Mind Over Chatter and other things on my mind

Tonight is one of those I don't have time to blog nights -- there's been a lot of that around here lately, sorry! It's the busy fall production season along with a bunch of other looming deadlines as well as wonderful travel opportunities.

I hope to be blogging to you from the UK this weekend as Ray Davies must trump DEVO. No offense DEVOtees -- I'm plenty pissed that concert was scheduled for the one weekend of the past 15 years I will happen to be in England! I'm quite sure that the Civic will be THE place to be in Akron, Friday night. I'll be jealous of you all on Friday, if you promise to drool with envy over my front seat ticket to see Come Dancing on Saturday!

But I vowed to see "Come Dancing" when I first heard Ray was writing it over a dozen years ago. And so I'm off Thursday night and back Monday night. Going to see as much theatre as I can possibly fit into the extended weekend including a John Webster play, The White Devil. From Wikipedia: "The play itself explores the differences between the reality of people and the way they depict themselves as a good, "white" or pure." It sounds so topical.

But the reason I opened up Blogger tonight really has nothing to do with anything I've just written. I was motivated by Rachel Maddow, who has fast become my favorite commenting TV head. She had Connie Schultz on tonight (go here for Connie's take on Sarah Palin and be sure to read this one.) -- and that made me wonder why Connie's opinions haven't been sought out more often? It was totally refreshing to see her on screen chatting one-on-one with Rachel, who doesn't go for the bunch of voices chattering in opposition shtick. She prefers to go face to face with one guest at a time, engaging them with insightful questions that draw the discussion to deeper levels rather than the shows that prefer to have people shouting over each other.

She had Barbara Boxer on and asked her about will the Democrats do something about the abuses of power and spying on citizens that went on during Bush's years of expanded presidential super powers. Boxer said yes, but they have to do it in the right way -- so that it will never happen again. She also commented that the Democrats are going to have huge urgent tasks ahead of them so it might not be the first item on the list.

I say this to Senator Boxer, whom I admire greatly, look -- you have all those standing committees in the senate with the power to convene, investigate and take testimony. Surely one of them is available for examining domestic spying procedures. If you get that big old fool proof majority this time, put FISA back under judicial oversight. All the schlepping around the globe with terrorists and torturing them in secret foreign locations -- that needs to stop too.

Rachel had a guest later on, a lemon-sucking Enterprise Institute upper class twit who attempted to make the point that the tone of Rachel's show was equivalent to the threats and derogatory remarks coming from the McPalin rallies. The guest smirked and sneered as he derided the first 41 minutes of her show, which as I mentioned, featured two very distinguished American women who engaged quite civilly with Rachel from unabashedly progressive viewpoints.

Yeah -- I'm digging the Maddow show and hope you are too. Here's a fine example. Rachel Maddow on Sarah Palin's lies: