Here's a commonly heard question at this holly and ivy time of year.
"So....what do you want for Christmas?"
Me being me, having a more than probably healthy fixation on mental roads less traveled, tend to wander right off the synaptic path of straight answers regarding questions like that and, as opposed to an answer at all, offer up a question in response to the original question.
"Well, riddle me this, kids. What, exactly constitutes a want.....as opposed to a need?"
In the context of the Christmas conversational theme, the difference between the two is both considerable and potentially problematic.
Not to mention eye-rollingly buzz killing.
Because when you start asking what someone needs for Christmas in place of asking them what they want for Christmas, anyone who has made it past, say, their fourth Christmas knows immediately what's implied.
The wonderful world of "want" includes everything from PlayStation to flat-screen to season tickets, unless, of course, you live in Dallas, to a luxury automobile complete with one of those almost impossible to actually create massive bright red bows, parked in the driveway on the morning after Santa's fly-by.
The nefarious notion of "need", meanwhile, almost always leads to socks.
A college professor of mine from a long time ago, in an academic universe far, far away had a particularly succinct, if borderline cynical, definition of the distinction between the two.
"Air to breathe, water to hydrate, nourishment to, well, nourish...........there's your needs......"
"....everything else.....is a want."
Ten items or less lines that really stick to their guns and/or hot dog buns that come in packages of ten instead of eight on my own list of "needs" notwithstanding, I'd hazard that a lot of people would add things like shelter, health, even money, in one form, or sum, or another and, amongst the more sentimental in our midst, peace, happiness and don't you want somebody to love..... to their own need list, but I always understood what the prof was professing.
You can live without anything except: air, water and nourishment.
Although survive is the more applicable word, here, because, hey, air, water and nourishment and that's it? You call that living?
Any back and forth after this is really just hair splitting followed by additional, possibly endless, splitting of already split hairs, so let's take a pass on follicle tomfoolery and move right to today's existential pop quiz.
What is it you really don't think you need but should actually loudly assert that you want it because even though you really don't think you need it, you do because, without it, pretty much everything you've ever wanted or, for that matter, will want from now on for the rest of your life depends on your having it?
Yeah, I'm not gonna tell you just yet.
Is this your first time with me? Welcome. And Merry Christmas.
Everybody else, you know the drill.
Put a pin in it. Hold that thought. Whatever floats your sleigh bells in the eggnog.
I cleaned up my DVR library to the tune of one entire film this past weekend. That keeps my space used at a healthy 35%, a number I arbitrarily selected some time ago as the max out. I know that seems low, what with it leaving me a seemingly generous 65% available, but, hard lesson experience has taught me that a couple of Ken Burns doc-u-series, a few must have, but will never really watch TCM noir classics and the whole eleven seasons of Two and A Half Men later, you're suddenly looking at being forced to delete as opposed to having the choice to delete. And I've long ago made my peace with being highly resistant to doing anything I'm forced to do
With the exception, of course, of my yearly tax returns which I am more than happy and proud to do correctly, truthfully and well ahead of April 15. And, hey, IRS, have I told you lately what a wonderful job you all do?
The movie I viewed was a fairly recent release, moderate buzz, and even though it boasted a fabled director and, at least, two iconic stars, it wasn't a smash success. I'd write that off, actually, to the absence of anything even remotely resembling a super-hero or a Camaro with abilities much more dramatic than first met the eye.
The Post.
Steven Spielberg. Meryl Streep. Tom Hanks.
And the story of the historically dramatic publishing, in the early 1970's by, first, the New York Times and, then, the Washington Post of the Pentagon Papers.
Google at will for details aplenty. For the more attention span challenged, the Pentagon Papers consisted of a top secret study, done by government officials, that essentially assessed the history of the Vietnam War.
And among the more dramatic revelations, hard, documented evidence that America, in the form of its, then, leaders, knew, even as the war continued to be fought in those days, that there was no way the war could be won.
Yet, thousands of American troops continued to be sent to live and fight and die.
Needless to say, the, then, Americans in charge weren't all that jiggy with the notion that a lot of bereaved loved ones, not to mention just your good, old fashioned, garden variety decent human beings were going to find out that those loved ones had been hurt, maimed or died for, pretty much, nothing.
So, the battle to keep the information secret began.
In a nutshell, as the movie sites sum it up, "a cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between press and the government."
The "battle" takes place in the courts.
That's mentioned here so that any folks still holding out hope that Aquaman or Decepticons come into play anywhere in the screenplay won't feel cheated when we're done here.
Or thanks for stopping by. And Merry Christmas.
One mini-review. Spielberg manages to accomplish what Ron Howard also mastered when he made "Apollo 13". It's not easy to create suspense, or even much tension, actually, when you're watching the playing out of a real life event which you already know had a happy ending. But Ron did. And Steven did, too.
With nary an Aquaman or Decepticon in sight.
Fifteen minutes, or so, into the one hundred and sixteen minute running time, it was clear to me that this film, while relating events that occurred in America 1971, was, to sum up movie biz-ishly, "as timely and topical as today's headlines."
It was a hundred and ten minutes in, give or take, that I realized it was not only timely and topical.
It was, and is, an authentic, genuine, accept no substitutes cautionary tale for America 2018. Soon to be America 2019.
And two other things occurred to me at that point.
What it is you may not think you need or, in some cases, want.
And that Hugo Black was a genius.
The first of which I promised a few minutes ago I'd reveal. The second, the why of which I will also reveal.
Soon. Patience. Still a virtue.
Donald Trump is whining.
There's a news flash that fits in nicely with "the sun came up this morning" "water is wet" and "Westworld still makes absolutely no sense whatsoever."
The whine-du-jour has to do with this past weekend's Saturday Night Live sketch parodying the perennial holiday fave, "It's A Wonderful Life", complete with Alec Baldwin lampooning the always good natured, self deprecating Orange Expert on Pretty Much Everything In The Known Universe in the traditionally uplifting Jimmy Stewart portrayal of George Bailey.
The premise, from the duhh folder, being Trump/Baldwin getting to see what life would have been like had he never been born.
I didn't see the sketch. Didn't want to. Or need to, for that matter, although that unintentionally teases that whole want and need thing I'm annoying you with.
Again. Patience. Still a virtue.
I didn't need to see the sketch because I've been watching SNL for forty plus years, I know what they do, I know how they do it and I'm fully cognizant of their approach to all things Donald.
And I'm fully cognizant of Donald's attitude about SNL's approach to all things Donald.
SPOILER ALERT: He doesn't like their approach to all things Donald. And, come Sundays, after Saturdays that include new SNL's, the tiny orange tweet fingers fly faster than Santa as he sees the finish line on the horizon.
Here's Donald's sadly predictable weekly take on how tweet it isn't.
“A REAL scandal is the one-sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?”
Not sure why, but now whenever I see or hear Donald use that word, I can't help but hear Dana Carvey's voice.
"...could it be....COLLUSION?"......
Well, isn't that special.
We all know that Donald struggles with the annoying limitations of not being able to have everything in existence be exactly and only the way he personally wants everything in existence to be.
And, boy, that pesky Constitution has just been a real thorn in that tiny, tiny orange paw for the longest now, you know?
Let's even cut the slack of conceding that, at this point in this reality show meets Twilight Zone of a presidency, most, if not all, of his sputtering, spewing, whimpering and whining are nothing more than badly disguised attempts at the shiny thing strategy that worked so well for him for such a long time.
Felonies. Indictments. Impeachment. Imprisonment.
Pending.
Cue the shiny things.
Defame! Belittle! Tested in courts! COLLUSION?
Well, isn't that especially pathetic.
At this point...thanks for your patience.
Time for the reveals.
First, Hugo Black.
Black was on the Supreme Court during that "battle" between the Government and the Press.
Writing for the majority in that case, he offered up twenty four amazing bedrock words.
"...in the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy...."
And these ten words bring it home, baby.
"...the press was to serve the governed...not the governors."
That's a total craw sticker, isn't it, Donald?
And....here's what you may, or may not, think you need but you do. Oh, you so, really, really, really do.
A free press.
I'll spare you a long dissertation on why. And simply lay the bottom line on you.
The free press is the only reason that America, the America that you know and love and honor, in whatever form that takes for you, still exists.
Without a free press, there is little or no light available to shine on places where secrets are kept, conspiracies are born, plots are hatched, where bacteria grow freely.
Where roaches and vermin breed and multiply. Flourish. And infect.
Where dictators begin to plan and plot their corrupted circumvention of hallowed traditions, sacred institutions ...and lawful, fundamental to a free society Constitutions.
Where evil nourishes itself.
Not a climate change believer? Not down with all that science stuff?
Not a problem. Here's a fact even you can't refute.
Where there is no light, there is darkness.
Democracy Dies In Darkness.
Wow. How profound is that?
Oh, had you not heard that before?
Powerful stuff, huh.
Interested in hearing more about it?
Just check out the home of that profound saying.
You can find it on the masthead of an American institution.
The Washington Post.
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