)
Thank God for Jon Stewart, contemporary media's unlicens'd fool and natural postmodern man, for going on CNN's Crossfire and dressing down the political hackery central to it (and endemic in media circles at the moment). I recommend reading the transcript of the show, of which this excerpt with Tucker Carlson is the kicker:CARLSON: I do think you're more fun on your show. Just my opinion.Beautiful.
CARLSON: OK, up next, Jon Stewart goes one on one with his fans...
STEWART: You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.
As if watching the debate last night between Kerry and Bush (or would that be carrion Bush?) wasn't absurd enough, I rather inexplicably found myself watching poor Neil McDonald's interview yesterday with the all-licens'd prevaricator of political hatred, Ann Coulter, on the CBC's Face to Face. It was a horrifying experience. McDonald-- a reasonable, deliberate journalist-- seemed to make the mistake of confronting She Of The Jagged Lips (you can choose which ones) with facts and studies and quotes, as if it were somehow possible that he might be able to have a civilized discourse with her. 'Twas not to be. She steamrolled over facts, over details, over even the basics dimensions of polite conduct, making President Bush's charging of Charlie Gibson seem a mere bumping of elbows. It's no secret that Coulter's a fire-breathing hag, but watching her in an extended session as she issued her sulphurous and racist spew (insulting not just those ever-targetted Fr-ehh-nch, but also Canadians), I couldn't help but wonder who pissed in her genetic pool. She's Barbie with Hitler's disposition, a twisted, hostile, ignorant loon who talks so much about America but evidently thinks America should only consist of people that think (and I use that word guardedly) exactly as she does. And there is poor Neil, nobly trying to carry on a serious interview, she barking at him like some rabid Cerberus as he tries to finish a question, trying, that is, to be courteous and professional, and only barely concealing his exasperation. I pitied him, having to deal with this embodiment of political and spiritual Turret's syndrome. I swear, that malignant tumour of a woman makes Goneril look like Anna Karenina. Okay, but at least I'm skinnier..... (Okay: just the throw this very, very fugly mutt a bone.....) 
We assure you you'll never have to explain it. Gar!
For those of you wondering what-the-fark (this blog refuses utterly to use the "wtf" abbreviation so common to "the internets") the difference is between Canadian and American Thanksgiving, this site should help to remedy your confusion. There are a few other dimensions worth noting, some worth noting if only to inform those outside of the Great White North what Canada really is like, and, in fact, what a "distinct society" we well and truly are:
You'll observe the Canadian avoidance of corn on this holiday, a fact some consider a strange ceremonial hole, but which is perhaps best understood as a distaste for maize for basting, though it's not uncommon among those that spend the holiday alone. But the rest, as they say, is gravy. So, my fellow Canadians, let us bow our heads and enjoy. Eat up-- and remember: We Are Canadian!
- Canadians eat beaver instead of turkey;
- We bless the beaver before we eat it (oh boy, do we ever);
- We do so generally after much-too-much beer has been consumed, and usually after hockey games, though not this year;
- The beaver is usually complemented by a buffet of fine juices, though not all of them are aromatic per se;
- After several morsels, we keep turning up our heads and asking, "Eh?"
- There is occasionally some activity to follow the eating of the beaver, but almost definitely then followed by a very deep sleep;
- There is an ancient ritual of reciprocating back to the beaver on Thanksgiving: if it truly has given a dam, it is rewarded with praise, deference, and greater attention in the preparation than it normally receives;
- Burping during the dinner is strictly forbidden;
- Burping after the dinner is discouraged but tolerated, and in some circumstances it is taken as a demonstration of appreciation;
- Men are occasionally allowed to go to Tim Horton's after dinner, but only if they have eaten all of what's been presented;
- Stuffing is entirely at the discretion of the hostess;
- Vegetables may or may not be included in the proceedings, but usually only carrots, cucumbers, tubers, and for the truly hearty, rutabagas (baby-corns being frowned upon);
- Although pie is generally served, hostesses regularly insist that their diners take care of their own whipped cream;
- We truly do end up giving thanks for giving, even if many wish the holiday were called "Thanksreceiving";
- And, perhaps most oddly, the more you spill in your lap, the better. But do not describe the meal as "bounty-licious." This will surely get your barred from eating for a very, very long time.
Nicholas Lemann has in this week's The New Yorker one of the most probing, and I think genuinely insightful, considerations of President Bush that's yet been written. It's a charged study, sympathetic but unapologetic, and, finally, a sobering account of things past and present that should make even those not naturally trepidatious of the President's re-election bid pause. It is, in short, an article that should be read in full. Both nuanced and impressively synoptic, Lemann's article may do the impossible, accounting for those qualities that have endeared him to many, but also accounting for why those qualities (to say nothing of his lesser ones) may also make him one of the most dangerous candidates for the Presidency in recent memory, and certainly at this awkward and very fragile point in modern history. It's a terrific piece. Look for it to be making major headlines in the next week-- and look for it, perhaps, to provide the arguing points for the Democrats and Senator Kerry to attack the President not as a caricature, but as a kind of tragic hero to whom Americans risk tying their own future at their own immediate peril. And it does so, I hasten to add, without lapsing into the glibness or the anger that so often seems to get the better of those of us that regard the President as a genuinely worrisome, and even stupefying, figure.
Alas, it's turned out very differently than Chaucer's. *sigh* RIP. 
Seems in recent days there's been much happening in the literary world, not least of which is the recent passing of Jacques Derrida from pancreatic cancer, the disease that seems to be rearing its ugly head in too many corners of the N-S-G Doctor's life of late. (See also The Independent's short piece here.) I don't want to say too much about Derrida, for many reasons, but not least of which is that because I haven't read him in the original French I hardly consider myself an authority. I'm certain RK will post here or elsewhere some remarks that will prove much more sage than any I could provide. But Derrida's death is an event of awkward symbolism for me: like most literature students of my generation, I was introduced to his ideas, very often with the attached implication that those ideas were laws rather than theories. That's one of the facts of a literary education in North America in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Derrida was right about so many things-- about the conditions of language, about the various informations and histories of language and their ultimate consequences-- but Derrida, especially in the hands of North American acolytes, always seemed to me in the end unsatisfactory, incomplete. I suspect Derrida would not only have understood that sense of frustration, but he'd likely have encouraged it, so much of his work in fact an exercise in academic, intellectual, philosophical and verbal play. But in the end, I could never accept Derrida, could never reject him, either; or, rather, I could do neither entirely, though I could -- and do-- reject the majority of his followers. In many ways, Derrida and Northrop Frye stood in utter opposition to one another, and I keep thinking there has to be a Hegelian synthesis that can be drawn from the two. I feel, I guess, a bit like Henry Drummond at the end of Inherit The Wind, pressing copies of Darwin and the Bible together, much to the chagrin of the science-professing cynicism of E.K. Hornbeck, the play's version of H.L. Mencken. Too corny a summary-feeling? Probably, but I guess I'm stuck there. As Hornbeck snipes, "We're growing a strange crop of agnostics this year." Yes, very much so, though I was probably reaped before I was sown.
In other literary news, Mr Bloom has a new book out, for which the NYTimes review can be found here. Bloom, another critic with whom the N-S-G Doctor is alternately chummy and uneasy, seems to be writing these days with a kind of vatic urgency, as if he alone has to carry the torch for The Love Of Literature, even if some of us more than others see why he would think he needs to do so. (Don't worry: I'll spare you all the sermon to which I'm sure most of you know all the words.) But Bloom seems to be writing with such rapidity and force, one begins to worry if he's not being driven by concerns with his own mortality, concerns that seldom come from strict hypochondria. I hate to write that, especially since Bloom has always been prolific, often alarmingly so, such that one begins to wonder how seriously he considers his own ideas before he releases them for publication. One stoops by worrying, one supposes; but I can't help but chuckle at Amazon's decision to sell Bloom's book by linking it to Greenblatt's new book on Shakespeare, a fact that has to have Harold rubbing his eyes in despair.
- When we got married my wife told me I was one in a million. I found out she was right!
- I saw my psychiatrist. I told him, "Doc, I keep thinking I'm a dog." He told me to get off his couch.
- Oh, when I was a kid, everyone thought I got plenty of girls. I used to go to a drive-in movie and do push-ups in the backseat of my car.
- I was making love to one girl, I told her, "You're so flat-chested." She said, "Get off my back."
- I said to one girl, "Come on, honey, I'll show you where it's at." She said, "You better, 'cause the last time I couldn't find it."
- Oh, when I go to a nude beach, I always take a ruler with me. Yeah, just in case I have to prove something.
- Oh, when I was a kid, when my parents went shopping, they always took me with them - that way they could park in a handicapped section.
- What a childhood I had, why, when I took my first step, my old man tripped me!
- Last week I told my psychiatrist, "I keep thinking about suicide." He told me from now on I have to pay in advance.
- I know the best way to get girls. I hang out at prisons and wait for parolees.
- Oh, this girl was fat, when she walks backward, she starts beeping. I mean, fat. She asked me why my eyes were bulging, I told her, "You're standing on my foot!"
- A lot of girls turn me down. One girl turned me down, she said she had to go to work in the morning. I told her, "I'll be finished by then!"
- I tell you, I'm not a sexy guy. I was the centerfold for Playgirl magazine. The staples covered everything!
- I'm getting old. I got no sex life. I get tired just holding up the magazine. At my age, I like to get sex over quickly. Then I can get to the nap.
- My doctor told me to watch my drinking. Now I drink in front of a mirror. And I drink too much, way too much; my doctor drew blood he ran a tab!
- One time my whole family played hide and seek. They found my mother in Pittsburgh!
- Oh, last week was a rough week. I noticed my gums were shrinking. I was brushing my teeth with Preparation H.
- Oh, my wife loves vacations. The other night she told me, "I wanna go someplace I've never been before." I took her to a men's room.
- With girls, I don't think right. I had a date with one girl, she had mirrors all over her bedroom. She told me to come over and bring a bottle. I got Windex.
- I'm trying a new diet now. The diet is Viagra and prune juice. I tell ya, I don't know if I'm coming or going.
- People say fish is good for a diet. But fish should never be cooked in butter. Fish should be cooked in its natural oils - Texaco, Mobil, Exxon...
- Oh, when I was a kid in show business I was poor, I used to go to orgies to eat the grapes.
- Oh, when I was a kid I was poor. We were so poor, when my father died; they asked my mother, "Paper or plastic?"
- Last night I came home, I walked in the house, I picked up the extension. My wife was having phone sex with some guy. I told the guy, "Don't let her fool you, she's faking it."
- I'll tell you one thing, I know how to satisfy my wife in bed, yeah, I leave.
- I tell ya, my wife was never nice. On our first date, I asked her if I could give her a goodnight kiss on the cheek - she bent over!
- You wanna have laughs? Do what I do. When I go through a tollbooth, I keep going. I tell the guy, "The car behind me is paying for two."
- I had a good time last week. I did a show; the whole audience was midgets. I got a standing ovation - I didn't even know it!
- I tell ya, with me, sleep is important. Well, last night I went to bed, I couldn't sleep. I started to count sheep - I got horny!
- When I was a kid I got no respect. I worked in a pet store. People kept asking how big I'd get.
Finally, a headline to make the N-S-G Doctor tear up with joy and, indeed, PRIDE.... Ya see? You just can't hide The Truth. And there it is, in black and white, for All The World to know. I think we've found the new Seven Words You Can't Say On Television. To quote Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles: "It's twoo, it's twoo!!!" 
(It applies to Canada, too. So There. ) Hehehe: Melvin.... 
Other stories at Ananova: the wife from Hell, the husband-slash-charity-pimp, and the undies of celebrotrash. But I love, I love that headline.... And, no, I am not overdoing it with the smilies.
The Michigan Republican Party is asking four county prosecutors to file charges against filmmaker Michael Moore, charging that he illegally offered underwear, noodles and snacks to college students in exchange for their promise to vote.This blog wonders if the more confused of those students would eat Moore's shorts. (And Republicans: c'mon; get over it. It's not like they used a conveniently-timed tax-cut to try to leverage votes, right?)
Alas, in a sign of long-needed respect: Mr Dangerfield has died at age 82. Always the Everyman mischief-maker, the lovable mess and glutton, Rodney -- for all of his turkeys, for all of his jokes that became as tired as a hooker on $2.50 Tuesdays -- will be missed. Go out and rent Back To School or Easy Money or even Caddyshack in remembrance; maybe even check out his surprisingly chilling performance in Natural Born Killers. You have to love the spirit that could remark, after brain surgery, that people "should ask [him] about things [he's] familiar with, like drugs and prostitution." This blog doffs its hat-- yes, in respect.
Bad AnalogiesNow go and turn your Pope upside down.
- She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
- The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
- McBride fell twelve stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.
- From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.
- Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
- Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
- Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.
- Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
- He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
- The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
- Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man."
- Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
- The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
- John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. (This blog's favourite)
- The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
- His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like socks in a dryer without Cling Free.
- The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
- He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
- "He smells bad," she thought, "As bad as Calvin Klein's Obsession would smell if it were called Enema and was made from spoiled Spamburgers instead of natural floral fragrances."
- After having printed the book, he felt that very few would remember his participation. Like the football player who passed to the goal scorer.
- The baseball player stepped out of the box and spit like a fountain statue of a Greek god that scratches itself a lot and spits brown, rusty tobacco water and refuses to sign autographs for all the little Greek kids unless they pay him lots of drachmas.
- I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like geschpooklicheit or something, but I don't speak German. Anyway, it's a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don't know the name for those either.
- She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can't sing worth a damn.
- His fountain pen was so expensive it looked as if someone had grabbed the pope, turned him upside down and started writing with the tip of his big pointy hat.
- After sending in my entries for the Style Invitational, I feel relieved and apprehensive, like a little boy who has just wet his bed.
This blog LOVES IT when American actors display their rubeishness like their ex-wives vaunt their admittedly ample cleavage. Query, ye of the BB, how many people will be quoting Sling Blade in 400 years?
The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry StudentsAm invoking the poem not to rebuke student efforts, by the way, but for the poem's opening stanza, which so perfectly sums up the hideous stuff that tends to make up so much Bad Poetry. One day, we'll have to start compiling the World's Worst Poets. The sad thing is, I'm relatively sure the 20th century would be vastly overrepresented.
Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me
snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting
you were beautiful; goodbye,
Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain
brown envelopes for the return of your very
"Clinical Sonnets"; goodbye, manufacturer
of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues
give the fullest treatment in literature yet
to the sagging-breast motif; goodbye, you in San Quentin,
who wrote, "Being German my hero is Hitler,"
instead of "Sincerely yours," at the end of long,
neat-scripted letters demolishing
the pre-Raphaelites:
I swear to you, it was just my way
of cheering myself up, as I licked
the stamped, self-addressed envelopes,
the game I had
of trying to guess which one of you, this time,
had poisoned his glue. I did care.
I did read each poem entire.
I did say what I thought was the truth
in the mildest words I know. And now,
in this poem, or chopped prose, not any better,
I realize, than those troubled lines
I kept sending back to you,
I have to say I am relieved it is over:
at the end I could feel only pity
for that urge toward more life
your poems kept smothering in words, the smell
of which, days later, would tingle
in your nostrils as new, God-given impulses
to write.
Goodbye,
you who are, for me, the postmarks again
of shattered towns--- Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell---
their loneliness
given away in poems, only their solitude kept.
Key quote: "I went numb and couldn't speak for two minutes. Then I couldn't stop laughing."
[He] was a complicated, acerbic, and contradictory man, with a wry sense of humor and a schoolboy's taste for pranks and practical jokes; he loved making a mystery of his life, and he kept the three different aspects of his identity—the writer, the public figure, and the private man—separate and distinct.So that's where I get it from.
Actually these are Michael Korda's words in describing Graham Greene, from a reprinted article in The New Yorker. It's a good, interesting read. I suppose that's one of the benefits of the new volume of the Sherry biography: there's Greene material aplenty right now, some of it even worthwhile. Shock!
This site has to be seen to be disbelieved. No word on whether or not the figures are anatomically correct-- or if any of them are wearing their "Garments." Oh, he says in his best Rasputin-per-Boney-M impression, those Mormons.... Now THAT's poetry.1-2-3,
1-2-3....
Ow! Uh! Alright! Uh!
Got to know how to pony
Like Bony Maronie
Mash potato, do the alligator
Put your hand on your hips, yeah
Let your backbone slip
Do the Watusi
Like my little Lucy
Hey! Uh!
Na na-na-na-na na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na na-na-na-na
I need somebody to help me say it one time
(Na na-na-na-na na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na na-na-na-na)
Wo--ow!
Q: So, Doctor J, why haven't you written any poetry lately?
I'm sure all of you are just sitting on pins & needles waiting for the Not-So-Good Doctor's assessment of the debate last night (yeah, I know...), and I'll keep you in suspense no longer. Below are my words from an email to RK this morning which I'm copying here because I'm simply too lazy-- it is Friday morning, after all, which, by the way, would have been an interesting Wallace Stevens poem-- to rewrite in more generalized form. The irony: that as I write this, one of the Talking Heads on CNN is admitting that from the traditional standards of a debate, Mr Kerry probably won, but It is also saying that President Bush acquitted himself and defended his position effectively, which strikes this viewer as gross proof of my email's later points about the press. "In the more traditional form of a debate"? D'Oh! "Acquitted himself?" How?!? Un-bloody-believable. The Press must not have been watching the same event that I was watching, and, more importantly, it seems utterly unwilling to examine a debate as a debate. I should say that although my antipathy towards the American President is no secret, I'm more than capable of setting aside my own beliefs to assess rhetorical and oratorical effectiveness. In fact, as the night wore on, I wound up trying to hunt for things to praise in Mr Bush's performance, like the teacher "looking to give out marks," always a sign of an evaluator's sense of pity and self-examination.You're right, Kerry was *really, really* good last night, though I cannot for the life of me understand how the commentators afterwards have been able to say it was "a tie" or "inconclusive." I almost felt sorry for Bush: his performance was so poor, so frustrated, so monotonous, so vapid. It was embarrassing how soundly Kerry was demolishing -- and agitating-- the Prez; it was like watching the reigning champ in the ring being pummelled to death, often simpering in his corner and then coming out to make a few flimsy attempts at a punch, only to end up pummelled and simpering again. And better, Kerry came across very well (though still no Cicero): aggressive, assertive, but not defensive; disciplined, focussed, and even -- hark!-- a bit charming. From pure debating standards, it was a blow-out, so I really have no clue how the Yank commentators can be so tepid.
Another metaphor, one familiar to both of us in spades: watching and listening to Bush last night was like listening to a not-too-bright student try to defend a D- paper. He all-too-obviously kept trying to defend himself, stuttering and stammering and making mistakes, but when most confused, he kept retreating to the same phrases that he felt had to say ("mixed messages" became so annoying, I wanted to bitch-slap him). Those phrases weren't Reaganesque reinforcements of message: they were intellectual security blankets to which the President clung so needily, the vain forms of desperate protestation that only end up demonstrating that he doesn't really know what he's talking about, the verbal buoys within the sea of his confusion. It was depressing, especially from the standpoint of that D- student: the chap was out of his depth, clearly lost without his steeling speeches and his battalion of advisors; this was a man who couldn't think coherently on his own, who couldn't articulate himself without the dispensation of tired soundbytes, all intended to demonstrate that he actually does know what he's talking about. Clearly, he doesn't-- like the student who keeps saying "the gender hierarchies" or "cultural materiality" but has no idea how to use those terms, let alone what they mean, or how to work beyond those easy terms to make them relevant. The worse part is, one gets the sense that no matter how much one tried to talk him through things, to ground him in facts, he'd never go any further in his thinking. The result from the viewing standpoint is one of despair. The man's in an intellectual cul-de-sac, the D- student frustrated with that D- but whose intellectual arc is descendant rather than ascendant. It was just plain sad.
But my greatest frustration is with the commentators, who seem now unable to judge genuine debate-- and I think the format actually worked out better than any of us had anticipated. The pundits seem to have developed a built-in pity for Bush, a glib "well-that's-just-the-way-George-is" mentality that grades him on a lesser scale than they would anyone else. It was like watching Woodrow Wilson-- or "Professor Wilson," as Mencken kept calling him long after he became President-- debate Gerald Ford, and then to have the result declared inconclusive, even though flash-polls this morning are all giving Kerry a significant win with numbers in the area of 53-37, numbers pretty decisive if you ask me, especially when one considers that 37% is around the number of Bush's base who'd never vote for Kerry even if W went out and Michael Jacksoned himself. In other words, the prognosticators are proving themselves the types who'd give that D- student B's for the rest of the course, while lowering the A student to the B level, the evaluators more dangerously uncritical than even that D-student. (Types we both know are not only alive and well at the university level, but now indeed constitute the white-washing majority.) That, in fact, sends a chill down my spine.
To tie things up with a lazy metaphor: Kerry earned an A last night, a solid one, Bush a D- (and embarrassing one, one even the result of a bit of pity for the poor guy), and the press an F, who hardly seemed to have watched the same event the rest of us watched. Kerry may have saved himself from oblivion last night, and maybe it's the peripeteia that he needed, even though he may have raised the standards by which his own performances at the coming debates will be judged. But I think it's about time the press stopped giving the President a bye on matters; for him they've lowered the bar so low that were this a limbo competition only a toddler could win. Gob-stopping, as they say.
Sorry, I've gone on a bit, though I think I may throw this on my blog and save myself the effort of rewriting it (so I guess you're getting a personalized copy). Below's a bit that was going around the TSE Discussion forum that's quite funny and that you should enjoy. I did. Cheers, J.
from Wednesday, November 12, 2003
A baseball metaphor that scores! Early in the CNN "Rock the Vote" Democratic debate a week ago, the following interchange took place--
QUESTION: Senator Kerry?
KERRY: Yes, sir.
QUESTION: You're the manager of the Boston Red Sox.
(LAUGHTER)
KERRY: Yes.
QUESTION: It's game seven.
(UNKNOWN): That's one way to get Kerry out of the race.
(LAUGHTER)
QUESTION: It's game seven of the ALCS versus the New York Yankees. Your starting pitcher appears to be tiring.
(LAUGHTER)
You know it's best for the team to replace him, but the star asks to stay in. Do you make an executive decision and take him out? Or do you listen to your star and let him, the person who you hired in that role, and let him finish that job?
(APPLAUSE)
KERRY: That's a great question.
(APPLAUSE)
KERRY: Wilmington, thank you very much for the question. I thought it was tough running for president of the United States. Now he wants to make me manager of the Red Sox.
(LAUGHTER)
KERRY: Let me tell you something. You know why I will be a great president of the United States? Because I've been a long suffering Red Sox fan. I know adversity.
(APPLAUSE)
Like most of you here, I was throwing things at the television set, screaming at Grady Little, 'Get him out of there. Get him out of there.'
And regrettably he didn't. Now we have another round. But that's our role in life. You have to understand. If you come from Boston, you come from Massachusetts, you love the Red Sox, your role in life is to put up with it.
And I'll tell you what. Every single one of us ought to celebrate the Marlins beating the Yankees.
(APPLAUSE)
And the reason it's extra special is that's the first legitimate victory out of Florida since 2000.
