Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1103
April 2, 2013
What Your Favorite Pixar Movie Says About You
Pixar movies are kids movies on the surface, sure, but decades of Academy acceptance and a warehouse full of golden statues later, they've crossed over into that realm of things made for kids that adults are allowed to like. So, with that and the big Pixar news of the day in mind, we've decided to make you feel better about liking Pixar movies.
Can we all agree that we are unanimously, as a society, excited for Pixar's new movie Finding Dory, the sequel to 2003's Finding Nemo, that's coming in 2015? Good, perfect, glad that's decided. It's coming out November 25, 2015, which is more than two years away, which seems a little crazy. Ellen DeGeneres is returning as Dory and the whole crew is coming back, too: Nemo, Marlin, and the rest of the creatures from that dentist office tank, too. The script is "fantastic," Ellen said in a press release. She announced it on Instagram, too, and her show this morning:
You may notice there are no children in Ellen's audience, and yet the crowd lets out a deafening roar when she announces the sequel. Whether it's the story of a lovelorn robot in Wall-E or the toys just trying to find their way home in Toy Story, each and every human has a favorite Pixar movie. Only the coldest and darkest hearts don't watch Pixar movies. But not all Pixar movies are created equal. Some Pixar movies are Cars. So, without further ado, a mini-investigation:

Liking the Toy Story movies more than the rest of the bunch is a cop-out, really, because they're the ones everyone likes. They were first, and they are the most universally beloved of all the Pixar movies, with their themes of acceptance, curiosity, and loyalty. Toy Story is the cold glass of milk of Pixar movies. Classic, simple, and satisfying. A staple of any movie diet. It means you're kind of boring, like a glass of milk.

It's the secret Pixar movie packed with comedy bigwigs. It's got Denis Leary, Phyllis Diller, David Hyde Pierce, Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brad Garrett, and Kids in the Hall alum Dave Foley. You like it when good people make OK movies. You probably read SplitSider.

The thought of taking care of a child terrifies you, but you also find it fascinating. Kids! They can teach you so much about life, about the world, and about yourself. They are also filthy little mongrels that can be hard to keep track of. Watching this is better than having kids, you say, but maybe you'll borrow one for an afternoon sometime. Just to try it out. They aren't so bad.

You're living on your own and realizing how big and scary the world is. Deep down all you really want is to go home and hang out with your parents for an afternoon, maybe do some yardwork with dad. But instead, you're just out here swimming. Swimming, swimming, swimming around, hoping for the best and never, ever stopping.
The Incredibles
You like it when dysfunctional families come together to achieve something spectacular in the end. You're probably a really big Modern Family fan. You're also probably thrilled that Disney acquired Marvel, but might not know they don't have the rights to the Fantastic Four. You wish that your family could come together on the holidays, at least, without Uncle Dave starting an argument about his politics after one too many. You are also part of the most neglected fanbase in the Pixar community, and for that our heart goes out to you. You deserve better, Incredibles fans.

You really like Owen Wilson, NASCAR, Larry the Cable Guy, or all of the above, and you like them a little too much. Cars is bad and you should feel bad. Or you have a small child and it shuts them up for an hour, and for that you are forever grateful. It's one of those two things, is what we're saying about Cars.

You like a good slobs-vs.-snobs story. You're also a foodie who records all the Food Network shows, diligently. You've never missed an episode of Chopped. But, unfortunately, you're an absolute disaster in the kitchen. You can't tell the difference between a ladle or a whisk to save your life. You may also just really like Patton Oswalt. That guy is alright.

You're a big Meg Ryan fan. Or, at the very least, movies about unrequited love are your M.O. You've probably seen You've Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle enough times to know each and every line backwards and forwards and backwards again. You may also enjoy seeing the world destroyed and humans relegated to being fat, lazy drones floating in space. You may just enjoy space and robots and things. It's a toss-up, really.

You like it when a movie breaks you down emotionally and then builds you back up again. You like a good cry. You're a sucker for punishment. You also like very, very good movies.
Brave
You may have stayed up late this week finishing Lean In, then spent another two hours reading all of the blog posts written about it. You counted it as a personal victory that Pixar finally had a female lead. You may also be a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. You have a Katniss Everdeen phone background, and you dig archery. You're a Jezebel commenter, or a ginger, or both.






12 Million Americans Believe Lizard People Run Our Country
About 90 million Americans believe aliens exist. Some 66 million of us think aliens landed at Roswell in 1948. These are the things you learn when there's a lull in political news and pollsters get to ask whatever questions they want.
Public Policy Polling has raised weird polls to an art form. During last year's presidential campaign, the firm earned a bit of a reputation for its unorthodox questions; for example, "If God exists, do you approve of its handling of natural disasters?"
Today PPP released the results of a national survey looking at common conspiracy theories. Broken down by topic and cross-referenced by political preference, the results will not inspire a lot of patriotism. If you need to defend your fellow countrymen, be sure to note that the margin of error is 2.8 percent.
We took the findings and arranged them from most- to least-believed. And, just to inspire additional shame, figured out how many actual Americans that meant must believe in things like the danger of fluoride in water. (28 million, if you're wondering.)
View the full question asked for each conspiracy.
Conspiracy Percent believing Number of Americans believing JFK was killed by conspiracy 51 percent 160,096,160 Bush intentionally misled on Iraq WMDs 44 percent 138,122,178 Global warming is a hoax 37 percent 116,148,195 Aliens exist 29 percent 91,035,072 New World Order 28 percent 87,895,931 Hussein was involved in 9/11 28 percent 87,895,931 A UFO crashed at Roswell 21 percent 65,921,948 Vaccines are linked to autism 20 percent 62,782,808 The government controls minds with TV 15 percent 47,087,106 Medical industry invents diseases 15 percent 47,087,106 CIA developed crack 14 percent 43,947,966 Bigfoot exists 14 percent 43,947,966 Obama is the Antichrist 13 percent 40,808,825 The government allowed 9/11 11 percent 34,530,544 Fluoride is dangerous 9 percent 28,252,264 The moon landing was faked 7 percent 21,973,983 Bin Laden is alive 6 percent 18,834,842 Airplane contrails are sinister chemicals 5 percent 15,695,702 McCartney died in 1966 5 percent 15,695,702 Lizard people control politics 4 percent 12,556,562
Just to further inspire conversation, PPP broke down belief in each theory by whom the respondent supported in the 2012 election. This yielded some genuinely interesting results.
For example, only three conspiracies were more commonly believed by Obama supporters: that Bush intentionally misled America about Iraq's WMDs (a massive 69 percent of his supporters believe that one), that the CIA launched the crack epidemic, and that the moon landing was faked. There are two theories with equal support among Obama and Romney supporters: that aliens exist and the one about fluoridation. Everything else, from lizard people to vaccines and autism to global warming being a hoax? Believed by more Romney supporters.
No conspiracy was less commonly believed than one suggesting that the government is populated by lizard people. But that's mostly because only 2 percent of Obama supporters believe the theory while 5 percent of Romney supporters do.






Florida DJs May Face Felony for April Fools' Water Joke Worse Than Rubio's
Florida country radio morning-show hosts Val St. John and Scott Fish are currently serving indefinite suspensions and possibly worse over a successful April Fools' Day prank. They told their listeners that "dihydrogen monoxide" was coming out of the taps throughout the Fort Myers area. Dihydrogen monoxide is water.
The popular deejays are mainly in all this trouble (potentially of a felony level) because their listeners panicked so much — about the molecular makeup of their drinking water, however unwittingly — that Lee County utility officials had to issue a county-wide statement calming the fears of chemistry challenged Floridians.
Audio evidence of exactly how St. John and Fish executed this bad joke remains scarce, as they were pulled off the air around 8:30 a.m. — about three and half hours into their Val and Scott in the Morning show on WWGR/Gator Country 101.9 FM, which airs across a big region of Southwest Florida. That was enough time for listeners to begin calling the water company. Here's the official statement from Lee County utility issued Monday after fielding many calls about the "dihydrogen monoxide" scare:
"They were joking that 'dihydrogen monoxide' was coming out of Lee County residents' taps," reports Florida's WPTV, though it also remains unclear just how much the two hosts stoked the joke, and whether they actually told people to stop drinking the "dihydrogen monoxide" coming out of their taps. The WWGR station's manager did have to issue a retraction — or at least a constant on-air admission that the gag was, in fact, a joke — even though St. John and Fish were technically correct that dihydrogen monoxide was, indeed, coming out of their taps.
"Every break we have we're telling listeners it was a goof, a bad joke," Tony Renda, general manager at WWGR radio told WTSP-TV. And apparently, the station, the water works, and perhaps the authorities are still trying to figure out if the two hosts could face felony charges for, again, reporting that the scientific name of water was coming out of the pipes. "My understanding is it is a felony to call in a false water quality issue," Diane Holm, a public information officer for Lee County, told WTSP, while Renda stood firm about his deejays: "They will have to deal with the circumstances."
St. John and Fish are currently off the air, and maybe someone should tell their Senator, Marco Rubio — he of the unending water joke — or conservative lawmakers across the land: Our CPAC correspondent Elspeth Reeve tells us that the whole water-is-a-chemical-called-"dihydrogen oxide" bit was a really hit at the annual conference's panel entitled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love Plastic Water Bottles, Fracking, Genetically Modified Food, & Big Gulp Sodas."
Update 4:36 p.m. Eastern: We noticed that the station seems to be enjoying this controversy, despite the very real concerns expressed to the Lee County utility. There's a poll on the Gator Country website asking when the two DJs should return to air, with (at the time we viewed the results) 78 percent of those voting "never."
Image by Verdateo via Shutterstock.






How the NRA Puts on Its Nice Face Now
Wayne LaPierre was MIA from the National Rifle Association's press conference Tuesday offering what it calls "common ground" proposals to stop gun violence in schools. Instead, there was the moderate-sounding former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, who did not offer any conspiracy theories about the government's plan to take all the guns, but instead humbly suggested that putting trained armed guards in schools was an important "element" in a wider plan to take on this troubling social problem. Unlike in LaPierre's spectacular press events, Hutchinson took questions from the press, making him look less defensive. The NRA's program has the pleasant name National School Shield. Mark Mattioli, the father of a boy killed at Sandy Hook, spoke briefly, and called for politics "to be sort of set aside here," without "name-calling." With major gun control legislation blocked, the NRA can shift from looking like a hardline lobby to embodying a reasonable compromiser whose compromise position just so happens to involve proposing nothing that in any way limits gun ownership.
Tuesday's event, of course, was not the NRA's first attempt to look more moderate of late. It's merely the latest in a wave of outward niceness to arise from its ocean of undulating strategy since Newtown. Earlier this month, NRA News posted a video introducing its new commentators — cool hip youth talking about how the media gets the AR-15 all wrong. Instead of the old southern white guys we usually associate with the NRA, there's a blonde lady, a black guy, and a white guy who's a former Navy SEAL. There is a slow-motion high-five. In another video, commentator Colion Noir talks about how the media isn't objective. It's Cool Youth vs. the Man: "We're not idiots, we're not stupid!" he says of the media's anti-gun "propaganda." That goes for politicians, too: "Obama didn't kill Osama bin Laden — Navy SEALs with guns did!"
Hutchinson, too, tried to sound like he was offering just good common horse sense. He said an armed guard — a "school resource officer" — "in every school building is important. Right now you have an SRO in every third building. I would say that is insufficient. Generally there should be at least one in every school campus to reduce the response time." The NRA report is meant to look like carefully thought out policy — it features annotated pictures showing vulnerable entry points in schools (left), calls for perimeter fences — and not a lobbying document that lacks any concrete proposals to make its ideas happen. But that's what it is. With its legislative victories all but secured, the NRA is moving on to repairing its image.






'Mad Men' Is Listening to You
Of all the American television shows right now, with the possible exception of the philharmonic playing on PBS every now and then, Mad Men seems like the most carefully orchestrated—and creator Matthew Weiner's secrecy seems like a good indication of that. But in his first partially revealing interview ahead of season six, with the New York Times's Dave Itzkoff, Weiner claims that the AMC show's legions of fans might have more control over the show—and the mystery of Don Draper's love life—than anyone thought. Sort of.
Itzkoff asked an obvious question: Does Draper's almost lecherous look at an approaching woman at the end of last season foretell where this one is going? The answer is, not exactly. Weiner actually uses all of the Mad Men chatter to construct the coming seasons—including, apparently, the new one:
When the season ends, that’s the end of the show for me. I’m out of stuff. I never know what’s going to be the tension in between the seasons. I didn’t know that after Season 3 the audience would not be convinced that Don was divorced. As soon as I heard, “Will he get divorced?” I’m like, well, I guess they don’t know. That’s the tension. “Will he start a new agency?” I guess that’s the tension. What I start hearing over the break starts to inform where I start the next year.
Of course, that's not to say Weiner goes where everyone thinks he's going—or that quotes like that aren't perfect bait for the season premiere. (And we mean perfect, but no spoilers here.) In fact, what this mostly tells us is that Weiner likes to toy with all of the serious emotions we build up at the end of each season. His penchant for going in whatever direction he damn well pleases is evident in the Betty-centric interview he gave to Ali Trachta over at LA Weekly, in which he explains his desire to keep Betty part of the action despite seeming somewhat irrelevant to the central plot lines. So-called "fat Betty" was wrought out of January Jones's pregnancy and Betty's own "domestic conundrum." As has long been anticipated, Betty will have a big role in this coming season. That's something even Weiner is willing to admit.
Devotees of the show, however helpful they may be, now just have a couple more days to wait until the premieres this Sunday. AMC has dropped some pictures of said premiere. So feel free to read all you want into Megan Draper's sun hat, the Christmas decorations in the office, and the toast thereafter.






April 1, 2013
Colorado Accidentally Releases Man from Jail, Man Allegedly Kills Prisons Chief
The case of the white supremacist suspected of killing the head of Colorado's prison system and a pizza man just got weirder. Apparently, a clerical error enabled the alleged killer to leave jail four years early. The murders took place two months later. These kinds of things — that is, clerical errors — probably happen all the time across America due to bored pencil pushers and disorganized bureaucracies. But when it's the prison system, dangerous consequences seem inevitable. A body count seems avoidable.
The suspect, Evan Spencer Ebel, was a pretty bad guy. Nicknamed "Evil Ebel" in jail, the 28-year-old, racked up 28 different violations while in a Colorado prison, where he spent most of his time in solitary confinement. He pleaded guilty to assaulting a prison guard in 2008 and as part of a plea deal was sentenced to an additional four years which would've left him behind bars until 2017. Instead, he was mistaken released in January. The judge failed to say "consecutive," so the court reporter had written "concurrently" meaning Ebel would serve no additional time. And so on January 28, prison officials released Ebel. Bad idea.
In late March, Ebel allegedly killed a Dominos pizza driver so that he could get his uniform and a pizza bag that would help him gain entry to the home Tom Clements, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections. The trick worked as Clements was later found dead in his home. Ebel apparently then drove to Texas, where he shot a cop and died when a truck delivering rocks broad-sided him while he was engaged in a high-speed shootout with police. In his black Cadillac, police found a Domino's pizza bag, bomb supplies, surveillance equipment, handwritten directions to Clements' home and bloody clothing.
What an absurd story. So absurd that it's hard to point a finger at anybody, although the court reporter and judge will certainly think twice the next time they tack additional years onto the sentence of a man with "HATE" tattooed on his hand. The court extended its condolences to the family of the pizza delivery man and Clements — the Texas cop survived the shooting, thank goodness — and the district will conduct "a review of its practices."
Most heartbreaking is the fact that Clements really did believe in redemption. "It is an unbelievably bitter irony ... the thing he most wanted to change was releasing people from six years of solitary confinement directly into the general population," said Gov. John Hickenlooper at deeply religious prison director's memorial service, days before news of the clerical error broke. "They're considered unsafe to release into the prison population. How can we release them back into the general public?"






How on Earth Did Arianna Huffington Do $275,000 Worth of Damage to Her Chelsea Loft?
The owner of a 4,400-square-foot New York City apartment is accusing former tenant Arianna Huffington of trashing the place, leaving bloodied mattresses, gouged wood floors and a very expensive scratched up dining room table. Documentary filmmaker Eric Steel says it took three months to repair all of the damage and is suing Huffington for $275,000 for the trouble. That sounds excessive.
At $32,000 a month, this is not your run of the mill Chelsea loft, and that was no ordinary dining room table. Steel says that even though he told her not to use the apartment to entertain due to the loft's "historical and aesthetic significance," Huffington made copies of the elevator key, let her daughters use the place regularly and frequently hosted parties. Presumably as a result of such activities, virtually every wall was "gouged, stained and otherwise damaged" badly enough to require repainting, and the once pristine hardwood floor was damaged so badly it needed refinishing. The bathtub was stained, the kitchen cabinets were broken, candles and cosmetics had damaged the steel window seats, a mattress had been bloodied — it all sounds unpleasant. And that table. Designed by Steel's famous architect father Charles Gwathmey, the piece of furniture was so dinged up, it had to be shipped back to the manufacturer for repairs.
But it's not like Huffington blasted holes in the ceiling or anything like that. Other complaints included a damaged stove knob and refrigerator door. Aren't these all pretty much symptoms of normal wear-and-tear? Landlords paint apartment walls and refinish floors before a new tenant moves in pretty much all the time — some tenants even require it. That table sounds nice, but maybe don't leave your father's works of art lying in the apartment you're leasing to strangers? The mattress thing is gross. But does all this add up to more than a quarter million dollars worth of damage?
That's up to a judge to decide. Huffington, who moved out of the apartment in January, vehemently denied the allegations in a statement. "Every single claim in this suit is false except the square footage and the address," said the online news mogul. "Eric Steel, who happily renewed the lease twice and visited the apartment multiple times, is holding onto $93,000 dollars in deposits, which he has refused to return." Huffington added that Steel was "obviously trying to extort more money from me by making ludicrous claims." Meanwhile, she's reportedly heading to her very own townhouse on the Upper East Side which she's free to trash all she wants.






Avicii Didn't Like His Big GQ Profile
Avicii is one of the biggest DJs in the world, commands six figures when he plays to huge crowds at the biggest night clubs and electronic music festivals, which is enough to earn a profile in GQ. Except he hates that profile and is fighting back against it.
Tim Bergling, the 23-year-old Swedish bro known as Avicii to his millions of fans, is one of the bigger DJs operating within the vast world of Electronic Dance Music. GQ's writer, Jessica Pressler, followed Bergling and his "bodyman," Felix Alfonso, for the week leading up to his New Year's Eve show at the Las Vegas club XS, collecting plaudits from his fans like Pharrel and Paris Hilton.
But Bergling doesn't like how he, or his music scene, come across in the article. "I would normally not even care but this article really got to me, how it could even be published with so little truth and misquotations," he posted today on Twitlonger. His biggest complaints about the article: it makes his fans out to be bunch of drug addicts, it catches him saying what he does isn't that hard, and it suggests he thinks his fans are a bunch of douchebags.
And, the piece does indeed contain some pretty nasty quotes about the EDM scene. First, he allegedly said that what he does 250 nights a year for $250,000 pay checks isn't that hard:
I guess I think like deep inside, I know that it's like, it's a different kind of performing, it's not really... You're not performing like a guitar player or a singer is performing, you know what I mean? So it's weird to be in the same type setup as one of those. 'Cause I'm not really doing much, you know, like technically it's not that hard.
And secondly, he called out older DJs for, well, for being better DJs than he is in the most technical of senses:
Thanks to computers, these days, DJing is mostly "before work," Tim explains. Most of the set list and transitions are worked out before he gets onstage. The notion of a DJ who determines what to play by reading the room "feels like something a lot of older DJs are saying to kind of desperately cling on staying relevant."
Pressler pressed him on this, asking what he's doing up there for two or three hours smiling, dancing, pushing buttons with vigor, looking busy and working a crowd. "Yeah, it's mostly volume," he told her. "Or the faders, when you're starting to mix into another song, you can hear both in your headphones, you get it to where you want and you pull up the fader." That's it. That was his explanation.
This prompted a response from at least one of the older DJs in the EDM world. A-Trak -- the Canadian DJ who commands the same pay checks and plays a lot of the same clubs who won world DJing championships when he was 15 years old, back in 1997 -- raised the issue over the weekend on Twitter:
So there's an Avicii article in GQ where he says his sets are completely pre-planned & reading the crowd is a thing of the past. He also complains about opening djs who play the same big songs from his set -- which are the same songs everyone else plays. So if I understand correctly, DJs should be robots and each pre-planned robot should know their place...? By the way I think
@avicii makes great music. Sincerely. But if you play the same thing every night you're not a DJ. Dudes live in a bubble, they think what they hear in bottle service clubs and festivals is djing. That's just entertainment.
Another prominent EDM DJ, Laidback Luke, said, "Wow that's scary stuff. You won't be able to play the best set that fits the night, it's missing a chance," prompting A-Trak to respond, "These guys need to go to DJ boot camp."
That's appears to be when Avicii picked up that his peers were turning on him and chose to respond. "I didnt say any of that, its all out of context and phrased in a way that make me sound oblivious," he protested. "So tell us what you mean, Tim..." A-Trak asked. Then we didn't hear from Avicii again, until now. This was his response:
How on earth the fact that I complain when an opening DJ plays some of the peak time tracks I usually play somewhere in my set becomes the conclusion that I only touch volume faders is beyond me and even though I could beat mix in my sleep doesn't allude any kind of respect which I find deeply insulting. I would never lay down a pre-programmed set and performed to a pre-mixed CD, I would never cheat my fans like that. Period. For the record, the only planning I do is check transitions so that I don't have to pre-program anything and still make sure I bring it to my fans. A lot of work and thinking goes into my DJing. I want the entire night to progress seamlessly and when I have to adapt the energy on the fly for the crowd on any given night, I can do so with harmonic mixes that I've practiced over and over again. I am far from the only DJ that does this and it's something I take pride in being able to do. Truth is that at bigger festivals or solo shows I know what people want to hear and my set is a compromise between what I want to play for them and what people come and expect to hear me play for them. At a smaller club show I can wing it completely.
The criticism of major EDM DJs being little more than button-pushers is not new, but this particular instance seems to have irked Avicii. Although, most of that paragraph sounds a bit like rocket science to the uninitiated because, well, it's a lot of technical DJing talk mixed with Avicii's loose handling of the English language. And immediately after dropping all of that technical defense of his work, he admitted this:
Some people are known for certain things, some DJs like A-trak, Steve Angello and Laidback Luke are excellent technical DJs, something I will never be, and have a whole different approach to their performances.
So... uh. Right. He's a very technical DJ when facing criticism for not doing much while performing but he is not a technical DJ when honoring his elderly peers he just insulted. Got it? It's not confusing at all. Avicii's fans aren't pleased with the profile either. They've started attacking Pressler on Twitter:
Besides all of that, Avicii didn't like how Pressler made him or EDM fans who go out to clubs and get bottle service and fist pump to the tight beats sound like complete douchebags. In her defense, it wasn't hard. The douchebaggery was on full display:
"You're sticking with us through New Year's Eve?" Felix asks me. "You'll see what we're all about."
"We'll do some showers," Tim says.
"We'll get ten bottles of champagne and we spray it, we have a war," Felix clarifies, seeing my blank look.
But Tim is having second thoughts. "It's a bit douchey," he says. "It's very douchey."
"Just blame it on me," Felix offers magnanimously. "I'll be a douche."
More douchiness:
"Did you shave his eyebrows? The rule is when someone gets drunk you shave their eyebrows," says Felix. "When we get out of the club, let's go and TP his car," he adds, as we board the private plane. Everyone agrees this is an awesome idea.
He also took issue with the implication EDM fans do a lot of drugs, even though it's a fairly common understanding that EDM is synonymous with "molly," or MDMA, a form of Ecstacy. Pressler asked him about the drug while travelling with his crew:
Tim has never taken the Drug Formerly Known As Ecstasy, which is sort of odd since MDMA is to EDM what cocaine was to disco. "I mean, I want to take it," he says the next day, eating a layover hamburger on the way to Vegas. "But I'm sort of afraid of anything that makes you feel out of control."
Ya burnt.






Conservatives Can't Agree on Which TV Show Brought Us Gay Marriage
According to Bill Kristol and Rick Santorum and other conservatives, there's one reason for a surge in American support for gay marriage: television. But the question is: Which television show? Which television show was it that convinced the majority of Americans to support gay marriage?
We've compiled the various contenders, as nominated by conservative pundits, and subjected them to rigorous scientific and data analysis. And we're pleased to announce that we've identified it.
The Contenders Friends
Suggested by: Conservative pundit Bill Kristol
In a recently released Weekly Standard podcast, Kristol identified two shows that he believes were part of the cultural avalanche that pulled the wool over America's eyes. Think Progress transcribed what he said:
I myself am socially conservative on the marriage issue but even if you’re not, just say what you believe and let the country decide…. This kind of pathetic attempt of ‘Oh my god, young people especially are liberal so let’s just rush to cater to them.’ As if they’re going to respect you if you just embrace the views of some 26-year-old who doesn’t know anything honestly. Can’t adults say young people are sometimes wrong? […]
Gee, this TV show is popular so let’s just throw over thousands of years of history and what the great religions teach and let’s just embrace it because, hey, you don’t want to be on the other side from a TV show that has 20 million viewers.
Twenty-six year-olds were seven when the show came out, which may explain why they don't know anything.
Peak ratings: 24.5 million
Most popular scene on YouTube:
Here, Joey dresses up like Chandler for Halloween, which certainly reinforces Kristol's point.
Dharma and Greg
Suggested by: Also Bill Kristol
Peak ratings: 15.76 million
Most popular scene on YouTube:
This, from the pilot, shows two "hippies" raising their daughter as a hippie. This show provided liberal indoctrination from the very first minute it aired.
Will and Grace
Suggested by: Richard "Rick" Santorum
Santorum identified the popular early-2000s show in a speech at CPAC, though most people didn't notice it until it became part of this (odd) video.
Unlike the wishy-washy William "Bill" Kristol, Santorum isn't bashful about the show that is to blame. Will and Grace featured several gay characters, which almost certainly increased its advocacy exponentially.
Peak ratings: 17.3 million
Most popular scene on YouTube:
This is Madonna getting "past first base" with one of the show's female stars. Rick Santorum clearly knows what he's talking about.
The New Normal
Suggested by: One Million Moms
One Million Moms, the advocacy organization comprised of several thousand moms, identified The New Normal as the culprit last year. Which is impressive, since it was also the show's first season. According to Advocate.com, the group wrote:
NBC's The New Normal is attempting to desensitize America and our children. It is the opposite of how families are designed and created. You cannot recreate the biological wheel.
Which makes sense, if you really think about it.
Ratings: 3.6 million (last week)
Most popular scene on YouTube:
This clip shows two men interviewing a surrogate mother. Which is actually a reflection of a subset of some same-sex relationships! Well played, A Few Thousand Moms.
The Simpsons
Suggested by: Brent Bozell of the Parents Television Council
In 2005, the long running show was in its 50th season, or thereabouts, and featured one of Marge Simpsons' sisters marrying a woman. Bozell didn't like it.
"At a time when the public mood is overwhelmingly against gay marriage, any show that promotes gay marriage is deliberately bucking the public mood," he said.
"I'd rather them not do it at all," he added. "You've got a show watched by millions of children. Do children need to have gay marriage thrust in their faces as an issue? Why can't we just entertain them?"
Clearly now that gay marriage is popular, Bozell will embrace a broad expansion of the coverage of gay marriage in television production. As long as it is not thrust into faces.
Peak ratings: 18.4 million ("Bart Gets an F")
Most popular scene on YouTube:
Seriously. This is The Simpsons' most viewed clip that can also be embedded. The Harlem Shake. And here some people think that gay marriage is bringing about the downfall of modern society.
Glee
Suggested by: Bristol Palin
When President Obama announced that he'd recently completed his evolution on gay marriage, it took one of the great champions of traditional relationships to call him out. Palin, the daughter of one-time Alaska governor Sarah Palin, suggested that gay marriage support was the fault of Fox, her mother's then-employer. Jezebel quoted her Facebook post:
Sometimes dads should lead their family in the right ways of thinking. In this case, it would've been nice if the President would've been an actual leader and helped shape their thoughts instead of merely reflecting what many teenagers think after one too many episodes of Glee.
It is not clear how many episodes of Glee one may watch without suddenly capitulating your long held values; if you know, please leave it in the comments.
Peak ratings: 26.8 million
Most popular scene on YouTube:
"Don't Stop Believin'" was also the song playing when that great defender of traditional families, Tony Soprano, was murdered. Think about it.
The Responsible ShowThere are a few considerations we looked at. Peak ratings, of course, since that meant the highest number of people being brain-washed. Then there are the demographics of gay marriage support. Since a higher percentage of young people are in favor of same-sex nuptials, it stands to reason that newer shows may have played a bigger role.
Once we put all of the data into our supercomputer, however, we were surprised by the result. It turns out that none of these pundits were correct. It turns out that gay marriage is now broadly supported because people watched Walker, Texas Ranger. Here's that show's most popular clip:
Walker wrestles a bear. We rest our case.
(Top image via Flick user videocrab.)






Jesus and 'The Walking Dead' Had a Big Night
Today in showbiz news: Basic cable ratings were huge last night, FX has got a big miniseries in the works, and a look at Teen Wolf season three.
Last night saw the conclusion of both the third season of AMC's The Walking Dead and History's The Bible. An Easter Sunday full of things coming back to life! Because everyone was in the Easter spirit, both programs did very well in the ratings. The Walking Dead broke its own ratings records with a whopping 12.1 million viewers over all and 8.1 million in the 18-49ers. That's a very, very strong showing. Meanwhile The Bible averaged a solid 11.7 million viewers over its two-hour broadcast. This was the big finale, though, of course, lots of people are still hoping for a sequel. Man, when is that dang book gonna come out? Anyway, both of these big numbers represent something important for cable TV: Uh, it's doing really well. Obvious, but important! These are big broadcast network numbers that these shows are posting — about as many people watched The Walking Dead last night as watched American Idol last week. That's pretty significant. Basically the distinction between the two is narrowing. And soon it will be gone! Or they will be gone. The broadcast networks, that is. Hey, it could happen. (Not while twenty million people a week are watching Big Bang Theory, but someday.) [The Hollywood Reporter; The Hollywood Reporter]
Speaking of basic cable networks doing big things, FX is developing a miniseries about the Vietnam War to be produced by Traffic writer and Syriana writer/director Stephen Gaghan. So this is basically their Band of Brothers/The Pacific. The project is called They Marched into Sunlight and is based on the book by David Maraniss. An Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker and playwright is writing the script. The plot is described as this: "It centers on two simultaneous events in October 1967 — the violent ambush of the Black Lion army battalion in the jungles of Vietnam, and a student protest against Dow Chemical, the makers of napalm, on the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin — both of which marked a dramatic turning point for the war and the beginning of an American conversation that is ongoing today." That sounds very interesting! And very high-class for FX. But hey, that's their new strategy. Lots of upcoming cable stuff to be excited about, guys. Lots to look forward to. Meanwhile, NBC debuts Hannibal this Thursday. [Deadline]
Venturing a little further down the cable ladder, but not that much further, here are some new promo photos and some little plot tidbits about the next season of Teen Wolf. The supersized third season! Are you excited? Did you see Scott's mom in a little throwaway role on a few episodes of The Walking Dead? Might she'll be a bigger character next year? Who knows. Anyway, she's not in this slideshow. The main kids are, plus the new twins that are being brought in to replace Colton Haynes. I guess they needed two hunks to replace one Colton Haynes. And apparently one of them is playing a gay love interest for gay Danny! Which is interesting. It's all very interesting. Teen Wolf, guys. Get into it. Or don't, whatever. It's a free country. [Entertainment Weekly]
Selena Gomez has been cast in another big grownup movie! And this one isn't about grownups being terrible to Selena Gomez. At least I don't think it is. She's joined the large ensemble cast of Rudderless, a movie about a grieving father starting a band so he can play his dead son's music. The movie marks William H. Macy's directorial debut and also features Felicity Huffman (natch), Laurence Fishburne, Anton Yelchin (my guess is he plays the dead son in flashbacks?), and Billy Crudup. That's quite a cast! But of course I'm sure that at this point William H. Macy probably knows every person in show business. He's been around a lot and people seem to like him. It's a fancy cast, and Selena Gomez is part of it. So, good for Gomez! Good for Gomez indeed. Maybe she plays the dead son's old girlfriend? And she comes to the garage or wherever the dad's band plays and she says they sound good? That's just a guess, but it seems plausible, right? Whatever the role is, it probably won't involve being leered at by some actor with a fake grill. We can probably assume that. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Hm. Orlando Bloom has been set to star as fair Romeo in an upcoming Broadway production of Romeo & Juliet, alongside Condola Rashad. People are mostly touting this as "the interracial Romeo & Juliet," which is significant, I guess. I mean, Juliet's family will be all black, Romeo's will be all white. Which... if you don't get it, that's why the families hate each other I guess? Because of race? Kind of like how Baz Luhrmann made the Capulets vaguely Latino in Romeo + Juliet. I don't know. It seems like a pretty obvious gimmick, doesn't it? Like it's probably been done before. So it doesn't feel all that newsy, honestly. What does feel newsy is: Wait, Orlando Bloom is going to play Romeo?? Hahaha. Did the director, David Leveaux, not see... any of his movies? Not Elizabethtown? Not The Three Musketeers? *Really* not Elizabethtown?? Gotta do your homework, guys. Really gotta look into people before you go offering them big fancy play roles. Otherwise stuff like this happens. [Playbill]
Here's the first promo for CBS's summertime miniseries Under the Dome, the adaptation of Stephen King's novel Under the Dome, about people living... under a dome. It stars, among others, Mike Vogel (who's in everything these days, isn't he?), Rachelle Lefevre, Dean Norris, and Avalon High star Britt Robertson. Oh there's also some named Steve Baldwin! It's not Stephen Baldwin, though. It's a different Baldwin. Maybe he's a cousin or something. Or that's just his name. Whatever the case, that's the most exciting part of this whole thing. Steve Baldwin. What's he like I wonder??






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