MSNBC has exactly two prominent liberal commentators, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. We can pare that down to one because Matthews is usually unwatchable and isn’t really that liberal anyway. (He did vote for Bush in 2000.) So you have a network’s reputation being made off of one smart-assed commentator — full disclosure, I do like Olbermann most of the time — who makes most of his publicity off of YouTube replays. Nor do I see how David Gregory, Tim Russert and Andrea Mitchell count as partisan in any way when compared with the likes of Brit Hume and Shephard Smith.
But, let’s assume MSNBC is slanting to the left. McCain and Clinton spokespeople have to rail against any loud voice that ostensibly opposes them, but I wish those kind of complaints–and the ones against Fox News–were recognized more often for what they are: empty gestures ignoring the underlying reality that these networks exist because there’s a market for the slant they’re selling. Protest the viewing public that keeps your favorite target network going, and then you’re on the right track.
The media is a special business because of the effect it has on society, but it is still a business where resources flow to any open opportunity. In NBC / GE’s case, that was for a mildly liberal network that’s happy to scrap with conservative rivals. There’s thus little point in being mad at them for slanting. I think it’s digusting and hilarious that KFC has found a market for the Famous Bowl, but getting mad at KFC for following the dollars is the wrong way to go. They aren’t a 1950s cigarette company keeping a lid on the fact that fatty food is bad for you–we as a nation are clearly aware of it, but plenty of us still clamor for gravy with cheese.
TV is no different. It’s a market, and getting your news from TV is a bad decision in the first place. (Nearly every time “the media” catches flak for being too dumb, it’s really the televised media, but that’s for another post.) So get pissed all you want at MSNBC, McCain and Clinton staffers, but it’s not going to stop the gravy-and-cheese train.
We’re up in the new place after our three-leg, two-vehicle, 921-mile journey out to Illinois. Things are mostly unpacked, but more than anything I’m glad the moving part is over.
I managed just fine with the U-Haul truck. The testosterone highlight of the trip for me was when one of the movers asked me, “Who backed that [truck] in? You? Nice job,” when looking at the narrow alley behind our building. (That was without any guidance, thank you. I am pure steel.) About an hour later another of the tenants had to move her car out of the garage, requiring me to move the truck. I drove it down an alley nearby, thinking I could just drive straight through, but instead spent ten minutes turning the thing Austin-Powers style around a corner before I got out. Thus ended my truck-driving high.
While I now feel good about my own Teamster skills, I don’t get how U-Haul can rent bigger trucks than that one to the general public. A 26-foot moving van? A dude was driving one this weekend through Lakeview — he took a corner too widely, almost hit a bus, then had to back up in the middle of a six-way intersection. I thought cool over-one’s-head-on-the-road stuff like that is only supposed to happen in Third-World countries and New York City’s Chinatown-bus system.
Overall it was an unusually smooth move. The only things that broke were a cat-food container that fell out while I was unloading some extra boxes and a one-inch refrigerator magnet. I’m a little freaked out by how little went wrong. Apparently my payback has been the twogames in Detroit. The less said about those, the better.
What I’ll Miss Least: The transient nature of the city–at least the whitey part of the city. (NW, plus Capitol Hill SE and NE where we live.) I can’t shake the feeling that most people are here just to soon go somewhere else, and thus it’s harder to feel settled here than it has been in other mobile, creative neighborhoods of cities where I’ve lived. With NYC abuzz 24-7, settled was a relative term, but at least it makes everyone feel like one of the bees in the hive.
First runner up: The summer heat and humidity. Like swimming without a pool!
Also placed: Our old-ass apartment with its lack of air circulation and power outlets; confusing and poorly labeled road system; not enough going-out neighborhoods and the tiny size of the ones that exist; Metro delays, large areas of the city unserved by Metro trains and the lack of conductors who don’t pronounce “Judiciary Square” as “Ju-dish-u-ary”.
What I’ll Miss Most: Being in the political heart of the U.S. and everything that comes with it. In no other town in the U.S. can you to walk up to a random person in a bar and find out they work as a State Department liaison to Pakistan, or as an assistant for Ted Kennedy, or as a journalist working on an in-depth book about the failure of the Bush presidency. (And there’s never a shortage of the latter.) With the government comes the media swarm in which I work and the lobbyists, consultants and hangers-on that are part of how the country runs. Most people would probably find this group to be disgusting, and it often is. But if you want to be a part of the national conversation at the top level, this is where to bring the microphone.
First runner up: The great places to do some roadwork. My default running spot was the National Mall and surrounding area, and that was just as cool as it sounds.
Also placed: The cherry milkshake from Ben’s Chili Bowl; hot female Hill staffers walking around my hood; Eastern Market; the beautiful neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park; the fact that while it was still old-ass (see above), you could walk out the door of our building and see the Capitol dome and the Supreme Court; being only four hours from Pittsburgh; the fish-taco combo at California Tortilla; cherry blossoms and the other spring blooms; free museums.
Wish us luck on the move tomorrow; nothing cheers the soul quite like loading, driving 900 miles and unloading a UHaul 17-foot truck full of all your earthly goods.
I didn’t think this one would be back again as a campaign issue, but it seems that it will be.
There are a few differences this time around. First, if campaigning were a video game, the G.O.P. already used the one-time, battleground-state-gay-marriage-ballot supermove to defeat the 2004 Democrats, leaving them without the ability to use it again. You can’t write the same amendment to a state constitution twice, so that’s out of the question in important electoral states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri and Kentucky It thus can’t be used to quite the same right-wing-voter motivation effect.
Second, Barack Obama doesn’t even support gay marriage. I had no idea that this was the case until I read it tonight. Liberal groups are apparently so excited that a liberal has a decent shot at the presidency that they have swept this normally liberal-upsetting factoid under the rug. (How mature of my fellow bleeding hearts to accept political nuance for a change.) Though Obama has an otherwise pro-gay-rights voting record, he is on the record against gay marriage. So it’s not really something that can be used against him the same way it could against John Kerry, who was more vague on everything.
I do, however, say that even as people continue to buy the Muslim rumor even after weeks of high-decibel tongue-clucking over Obama’s Christian pastor, so figuring out which smears will stick isn’t much of a logical pursuit.
Third, McCain is the candidate who is potentially the most impacted by this. Does McCain come out strongly against the California court in a bid for more religious-conservative support? Or does he stick to his relatively libertarian past talk on gay issues, in which he said he didn’t support a federal amendment banning gay marriage? (That’s libertarian by moralistic-Republican standards; he still opposes gay marriage on moral grounds and supports “don’t ask, don’t tell”.) I don’t think he’ll do anything beyond reiterating the “Marriage is between a man and a woman” boilerplate b.s.
Meanwhile, Godwin’s law has already come into play in this campaign—by the President himself!—and we’re still five months out from the election. While Bush technically compared Obama to Neville Chamberlain, I’m going to say that it still counts because Nazis were explicitly mentioned.
My verdict: it seems worth skipping. There isn’t really any big plot twist, because the nature of the beast becomes evident pretty early on. Maybe it would be cooler if it’s shot well, but that’s a stretch. Once the bad guy is revealed, the screenplay is little more than horror-movie imagery and a pretty ridiculous resolution.
So take it from your blogging friend who’s prejudging the entire film based on an unverifiable script: it’s probably not a great movie.
(And as an intellectual-property business guy, I recognize that I’m undermining my own business model by reading a leaked script. But is it really so different than a critic’s sneak preview? Rationalizations are great fun.)
We’re up in the new place after our three-leg, two-vehicle, 921-mile journey out to Illinois. Things are mostly unpacked, but more than anything I’m glad the moving part is over.
