NYCweboy

And So Are You In Something Backless

Two weeks ago, while house sitting for friends in Manhattan, I had the opportunity to catch the ever enticing morning lineup on Lifetime (Television for Women... and Gay Men. Still). This meant two back-to back episodes of The Golden Girls. I made it through about half of one (you know the one where the gals get into some misadventure... and hilarity ensues.... Oh wait), and then fell back to sleep halfway into the next.

It's odd to realize that for seven years, four older women were the hottest stars on television (well, five actually; Angela Lansbury was also top ten at the same time), commanding top salaries and holding a network to their demands.  It's also worth remembering the power of the Golden Girls - which did not leave TV as a ratings failure - and other shows when people say "nobody wants to see older people in the leads", or when suddenly no women are holding the leads on their own shows. Women actually do want to see other women, even older women, in the main roles.

I don't have much to say about Estelle Getty, who passed away yesterday, just shy of her 85th birthday (is it indiscreet to say she was the likely one of the four to pass first?). But it seems a shame not to say anything. I've never been in the cult of the Golden Girls (I'm not that gay... or that woman), never really loved the show, and thought it beat a fairly innocuous premise into the well worn ground. What saved it, always, was the insane amount of talent thrown at the material: four veteran comic actresses, all in top form. And though all the performances devolved into caricature, that didn't mean they didn't know how to zing. Especially Getty, who often had the most tart responses, whether insulting Blanche's life as a loose woman, or continually putting down her daughter Dorothy (the title of this post comes from a line J always loved, which I believe in full was "that's pretty scary" which she says to Dorothy, "and so are you in something backless.").

Like all The Golden Girls, she won an Emmy -  but just one - for Sophia... but was nominated every year. And while she's gone, she never really will be. One thing the show is, at least for my lifetime (television for women and gay men. always) - is timeless. Also, a little scary.

One... And That's Not Funny. (Or, Are You Ready For The New Seriousness?)

Time and others are taking her (as usual) to task for her snarkiness, but I have to say I think Maureen Dowd is onto something... though not something that's as bad as she thinks.

Flash forward to the kerfuffle — and Obama’s icy reaction — over this week’s New Yorker cover parodying fears about the Obamas.

“We’ve already scratched thrift, candor and brevity off the list of virtues in this presidential cycle, so why not eliminate humor, too?” wrote James Rainey in The Los Angeles Times, suggesting “an irony deficiency” in Obama and his fans.

Many of the late-night comics and their writers — nearly all white — now admit to The New York Times’s Bill Carter that because of race and because there is nothing “buffoonish” about Obama — and because many in their audiences are intoxicated by him and resistant to seeing him skewered — he has not been flayed by the sort of ridicule that diminished Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.

Dowd, of course, is worried about being out of a job... or at least, as Joe Klein suggests, forced to be serious.. but as I said, I think she's on to something, something I've been noting for a couple of posts and counting: the New Yorker flap, the discussion of humorlessness... there's something of a sea-change coming in political comedy, I think.

George Carlin

All I can say is: me, too. I was stunned to hear that Carlin's dead, and the usual "what a great guy" or even "what a funny guy" seems beside the point. Carlin was too alive, too present, really, to deserve reverie. He'd have said "Fuck you, cocksucker" (using two of the seven), and ignored it.

I'm sort of fascinated that what we celebrate in Carlin really happened in the last 10, maybe 20 years. He was an old comic, from an old tradition, and like many of them, he got funnier, and feistier, with age. I don't even know what he was like in his actual youth; in the seventies, when he was in his forties, he was really sort of a counterculture holdover; but suddenly, in the eighties and beyond, he came into his own, and was really completely unstoppable.

In that hazy way, we will remember for those moments of speaking truth to power, and forget that his best humor was "old crank" humor maybe amped up a notch or two: if it was official, or established, or serious, or had some beaurocracy attached to it, Carlin hated it. He hated that we had to be polite, or perhaps more accurately, that we pretended that we had to be polite. As a result, though, he probably gave license to a sort of inner asshol-ishness that's not necessarily an improvement. Though I enjoyed his various specials... I usually got a little weary as they wore on.

But oh, when he was on! When it was seven dirty words or other hot topics, and he killed. Or, as the grizzled anchor of "The Aristocrats", the brilliant, savage documentary about one of the dirtiest jokes ever, he  was soft spoken yet brilliant. We won't have to miss him (there's so much video)... but oh, what a shame that someday... we'll have to explain him.

I can't choose: Ezra, Dana Goldstein and Nick Beaudrot all found wickedly funny moments. I offer them all, together. Share and enjoy.

Tim Russert

It's only in the last six months or so - since I moved back home - that I've been tuning in regularly to Meet The Press. Within the last 3 years, I'd pretty much stopped watching; partly out of convenience (I would DVR it and never watch those either), and partly because I really found it utterly unsatisfying.

It's these things that come to mind when I think about the sudden, stunning loss of Tim Russert.

In his way, by the time he died, Russert was legendary. Partly that was due to ratings - Russert was the number one Sunday talk show anchor almost without interruption (I think ABC was on top for a while there, but I can't confirm that). Partly it was due to a reputation as the "serious" interviewer, the litmus test of any major political figure, certainly any American one (and really... what's the alternative... Charlie Rose?).

Neither of those, I think, really speak to what made Russert so successful, which was really about personality. Russert was a prime example of news reader celebrity, and almost everything - his role as political commentator, his hosting duties, his role as "Washington Bureau Chief," was subsumed to his star quality. Buoyant, gregarious, full of that manly bonhomie that people seem to like so much, Russert filled up the space - literally - and the room. I may not have loved Meet The Press... but I always liked the guy. How could anyone not?

No, Not Everyone. Just You.

Update and NEWS FLASH, apropos of this post: Tim Russert has died.

I saw on the front page of the NYT today (before my Mom dashed off to her babysitting gig) that media organizations are under fire for sexist coverage of the campaign. Via Jeralyn at TalkLeft, it appears that MSNBC and NBC are being defensive about it:

Keith Olbermann, the host of “Countdown” on MSNBC, said that while there were “individual, sexist, mistakes,” there was no overall sexism. Any suggestion that MSNBC “was somehow out to ‘get’ Senator Clinton is false and unfair,” Mr. Olbermann wrote in an e-mail message. “We became a whipping boy.”

Well, if the whip stings...

Lost in the general negativity about sexist coverage is the notion that not all failure are equal - while I think it's poor judgment on the part of CNN to treat contributors like Donna Brazile as unbiased or neutral, much of CNN's coverage of the primary season set the bar for good reporting and sensible analysis (that was helped, in no small part, by actually knowing who was backing Clinton, and including them in discussions and interviews). And while Fox News is, well, Fox News, their umbilical cord to the right wing provided them a vantage point over the Democratic primaries of a certain sort of unique objectivity: when you're rooting for no one, it's easy to be evenhanded.

Even at the network level, it's hard to fault much of the work CBS (where Katie Couric, and her troubles, made their treatment of Clinton the least of their problems) and ABC (even though Stephanopolous seemed especially non-plussed at revisiting the Clinton experience, he did know his subjects; though his use of Brazile was also highly problematic).

But NBC and MSNBC... well, that's another level.

Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes

If you need it in brief: The Sex and The City Movie is fabulous. Go. Now.

If you need it longer, then perhaps you are more like Samantha.

I'm not; but beyond all of the "which SATC girl are you" (the quizzes where the gay boys wind up choosing between Carrie's Stanford and Charlotte's Anthony), is where the heart of the matter actually lies. The Sex and The City Movie succeeds best - and it frankly exceeded every expectation I had - because it's all about not believing your own press. Because it's not about Cosmos, or Manolos, or gay pals, or even man candy.

It's about love. And what we'll do for it.

Scott?

Scott McClellan is not Cher; nor is he Charo, Madonna, Fabio, Fabian, Jaylo, The Rock, or The Edge.

I say this as preface to more on why I don't think I'll ever fully understand the MSM.

Apparently, one-time Bush Press Secretary, Scott McClellan has poison-penned a tell-all on his former boss. 

What I'm finding odd is that, for the last twenty minutes, as both Campbell Brown and Keith Olbermann (I'm shamelessly fickle with the remote) have been reporting this story, chock full of interviews and pundits from both sides of this rancor, everyone of them, to the last, is referring to McClellan as "Scott."  Not "Scott McLellan," once followed by "McLellan" later, but just "Scott.":

"If Scott felt this way, why didn't he speak up then?"

"I think Scott's intentions are good here."

"Scott wouldn't have been involved in those meetings."

"Scott was unhappy with his exit."

Now, I understand that many of these people may have been used to calling McClellan "Scott" when they were working with/alongside of him, but surely when he becomes the story, his last name should be used.  I lose little sleep over the MSM treating GW unfairly, but what kind of press gives us half of the story on a first name basis?  This Scott sounds about eight years old to me, wide-eyed and innocent, you know, maybe a neighbor of Lassie's Timmy.

Google Image Search, for now, anyway, agrees with me, in that all Scotts are not created equal, nor that McClellan is The Scott.  Pictured above is Google's first entry under just "Scott," April Scott, that is, who either won or is entered in something called Quattro High Performance Disposable Babe Tournament.  But Google and its, ahem, priorities, are topics for another day, or week, I think.

- jinbaltimore

  

Coming Home... Just The Way I Left It

I had brave plans to get home and blog at length... but the trip was long, it's late and I'm tired.

I will say this, though, now that I'm home... I like being home, just the way it is. One interesting thing I got exposed to this weekend was a plethora of decorating shows on the House and Garden channel (thus providing a double edged cable experience - more channels, but more time spent watching landscaping than I would have picked for myself).

What fascinates me is how thinly the concept of a decorating show can be stretched.  Basically, show after show was ordinary shlub with a decorating problem (ugly living room, bad garden, house that won't sell), where a stylish - often gay, or in the case of the women, exuberant - "designer" came in and redid the space, usually along the lines of what you see in most of the magazines. It's nice enough, but four or so of these progeams... and you're not getting a lot of new insight.

I really thought I knew what this stuff was about... but I had no idea: there's a whole, endless, industry around this. Video crews wandering around dull neighborhoods, watching unconfident people get generally browbeaten into submission by urban types with a sense for clean lines and occasional dashes of color.

Knowing that Jennifer will get on me mercilessly for seeming so dismissive (never mind Ray, who was one of the design watching culprits), I still can't resist wondering what the appeal is here. It made five hours of SVU reruns, with every creep and kink on display in gruesome detail, seem like a welcome respite.

In any case, good to be home. Hi Mom. More here tomorrow.

And Now We'll Go To The Other Room For Coffee...

Well, I got home just in time for the tail end of the episode... but it was enough for me.  I think the interruption this season was actually kind of healthy for Grey's; they needed to take a breath, re-think the storylines and set a new course. 

Of course, everyone will focus on Meredith and Derek, but I liked the wrinkles for Alex, and Izzie, Yang, and Bailey. Justin Chambers has a marvelous moody quality that was barely tapped while he was playing asshole lothario; now he's a complex, bruised soul. And Katharine Heigl, who's been all over the place seemed to concentrate down to Izzie's essence in the last few weeks.

I'm not sure I care all that much for the exploration of lesbianism between Callie and Hahn; but Hahn's toughness, her difficulties with Yang... those have added dimensions we just couldn't get with Isaiah Washington's Burke. And I'd like to put a plug in here for Brooke Smith, an actress I always find memorable... without knowing her name. Until now.

For me, Grey's remains the show that, right now, week to week reminds me what television is capable of; there are more interesting professional women here than almost anywhere else. A more integrated environment that reflects reality than almost anywhere else. And good drama done with excellent dialogue and with a clear visual style. I know we quibble. I know we have more interactive power, as an audience with this show than perhaps at any other time. And it's allowed the audience, I think, to set a high bar. But for a moment, just consider who else is doing anything close to this. Then tell me again it's not good enough.

-- weboy

If everyone could please take their seats...

Grey's Anatomy season finale in 5 minutes!!!!

- Red