1972 and 2008

In my enthusiastic support of a woman for president in 2008, I blanked out about Shirley Chisholm's campaign as a Democrat in 1972. Turns out there's a nifty documentary available in DVD format that I just ordered for the library: Shola Lynch's Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed (2004). Looks good for its content about candidate Chisholm, the election process (then and now), and the context of the times -- Vietnam, Nixon-Agnew, a fractured USA, all of it. I was a kid at the time living in Durham, North Carolina, but remember viscerally the passionate engagement of my teachers. One was fresh from an Ohio school near Kent State and hopping mad at the Establishment!



For insight into dirty political deeds, this one looks good: Allen Raymond's How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative (2008). Certainly the last two elections had their share of them -- did Bush really win Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004? And if he didn't, why is he the president of the USA?


Of course, back in 1972, Shirley Chisholm didn't win the election. She didn't become the Democrats' official candidate, either. Instead, Nixon-Agnew won in a landslide. The two crooks did it again! Here's Spiro Agnew (on the right) at NASA in 1971 shaking hands with former Nazi, SS Sturmbannführer Wernher von Braun ("once the missiles go up, who cares where they come down?"). The Royal Spanish couple watches on (that's Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias just beyond Agnew, if you didn't guess . . . now King Juan Carlos I)

So the Democrats didn't win in 1972, but Agnew and Nixon got theirs eventually . . .


Russell Crowe and Marion Cotillard from Ridley Scott's A Good Year (2006). Archie Panjabi, Albert Finney, Abbie Cornish, and most of the cast is good. The pleasures of pastoral France trump the mad business parade in London . . .

Today's Rune: Opening.

God Save the Queen
Her fascist regime!
They made you a moron
Potential H-Bomb!