US Elections

DC TV

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

15 May 2012

There's a whole lot of city off there in the distance

Alyssa Rosenberg wants to see the purview of TV shows set in DC extend beyond the immediate vicinity of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave:

Veep, HBO’s half-hour comedy about a flailing Vice President starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, has been on the air for three weeks, but it’s only the beginning of what promises to be a glut of Washington-based and politically-themed television shows. Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal, about a DC PR fixer based on Judy Smith, seems likely to be back for a second season. USA has a stacked cast behind its show Political Animals, in which Sigourney Weaver will play a former First Lady who’s now Secretary of State. And NBC just picked up 1600 Penn, a family comedy in which father had better know best because the fate of the free world depends on it. Despite being set in Washington, it’s not clear how much these shows actually have to say about contemporary American politics—I tend to agree with critics who say that Veep is more an office comedy where the employees happen to work for the Vice President than an examination of the specific and hilarious cravenness of our current political system. If you want to get at that, though, you might have to move beyond the White House and the Old Executive Office Building.

She suggests congressional offices, administrative agencies, the political press, advocacy groups, and think tanks. Which is fine as far as it goes, and, sure, Rosenberg is thinking within the tight confines of politically-themed television. But how about we get some TV that focuses on the Washington that doesn't constantly have its mind in beltway business, even if its hip pocket relies upon it? Washington is a company town where the company is the government, but a sizable — and mostly invisble — population lives far from the city's monuments and political buildings. It would be nice if a medium other than rap music engaged with the Green Line side of the city.

As Adam Serwer puts it:

Washington, D.C., has always been two cities. Washington spills out of downtown Metro stations at 8 A.M.; D.C. huddles on crowded buses at 6 A.M. On Sundays, when Washington goes to brunch, D.C. is in church. Washington clinks glasses in bars like Local 16 in its leisure time, while D.C. sweats out its perm at dance clubs like Love or DC Star. Washington has health-insurance benefits, but D.C. is paying out of pocket. Washington just closed on a condo; D.C. is in foreclosure. Washington is making money. D.C. never recovered from the 2001 recession.

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Veep and realism

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

10 May 2012

Three episodes in to HBO's vice-presidential comedy Veep, I continue to be impressed by the show's realism and attention to detail. One small thing I appreciate: the politicians look like politicians. I've long found it faintly baffling that Hollywood apparently believes politicians universally possess a bland cookie-cutter handsomeness. They're all Evan Bayhs or John Edwardses. Pols on screen rarely look like Jerry Nadler, Ron Paul, or Patty Murray.

Veep recognises how representatives in DC really look. These are fusty old politicians, the sort who win office because they can bring dollars back to their districts, not because they have a charming smile. 

Less realistic, perhaps, is the clothing. That's what Kelsey Wallace says, anyway:

Now, this is probably due to the fact that the show is deliberately vague when it comes to political parties and rhetoric, but that doesn't change the fact that I can't get through an episode without exclaiming aloud that a woman in the oval office would never be allowed to wear something form-fitting, low-cut, and sleeveless without the media having a total field day. Look at the whole "Does Michelle Obama have the right to bare arms?" frenzy that occurred when the First Lady ventured out sans cardigan!

Then again, this might be because the show's costume designer specifically avoided looking to Washington for inspiration:

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The nerdiest joke in Sunday's Veep premiere

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

24 April 2012

I mentioned a while back how excited I was for the new HBO series Veep, a political comedy set in a fictional vice president's office. Well, the Julia Louis-Dreyfus starring show premiered on Sunday evening US time, and I wasn't disappointed. 

Veep is hilarious, and, what's more, for anyone who's spent some time in Washington, it's disconcertingly realistic. Erin Riley pinpoints the little details that make the show's portrayal of D.C. so authentic:

More than any other fictional representation of that town, it really seemed like the place I knew for a little while a few years ago. Here are a few things that seemed incredibly real:

• Totally messy congressional offices with coffee machines that don’t work
• Arrogant young dudes with low-paying but high-power jobs, who really rate themselves
• Fake signatures
• “It’s intern season”
• Signing a card for a rapey Senator’s widow

Perhaps my favourite minor detail, however, was the plotline about biodegradable cutlery. Selina Meyer, the titular vice-president, has made ridding government offices of plastic knives and forks her signature issue. She wants Washington to use corn starch utensils instead. (It becomes a political problem when the plastics industry gets wind of the plan.) The funny part? It really happened. From Politico in 2008:

After eating in most other cafeterias, you would never see your flatware again, destined as it would be for a landfill somewhere. But since House leaders instituted a composting program last fall — a development they’re sure to tout as part of their Earth Day observances Tuesday — you may reunite with your utensils in some unlikely places.

[...]

The pulper grinds up your fork and plate, which are made of corn and sugar cane, respectively, and presses any excess moisture out of them. The resulting pile of waste looks very much like cole slaw prepared for a giant. Perry Plumart, the deputy director of the House’s Green the Capitol Initiative, calls it “wet confetti.”

The real life recyclable utensils program came to an end not thanks to a plastics industry campaign, but an election. ABC in 2011:

You can debate whether or not it is a good thing or bad thing, but here's one tangible accomplishment for the new Republican Congress: They've brought plastic and Styrofoam back to the House cafeteria.

Republicans are practically giddy about the change: They've turned the clock back on one of Nancy Pelosi's pet projects.

When Pelosi became Speaker of the House in 2007, she launched an initiative called "Green the Capitol." The centerpiece of the project was the Capitol cafeteria. She replaced the greasy French fries (which Republicans called Freedom Fries), plastic ware and Styrofoam cups with locally grown organic food, recyclable utensils and cups made of cornstarch.

Truth really is pettier than fiction.

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Springfield: Another America

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

13 April 2012

A couple days ago, the Internet went nuts about a Smithsonian Magazine interview with creator of The Simpsons Matt Groening, in which he apparently revealed the location of the show's fictional setting of Springfield. (He didn't.) More interesting, however, than the non-story that Groening took the name from a city in his home state of Oregon, is this:

How typical is the Simpsons’ home of an American home? How has it changed?

I think what’s different is that Marge doesn’t work. She’s a stay-at-home mother and housewife, and for the most parts these days both parents work. So I think that’s a little bit of a throwback. 

The Simpsons was created as a satire of the American family^[1], but 23 years into its life as a primetime sitcom, the institution it parodies has changed so much as to leave the show looking faintly archaic. The America of the first President George Bush was one in which the single-income, male-headed household was so commonplace as to be an archetype. Today, the Simpson family comes off as rather quaint.

It's a point that the good people at the fan/hate^[2] site Dead Homer Society have made well:

The Simpsons has been on for so long now that the world itself has changed around them and as a result the characters no longer epitomize what they’re supposed to be satirizing. Homer and Marge are exquisitely crafted late model Baby Boomers; they came of age in the seventies and became adults in the eighties. He’s a union guy; she’s a housewife; they have cranky World War II generation parents, they go to church out of a sense of duty and their kids lead unstructured, small town lives. They are run of the mill late 1980s Americans, that is when they were created and that is the context in which they best fit.

Homer and Marge are supposed to be in their mid to late thirties, but in 2009 real people who are in their mid to late thirties are Generation Xers. They grew up on MTV and video games and they don’t typically go to church; their kids go on play dates and it’s their parents who are the Baby Boomers. Yes, these are stereotypes and generalizations, but stereotypes and generalizations have always been The Simpsons stock in trade. Are there still people like Homer and Marge? Of course, but neither of them is the archetype they once were. The Simpsons may not have aged but America did, and it takes increasinly zany nonsense to shoehorn old characters into modern situations.

To see how America has changed over the past decade, just look at its longest running prime time scripted TV series.

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A thing I really like about NBC's "Parks and Recreation"

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

6 February 2012

In American film and television, the Big City is always New York or Los Angeles. Cities in the flyover states, even ones with metro populations of one to two million, are considered podunk towns in the same way everywhere in the flyover states is considered a podunk town. This is probably because film and television people usually live in New York or Los Angeles, and conflate “smaller than my city” with “small city.”

I've discussed before my fondness for NBC sitcom "Parks and Recreation," which easily holds the title of funniest program on American TV right now. A small detail I appreciate about it: On this show, Indianapolis is always the Big City. The citizens of the show's fictional Midwestern small town of Pawnee, Indiana never talk about it as anything other than a major urban center, one with all the attributes connected with major urban centers: fast-paced lifestyles, cosmopolitan outlooks, au courant chic. I don’t know much about Indianapolis, though I do know it has a metropolitan area of 1.8 million people, making it slightly smaller than Brisbane. I expect it really does feel fairly urban.

Apparently it has “swanky lofts and modern wine bars” in some part of downtown, and today's Super Bowl has led to a construction boom:

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Santorum nabs the coveted fictional mob boss endorsement

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

19 January 2012

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum might be struggling to convert his strong Iowa showing into a successful national campaign, but he should be cheered by one vote of approval — that of HBO Mafia don Tony Soprano. The above clip comes from a 2006 episode of "The Sopranos," Live Free or Die, which featured one of Tony's mobsters, Vito Spatafore, being outed as gay. Vito flees to New Hampshire to escape the persecution of his compatriots, and Tony struggles to reconcile his revulsion at homosexuality with his lack of concern for people's personal lives as long as they don't interfere with his business activities. He particularly likes, he says, the anti-gay stance of Senator "Sanitarium."

Unfortunately for Santorum, the New Jersey primary won't be held until June 5th — and fictional characters can't vote.

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Yet another New York story

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

9 December 2011

Phoenix, Arizona

Alyssa Rosenberg doesn’t like the sound of a new, untitled CW comedy:

The CW, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that its next comedy will be about a young woman who marries her best friend to get around rules about roommates that would forbid said friend from moving into the main character's "swanky New York co-op." And I've had enough of fake pop culture gay people.

Right. But another thing: I’ve discussed before my impatience with American creatives who apparently believe that the only stories worth telling are ones that happen to people who live in the country’s two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles. This program Rosenberg highlights is a perfect illustration of the problem. Do that many Americans actually experience the challenges associated with getting a really nice apartment in Manhattan? Does America have no better stories to tell than ones surrounding the difficulty in wrangling access to coveted real estate?

Over the past few decades, some of the fastest population growth in the United States has occurred far from New York, in the sprawling cities of the Sunbelt and Mountain West. Thanks to the housing crisis, the problem in those cities is not a lack of desirable properties, but too many empty ones. The construction boom has left housing stock in cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas, Tampa and Atlanta standing empty. Why not ditch vacuous facsimiles of Big Apple chic and instead create stories about the places Americans have been moving to and building lives in?

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I missed the part where it started being about Imus

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

28 November 2011

There's not much defensible about the decision of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" house band the Roots to greet show guest Michele Bachmann with a rendition of a Fishbone song called "Lyin' Ass Bitch." Maura Johnston got it right:

[Bachmann is] the lone woman remaining in the field, which makes me wonder if Rick Perry or Rick Santorum would have been greeted by this particular Fishbone track had they been first to Fallon's couch. The answer, sadly, is "probably not."

Roots drummer ?uestlove apologised for his choice of tune, as did NBC, through Doug Vaughn, the network's senior vice president for special programs. Bachmann however, apparently couldn't help but be obnoxious about a situation in which she deserved sympathy, regardless of your politics:

[The bandleader] had tweeted twice before the show what his intentions were. And his Twitter account is 1.7 million people. So, it’s just, again, it comes down to the fact that if a Don Imus or someone does something that’s questionable, they are thrown off the air. But when something is done to a conservative, it’s just passed off and forgotten.

I suspect it's no accident on her part that she decided to invoke Don Imus, a man who found himself in hot water because of comments both racist and sexist. Those comments, you may recall, were directed at an apolitical group of people: a team of basketballers.

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President Knope

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

14 October 2011

Parks and Recreation, the current holder of the title of best comedy on US television right now, seems intent on disproving my rash contention that its appeal doesn't rest on its ability to satirise American government. After opening its fourth season with a plot line parodying disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner, last week's featured the show's main character, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), facing an Obama-esque birther conspiracy. (She was rumoured to have been born not in the show's small town focal point of Pawnee, Indiana, but in the tony neighbouring burg of Eagleton.) And this week's episode, I'm told, contains an homage to the Bill of Rights in the form of a puppet show. I don't need my sitcoms to contain geeky references to American politics or history, but it helps!

And the show's government theme has inspired my favourite new Tumblr: Obama is the New Knope, which captions images of the President with quotes from the show. Highly recommended!

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about, those of you in the US can catch this gem on NBC at 8.30/7.30c. For those of us in Australia, unless we're willing to use, um, non-traditional means, Channel 7 is currently airing the show's third season at 11.10pm on Tuesday nights. For all the American media we get on our shores, some of the smartest and most innovative is irritatingly difficult to track down.)

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One last Get Out Of Jail Free card to play on the debt ceiling?

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

28 July 2011

Jack Balkin has a novel suggestion for what President Barack Obama can do if Congress doesn't pass a debt ceiling increase before the government runs out of funding. He presents it as a brief piece of fiction, complete (naturally) with Joe Biden jokes. Check it out.

An excerpt:

"That left one other possibility. We could use coin seigniorage."

"Senior what?" Reid exclaimed.

"Seigniorage. Sovereign governments like the United States can print their own money. We have a system of fiat currency and we've been off the gold standard for many years now. With fiat currency, you issue coins and simply assert that they have a certain value, which may have little to do with the value of the raw materials you use to make them. But as long as people believe that your money is worth something, the system works.

"The difference between the face value of the coin and the cost of the materials it takes to produce it is called seigniorage. So if you create a hundred dollar coin made mostly of copper and nickel, the seignorage is likely to be close to a hundred dollars. That's new monetary value pumped into the system."

Geithner continued: "Now it turns out that under federal law, there's a limit to how much paper money we can have in circulation at any time.

"However, there's no limit to the amount of coinage we can make. There are rules that limit what we can do with gold, silver, copper, and other metals.

I'd been wondering if, absent inflation fears, whether the Treasury had the authority to simply print their way out of the debt ceiling bind. According to Balkin's suggestion, they may not be able to print their way out, but they can mint their way out. The idea is that Treasury would issue a couple of platinum coins worth a trillion dollars each, which would be added to the government coffers, replenishing its funding without requiring further borrowing. Since there's a lot of slack in the economy, it would not result in hyperinflation. Even so, it's a radical proposal that is only preferable to the so-called "Constitutional option" in that its legality is a bit less contentious. Hopefully it won't be necessary.

A word of caution to Obama administration, however. I saw an episode of "The Simpsons" where they did something similar, though in that case it the currency in question was a trillion dollar note. Wealthy industrialist C. Montgomery Burns swiped the note and fled with it to Cuba. So, y'know: be sure to keep it out of the hands of cold-hearted billionaires.

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Welcome to the D.C.: This is how we do things in the District of Columbia

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

8 February 2011

I'm hugely excited about this news:

Earlier this week, ABC gave a thumbs-up to Georgetown, ordering a pilot for the Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage–produced hour about sexy young folks working behind the scenes in Washington, D.C. We immediately wondered if the show, penned by Remember Me writer Will Fetters, would be a sort of Gossip Girl on the Potomac. The answer: Maybe! Vulture has learned exclusively that the pilot for Georgetown will be directed by Mark Piznarski, who's sort of Schwartz and Savage's go-to guy for Very Important Projects.

For those of you who don't know why you should care, or think you should not: Josh Schwartz is one of the greatest creative minds in American television around right now. And where Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing") has done his best work of late in film and "Treme," David Simon's follow up to "The Wire" could not garner the latter's universal acclaim, Schwartz is a model of consistent creativity.

Schwartz made his name with "The O.C." the smart soap opera that Daniel Fienberg semi-seriously called "a time capsule glimpse of the second half of the second Bush Administration." Schwartz followed that up with "Chuck," a spy show that turned a concept of Max Smart-level silliness into an engaging comedy/action/drama. And, hardly least, he is one of the brains behind "Gossip Girl," another sharply lurid soap that subtly but consciously aspires to be a modern-day Age of Innocence.

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And I mean done!

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

21 December 2010

In my new quest to relate all events in America to Matt Groening cartoons, I'd like to commend the Senate for its actions this weekend. Thanks to the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the armed forces will soon cease discriminating against gay Americans, America will move just a bit closer to being a country where all men truly are created equal, and this joke from the Simpsons will no longer make any sense:

Skinner: Er, one question remains: how do I get out of the army?

Bart: No problemo. Just make a pass at your commanding officer!

Skinner: Done and done!

---

Related Posts: A federal judge orders the end of DADT, a handful of Senators scuttle DADT over selfish procedural issues. Yeah, this has been due for a while.

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Live Free or Don't

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

17 December 2010

If you're familiar with "Futurama," one of the more underrated comedies of modern times, you might remember the episode Brannigan, Begin Again, featuring the show's Captain Kirk-esque starship commander Zapp Brannigan leading an attack on the Neutral Planet. (It's a ridiculous plan because he's a ridiculous captain.) The Neutral Planet turns out to be a world of greyish beings whose motto is "Live Free or Don't," who issue "beige alerts," and, when faced with death, instruct one another to "tell my wife 'Hello.'"

Why do I bring up the Neutrals? Well, I think they've escaped the fictional 31st Century and are having a conference on 21st Century Earth. Only they're calling themselves No Labels, throwing a summit featuring luminaries like New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, and are making a determined pitch for the vacuous centre.

E.J. Dionne has their number:

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On moderation

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

9 November 2010

Bill Maher might be smug and obnoxious in this video, but he's also right.  His critique of Jon Stewart's Rally for Sanity cuts with razor-blade precision: "If you truly wanted to come down on the side of sanity and reason, you'd side with the sane and reasonable, and not try to pretend that the insanity is equally distributed in both parties." The whole thing is required viewing, but try this for a solid takeaway: "Two opposing sides don't necessarily have two compelling arguments."

Eric Harvey has it:

I’ll be the first one to say, along with probably most people reading this, that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are funnier than Bill Maher. Maher’s an old school, Borscht Belt/Vegas type yukster, his jokes about women are Cro-Magnon, his opinions on religion are borderline intolerant. Stewart and Colbert are much hipper, and therefore much funnier. But Maher just owns them here, eviscerating the Rally to Restore Sanity for buying into the invisible, rational middle model of political rhetoric that needs two equally extreme sides to exist.

Stewart's problem is that he conflates political moderation with rhetorical moderation, when in real life, there is little link between the two. Take a look at the spiel promoting the event, which was pitched as a "call-to-reasonableness":

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American zombieland.

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

1 September 2010

I'm interested in, though not entirely convinced by, Alyssa Rosenberg's theory that zombie movies are an expression of American yearning for a new frontier (see also here):

But [new AMC series "The Walking Dead" is] also part of a trend I'm seeing that I think is serious and significant, and that deserves further thought: American pop culture is increasingly giving us stories of depopulating cataclysms that leave only a few survivors alive. I think part of that tendency comes from the need for an American frontier. With the country filled up, the only way to explore ideas of manifest destiny, exploration, and the unsettled wild in an American context is to destroy the country's population and to force characters to survive, and start over. I think there's also a strain of thinking that our present course of life is unsustainable, and that disaster is inevitable.

Certainly the trailer for The Walking Dead supports this; featuring a literal sheriff riding an actual horse, under threat from hoards of inhuman attackers, it feels like a western, even though it's set in the South. But usually, zombie films seem more focused on the immediate aftermath; survival in the short term rather than the long term. The focus here is on a familiar area becoming alien, not a new wilderness. But I'm open to being convinced.

A more convincing proposition for a new American frontier is David Simon's suggestion of the inner city (clicking through will reveal spoilers for "The Wire"):

We did introduce him, and I had it in my mind that I wanted a moment like "The Shootist" or the buried moment in the gunfight at the end of "Wild Bunch." The character that was most in the Western archetype -- and George had a lot of fun with this -- was Omar. The inner city is now the Wild West, the new frontier in terms of American storytelling, it has been for several decades now. We played a lot of our Western film themes and archetypes through Omar's story. I always had that in my mind.

If this is true, perhaps fantasy apocalypses are a way for creative types to explore the frontier mentality without having to deal with the messy political terrain with which The Wire involved itself. Shootouts and survival struggles for the middle class?

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Comforting madness.

By Jonathan Bradley

8 August 2010

Moderate spoilers ahead, depending on how much of the show you've seen.

When the fourth season premiere of the AMC drama "Mad Men" went to air three weeks ago, the show seemed to shift from highly acclaimed TV series to genuine cultural phenomenon. The premiere was launched with a Times Square party. Banana Republic mimicked the show's style in its window displays and offered its customers the chance to win a role in the series. Leading man Jon Hamm's face seemed to crop up everywhere and his character is being touted as a model for modern masculinity. Sadie Stein at Jezebel argues that the show is the new "Sex and the City," observing that, "people talk about Mad Men who don't watch it. There's enough cultural saturation that we've come to feel a collective sense of ownership, whether someone's seen the show or not."

Last Sunday, the New York Times ran an article by Katie Roiphe arguing that the Mad Men appeal lies in its portrayal of moral abandon in contrast to modern stuffiness:

The phenomenal success of the show relies at least in part on the thrill of casual vice, on the glamour of spectacularly messy, self-destructive behavior to our relatively staid and enlightened times. As a culture we have moved in the direction of the gym, of the enriching, wholesome pursuit, of the embrace of responsibility, and the furthering of goals, and away from lounging around in the middle of the afternoon with a drink.

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Let Gillard be Poland.

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

2 August 2010

In Bartlet's image...

West Wing fans (we've got a few of them at the Centre) might be charmed by this post from Annabel Crabb in which she compares Julia Gillard's new desire to show Australia the real Julia Gillard with this scene from Aaron Sorkin's political drama. The staff of the show's fictional President Bartlet urges the first termer to gear up for re-election by reaffirming his core principles: "Let Bartlet be Bartlet."

Says Crabb: "After six weeks of Ms Gillard's prime ministership, after a repetitive feast of "moving forwards" and "more governing to do" and "a good government that lost its way", we have finally arrived at: "Let Gillard be Gillard"."

There's nothing wrong with a good "West Wing" reference, but I'm more fond of American politics in its non-fictional guise. And before Bartlet and Gillard, there was the Gipper.

"Let Reagan be Reagan" was a slogan used by the 40th president's conservative supporters to urge the administration to eschew compromise and enact stronger conservative policies. The earliest usage I can find of it in the Factiva database is a New York Times article from December 17, 1982, in which the reporter questions, "Will the budget for the fiscal year 1984 be one that, in the view of some, 'lets Reagan be Reagan?'" The sentence is written as if readers might already be expected to be familiar with the phrase. Another early usage in the Times, from January 21, 1983, reports on a Republican rally:

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D.C. half-smoke; get my U Street on

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

8 April 2010

Good Stuff Eatery. Conveniently, it's just a few blocks from the Capitol

Erin delivered this to my inbox the other day: news that Bravo's apparently beloved competitive cooking-themed TV show, "Top Chef," is to film its next season in Washington, D.C. That link is to a discussion a few foodie-type bloggers had about the exciting potential for episodes themed on local culinary experiences, and it namedropped more than a few of our favourite District of Columbia haunts. (Most are Obama-related: Good Stuff on SE Pennsylvania, which features the delicious Prez Obama burger! Obama's Rosslyn hangout Ray's Hell Burger!)

And, of course, Washington institution, Ben's Chili Bowl.

Obama's been to Ben's too, if you're keeping score. Photo: Washington Post

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A free born man of the USA

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

18 March 2010

Excuse me if I can't quite get worked up over the complaints of James Morrow (whose neighbours all enjoy a single-payer health care system) concerning the deem-and-pass procedure the Democrats appear to be deploying to effect their health care reform. I mean, here in America we're celebrating St. Patrick's Day, and I can figure few better ways of doing that than honoring one of the greatest fictional Irish-Americans of recent years, "The Wire"'s Jimmy McNulty. Here's his (spoiler) supposed wake, accompanied by the Pogues' "The Body of an American." Politics right now seems like it should only concern the day Americans from both sides of the ideological spectrum unite in their desire to be identified with a European nation, one with universal health care and strict prohibitions on abortion. Dear Bart Stupak... have you ever thought about emigrating?

But, if we must, let's examine a few of Morrow's arguments. Fortunately for him, his objections to deem-and-pass, or as it's more properly known, the "self-executing rule," have been examined [PDF] by the Library of Congress' non-partisan Congressional Research Service. Here's what they said in December of 2006. That is, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress :

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Mr. District Attorney, I'm not sure if they told you: I'm on TV every day...

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

15 March 2010

Let's be positive about this and say that NBC has an admirable respect for the principle of innocent-until-proven-guilty. Because that's the only reason I can think they may have for their casting on the current season of The Apprentice, which debuted this evening. I'll save you from speculating as to whether the above video is a fake: it's not. The line-up for this season's apprentice includes a pre-trial Rod Blagojevich. You know, the former Governor of Illinois who was caught on tape trying to sell a Senate seat, and whose lawyers are currently trying to convince Federal Court to put off his court date until November because they don't have his brand of shampoo in prison Democrats don't want to be testifying against one of their own while campaigning simply have so much paperwork.

But even if NBC is fine with helping Blago rehabilitate his image, the rest of us don't even need to fall back on a distaste for Donald Trump's bloviating to spend our Sunday evenings watching something else. (I tried The Lizzie McGuire Movie, then realised that no stand against government corruption could justify watching The Lizzie McGuire Movie.)

After the jump, the only brand of Blagojevich-related entertainment I feel comfortable endorsing: Spencer Ackerman's remix of Shawty Lo's "Dey Know," titled "Dey Know (Blago)":

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Barbie girls in a Mad Men world

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

11 March 2010

[Photo: NYT]

I know it's a little naive to complain that Barbie dolls reinforce traditonal stereotypes and etc., but I was a little disturbed by the announcement that the AMC show "Mad Men" is to have four of its characters immortalised in plastic toy form. And, sure, since these dolls are retailing at US$74.95 each, I'm imagining they're going to end up on collecters' shelves rather than in little girls' bedrooms, but nonetheless, it seems part of the continued cultural conversion of Mad Men from an outlet for pointed commentary to one of chic nostalgia.

Like I said a few months back:

[T]he cutting social commentary of "Mad Men" the TV series ... has no qualms about highlighting the deeply ingrained power lines of early '60s society - whites over blacks, men over women, [unlike] the stylish nostalgia of "Mad Men" the cultural phenomenon. If you get invited to a Mad Men party, you're not going to expect sexual harassment and pregnant women smoking; you're going to find stylish clothes, classy cocktails, and hot retro tunes. "Mad Men" in the public consciousness has come to represent exactly the kind of rose-coloured fantasy world the television series was intent on dismantling.

The response to news of the new toy seems to have been quite positive; New York Magazine's Vulture blog, for instance, enthused, "Okay, the New Mad Men Barbies Look Kind of Cool," while noting that, "if you want them to drink or smoke you'll have to supply your own tiny vice objects, because these Barbies are clean living." I'd add that if you wanted a critique of gender relations in the American workplace, you'll have to supply your own discrimination.

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The American Television Decade

By http://ussc.edu.au/people/erin-riley in Washington DC

4 January 2010

I've been thinking a lot, as the decade ends, about things that have changed since 2000. In particular, I've been thinking a lot about changes in American culture.  Sure, there are the really big things one cannot ignore, but there's a cultural change I just can't seem to get past: the changes in American TV over the last decade.  After reading Emily Nussbaum's wonderful piece titled When TV Became Art, the first decade of the 21st century is, in my mind, the American television decade.

The 2000s were the golden era of television.  Television itself fundamentally changed over the decade.  The widespread adoption of the DVD player meant television programs could be produced in a way that was designed to be re-watched.  It also assured a new source of revenue. Viewers could catch up on missed episodes online.  And new sources of revenue meant large audiences were no longer necessary in order for a television program to be viable.  Far from destroying television as some predicted, the fragmentation of audiences was a boon for creative television production.

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