{"id":573886699,"date":"2014-08-09T23:37:49","date_gmt":"2014-08-10T04:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573886699"},"modified":"2014-08-10T18:47:07","modified_gmt":"2014-08-10T23:47:07","slug":"nixon-on-the-subway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2014\/08\/09\/nixon-on-the-subway\/","title":{"rendered":"Nixon on the subway"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was raised in a suburban and exurban lifestyle. It was grand. And, like so many Americans, that involved cars. Many cars. A lot of miles. A great deal of time on interstates and highways. <\/p>\n<p>So, when I was however old I was, when I spent time on a mass transit bus and subway systems I noticed something. Everyone on board the thing would rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else. It is an energy-sapping experience and you can see it on everyone&#8217;s faces. <\/p>\n<p>I make the joke, which my beautiful wife hates, that it is like &#8220;Lord of the Flies.&#8221; She hates it because she&#8217;s spent plenty of times on the subway, so she always rolls her eyes, which means the jokes continue until someone inevitably brings up the conch shell. <\/p>\n<p>Well. I&#8217;m going to take this video as a piece of evidence for my side of the joke. The Broadway cast from &#8220;The Lion King&#8221; delivered a performance on the subway. Watch the commuters:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/W9QMM_nTuC4?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In contrast, when the Australian cast did it earlier this year, people actually enjoyed themselves. And they were on a plane:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UfcyGPHP0Ak?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Which brings up a good idea. If you&#8217;re organizing a flash mob &#8212; and why are you doing that, again? &#8212; you might want to have four or five people who have the very important job of acting shocked and amazed.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re organizing a flash mob, be sure you top this one, which is perhaps the best one ever:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GBaHPND2QJg?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>OK, one more video. This was 40 years ago, today, Richard Nixon had resigned amid the Watergate investigations, and was addressing the White House staff. It remains a fine speech lost in all of the important things that were happening. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"720\" height=\"540\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/32GaowQnGRw?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He was wrong about one thing, well a few things, in that speech. There was <a TARGET=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&#038;ion=1&#038;espv=2&#038;ie=UTF-8#q=%22Mother%20of%20the%20president%3A%20Hannah%20Milhous%20Nixon%2C%201885-1967%22\">a book<\/a> written about his mother.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder if Nixon would have liked The Lion King. I wonder what he would have been like on the the subway.<\/p>\n<p><a TARGET=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/historicaltimes.tumblr.com\/post\/86214044866\/richard-nixon-in-the-subway-ussr-moscow-june\">Something like this<\/a>. Thanks, Internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was raised in a suburban and exurban lifestyle. It was grand. And, like so many Americans, that involved cars. Many cars. A lot of miles. A great deal of time on interstates and highways. So, when I was however old I was, when I spent time on a mass transit bus and subway systems [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,39,11,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573886699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-music","category-video","category-weekend"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573886699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573886699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573886699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573886700,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573886699\/revisions\/573886700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573886699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573886699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573886699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}