Acting Lessons for Democrats
When it comes to acting, there are various schools of thought. Some preferred the Stanislavski approach, which was generally referred to as The Method.
When it comes to acting, there are various schools of thought. Some preferred the Stanislavski approach, which was generally referred to as The Method. It called for actors to dig into their sense memories. How did they feel when their dog died? How did they feel when that little schmuck Dustin Hoffman got the role they were born to play? They are then expected to bring that emotion to the surface, giving their performances that certain whiff of ham in the air that we all came to identify with James Dean, Vic Morrow, Rod Steiger, Marlon Brando and Ben Gazzara.
Then there was the technique preferred by Spencer Tracy, who advised a young actor to “Learn your lines, hit your mark and don’t bump into the furniture.”
But, whatever their preference, the Democrats should learn to deliver their lines with some degree of sincerity and to keep in mind they shouldn’t say the same words in exactly the same way as they go from one cable channel show to another because most of the same people will be tuned in.
It’s actually funny when Tucker Carlson runs a montage of House Speaker Pelosi delivering the same lines about being saddened by President Trump’s fall from grace and his impending impeachment in a voice better suited to a grief counselor at a mortuary than a partisan hack. As if the words aren’t hackneyed enough, she invariably pauses at the same spot, as if overcome by emotion, to find just the perfect heart-felt words…and the words turn out to be the exact same heart-felt words she uttered 20 minutes earlier.
Speaking of bad acting, Susan Li of Fox Business has been over-emoting every time she takes part in one of Tucker Carlson’s Final Exams. Ms. Li is clearly the most competitive individual since coaches Woody Hayes was throwing a tantrum over at Ohio State and Bobby Knight was tossing chairs onto the basketball court at Indiana.
Ms. Li gets all over Carlson if he hasn’t made it clear enough to her that a question is multi-part, but then she pretends to take it to heart if her opponent gets an answer wrong or loses the match.
Someone should advise her to adopt one role and stick with it. She can either be the person who’ll step over anyone to win the Erik Wemple mug or the reluctant, compassionate competitor who seems almost embarrassed to win. But she surely can’t be both.
In 2016, prior to the election, Evelyn Farkas, an Obama appointee to the State Department, declared during a televised interview that in the highly unlikely event that Donald Trump was elected, he would very quickly be impeached.
Keep in mind he hadn’t yet been elected, hadn’t been inaugurated and hadn’t made a single executive decision, and Ms. Farkas was speaking with some certainly that the President wouldn’t make it through his first term.
It is such a fantastic statement to make, I suspect even the publicity-crazed Criswell would have shied away from predicting something that far-fetched. Yet here we are, less than three years down the road and Ms. Farkas is looking like a 21st century Nostradamus.
I heard that, according to a recent poll, 64% of Democrats and 55% of Republicans admit they don’t have friends in the other party. I expect that many on both sides have relatives of the other political persuasion but wish they could avoid family get-togethers.
In my case, the only Democrats I know and like are a former agent of mine named Frank and a black couple across the street named Frank and Dodie. It hadn’t occurred to me before now that they’re both Franks, but the secret to our success is that the Franks and I never discuss politics.
Have you any idea how difficult that is for me? Talk about the elephant in the room!
To be fair, it’s probably almost as difficult for the two Franks to avoid mentioning the elephant, recognizing that it’s the noble symbol of the Republican party.
I did get a bit of good news last week when I heard about an international scientific report on red meat that claims the health scare is over and that red meat is, in fact, a healthy source of protein and other nutrients.
I’m reminded that various experts take turns trying to scare us. If it’s not eggs, butter and global cooling, that are going to kill us, it’s global warming, sugar and cheeseburgers.
I think you should eat whatever you like. Eventually, life itself is going to going to do you in, so enjoy yourself while you’re here.
Having said that, I still believe that kale, arugula and cilantro, will kill you faster than anthrax.
Joe Biden isn’t the only Washingtonian who is talking like a movie tough guy. Former CIA and FBI official Phil Mudd recently warned that the “brotherhood,” which is how he refers to his fellow Deep Staters lurking in the intelligence community, believe that Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal attorney, parachuted in from Mars and that they might very well stick “a shiv” in his back.
Mr. Mudd, who inevitably found a home as a CNN analyst, is a close friend of both John Brennan and Robert Mueller. He has called President Trump a “dirtbag.” And that was said in public, so you can imagine what he calls him in private.
Isn’t it odd that if a private citizen threatened to put a shiv in the back of one of the President’s associates, he could expect a visit from the Secret Service, but all it gets Mudd is a cushy, good-paying gig at a cable news network?
In Chicago, when it was discovered that Dan Webb, who was called in to investigate why State Investigator Kim Fox decided not to pursue legal action against Jussie Smollett, had donated $1,000 to Ms. Fox’s campaign, a presiding judge determined that did not indicate a conflict of interest.
Apparently, in Chicago, unless $100,000 in a brown paper bag exchanges hands, it’s no big deal. It does make a person wonder, though, how much the judge, himself, donated to the Fox campaign.
Still, Mr. Webb felt it necessary to claim he doesn’t recall writing the check or even attending the fund-raiser. Like Col. Klink, he knows nottink!
You can’t help wondering if people like Robert Mueller and Dan Webb ever worry about their failing memories and have themselves checked out for the possible onset of Alzheimer’s. Perhaps those with licenses to practice law, like those with licenses to drive, should be road-tested every few years.
In the latest bit of gender madness, Portland, Oregon, has banned urinals in municipal buildings “for the sake of removing arbitrary differences in pursuit of gender-neutrality.”
The morons who came up with this decision were elected by the citizens of Portland, which suggests there is something in the air or the water supply that makes these people believe that, biology and commonsense be damned, there are more than two genders.
In the meantime, in Virginia, a French high school teacher was fired for referring to a female transgender (one of I suspect three in the entire nation) as she or her. The object in question had apparently made it abundantly clear that it preferred the pronoun “they.”
Well, pardon my French, but I think they is an ass.
