Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.

Stand by your man: Silda Wall Spitzer and the cheating governor

When politicians cheat on their wives, why, as they give their public confessions, do their wives stand next to them at the podium?

Joe Garofoli’s San Francisco Chronicle piece, “Why do political wives stand by their men?”, asks this great, little-asked question:

Part political theater, part open-air therapy, these excruciating public confessionals demand three things of the spouse: to hold her family together at a moment of crisis; to support the person she supposedly loves; and to provide a least a shred of future political viability for her man.

But some analysts wonder if these humiliating productions have outlived their political usefulness.

“They have put these women through so much already – it just seems to be a second level of humiliation,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “It is supposed to make him look like not such a bad guy. Like, ‘Geez, look, his wife was standing next to him.’ But in this case, she looked so pained that, to me, he looked less sympathetic.”

Also in the SF Chronicle, Debra J. Saunders (“The emperor’s wife”) reasonably asks

If we have to see the wife, couldn’t it be as she is throwing his suits, socks and golf clubs on the sidewalk while invoking the name of a ruthless divorce attorney?

It would certianly make better television. Watching Silda Wall Spitzer, all I could think was that she looked like she probably felt: That she’d been socked in the gut. (Reportedly, she’d learned of the scandal the day before.) She didn’t even have Dina McGreevey’s odd little frozen smile.

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Check out the Huffington Post‘s article, Emperors Club: All About Eliot Spitzer’s Alleged Prostitution Ring. (You can click on the pic, also.)

Is it just me, or are these pictures, like the one at right, kinda creepy?

Is there an odd kind of deathliness to this whole thing: To ordering women with no heads, seated in kind of fake-artsy poses, so that you can have sex with them?

As a child born in the early 1960s, I can remember when every print ad in National Geographic seemed to be done in this style: Painting of athletic and slim white man and woman in some otherwise impossible, wildly desirable setting, madly enjoying some consumer item that, it seems, would not be that all interesting, actually, if you, say, lived in a bleeding-edge, part-glass, woodland home cantilevered over a stream, or a couple dozen stories above a headlamp-lit New York City street.

Both are by illustrator Charles Schridde. As the awesome Paleo-Future notes, the top pic is from a Motorola television print campaign:

This series ran in Life Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post from 1961 until 1963 and was immensely popular for its elegant, futuristic look.

Though the Western-themed stuff Schridde seems to most paint these days does zero for me, thankfully, his work is preserved on the web, in books like Window to the Future: The Golden Age of Television Marketing and Advertising and The Golden Age of Advertising – the 70s. Click on the pics to see close-ups. Thanks to FFFFOUND, StrangeHarvest, Paleo-Future, and The World of Kane for the links.

Congratulations to Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff of Gamble & Huff, for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last night.

The architects of the so-called “Philly Sound,” the duo, as songwriters, arrangers, and producers, were responsible for such hits as the O’Jays’ “Backstabbers”and “Love Train,” Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” and a list as long as you are tall of everything you and your parents love in ’70s soul music.

I’ve met Kenny Gamble, and hosted him on a producer’s panel at the VIBE Music Seminar, about 10 years ago, where we listened to and discussed the O’Jays’ “For The Love of Money”; still, in my opinion, one of the greatest record productions ever; almost hallucinogenic in its intensity.

For your morning commute, consider one the most lovely records to come out of the Philly Sound: The Three Degrees’s “When Will I See You Again,” presented both in a live version, and a kinda strange/yet still kinda cool German TV lip sync version.

The almost certainly pseudonymous Winston Rowntree is my new favorite comic strip artist in the world, just based on these two pieces from his ongoing Subnormality series: an explanation of how wack bands top the charts, and a quick guide on how to choose when picking air fresheners for your car.

I’m almost religiously unmoved by political advertising, which, I’m sure like, many, I usually find boring beyond rote; usually no more than talking points with pictures.

However, when I saw this 2006 campaign ad during Eliot Spitzer’s run for governor of New York State, it almost took my breath away.

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Oh, for the good old days, when the only pot shots Barack Obama had to worry about were people criticizing him for sucking down a few sticks of Chocolate Thai…brilliant stuff from Michael Stevens, the brain behind CamPain 2008.

Hey: What is Barack Obama’s drug policy, anyway?

This Skittles “Midas Touch” commercial is a thing of perverse beauty, but you’ve gotta watch the 45-second version, here, with the brief monologue in the center, to glom the true art of it.

Pablo Escobar (1949-1993), Medellín Cartel mastermind, the most notorious drug kingpin in history, and inspiration to an entire generation of rappers…had a soft spot for hippopotamuses.

Please: Would someone just shoot me?

According to this article in Animation Magazine, Tyler Perry is in discussions to do—help me—a Madea cartoon series:

Perry’s yet untitled project will follow his character Madea on her comedic trials and tribulations, and will teach “children about family values, in a way that only Madea could!” “After receiving thousands of letters from parents telling me how much their kids love Madea and realizing that a lot of the plays were not kid friendly,” says Perry, “I wanted to do something more appropriate and this seems to be it. A ‘Madea’ animation looks like the best way.”

Actually, the really best way would be for people to stop watching movies and plays with Madea in them, no?