Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 382

Boardwalk Empire 2.9: Ireland, Radio, Polio

Another powerful, wrenching, historically brilliant Boardwalk Empire last night - 2.9 - in which Nucky Thompson goes to Ireland to seek a booze supply in return for his Thompson guns (the name is pure coincidence, as Nucky says).

The Irish part of this story is straight-up fine and tough international intrigue. When John McGarrigle refuses to make the deal with Nucky - even after Nucky impresses the rest of the Irish rebellion leaders with the power of his guns - and McGarrigle tells Owen he must stay in Ireland, rather than return to America with Nucky (and return to Margaret, which Nucky doesn't yet know), the result is somewhat predictable but still satisfying.  Owen, also without Nucky's knowledge, arranges for McGarrigle's assassination.  His successor will make the deal.

But the most punch-in-gut development happens back in Atlantic City ("AC," as Jimmy at one point calls it).  Margaret's  daughter is striken with polio.  Like many of the historical touches in Boardwalk Empire, this shows us how very far we've come from that time, which is so much like ours in many other ways.  But imagine what it must have been like to live in a world, before polio vaccine rid us of this disease, where you get a little flu-like fever, but end up paralyzed for life.  Americans of all classes were hit by this virus, including Franklyn Delano Roosevelt, who mostly kept his paralysis from public view during his four terms as US President.

FDR addressed and unified the nation via his "fireside" chats on radio, a medium which again makes a major appearance on Boardwalk Empire, even bigger than a few weeks ago.  We now actually hear the radio broadcast of the Jack Dempsey fight.  Jimmy listens to and enjoys it - after Al Capone, no student of the media, says listening to radio is like "reading a book," and goes to the fight in person.   Radio also attracts the medical staff away from Margaret's daughter, which allows Margaret to cuddle in bed with her, against the doctor's strong orders.  Polio is highly contagious (but, fortunately, as the doctor didn't say or didn't know, more than 95% of the people who contract the illness suffer no debilitating consequences).  Margaret's action is both a commendable act of love and courage but a bit reckless in that she could be endangering her son.

The radio broadcast of the Dempsey fight also closes out the episode, a very nice touch.  And, apropos of Yiddish culture not radio, I was very glad to see that Manny Horvitz aka Munya survived the attempt to take him out in Philadelphia.  This will spell trouble for Jimmy, but Munya has the best pronunciation of "toochis" these days on television (kudos to actor William Forsythe).

See also Boardwalk Empire 2.1: Politics in an Age Before YouTube  ... Boardwalk Empire 2.2: The Woman Behind the Throne ... Boardwalk Empire 2.3: Frankenstein and Victrola ... Boardwalk Empire 2.4: Nearly Flagrante Delicto ... Boardwalk Empire 2.5: Richard's Story ... Boardwalk Empire 2.6: Owen and Other Bad News for Nucky ... Boardwalk Empire 2.7: Shot in the Hand  ... Boardwalk Empire 2.8: Pups with Fangs
And see also Boardwalk Emipre on HBO ... Boardwalk Empire 1.2: Lines and Centers Power ... Boardwalk Empire 1.10: Arnold Rothstein, Media Theorist  ... Season One Finale of Boardwalk Empire                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic




The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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Dexter 6.8: Is Gellar Really Real?

The battle continues in Dexter 6.8 tonight - the battle in our minds about whether Professor Gellar is real, or an evil sector in Travis' mind?

The victim tonight - the slain whore of  Babylon is Travis's sister Lisa - up's the ante about Gellar, who killed her.  But was the killer the flesh-and-blood Gellar, whom Dexter thinks is Travis's physical, palpable dark passenger, or Travis, taken over mentally by the dark passenger within who is Gellar?

Here's what we knew before tonight's episode.  Gellar was Travis's professor, and dropped out of sight a few years ago (because Travis killed him?).  We never see Gellar without Travis in some kind of attendance.  I can't recall a single scene with Gellar present and Travis nowhere to be seen or heard.  This certainly suggests Gellar is an evil figment.

But against this we have Dexter's continuing view that Gellar and Travis are two different people.  Dexter's not infallable, but his perception over the years has been pretty impressive.

And what did we see and learn tonight?  Travis knows his sister was talking to the cops - he sees the gun on Debra as he bicycles by his sister in the house.  We see Travis chained to the floor after Lisa's killing - presumably by Gellar, to keep Travis from interfering or (as Gelllar volunteers) to keep Travis from running away.  But surely Travis could have chained himself to the floor ....

At this point, I'd say the scale is tipping towards Gellar as deadly figment.

And there's also Debra.  Although she doesn't know half as much as Dexter about Gellar and Travis, she's focusing on Travis as the killer.  She even delivers the best line of the night to this effect - "I'll fuck Massuda if this [Travis] isn't our guy." (Poor Masuda, he just never gets much respect.) Is Debra just three or four weeks behind Dexter on this case, or is she seeing some deeper truth that for some reason Dexter is missing?

Meanwhile, just for good measure, Deb's beginning to catch Dexter in some medium-serious lies about Nebraska.   And ... LaGuerta's trying to close up a one of Deb's cases - of a blond found dead and naked on the floor - and she's talking on the phone to someone about that.  Likely that's Matthews.

The rest of this season will bear some careful viewing.

See also Dexter Season 6 Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 6.4: Two Numbers and Two Killers Equals? ... Dexter 6.5 and 6.6: Decisive Sam ... Dexter 6.7: The State of Nebraska

And see also Dexter Season Five Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 5.4: Dexter's Conscience ... Dexter 5.8 and Lumen ... Dexter 5.9: He's Getting Healthier ... Dexter 5.10: Monsters -Worse and Better ... Dexter 5.11: Sneak Preview with Spoilers  ... Dexter Season 5 Finale: Behind the Curtain

And see also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ... Dexter on the Couch in 4.6 ... Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi' ... Dexter 4.8: Great Mistakes ... 4.9: Trinity's Surprising Daughter ... 4.10: More than Trinity ... 4.11: The "Soulless, Anti-Family Schmuck" ... 4.12: Revenges and Recapitulations

See also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ... Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter


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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Failure of Budget Super-Committee Shows Further Decay of Representative Democracy

The bipartisan bozos in Washington - the super-committee tasked this summer with working out a new budget by the day before Thanksgiving - are reported to be on the verge of announcing failure to reach agreement on a new budget.   This is after Congress and the President failed to reach agreement on a new budget this summer, and instead created the super-committee to come up with a budget, with a back-up of draconian cuts to major arteries of government, ranging from the military to human services., is a new budget was not agreed upon and approved by Congress.

The upshot: at a time when our and the world's economy are in serious crisis - at a time, in other words, in which government is more needed than ever -  our representative government in the United States is incapable of performing.

Part of it is their own fault.  The Senate is tied up because it has imposed upon itself a de facto requirement of 60 votes to pass controversial legislation.  Constitutional scholar Lyle Denniston quotes Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon, not on the super-committee) as noting that the Constitution "only specifies a 'supermajority' for a limited list of Senate actions.  Some of them are: ratification of treaties, conviction of a President in an impeachment trial, overriding presidential vetoes, approving constitutional amendments ..."  Nowhere does the Constitution say that 60 votes are required for difficult or controversial legislation - indeed, I would argue that, the more pressing the need for some kind of legislation, the more illogical and counterproductive it is to require 60 votes. In addition to that requirement being extra-Constitutional.

But there is a deeper factor at work here, that goes beyond our elected representatives shooting themselves in their own feet.   Representative democracy may well be floundering because we finally have the means, in the digital age, to govern ourselves, to discuss and vote upon pressing issues, directly.

If budgets were put to a direct majority up-or-down vote of the American people, surely one would soon get 50% of the vote plus one.  Surely, in other words, a new budget would be soon be adopted.

The digital revolution - social media, or what I call "new new media" - have given us the means to do this.  Occupy Wall Street and the the Arab Spring are the leading expression of this.  Unsurprisingly, representative governments and dictatorships are alike in opposing these developments.   But the tide of history is turning.   The representative governments and the dictatorships will continue to decay, and the people will emerge triumphant, one hopes will less bloodshed overseas and less police brutality in the US, than we've seen so far.


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Jay Carney (and Obama) Have It All Wrong about Police and OWS

So did you catch this statement the other from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney?

Speaking November 15 aboard Air Force One, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said "The president's position is that obviously every municipality has to make its own decisions about how to handle these issues."

Carney was seeking to debunk questions about whether the Federal government is in some way coordinating the police crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street protests across the country this past week.  (We already know that the Mayors of New York, Oakland, and 16 other American cities coordinated their unconstitutional attacks on the protesters.)

But Carney's statement also says something quite important - crucial - that he likely did not intend.  And that is:  allowing municipalities to make their own decisions regarding the protesters is not an expression of innocence, but an admission of guilt, when what the cities are doing is pepper-spraying the protesters, arresting and beating protesters as well as reporters, and (in the case of NYC) deliberately shutting off the eviction of Zuccotti Park from the press.

The First Amendment guarantees citizens the right to peaceably assemble.   The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble," and the Fourteenth Amendment extends that restriction to all levels of government, including municipalities.

So in leaving decisions about how to respond to OWS protests to municipalities, the Obama administration is plainly shirking its responsibility to make sure no local government violates the First Amendment rights of citizens - by allowing them to be attacked by police, and by preventing the media from fully reporting these violations to the people.

This is not only shameful but an admission of an inability to govern by the Obama administration.   I hope Obama and his advisers wake up to this disgrace and outrage before he's voted out of office.

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What OWS Has Shown Us about Bloomberg, Jerry Brown, Obama

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC:  Trampled on the First Amendment freedom of peaceable assembly rights of Occupy Wall Street protesters  in Zuccotti Park; trampled on First Amendment freedom of press rights of all New Yorkers and Americans by banning media from his forced eviction of Zuccotti Park protesters; has supported police beating of protesters, roughing up of journalists, arrest of protesters and journalists; conspired with 17 other mayors to launch nation-wide clearing of OWS sites in cities across America.   I would not vote for him if I lived in NYC (where I work);  I will never vote for him for any other offices; I would like to see a Federal investigation into his OWS conduct.

Governor Jerry Brown of California:  Has remained silent as police in cities and campuses in California have shot rubber bullets at protesters (one point blank at the head on an Iraq War veteran that put him in the hospital in critical condition) and people with camera phones, used pepper spray on students at UC-Davis, and beat students at Berkeley.  I once admired his vision and had an impressive, hour-long conversation with him at  Fordham University when I was Chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies several years ago.   I no longer admire him, to say the least, and unless he moves very quickly now to protect the people in his state from police brutality I will speak out against him if he runs for any office again.

President Barack Obama of the United States:  Has also been silent about all of the above.  I voted for him in 2008, and wrote and spoke out in his favor many times (see the many posts in this blog).  His silence about the above attacks on Americans exercising their First Amendment rights are making me begin to wonder if I will able to vote for him again.


my interview on NY Night News about Bloomberg Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Person of Interest 1.8: Widmore and Ben, At It Again

Hey, fans of Lost - and I was a devoted one, until those ruinous last few minutes of the finale - will be happy to know that Widmore and Ben were up to their old tricks on Person of Interest 1.8 the other night.

Well, not quite Widmore, but Alan Dale, who played Widmore so well in Lost, is back on the kill in Person of Interest.  This time, Dale as Ulrich Kohl is a former Eastern German agent, recently out of prison, and determined to end every member of his former team he holds responsible for the death of his beloved wife Anja, years ago.


Reese and Finch (Ben aka Michael Emerson), then, soon realize they are out to intervene with a perpetrator not a victim.  Kohl gets the drop on the usually almost invincible Reese - as I've said previous reviews, I like when heroes are not perfect, makes them more human and believable - and Reese and Finch have to work especially hard to finally get the drop on Kohl.


Two good twists in this episode - Anja is alive and well in NYC, and Kohl who feels betrayed by her turns out to be bluffing when he makes to kill her (and this provokes his suicide by Reese, which he is not happy about - where's Desmond and his time traveling when you need him).   And Carter and Fusco have a little more relevance than usual, almost closing in on Reese in the park, a few minutes after he shoots Kohl.


So Widmore again dies, if not by Ben then by his partner Reese (or whatever exactly Reese is to Finch - not quite his partner, but not quite his employee, either).  And we get some good flashback scenes - which seem to have a become a television staple since Lost - of how Reese got into the business.  But, hey, they're both J. J. Abrams' shows, and he's entitled.  It's not plagiarism to take from yourself.

See also Person of Interest of Interest  ... Person of Interest 1.2:  Reese and Finch ... Person of Interest 1.5: Potentials ... Person of Interest 1.7: Meets Flashpoint and The Usual Suspects


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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man

The Invisible Man has been a great staple of science fiction since H. G. Wells' novel (1897) of the same through Hollow Man (the fine 2000 movie starring Kevin Bacon).   He - or another version of an invisible guy - returned tonight in Fringe (episode 4.7), which exells in bringing classic science fiction onto today's television screens.

The specifics of the story are less important than what they do to Olivia.  The invisible man - struggling to become visible, literally dying to do that - became that way due to a genetic condition, treated by a predecessor of Massive Dynamic, with Bell and Nina in residence.  This has two effects:

1. Olivia gets more in touch with the treatment Walter and Bell subjected her to.

2.  Even more importantly, this gets Olivia to go see Nina.   Which sets up the ending: Olivia is knocked out (white gas under her door), and injected with something that will remove her memories from the two hours.  In some sense, Nina is now a villain.

But to what purpose?  What did Olivia see, think, do, feel in the previous two hours that Nina, for whomever or whatever she may be working for, wants Olive (as Nina calls Olivia in their meeting) to forget?  We'll have to wait until January to find out more, but I'm thinking Nina may be working in concert with Walternate.

We haven't seen too much of the alternate universe in Fringe this Fall, but the coming attractions show it will be back in the action.

Both ours and the alternate universe have been changed by Peter's absence, and it's important to bear in mind in which ways the alternate universe has been changed and unchanged from what we knew of it last season (we've seen this season how much our universe has been changed by Peter's absence).  Since Peter "died" in the crossing on the iced-over lake, Walternate may hate our universe and Walter even more than in the reality in which Peter at least lived on our side.   From Walternate's point of view in this double-universe without Peter, Walter not only kidnapped Peter but killed him.

The resolution has to come down to Peter, now, who is the only witness (other than the Eternal Bald Obersvers) to what we the audience saw the first three seasons.  He gives Lincoln a new pair of glasses - to make him more attractive to Olivia? - but the metaphoric implications of this are huge.  What's going on in Fringe is how to improve everyone's vision, so they see the truth.  Somehow, that reality - ours and Peter's (who is also an invisible man) - has to become visible.

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology




See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee  ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21:  Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe 
 
See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ...  New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22:  Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book



Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...


Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington

My favorite part of Bones 7.3 is Lance and his efforts to get a green light to carry and use, if necessary, a gun on the job.  As he points out to Booth, who is dubious, Lance after all is FBI, and he could cover Booth's back when they go out together.

What Sweets didn't know (I called him Lance, because that goes a little better with Bond) is packing and firing a gun would turn on Daisy.   That's not only good for obvious reasons, but it's saving Daisy that focuses Sweets when he goes through his qualifying tests, which he passes with flying colors - like James Bond - and even gets nicked in the process.   Which also excites Daisy.

Indeed, Daisy may be the leading character tonight, because she also figures in the hunt for Prince Chamington's killer (or dismemberer), the same person who killed the brilliant toy designer (Charmington the doll was found with her body).

Meanwhile, toys, or at least play, is the thing in a lot of the rest of the story, too.  Angela and later Hodgins find the Chinese-translated-into-English assembly instructions that accompany a baby walker set indecipherable - something everyone can relate to - and Bones gets in touch with the importance of play in a baby as well as adult's life.

As I've been saying for the past two weeks, it's a pleasure to see Bones enjoying herself and the way she looks at Booth, which is a real credit to Emily Deschanel's acting.  About the only note that rang a little false in tonight's episode is Angela saying something about no pictures of naked Congressman, as she looks in vain on the victim's computer for something pertinent to the case or at least interesting.  That line was no doubt inspired by Anthony Weiner, and the script likely written this summer, but all that feels like ancient history now, doesn't it.  I run into the same temptations in my novels - the key is to resist putting in a reference to some current, hot topic.  By the time the novel is published - or the TV episode is on the air - that current hot reference will likely have cooled to fading room temperature.

But the series is just bubbling and the best it's been in years, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7:  Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution





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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Violation of First Amendment to Cover Up Violation of First Amendment

More on what happened yesterday at Zuccotti Park -

The muzzling of media coverage, which went as far as arresting and literally pushing around reporters, amounts to a violation of the First Amendment (freedom of press) to cover up a violation of the First Amendment (right to peaceably assemble).

It's not surprising that Bloomberg missed this, as he appallingly indicated in his public statement that he thinks for First Amendment protects only freedom of speech.   But, as I pointed out yesterday, the First Amendment also quite obviously protects freedoms of press and peaceable assemblage (for which, by the way, no expiration date or limitation of duration of assembly is given).

Further, since Oakland Mayor Quan admitted that the clearings of Occupy sites across the country were coordinated in a conference call with 18 mayors, there may be good evidence of a conspiracy to violate the First Amendment.

I call upon the Federal government to finally do something to stop this coordinated attack on American democracy.   How about the Attorney General investigating what those misguided mayors did?   How about charging them with conspiracy to undermine our Constitution?

Do we live in a nation of laws, or a nation in which government officials and police can do whatever they choose?

-Paul Levinson, PhD
Professor of Communication and Media Studies
Fordham University


Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

NCIS 9.9: Twists and History

Some twists and surprises in NCIS 9.9 last night, most importantly -
We're lead to believe, at the beginning , that Gibbs is coming back home with Marine First Lieutenant Gabriela Flores' body, but in the action we see in Afghanistan, it turns out to be Marine Captain Craig Quincy who was killed in the fight to rescue Flores.  Good work by Ziva in this theater of the story.Gibbs has been thinking about Marine Private Joan Matteson, whom he knew when he was much younger, not because she was his first real attraction, but because she died before the two of them could get together (she was killed when her plane crashed oveseas).   Flores' survival creates a nice, bitter-sweet counterpoint for Gibbs.The terrorist business in Afghanistan - they blew up a school with kids - turns out to be prelude to a plot to blow up a school bus here in America.  Gibbs and team stop this in the nick of time, thanks to good bad cop/good cop questioning by Gibbs and Leon (which gets one of terrorists to reveal the plot), and McGee's jamming of the terrorist's cellphone at the scene.So the two-part story which began last week is wrapped up well, with the benefit of our being given access to another part of Gibbs' difficult life we didn't know before.   It occurred to me, as I was watching this, that so far this NCIS season there's been no ongoing new romances for anyone on the team.   Ducky was smitten a few weeks ago, but that affair didn't survive the episode.   Will be interesting to see how much longer the chaste season continues.

See also NCIS 9.1: Unpacking Partial Amnesia ... NCIS 9.2: Lying to Yourself ... NCIS 9.3: McGee's Grandmother ... NCIS 9.4: Turkey Vulture as Explained by DiNozzo ... NCIS 9.5: Behrooz's Mother ... NCIS 9.6: Too Good to be True ... NCIS 9.7: "You Were My Shannon, Leroy" ... NCIS 9.8: Intersections with Reality

And see also NCIS Back in Season 8 Action ... NCIS 8.2: Interns! ... NCIS 8.3: Tiff! ... NCIS 8.4: Gary Cooper not John Wayne ... NCIS 8.5: Dead DJ, DiNozzo Hoarse, and Baseball ... NCIS 8.6: The Written Woman ... NCIS 8.7: "James Bond Movie Directed by Fellini" ... NCIS 8.8: Ziva's Father ... NCIS 8.9: Leon's Story ... NCIS 8.10: DiNozzo In and Out ... NCIS 8.11: "The Sister Went Viral" ... Bob Newhart on NCIS 8.12 ... NCIS 8.13: The Wife or the Girlfriend ... NCIS 8.14: Kate ... NCIS 8.15: McGee and DiNozzo's Badges ... NCIS 8.16: Computer Games ... NCIS 8.17: Budget Cuts ... NCIS 8.18: Gibbs vs. the Kid ... NCIS 8.19: The Deadly Book ... NCIS 8.20: CIRay ... NCIS 8.21: Mask and Eye ... NCIS 8.22: "I'd Rather Have a Lead" ... NCIS 8.23: Answers and Questions ... NCIS Season 8 Finale

And see also NCIS  ... NCIS 7.16: Gibbs' Mother-in-Law Dilemma ... NCIS 7.17: Ducky's Ties ... NCIS 7.18: Bogus Treasure and Real Locker ... NCIS 7.21: NCIS Meets Laura ... NCIS Season 7 Finale: Retribution


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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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