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Second GOP Presidential Debate: Trump Fails on Immunizations

I'll preface my analysis of the second GOP Presidential debate - three hours, just concluded on CNN - that I'm not a Republican, and this undoubtedly influences my views of who scored and who did not in a Republican debate.   Nonetheless -

It seemed to me that Trump did not do all that well tonight.  He was more conciliatory, true, and perhaps that helps him, but he once again spoke only in generalities.  And at times - for example - in the discussion of immunizations and autism - he seemed outrightly ignorant, insisting there was sort of a connection, even though Ben Carson, an MD, patiently and repeatedly explained that there was not, or none statistically and scientifically demonstrated.

As Trump does on most of these issues, he conflated at least two different issues - one, whether immune injections cause autism, and, two, whether the immunization shots can be spaced out, or not given all at once.   Many doctors agree with the latter, but not the former - including Drs. Carson and Paul - and Trump tried to sweep his ignorance under the rug by saying he, too, agreed with that, but somehow that still meant there was a connection between immunizations and autism.

The other candidates, with varying styles and intensity, all talked knowledgeably about a variety of issues.  Rand Paul was especially good on the dangers of unconstitutional wars, and Chris Christie on the opposite side of that argument, on the need for a strong and aggressive defense.   These two also spoke very well on opposite sides of the recreational drug legalization issue (I agree with Rand Paul).

Christie was also good in his denunciation of the personal skirmishing between Trump and Fiorina.  I thought Jeb and Fiorina were both strong and articulate in taking Trump on.    But of the two - Jeb and Fiorina - I thought Jeb had far more substance in his positions.

We'll see what the polls say in the next few days.  But I'd be surprised if there wasn't some slippage for Trump - a dangerous prediction, I know.


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Come Out Tonight by Bonnie Rozanski: Brief Review

This is more a blurb than a review, but, hey, it captures perfectly what I thought about this superbly complex novel:

A riveting, high-concept medical thriller with an eye and ear for New York ambience that rivals E. L. Doctorow’s, except Come Out Tonight is quintessentially 21st century. Bonnie Rozanski will have you wondering, laughing, cajoling your brain for answers until the final page.

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Twice Upon a Rhyme in the press

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Stephen Colbert in His CBS Debut Reminiscent of Dick Cavett and Jack Paar

I don't usually review late-night talk shows - actually, never have - but there's a first time for everything, and I thought Stephen Colbert's debut on CBS Late Show last night was a good time to begin.

In a phrase, I thought Colbert, divested of his incisive and hilarious conservative caricature from his previous show, was just as brilliant last night, and as funny and politically relevant in his own persona (assuming that's what we saw last night).

The interview with Jeb Bush was probably the highlight of the hour.   Colbert peppered Jeb with hard-hitting questions, and managed to be funny at the same time.  The last late-night host who had this kind of intellectual gravitas wrapped in a smile was Dick Cavett, and before him, Jack Paar.

It's not that everyone from Carson through Letterman and even Fallon right now weren't and aren't sharp as tacks intellectually.  It's just that Colbert last night mixed it with a perfect lightness, a quickness, that we haven't seen on late-night television for a while.

It was a good session for Jeb, too, who seemed a little nervous at first, but came back with a series of good and good-humored responses.   It will be interesting to see if this gives him a lift in the polls, and how he compares with Donald Trump, who will be on Colbert's show later this week.

There was also a winning meta quality weaved into the show, with George Clooney and Colbert talking about and showing clips from a non-existent movie, and Colbert having two interactions with Jimmy Fallon.    That would have been unimaginable in Cavett's or Paar's time - and, for that matter, in Carson's or even Letterman's (unless I missed it in Letterman) - but Colbert, if this first show is an indication, represents a nice step forward in late-night television, even as he reclaims an intellectual terrain not seen since the 1960s.

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Stephen Colbert in His CBS Debut Reminiscent of Dick Cavett and Jack Parr

I don't usually review late-night talk shows - actually, never have - but there's a first time for everything, and I thought Stephen Colbert's debut on CBS Late Show last night was a good time to begin.

In a phrase, I thought Colbert, divested of his incisive and hilarious conservative caricature from his previous show, was just as brilliant last night, and as funny and politically relevant in his own persona (assuming that's what we saw last night).

The interview with Jeb Bush was probably the highlight of the hour.   Colbert peppered Jeb with hard-hitting questions, and managed to be funny at the same time.  The last late-night host who had this kind of intellectual gravitas wrapped in a smile was Dick Cavett, and before him, Jack Paar.

It's not that everyone from Carson through Letterman and even Fallon right now weren't and aren't sharp as tacks intellectually.  It's just that Colbert last night mixed it with a perfect lightness, a quickness, that we haven't seen on late-night television for a while.

It was a good session for Jeb, too, who seemed a little nervous at first, but came back with a series of good and good-humored responses.   It will be interesting to see if this gives him a lift in the polls, and how he compares with Donald Trump, who will be on Colbert's show later this week.

There was also a winning meta quality weaved into the show, with George Clooney and Colbert talking about and showing clips from a non-existent movie, and Colbert having two interactions with Jimmy Fallon.    That would have been unimaginable in Cavett's or Parr's time - and, for that matter, in Carson's or even Letterman's (unless I missed it in Letterman) - but Colbert, if this first show is an indication, represents a nice step forward in late-night television, even as he reclaims an intellectual terrain not seen since the 1960s.

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Masters of Sex 3.9: Calling Hugh Hefner

The last two episodes of Masters of Sex have been pretty good, but there were at least two things that annoyed me.

First, in episode 3.8 last week, there's talk about not drinking if you're pregnant. This is 1966, and at least 15-20 years before that limitation became common practice.  This follows the talk, in episode 3.7, of humans and apes being almost 99% the same - another anachronism, said on the show decades ahead of its time.

But in both episodes 3.8 and 3.9, and especially last night's 3.9, I'm finding it hard to believer that Virginia is falling so hard for perfume-exec Dan Logan.  He's well enough played by The Good Wife's Josh Charles, and the weekend fling in 3.8 made some sense, but Virginia's falling in love with him in 3.9 and out of love with poor Bill doesn't add up.

Yes, she's had her frustrations with Bill, but these have been there all along, but if anything Bill recently has been far more considerate of her than he's been in the past.  Yes, his attempts at finding out what's wrong are lame, but this is also nothing new, and no reason why Virginia should suddenly be pulling away emotionally and faking orgasms with Bill.

And Dan Logan just isn't that good.  He's bright enough, and more attentive than Bill, but he's no Bill, not by a long shot.  One of the problems with Masters of Sex is that we don't know where the real history leaves off and the fiction begins.  We've been told that the narratives involving the children are all fictitious, but was Virginia really involved with this perfume guy or someone like him?  (See this little essay in Bustle, which says that Logan is indeed based on a real person - if so, then I guess the truth of history is stranger than fiction in this case.)

Virginia aptly tells Bill that Logan was his choice to bring into their work, and that she wanted Playboy's Hugh Hefner.   Him I could believe Virginia would fall for, or at least get addicted to having sex with.

See also Thomas Maier: Masters of Sex and Biography Come to Life ...Masters of Sex 3.1: Galley Slaves ... Masters of Sex 3.2: The Shah, the Baby, and the Book ... Masters of Sex 3.3: The Bookstore ... Masters of Sex 3.7: Going Ape

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Tyrant Season 2 Finale: Deserves to Be Renewed

The Tyrant season 2 finale this week offered a rocky ending to a rocky, uneven season, which nonetheless had some excellent moments - the season and the finale - making me want to see the series renewed.  (There will be lots of spoilers ahead.)

The single most absurd part of this season was Barry managing to fool his brother Jamal into not recognizing him on the phone, with his voice just muffled by a head-dress.   No way Jamal wouldn't have recognized his brother's cadences through that "disguise".

But, with that subtracted from whatever episode a few weeks ago, we still got a pretty good wind-up to the season on Tuesday.  Barry's coming back to the capital as a hero was satisfying, and Jamal's stubborn refusal to abdicate, after he said he would, was completely believable.  Moran Atias, in particular, put in a sterling performance as Jamal's wife Lila, as, for that matter, did Ashraf Barhom as Jamal, Adam Rayner as Barry, and even Noah Silver as Sammy, who was not the greatest last season.

Jamal's getting shot and likely killed by his daughter-in-law was also both well-motivated and surprising.  I say "likely" because, I'm a firm believer in the principle that if you don't see a character's head blown off on television, he or she may somehow survive (and sometimes even with a shot to the head, if we're talking science fiction.)

But Tyrant has done an excellent job of portraying very real situations in this fictional country in the Middle East, a quasi-Syria in most respects.   As such, and given our world today, the series has made an important and even compelling contribution, and deserves to be renewed.

I'll certainly be reviewing it if it is.

See also: Tyrant 2.1: The Tyrant's Character ... Tyrant 2.5: The Caliphate
And see also: Tyrant: Compelling Debut ... Tyrant 1.2: The Brother's Speech and His Wife ... Tyrant 1.3: A New Leaf? ... Tyrant 1.4: Close to the Bone ...Tyrant 1.6: Don't Mess with Jamal ... Tyrant 1.7-8: Coup ... Tyrant 1.9: Tariq ... Tyrant Season 1 Finale: The Truest Tyrant

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and earlier in the Middle East ...

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Mr. Robot: Cyberpunk Triumph

Well, my number-one television guilty pleasure this summer was "Mr. Robot" on the USA Network - though it was so good, easily the best new show on TV this summer, indeed of the year, maybe even the past year or two, that there's nothing whatsoever to feel guilty about watching it.  It was just a pleasure, rare, keenly intelligent, and provocative.  I saw most of it in the past few weeks, and the finale tonight.

Hackers have appeared in all kinds of TV series, most of them obvious, a few like CBS's CSI-Cyber not half-bad, but Mr. Robot is something else, in a class all its own.  Impossibly suave and gritty at the same time, as lyrical as Rectify - the other out-of-left-field masterpiece to come along in the past few years - but hipper, with words like louche in  it, and with a heart and soul and slap-in-your face realism and cynicism that's not to be believed, but is plausible all the same, you disbelieve Mr. Robot at your peril.

Cyberpunk has attained impressive heights in writing - Sterling, Gibson, Varley - but not so much on the screen.   Mr. Robot takes its place right up there with its story - its only competition screenwise being Bladerunner, an utterly different kind of tale.

There are elements not only of Occupy Wall Street and V for Vendetta but Fight Club in Mr. Robot, but I won't say which ones or what, because I don't want to spoil your surprise and fun if you haven't yet seen it.  But unlike Fight Club and its progeny, in which the narrative is completely situated in the minds of the characters, in Mr. Robot we have a ratification or support of this in the very digital age we in fact inhabit, in which the difference between the fantasies on screens and realities in first-hand tangible experiences in hand have never been less.

Like many series, the next-to-last episode, and the one before that, packed more of a punch than the finale.  But that doesn't matter, because the story is continuing, the series will be back next year, which makes tonight's finale not a finale at all, but a bridge, and a short one at that.

I'll be here next year with more.

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The Eye in the Sky in the Hand: How Video Cameras in Smartphones are Finally Beginning to Bring Police to Justice

I'll be presenting this paper at a Digital Culture Symposium at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia on December 3, 2015, and thought I'd share this abstract with you for starters.  (I'll provide links to the video, is there is one, and details on where to get the entire paper, after the symposium.)

The Eye in the Sky in the Hand: How Video Cameras in Smartphones are Finally Beginning to Bring Police to Justice

by Paul Levinson

Abstract

For the first time in human history, the ubiquity of video cameras in smartphones has made police misconduct publicly accessible to the world at large, including on the Internet, television screens, and in courts of law. This paper will explore the modern history of this revolutionary development, beginning with the 1991 police beating and bystander videotaping of Rodney King, through the role of video cameras in the hands of citizen journalists in Occupy Wall Street, and major cases of police killing unarmed civilians in 2014 and 2015. The uneven impact of this on the judicial system - including not-guilty verdicts and charges not filed by prosecutors - will be explored, as well as the ethics and logistics of police body cams and their impact on police work and democracy, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s reasonably clear that police cannot just continue doing business as usual in this new panoptical environment in everyone’s hands. The question is what role will the police play, how will they be expected to perform and held to account, when this new world becomes universally recognized.

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Fear the Walking Dead 1.2: Tobias Leads the Way

Fear the Walking Dead continued its powerful start tonight, with a second episode which was relentlessly strong, pounding, and frightening.   As in The Walking Dead, humans have as much to fear from other humans as from zombies, except at this stage the humans include police, a situation all too familiar and chilling to anyone who watches the non-fictitious news.   The cops kill a homeless man.  He's laying there, dead.  Will he soon stagger to his feet?  Your guess is as good as mine.

Meanwhile, you just knew Art would be a zombie, because, well, he looked like a zombie already, last week, when he was still human.  And he faked us out nicely then, when it turned out he wasn't yet a zombie, but was just hunched over, engrossed in some audio.   So seeing him attain his destiny tonight was chillingly satisfying.

I didn't mention Tobias in my review of episode 1, but I was impressed with him then.  He's the only person we've met and seen so far who knows something of what is really going on, and he carries that burden well.  Tonight, he's only happy because he got back his knife, and I'm hoping he accepts Madison's offer to come live (and no doubt run) with them.  Yeah, there's no way that won't happen.

Nick (played by Frank Dillane, son of Stephen Dillane of Game of Thrones and other notable fame, by the way), put in another fine outing, capped off by apparently pretending to be worse than he really was in his drug withdrawal, as a way of getting his sister Alicia to stay with him.  (I say "apparently," because, although he tells his mother he got his sister to stay, you can never be 100% sure.)  Good job Alycia Debnam-Carey playing Alicia, by the way.

Just about every character we've met at any length is appealing, which raises of the question of who will be the first to go among the beloved or at least appealing characters?  It would be something of a coup if the answer was none of these, for at least a while, but this is still The Walking Dead universe we're dealing with, so that's not very likely.

And I'll be back here next week - or, actually, two weeks from tonight, because next week's Labor Day - with a review of the next episode.

(I find most holidays, by the way, to be annoyances.  Here I am making this very point on a HuffPost Live panel earlier this week.)

See also Fear the Walking Dead 1.1: Great Beginnings

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