I just walked around our house opening blinds – it is 6:40 AM and it is pitch black outside. This time of year we normally subscribe to television, but mainstream fare is too laden with advertising to be palatable, no matter the quality of the programming inserted between the commercials. I do from time-to-time hop around those channels, often hitting five or six channels before finding one not in ad mode. What I see is pretty silly, even stupid.
Sitcoms are so poorly written and acted that they merely highlight the sham of laugh tracks. Unless openly perverse and mocking and having no intent of offering a serious message (Seinfeld in the 90’s, Two and One-Half Men more recently), they are either cheesy soap operas or lurid tales of hyper-sexual twenty-somethings. I haven’t sat through serious drama – I refuse to believe that beautiful men and women become brilliant doctors, police and lawyers, and at young age to boot. Have you been to a hospital? People of physical beauty do not have to work or study hard to succeed.
Occasionally PBS offers some high quality programming, but that too is interspersed with long commercials called “pledge drives,” that make it unwatchable. Then it’s back to normal fare.
We subscribe to HBO and Showtime in winter. HBO has gotten much better in its program delivery these past few years. Most often the regular schedule consists of movies of no interest or that we’ve seen before. We don’t ever plan to watch anything, so it is rare that we catch something of interest from the beginning. But “HBO GO” allows us to watch programs we choose when we can.
The point of this ramble are some series that I was aware of but never actually sat down and watched these past few years. Right now I am knee-deep in Deadwood, and yet to come for me are Sopranos, and Boardwalk Empire.
What is interesting about Deadwood is the utter depravity of the people involved. Unlike my old favorite, Rockford Files, where everyman James Garner took his beatings and losses but usually solved the crime and jailed the criminals, these shows rarely offer closure. In fact, the main players are anti-heroes, scumbags and life’s big winners. If anyone meets justice, it is usually by means of violence at the hands of associates, and not police.
The male lead in Deadwood is Al Swearengen, a comical name, since f-bombing is his main occupation. My wife cannot be in the room during this show, as it is so blatantly crude and offensive. Most of the female leads are whores who are treated with cruelty and indifference. They were warned in one episode to “keep their snatches clean” and not to have “cock breath.” In one particularly crude episode, Swearengen is getting a blow job (we see the bobbing head) as he rants about his current problems and the other people in the town. After a disgusting orgasm, he advises the whore to spit it out in the chamber pot and leave.
Had enough? The big draw for me in this and other series (Mad Men, Game of Thrones) is the superb casting. Swearengen, played by English actor Ian McShane, is that man. All of the characters, including the drunken and foul-mouthed Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert), were selected for their real life bearing (or remarkable acting skill) that enables them to become these awful people. The writing is OK, dialogues believable, but suffer from lack of discipline. The writers never need worry that one of the main characters will face real-life retribution for his crimes, so that ungodly violence and perversion are not only allowed in unrestrained fashion, but are winked at. There is no “law” in Deadwood, whose characters are based on real people from those times, if not daily events.
And that is what got me going on this rant – in Sopranos, Deadwood, Boardwalk Empire, and even the idiotic Dexter, there is no justice. Lower-cast characters are killed off, perhaps even face prison, but the principle players are free human beings. Plot resolution, as when Tony Soprano brutally murders an associate over the death of a race horse, only comes due to his machinations used to get away with it. Nucky Thompson of Boardwalk is a more subtle man, but carries within him deep rage that is as repulsive as Soprano or Swearengen’s.
I do not know if TV reflects us or the opposite or both, but the idea that crime pays was an anathema to our popular culture in years past. Now we are entertained by those who get away with it. There is surely deeper meaning here, and if I try to fathom it I’ll miss the important stuff. So I’ll only hit the high points that have made this blog a stopping point for curiosity seekers too smart to fall for conspiracy theories. JFK was murdered in public, and it is easy to see that the perps were never caught or punished. The media, the education system, law enforcement, legal and political systems all approved of the crime. The Bush family is comprised of ordinary criminals of no particular skill who have been raised to Kennedy-like stature.
Our landscape is dotted with 9/11 and so many assassinations that have never been solved or resolved. But oddly, the fake events of recent days have “real” perpetrators who are immediately brought to justice, Oswald style – the Tsarnaev brothers and the fictional character Adam Lanza. Real criminals never see justice even as bodies are scattered about them.
Do we all accept now, subconsciously, that crime pays? Most Americans know that JFK’s death was a conspiracy, and accept that on one still alive will ever pay. 9/11 was so superficial and transparent that there must exist in the ordinary American some residue of disbelief. Couple that with the understanding that those perps too will not pay … we live in Deadwood.
I am not making some grand inference here about transference of values from the TV to the population. These shows exist based on production values and writing, such as they are. The writers are not selected from CIA drama school – writing, casting and acting coming together to create a powerful series is a rare event. What emerges from that writing is an angst that most of us must feel, that powerful people are free to commit crimes and live luxurious lives.
Who of prominence has gone to jail recently for high crimes? I can only think of three – OJ Simpson, an everyman; Martha Stewart, only because she was was so high in profile that she could not be set free without a wrist slap; and Bernie Madoff, whose real crime was scamming other powerful people. All of the other Bernie’s of Wall Street are still at large.*
Maybe Deadwood is telling us that it’s always been that way. The veneer of happy families on TV exited in the 1980’s with the end of the Cosby Show. Then came the dysfunctional Seinfeld cast, and later the painfully useless Charlie Sheen, cast as a man who wrote jingles for a living. There’s no more shine on the apple, and the rotten core is on display now for all of us to see. This is a corrupt country. Disgustingly so.
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*Oops! I forgot Jack Abramoff. He was jailed, is free now, and claims to be a reformed man. He belongs in this post, as when I last heard him, he was doing some fine acting.
Piece of Mindful 
not sure if this would be your cup of tea, but 6 Feet Under is one of my favorites.
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Hey, thanks. I’ve heard do that one too, good things about it. I hope it’s on the menu.
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Those who have the money make the rules, so the advertising driven media makes shows for women and teenage girls. They are buying the stuff. Thus we get programs featuring alpha thug males and happy, attractive women juggling their sex partners.
The solution, of course, is to reinstate a strict patriarchy and have men tell women what to watch. It is the only way.
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Now THAT is trolling, not that I care. You’re right that tits have a lot to do with our economy, which is why being 20 and having nice ones often makes young gals into TV doctors and lawyers. And even back in the 70’s the Corleones, thugs, were anti-heroes. Didn’t we all feel sadness when Sonny got it?
It’s bigger than I reduce it to here, for sure.
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It’s not trolling if it’s in the Koran.
makes young gals into TV doctors and lawyers and kick-ass babes who take down the criminal alone in a dark alley. Also, let us note more of the cultural politics here, with people of color and homosexuals carefully scripted into plum roles far beyond their representation in society at large, with no mention of any negative trappings. Meanwhile, the heterosexual White male is the stock bad guy, usually as a greedy businessman, or a buffoon in a commercial who has to be saved by the female/diversity/different-gendered.
My side has so lost the culture war. I live in an internment camp.
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White guys are at such disadvantage in our society.
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Disadvantage is not the word, if you have any care to be accurate. The demographic arc is not in their favor, which I suppose is their fault, but it would be nice if public policy wasn’t skewed in favor of demographic scab labor.
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The owners of the country want it that way.
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Touche.
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“Our elites have nothing to be proud of, they are the pimps sneering at the women they deceived and ruined.”
I rail against TPTB, but, really, nothing they have advocated differs from the average Boulderite view: White people are boring; Hispanic immigrants are going to buy your house; send your daughter to Haiti for a year.
How does one generate any political opposition when the People are falling all over themselves to demonstrate cred by cooing over the latest homosexual/slut/immigrant fashiion?
The People raise up their elites, their “owners”. We need to look in the mirror for some of this stuff.
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It always comes down to race with you. How many times have I told you I don’t live in Boulder? You really ought to study the history of Haiti sometime. It was the first slave colony to break free, and France and the US did not take kindly to it.
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…don’t live in Boulder
I know that. I’m talking spirit here, not physical presence.
…race
One component of things. You make a point to avoid it. How can you approach a complete picture of the world if you leave this out?
I know of Haiti’s history. You must like the part where the oppressed kill the oppressors. It is only fair.
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I am talking about the post-colonial period and the punishment meted out on them.
Race – what’s to avoid? It’s a complicated subject, but from a DNA standpoint, there are no races. You are intent on placing stations, one above the other, to construct a world hierarchy. Dangerous, as you must know if you know history. So I am saying, and repeat for the final time, I hope, that I do not touch this subject because no good can come of it.
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I am talking about the post-colonial period and the punishment meted out on them
So no one would lend them money. Yeah, I’ve heard all that time and time again. Apparently no one can ever boot strap themselves by developing a domestic market.
race…doesn’t exist…too many bad outcomes…too many bad feelings…must not consider hierarchy
You know what race is; I know what race is; everyone knows what race is. Everyone is counting noses and keeping score.
Someone noticed, and made the effort to comment, on an ethnicity in one of your Nepal pictures, and you thought that was pretty cool.
I agree that things can get ugly, but every race/ethnicity I encounter informs me in no uncertain terms that they are the best; the superior specimen. The game is afoot, and I’m sure what is gained by unilateral disarmament. You have to compete and win (at some level), or go extinct. The conflict began long ago, and you might not want to touch these matters, but these matters are touching you.
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You do not comprehend. It is dangerous. Racial and cultural differences are an outlet for hatred. The reason why we’ve been able to kill millions of Muslims and feel OK about it is that we have branded them as an evil culture. The only time I have seen this country bomb white people was Serbia in 1999 – every other time it is people of color. If you want to draw racial distinctions and separate the murdering bastards, it is us, but we are a mixed bag. Our aristocracy is WASPY, the continuation of the British aristocracy, so there is bad seed there.
You know nothing of the history of Haiti, or what slavery does to a culture. You need to travel and get off your high horse, join the rest of us here trying to figure things out. What you got … Ain’t much. It appears you draw some kind of validation from your skin color. I find that rather sad. What else you got going for you?
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My beloved haves a total crush on Ian McShane, and Deadwood was an obsession, for a while. But we haven’t been motivated to watch the end. Dexter got all preachy and sad, and we haven’t been motivated to watch the end of that, either. Sopranos was, quite frankly, boring. To be honest, so was Treme and Boardwalk Empire. Game of Thrones is an obsession we will follow.
We watch these shows to see the bad guys get their comeuppance. Seriously, we all know that crime pays. Most of us just don’t worship the ideal that crime pays and it’s … okay. The more extravagant the crime, the more we like the evil that follows. That’s why Dexter was so enjoyable until it got preachy. These things aren’t about justice. They are about Karma, as we silly westerners understand it.
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Pretty much you nailed it.
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The only time I have seen this country bomb white people was Serbia in 1999
There was the whole WWII thing with Germany, but I guess you didn’t see that, along with the Civil war. And the cold war was against a properly hued foe, and the casualties there weren’t exactly zero. But you are such a brain damaged leftist you need affirmative action even in your conflicts.
And who is doing the killing in this country motivated by racial animus? Have you looked at any crime stats lately?
The reason why we’ve been able to kill millions of Muslims and feel OK about it is that we have branded them as an evil culture.
Maybe they are an evil culture. They sure don’t line up with anything you promote. Racially they are surprisingly close to us, if you knew anything about the details of such matters. Maybe that is one reason we are comfortable in conflict with them; narcissism of small differences. I agree the threat there is overblown, and our bombing of wedding parties is counter-productive; but the threat from Islamists is not zero. I’m not sure you would fight any enemy anyway, despite your protests that you agree in defensive wars. You wouldn’t fight in one of those. You rather welcome our enemies: more help in destroying the current order you abhor so much.
And for people we are supposed to hate, we sure let a lot of them into the country to live and procreate forever. And they let few of us move to their countries. How does that work out long term? We defend their religious practices here, but any Western religion is stamped out in Muslim countries.
Our aristocracy is WASPY, the continuation of the British aristocracy, so there is bad seed there.
After your usual warning about hatred, and how one must not have any, you launch right into it. The WASPs had their flaws, but we flourished materially under their watch, and built a historic middle class. Now they’ve been pretty well replaced by the Jews. I’m not sure it is an upgrade.
You know nothing of the history of Haiti…or what slavery does to a culture…validated by your skin color
Your usual lame-ass comeback on your way to blaming Whitey. I’m sure I’ve interacted with way more People of Color than you ever will; while you live in Billings-Bozeman-Boulder-Morrison-or-wherever-the-ffff-it-is. You just like being pious on these matters.
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I grew up in a post-war cracker box white working class neighborhood and attended school on the South side of Billings, primarily Hispanic and Indian, and attended Catholic school which easily admitted all races and colors. Looking back I see that my friends were white, but don’t recall feeling any ill will towards my other classmates, nor any particular tensions.
Obviously I was referring to post-war history. The Cold War itself was merely cover for aggression against people of color, most prominently SE Asia, but many others as well. We never fired a shot at the Soviets.
Muslim culture differs from our own, but people are people. The US has attacked every secular Islamic regime, 1953 forward, and continues to do so. By this they achieve two apparent objectives – to install totalitarian government on those countries (the US does not care about what type of totalitarianism, and only fears democracy), and to prevent Arab alliances (Nasser: The “Hitler of the Nile”). Muslim anti-Israeli sympathies seem to me justified, as land was stolen and surrendering countries attacked, Palestinians forming a huge refugee class in an apartheid regime, murdered, imprisoned and debased. By the time this is filtered through our indoctrination system,Israelis are the victims.
Just for a recent rundown of Haitian history, I suggest you read Mark Danner’s Stripping Bare the Body.
Oh, forgot. You don’t read.
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Obviously I was referring to post-war history
Obviously I noticed that and pointed out that that was a gimmick.
The Cold War itself was merely cover for aggression against people of color
Such a mad-lib! List something you don’t like with the appendage “against people of color” and voila! The usual talking point. Just try it: Capitalism is against people of color. Foreign policy is APOC. Domestic policy is APOC. Local politics is APOC.
Your brainwashing is so complete here, I don’t think you could ever come to the truth of things. Too many synapses are devoted to avoiding reality.
The US has attacked every secular Islamic regime, 1953 forward
Your usual hyperbolic statement (Turkey? Maylasia? Most of the -stans?). The discourse suffers, but what else is new?
Most of the “attacks” were in service to the oil trade. Probably not worth it, as many have pointed out. A quirk of geography that much oil lies in politically volatile regions.
Muslim anti-Israeli sympathies seem to me justified, as land was stolen…refugees
Land disputes are common, but here there is a maintenance of the feud. Refugees are usually temporary until they get absorbed, but here they are maintained as such. Palestinians in Israel are better off than those elsewhere in the region. I don’t think the Arab position here is anything to brag about.
Haiti…read
So, if I just keep absorbing your Koranic tomes, I will come to see things your way?
I lived for a while in Naples, FL. I found the Haitians to be pleasant and fun to be around. But whatever their history, I wouldn’t expect much achievement from a country with many of them around.
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You are an odd duck. Strange on its own that you would so relentlessly spam and troll as max b-u-c-k-s, with some of the most foul and childish insults & racism around. Even stranger that you post so much now under this ID and attempt to put a rational veneer on it. Who are you? What’s your deal? I don’t really expect to get an honest answer but any answer would do. I recall you are a Vietnam vet, published novelist and independently wealthy. Whats the rest of the legend you weirdo?
Do you think the United States has actually derived any material benefit from the influx of immigrants that closed bordered Caucasian or other nations have not? If the United States having received the benefit is not satisfactory can you say whether the white man residing in the united states himself has benefited? If there is any benefit has it run its course?
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I do not beleive that the fact that most of our post-war aggression is against people of color is deliberate. It just so happens that most of the colonial world is comprised of other races.
I should have not have said “every” Islamic regime. But I will say most of them, and I can do a long list that would include the ‘stans.’ Malaysia – is that not Hindu? (I do not know.)
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not unusual except in thsi regard: The US has armed the Israelis and put no restraints on them, so that they can abuse the Palestinians at will. And before you snap at me, we might agree that if the US had armed the Palestinians as we have the Israelis, then they might be dropping white phosphorus on Tel Aviv. It is the huge arms subsidy that inflames that conflict.
Mark Danner is a respected journalists who actually lives in places to do his reporting. I know you won’t go near him, as you are Swedish in that regard, but you don’t know what you are missing. He also wrote about the Bosnian conflict in depth, boots on the ground.
Jack, I don’t get Max out of Fred at all – maybe wrong, of course, but Max was all over this place like flies on intestines, and Fred not so much.
As to attacks not being “worth it,” that is a basic misunderstanding – it may cost more to make war in a place than it delivers in say, oil or bananas, but taxpayers pay for the wars, and are willing to spend any amount of our money and lives to protect their investments.
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I thought he admitted he was bucks a few weeks back, I could be mistaken.
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