;)
The Commentariat -- Nov. 21, 2012
When events unfolded at CIA last week, my wife called me immediately. She said, 'I hope the president doesn't make you take that job again.' I said, 'No, been there; done that.' -- Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, former CIA Director
Paul Krugman Explains American Politics to Shut-ins: "... on economic issues the modern Democratic party is what we would once have considered 'centrist', or even center-right.... Today's Republican party is an alliance between the plutocrats and the preachers, plus some opportunists along for the ride.... Anyone who imagines that there is any real soul-searching going on is deluding himself or herself."
Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "President Obama's decision to send his top diplomat on an emergency Middle East peacemaking mission Tuesday marked an administration shift to a more activist role in the region's affairs and offered clues to how he may use the political elbow room afforded by a second term. The move could pay dividends quickly if Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton helps arrange an end to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
CW: Denise Velez of Daily Kos picks up my column on Maureen Dowd's hit job on Ambassador Susan Rice, et al. Velez includes some interesting background on Rice, too. ...
... Testimonials. Karen Gleuck of Politico: white Republican men who have attacked Susan Rice for "incompetence" say they aren't racists. Okay, that settles that.
Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The Obama administration took a big step on Tuesday to carry out the new by defining 'essential health benefits' that must be offered to most Americans and by allowing employers to offer much bigger financial rewards to employees who quit smoking or adopt other healthy behaviors."
Matt Yglesias of Slate: "The dishonesty with which the 'Fix The Debt' campaign is dealing with the fiscal cliff is really breathtaking." CW: Fix the Debt seems to be an Erskine Bowles-Alan Simpson concoction so you know it's mm-mmm good. Update: apparently it's a project of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a buncha Very Serious Deficit Hawks. As Dave S. says in today's comments, they get some funding from the Richest Deficit Hawk of Them All Pete Peterson.
New York Times Editors: "In a persuasive ruling last week, a majority of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down Michigan's ban on race-conscious affirmative action policies. The ban violated the United States Constitution's equal protection clause by placing an unfair burden on racial minorities seeking to change those policies."
Voter Suppression
Steve Benen: "Why would Wisconsin's governor [Scott Walker {RTP}] and leading state GOP lawmakers want to scale back a [same-day voter registration] system that's worked so well? According to Walker, the state has 'poll workers who are wonderful volunteers, who work 13-hour days and who in most cases are retirees." He added, 'It's difficult for them to handle the volume of people who come at the last minute. It'd be much better if registration was done in advance of election day. It'd be easier for our clerks to handle that.' Yes, the governor of Wisconsin wants to scrap same-day registration because he feels bad for county clerks and elderly volunteers. Riiiiiight. I'm sure that's the only reason Walker, who also pushed a destructive voter-ID scheme that was blocked by the courts, supports this change." CW: so here's the (fake) rationale: we don't have enough able-bodied workers to allow everybody to vote. If the Republican legislature passes this law, Walker's statement sounds like a good basis for a lawsuit against it. I expect a judge would find "We're too tired to let everybody vote" an amusing defense.
Rachel Maddow: Republicans are "competing against our democracy":
New York Times Editors: "In a spontaneous aside [during his November 7 victory speech] -- 'by the way, we have to fix that' -- the president acknowledged the unnecessary hardship of casting a vote in the United States and established a goal that he now has an obligation to address." Congress & the President can fix that. The Times editors suggest legislation AND a Constitutional Amendment. CW: what they don't mention -- and they should have -- is a fix to the Federal Elections Commission; it's broke.
Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "A union-backed group of Wal-Mart workers, OUR Walmart, said on Tuesday that it had filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, asserting that Wal-Mart was making illegal threats to deter its employees from participating in protests scheduled for Black Friday."
Michael Lysiak, et al., of the New York Daily News: "The notes Paula Broadwell sent to Jill Kelley were far more sinister than previously reported and seemed like the rantings of someone 'clearly unhinged,' a close friend of Kelley told The News Monday." CW Note: this is a single-source report that relies on an assertion by an anonymous friend of Jill Kelley's who said Kelley read her the Broadwell e-mails over the phone. I leave it to you to decide what it's worth. I'm running with it because a number of major news outlets picked up the story. ...
... Whatever the nature of the Broadwell emails that set in motion the public airing of the Petraeus Affair, they key players have created a cottage industry for high-powered lawyers & P.R. consultants, Scott Shane of the New York Times reports. ...
... "AND," as Maureen Dowd writes, "no doubt, pave the way for future book deals, cushy jobs and TV apologias in honeyed light with Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters." Meanwhile, Dowd recommends the parties read Jane Austen: "'Pride and Prejudice' is full of warnings about the dangers of young ladies with exuberant, flirtatious, 'unguarded and imprudent' manners visiting military regiments and preening in 'all the glories of the camp.' Such folly and vanity, the ever wise Elizabeth Bennet cautioned, can lead to censure and disgrace."
Pam Benson of CNN: "The intelligence community -- not the White House, State Department or Justice Department -- was responsible for the substantive changes made to the talking points distributed for government officials who spoke publicly about the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, the spokesman for the director of national intelligence said Monday."
AP: "Gen. John Allen has returned to Kabul to resume his e-mailing duties as the top U.S. and NATO commander of the war in Afghanistan, more than a week after the Pentagon announced it is investigating potentially 'inappropriate' correspondence between the four-star general and a woman linked to the David Petraeus sex scandal."
Right Wing World
Dave Weigel of Slate: the Republican voter fraud meme is upon us. The guy who did the Unscewed Polls site before the election, which perpetually claimed Romney was winning everyplace, has moved on to "proving" voter fraud. He even has a map! CW: Did you know that Obama only won Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia & Florida because of voter fraud? You can tell because Screw-Loose there colored those states in black. Great color choice! ...
... Update: Rachel Maddow has more on Barack O'Fraudo & other conservatives who are telling themselves things to make themselves feel good:
AND here's Mr. Forty 7. Percent, filling his own gas tank this past weekend. Obviously, he's having a bad hair day. His usually-crisp shirt and pants are rumpled. He looks like either (a) a regular American tending to chores, or (b) the villain in a slash movie eying his next victim. Mitt Romney -- the 47 Percent Candidate. Markos Moulitsas: Some states are still counting votes. "President Barack Obama already has a higher popular vote margin than George W. Bush had in 2004. While Bush's margin over John Kerry was a sliver over 3 million, the margin in 2012 now exceeds 4 million votes.... If Romney hits 47.49 percent [as is likely], his totals will round down to 47 percent. It doesn't matter of course, but it would be delicious irony to see him finish the election at that very famous 47 percent mark." ...
... Joshua Holland of AlterNet is not buying the Clueless Romney story: "It's far more likely that the campaign was telling these fat-cats that Romney had a great chance of pulling out a win if they'd just dig a bit deeper. They showed their supporters their unskewed internal polling and assured them that their money wouldn't go to waste." CW: So while Mitt was suckering the electorate with his secret plan to get them good jobs, he was suckering the fat cats with his secret plan to win the election. Mitt was never anything more than a con-man in a Mormon suit. Now he's pumping gas, appropriately enough.
Every day is Anti-Science Day in Right Wing World. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs: "... today we have a real howler of an anti-rational manifesto, courtesy of CNN contributor Erick Erickson. I have to give credit where it's due: Erickson does not try to dodge the issue, like Marco Rubio did. He's anti-science and extremely proud of it, and he wants the world to know." ...
... Okay, make that Every Day Is Anti-Science Day in Politics. CW: I don't agree with Daniel Engber's premise that believing in magic is A-okay because you can do algorithms while still believing in virgin birth or something, but it turns out Marco there was copying from Senator Barack Obama's playbook. ...
... Dear 46 Per of Americans Who Are Creationists: yes, evolution is a scientific "theory" -- as is every scientific assertion -- and it gets tweaked from time-to-time as scientists examine new evidence or re-think existing data. Creationism is a fairy tale. The ancient religions, like Judaism, developed stories to explain stuff that was mysterious to people then but is not so mysterious now. The ancients made up gods, & they made up what the gods could do. Jewish mythology is no more or less accurate than Greek or Egyptian mythology. There are two different & conflicting early Jewish myths about the creation of humankind, and they both appear in the first chapters of your infallible Bible. Trick Question: Which infallible chapter of Genesis is a lie: Chapter 1 or Chapter 2? -- Constant Weader
News Ledes
New York Times: "The cease-fire brokered between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday was the official unveiling of [an] unlikely new geopolitical partnership [between President Obama & Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi], one with bracing potential if not a fair measure of risk for both men. After a rocky start to their relationship, Mr. Obama has decided to invest heavily in the leader whose election caused concern because of his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, seeing in him an intermediary who might help make progress in the Middle East beyond the current crisis in Gaza."
Reuters: "U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, broke her silence on Wednesday and defended her remarks on a September attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to the North African nation."
New York Times: "Newly released documents add vivid detail to the emerging portrait of the Food and Drug Administration's ineffective and halting efforts to regulate a Massachusetts company implicated in a national meningitis outbreak that has sickened nearly 500 people and killed 34."
Politico: "Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is resigning his seat in Congress after a protracted absence due to what he described as mental health issues. The Illinois Democrat, who was elected in 1995, has sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) saying he will resign, an aide to Boehner said. Jackson Jr.'s office hasn't responded to requests for comment." ...
... Update: New York Times story here.
NBC News: "The Labor Department reported that new jobless claims fell a seasonally-adjusted 41,000 to 410,000. The four-week moving average, which smooths out some of the wrinkles in the data, rose 9,500 to 396,250.... [Hurricane Sandy] has elevated the claims data."
New York Times: "Israeli airstrikes overnight continued into Wednesday morning, hitting government buildings, the smuggling tunnels under the southern Rafah border crossing, and a bridge on the beach road that is one of three linking Gaza City to the central area of the strip. The Hamas healthy ministry said the Palestinian death toll stood at 140 at noon, with 1,100 injured. At least a third of those killed are believed to have been militants." ...
... ** UPDATE. New Lede: "Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire on Wednesday after eight days of lethal fighting over the Gaza Strip, the United States and Egypt said after intensive negotiations in Cairo. The cease-fire, which is to take effect at 9 p.m. local time (2 p.m. E.S.T.), was formally announced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr of Egypt at a news conference [in Cairo].
... Al Jazeera: "At least seventeen casualties have been reported as a bus exploded in Tel Aviv a block away from the Israeli defence ministry. Israeli police are calling the explosion on Wednesday a "terrorist attack," and have said that an unidentified package was left in the bus."
Al Jazeera: "A large blast that was most likely a suicide bomb attack ripped through the heavily barricaded diplomatic area of the Afghan capital Kabul, a police official said, and there were an unknown number of casualties. At least two people were killed along with two suicide bombers, two people were also injured. The guards fired on the assailants, killing them, but not before one of the vests exploded...."
AP: "Three Southern California men charged this week with plotting to kill Americans and bomb U.S. military bases overseas spent months preparing for a trip to Afghanistan where, authorities say, they hoped to join the Taliban and eventually graduate to the ranks of al-Qaida."
AP: "San Francisco lawmakers disappointed committed nudists Tuesday by narrowly approving a ban on public nakedness despite concerns the measure would undermine the city's reputation as a sanctuary for free expression. The Board of Supervisors voted 6-5 in favor of a public safety ordinance that prohibits exposed genitals in most public places, including streets, sidewalks and public transit. The law still must pass a final vote and secure Mayor Edwin Lee's signature to take effect early next year."
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Reader Comments (19)
Fix the Debt is just another Pete Petersen organization dedicated to make sure SS and medicare are gutted.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11/why-fix-the-debt-is-trying-to-scare-you.html
Marie, the problem as I am sure you already know is that the creationists don't read your comments. I bought a book a few years ago called 'Why Intelligent Design Fails'. After getting through about half I stopped. First of course there was nothing new for me. But I also realized the book was a waste of paper. The only people who would read it already new the answer.
I have always believed (just a belief since I have no evidence) that the big problem is that a large chunk of the 'true believers' are not quite sure. So they are petrified of anything that might mean there entire mind is wrong.
@ Zee, from yesterday's thread:
I have small government, don't bother me, libertarian urges myself and suspect growing up in a small, what was then relatively remote, community of farmers and loggers has something to do with that bent toward simplicity. But that was in a nation of half of today's population and communication technology was limited to party line telephones, radios and first generation black and white TVs.
Now far more of us live cheek by jowl and both government and the nation's legions of salesmen know everything there is to know about us. In that context, with the doubling of the population and the profound changes in the ways we live, I fear small government just ain't gonna happen. More people, in all ways less isolated, means more rules.
It bothers me, too, but right now I'm worried far more by international corporations and their handmaiden organizations like the WTO that have more power than national governments and are currently negotiating in secret (see the Trans-Pacific Partnership) to get more. To control corporate reach, at least, government need to get larger. As nations and as citizens of those nations we are already losing our sovereignty to business entities not just too big to fail, but too big to control.
@Akhilleus: I thought yesterday's contrast of two Presidents and two administrations brilliant. In a few short words, you made the assumptions motivating the two sets of behaviors abundantly clear. Thanks.
Somebody still has an organization...I just finished filling out a detailed survey from the Obama campaign. Some backward looking questions about the campaign experience, but mostly forward looking about issues and specific willingness to work on future campaigns. I didn't work on Obama's campaign, did local stuff - gave money. So I guess I got the survey because I donated. I was heartened to see organizing around 2014, which I believe will be an equally critical election. I'm taking up Kate's example. Remember voter suppression.
Ewwww..... I'm so glad the Lord SB pumping gas pix did not have a scratch and sniff feature.
I don't often go to the Huffington Post but today did looking for a particular video and what to my wandering eyes did appear but a headline about Groover losing his groove–––some of his minions are backtracking on their no raise tax pledge–– and below that a story about a Lisa Biron an anti-Gay Christian lawyer charged with child pornography. Two icky people getting their just desserts just in time for Thanksgiving. (Groover is a despicable little man with an arrogance and asininity that I fervently hope will one day be thoroughly squashed). I tried to avert my eyes from the right side with headlines like: "Ke$ha wears Bra Made of Human Teeth," but it's hard when they flash their freakiness so well.
The video I was seeking is the John Stewart/ Bill O'Reilly contretemps over John's joshing of Bill's nostalgic mention of the "Leave it to Beaver" sitcom during the fifties saying that the traditional values/families are in the past and oh, my god, look what we have now! O'Reilly slams John –-calling him obtuse––but what Bill doesn't understand or fails to grasp is that there was never a "Leave it to Beaver" family ever! Those family sitcoms––and they were essentially alike–– portrayed an unreality that O'Reilly seems to think existed. There were so many little guys like Beaver that watched him being punished for some minor infraction and being sent upstairs to his room. Wow, those kids might have thought, their own punishments pretty severe, and only wished they had had an upstairs room to go to, let alone a room of their own.
Re: Palatine problems: Since I am simple I have never tried to link any other info to Rechex but this was sent to me and I thought if others could view it they might gain information that is not being presented by MSM
/do/redirect?url=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.vice.com%252Fvice-news%252Frenegade-jewish-settlers-part-1%253Futm_source%253Dtaboola
To answer Marie's trick question: Given that both chapters are lovely lies I'd guess that chapter one's claiming "So god created man in his OWN image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (this god was evidently a two in one entity), but in Chapter two he must have forgotten that he already had created a male and female because here it's the seventh day and god is all pooped out so takes a rest. Suddenly he says, damn! I have nobody to till those fine fields I just created so from a mist that arises from the earth god formed a man from the dust who looked around, dusted himself off, and immediately put on his work clothes and started planting trees. But soon the man got weary and lonely and god thought, it's not good for this man to be alone, who the heck is going to soothe him at the end of his day so one night when, and now suddenly we have the man's name––Adam–-when Adam is asleep god removes one of his ribs and creates a WOman who he hasn't named as yet, but he tells us they are both naked–– and Adam having removed his dusty work duds wakes to find someone beside him looking mighty appealing and the rest is history as god always reminds us.
But I'm probably wrong in my answer.
On Every Day is Anti-Science Day in Politics:
Sent this a few months back to Analog, a science fiction and fact magazine, to which I still subscribe (mostly out of nostalgia) but seldom read. The editorial, though, on Tennessee's recent "academic freedom" legislation caught my eye. At the time I wrote the following, which when I re-read it in print this AM struck me as relevant to both my own contradictory libertarian urges--the ones that don't like being told what to do or think but run into reality's complexity at every turn--and to the Right's dangerous incarnation as the ignorant bull still happily rampaging in the shop of science.
In part that letter said in part:
"Surely the motive behind Tennessee's new academic "freedom" law is not what it claims. In fact, True Believers of both religious and political persuasions, often themselves indistinguishable, have long loved to hoist those liberal scientists, who approach the Universe with an open, questioning mind, on their own petard: that of free inquiry. If inquiry is truly free they say, my opinion should receive the same airing as yours....and once said, their advantage is immediate. It's very hard for the open- and fair-minded to say "no," when "freedom" is remotely involved.
In the urge to maintain a "fair" democracy, though, where everyone has a right to his opinion, nature's natural hierarchy is often shunted aside. Some statements are simply more true than others because they better fit the observable evidence, and it is that uncomfortable fact that is both the bedrock of science and the cause of the tension between it and True Belief.
As you point out, the Believers have lately done an impressive job of colonizing science's territory. Using scientific-sounding language to disguise their true intent, they pass themselves off as scientists, while promulgating the most anti-scientific of views. In our democracy, they are free to do so, but genuine science and scientists , constrained by the observable evidence, are not equally free to take them seriously.
In matters of freedom, it's always a question of whose freedom is at stake to do what. Often your freedom is my loss. If you are "free" to pretend to be a scientist in my child's classroom, my child's education is being shortchanged. If truth were truly our mutual intent, you should not be "free" to do that.
Maybe a thought experiment is in order: Now that Tennessee's new law in on the books, as a teacher in that state, could I call on the same academic "freedom" to point out where Karl Marx was obviously and observably correct (economics and sociology are not simply matters of opinion) as I could to deny or undermine the evidence underlying evolution and climate science?
I think we know the answer."
But I admit I don't have the answer to the deeper problem, that of finding the proper balance between individual freedom of thought any guarantee of freedom from harm. Seems that promulgating obviously untrue things, let's call them anti-scientific, is often harmful to others, and while scorn may be one proper response to idiocy, it's likely not enough.
Ken,
The anti-rationalists on the right are very clever at trying to take advantage of a sense of fairness on the part of many open-minded consumers in the marketplace of ideas, but there's an essential problem with their plan.
Part of the problem with the subterfuge surrounding science-y sounding promulgations on the right and the attempt to force their decidedly anti-scientific beliefs onto the same page as fact-based science stems from a basic misunderstanding of language (which itself stems from, and sometimes succeeds through a deficit of critical thinking skills).
First, the formulation opinion=fact has a nil truth value, as a logician might say. Trying to shoehorn opinions about, say, the age of the solar system onto the same page as fact based findings about same is a risible proposition at best, but one that succeeds much more often than it should because too many people are unable to detect the ruse.
As a sidebar, isn't interesting to recall the knee slapping on the right that accompanied the Rat's pre-fabbed zinger about the president having the right to his own opinion but not his own facts.
The same, of course, applies to all of these fundamentalist-approved declarations about Adam and Eve riding to the 7-11 on the back of a stegosaurus to purchase an apple from Mr. Snake. I hope it was a red delicious. It would be a shame to send humanity packing from the ultra fun Garden of Eden (in Missouri, was it?) for some sucky little worm-eaten crab apple.
But I digress.
There are multiple benefits for the right in discombobulating the educational system and throwing religious stones in the path to factual knowledge (although at one time--the freaking DARK AGES--religion and science co-existed quite peacefully, each flourishing on its own merits and usefulness as a resource for human life). Creating its own alternative universe of belief and opinion and demanding that it be considered just as valid as the factual universe many of the rest of us inhabit not only causes confusion for students, it deprives them of the ability to learn how to think critically and clearly, a HUGE plus for the right.
A poorly educated, confused electorate is just what Mr. Snake ordered for Republicans who see their electoral chances dimming each day.
Which is why, as Roger Henry reminded us yesterday, we cannot congratulate ourselves and rest now that the election is over. The begrudgers are out there running around with their noses to the ground sniffing up newer and more nefarious ways to subvert democracy. That ain't no opinion. That's a fact.
As James Thurber used to say, "You could look it up."
PD,
Poor Billy, wishing he could go back to those wistful days or yore when Mr. Cleaver went to work (not quite sure what the hell he did. Wouldn't it have been great if he was directing porn in some dank motel downtown?) with his briefcase, Mrs. Cleaver stayed home washing the kitchen floor while wearing pearls, and the boys got into healthy sorts of mischief (no smoking crack in the garage, no sirree bob). Days when everyone voted Republican, perverts weren't demanding that they be allowed to actually MARRY each other, pesky women's libbers were still a decade from burning bras (just not ones made out of human teeth), and blah people asked permission from Billy's dad before being allowed to walk through the Beaver's neighborhood. Hispanics didn't even exist except as extras on Zorro.
Ah the good old days. Too bad they were FICTIONAL! What's with these people? Wasn't too long ago that addict and right-wing fiction lover Rushbo Limbaugh was complaining that people weren't living life as laid out by the gospel according to Ozzie and Harriet. Two more characters of FICTION.
But as we all know, Republicans simply cannot stand life in the real world so they crave a fictional existence that never has and never will exist.
The biggest problem for the rest of us is that the made up worlds they try to drag everyone into come from horror fiction.
This just in (from right-wing fantasy land):
"Life on food stamps! Wonderful!"
According to Fox personality, Andrea Tantaros, life on food stamps would be so great. She could get her weight down and look FAB on TV!
Ooooooh. How cool would that be?
I guess just one more way those lucky duckies have it all over the rest of us. The food stamp diet.
Lucky bastards.
These fucking people. WHERE do they come from????
@Akhilleus--Their parents. (-:
Re sitcoms of old, they were idealized versions of reality but--more often than not--reality, still. After all, all sitcoms are idealizations of reality, but if their basic details were totally out of sync with audience reality, they wouldn't work. (Ditto for soaps, which more than anything else are massive exaggerations of real life.) For instance, I have it on good authority that average people actually dressed up all the time in our pop past--our culture of informal wear is a pretty recent thing. In the early '50s, some older folk even dressed up to watch TV (perhaps thinking that, if they could see the people on the screen, those screen people could see us). Not that you don't already know these things, but just to make the point that pop fashions change faster than anything. Details that seem too silly to be true
arewere often silly but true. Everyday details of our day will soon seem like the stuff of science fiction, whether we want to believe that or not. Because our modern media re-re-re-re-packages everything, vulture-style, as long as it can squeeze a profit out of it, we have a false notion of how long things stay cool. Answer: not very. The pop culture of my youth is "retro" as we speak, and "retro" is cool only in the ironic sense.I think I set some record for not making a paragraph break....
We forget that Beaver was actually quite innovative for its time. It eschewed burlesque and goofy behavior for dramas based on the smaller, most common details of actual life--contrast that with I Love Lucy. Naturally, fifty years later, it's pretty stilted, but that's partly because the dramatic conventions have aged so much (think Twilight Zone, which looks like a high school play these days). I won't resort to the obvious "Don't be too hard on the Beaver" here, but we really shouldn't be so hostile to a show that was actually quite innovative, and which has a lot to teach the shit... er, sitcoms of today, which mostly feature people walking into rooms, saying ridiculous things, and then exiting. First Norman Lear, then cable were responsible for returning sitcoms to their formless vaudeville and radio roots, imo. In fact, TCM showed a circa-1930 "satire" last night which was as dramatically unmotivated and divorced from real life as, say, Seinfeld.
Nothing's new, including our conceit that anything is. (Have I previously warned that I'm a pop culture person?)
Sorry for repeating my "idealization of reality" line. An editing error on my part. (Someday, editing errors will seem like science fiction.)
Akhilleus: the sad and weird tale of Ozzie and Harriet is that they were an actual family acting as an actual family. I remember reading about a writer who was doing a story about them for Time magazine ––a Greek guy who discovered that their TV house was exactly like their real house and when he visited their REAL house he was astonished that there wasn't an odor. In the house he grew up in there were always cooking odors, because his mother actually cooked––a lot. Ricky suffered the most from having to cow-tow to "DAD" who demanded his boys tow the line at all times. He became a rock star of sorts, but later got into drugs and lost his way––could we say because he was a product of a dysfunctional family?
Raul,
I appreciate the idea that sitcoms appropriate some connection with reality but the idealization of that reality effects a serious disconnect with a wide swath of viewers, or potential viewers.
After all, the success of sitcoms is often determined not by a quality of verisimilitude as much as an ablative association with reality which substitutes a desired reality for an actual one.
The innovations of Leave it to Beaver, as interesting as they are, are more connected with a different use of narrative features. I would suggest that other narrative ideations of the fifties and early sixties, such as films like Blackboard Jungle are far more expressive of the era than LITB or My Three Sons.
And I'm not being hard on LITB, a show I loved as a kid, as much as its appropriation by those, like Bill O'Reilly, who adhere to it for its signification what they believe is a realistic portrayal of life in America at that time.
Were I constructing a hierarchy of popular narrative structures, I would approach LITB much differently.
But thanks for pointing that out.
My point has more to do with that fact that only a small number of Americans at that time could have assigned a significant accuracy value to shows like that.
@Akhilleus, how so? In the Beaver era (1957-1963-ish), nuclear families were quite common, with stay-home moms, weekday-working fathers, kids with paper routes, etc. I realize that, by today's pop standards, all things "normal" are false (or written off as a right-wing construct) but I don't know that we have any reason to consider LITB something right-wing, simply because O'Reilly is stuck in a fantasy post-war past. We let the right appropriate way too much. It's almost as if, they touch it, we recoil. We need to own more of our own culture. I do tend to approach popular art as art and not political statement.
Beaver showed two loving, patient parents learning as much from their children as vice versa. It helped lay the foundation for the best in children's TV, including the completely non-right-wing Mr. Rogers. I don't view it as remotely Fox-like, and O'Reilly can suck eggs. I see no point in judging a milestone of sitcom quality by the fact that uber-right imbeciles like it. That's their problem, not its. Beaver celebrated the family; the right makes war against it.
"After all, the success of sitcoms is often determined not by a quality of verisimilitude as much as an ablative association with reality which substitutes a desired reality for an actual one."
Then why are sitcoms like Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet built around everyday-life situations? Where's the escape? Beaver gets a paper route, the Nelsons argue over who's going to take out the garbage, etc. Average people love seeing themselves reflected in media--that's why there are so many songs about dating, driving, working, dancing, etc.
Blackboard Jungle and Beaver are apples and oranges. One is an exploitation picture with serious pretensions, while the other is a weekly half-hour sitcom. The notion that inner-city delinquency is more realistic/reflective/etc. of its time than everyday life is a notion I don't subscribe to. You know, Elvis "authentic" and Lawrence Welk false. And, true, Elvis made tons more money than any of Lawrence's gang.
Marie et all: This is tooo wonderful! It is from a commenter's girlfriend from Pierce's blog on Joe Scarborough's "apology".
Jake Freppel · Top Commenter · Napoleon, Ohio
I can't take credit for this, as it came from my girlfriend -
"Nate Silver is my statistician; I shall not fret.
He maketh me to lie down in blue states:
He leadeth me beside the bicoastal urban elites.
He restoreth my faith in the electoral college:
He leadeth me in the path of accuracy for his name brand’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of Diebold,
I will fear no recounts: For he is with me;.
His blog and his stats, they comfort me.
He preparest a table of odds before me in the presence of partisan hacks;.
He filleth my head with possible outcomes; My brain bloweth up.
Surely middle class tax relief and affordable health care shall follow me all the days of my life,
and Obama will dwell in the House of White for the next four years."
(God. I hope this is legal.)
Actually, Women could stay in the home and a man's wages would support a family until the mid '70s. Somehow or other Reagan's trickle down didn't reach American workers and the ladies went to work to maintain the middle class life.
Things have been bumpy ever since and the general trend for American workers has been down.
There is nothing on the political horizon to change this trend. We will refinance the American worker or we will be destroyed by our damaged population. At some point workers will realize that Americans lead lives inferior to most citizens of the civilized European Countries .
@Haley Simon. The author appears to be Abraham Penrose. Normally, I would not republish his work without his permission, but this piece is going around & deservedly so. I've written to him to ask him if he wants me to take it down. If he does, it goes. It is pretty terrific, isn't it?
Marie