January 2006 Archives

From "Goodbye Terry Gross, we never knew ye—on liberal media denial" by Joe Bageant, in the Online Journal:

As Helen Caldicott recently put it: “What’s to become of us? Ask any experienced mental health practitioner what happens to a person who constructs and tries to maintain a life based on denial of fundamental reality. It can be done for a while, in spite of occasional outbursts of behavioral oddities (remember Dr. Strangelove’s disobedient arm that was always popping up in an embarrassing Nazi salute). But how long can such a pretense be maintained, even when the pretender is surrounded by the best handlers money can buy?”

CLICK THE FALSIE:

Did you know Sylvie Simmons has a whole page of interviews posted, and claims metal men are more respectful of women then "garden-variety" rockers? Wasn't that the joke in BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE...?

KPFA has a pretty ROBUST podcast page

Is this really Sylvie Simmons ?

REVIEWS OF THE MONTH

From Ed Condran in Giantmag.com (Beckensale issue, page 98):

PLEDGE THIS! (2005) It's the female ANIMAL HOUSE starring Paris Hilton. I'm the professor of sexology and I'm obsessed with paris. She did very well considering that she's not an actor and not of this planet. I think many lives before this one she was a spider. A very wealthy spider.

THE ARISTOCRATS (2005) I never in a million years thought THE ARISTOCRATS would make it like it has. I did the joke as a personal poem to Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette because I thought they were just fooling around. I thought the film would be this little intimate valentinte to somebody sitting around stoned in an editing bay. THE ARISTOCRATS is MARCH OF THE PENGUINS in reverse.

YET URGED W. TO "STAY TOUGH" ON NSA WIRETAPPING...

David Weigel on the Patriot Act (Reason):

...no senator who voted against the PATRIOT Act in 2001 or subsequently voted to amend it has ever lost a race; five congressmen who voted to reject or amend the act have lost their seats, but those losses had more to do with redistricting and a gay marriage vote than with their positions on the PATRIOT act...

When Tierney and Brooks replaced Safire, I made some crack about how that would be bad for the wordmeister's ego. Now it's not so funny: in today's column, Brooks misrepresents a half-century of cultural politics so lamely you'd think you were reading a Murdoch rag:

But by the late 1960's, cultural politics replaced New Deal politics, and liberal Democrats did their best to repel Northern white ethnic voters...

Huh? Reagan brought down "New Deal" politics, and the "cultural politics" was all about an immoral war, the politics surrounding the birth control pill, and a corrupt elite betraying their children. Youth culture then had much to rebel against, given that Nixon and Kissinger were sending them off the die in Nam before they had the right to even VOTE. [CUE: the Who's "Summertime Blues" at Woodstock...]

The liberals had "Question Authority" bumper stickers; the ethnics had been taught in school to respect authority.

What if that authority proves thoroughly corrupt and irredeemable? Does Brooks seriously want to defend a Archie Bunker's bigot politics against the Meathead's? Didn't Nixon resign in SHAME?

I could go on: this misrepresentation of history is as duplicitous as... a) forgetting which Princeton Alumni group you once bragged about joining b) dodging any "culture of life" queries c) posing as a nerd when you're a secret idealogue.

But just one more thing:

In a culture of made-for-TV sentimentalism, Alito refuses to emote.

Right, he just gets his wife to run from the hearing crying. Gotta hand it to Rove, he's damned creative.

PARADIGM SHIFT

I heard Tim Westergreen on LaPorte's Inside the Net, and it sent me directly to Pandora , where I've had a high time fiddling about. Its country stash could be stronger, but I'm pretty happy with my Big Star station, and it's the kind of product that can only improve with use -- and more users.

PAZZ AND JOP ballot:

Neko Case TIGER HAS SPOKEN (Anti-)
Petra Haden THE WHO SELL OUT (Bar-None)
Ivy IN THE CLEAR (Nettwerk)
Beck GUERO (Interscope)
Gorillaz DEMON DAYS (Virgin)
Stephen Malkmus FACE THE TRUTH (Matador)
The New Pornographers TWIN CINEMA (Matador)
Bob Dylan NO DIRECTION HOME SOUNDTRACK (Columbia)
Sleater-Kinney THE WOODS (Sub Pop)
Fiona Apple EXTRAORDINARY MACHINE (Epic)

Wish there was room for:

Art Brut
Sinead O'Connor
Chris Brokaw
oh there's more, stay tuned...

As a longtime ER fanatic, I come to praise its latest themes: Maura Tierney is getting BETTER, and their abortion episode last week, replete with "fundamentalists" (which they slyly equated with Catholicism), pushed a lot of over-familiar buttons in ingenious ways. John Leguizamo's so good he plays reckless cowboy bigus dickus for genwine comedy. That music, though, at the end of "If Not Now, When?" last week was symptomatic of the reigning confusion between singer-songwriter and mental illness. I predict Antony will commit himself onstage. And if you think that's not nice, that's how I feel when I hear him sing. Won't anyone else stand with me and call his style mannered and annoying? It's the OPPOSITE of authentic posing as unfiltered emotion.

Even so, the abortion ethic as played out between a 15-year-old, who everybody sympathizes with and nobody thinks should carry her unplanned pregnancy to term, and Abby, who everybody sympathizes with and wants to see become the mother she never had, was a decent barometer of where we are on this prickly issue. Until Abby can go through with an abortion which nobody wants her to have WITHOUT BEING A CRIMINAL we haven't come very far since Roe V. Wade. Reasonable, civilized people can disagree about choice, even disagree about parental notification, right? We'd still love Abby even if she terminated her pregnancy, right? Even if we disagreed?

Turns out there's a greater sin than dismissing Alex Kingston, however, and that's flushing Dr. Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield) without so much as a plot point. What happens when the offstage values clash directly when the script's ethics? Oh, yeah. [PS: official web site sucks, no link.]

WEST WING

We rented WAR OF THE WORLDS, which works as an overt 9/11 allegory (lost family flyers, ashen aftermath, literal ground shifting under our feet) until you start to think it through. The very stupid ending is a quasi-argument for... germ warfare. It's the epitomy of how elaborately Hollywood orchestrates empty ideas. I kept waiting for the script to follow through on Tim Robbins as George W., but it didn't have the nerve.

Meanwhile, watching John Spencer's swan song was excrutiating, if enjoyable.

Ken Auletta on Judy Miller? Did you gulp hard after you bumped into "(A disclosure: My wife, a literary agent, represents both Keller and Miller.)" So did every other self-respecting journalist. Seth Mnookin's piece in Vanity Fair was superior.

PREDICTION OF THE YEAR:

Scooter Libby Gets Pardoned BEFORE his trial.