“We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” – H.L. Mencken

I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. – H.L. Mencken

In this video from William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line,” beat novelist and poet Jack Kerouac declares himself a lifelong Republican and chews out a hippy:

From the website of “The American Museum of Beat Art”:

Despite the ‘beatnik’ stereotype, Kerouac was a political conservative, especially when under the influence of his Catholic mother. As the beatniks of the 1950′s began to yield their spotlight to the hippies of the 1960′s, Jack took pleasure in standing against everything the hippies stood for. He supported the Vietnam War and became friendly with William F. Buckley.

Image Source: LiveScience

An Irish filmmaker’s claim that footage from a Charlie Chaplin movie premiere in 1928 reveals a time-traveling woman speaking on a mobile phone has been debunked:

“As you can tell from these, old-fashioned mechanical or resonating hearing aids were not necessarily long and rounded,” said Philip Skroska, an archivist at the Bernard Becker Medical Library of Washington University in St. Louis. “Short, compact rectangular forms were not unusual.”

A hearing aid sounds about right, but I am still amazed that George Clarke (who discovered the footage and promoted the theory) skipped right over this woman is insane to this woman is a time traveler.

See the video that started it all here.

Pitchfork Media has published ”The Top 50 Music Videos of the 1990s.”

This nostalgic look back at the videos of the 1990s includes “Buddy Holly” by Weezer (1994), a nostalgic spoof of “Happy Days,” a sitcom (’74-’84) which itself reminisced an idealized 1950s. Count it: 3 layers of nostalgia. And when I look back upon this post years from now, we will have reached Inception-level nostalgia.

SEE ALSO: A compilation of the some of the most 90s stuff ever.

Alex Chilton– precocious frontman for the Box Tops and then leader of the influential power pop band Big Star– has died at age 59.

Here a 16- or 17-year old Chilton performs the Box Tops’ hit “The Letter”:

We’ve got Olympics fever, but it’s for Lillehammer, 1994 and one magical performance…