Girth of a Nation

I wanted to like the Roseanne reboot, I suppose; at the very least, I resolved not to let it be a political decision, which appears to be something of a feat for many folks these days. But let's not kid ourselves -- the show's namesake has gone out of her way the last few years to be (or at least make effort to appear to be) a repellent troll.

As her bumptious political opinions have pinballed around the dial throughout her tumultuous public life, one thing has remained consistent for Roseanne the person:  she seems to place an inordinate value in being tough to pigeonhole or defend. This would be worthy of note if only she'd ever had an opinion on any subject that was worth repeating or endorsing. But her main goal has always been simply to be a pain in the ass. Like her ricockulous orange golem idol, she can't stand to be ignored. Unlike Preznit Tide Pod Challenge, she doesn't care if you like her or not.

But again, I don't want to be one of those Zhdanovite douchebags, stress-testing every note of every song and every line of every show for absolute alignment with my own view of the world and its sorry inhabitants. Ultimately, either the show is funny, or it isn't.

And the show is funny....until it isn't. There are a lot of nice little moments, and some decent laughs. John Goodman fits right back into the Dan Conner (easily the best character on the show, then and now) role like a comfortable shoe. The original kids are all back, as is Laurie Metcalf. They all fall right back into familiar rhythms.

But the first two episodes, which aired back-to-back last week, submerge the viewer in tone and smarm and reverse PC winks. It's likely that the writers were going for an Archie vs. Meathead dynamic between Roseanne and Jackie, but Michael Stivic was actually allowed to make a point once in a while. Jackie is simply a hopped-up caricature of every conservatard twitbag's laundry list of imaginary grievances:  shrill, smug, self-righteous, pedantic. It gets old quickly.

Roseanne, on the other hand, is never ever wrong about anything, just ask her. She defends her choice of a moronic grifter with a vague grumble about "jobs" and brooks no further disagreement. We'll see how that all goes with the jobs and the health care booming along as they are in that part of the country. The bottom line is that it becomes difficult to separate a show from its politics when the show is so blatantly political at every turn.

One of the plots in the second episode encapsulates the dilemma of the show pretty well:  younger daughter Darlene (Sara Gilbert, who is producing the reboot) has moved back home with her teen daughter and tween son, the latter of whom is, as the kids say in the 'hood, "gender fluid." Ultimately the grandparents' initial discomfort with a ten-year-old boy wearing unisex clothes and nail polish gives way to the predictable trope of fierce family protection.

All well and good, except this is precisely the same demographic that, in real life, could not stop braying about the looming danger of transgender bathrooms and such like. The lack of empathy in the real people the Conners are meant to represent is palpable, and the feeling that they (Roseanne and Dan) would have jeered at the same kid if he were in a news item at a school is inescapable. That's how they are -- they didn't give a fuck about heroin addicts, until it hit their trailer park. And they didn't give a fuck about jobs until theirs went to China and India and Mexico.

The preening arrogance of these people -- the real white working class and their teevee avatars -- is just exhausting. They seem to think that their diet of deep-fried twinkies and Bachelor offshoots confers some sort of "realness" upon them, that they are somehow more genuinely American than someone who (hurr!) reads hard-cover books and pays attention to actual news. That's really the worst out of all of it, you know, that they really seem to believe such bullshit.

Mostly though, the show is just old Thunderbird in a new-ish box. Underpinning the entire operation is this endless, constant, overweening grievance. It's the conservative reactionary version of that dreaded word, entitlement. To listen to these jabbering maroons, you'd never guess that their guy won, that they have a majority in both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, that every thing their dotard has been criticized for has been well-earned. Seriously, these are the sorest fucking winners ever.

It is not the pussy-hat crowd's fault that the doddering grifter keeps shooting himself in the clown shoes every week, nor is it their fault that it turns out that -- surprise! -- all of his promises were predictably empty, that the widget-stamping jobs aren't coming back to BFE, and in fact his tiny-dick-waving stunts with the Chinese are threatening a trade war that will specifically target these salt-of-the-earth rubes.

For several years running, we've been entreatied to "listen" to a cohort of hostile, incoherent jokers who can't muster any facts, and blame everyone else for their manifest failures in life. There is never any countervailing voice, never anyone in the supposedly liberal media, and certainly nobody on the "conservative" side, who ever bothers to even suggest, Hey, more people voted for the other person, wonder if we might listen to them just once? I've gotta listen to them, over and over and fucking over again, but god forbid they'd ever come around to listen to me. Well, fuck that shit, as my great-grandmother used to tell her Sunday school class.

I don't know why that is, and I give up asking. All I know is that I've seen and heard enough plaints from these fools in real life, and I don't need a thinly fictionalized version of their nonsense to drive the point home. They'll never be happy, because they'll never get an even break, and they're never going to be honest with themselves about why that is. So why bother?

There was a time when Roseanne was ground-breaking in many respects, and downright hilarious much of the time. Now it just comes off as preachy and predictable, every bit as smug and spiteful and ill-informed as the loony lefties it lampoons.

But at least that should serve as an object lesson for any would-be liberals. Roseanne does deserve credit for telling her story her way -- loud, brash, aggressive, fuck you if you don't like it. If there are any real liberals (in entertainment or government or news) left, maybe they should consider doing the same thing for once, instead of meekly waiting around for Cadet Bonespurs to send us into a recession and nuke Tehran as a distraction. Waiting for Mueller and/or November is not a strategy.

In the meantime, instead of bothering with the nattering narcissism of the Oracle of the White Workin' Class (when she's not farming macadamia nuts in Hawaii), do yourself a favor and check out The President Show's special. Kathy Griffin's portrayal of soulless homunculus Kellyanne Con-way steals what was a pretty solid show all the way around.

Complicity

Look, what Texas and other states are doing -- and have been doing for decades -- to undermine reproductive rights is shameful, despicable, disgusting (to use the Drumpfster's favorite word). There's no two ways about it, especially considering that the abortion rate has been steadily declining in this country for about twenty years now. There's just no reason for this nonsense, except that it inflames the rubes.

But this is an issue that affects poor women the most, by far, and so here is what I would ask those women:  Do you vote? More specifically, do you vote every time you can, even if a pet issue isn't on the ballot? Do you vote in the midterms? Because part of the reason so many of these fuckers are in office right now is because no one could be bothered to show up in 2010, or 2014. That's why you vote every time. That's why you follow the issues and the people, and pay attention.

Takin' It to the Streets

Let's reiterate, for the kids in the cheap seats:  it doesn't matter if you throw Molotov cocktails in the streets, or lay down in Grand Central Station -- it won't do any good, because they don't care. You think a federal investigation or a body camera will prevent the next cop from perforating an unarmed civilian? The ends of Eric Garner, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, and plenty of others are on video. We can all see what happened. Nothing will be done about any of them, because what the fuck are you gonna do about it, block traffic? Go ahead. Vote? Please. Jesus H. Christ.

Back in the day, the noted optimist Jim Morrison said "they got the guns, but we got the numbers". In a modern, militarized surveillance/security state, it's really the other way around -- mere numbers become irrelevant when the minority has all the weapons, the money, and the power, overt and coercive. Power gives you options:  to beat, to imprison, to ignore, to propagandize, to wait you out, to fuck up your future job prospects, any number of things. Mainly to refuse to respond to your plaints and your protests and your duly registered disgust at their conduct.

They don't give a shit because they don't need to give a shit because they don't want to give you the satisfaction and risk legitimizing your grievances because fuck you, cowboy. Whose country do you think this is, anyway? Get back in line or the hired dogs will just put on the riot gear and roll out the up-armored assault vehicles.

Of course these are lessons learned from the '60s, that hippies and idealists need to be beaten down, bought off, or spied on and blackmailed. Nowadays, they hardly even need to do that -- the flying monkeys at Faux News and their scumbag commentators will happily ridicule any non-teabagger grievance. Rudy Giuliani and his Nosferatu shadow have opportunistically slithered out of the coffin to piss on the graves of Eric Garner and Michael Brown and anyone else who fucks with Our Boys In Blue, the same type of hyper-paranoid mutt that perforated Amadou Diallo for the high crime of reaching for his wallet.

I respect the idealism of protestors, the sincere conviction that it will do jack shit to change anything. Occupy Wall Street changed nothing, the massive Iraq War protests around the world in 2003 changed nothing. People reserve high praise for the non-violent (well, on the part of the protestors, anyway) resistance tactics of Gandhi and MLK. And those did change some things, but at what a price, a lot of people getting the shit beaten out of them or murdered for saying no, and a couple of martyred heroes.

But the most modern manifestation of the tactics you see when you see protests is the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. A grim combination of pushing people around, presenting the tactics of looters and vandals as the norm, and dismissing and delegitimizing valid grievances, Seattle became the template for defusing the causes of disruptive groups of citizens.

(Some of the comments in the Atlantic article are just as appalling. Look, most reasonable people will acknowledge that pulling hundreds of millions of people out of grinding poverty in China and India is a net positive from a humanitarian perspective. But, uh, it wasn't the average 'murkin manufacturing worker's fault that those countries are hopelessly overpopulated; it wasn't just a couple thousand greedy union tools that lost their jobs, it was millions of working-class people who were promised retraining and opportunities; the usual suspects made all the money from gutting their countrymen's jobs and communities. Whatever potential globalization legitimately had, what it was was just another round of American corporations fucking over American workers, and pocketing the profits.)

About the only protests you don't see getting smacked down are old white guy protests, your Cliven Bundy types, your teabagger rallies, your gun-nut slobs sporting stretched-out beach shorts and assault rifles at the Chipotle ostensibly because Second Amendment, but really because most guys who can no longer see their dicks have trouble convincing women to suck them off.

The reason those protests don't get shut down is because they're useful to the powers that really be. They're a handy distraction, a way to further propagandize and polarize a dwindling but effective slice of the electorate. They've had their lives upended so that greedheads could profit massively from exploiting the competitive advantage of places with a massive surplus of labor, and look for easy answers to pin the blame on.

Body cameras on cops won't hurt, but also won't change much when grand juries literally refuse to indict despite actual video evidence of police over-reaction and misconduct. Those punk-ass cops gang-mauled Eric Garner for selling individual cigarettes; the man lost his life for selling loosies. It's all on video, crystal clear, and still they refuse to do a goddamned thing about it. Video doesn't matter, in a climate where citizens will not just eat the shit sandwich, but run down to the store and buy the bread.

Here's the only video that matters, if we want to understand what's going on here:
Robin Harris in House Party

Dugout

One of the "advantages" of having mostly conservative (especially a few really conservative) Facebook friends is that you get direct links to some odd shit. We're talking about stuff that makes Whirled Nut Daily look like the Utne Reader.

One such outlet is something pulled out of (let's say) Jerry Corsi's gaping asshole, called (hilariously) Western Journalism. One such "article" (the entire site seems to be an incompetent mishmash of half-witted conspiracy theories and circus-freak clickbait) involves the hapless Duggar family, whom you may recall as the goofball Arkansas cultists whose sole claim to fame is doing what just about every human can do, just way too much of it.

Apparently some five-figured number of gay-rights supporters have e-signed an e-petition to cancel 19 Kids and Counting, not because the entire premise of the show can be gleaned from the title, and therefore every episode is interchangeable, but because they tried to start a stupid meme and got trolled by same-sex couples, and took those eeevil fotoz down. Oh noez!

So of course e-supporters from the "other" "side" of the e-divide sharpened their e-crayons, and proceeded to self-actualize by e-signing their e-petition exhorting TLC -- which, let's step back and recall for a hot moment, putatively stands for The Learning Channel -- to keep the show on the air.

Does it really need to be said that whether or not this dumb fucking show about these dumb fucking people (and really, take a look at the ricockulous clickbait items on the right sidebar at the HollywoodLife link -- "Jessa Duggar & Ben Seewald:  Why They Didn't Have First Wedding Kiss"; what sort of inbred maroon cares?) gets cancelled is entirely based upon whether it gets good ratings or not? And amazingly, it does. Someone actually tunes into this nonsense, for some reason.

Like Duck Dynasty, this sort of stuff is just the usual cultural self-affirmation, a reminder of a largely mythical time when those people knew their place, and Jebus brought the Constitution down from hebbin to explain to the Founding Fathers (in English, doncha know) what the deal was.

I really could not possibly care less whether or not 19 Kids gets kicked to the curb or not. It's not like religious fanatics haven't had shows cancelled that that they found offensive. There can't possibly be any more to this premise, than watching the grown kids conceive and start ludicrously large families of their own. The Duggars are a "traditional" family only in the most archaic sense of the word, a vestige of a time when life was short and there were acres of subsistence crops to tend to.

I think this "quiverfull" bullshit is just that, especially on a groaning, strained planet at the extent of its resources, vastly overpopulated as it is. If everyone decided, like these religious fanatics, that viral over-breeding was the thing to do, we'd have twenty billion people, instead of just seven billion. The idiocy is in thinking that something will come along and work out and enable that to happen, because something always comes along. And that's just not true; every tsunami and earthquake and hurricane that takes thousands of lives is the earth sneezing, attempting to expel the virus which has overrun it.

That's a bit polemic, but the core truth still holds; the planet is optimized for maybe 2 billion people tops. After that, the issue of finite resources tend to become an issue. Good luck when the majority of humanity, who live in poverty-ridden, over-populated places like China and India, catch up with the West in resource consumption. That is the endgame of thinking you can just have a couple dozen kids, turn your vagina into a clown car, and that there will be no environmental effects.

It's to be expected that in an enormous (and enormously diverse) nation there will be manifold buffooneries, each more puzzling and laughable than the next. What's tricky is figuring out whether the cultural buffooneries inform the political ones, or the other way around. Probably a bit of both.

The New Model

I am most likely the worst holder of an MBA degree you can think of, since I routinely piss and moan about the multitudinous vicissitudes and perfidy of the rentier grifter class, the shameless scamboogery with which they run this nation for their own benefit and no one else's.

But I'm always on the lookout for newer, fresher revenue models to emulate. So I'm strangely in somewhat respectful awe of this here revenue model, the ease and guilelessness with which hack comic Byron Allen has become a hack tycoon. Keep an eye on his low-ball licensing and distribution model, because it's likely to be some variant that will eventually provide your satellite, cable, and internets content.

And why not? For every Vince Gilligan or David Benioff or Kurt Sutter, there are a hundred Byron Allens, giving the people what they really want. I've often said that the corporate news exists solely to get you to buy cheeseburgers and pills and trucks and tampons, but the fact is that all media exists for that purpose.

Every football game; every talk-radio blowhard; every true-crime spouse-kills-spouse dramatization stretching twenty minutes of story to two hours; every karaoke competition that stretches an hour of material to twenty weeks; every group of inbred southerners hicking it up for the cameras, opening storage sheds or teasing alligators or whatever the hell it is they do. All of it exists for the singular purpose of distracting you long enough to open your wallet for a Duck Dynasty chia pet or some such.

Breaking Bad: Meta-Criticism, Binge-Watching, and O.G. Fans

[*here there be spoilers*]

As Breaking Bad, almost indisputably one of the best teevee shows ever, winds up as strongly as any series could hope for, it behooves us to do what everyone else is currently doing, and provide some deeper insight to the ongoing proceedings.

Having watched the show first-run from the very start, but not having Netflixed in between seasons, it's actually somewhat difficult to draw from memory specific threads from early episodes to these amazingly intense homestretch episodes. But catching a few episodes from the first two seasons in last week's marathon brought back many fine details and nuances -- the unrelenting madness of Tuco and the consequences of dealing with it; the gamesmanship between Walt and Fring; the professional (professorial?) distance Jesse always kept between Walt and himself; the way Hank seamlessly morphed from blustery jock-cop to determined bloodhound. You could go on and on and on.

But really, both eight-episode "halves" of the final season were constructed and paced nearly to perfection, culminating in the now-infamous third-to-last episode, whose title said it all, the same way its Sopranos episodic counterpart used a related poetic reference as an anticipatory framing device.

Feel free to correct my dumb ass, but I think the trend to instant meta-criticism came to fruition with The Sopranos. By the time that series neared its close, technology had enabled anyone with a connection to inform the rabble of their deeper insights of each episode. This persisted not only to the more obvious, narrative-driven salient points of the scene or episode, but to the apparent visual cues and MacGuffins contained therein.

With high-stakes series such as The Sopranos, The Wire, or (in this case) Breaking Bad, this makes sense, and it has only accelerated with the vaunted advent of social media. But it has also cemented the observer effect on such shows, as they navigate through their respective narratives, and ultimately determine the "right" way to eventually come to a satisfying conclusion.

The ability and popularity of binge-watching (and I've done that as well, especially with Showtime series such as Dexter, Homeland, and The Borgias) has a similar effect, I think, in that you no longer spend a week or even a day digesting the layers of the episode you just viewed; you move on to the next one, right away or tomorrow. You don't have to wait anymore. This too will affect the production and writing of future series, guaranteed. Another trend with these critically acclaimed series is the decisions by their creators to end strong, after five or seven seasons, resisting the urge to milk a premise to death, to a limp-dick end watched only by die-hards who sat it out for a sense of completion.

A big part of the magic of BB, the show and its finale, was that so many threads were pulled, and while so many were left to be resolved, the major threads were resolved, and in a way that didn't leave people on a ledge the way the Sopranos finale did. As with Sopranos or The Wire, there have always been clues in the episode titles, and Felina did not disappoint on that account. From the Marty Robbins reference to the blood (Fe), meth (Li), and tears (Na) chemical breakdown to the playing out of all the elements, the episode rang true to Walt's statement in the pilot about chemistry being the science of transformation. I defy you to find any dramatic work -- including Shakespeare -- where every single character transformed so tremendously, so catastrophically.

I'll probably Netflix the entire series over the winter, and I have no doubt that I'll catch any number of catalyzing scenes and events that more fully inform the final half-season. In the meantime, what transpired was nothing short of rare, true greatness, the kind of "dramatic Halley's comet" folks were lucky to catch once or twice in a lifetime.

Like the aforementioned shows as well as Game of Thrones and past treasures such as The Shield, these shows are obviously rare confluences of spectacular writing and strong ensembles, catalyzed by one or two "force of nature" type performers who are enabled by the overall strength of the cast. In an endless ocean of dross, these are things that give you a sliver of hope, and maybe even a reason to watch.

Human Cockfighting

Talk about burying the lede. As sad as the accidental death of Buckwild cast member Shain Gandee is, it's a fairly logical consequence of the various stunts he and his castmates were encouraged to do as part of the "show," though of course these were things they were doing in the first place

As always, I'm more intrigued by how these sorts of antics constitute a program series, an associated group of episodes with with a cohesive narrative of plot and characterization, in the traditional Aristotelian sense. Yes, there are archetypes, even in cultural edema such as Storage Wars and Redneck Intervention. But at what point do otherwise sensible people take stock of their lives and ask, if only of themselves, not only why there is something on the teevee called Redneck Intervention but why the holy fuck they are watching it?

Gandee's mother, deep in the article, actually makes some decent points about the escapism aspect of this nonsense. But even there, what are they escaping, and is this the best we can do? Is this all working people have available to them to avoid thinking about the wretched futility of their lives until the next slave shift, watching drunken hillbillies molest farm animals and each other?

Thousands of years from now, when we're all just dust and distant memories, it will be interesting to see how future archaeologists perceive this metastasized cultural tumor of "reality" teevee.

James Gandolfini

I happened to catch the awful news about James Gandolfini just minutes after it hit the news outlets, and thought for a split second about jumping on the instant "oh noez!" wagon. But more and more I'm coming to appreciate the value of "slow news", in correlation with "slow food."

Really, as dysfunctional as Americans' relationship with their food is, the news is so much worse, as it is compelled to fill every fucking moment with whatever's there, which usually ain't a whole lot, unless endless iterations of the same goddamned thing punches your ticket. Sometimes, we need to take a few minutes and let news -- good or bad -- sink in.

Anyway, Gandolfini. As a huge fan of The Sopranos, and of Gandolfini (even before Sopranos; his bit part in True Romance stood out in a movie full of wonderful small parts), it's always a horrible thing for someone of such talent to be cut down in their prime. And if half of the "nice guy" encomia are remotely true -- and I'm sure they are --  then it's also the loss of a working-class dog, a regular guy uncomfortable with the irregularity his status granted him. You can never have too many people like that.

It's not an exaggeration to say that the success of The Sopranos changed the face of television. In a pustulent wasteland of "reality" diarrhea gravitating to every low nook and crevice of the people's airwaves, never to be completely rinsed out, there are diamonds to be found, rich story arcs populated by vivid, complex characters and compelling scenarios.

You definitely have no Boardwalk Empire or Mad Men without Sopranos, as they were created by folks who got their pedigree on David Chase's watch. But you probably also don't have the rest of the quality basic cable stable:  Breaking Bad, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, the late great Southland. Hell, anything good that's come on HBO since Sopranos probably owes at least part of its existence to the success of that show; HBO had foundered after Larry Sanders closed shop and needed something to boost its stock. Instead it captured lightning in a bottle, a sprawling, rambunctious mob epic with heart and grit and a stellar ensemble cast.

But every ensemble needs its gravitational force, and that was Gandolfini to a T, at turns charming and menacing, communicating subtleties of character with a cold glint of the eye and a slight Doberman grin. I always felt that Sopranos was the funniest show of its era, still do. It was the darkest of humor, but hilarious all the same, and much of that was due to Gandolfini's tremendous timing and facial cues.

I recall reading once that Chase originally wanted DeNiro for the role of Tony Soprano, and as great as DeNiro is, Gandolfini used is bulk to inhabit the character and make it larger than life. Where DeNiro is almost catlike in his presence, stealthy and clever, but not physically overpowering, Gandolfini made Tony more like a bear, pleasant one moment, imminently dangerous the next. Like Michael Chiklis in The Shield, Gandolfini was a force of nature in his signature role, compelling and unstoppable.

So there ya go. It's not hyperbole -- James Gandolfini really did change teevee in this new millennium, helped create a redoubt for quality, storytelling, and acting as a true craft. That he was apparently a great person as well is icing on the cake. Gone far too soon. Go rent True Romance, which is just a great movie from front to back anyway, and check out Gandolfini's interview with James Lipton.

The Ballad of Frito Pendejo

Looks like 'murka's ongoing love affair with watching nobodies sort their sock drawers is safe for the time being, praise Jebus:

“I don't see anything mind-blowing this year,” says Karoline Spodsberg of Banijay International. “The trend, if you can call it a trend – is that people are reworking already existing genres and existing shows. Almost everything “new” is set in something we already know and already is successful.”

Sooo....the laziest conceivable form of popular entertainment is going to continue down that discount path, saving tons of money on talent (writers, actors, directors, etc.) while charging the same ad rates for all those boner pills and pick'em up trucks? Color this hombre shocked.

 

It's not like anyone expected anything else, but I suppose the characterization of anything being potentially "mind-blowing" is, well, a bit weird, even by the depressingly low standards of the industry. Was anyone's mind really "blown" by the Candid-Camera-meets-Lord-of-the-Flies aesthetic of Survivor when it mutated the prime-time landscape, then metastasizing into the myriad indistinguishable karaoke-dancing-bachelor contest shows that now proliferate?

 

Perhaps they were blown away by the realization that people would actually tune in to what appears to be roughly ten minutes of actual content stretched into an hour with pregnant pauses and an overabundance of commercials. Surely the money they're raking in hand over fist, peddling total dreck, is pretty mind-blowing, I'll grant them that.

 

A charitable way to observe the phenomenon might be to note that the extreme abundance of satellite channels basically provides something for just about anyone at almost any time. (This is not exactly true, at least in my case -- I'm willing to watch a variety of stuff if I'm in the house, working on the laptop, whatever. But there is never going to be a situation where I would leave, say, Baby Geniuses 2 -- yes, sadly, it is a real movie -- going, even as background noise, yet I'm paying HBO $15/month to lard their extra channels such crap, presumably so that they can then afford Game of Thrones and Bill Maher. But I digress.)

 

Rather than endlessly kvetching about the nonstop ludicrousness of the whole operation, or engaging in pointless chacun à son gout diversions, the meta aspects are more interesting to observe. I am old enough to remember watching (for example) Hee Haw on the teevee on Sundays when it wasn't football season, but there were no computers or video games, and we had literally only three channels in Northern California. (Even in Los Angeles, in the early '70s, I think we only had maybe 8-10 channels.) So we didn't have much else to choose from.

 

I am unable to just sit and passively watch the teevee; even if it's something I genuinely enjoy and look forward to -- Daily Show, GoT, Justified -- I have the laptop or a book handy, or a pad and paper to take notes on whatever project I have going. (I know, I must be a really fun date, right?) I honestly can't conceive of just sitting and watching a dancing show or an infomercial, unless they bring in weapons for the participants to use on each other. But they're on, so even with all the other cool choices, someone's got that kind of time on their hands. I can't disparage it, because it's just incomprehensible to me. But society and the workplace have a way of burning people out to where they just sit and accept, I suppose.

 

It's not all dreck; technology has enabled so much high-quality content, from video games to books to music, it's impossible to get to it all. And it's actually a bit strange that so many people continue to bother with old-format teevee and movies. Length of format is one thing that is ripe for change -- why does a show have to be an hour or half-hour, or a movie 90-120 min.? -- especially as mainstream content becomes more and more repetitive, recursive, ripped from comic books or board games or what have you.

 

That's the blessing and curse of having infinity channels:  something for everyone, but also the overall dilution of the importance of creativity, originality, quality. I have probably 400 channels at my disposal; I don't think I use more than nine or ten of them, like ever. I suspect we're all in that boat, of paying a thousand dollars a year for content we might value at a tenth of that. And hell, it may the sole remaining choice of employment before too much longer.

 

You can catch my upcoming reality-fest, Sortin' Sock Drawers with the Kardashians, on the E! Channel next summer.

Game Changers

Trying to watch the Bungles-Texans playoff game. I enjoy how NBC had the foresight to stick one of their sideline mikes next to a retard apparently banging a metal spoon and a cooking pot, judging by the rapid fucking clatter after every fucking play. Jesus, where's a drunken bleacher brawl when you could really use one?

Update [1/6/13 2:45 PST]:  Apparently the same bozo(s) made his/their way to FedEx Field to clatter through the Redskins/Seahawks matchup, thus turning what should be an enjoyable showdown between two prodigiously gifted rookie QB phenoms into a headache. Every goddamned play -- clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-TING-TING-TING-TING-TING.

It sounds like a small army of those stupid wind-up toy chimps that clank cymbals together. Only more annoying. This is on a par with Thunderstix and vuvuzelas, two other devices that prove conclusively that if there is in fact a God, He enjoys screwing with us. I'm not kidding when I say I hope this guy's fucking balls fall off unexpectedly (or hell, expectedly). Just yell like a normal person, Holmes, there's no need to spend an entire afternoon acting like an autistic first-grader with a pipe wrench and a ride cymbal.

Master Debaters Part 2: Binders Full of Women

So the Obama shows up last night to better expose Mittens for what he is --  a smug, pompous jackass who needs to kindly go away and hug his precious hectomillions already, leave us peons to what's left of our scraps for the next four years. Extra super bonus points for the faces of death Mrs. "You People" Rmoney and son Tagg "Tagg" projecting at the stage, apparently hoping for some effect on Obama. Not only that, Tagg was so darn angry, he was like totally gonna get up all in Obama's face and throw a punch at him, because he's a tough guychickenhawk just like dear ol' Dad.

Lest anyone out there on the intartubez might think this is schtick here, it isn't. If we talk about "character" mattering, then what sort of "character" does it take for someone to lead pro-Vietnam War counter-demonstrations at Stanford, while getting four deferments and then heading off for France? For a nation that refuses to forget the most marginal slight, it's something that this barely merits mention. It seems to me to be about the most chickenshit thing a man can do, to protest loudly and vociferously for poorer, less-connected kids to go fight and die, and turn tail yourself every bloody chance you get.

Anyhoo, the narrative is back on track, Obama will have just enough momentum to push him back over the top, but not enough to actually change anything, and in four years we'll be switching between the Andrew Cuomo-Todd Akin debates and Honey Boo Boo's Celebrity Rehab show, while holding on for dear life as Our Betters continue to skim 90% of what economic gains there are to be had.

The One Who Knocks

One of the very few shows worth watching, easily in a league with all-time greats like The Sopranos and The Wire. It's hard to say enough good things about this show and its amazing ensemble cast. And the recapper in the link clearly loves the show, which is contagious. For some reason, the final season is being split into two eight-episode mini-seasons.

With the now-annual pissing contests between satellite providers and cable networks, over bundling and prices and such, great shows that require people of skill may become fewer and farther between. There's a lot of great stuff on, but as long as enough people are willing to watch retards wrestle gators and tow cars and open storage lockers, it's easy to understand the business decision that opts for the short margin of dreck, over the long-tail model of having to pay skilled people to make shows with expensive sets and costumes and, you know, writing.

If the profit margin of one offsets the prestige and craft of the other, we're all the poorer for it. Even if ingested ironically, it's sad that inbred duck-call manufacturers and handfishin' hillbillies have any cultural presence at all.

But whatever. Enjoy Breaking Bad while it's still around.

When You're Strange

No doubt by now you've heard -- perhaps even formed an opinion -- on the great changing of the guard of our institutionalized morning fluff, the rotation of one moderately attractive, reasonably intelligent, and mostly ambitious middle-aged woman of little consequence, for another of the same. Yes, let's do spend a week or two wond'ring aloud who should be awarded seven or eight figures a year to warm up the bozos in the square for Gettin' Yer Lunchtime Swerve On With Hoda 'n' Kathie Lee, it's not like there's anything else going on.

But that's not the weird part. This is the weird part:

Ordinarily, you'd assume this was the usual spambot jabber, more or less randomly organized word-pixels roughly approximating a relevant sentence. But spambots are selling something, and neither of these idiots (who, by the repeated use of the phrase "downright creepy", appear to actually be the same idiot) have any active links or pitches. So, you know, what the hell?

Not necessarily another sign of the Decline O' Western Civ or anything, just really peculiar, that this guy felt the need to adopt two separate personae, to take two different (and frankly, rather stalker-y) poses on a completely meaningless subject.

And of course, I felt the need to weigh in on the meta-aspect of it, raising said meta by yet another order of magnitude. Who says America causes cancer?

Random Appreciation

Right now, and for quite some time, Louis C.K. is and has been the funniest bastard on the teevee, hands down. Catch the show before he figures it out.

Booty Call, Too

Not sure how the publicity-stunt sexual exploits of a horsefaced Armenian chick with a fat ass, a sex tape, and an infamous dad, whose primary talent seems to be banging pro athaletes, merits so much attention. No doubt the Today show, most noted for having a chimp (other than Lauer) as a sidekick back in the day, will be milking this through Thanksgiving, no doubt thanks in no small part to esteemed relationship expert Star Jones.

Really, I'm repulsed that I know even this much about it, but it happens the same way I know that the most recent American Idol was won by some kid that looks like Alfred E. Neuman, without ever watching a blessed second of the show. You can only switch channels -- or turn the infernal thing off, or kill the browser link -- so quickly. Cultural osmosis, incurable even with antibiotics.

Do we even need to ask whether any corporate media outlets will turn away from Kim Kardashian's hypnotic cowcatcher ass long enough to talk about anything important to anyone's actual life -- say, the likelihood that Bank of America may have overextended itself (and, of course, all of us, since we're on the hook for their bullshit whether we like it or not) irretrievably [via Taibbi?]

5. Bank of America is officially rated the biggest, scariest bank. Its stock price also fared the worst of the group of banks (which also included Citigroup and Wells Fargo) when Moody's Investors Service downgraded it on September 21.

B of A's long-term holding company (parent bank) rating was chopped two notches to Baa1 from A2, and its retail bank rating was cut two notches from A2 to Aa3, placing B of A four notches below rival JP Morgan Chase and one below Citigroup, the third-largest US bank. Its bank holding company has the lowest rating among the top five banks with the largest derivatives positions.

This caused great fear for investors involved in derivatives trades with the Merrill Lynch division, prompting them to request trades be moved to the part of the bank with the better rating - the retail part with the insured (peoples') deposits. That way, B of A doesn't have to pony up as much collateral to back the trades, as it would in a subsidiary with a lower rating. The Fed was recklessly happy to approve, despite the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's (FDIC) misgiving about having to insure more risk, even if it can borrow from the US Treasury to do so. Meanwhile, Bank of America's stock price got so crushed that Warren Buffett scooped up a $5 billion preferred stock deal, effectively betting that the government won't let this big bank go bust.

6. B of A's derivatives position keeps rising. The total amount of derivatives in the FDIC-insured portion of B of A as of mid-year was $53.7 trillion, up 10 percent from $48.9 trillion the prior year, and up nearly 35 percent from its pre-fall crisis level of $40 trillion (the Merrill Lynch securities division holds $22 trillion in addition.) The bank has $5 trillion of credit derivatives, nearly double its $2.7 trillion pre-Merrill amount. In addition, because of its inherent zombie status and rating downgrades, the cost of insuring B of A against a possible default continues to rise in the credit derivatives market - a pattern that American International group (AIG) once followed.

Nice, huh? Read that again -- that's not $53 billion, but $53 trillion, roughly the equivalent of the entire on-the-books global GDP. The idea that we're forced to subsidize these ricockulously bad bets, while Ken Lewis gets nine figures of walking-away money, would merit the guillotine, in a society that didn't have the attention span and priorities of a seventh-grader.

Obviously it was ever thus. But anymore it seems the circuses-to-bread ratio is skewed in Paretian fashion. Herman Cain should not be disqualified because he played grab-ass with a couple of subordinates back in the '90s (though that is a reason, just not the most damning); he should be disqualified because he is a ludicrous person with stupid ideas, who is doing this just to bump up his book sales and speaking fees.

The more the corporate media (who of course have no vested interest in keeping you distracted with shiny baubles and plastic personalities, nosiree bob) indulge in this nonsense, as Neil Postman sagely pointed out a generation ago, the more we (in the collective) lose our capacity for meaningful engagement.

Instead of commiserating over the water cooler about the few picking the pockets of the masses, and getting away scot-free, we ponder the fairytale aspects of reality teevee wannabes and their contrived love lives. We debate the momentous occurrence of Chaz Bono being on a dancing show, without pondering for a second that Chaz Bono is way too fucking fat to be on a dancing show. (Or that, you know, the idea of sitting there and watching Chaz Bono or yet another of these Kardaashians dancing is a supreme waste of time and cable bill.)

I dunno. I am back as always to that poisoned well, the unleashing of easy "people are morons" snark, while realizing at the same time that there are a lot of intelligent people out there that are tired of this stuff, the debasement of "news" and "discussion" to its lowest common denominator, the sage review of idiot sexcapades, the common culture of collectively watching has-beens and never-weres sort their sock drawers. It's pathetic and unnecessary, and ultimately self-defeating.

When you're already in a deep, deep hole as a nation-state entity, these miserably inept cultural touchstones are not ladders, they're shovels, things deliberately placed to keep us from looking at the real problems. It's not just that the "stories" are stupid; they are, but the real issue is that, like the shows whence these creatures emanate, weeks and months are spent telling and rehashing what is really about five minutes' worth of one-view trivia. after that, really, who gives two shits about the Kardashian sisters or interchangeable reality twits? But they are marketed for months on end, until it's played out and the next meaningless thing comes along for another six months.

And I think there are a lot of folks who really just don't want to know. They understand just enough to realize that the game is fixed, the players bought, they are not in the club and are going to lose regardless, so they may as well distract themselves with comforting effluvia, cultural macaroni-and-cheese. The subject, its facts and its players are too complicated to keep track of, by design.

Actually getting on the same page to change the game would be too much like work, unless you're some DFH beating a plastic bucket in the park. Hopefully those folks keep all that in mind when their destitute grandkids are bailing out Ken Lewis' lucky-sperm-wealthy-from-cradle-to-grave grandkids.

And if you're a one-percenter, that is precisely the collective mentality you count on.

American Nightmare

I would think that everyone who would enjoy Breaking Bad has already been watching it, but just in case....Go. Now. Get on your Netflix queue and put the first three seasons on. This, not Mad Men (and that's not to take anything away from the latter's mannered, lugubrious deconstructions of post-Ike, Bernaysian Amurka) is AMC's true flagship series. The writing is spectacular, the ensemble cast flawless, the production of the show finding dark humor (not unlike The Sopranos) in whatever corners it may lurk.

Of all things, in terms of the narrative unfolding as a cascading series of disastrous, unforeseen consequences of pivotal decisions, BB actually makes me think of A Simple Plan, which, as dismal as its subject and execution is, holds up rather well and I think is very underrated.

And there's a very real subtext, that as what remains of the middle class becomes increasingly squeezed, as the dream goes sideways for all but a very lucky few, options become less constrained, more volatile for a lot of people, who have been given nowhere else to turn. When even the golden opportunity of a lifetime of wage slavery and debt peonage starts drying up, where do you go?

Also, too, just in time to push the BB premiere.

Pop Star

So Kathleen Parker, perhaps aspiring to be the WaPo MoDo, not realizing that the one is quite enough, vaingloriously and tediously attempts to cast performance artist Sarah Palin as some sort of postmodern feminist icon. Ahahahaha. Oh wait, she's (somewhat) serious.

This is, I believe, the selfsame Kathleen Parker who, not so long ago, ired thousands of knuckle-dragging cyber-troglodytes with her heretical analysis of Saint Sarah as being slightly out of her depth.

Apparently that was then, and this is now, and Parker's sage analysis has -- well, what's the opposite of deepened? Shallowed?

For what it's worth, I get a kick out of Sarah. May I call her Sarah?

She and I apparently share a certain genetic predisposition to annoy all the right people. These would be the folks who take themselves and their ideologies a tad too seriously. Thus when I was promoting my book, "Save the Males," I wore an aggressively feminine suit -- pink with a bow in back -- just to irritate hard-line feminists, who, without bothering to read the book, would hate it on sight.

I happen to hate bows, but it was worth it.

Likewise, Sarah knows just what drives us all nuts and, instead of changing her tune, she turns up the volume -- and triples down. Don't like her little red shoes? She'll add a red leather jacket. Got gloss?

Oh, sisters really are doing it tofor themselves, aren't they? Here's the thing, and even Parker should be able to grok this simple observation -- there is a substantial difference between a columnist peddling a book under the guise of comfortably suburban pseudo-contrarian claptrap, and a former vice-presidential candidate hitting the rubber-chicken circuit and angering rubes with a St. Vitus' dance of choregraphed winks and glances at her scrawled palm, lying every step of the way. Parker and Palin are both trying to sell easily-replicated compendia of smartassery, true, but Palin is also catering -- no, deliberately antagonizing -- the addled assumptions of fairly large swaths of aggrieved morons, with the clear purpose of disrupting what's left of our political process.

This would be one thing if the country weren't on the verge of implosion, but this breathy sister-bonding with a noisome dingbat while serious people are trying to figure out serious solutions to serious problems, it's just bullshit. Palin appears to be not a whit more informed or astute about the world around her or the mechanics of US government than she was when Parker rightly called her out. Yet now Parker feels some lame kinship with Palin's increasingly tiresome narcissism.

This woman is not to be feared or loathed. She is to be taken with a grain of humor and a dash of admiration. A different version of Madonna, she's a public relations machine who manipulates public perception with well-timed and, recently, sophisticated messaging.

Again, Parker writes as if she should be talking about Lady Gaga or Lindsay Lohan, rather than someone who actively aspires to have an impact on the political process. Frankly, I'd rather have Madonna in high political office than Sarah Palin, and I can't fucking stand Madonna. The "grain of humor and a dash of admiration" was done with about 18 months ago; Palin is little more than a reality-teevee stunt-cast at this point.

So why the fuck are we hearing all goddamned week about her hypocrite daughter's impending crossbow wedding, like we should care that she put her legs behind her ears for a drunken hockey oaf and let him knock her up again? Happens every day around the world, the only difference here is that Levi is slightly smarter than we gave him credit for, insofar as he reads the papers enough to know that his future maw-in-law made $12 mil last year.

The genius of Sarah's message, whatever it is, is that it doesn't matter what it is. Of course Americans want their country back. We'd prefer that China not own us. Most don't like unfunded federal mandates, takeovers or bailouts. Except when it benefits us directly.

Reread that, because those five sentences are, inadvertenly one fears, the truest part of the entire column. The moment it doesn't matter what someone says, just so long as they say something, that person is just a parody of themselves with a brain-dead fan club -- in other words, Lady Gaga once again. So break the rest of it down -- "Americans want their country back" from whom? We had an election, you fucktards, it was in the papers and everything. And why does China own us, exactly, can our new pop goddess enlighten us? Does she know fuck-all about how the working class has been bled dry for 35 years, and now since the top 10% own 70% of the assets, they can pretty much trade with each other and write the rest of us off? Seriously, I've asked this many times, and I'll do it once again -- if anyone knows of any specific instance where Palin has proposed even one (1) actual serious policy, foreign or domestic, financial, job-creating, energy, whatever -- please do speak up. I think we'd all be very surprised.

In the meantime, Parker cuts to the heart of the teabaggers' deal, whether she knows it or not. Everyone gets bent over the idea of handouts, until some of the pelf lands in their hands. This is the core of the "get the gubmint out of my Medicare" morons' deal, which is why they need to die off all the sooner, since no one should expend energy trying to explain this shit to them.

Well, who's to argue with a lotta women comin' together? It's the sisterhood, baby. Wear pink and put a bow on it.

Sarah's long-term plans are anybody's guess. Anyone who thinks she won't run for president because she's making too much money on the celebrity circuit is missing a big point. You make money as a presidential candidate, too. If you win, you're president. If you lose, you're rich.

And don't tell her she can't. If you do, she's just gonna get feistier and cuter. Next thing you know she'll be a dadgum lioness givin' heck to those media hyenas, just the way they can't stand it.

Yes, she's showed us all, hasn't she? She really has, you know; where else can you lie through your fucking teeth, make millions, have thousands of morons adoring you at every stop, and even have formerly cogent media commentators fawning over your wardrobe and your bullshit attitude? But it's just good fun watching supposedly professional journamalists write these wretched screeds, like they're auditioning for a job at Entertainment Weekly.

It's not a coincidence that Bristol and Levi announced their immaculate engagement to some cheesy gossip rag, you know. Considering the "legitimate" media we've got, I'd guess we're about 10-20 years out from electing a Kardashian to national office, since neither the people nor the media can tell the difference any longer. Idiocracy will turn out to have been an eerily prescient documentary.

I'm so goddamned sick of all these people, the assholes yanking the world's chain with their prima-donna bullshit, and the highly-paid media monkeys writing brainless odes to them, instead of something useful. How do we get rid of them? They are ruining what's left of the country, but maybe we really want it that way.

California Drinking

Deep thought: the exquisite irony of eMeg "Griff Harsh V's proud mom" Whitman spending $71 million of her own money to peddle herself as the voice of fiscal responsibility, has it registered itself in her Ben Franklin fivehead yet? Obviously not, since eMeg is really no doubt positioning herself as a possible running mate for Mitt Romney's next tilt at the electoral windmill. It takes some real doing to make Jerry Brown look like the best choice, but by gawd she's done it in spades.

As for iCarly Fiorina, the less said the better. The weekend chatter 'mongst the "news" dipshits centers around iCarly's snotty pot-meet-kettle live-mike sniping at Barbara Boxer's hair, because that is the media we have.

And while Boxer is as uninspiring as they come, at least she doesn't have the "I lawn-darted HP and all I got were these ludicrous campaign commercials" albatross. Poor iCarly probably does really think that Sarah Palin's imprimatur will help, but she would probably get more cred with the endorsement of the ghost of former gubernatorial candidate Gary Coleman. Tom Campbell would have been a much better opponent for the Republicans to run, and might have actually won with some financial support, but since the GOP org in this state could find a way to fuck up a baked potato, they declined to even pretend to help him out. So they get what they got, which is a big bowl of wrong.

Forty million people in this fucking state, and these are the choices we have. No wonder we're imploding. It's going to be a long campaign season; I may have to pull an Elvis and just shoot my teevee by the fourth of July.

Sideshow

Taibbi is being rhetorical, of course, but I think we all know what Rick Santelli "means" by saying that you can't cheat an honest man. It's just that Rick Santelli is a loud and proud spokes-tool for profoundly dishonest people to begin with, a nasty symptom of a deeply compromised media system. Who the hell is Rick Santelli, and why does he have a teevee show, and what sort of person should take his spoutings at all seriously? Were those questions to be adequately answered, Santelli would probably be selling sacks of oranges at the corner of Woodruff and Rosecrans (I spent a few magical summers from ages 10-13, in the late '70s, nearby on the Faywood Street that runs off the Somerset/Woodruff intersection. Good fucking times, Bro Namath. I can show Little Ricky around the 'hood.)

Meanwhile, Frank Rich poses the heavier queries that pester the finer minds of the commentariat; namely, whither Obama the Fighter, sword inexplicably sheathed post-campaign?

The problem is not necessarily that Obama is trying to do too much, but that there is no consistent, clear message to unite all that he is trying to do. He has variously argued that health care reform is a moral imperative to protect the uninsured, a long-term fiscal fix for the American economy and an attempt to curb insurers’ abuses. It may be all of these, but between the multitude of motives and the blurriness (until now) of Obama’s own specific must-have provisions, the bill became a mash-up that baffled or defeated those Americans on his side and was easily caricatured as a big-government catastrophe by his adversaries.

No. The problem is not the absence of a message, it is the absence of a will to fight, more importantly to punch back. Fuck punching back, forget the Republican cheap shots and incoherent teabagger rants. He gets cock-blocked by Mary Landrieu, pushed around by Joe Lieberman, undermined by (ahem) something called Bart Stupak. The problem is a lack of party discipline, an understanding that sometimes it really is better, from a purely operational perspective, to be feared rather than merely respected.

Last week featured the bloodless pimping of Obama's sudden sense of urgency on this here health-care thingy, smash cuts of hortatory rhetoric, encouraging of the masses to alert their duly elected representatives to the crisis afoot.

Listen close, pally -- we did our fucking jobs already. We voted, and some of us even paid due attention after the election circus had left town. Now I'm supposed to harass my neighbors to pester their congresscritters over something they already know goddamned good and well they should do? Just to squeak through an industry-written abortion of a bill that won't change much for most people in the end? Are you fucking serious?

I resent the notion that, despite the unholy amounts of money these people make, we're supposed to continue to do their ground-work for them in our off-hours. Motherfucker, I have a job -- and so do they. What say we all do our damned jobs? You want me to help pass bullshit health-care legislation, pay me mid-six-figures and perks and lifetime free health care and I'll do your grunt work. Otherwise, kindly piss up a rope, Jack. We told you what we wanted a full eighteen months ago, fucking do it already with yer superdupermajority.

Back to Santelli and the media system, how it lets animals like that in. Yesterday and today -- and for all I know, the next week -- the Today show has had "exclusive" interviews with professional scumbag Karl Rove. Forgive my assumption that some vertical integration of ownership between NBC and Rove's publisher exists, but it's not exactly unheard of. But for some reason, I couldn't help but think of the recent death of the late great Howard Zinn, and how different our political culture might be if Zinn or Chomsky or practically any sentient being with opposable thumbs were allowed even 1% of the mass-media time accorded to a fucking piece of shit like Rove. Every time you flip on your teevee and get force-fed intellectual gruel, you can count on that being the very root of the problem.

That Swirling Sound

Kunstler susses the current media/culture dynamic with his usual cheery optimism. Obviously it's a quick and easy rant button to push, why presumably sentient beings would waste one second of their lives watching reality teevee or Erik Estrada dancing or what have you. Fish in a barrel and all.

And the last two months of the year are always the silly season anyway, when it comes to what qualifies as newsworthy. This is not coincidental; the corporate media, after all, are in business to sell ad space, just as if they were airing Jon and Kate or Leave it to Llamas. If you no longer have to try, content-wise, because enough idiots show up to the train wreck regardless, it instantly becomes much easier to control your marginal and operational costs.

But the silly season has expanded to all year long, not just summer and the holidays, the media 'tards just frog-jump from one contrivance to another, hoping to whip another crowd of morons into a frenzy. This throws the usual bread-to-circuses ratio ever more out of balance. The distractions become bigger, emptier, and somehow more baroque and protracted; the characters more interchangeable and uninteresting; the peanut gallery playing to ever-dumber audiences.

So when random mouth-breathers take up their electronic crayons to draft their hysterical plaints about how the scope of poor Sarah Palin's public abuse has been uniquely unfair and vicious, I have to wonder where the fuck they were when Hitlery Clinton was being called a lesbian and a murderer. Whatever fancifully-based mortal wounds the herd animals of the MSM have apparently inflicted on this beleaguered Christian woman, so far they have not Gone There.

Probably the worst rumor-mongering Palin has had to endure revolved around the birth of her most recent rugrat. But between her failure to tell anyone about the impending birth, her efforts to wear clothing to obscure the pregnancy, and her peculiar (and dangerous) insistence on flying home from Texas while in labor, and the subsequent knocked-upness of her presumably abstinence-educated daughter, some confusion was bound to occur. The most important thing to remember about Sarah is that, whatever the issue or event in question may be, it's never ever her fault. These really are the biggest bunch of fucking crybabies since the Michael Jackson funeral (no doubt available on DVD any day now).

The fact of the matter is, the media has stepped over itself in order to allow Palin to peddle her unnecessary memoir, regularly trotting out talking heads who have not actually read the damned thing, but can still be counted to let us all know what a compelling read it is. None of them ever quite seem to get around to asking the more fundamental question, "Does this book serve any purpose whatsoever, and if so, what in hell could it possibly be?".

Well, the purpose is to make her some money, and keep her name out there, keep her options open. But her idiot fanclub have higher aspirations for her, of course -- merely reifying their incoherent tropes is just the cover charge. And that's just not going to happen if the money people don't believe she's a good investment.

Comparisons are inevitably made to George W. Bush, who counterintuitively comes out looking rather intelligent and well-spoken next to Palin. But Fredo had a serious pedigree in both the familial and political senses of the word, which Palin has yet to cultivate in even a professional sense. And until she can convince some of the actual money and power players in her party to sponsor her tomfoolery, she'll always just be a populist totem, to be trotted out at appropriate times and make these drunken goobers forget that their jobs have been outsourced and their homes have been foreclosed, and that both parties are balls-deep in those problems.

But people who have that kind of money and influence clearly are not going to invest in Palin populism unless they can control the aim of its vituperation. Truly influential people will always be mortified at the very notion of the country being run or even affected in any truly meaningful way by the dipshits waiting in line at the signing of a book they'll never quite finish. [Hilarious video here.]

And really, who can blame them? There's a reason Mencken loathed and distrusted the democratic process, and these fucking yahoos are it. Damned if I can find a difference between these fools and a gaggle of moony-eyed teeny-boppers waiting in line to see the Twilight sequel for the eighth time. Jesus H. Christ, they must have interviewed a couple dozen people in that segment, and not one of them made any fucking sense at all. It's obviously not some isolated agitprop edit, either -- videos like this proliferate, at the teabagger rallies, at the summer town-hall putsches, and not one of these goddamned people has the presence of mind to explain themselves or how they can buy into this happy horseshit.

Surely one (1) of these bozos is able to show up at what they reasonably anticipate (or assume, or hope) is going to be a media event, and have taken two minutes to prepare some meaningful sound-byte manifesto beyond the usual boilerplate they picked up through Glenn Beck osmosis. Or not, since it has yet to happen. Any sensible person should be viewing these troglodytes with a hearty mixture of scorn and contempt, of figuring that they pretty much deserve whatever they get. Pity is always wasted on the willfully, obnoxiously ignorant -- you don't have to buy what Hopenchange is selling, but you do have to have a better answer for why not, or at least one that makes some sense.

Now supposedly, there is a wide disconnect between the amount of coverage Palin gets, and the amount most people think she should get. And yet it continues unabated, much like her reality teevee counterparts. It's the old Yogi Berra conundrum -- nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

What it is is a vile combination of the newsertainment symbiosis which has metastasized and seems well on its way to turning every journamalistic institution into tabloid coverage, celebrity ass-sniffing, and reading viewers' tweets; and the impulse of the flailing media establishment to mainstream all these niche marketing gambits. All the things they do are covered on the internets, and faster and better, so there's no need for the people who actually crave that sort of Twinkie news coverage to bother with watching Andrea Mitchell cover some fucking book signing.

And in the meantime, the "recovery" is still jobless, the bubble is still being re-inflated, Goldman Sachs is still fucking you and your grandchildren over, Blackwater is still conducting ops and will probably be covertly bombing Laos next week. And Sarah Palin is well on her way to becoming the conservatards' Lucy Van Pelt, forever dangling incoherent hopes and fever dreams in front of their bloodshot eyes, and always yanking the ball away when the time is right. And why shouldn't she? Why should the Democrats have all the fun with true believers?