More 80s Music; Trudeau Does Good (?!)
Category: Kitchen Sink...
Posted Thursday, December 12, 2002 at 05:19 PM [GMT-6]

Quick follow-up to yesterday's interminable post about music videos from the Eighties. I failed to tell you the identity of MTV's #1 music video in 1986, mainly because I didn't get that far into the tape. I watched the rest of it today - and just so you'll know the lengths [pun intended] to which I'll go for my readers, I had to run five miles on the treadmill to get to the end. Anyhow, Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" got the top pick. My take? It's an OK song and a pretty darn good video, especially considering the technology in 1986. According to Mr. Gabriel's website, "Sledgehammer" is actually the #1 video of ALL-TIME...or so says Rolling Stone Magazine, and who are we to argue with that august publication? (This honor does, of course, beg the question: how do you designate anything the best of all-time, if the product/service/whatever is still being made/done/whatever? Shouldn't the award more properly be called "The Best Up To Now"?)

Generally speaking, Gary Trudeau frosts my fritters with his waaaay-left leaning cartoons, but I have to admit that he provided a laugh-out-loud moment in this morning's Doonesbury. I won't try to re-create anything but the straight line and the punch line:

Iraqi obfuscator: "Is it true that only 13% of Americans can find Iraq on a map?"
American deflator: "Yeah...but they're all Marines." (Hoo-wah!)

Of course, if push comes to shove, there's a really good chance that less than 13% of anybody will be able to find Iraq on a map...or anywhere else, for that matter. Personally, I hope and pray it never comes to that. I won't blindly support an American declaration of war on any pretext, but I also fail to see the wisdom of a unilateral "live and let live" philosophy, especially when The Other Guy counters with a "live and let kill" philosophy.