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Articles We Never Finished Reading: The Myth Of Mr. Nice Guy

From the beginning, the president's reelection campaign has taken a brutal, no-holds-barred approach that's sharply at odds with the conciliatory image that was the central predicate of Obama's entire pre-presidential political career. Whether or not the specific issue of Bain Capital ought to be off limits -- Booker has taken pains to clarify he doesn't think it should be -- there's no denying that Obama's 2012 campaign has seized every opportunity to turn the campaign toward sharply personal attacks of a type that the 2008-vintage Obama would surely have recoiled from. From Romney's treatment of his onetime pet dog to his high-school pranks to his income-tax rate, from the "war on women" to the "war on caterpillars," from "I like being able to fire people" to "I'm not concerned about the very poor," no potential controversy has been too petty, too rhetorically overblown or too out-of-context to be exploited to the hilt.

None of this is shocking -- it's how the game is played. But Obama once ostentatiously refused to play it. In June 2007, for example, when Obama's primary campaign distributed a memo titled "Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)" detailing Clinton's connections to India, Obama publicly upbraided his staff, calling it "a dumb mistake" and "unnecessarily caustic." As the New York Times put it at the time, "The memo...raised quesitons about Obama's claims that he is above attack politics, which are epitomized by secretly distributing opposition research about a rival."

 - Molly Ball "The New, Nasty Obama Campaign," at The Atlantic Online.

It may be nasty... but there's nothing "new" about the Obama campaign running vigorously against its opponents. If anything, Democrats are a bit relieved that a primary challenge never materialized, and that Mitt Romney is rising to every expectation of being the lousy campaigner we knew him to be.

This notion of that "hope and change" meant "nice and kind" is a fantasy that played mostly in the heads of Obama's most youthful, or most ardent, believers in 2008. The "can't we all just get along" arguments, the "he's the only one that can bring us together" notes of the pro-Obama hymn, were pretty (and about an inch deep), but they belied the reality that the Obama campaign's approach to beating Hillary Clinton was often brutal and desperate. And while his supporters moutheed words of Kumbayah and World Peace, privately they tended to gripe that Obama should be even rougher and tougher... hardly the notion of gentle niceness that was meant to be projected.

The "India memo" cited above (which is news to me, all these years later), is really more of a prime example of the hamhandedness and neophyte campaign mistakes of the Obama team, lessons they only seem to have partially learned and dealt with since. There is still the inordinate faith in his speeches, still the part where they get caught flat footed when news breaks that's out of their control, and still a kind of amateur quality to their attempts to go hard and mean against opponents. It's not that Mitt Romney's "Bain problem" should be off liits, it's that the message of that Bain problem needs to be spelled out correctly. As far as I can tell, the Obama people get it about half right (and then seem skittish when suggestions arise that they "go too far"). Still, they suffer from the liberal anxiety of being seen as actually believing the things they claim to find important.

The President would be in much rougher shape if Republicans had fielded a candidate - arguably Rick Santorum was closest - who actually appealed to a wide swath of voters who are actually indifferent to the President's record thus far. These are largely the sorts of people who found Hillary Clinton interesting as well - working class people, often white, but also many of color, as well as other distinct minorities, like gay men and lesbians. Instead, because he and Romney are fighting over a fairly narrow percentage of a small part of the overall electorate - educated, but non partisan voters in the middle and iupper middle class - things are bound to be ugly, and charges thrown around. 

It's worth remembering that the 2008 campaign, against McCain had an undercurrent of ugliness that never entirely went away; it's mainly that it was so clear, early in October, that McCain was doomed that the Obama team was much better positioned to stay on the high road, and did so most of the time. It's clear that many conservatives, still, think that they lost because McCain didn't go harder and uglier; but at the same time, they are also the ones who complain, still, that Sarah Palin was subjected to all kinds of ugliness, from the press and from the Obama team. True or not, both ideas miss the point that McCain failed mainly because he was a lousy candidate, and Sarah Palin's selection was Example A (or possibly B after McCain flopped on the economic meltdown in the fall of 2008) of the kind of bad decision making that did him in. The obama didn't so much "play nice" as they simply ignored him, for close to a month. And this year, they may indeed get a similarly luxury option towards the middle of October as well. That won't be a win for "niceness", merely an expression of the reality that Republicans remain in spectacular disarray. There's nothing "new" about the Obama team's "meanness"; and still, nastiness may not define his presidential victories. Either of them.

Articles We Never Finished Reading: Money Talks... Or Something

At its {Buckley v. Valeo, 1974] center is a distinction between expenditures and contributions. The Court said that, under the First Amendment, Congress could not restrict campaign expenditures. Spending money was like speech itself, because “every means of communicating ideas in today’s mass society requires the expenditure of money.” That included printing handbills, renting halls, and buying ads on television. It is a result of Buckley that wealthy candidates like Mayor Michael Bloomberg can spend as much as they want of their own money on their campaigns; it would be unconstitutional to limit their expenditures.

But, according to Buckley, limits on contributions were constitutionally permissible. The Court said that a campaign contribution served only as “a general expression of support for the candidate and his views, but does not communicate the underlying basis for the support.” In the Court’s view, limiting contributions did not significantly inhibit political expression by the person giving the money. This was why the Court concluded that it was permissible for the law to limit how much an individual could contribute to any particular campaign.

In the 1974 law, Congress had tried to set up a tightly controlled system for financing campaigns: the government would monitor and regulate both the inflows and the outflows of money. It is not clear that the proposal would have worked as intended, but at least it made holistic sense. Congress could essentially select a number for the over-all price of a congressional or Presidential campaign, and then force candidates to live within that number. Buckley ended that system before it even started, and imposed a different one, of the Justices’ own creation. The court declared that contributions could be limited but expenditures could not, and for two generations that distinction has been the central feature of the constitutional rules of campaign finance. The bottom line was that money is speech.

 - Jeffrey Toobin, "Money Unlimited," an analysis of the Citizens United case, in the May 21st issue of The New Yorker

The "bottom line", of course, is Toobin's; he himself has just written, in the prior two paragraphs that the "bottom line" is not nearly the bright (and in the paragraphs preceding it, he points out that Buckley v. Valeo is a contradictory, complicated, and extremely long decision that's hard to understand). But "bottom line'... Toobin's happy to shorthand it for you.

And shorthand that, and much else, Toobin does, for pages and pages in The New Yorker. Poorly written, sloppily fact checked - somewhere, the ghosts of the old New Yorker staff are spinning in mausolea - Toobin's exercise is mainly one of Supreme Court soap opera, full of (unverified, as far as I can tell) postulating on who does what to whom and how the Important Work of the Law gets injured in the process. Toobin's take is catnip for liberals, and blasphemy to conservatives, but both reactions give Toobin too much credit. Toobin's lazy assertions, like the breezy (and popular) sum-up of Buckley, tend to show that his investigation of campaign financing, never mind its "reform" are secondary to scoring political points and cheap shots (his disdain for Roberts, Alito, Scalia and especially Clarence Thomas are glaring). Though Toobin attempts - and he'd have to, because otherwise the article is little more than gossipy fluff - to ground his storytelling in a historical and theoretically detailed historical perspective, his retelling is slapdash, lazy, and lacking in useful specifics. For instance, he breezily sums up Watergate and the campaign reforms out of it - which led to the Buckley case - without really laying out why Congress approached the reforms as it did, or which aspects of Watergate were the real drivers for reform). This matters, I swear. He's equally lazy, and curiously vague, when describing the even earlier aspects of the Gilded Age-era practices that first led to some attempt to regulate campaigns; and he acts as if problematic campaigns, never mind questionable campaign spending, suddenly became an issue after 1870 (try looking up "Ma, Ma, who's my Paw?" for just one earlier example).

All of which makes soggy, slippery ground for Toobin to try and ground the discussion of Citizens United, though mostly Toobin can't be bothered to lay out the specifics of McCain Feingold, why they were seen as problematic from before the law even passed, and why the Supreme Court started looking askance at the law soon after it became law. And Toobin can't really avoid the fact that First Amendment issues were a concern for the Court well before the specifics of Citizens United were brought to it (a case called FEC vs. Wisconsin Right To Life in 2007 made clear that the Court was concerned about speech restrictions), but he insists that it's a "crusading" Court, led by John Roberts, that's trying to eviscerate Campaign Finance Reform. I'm at least pretty sure that's not how they would puit it; but you'll never know from Toobin, since he makes virtually no attempt to get perspectives from anyone who seemingly disagrees with his assessments.

I'm not trying to defend the Citizens United decision, or suggest that money equals speech is a great standard; if anything I don't need to, since Toobin's article, really, does most of that work itself. Though Toobin is incredulous about the path that set the Court towards overturning McCain Feingold, he does, in fact, backhandedly lay out why the decision's logic makes internal sense: trying to separate a biased, provocative, deliberately propagandistic film from other forms of political "advertising" is in many ways a distinction without a difference, and whie the Court is more willing to regulate advertising than other forms of speech, political advertising, because it is a form of speech so central to our Constitutional approach (elections, where people can freely debate ideas and assumptions), gets more than usual protectionunder the First Amendment. That's why "money=speech" is complicated, and difficult. The money Proctor and Gamble spends to sell Tide is not afforded special consititutional protections. But Mayor Bloomberg's ability to spend his own money to advocate for his own election is. And probably should be.

In any event, exploring this fascinating, difficult, and challenging subject would make for a great, thoughtful article one could chew over and debate with friends. The most frustrating thing is that Toobin hasn't written it. Which is reason enough not to bother reading it.

 

Articles We Never Finished Reading (Except For The Pictures): The Rocks That I Got

"The house, a classic white brick manse, is huge—nine bedrooms—and sprawls out from the center hall with two giant wings. The interior is echt J.Lo: luxe, modern, and sexy—dark floors, gray curtains and walls, pastel-colored furniture. Her assistant, Gilly, deposits me in Lopez’s office and says, “Jennifer will be down shortly.” I hear kids shrieking somewhere upstairs. Like Lopez herself, the office is both masculine and feminine. There are wood-paneled walls and wingback chairs, a killer sound system, and a fur throw draped over a sofa. There’s a huge plaque (30 MILLION ALBUMS SOLD WORLD-WIDE); a ledge full of various film- and music-industry awards; and on her desk, nude shots of J.Lo for the advertising campaign for her forthcoming perfume, Glowing (the sample fragrance bottle actually lights up). A quick glance at the shelves reveals a taste for the classics (The Grapes of Wrath, Shakespeare); memoir (Arthur Miller’sTimebends); and self-help (Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages). On the glass coffee table there is a big, lush book on Pucci, which somehow seems perfect."

"Venus Rising", a profile of Jennifer Lopez by Jonathan Van Meter, in the April 2012 Vogue

I just wanted to prove that not everything I put down is in New York, and also that not everything is a political or intellectual diatribe. I don't (generally) buy People or Us (though I admit a weakness for the sleazier Star) or other mags with fawning celbrity profiles... but Conde Nast can get me to read them anyway, posing as fashion (Vogue, GQ) or deep thought (Vanity Fair, which isn't). At this late date, I know what I'm in for: a quick tour of the Star's Lovely Home, a few bites of Our Star at a Meal, the old "they're just like us" anecdote, and another few thousand words about how, really, they're not (multiple divorces, million dollar lifestyles, blah blah blah). Sometimes they're interesting (Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron), even thoughtful (Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway)... but sometimes you can't even fake the necessary interest, which appears to be the case here. I kept putting this issue at the top of my pile, even after the new one came out, determined to read the Lopez piece all the way to the end. But I just couldn't do it; I'd get hung up on descriptions, like the one above, which illustrate both the absurdity of her wealth and the vapidness of the profiles like this (and, by extension, the vapid prose of writers like Van Meter). Then there's the fact that Lopez, still, is the odd kind of nondescript star only America can quite produce: she's not exactly good, her career is kind of middling, she's the third chair on a reality panel show whose recording career has been modestly succesful. Although she seemed a promising actress, that hasn't really worked out either. So why does she get Vogue covers? I mean, obviously, she's attractive, but that seems to be about it, and even there, there are more striking brunettes and women of Puerto Rican descent. So mostly, I've given up, the Vogue goes into my back issue pile, and I'll never know Jennifer's beauty secrets. Oh well. Life, I suppose, must go on.

Articles We Never Finished Reading: And The World Screams, Kiss Me, Son Of God

"[Cornel] West and Cone did a Q&A at a Princeton bookstore last winter, and afterward, they and a handful of friends and colleagues—including the journalist Chris Hedges, who wrote the Truthdig piece; Carl Dix, a local communist organizer; Brother Ali, an albino rapper; and a few professors—went to dinner. There, West was in his element. He had no one to provoke, and it was clear to see why some might compare West to Ralph Waldo Emerson, W.E.B. DuBois, or even Mark Twain. The conversation started with an appreciation of the works of novelist James Baldwin. “At Baldwin’s funeral,” said West, “I sat next to Stokely Carmichael. He’s a hard brother, and he cried like a baby.” West regarded Baldwin in the light of William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Amiri Baraka, and his friend Toni Morrison. Then the conversation took a turn, touching briefly on the works of the slavery historians ­David Brion Davis and Leon Litwack, and the civil-rights historian Howard Zinn, ­before resting for a time on Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, the definers of ­twentieth-century Christian theology—both of whom taught at Union. About the literary critic Harold Bloom, West pronounced, “He’s not always right, but he’s always got something to say,” and then he veered straight through Martin Heidegger to praise his lesser-known disciple, Hans-Georg Gadamer."

 - This week's profile of Cornel West titled - I'm not kidding - "I Want To Be Like Jesus", by Lisa Miller.

Miller does manage the neat trick of being both fawning and dismayed in profiling West, apparently going with "how could such a great mind have so many personal problems," but none of West's admirers can outdo West himself. If you can get past the Jesus part - it's an actual quote that West says he doesn't see himeself as any of Jesus' disciples, but rather as Jesus, himself - there's still West polishing his resume over a string of appointments at Ivy League schools (the hook for the story, ostensibly, is that West is leaving Princeton for Union Theological Seminary), and name dropping like mad. It's not West's celebrity that gets me, or the self satisfaction; his Jesus complex is no doubt helped by the sycophants he's trained to follow him and who shower him with accolades and praise. Miller does a nice job, really, of highlighting the fact that all this mass love is no substitute for the fact that he has few friends, three bad marriages and even a fairly checkered set of professional connections (and really, when forced to choose between Larry Summers or Professor West, who's really worse?).

No, the thing that got me to throw down the artcle was the paragraph above, which to me laid bare the intellectual pomposity that annoys me when West talks in most interviews and appearances (I can only imagine what his classes would be like), the scattershot deployment of Big Intellectual Names You Must Know, the smattering of celebrity names and inside gossip that make you feel like an intimate (why else name drop of Stokely Carmichael?) , but the considered lack of thought about the ideas that are supposed to drive these big thinkers and their works. I feel very lucky to have had college professors who challenged me not to just read the assignments, but to think about what I read, synthesize my own ideas and apply the learnings to all sorts of aspects of life in general. It's not who you know, or how fabulously well read you are, I think it's what you do with the ideas that you discover along the way, and the life you put together as a result. Otherwise, why bother learning anything along the way?

West, the article suggests, is suffering now because he's one of the few major black intellectuals to have soured on President Obama, but that, of course, is of a piece with West's general approach: his over-the-top praise for Obama initially was both too much and too intended to get attention for himself, and his new contrarianism is just as self aggrandizing and just as poorly thought through (if you can stay long enough, Melissa Harris-Perry takes it apart in the article, with her usual combination of smarts and class). Maybe it's my life spent around collegiate types, and faculty in particular; but the best teachers, and the best friends, I find, carry less pretension and look more to share ideas rather than win the contest of Obscure References, because it's a better world when we all know a little bit more. West can probably win the name game... but that doesn't make you Christ. Or even Christ-like.

This American Lie

Maybe it's just a matter of timing - I didn't see it until late Friday afternoon, and the paid blogosphere does seem to cut out before Happy Hour on Fridays - but I'm surprised that the exposure of Mike Daisey as something of a fraud isn't resonating more on the right.

That may sound odd, but bear with me.

The discrediting of NPR has been an odd hobbyhorse of the right's most ardent screechers, something about the confluence of soothing voices, liberal boilerplate, and perceived objectivity, from what I can tell (roll that all up in a ball and you get... Nina Totenberg). James O'Keefe, in one of his more amusing sideshows, helped take out the head of fundraising at NPR with a tape of a conversation with a fake Middle Eastern investor, which led to a stunning series of off-point comments from senior officials at NPR that mostly made matters worse. NPR was also at the center of the Juan Williams "scandal", in which Williams was dropped as a commentator after telling Bill O'Reilly that he harbored suspicions that Muslims on his flights were possibly terrorists. 

Given all that, surely someone on the right will spend the weekend chortling as This American Life, one of NPR's most popular shows, has had to retract its most popular podcast, an episode recorded with Mike Daisey about Apple's dubious record manufacturing iPads and iPhones in China. Adapted from his monologue "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs", "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory" garnered a lot of attention, and started a string of modestly bad press for Apple, which has tried to minimize the fallout while trying to beef up standards at its plants (and I say "modestly bad" because none of it has really hurt Apple's sales or profits). 

Daisey's claims - that Apple's plants were rife with child workers and exposure to dangerous chemicals, among other horrendous practices - had been questioned by knowledgable reporters (though the practices were also confirmed by their reporting), but it wasn't until this week that Marketplace, PRI's business show (also on NPR), found Daisey's chinese translator who was with him on that trip, who said much of what Daisey claimed to witness - speaking to child workers, or observing workers injured from chemical exposure - never happened. Daisey calls it "dramatic license", now, and TAL is red faced.

But this isn't really just about This American Life; the New York Times has already had to issue its own correction to an online op-ed Daisey wrote making similar claims, and the Associated Press is looking at retracting coverage they did of Daisey on the topic as well. Others will surely follow. Even New York's Public Theater, where Daisey's show has been running, had to issue a statement generally supporting Daisey, but admitting that the show is not exactly entirely accurate (and that's okay, cause that's how drama works. Or something).

Perhaps you can see where I'm going with this - this is a "Mainstream Media" disaster of large proportions, undermining a popular storyline (corporate malfeasance! Cheap Chinese manufacturing practices! Labor rights!) that the right already can't stand. And this, really, is a classic unforced error: no James O'Keefe fakery needed, no dicey ideologue like Juan Williams to make the scapegoat. This was, as Ira Glass admitted, simply shoddy journalism that tends to undermine the credibility of a show like This American Life - failing to ask basic questions, check primary sources, or to make sure that information was fully confirmed. It doesn't help that TAL often comes off as smug, slightly sanctimonious, and hipper than thou on most topics it covers; this was hubris waiting for a fall.

Conservatives may shy away form this because it is, after all, Apple; on the one hand, an emblem of exactly the kind of capitalism they want to enshrine, while at the same time, a do-gooder sort of firm that liberals love to shop because it seems hip and cool and socially conscious. Embracing the discrediting of Daisey, when Apple still faces unpleasant questions about its corporate actions and conditions in factories, could easily be a two-edged sword, and it may just be that conservatives miss the connections: all that raling against MSM and bad journalism is less potent when there's no obvious political payoff.

On the other hand, it's the very clean spin of the Daisey case that I think should give lefty defenders of NPR through the previous scandals some pause: it's one thing to have been pranked by O'Keefe and his ilk, it's no fun having to defend the notion that Juan Williams didn't deserve all of what he got... but the through-line here is much like the unraveling of the NYT after Jayson Blair: lying to your editors shouldn't be this easy, and it's just arrogance to have missed the signs that this report was seriously flawed. Many lefties will, no doubt, want to take the line that Daisey's real disaster is undermining the efforts to investigate Chinese factories. But this, really, amounts to "he may have stretched the truth, but he wasn't wrong" and that's not true. This wasn't stretching, it was fabrication and falsehoods. Journalism can't let that stand. And NPR, as a whole and not just on one program, probably needs to reexamine its mission and how that mission is pursued. 

Most imortantly, though, is that listeners probably need to also ak more questions, and take less reporting at face value. That's the reality of our current American Lives.

What's Black And White And Red All Over?

I promised myself not to write anything about the News of the World "phone hacking" scandal until Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of News International, resigned. I did that because, ultimately, any piece before she did would amount to " Rebekah Brooks will have to go".

And now she has. And she's been arrested to boot.

I've been following the phone hacking story for months, at least; I kind of remember being interested back when Sienna Miller first filed suit in 2007, claiming her phones had been hacked, messages deleted, and details related to the messages showed up in the News of the World. But since then, watching this story unfold, it's fascinating and truly compelling to see how one minor incident has snowballed  into the calamity that may take down Rupert Murdoch's empire, his livelihood, and possibly his career. 

But if you're lloking for me to join in vocal outrage over the phone hacking details... well, you should know I don't do outrage a lot. Also that I tend not to take the familiar, obvious line; in this case, I'm not especially sympathetic to cries that "reasonable expectations of privacy" are really the story of the phone hacking scandal. Indeed, the unfolding of the phone stories has reinforced a faith I have that the belief in a "right to privacy" is actually kind of a vague all purpose shield that tends to wilt under close scrutiny.

No, what's really unfolding out of the revelations of phone hacking is something much more fundamental, especially for the British, whose culture, after all, is actually quite different from Americans. What's fundamentally unraveling in England, and may drift over to American shores, is a fundamental reassessment of just what constitutes news and what we deserve to know. In some ways, yes, that's the flip side of "privacy", but it's really the more relevant, more controllable question. Just how freely should the press rummage about in people's lives, and what amounts to going too far? 

That's the real question that "phone hacking" has generated. And it's why, really, the phone hacking scandal probably begins and ends with Milly Dowler.

The Darn Thing Has Wings!

The Emmy Awards are silly.

I wouldn't bother to share this insight, but I tripped over the fact, just now, that today was the "official release of the Emmy nominations," a showing of pomp and circumstance meant, like all things Emmy, to emulate the actual suspense around the reveal of the Oscar nominations; TV still suffers from movie envy. 

If you want a quick indication of the pointlessness of the Emmys, here's a few obvious examples: Mariska Hargitay's umpteenth nomination for SVU, long past the point the show, or her performance, is anything to write home about. Or the "so sorry about Charlie Sheen" nomination for Jon Cryer of Two and a Half Men, nobody's idea of a brilliant comic performance.

How about this? The program with the most nominations of any show is Mildred Pierce, HBO's bloated remake of James M. Cain's noir potboiler, which premiered to dismal reviews and compares weakly to the 1945 film (or, as we like to call it, Joan Crawford's Oscar). Even if it's decent (I haven't seen it, and I'd bet Downton Abbey, the BBC miniseries for masterpiece actually wins), does it deserve 21 nominations? I'm guessing no.

And those 21 categories are just the tip of the Emmy iceberg.

It's an odd moment for television; I can't remember a time where so much good episodic television is being produced, nor a time when network television was as generally poor. The great work of producing television, really, is off the network path, whether it's the cable channels that mimic network like TNT and USA, or the higher end efforts of HBO and Showtime, or even the upstart work of mini-net the CW. The options are so wide and varied, it is, in some sense, no wonder that the Emmys can't possibly take it all in. What's sad, and has always been sad, is that the Emmys rarely reflect the boldest, or most innovative efforts in series television, going back to, say Twilight Zone or Star Trek - reflecting a general failure to respect science fiction - up through ignoring shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Emmy Awards generally play catch up, or reward, as is often noted, movie stars willing to slum on the small screen.

This year, among the overlooked: Burn Notice, Southland (now on TNT), Rizzoli and Isles, The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, Archer, RuPaul's Drag Race (tell me, really, how So You Think You Can Dance is better). That's just off the top of my head, and the top of my viewing interests. Yes, the Emmys were quick to recognize Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire (both of which I'd like to see), and recognized the bright spots of NBC's comedy lineup as welll as the obvious necessity to reward The Good Wife. But still; the Emmy Awards continue to reward industry darlings, movie stars, and marketing ploys. Want another example? How about Betty White's forgettable performance in Hot In Cleveland, an altogether pointless excuse for a sitcom? It's embarrassing, and as I said, it becomes silly to try and take the nominations seriously, never mind the awards.

I mention all of thie because it's a good moment to plug a couple of blogs I read for entertainment news. One, most obviously, is Deadline Hollywood, which still showcases the genius and reporting godlike qualities of Nikki Finke, along with a new band of hardy coanchors. Nellie Andreeva is their main TV reporter, and she is generally great, though her Emmy coverage is depressingly conventional, and tends to accept the status quo. 

The other blog I feel compelled to mention is Alyssa Rosenberg's new effort over at Think Progress, which is devoted to "cultural criticism", the kind of blog idea that makes me slightly green with envy... except that, as good as she is, Rosenberg's blog is interesting only in starts and fits. She's settled into too many TV series recaps (her Burn Notice recaps seem especially poorly conceived), and her overall insights on film and television are, too often, pedestrian and kind of obvious. Still, she's a bracing feminist critic and she's clearly passionate about the material, if muddy on her overall concept. 

But here's the thing: I expect, as with Deadline, that Rosenberg will take apart the nominee lists, pick her favorites, and generally cheerlead the run up to the awards. And I think that's giving the Emmys a seriousness that they just haven't earned. When they do, if they ever can... that's an interesting question. And one worth pondering. For such a pretty award, it's a shame it's just so... silly.

The Charlie Sheen Story Is Not A Comedy

In the contest for "America's Most Prominent Public Mess" (recent previous title holders: Whitney Houston, Lindsay Lohan, Robert Downey Jr., Tara Reid), it's clear we have a new winner: Charlie Sheen.

Sheen's problems are, as they say, "legendary", which mostly means tales of his partying ways have been with us pretty much since he arrived as a public celebrity, in his late teens. Booze! Drugs! Prostitutes! Pornstars! It's no wonder, really, that Sheen's exploits have been tabloid fodder for so long and in such detail.

It's hard to say what changed of late - though the sheer length of time is itself probably a good reason - but sometime in the past year, pick your point, the story of Charlie Sheen and his messy exploits went from comedy to tragedy... though it's taking a while for the media and the public to catch up.

Certainly, a string of arrests for drug possession and erratic behavior are part of it, as is the fact that Sheen's been enjoying a modest comeback as the star of Two and a Half Men, which benefits considerably from Sheen's droll delivery of outrageous, party hearty mindset as dialogue.

But I'm sort of less fascinated about the spectacularly public nature of Sheen's meltdown as I am with the way people are watching it, because I think the misture of humor and revulsion that's driven the story much of the way thus far is a good indication of the problems we have as a nation, socially and culturally, of dealing with addiction issues.

If that sounds terribly serious for such a frivolous story... well, there's the problem in the nutshell.

It's well past the point to face the reality that Sheen's personal problems aren't funny. Friends, family and his employers have all gone public with their concerns that he has a considerable substance abuse problem and needs treatment. His most recent collapse in Los Angeles led to revelations by one of his companions, an adult film actress, of his disturbed behavior and the large quantities of cocaine and other drugs present in his home. His TV show was put on hiatus so Sheen could get treatment. Sheen now claims to be just fine, and this past week lashed out at CBS and his show's producers, saying he was fine and ready to work.

Almost all of the preceeding paragraph has been presented as hilarious, and given to the public largely as entertainment.

I've been thinking about this topic for weeks; those who know me well can guess as to why this might resonate more with me than most stories. But what got me off the dime to finally write this down was this post from Melissa McEwan, in its entirety:

I'm not inclined to give unsolicited advice, but I'm going to make an exception just this once.

Charlie Sheen: Take a nap.

Shhhhhhhhhh. It's sleepytime now.

Charlie Sheen doesn't need "a nap." He needs treatment for a significant substance abuse problem. It's cute, and cheeky, to see his trials and travails as a public meltdown happening in front of us, for our amusement. But it's that failure to take addiction seriously - as we do most issues around mental health - that's helped make it harder for addicts to get access to treatment and for family, friends, employers and coworkers to find the support they need to help someone they care about. It's a ghastly, ghoulish aspect of American culture that so much of our need to be entertained is satiated by gawking at the antics of the intoxicated. It's not new, it's not healthy, and it's not helping Charlie Sheen. And maybe we won't figure that out until he's dead. But even if that happens, I'm pretty sure we'll just keep staring, wondering, in our sweet faux-naive way, how this could have happened. Because drug addiction leading to overdose is so unexpected... and so funny.

 

A Few More Words From The Terrible TV Criticism Of Alessandra Stanley

It's false equivalency time!

On Monday’s episode of  MTV could show minors in the kind of flagrante delicto that is usually reserved for mature audiences. Yet most adult Americans still can’t watch Al Jazeera English on television — even now, when the world is transfixed by images of Egypt in revolt.

It seems like a perverse application of free speech. But sex is sexier than foreign affairs and it certainly sells better. Freedom of expression is guaranteed to all Americans, but mostly it follows the money.

Yes, that's right, Alessandra Stanley has decided to link Skins and the Egyptian Revolution, as presented by Al Jazeera!

Can you figure out how to veer from discussing the slanted coverage of a news network to the sleazy business of selling teen sexuality on a scripted British import? Neither can Stanley, though she lurches all over the place, and eventually settles on "ratings" as her basis for cable systems not carrying Al Jazeera but still carrying MTV. That's not "analysis", that's desperation.

And, as if that's not enough, Stanley isn't done throwing in the kitchen sink:

To be fair, Al Jazeera English may be providing the most up-close and personal coverage round-the-clock, but it isn’t necessarily the best. And “Skins” isn’t the worst series for young people on cable, not by far. That would be “Jersey Shore.”

"To be fair"? How about "to try and throw in yet another complete non sequitour"?

And "Jersey Shore"? Seriously?

None of this is necessarily surprising - Stanley's long been the best example of worst criticism the Times has to offer... which is saying something in a pool that includes, still, the blatherings of Ben Brantley. Still, even for Stanley's usual lousy standards, this column was especially, awesomely, bad.

It's a shame, because the Times has actually been putting some effort into recasting its Arts pages, improving the quality of coverage, smoothing out its terrible instincts for flashy trash and simultaneous Upper East Side superiority (Which explains the Music department's apparent schizophrenic love of gangsta rap and opera). The Sunday section is almost readable again, Brantley is balanced with the perceptive analysis of Charles Isherwood, Manohla Dargis seems to be less and less of a presence on the film side. But for all the good... there's still Stanley and her astonishingly lame TV reviews. Does this nightmare ever end?

By the way, just to wrap up how lousy this column is: the problem with Skins is that it's not very good, which is the kind of situation where pushing the envelope on salaciousness is meant to cover weak writing and fairly bad acting (it's hard to find great acting talent under 18, and the market is seriously tapped out). Skins is mostly further proof that British shows rarely transfer well to America (The Office is an exception that actually helps prove the rule). Al Jazeera's inability to increase its presence on American cable systems deserves a full, separate article. And Jersey Shore's popularity, while mind blowing, is not inexplicable, and mostly a reminder that America's television habits are not generally, a reflection of good taste. Which, really, should help Alessandra Stanley, and still, somehow, doesn't.

The Revolution, Televised

At first, I didn't want to write something about Egypt's turmoil because things seemed to be changing moment to moment.

As events (and non-events) have unfolded, I think the opposite is true: there's not much to write about Egypt, because in many ways, nothing has exactly happened, yet.

Egypt may well be the first televised modern revolt, partly by timing, partly because, despite Mubarak's authoritarian instincts, Egypt has been a fairly secular society which hasn't limited access to various media. Indeed, Mubarak's inability to black out and isolate his protestors is as good an example as any of his wishy-washy presentation as an iron fisted leader. The really successful dictators know enough to insist on total control. Of everything.

For all the talk of how tweeting and facebook and "social media" have vastly changed the opportunities to communicate in situations like this, it's television that still makes the story a story. More than anything, the Egyptian government can't get these protests under control because doing so - shooting at civilians, quelling riots - would happen in plain view of the cameras watching events 24/7. Violence and streetb protests make, as they say, great television. And right now, the story of Egypt is really a story about watching and waiting. TV has created the impression that there's a fast moving, ever changing story on the ground... but mostly, it's the effect of heightening tension in hopes of a dramatic resolution.

As with Tunisia, the Egyptians have one simple demand: the removal of the totalitarian in charge. The unraveling of the past few days has been amazing, mostly because Mubarak has offered cosmetic change after cosmetic change - I'll appoint a Vice President!  I'll fire my cabinet! - refusing to accept that the change Egyptians want is... not him.

It would be amazing - and generally very unlikely - for this matter to resolve peacefully. If Mubarak can be convinced to step down and leave Egypt, there's the question of what arises to take his place. If he refuses to leave, then it's hard to see how violence and chaos can be avoided.

One thing I think American audiences may not realize fully is just how much this is not an American story. The puzzlement and disarray in American government and American media - both of which were caught fairly flat footed by the speed and direction of events as they unfolded in Tunisia and Egypt - speaks to a failure to fit this into our own national narrative. The dirty open secret of our foreign policy - as WikiLeaks more or less reminded us - is that America accepts foreign dictatorships as a necessary, even useful evil. Authoritarians provide structure, and make the business of supplying funds to get a desired result much easier. We talk a lot about freedom and favoring democracy everywhere... but freedom is dangerous and democracy is messy when you just want to get your way. And really, a lot of people living under those authoritarians have caught on to the reality that our talk of "freedom" is pretty much all talk. And possibly marketing, since we remain the world's best advertiser.

In our country, I think the Obama Administration has, yet again, benefitted from a wild card event beyond its control. Egypt has swept our petty intraparty squabbles off the front page, put foreign policy back up front, and left conservatives scrambling for  something to oppose. At the same time, I'm struck, as usual, by the American ability to cast ourselves as the innocent ingenue. Who knew Egypt would fall apart? Who knew that there could be a random shooting in Arizona? The truth that these wild cards are not so wild, that these events speak to issues and problems we should be addressing but largely avoid, generally gets lost. We know, actually, that this country has a problem delaing with untreated mentally ill people who turn to violence.

And we've known, for years, that Hosni Mubarak has been a disaster for Egypt, and should never have been allowed to hang on to power this long, and stifle all opposition forces so thoroughly. But doing nothing, giving Mubarak guns and money and credibility as a "world leader" served our purposes. Like a Shah in Iran, a President in the Phillipines, or a totalitarian in Iraq... until their usefulness ceased to be so useful.  They get overthrown, and we look around, each time, wondering how these situations got so out of hand.

Television, our instant history maker, doesn't tell that story. That story is complicated, it doesn't have great pictures, the drama is long and mostly hidden from view. The story television likes to tell is unfolding in front of us, right now, soon to be resolved. It tells the story we say we want to hear, even if we think we don't say it, or want it. Because television, primarily and still, is a medium that entertains, however we try to dress up news as "serious" and "important". TV shapes the "news" into a dramatic narrative... and then waits for the dramatic conclusion. The revolution will be televised... because revolutions make great television... and that's what's important. Vive la revolucion!