WSJ: The Fine Art Of The Choke

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

This Wall Street Journal piece on Wednesday morning very artistically anticipated the Boston Red Sox implosion Wednesday night.

The Fine Art of the Choke

The Boston Red Sox have had a grisly September. They’ve blown a nine-game lead in the American League wild-card race and stand on the verge of completing one of the most shameful collapses in baseball history. As any Boston fan knows, this isn’t the first time a Red Sox season has ended in carnage and woe. In fact, if you look closely at some of the great art works throughout history, you’ll see the occasional, subtle reference to the team’s struggles. Here are four examples: Paul Cezanne’s “The Smoker”; Caravaggio’s “Medusa”; Francisco Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son”; and Jacques-Louis David’s “The Death of Marat.”

Helpful Hurtful illustrations:

Who’s your Papi now, (Jacques-Louis) David?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Our Gala 1500th Post

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

The hardworking staff launched this modest blog in June of 2009. Since then, we’ve basically chronicled whatever was in front of us.

Thank you for your support.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Live Blogging The Latest Worst Red Sox Loss Ever

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

So it’s 11:40 p.m. on Wednesday and the hardworking staff has the Sox-Orioles game on the kitchen TV and is tracking the Yankees-Rays on MLB’s Gameday site, which is the digital equivalent of watching an old-fashioned ticker provide a pitch-by-pitch account of the baseball action.

And the Rays just squandered a one-out, two-on opportunity in the bottom of the 11th, while the Sox squandered their three-on opportunity in the top of the ninth.

Jonathan Papelbon strikes out Adam Jones. Greg Golson singles off Brandon Gomes. Papelbon strikes out Reynolds. Eric Chavez singles off Jake McGee.  Jorge Posada grounds into a fielder’s choice.

(Total fire drill here – hardworking staff shuttling from laptop to kitchen to laptop to kitchen.)

Yankees don’t score; Orioles do.

PAPELBON BLOWS SAVE! ORIOLES WIN!

Mercy mercy mercy.

And Evan Longoria just HOMERED to send the Rays to the postseason and the 2011 Greatest Team Ever to the dustbin of history.

This is one crazy frickin’ night of baseball.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Quote o’ the Day (Sarah Palin Edition)

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

( . . . at least for now, although it will be tough to top this one.)

The hardworking staff realizes that this is a very long QotD, but really, it’s worth it.

From ABC News’s The Note:

WHAT ABOUT PALIN? “A Palin presidency: Too ‘shackle-y?’ That’s what Sarah Palin suggested on Fox News’ ‘On The Record with Greta Van Susteren’ last night, saying that she’s concerned jumping into the 2012 presidential race will muffle her message,” according to ABC Palin-watcher Sheila Marikar. “‘Is a title worth it?’ she asked, rhetorically. ‘Does a title shackle a person? Are they someone like me who’s maverick? I do go rogue and I call it like I see it and I don’t mind stirring it up in order to get people to think and debate aggressively.’ ‘Is a title and a campaign too shackle-y?,’ she continued. ‘Does that prohibit me from being out there, out of a box, not allowing handlers to shape me and to force my message to be what donors or what contributors or what pundits want it to be? Does a title take away my freedom to call it like I see it and to affect positive change that we need in this country? That’s the biggest contemplation piece in my process.’ Palin expressed a concern about ‘being caricatured’ if she runs, and asked again ‘whether a title is needed to make a difference or someone can be rogue, can be maverick, can be passionate about issues and can get people to think very wisely about issues.’”http://abcn.ws/mVvPUK

Wanna know the biggest contemplation piece in our process?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Land of Doritos, Which Is Not In Mexico, Exactly . . .

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

From today’s New York Times obituary section:

Arch West, Who Helped Create Doritos Corn Chips, Is Dead at 97

That reminded the hardworking staff of the George Saunders short story In Persuasion Nation, in which the Land of Doritos “is not in Mexico, exactly, but is very much like Mexico.”

Just as George Saunders’ stories are not in reality, exactly, but are very much like reality.

You can read them here. You won’t be sorry.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Like A Trolling Stone

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Bob Dylan, it turns out, is a transmedia pickpocket.

The legendary song/writer has already been accused of lifting material for his 2006 album “Modern Times” from obscure Civil War poet Henry Timrod; stealing passages from Junichi Saga’s Japanese gangster novel “Confessions of a Yakuza” for his album “Love and Theft”; and borrowing phrases and sentences from Jack London and Archibald MacLeish for his 2004 memoir “Chronicles: Volume One.”

Now Dylan is looting the photographic world according to this piece from the New York Times Arts Beat blog:

The freewheeling artistic style of Bob Dylan, who has drawn on a variety of sources in creating his music and has previously raised questions of attribution in his work, is once again stirring debate — this time over an exhibition of his paintings at the Gagosian Gallery on the Upper East Side.

When the gallery announced the exhibition, called “The Asia Series,” this month, it said the collection of paintings and other artwork would provide “a visual journal” of Mr. Dylan’s travels “in Japan, China, Vietnam and Korea,” with “firsthand depictions of people, street scenes, architecture and landscape.”

But since the exhibition opened on Sept. 20, some fans and Dylanologists have raised questions about whether some of these paintings are based on Mr. Dylan’s own experiences and observations, or on photographs that are widely available and that he did not take.

The Times blog helpfuly provides some illustrations.

Dylan:

Henri Cartier-Bresson:

Dylan:

Léon Busy:

And etc.

New Dylan tune:  Think twice. It’s alright.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

CultureGrrl Whacks Boston’s MFA For Caille-Butt Acquisition

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

To all appearances, the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s eight-for-one swap to acquire Gustave Caillebotte’s “Man at His Bath” has gone over like the metric system.

Exhibit A: Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh.

Now wait a minute, Mr. Malcolm Rogers, prestigious Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts. You are going to sell eight paintings from the MFA collection – eight paintings worth up to $24 million – to raise money to buy a view of a gentleman’s just-bathed backside?

Call me a philistine, but somehow this just doesn’t strike me as an astute trade. Why not? Well, let me count the ways.

This painting, “Man at His Bath,” is not an eye-catching celebration of the human form, a la Michelangelo’s “David.” Rather, it’s an everyday view of… well, mostly of an everyday butt. Which is basically what George Shackelford, chairman of the museum’s Art of Europe Department, said in Monday’s Globe.

“This guy is no Arcadian bather,” he noted. “It’s perfectly mundane – and expressly so.” One would think that self-evidently accurate appraisal would lead to this equally obvious notion: It’s probably not worth selling scenes by Monet, Gauguin, Sisley, Pissarro, and Renoir to acquire that perfectly mundane scene.

Said mundane scene:

Exhibit Umpteen: ArtsJournal’s CultureGrrl.

 I strongly believe that museum-quality works that are in the public domain should stay in the public domain. If they belong in the museum, they should stay there. As I’ve stated time and again, they are held in public trust and should not be used as trading chips.

Here are the images of the soon-to-be-auctioned works, supplied (at my request) by the museum. See for yourself what Boston will cast off to bring home the rosy derrière. (The online version of the Globe article did not publish these images.)

CailMonet.jpg
Claude Monet, “The Fort of Antibes,” 1888
Presale estimate: $5-7 million

CailGaug.jpg
Paul Gauguin, “Forest Interior,” 1884
Presale estimate: $1.2-1.8 million

CaillPIs.jpg
Camille Pissarro, “View from the Artist’s Window, Eragny,” 1885
Presale estimate: $1.8-2.5 million

CailRenoir.jpg
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “Bust Portrait of a Young Woman,” c. 1890
Presale estimate: $1.8-2.5 million

CailSis.jpg
Alfred Sisley, “Overcast Day at Saint-Mammès,” c. 1880
Presale estimate: $1.5-2 million

CailSis2.jpg
Alfred Sisley, “Saint-Mammès: Morning (Le Matin),” 1881
Presale estimate: $2-3 million

CailVeresh.jpg
Vasily Vereshchagin, “Pearl Mosque, Delhi,” late 1880s
Presale estimate: $3-5 million

CailMauf.jpg
Maxime Camille Louis Maufra, “Gust of Wind,” 1899
Presale estimate: $300,000-500,000

Splendid readers, you be the judge: Is this a good deal or not?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

NYT, WSJ Live In Different New Yorks

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

My late great father-in-law Marvelous Marvin Sutton used to delight in declaring at suitable intervals, “Tough sledding on Wall Street: No snow.”

So it was when an Adbusters-inspired protest (#OccupyWallStreet) filled New York’s Financial District last week with hundreds (not the projected thousands) of activists decrying the capitalist system.

But Monday’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal had starkly different versions of what actually transpired during the protests.

From L. Gordon Crovitz’ Journal column:

A few hundred self-described “over-educated and under-employed” young people turned up for several days to camp out and carry cardboard signs. They occupied Zuccotti Park, a few blocks from Wall Street. This dislodged recent immigrants from their lunchtime chess matches and local teenagers from their evening skateboarding. New Yorkers mostly rolled their eyes, or as comedian Stephen Colbert put it, “If there’s one thing New Yorkers never ignore, it’s people sleeping in a park.” . . .

A tabloid’s headline, “Violence Erupts at Wall St. Protest,” proved overstated. There were arrests for erecting tents (protesters said they were trying to keep their laptops dry) and wearing masks (violating a century-old statute against masked gatherings).

From the Times report:

For a few moments on Saturday, the confrontations between the police and the protesters just south of Union Square in Manhattan seemed fairly typical. People pushed, the police shoved and arrests were made, and in the many videos recording the protest, it was not always clear which of the three had come first.

As the police arrested a protester in the street, an officer wearing a white shirt — indicating a rank of lieutenant or above — walked toward a group of demonstrators nearby and sent a blast of pepper spray that hit four women, the videos show.

Numerous videos and photos captured the aftermath: two women crumpled on the sidewalk in pain, one of them screaming. They were temporarily blinded, one of the women, Chelsea Elliott, said.

You should read the pieces in full to get the full picture. But there’s no question that the Times and the Journal saw different realities in the same events.

Plus ça change and etc.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Eddie On The Tobin, Jack On The Zakim: You Can Come Down Now

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

That 14-inning Red Sox-Yankee war of attrition might prove to be a Pyrrhic victory: How much the Sox burned their bullpen could come back to, well, burn them against the pesky Orioles the next few days.

But it sure made Red Sox Nation feel better last night.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

South Boston Rep. Steve Lynch Goes Postal

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

The United States Postal System is one step from the dead-letter office, given its $9 billion deficit.

Op Art feature in Sunday’s New York Times:

Things have gotten so bad, the American Postal Workers Union has launched an ad campaign to generate support from the (sporadically) mail-receiving public:

The APWU has launched Phase 2 of its television ad campaign, in conjunction with the National Association of Letter Carriers and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, APWU President Cliff Guffey announced. Spots will air on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. The ad will run for approximately two months.

The ad is designed to explain — in just 30 seconds — the true cause of the Postal Service’s financial crisis.“The Postal Service has been recording financial losses, but not for the reasons you might think,” the ad says. It quickly identifies the problem — a 2006 law that imposes a $5 billion annual burden on the Postal Service that no other agency or company bears. At the same time, the Postal Service is forced to overpay billions more into federal accounts, it says.

Said ad:

 

Massachusetts Rep. Steve Lynch has proposed legislation that might alleviate the Post Office problems. From National Journal’s Influence Alley:

The campaign is meant to build support for a bill by Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch, which addresses the USPS crisis without cutting pay, benefits or collective bargaining rights. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has blocked consideration of Lynch’s bill in favor of his own legislation, which the postal workers’ union says “would be devastating for the Postal Service, the American people and postal employees.”

The Lynch mob has more than 200 co-sponsors, according to the APWU. Let’s see how far that gets them.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments