Let's Get Ready to Rumble!

If you thought things couldn't get more kooky, think again. Donald Trump has apparently invited Gennifer Flowers to the first presidential debate to sit in the front row in what is a rather lame effort to psych Hillary out. This stems from his latest twitter war with Mark Cuban, who has been baiting Trump into rash statements in hopes of flustering the rival billionaire. Cuban had initially shown some interest in Trump way back in Spring but has since become a very vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton and proudly boasted of his front row seat at the first debate.

Trump is doing his best to make the first debate look like a Heavyweight title match. He has even dragged fabled boxing promoter Don King into the mix. All he needs now is Michael Buffer to announce the fight, I mean debate Monday night.

Yet, the "Manhattan Mauler" has been doing his best to lower expectations at the same time, claiming the debates are rigged against him. But, more interesting is the phony town hall he staged with the help of his buddy Sean Hannity at a Cleveland African-American church. Don King was among those who got a ring side seat behind Sean and Donald. There was even a Sikh sitting behind him on camera to show Donald now knows the difference between Sikhs and Muslims.

Donald is trying to play this debate from all sides, hoping that whatever comes out of it, he will be able to capitalize on it. Nothing short of a knockout will win it for Hillary at this point, and Trump is well aware Hillary is not a heavy hitter. He figures he can deflect her jabs all night if it comes to that, and even if he loses the debate on points, he will be seen as the winner as having gone into a hostile ring and come out in tact.

Hillary's corner is telling her to be the adult in the room, assuming voters are tired of Donald's shenanigans and want to hear at least one voice of reason. Polls are leaning Hillary's way in this regard. She needs to put on her best Presidential persona and not let any of Donald's antics rattle her. Most of all, she needs to be well rested so that there are no more stumbles, long bathroom breaks or head wobbling that will allow pundits to once again question her health.

Sadly, these debates are mostly about appearances, not substance. I like the fact that Hillary has laid low, not tried to play into the hype and anti-hype Donald has projected. She needs to remain level-headed and calm. It doesn't really matter whether Hillary has a better command of issues than Donald, she has to be able to project strength. Donald has gotten through this campaign solely on his ability to project authority, as he has shown a very weak grasp of reality. No amount of fact-checking is going to change that. Ultimately, voters pick who they think looks the most presidential and to hell with the consequences.

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, not...

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

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

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