"On no account will a Commie ever drink water, and not without good reason."

Best answer to the question why Paul Ryan — and not Biden (or Obama or Romney) — drank water during the debate. I had 5 suggested answers in my poll:



But the commenters — both in my post here and over at the poll site — came up with some funny answers:

"Hey — you think you're the only one playing a drinking-game during that debate!?"

"Drinking water helped him keep his cool and avoid beating the shit out of that smug asshole Biden."

"Heat generated by combination of Biden's gusty pizza cheese-smelling sighs and the dazzling white-hot glare from Biden's fake chompers led to increased need for hydration."

"Possibly he had come across Enoch Powell's 'Full Bladder technique.' Powell was a British politician of fifty years ago, famous, inter alia, for being a brilliant public speaker. He always made his speeches on a full bladder, on the theory that it helped concentrate the mind."

"Actually, it was a specially devised clear liquid CHEAT SHEET full of rethuglican LIES!!!"

And thanks as well to those who said things like:

Thanks for posting this, Ann. I've long felt that Instapundit was a bit too heavy on links to relevant and/or interesting content.

Wow. That's some hard hitting insightful analysis there, Ann.

I say thanks because it's helpful to me to remember that there's a segment of the population that doesn't get fun. I assume my readers are fun-loving, but there are some people who are essentially fun deaf, and things like this are as annoying as Joe Biden guffawing while Paul Ryan is talking about nuclear war in the Middle East.

Perhaps for some people, the sorrows and travails of this world are so weighty that we ought to demand a somber demeanor at all times — not just from ourselves, but from others. I can imagine a religion that requires grim facial and verbal expression at all times and for everyone, forever. An eternal funeral. After all: People are dying, dying at the rate of one per second. Wipe that smile off your face. Permanently.

Okay. I just wanted to acknowledge that you of the Religion of Grim are out there. And now, why don't you just take it easy, and please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater, and help yourself to whatever you'd like?

Cut me a big slice of that ham acting.

Bigger can be better. (Via Throwing Things.) Think Jack Nicholson in "The Shining" and Klaus Kinski in "Aguirre the Wrath of God" and George C. Scott in "Dr. Strangelove." Those are all named in the linked article, and I love them all. What can I add? Jeff Goldblum in "The Fly"! But I hate a lot of ham acting too. I'm still mad at myself for sitting through Nicholas Cage in "Leaving Las Vegas." Just remembering that performance makes me feel a little ill.

"It simply seemed depressing, oppressive and hopeless. It seemed like a relic from the past, a buried memory."

Judith Warner rewatches "Thelma and Louise," which was screened as part of film series chosen by various politicians.

Previous choices, by male lawmakers, have included “The Candidate,” “Dr. Strangelove” and “Dave.” But [Senator Susan Collins and Representative Jane Harmon], the cheery Maine Republican and tough-as-nails California Democrat, who have worked together on intelligence and homeland security legislation, broke the mold with their choice of the dystopic female buddy movie.

They wanted, they said, to showcase their against-the-odds, across-the-aisle friendship.

Bizarre. Had they seen the movie?

[I]n 1991 it was altogether understandable that a movie about sexual violence would be turned into a fable about women’s general social and political progress.

I remember that time so well.

It made perfect sense then to conflate sexual violence – in all its verbal, psychic, physical and political forms — with sexual politics. That year, the William Kennedy Smith rape case went to trial, belittling and publicly humiliating the victim; Anita Hill confronted Clarence Thomas and emerged besmirched while he reigned victorious; and Roe v. Wade seemed destined for extinction.

All the talk, nationally, was of sexual harassment, date rape and crimes against women generally...

The memory of that fear and anger and outrage – the sense of its momentous, transformative power – might have lasted longer had the “Thelma and Louise” moment not been followed, soon after, by a repudiation of “victim feminism” that was widespread and totalizing and highly welcome in the larger culture. It’s easy to forget now how vital and urgent the new focus on date rape and sexual harassment seemed, for a brief moment, back then. And yet it was, truly, transformative; the world of “Thelma and Louise,” I think it’s fair now to say, is not the one that we inhabit psychologically or physically today.

Date rape is no longer a contentious concept; it’s a known reality. Rape victims are no longer so thoughtlessly named and shamed by the media as was William Kennedy Smith’s accuser. Rape itself is down – its incidence having dropped 75 percent since the early 1990s, according to the Department of Justice.

These are profound and meaningful changes, and we should celebrate them — and revel in “Thelma and Louise”’s passage into history.

Oh, isn't that lovely! Well, Judith Warner's cheery recounting of history has a gigantic glaring omission! What happened was that the Democratic President Bill Clinton got into trouble for sexual harassment, and those who had worked so hard for so many years to bring the subject of sexual violence and sexual harassment to the front of the national consciousness did a turnaround to preserve partisan power. That's why the subject changed, not because the crime statistics improved. There are various problems with "victim feminism," but you've got to face up to the part of your repudiation of it that is about contempt for Paula Jones and interest in preserving the Clinton presidency.

Movie aftereffects.

Sometimes a movie leaves an incongruous aspect of itself in your head. On Sunday, after the accident, we watched "Serial Mom" to cheer us up. This is a black comedy about a squeaky clean suburban mom -- a veritable June Cleaver -- who turns out to be a serial murderer. (Hmmm ... June Cleaver would be an appropriate name for a murderer!) In one scene, a victim is taken by surprise while happily watching a videotape of "Annie." Four days after watching the movie, I'm still hearing "The sun'll come out tomorrow..."

I'm not really sure why I thought "Serial Mom" would be a good post-car-crash movie -- surely not because the first murder we see Mom commit is running down someone with her car! There's nothing cheerful about murder, though perhaps there's something cheering about laughing at death. But the movie -- which I've seen many times -- does embed the world's most optimistic song in the minds of the sort of jaded, cynical people who watch black comedies. Days later, the film is out of my consciousness, and that song, which I'd never have sought out, is still playing in my head, still "clear[ing] away the cobwebs and the sorrow."

ADDED: Maybe you think there's a more optimistic song. "Some Day My Prince Will Come"? Let me know.

UPDATE: A reader suggests two other songs which are also prominent in movies: "We'll Meet Again" (used at the end of "Dr. Strangelove") and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (from "The Wizard of Oz"). While both of these songs express hope, they are quite wistful and really rather sad. Does the singer really think things will work out well? Obviously, in "Dr. Strangelove," all hope is over when the song plays, but that is very much like the use of "Tomorrow" in "Serial Mom" (as opposed to the original use in "Annie"). The character in "Serial Mom" dies and has no shot at any tomorrow, sunny or cloudy. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" ends with "why, oh, why can't I?" and expresses the characters feeling of helplessness. There's the dreamy wish for a land somewhere else, which seems beautiful but feeble and unlikely to come true.

By the way, I first head "We'll Meet Again" -- and loved it -- on The Byrds' first album "Mr. Tambourine Man." The Byrds sang it because of "Dr. Strangelove," but I did not see "Dr. Strangelove" until years later. The Byrds did a nice job of using phrasing to convey the irony that accompanied the song in the movie.

ANOTHER UPDATE: For the most optimistic rock song, I'm going to suggest The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love."

Let me note that it isn't just the lyrics that makes the song optimistic, it's the music and the way a singer sings it. "Tomorrow," on the lyrics alone, could be seen as depressingly pessimistic: good times are "always a day away," which means they never actually get here.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: One reader says the best answer is "What a Wonderful World" -- the Louis Armstrong song. I always think of the Sam Cooke song when I read that title, but the "Don't know much about history" Sam Cooke song is called "Wonderful World." Another reader offers religious lyrics as the most optimistic -- "The Messiah" is suggested -- and pooh-poohs the delusional optimism of "All You Need Is Love." But it's the delusion of "All You Need Is Love" that I find so optimistic.

Another reader poses the question: What is optimism? Define your terms! Where does mistaken cheeriness fit in? "What a Wonderful World" is a great example of looking at the world that exists now and perceiving it as beautiful. There's no reliance on future events that may not happen as in "Tomorrow" and "We'll Meet Again" (and in "The Messiah" for that matter). "All You Need Is Love" also finds the present situation sufficient, but it makes assertions about the present that are quite simply not true and futility is presented as a good thing.

But let's look up "optimism" in the dictionary:

1. A tendency to expect the best possible outcome or dwell on the most hopeful aspects of a situation: “There is a touch of optimism in every worry about one's own moral cleanliness” (Victoria Ocampo). 2. Philosophy a. The doctrine, asserted by Leibnitz, that this world is the best of all possible worlds. b. The belief that the universe is improving and that good will ultimately triumph over evil.

So, maybe we need three songs to cover the three definitions.

AND MORE: A reader offers "You'll Never Walk Alone," from "The Sound of Music": "At the end of the storm is a golden sky/And the sweet silver song of a lark." That suggestion made me think of "My Melancholy Baby": "Every cloud must have a silver lining/Wait until the sun shines through." And what a beautiful song that is! It's a bit like "All You Need Is Love," but instead of the abstraction "love," the solution for everything is cuddling. That's damn sweet!

AND EVEN MORE: Wait. "You'll Never Walk Alone" is the big finale song by Rodgers and Hammerstein in "Carousel." I was thinking of "Climb Every Mountain," the big finale song by Rodgers and Hammerstein in "The Sound of Music": "Climb every mountain, ford every stream/Follow every rainbow, till you find your dream." Walking, climbing ... life is a journey. At least in "You'll Never Walk Alone," you have help. In "Climb Every Mountain," you're pretty much on your own. And it's not even a level surface!