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A reader writes:

I just watched the video of the young girl who is surprised when her father is home from the war. Watching the expressions on her face, I knew instantly what she felt. I've been in her shoes. My father spent time in the Middle East during the first Gulf war. I didn't see him for six months. I was about the same age as this girl is now.

At ten years old, you are old enough to understand that when your father leaves for war, he is not leaving by choice. It is duty, honor, and obligation. But abstract notions like war and duty are overshadowed by the stark reality of one parent not being home. And so at times, you get angry at your father for not being there, even knowing it's not his choice. But even the anger comes and goes. The strongest part of the complex emotional bundle is worry and fear; at ten years old, you are old enough to understand that if your father is off to war, he might not return.

So when you see him again, what you feel is complicated. First is joy. Soon after the joy follows anger. But the tears come from relief.

I remember the the moment when my mother brought my father home like it was yesterday.

We were back stateside for the summer (we were stationed in Yakota, Japan at the time). My mom had braved flying back to the Midwest from Japan with four children because my aunt was getting married. I was expecting that we would return to Japan before we would see my dad again. My mom dropped us off at one of my aunt's houses and went to the airport, not telling us our dad would be home soon. We played with our cousins until she came back. She rang the doorbell so we'd come down. As the door opened, and I saw my dad standing there, I stopped moving. I stood there for a long time (at least it felt like a long time) before I finally rushed to hug him. I worried all the time that I might never see him again. Having those worries assuaged was one of the biggest reliefs of my life.

Carl Hulse has an interesting report on the Republican clusterfuck that led to their losing a safe seat in an off-year election. They were outmaneuvered by the Dems:

Democrats planned to make mischief in the district from the moment Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, approached John M. McHugh, who held the seat, about becoming Army secretary. Democrats smelled opportunity. They put in place an extensive field operation that has become a hallmark of the House Democrats. Operatives say the party, which spent $1.1 million on the race, had workers knock on more than 101,000 district doors and make more than 108,000 phone calls. The White House dispatched Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to help in the campaign.

Jonathan Martin snuck into the Palinfest in Wisconsin and reports that the crowd was not so wowed:

While she drew applause during her remarks, Palin’s extemporaneous and frequently discursive style was such that she never truly roused a true-believing crowd as passionate about the issue at hand as she. Not once during her address did they rise to their feet. In a closing exhortation, she urged the audience, “Don't ever let anyone to tell you to sit down and shut up.” She then got a standing ovation from most of the crowd, but a few had begun to leave before she even finished and within seconds of her concluding, scores more got up and put on their jackets as they walked away.

But they were half a mile long in line to see the Immaculate Misconception beforehand. It seems to me like a Mass. Her very divine presence is all that matters; what she says is largely irrelevant. There's some small news in her re-telling of her fifth pregnancy story (more on the latest version tomorrow), but what strikes me from Jonathan's report is that she has been watching Glenn Beck closely. To wit:

Noting that there had been a lot of “change” of late, Palin recalled a recent conversation with a friend about how the phrase “In God We Trust” had been moved to the edge of the new coins. “Who calls a shot like that?” she demanded. “Who makes a decision like that?” She added: “It’s a disturbing trend.” Unsaid but implied was that the new Democratic White House was behind such a move to secularize the nation’s currency. But the new coins – concerns over which apparently stemmed from an email chain letter widely circulated among conservatives – were commissioned by the Republican-led Congress in 2005 and approved by President Bush.

The whole technique of mentioning strange events or codes or numbers and implying that there is some sinister force behind them is classic Beck. And since the anti-Christ is now in the White House, we are all left to wonder what is next. Of course: it's euthanasia of the elderly and state-mandated abortion of disabled or special need kids. Next up: the ritual killing of white new-borns or some such. 

I can't wait for the "book".

Howard Jacobson talks about offensive jokes – like the one about war amputees – and makes this observation:

No great comedian is ever amused by himself. Billy Connelly could have been a great comedian had he not taken to collapsing hysterically during his own routines. The seal on David Brent's prattishness was his laughing at his own jokes. Then it turned out that Ricky Gervais, who created him, laughs at his own jokes too. Self-satisfaction is an unpardonable crime in a comedian because his role is to remind us that nothing is satisfactory. Hence the necessity of keeping a straight face. It affirms the seriousness of his calling. Which is to make people laugh, not because life is funny but because it isn't.

(Hat tip: The Awl)

Number 94 on the You Aught To Remember countdown:

Remember the good old days? The days when you could turn on prime-time television at 9:00 or 10:00 PM and catch an arresting hour-long drama mid-season and feel thoroughly entertained? Oh sure, maybe you didn't know all the character's names on ER or what exactly was going on between Harry Hamlin and Susan Dey on LA LAW but, you could pretty much tune in any night and enjoy a well-constructed program. Other shows required even less dedication; The Twilight Zone, Quantum Leap or Law & Order (in any of its many incarnations) could be watched in whatever sequence one wished-you always knew Jerry Orbach's mordant one-liners would be the same. The model made sense; after all, television viewing was a casual activity – prone to whims of channel surfing and audience distraction (not to mention toilet breaks). Dramas that forced a deep commitment of time and mental energy on the viewer simply selected themselves out of candidacy for Neilsen glory. Not any more.

The Atlantic's Ben Schwarz also explores the "megamovie" in his recent review of Mad Men:

For more than 10 years, the intricate, multiseason narrative TV drama has exercised a dominant cultural sway over well-educated, well-off adults. Just as urbanish professionals in the 1950s could be counted on to collectively coo and argue over the latest Salinger short story, so that set in the 2000s has been most intellectually, emotionally, and aesthetically engaged not by fiction, the theater, or the cinema but by The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Big Love.

After watching videos of The Sopranos 13-hour first season, the film critic Vincent Canby discerned that this new genre—owing to its “cohesive dramatic arc,” the quality of its production values and ensemble performances, and the sophistication of its writing—amounted to a “megamovie” rather than merely a tarted-up TV miniseries. And he bestowed on it a fairly exalted pedigree, tracing it not just to Dennis Potter’s English production The Singing Detective (1986) and Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) but even to Erich von Stroheim’s lost silent masterpiece, the nine-and-a-half-hour Greed (1924).

Beastie Boys meets Star Wars. "It's a trap!"

Original "Sabotage" here.

Going down the artistic rabbit hole.

In thinking through the rather good ads that eventually came out in Maine, many are arguing that future marriage campaigns need to go negative against the anti-gay forces. Steve Hildebrand tells Rex Wockner:

We are fools to have spent all this money and time and not have defined the opponents. It's not enough to answer their charges. We need to hit them back and not let up on it until voters don't buy their lies anymore. Malpractice in my opinion.

We can, of course, do both. A campaign that in future took on the Catholic hierarchy for its tolerance of child abuse while denying grown people marriage rights would be a promising start. Ads reminding people of the Mormon church's long, long history of racism would also be salient. We're new to this, and we're learning.

With a shoe.

Jim Windolf explores the science behind adorable animals:

“It’s part of our DNA to react to cute things,” says Meg Frost, who founded Cute Overload in 2005. “What makes me post certain pictures is if I have an audible reaction—a squeal—when I see the picture. I’m kind of annoyed at myself for having no control over thinking these things are so cute. […]

Specifically, [biologist Melanie] Glocker’s series of experiments demonstrated that the act of looking at baby pictures stirs up an ancient part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. “It’s in the midbrain,” Glocker says, with a slight Teutonic accent, “which is an evolutionarily older part of the brain involved in reward processing. This region has also been shown to be activated by a variety of rewarding stimuli, including sexual stimuli, food stimuli, and drug stimuli.” Dr. Glocker is too much of a scientist to say so, but her experiments more or less prove that cuteness is physically addicting.

FU Penguin fights the urge to cuddle with the cute dog above:

This dog's name is Snapdragon, which not coincidentally is the PERFECT FUCKING NAME for this Muppet-looking motherfucker. I was sent in this picture by a person pretending to be the owner, but honestly is there any possible way this is a real dog? And if it is a real dog, it should be taken away because it is clearly fucking out of its mind high. THERE IS NO WAY I'M COMING TO SIT ON THAT COUCH WITH YOU, DOG. I don't care how many episodes of Planet Earth you have cued up.