THE DAILY BLADE: Romney Remains Authentically Inauthentic
Repeatedly throughout the Fox News-Google GOP Presidential debate in Orlando, FL, last Thursday evening, former Gov. Mitt Romney (MA) continued to strive mightily to present himself as a man who has core convictions – despite a long history that proves otherwise (see second item). Some examples:
† I want to make it clear my intent is to help the people who have been most hurt by President Obama's economy.
† I'm absolutely committed to keeping Social Security working. I put in my book that I wrote a couple of years ago a plan for how we can do that and to make sure Social Security stable not just for the next 25 years, but for the next 75.
† [I]t's fine for to you retreat from your own words in your own book, but please don't try and make me retreat from the words that I wrote in my book. I stand by what I wrote. I believe in what I did [responding to Gov. Rick Perry’s (TX) criticism of RomneyCare].
† I wrote a book two years ago, and I laid out in that book what my views are on a wide range of issues. I'm a conservative businessman. I haven't spent my life in politics. I spent my life in business. I know how jobs come, how jobs go. My positions are laid out in that book. I stand by them. … There are a lot of reasons not to elect me, a lot of reasons not to elect other people on this stage, but one reason to elect me is that I know what I stand for, I've written it down. Words have meaning, and I have the experience to get this country going again [responding Perry calling him a flip-flopper].
Wall Street Journal columnist and deputy editor, Dan Henninger, for one, is not falling for it. Here’s what he said about Romney’s answers in the debate during this weekend’s edition of “The Journal Editorial Report”:
He's very practiced … But I have to say, I was put off by his performance last night on the substance. His opening remark about -- when he was responding nominally to the question about our editorial on jobs, at the end of it, he said, we have to crack down on China's trade practices. And his definition of the middle class, more or less, come ports with Barack Obama's. He's going to raise -- not give a tax cut to people making over $250,000.
On issue after issue, it seems to me that Mitt Romney was just responding in a way that comports with opinion polls. If he's done an opinion poll or a focus group and you've got 60 percent of the people holding a position, that's where Mitt Romney is going to be. I just felt that his answers screamed polling and that it does make you wonder, in fact, what kind of a campaigner, what kind of leadership he's going to provide.
Following up on Henninger’s observation, his colleague Dorothy Rabinowitz cleanly stuck the shiv into Romney:
[A]part from the fact that he does this with so much assurance now, so much improved assurance, so much sense of authenticity, even falsely achieved authenticity that it's impressive, comparatively speaking.
Inner City Pathology Has Become A Cliché
In a copyright infringement ruling that speaks volumes beyond the narrow legal issue at hand, District Judge Stanley Chesler writes that it is so common for fatherless young men growing up in the inner city to turn to crime that any works of art that depict such a storyline are not copyrightable, New Jersey Law Journal reports:
Shadrach Winstead of Newark claimed that his autobiography provided much of the dialogue and plot for a CD and DVD set, "Before I Self-Destruct," produced in 2009 by 50 Cent, also known as Curtis Jackson.
But the similarities between Winstead's book and 50 Cent's movie were only superficial, part of "a story which has long ago been part of the public domain and ... the subject of numerous movies and television shows," District Judge Stanley Chesler wrote in Winstead v. Jackson, 10-cv-5783.
"Any common themes of a young male whose tumultuous upbringing leads him to resort to a life of crime and violence in order to gain power and money are scenes a faire, or standard to any coming of age story of a young man from an inner-city," Chesler wrote. …
Winstead's book and 50 Cent's movie have much in common. Both are set in urban New Jersey and depict characters spending time in jail, searching for an ex-girlfriend on release from prison, making love in the shower, obtaining money through criminal activity and experiencing a parent's death. …
Winstead also fell flat with his claim that 50 Cent's movie and CD infringed on his copyright by borrowing phrases from his book. Many of Winstead's purported examples of identical wording are misquoted, and those that he accurately quoted – such as "putting in" and "get the dope, cut the dope" – are generic phrases common in gangster movies and hip-hop music and are not subject to copyright protection, Chesler said.
Put another way, the judge’s ruling suggests that when a particular slice of life – in this case, ghetto gangstas – has a predictable trajectory – downward spiral – the art that depicts it becomes tiresomely generic.
Where Have I Read That Before?
About Gov. Rick Perry's (R-TX) debate performance, John Podhoretz wrote he was "Awful. Just awful." (Posted 1:31 AM, September 23, 2011)
The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto had a different take: "Rick Perry was awful in last night's debate. Just awful." (Posted 4:12 PM, September 23, 2011)
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