penning and singing the lead song for The Falcon and the Snowman, in which Penn also found himself running afoul of American interests. Rest in peace, Ziggy Stardust. You gave us much more than any of these other persons ever did.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Rick DiguetteJanuary 11, 2016 at 10:41 PM
Completely bizarre story. Although I'm no conspiracy theorist, I just think there's more here than meets the eye.
James FergusonJanuary 12, 2016 at 11:09 AM
Bizarre indeed. It seems that Penn thought he had ducked Mexican authorities, but it isn't the first time someone has interviewed a high profile fugitive. Here is CNN's 1997 interview with Osama bin Laden,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQwnqjA-6w

I fail to see the difference.
TripplerJanuary 14, 2016 at 6:20 PM
Chapo's cool shirt style is being sold online though it is a bit pricey.

Dispatches from Vilnius

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