Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 902

January 5, 2016

“Tequila crazy” and “martini maudlin”: Do different kinds of alcohol give us a different buzz?

We've all heard the folk wisdom about how different kinds of alcohol affect us differently. "I go crazy on tequila," one person claims. "He's okay drinking beer, but he's a mean whiskey drunk," is an oft-heard refrain. "If I drink gin, I turn into a big, maudlin crybaby," someone asserts. But is it true? Does the kind of alcohol we drink influence the kind of buzz we get? The science doesn't seem to support the folk wisdom. First off, booze is booze. Whether you're drinking beer, wine or hard liquor, the active ingredient—the stuff that gets you drunk—in each beverage is the same: ethyl alcohol or ethanol. Yes, hard liquor contains more ethanol per ounce than beer or wine, but it's the amount of ethanol consumed, not the vehicle for consuming it, that makes the difference. We recognize that different kinds of alcoholic beverages are of varying strengths—drinking 12 ounces of 80 proof (40%) hard liquor will get you much more intoxicated than 12 ounces of 5% alcohol beer—but we can account for those differences by using the standard drink rule set by the National Institutes of Health. That rule posits that although alcohol by volume varies by beverage we can assume that a 12-ounce beer equals a 5-ounce glass of wine equals 1.5-ounce shot of hard liquor. They all have about the same amount of pure alcohol and they should all affect drinkers similarly. If people claim they get more wasted on six shots of tequila than a six-pack of beer, the reason is not that they're drinking more alcohol or a different form of it—they are most likely sucking down the shots much more rapidly than they're swilling the brewskis. For all but the most crazed beer-hounds, it takes at least a few minutes to finish that beer, while multiple shots can be downed rapid-fire in a matter of seconds. That rapid ingestion of alcohol is going to cause a rapid spike in blood alcohol levels, as well as an associated rapid decrease in inhibitions, sense of propriety, judgment, and motor skills. But it's not because you drank hard liquor instead of beer; it's because you ingested massive amounts of ethanol in a hurry. Still, people are going to claim different forms of booze affect them (or others) differently. What can account for that? There are three possibilities, and the first is the likeliest. Expectations. If we believe drinking tequila will turn us into table-dancing maniacs, we're more likely to actually turn into table-dancing maniacs after downing pitchers of margaritas. Conversely, if we think gin makes us weepy, we're likely to get that way after a few martinis. As a 2006 review paper on alcohol expectancy effects noted, "Studies of alcohol effects on motor and cognitive functioning have shown the individual differences in responses to alcohol are related to the specific types of effects that drinkers expect. In general, those who expect the least impairment are least impaired and those who expect the most impairment are most impaired under the drug. Moreover, this same relationship is observed in response to placebo." And if we think a drink is going to get us drunk, we're likely to feel drunk even if there's no alcohol in it. That's the alcohol placebo effect, and it's been demonstrated repeatedly in the scientific literature. In one well-known example in 2003, a group of students in New Zealand were given bottles of tonic water and lime they were told contained vodka. That group experienced serious recall issues, while the control group did not. Like expectations about the effects of alcohol in general, expectations about the effects of different kinds of alcohol influence how it affects us. "A lot of this is folk memories and cultural hangovers," pharmacologist Paul Clayton, former senior scientific advisor to the UK government's Committee on the Safety of Medicines, told the Guardian. "A lot of it depends on what mood you were in when you started drinking and the social context. The idea that gin makes you unhappy probably comes from its nickname 'mother's ruin'—the idea that it makes women depressed, which is a cultural idea. But fundamentally, alcohol is alcohol whichever way you slice it." "We look for patterns in our lives that promote a good time. If we have a really great night, we try and re-create exactly what we did,” said UCLA psychiatry professor Timothy Fong. But whether your experience was tequila crazy or martini maudlin, "the body can’t tell the difference between whiskey, gin, or beer. It just sees alcohol, and it processes that alcohol,” he added. Mixers. When we drink alcohol, we don't always just drink alcohol. Little research has been done on how what we mix with our booze may affect the high (are "red beer" drinkers more mellow than plain beer drinkers?), but it seems like the mix (or lack of) might play a role. Do people drinking tequila shots get a different feel from those drinking margaritas or tequila sunrises? How does sugary cola affect alcohol's impact? What about mixing vodka and super-caffeinated energy drinks like Red Bull? Perhaps the different high is not because of the booze you're drinking, but because of what you're drinking with it. Congeners.These are byproducts of fermentation and distillation, and include acetone, acetaldehyde, esters, and terpenes, as well as forms of alcohol other than ethanol, such as methanol. Different kinds of alcohol contain different types and quantities of congeners, so while single shots of 80 proof rum, whiskey and tequila have the same amount of alcohol, they have significant variations in congener content. Congeners contribute to an alcohol's smell, flavor, and color, and could have an impact on the type of alcohol buzz, but this isn't proven. Still, the bottom line seems to be that booze is booze, and how (and to what degree) you get drunk is more a function of what you expect than the poison you pick. Happy New Year! Phillip Smith is editor of the AlterNet Drug Reporter and author of the Drug War Chronicle.

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Published on January 05, 2016 15:58

Welcome to Twitter hell: Imagine Donald Trump trolling us all — 10,000 characters at a time

Part of the appeal of Twitter is its brevity. A quick, 140 character expression of myriad news, emotion and information. It’s quick and convenient for our ever-moving lives, and allows us to obtain information in headline form. It also limits overwrought statements that can quickly become tedious -- and let’s admit it, annoying -- to read as we scroll through our feeds. If a person chooses to go on a rant via Twitter, they’re made aware of it by having to compose multiple tweets in quick succession for it to make sense. It’s as laborious for the user to write as it is for followers to read. But that’s all about to change. Twitter is considering adding a feature that will enable readers to tweet in 10,000 characters, which also happens to be the character limit for direct messages. The model being tested will display tweets as they currently appear, as 140 characters, but will have an added feature to indicate more content is available. Thank god for that. Imagine scrolling your feed only to find a 10,000 character rant from love-scorned follower, or vitriol spewed from Donald Trump? It would be enough to unfollow someone or leave Twitter entirely because 10,000 character tweets would begin to resemble lengthy Facebook posts that few have time or patience to read. What would a 10,000 character tweet look like? The number seems daunting considering how conditioned we are to succinct 140 characters. Below is an example of my attempt at 10,000 characters:

Hi, I’m Erin and I’m a journalist. Once upon a time I had dreams of being a neurosurgeon, but opted to pursue writing instead because I have an insatiable curiosity for exploring and telling stories. My favorite color is red, and I’m now writing facts about myself that might be given in some sort of group introduction #awkward. Currently, this statement is at 362 characters (!!!) despite my best attempts to use as many words and as much punctuation as possible. Typically, I find myself eliminating words and punctuation in order to meet the 140 character limit of a tweet. Seriously, I don’t know what I might be so moved or inspired to write on Twitter that would take up 10,000 characters #WTF??? Do I even write text messages this long??? I chat with my friends and family via g-chat, email and Facebook messenger daily, and am wondering if any of those messages add up to 10,000 characters. I’m starting to feel like I’m writing in a diary. I don’t like wasting words, and feel neither clever nor creative. Surely, this can’t be good. This entire paragraph is at roughly 1000 characters.

Readers, I’ve tried and failed you. I’m not sure I’ve ever written my boyfriend that many characters in any conversation. It felt more like writing a manifesto rather than the brief, of-the-moment and to-the-point style Twitter has encouraged thus far in its history. What difference will this make for Twitter users? Will anyone take the time to tweet 10,000 characters? Will anyone bother or care to read it? Twitter also recently introduced new measures to track trolls and reduce the hate speech often tweeted at users. Last year, a number of high-profile Twitter users like Lena Dunham quit Twitter because the abuse was too much to handle. “We have spent longer and put more effort into user safety than any other issue. The measures we’ve taken correlate directly with a reduction in the amount of bad behaviour on the platform,” Bruce Dailey, head of Twitter in Europe told The Independent. The new features don’t seem to add up. If Twitter is dedicating time to eliminate abuse from trolls, how is increasing the character limit going to aid in this mission? A 10,000 character tweet could easily be bait for a thirsty troll hoping to make a faceless fellow user as miserable as they are. It could get bad, especially if a troll’s response is in the form of 10,000 characters. The access we have to publicly displaying every noise in our heads we consider a thought is a powerful one, and now there’s almost no limit. (Please note that this post is just at the 4,000 character mark.)Part of the appeal of Twitter is its brevity. A quick, 140 character expression of myriad news, emotion and information. It’s quick and convenient for our ever-moving lives, and allows us to obtain information in headline form. It also limits overwrought statements that can quickly become tedious -- and let’s admit it, annoying -- to read as we scroll through our feeds. If a person chooses to go on a rant via Twitter, they’re made aware of it by having to compose multiple tweets in quick succession for it to make sense. It’s as laborious for the user to write as it is for followers to read. But that’s all about to change. Twitter is considering adding a feature that will enable readers to tweet in 10,000 characters, which also happens to be the character limit for direct messages. The model being tested will display tweets as they currently appear, as 140 characters, but will have an added feature to indicate more content is available. Thank god for that. Imagine scrolling your feed only to find a 10,000 character rant from love-scorned follower, or vitriol spewed from Donald Trump? It would be enough to unfollow someone or leave Twitter entirely because 10,000 character tweets would begin to resemble lengthy Facebook posts that few have time or patience to read. What would a 10,000 character tweet look like? The number seems daunting considering how conditioned we are to succinct 140 characters. Below is an example of my attempt at 10,000 characters:

Hi, I’m Erin and I’m a journalist. Once upon a time I had dreams of being a neurosurgeon, but opted to pursue writing instead because I have an insatiable curiosity for exploring and telling stories. My favorite color is red, and I’m now writing facts about myself that might be given in some sort of group introduction #awkward. Currently, this statement is at 362 characters (!!!) despite my best attempts to use as many words and as much punctuation as possible. Typically, I find myself eliminating words and punctuation in order to meet the 140 character limit of a tweet. Seriously, I don’t know what I might be so moved or inspired to write on Twitter that would take up 10,000 characters #WTF??? Do I even write text messages this long??? I chat with my friends and family via g-chat, email and Facebook messenger daily, and am wondering if any of those messages add up to 10,000 characters. I’m starting to feel like I’m writing in a diary. I don’t like wasting words, and feel neither clever nor creative. Surely, this can’t be good. This entire paragraph is at roughly 1000 characters.

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Published on January 05, 2016 14:57

Controlled by shadow government: Mike Lofgren reveals how top U.S. officials are at the mercy of the “deep state”

One of the predominant themes of the 2016 presidential campaign thus far — and one that is unlikely to lose significance once the primaries give way to the general election — is the American people's exasperation with a political system they see as corrupt, self-serving, disingenuous and out of touch. It is not an especially partisan or ideological sentiment; you can just as easily find it among supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders as among fans of Donald Trump. You can even find those who support paragons of the status quo, like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, making similar complaints. It's about as close to a consensus position as you're likely to find nowadays in American politics. Yet despite the widespread agreement that something is seriously wrong with democracy in the U.S., there's much less of a consensus as to what that something is — and, crucially, how to fix it. The answers Bernie Sanders offers, for example, are not exactly the same as those proffered by Donald Trump. Is the problem too much government? Not enough government? Too much immigration? Not enough immigration? Too much taxing and regulating? Not enough taxing and regulating? Our lack of a systemic analysis of the problem is part of the reason why our answers are so diffuse and ill-fitting. And that's just one of the reasons why "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government," the new book from ex-longtime GOP staffer turned best-selling author Mike Lofgren, is so valuable. Lofgren puts a name and a shape to a problem that has often been only nebulously defined; and while his conclusions are not exactly uplifting, the logic and sophistication of his argument is hard to resist. Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Lofgren about his book, the deep state and his read on the current sorry state of American government and politics. Our conversation, which also touched on President Obama's relationship with the deep state, was edited for clarity and length. How should we think about the deep state? Is it an elite conspiracy? A loosely defined social group? A network of specific institutions? How should we conceive of it? Well, first of all, it is not a conspiracy. It is something that operates in broad daylight. It is not a conspiratorial cabal. These are simply people who have evolved [into] a kind of position. It is in their best interest to act in this way. And given the fact that people would rather know about Kim Kardashian than what makes up the budget or what the government is doing in Mali or Sudan or other unknown places, this is what you get: a disconnected, self-serving bureaucracy that is ... simply evolving to do what it’s doing now. That is, to maintain and enhance its own power. When do you think the American deep state first started? Probably, it started in WWII, when we had the Manhattan Project, which was a huge secret project that required tens of thousands of people to be working in complete secrecy — and we actually built enormous cities [for the project's workers] ... and no one knew they existed. You also had the so-called Ultra and Magic secret [operations], the decoding of the Nazi and Japanese codes that required an enormous number of people to be doing absolutely top secret work that they did not reveal to anybody for decades. So, WWII created this kind of infrastructure of the deep state, which increased and consolidated during the Cold War. What are the key institutions and players within the deep state? The key institutions are exactly what people would think they are. The military-industrial complex; the Pentagon and all their contractors (but also, now, our entire homeland security apparatus); the Department of Treasury; the Justice Department; certain courts, like the southern district of Manhattan, and the eastern district of Virginia; the FISA courts. And you got this kind of rump Congress that consists of certain people in the leadership, defense and intelligence committees who kind of know what’s going on. The rest of Congress doesn’t really know or care; they’re too busy looking about the next election. So that's the governmental aspect. What about in the private sector? You’ve got Wall Street. Many of these people — whether it is David Petraeus ... or someone like [Bill] Daley, who is the former chief of staff to President Obama ... or Hank Paulson, who came from Goldman Sachs to become Treasury Secretary and bailed out Wall Street in 2008; or the people that Obama chose to be Treasury secretary — like Tim Geithner. They all have that Wall Street connection. And the third thing now is Silicon Valley. Oh? Why is Silicon Valley now so central? Because they generate so much money that they are rivaling and sometimes surpassing Wall Street. The heads of Google or Apple make more money than the guys running Wall Street. They make more money than Jamie Dimon. So that’s the new source of cash to run the deep state. Silicon Valley provides a lot of money. But it also has access to an unfathomable amount of information. Which do you think is more valuable to the deep state — the cash or the info? I think you can’t distinguish the two. There is a tremendous amount of money coming, in terms of lobbying, for Silicon Valley to get what it wants in terms of intellectual property and so forth. At the same time, NSA insiders have told me that they couldn’t even operate without the cooperation of Silicon Valley, because the communication backbones that are set up and operated by Silicon Valley provide the vast majority of information that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are going to exploit — and they can’t do it themselves. They need the willing or unwilling cooperation of Silicon Valley. But when the Snowden leaks first hit, a lot of Silicon Valley elites implied they didn't knowingly or willingly work with the government, no? There was a certain amount of deception there, after the Edward Snowden revelations. They claimed, Oh, well, the NSA made us do all these things! — but not really, because NSA, CIA, and these other intelligence organizations were also involved in giving seed money or subsidies to various Silicon Valley companies to do these things. Right. Which raises the question of whether the line between the public sector and the private sector even matters anymore, at least when it comes to the deep state. It is hard to distinguish them anymore. All these guys simply go through the revolving door to the point where you can hardly distinguish [government employees from private sector workers]. A good percentage of the people sitting at their desks right now in the Pentagon are private sector contractors. They are literally in the Pentagon, in the NSA building, in all these organizations. They are the ones who essentially run the show, by virtue of having the technical knowledge. Snowden himself was a contractor. Yes, he was a Booz Allen contractor. How is it that a Booz Allen contractor — a junior person — had access to all this information? It certainly doesn’t say much for Gen. Keith Alexander, who was the director of NSA at the time. How can he bitch and moan about Snowden? He was responsible for having him cleared, and for letting low-level contractors have that kind of access. And yet now he is working in some boutique cybersecurity firm on Wall Street and making a ton of money. Do the people who work in the deep state have a common ideology or narrative that they tell themselves and one another, something that justifies their behavior or explains why their interventions into the democratic process are "necessary"? I think it's an ideology that dare not speak its name. They claim it is not an ideology, that it is simply their technocratic expertise giving you the benefit of their knowledge. However, their knowledge is always based on a neoconservative view of foreign policy, [and] in domestic policy, it enforces neoliberalism. On a personal level, it is kind of, Well, we’re just doing the best we can or If only everyone appreciated how hard it is to decide whether to torture subject A or subject B when you are in the CIA or If only everyone appreciated how hard it is to decide to privatize this or that. You just don’t really appreciate how difficult things are for us. They sort of act like stoical martyrs when you ask them about why they actually do these things. Do you think that sense of martyrdom explains the revolving door problem? I'm imagining something along the lines of these people saying to themselves, Well, I sacrificed for my country; so now I deserve to cash out. I am sure they all acculturate themselves to that viewpoint. And when the money is there; you don’t want to leave it lying on the table. They certainly don’t. And our laws against that kind of behavior are nonexistent, or can be gotten around, so why not take the money? I once made a joke to a friend that President Obama was to the deep state what the press secretary is to the president. Was I closer to the truth than I realized? Or was I going too far? I don't believe so. [Obama] was a guy who was so carefully cultivated. You saw that already in the 2004 Democratic convention. He was going to filibuster the FISA Amendments Act regarding the telecoms illegal collusion with intelligence agencies, but somewhere in 2008, he decided he was going to vote for it. And that was right about the time that somebody supplied him with John Brennan, the current CIA director, who was going to tutor him on what it takes to be president from the national security perspective. It doesn't suggest a lot of autonomy on Obama's part. This guy is to some extent controlled. That doesn’t mean he is not articulate or bright or doesn’t know what’s going on; he is obviously more so, on all accounts, than his predecessor. But Obama, or any other president, has a very limited latitude of what he’s going to do on the very big issues of international finance and national security. He is very hemmed-in on those accounts. So he becomes a kind of a spokesman. Just hypothetically, what do you think would happen if he tried to push the envelope and publicly reject some foundational element of the deep state? I don’t think we really know what would happen, because the incentives for these people are so carefully aligned with what they’re "supposed" to do. Obama has already had White House dinners with very rich contributors about setting up his pharaonic monument, the Obama Presidential Library (which is going to require billions in funding). That already constraints how much he's going to go rogue. And we have to only have to think back to Clinton on his way out the door. He signed a bill which took the wraps off derivatives trading. He claimed later that somehow his hand was forced and that it was going to be written anyway and all that; I don't think so. He ended up being paid over $100 million afterwards, mainly by corporate sponsors, to give speeches. It was kind of like compensation after the fact. Given the ubiquity and continuity of the deep state, will it matter whether the Republican or the Democrat wins the presidential race later this year? Or will it be the same either way? It matters to a certain extent. A competent rogue is probably preferable to an insane one. There are definable differences between Bush and Obama. However, the differences are so constrained. They’re not between the 40-yard lines; they are between the 48-yard lines. Is there any scenario in which the deep state's influence and power can be curtailed or eliminated? Or does the fact that it's evolved sort of organically suggest that only something truly revolutionary could upend it? The deep state has created so many contradictions in this country. You have this enormous disparity of rich and poor; and you have this perpetual war, even though we’re braying about freedom. We have a surveillance state, and we talk about freedom. We have internal contradictions. Who knows what this will fly into? It may collapse like the Soviet Union; or it might go into fascism with a populist camouflage — like Trump is selling us.One of the predominant themes of the 2016 presidential campaign thus far — and one that is unlikely to lose significance once the primaries give way to the general election — is the American people's exasperation with a political system they see as corrupt, self-serving, disingenuous and out of touch. It is not an especially partisan or ideological sentiment; you can just as easily find it among supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders as among fans of Donald Trump. You can even find those who support paragons of the status quo, like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, making similar complaints. It's about as close to a consensus position as you're likely to find nowadays in American politics. Yet despite the widespread agreement that something is seriously wrong with democracy in the U.S., there's much less of a consensus as to what that something is — and, crucially, how to fix it. The answers Bernie Sanders offers, for example, are not exactly the same as those proffered by Donald Trump. Is the problem too much government? Not enough government? Too much immigration? Not enough immigration? Too much taxing and regulating? Not enough taxing and regulating? Our lack of a systemic analysis of the problem is part of the reason why our answers are so diffuse and ill-fitting. And that's just one of the reasons why "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government," the new book from ex-longtime GOP staffer turned best-selling author Mike Lofgren, is so valuable. Lofgren puts a name and a shape to a problem that has often been only nebulously defined; and while his conclusions are not exactly uplifting, the logic and sophistication of his argument is hard to resist. Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Lofgren about his book, the deep state and his read on the current sorry state of American government and politics. Our conversation, which also touched on President Obama's relationship with the deep state, was edited for clarity and length. How should we think about the deep state? Is it an elite conspiracy? A loosely defined social group? A network of specific institutions? How should we conceive of it? Well, first of all, it is not a conspiracy. It is something that operates in broad daylight. It is not a conspiratorial cabal. These are simply people who have evolved [into] a kind of position. It is in their best interest to act in this way. And given the fact that people would rather know about Kim Kardashian than what makes up the budget or what the government is doing in Mali or Sudan or other unknown places, this is what you get: a disconnected, self-serving bureaucracy that is ... simply evolving to do what it’s doing now. That is, to maintain and enhance its own power. When do you think the American deep state first started? Probably, it started in WWII, when we had the Manhattan Project, which was a huge secret project that required tens of thousands of people to be working in complete secrecy — and we actually built enormous cities [for the project's workers] ... and no one knew they existed. You also had the so-called Ultra and Magic secret [operations], the decoding of the Nazi and Japanese codes that required an enormous number of people to be doing absolutely top secret work that they did not reveal to anybody for decades. So, WWII created this kind of infrastructure of the deep state, which increased and consolidated during the Cold War. What are the key institutions and players within the deep state? The key institutions are exactly what people would think they are. The military-industrial complex; the Pentagon and all their contractors (but also, now, our entire homeland security apparatus); the Department of Treasury; the Justice Department; certain courts, like the southern district of Manhattan, and the eastern district of Virginia; the FISA courts. And you got this kind of rump Congress that consists of certain people in the leadership, defense and intelligence committees who kind of know what’s going on. The rest of Congress doesn’t really know or care; they’re too busy looking about the next election. So that's the governmental aspect. What about in the private sector? You’ve got Wall Street. Many of these people — whether it is David Petraeus ... or someone like [Bill] Daley, who is the former chief of staff to President Obama ... or Hank Paulson, who came from Goldman Sachs to become Treasury Secretary and bailed out Wall Street in 2008; or the people that Obama chose to be Treasury secretary — like Tim Geithner. They all have that Wall Street connection. And the third thing now is Silicon Valley. Oh? Why is Silicon Valley now so central? Because they generate so much money that they are rivaling and sometimes surpassing Wall Street. The heads of Google or Apple make more money than the guys running Wall Street. They make more money than Jamie Dimon. So that’s the new source of cash to run the deep state. Silicon Valley provides a lot of money. But it also has access to an unfathomable amount of information. Which do you think is more valuable to the deep state — the cash or the info? I think you can’t distinguish the two. There is a tremendous amount of money coming, in terms of lobbying, for Silicon Valley to get what it wants in terms of intellectual property and so forth. At the same time, NSA insiders have told me that they couldn’t even operate without the cooperation of Silicon Valley, because the communication backbones that are set up and operated by Silicon Valley provide the vast majority of information that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are going to exploit — and they can’t do it themselves. They need the willing or unwilling cooperation of Silicon Valley. But when the Snowden leaks first hit, a lot of Silicon Valley elites implied they didn't knowingly or willingly work with the government, no? There was a certain amount of deception there, after the Edward Snowden revelations. They claimed, Oh, well, the NSA made us do all these things! — but not really, because NSA, CIA, and these other intelligence organizations were also involved in giving seed money or subsidies to various Silicon Valley companies to do these things. Right. Which raises the question of whether the line between the public sector and the private sector even matters anymore, at least when it comes to the deep state. It is hard to distinguish them anymore. All these guys simply go through the revolving door to the point where you can hardly distinguish [government employees from private sector workers]. A good percentage of the people sitting at their desks right now in the Pentagon are private sector contractors. They are literally in the Pentagon, in the NSA building, in all these organizations. They are the ones who essentially run the show, by virtue of having the technical knowledge. Snowden himself was a contractor. Yes, he was a Booz Allen contractor. How is it that a Booz Allen contractor — a junior person — had access to all this information? It certainly doesn’t say much for Gen. Keith Alexander, who was the director of NSA at the time. How can he bitch and moan about Snowden? He was responsible for having him cleared, and for letting low-level contractors have that kind of access. And yet now he is working in some boutique cybersecurity firm on Wall Street and making a ton of money. Do the people who work in the deep state have a common ideology or narrative that they tell themselves and one another, something that justifies their behavior or explains why their interventions into the democratic process are "necessary"? I think it's an ideology that dare not speak its name. They claim it is not an ideology, that it is simply their technocratic expertise giving you the benefit of their knowledge. However, their knowledge is always based on a neoconservative view of foreign policy, [and] in domestic policy, it enforces neoliberalism. On a personal level, it is kind of, Well, we’re just doing the best we can or If only everyone appreciated how hard it is to decide whether to torture subject A or subject B when you are in the CIA or If only everyone appreciated how hard it is to decide to privatize this or that. You just don’t really appreciate how difficult things are for us. They sort of act like stoical martyrs when you ask them about why they actually do these things. Do you think that sense of martyrdom explains the revolving door problem? I'm imagining something along the lines of these people saying to themselves, Well, I sacrificed for my country; so now I deserve to cash out. I am sure they all acculturate themselves to that viewpoint. And when the money is there; you don’t want to leave it lying on the table. They certainly don’t. And our laws against that kind of behavior are nonexistent, or can be gotten around, so why not take the money? I once made a joke to a friend that President Obama was to the deep state what the press secretary is to the president. Was I closer to the truth than I realized? Or was I going too far? I don't believe so. [Obama] was a guy who was so carefully cultivated. You saw that already in the 2004 Democratic convention. He was going to filibuster the FISA Amendments Act regarding the telecoms illegal collusion with intelligence agencies, but somewhere in 2008, he decided he was going to vote for it. And that was right about the time that somebody supplied him with John Brennan, the current CIA director, who was going to tutor him on what it takes to be president from the national security perspective. It doesn't suggest a lot of autonomy on Obama's part. This guy is to some extent controlled. That doesn’t mean he is not articulate or bright or doesn’t know what’s going on; he is obviously more so, on all accounts, than his predecessor. But Obama, or any other president, has a very limited latitude of what he’s going to do on the very big issues of international finance and national security. He is very hemmed-in on those accounts. So he becomes a kind of a spokesman. Just hypothetically, what do you think would happen if he tried to push the envelope and publicly reject some foundational element of the deep state? I don’t think we really know what would happen, because the incentives for these people are so carefully aligned with what they’re "supposed" to do. Obama has already had White House dinners with very rich contributors about setting up his pharaonic monument, the Obama Presidential Library (which is going to require billions in funding). That already constraints how much he's going to go rogue. And we have to only have to think back to Clinton on his way out the door. He signed a bill which took the wraps off derivatives trading. He claimed later that somehow his hand was forced and that it was going to be written anyway and all that; I don't think so. He ended up being paid over $100 million afterwards, mainly by corporate sponsors, to give speeches. It was kind of like compensation after the fact. Given the ubiquity and continuity of the deep state, will it matter whether the Republican or the Democrat wins the presidential race later this year? Or will it be the same either way? It matters to a certain extent. A competent rogue is probably preferable to an insane one. There are definable differences between Bush and Obama. However, the differences are so constrained. They’re not between the 40-yard lines; they are between the 48-yard lines. Is there any scenario in which the deep state's influence and power can be curtailed or eliminated? Or does the fact that it's evolved sort of organically suggest that only something truly revolutionary could upend it? The deep state has created so many contradictions in this country. You have this enormous disparity of rich and poor; and you have this perpetual war, even though we’re braying about freedom. We have a surveillance state, and we talk about freedom. We have internal contradictions. Who knows what this will fly into? It may collapse like the Soviet Union; or it might go into fascism with a populist camouflage — like Trump is selling us.One of the predominant themes of the 2016 presidential campaign thus far — and one that is unlikely to lose significance once the primaries give way to the general election — is the American people's exasperation with a political system they see as corrupt, self-serving, disingenuous and out of touch. It is not an especially partisan or ideological sentiment; you can just as easily find it among supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders as among fans of Donald Trump. You can even find those who support paragons of the status quo, like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, making similar complaints. It's about as close to a consensus position as you're likely to find nowadays in American politics. Yet despite the widespread agreement that something is seriously wrong with democracy in the U.S., there's much less of a consensus as to what that something is — and, crucially, how to fix it. The answers Bernie Sanders offers, for example, are not exactly the same as those proffered by Donald Trump. Is the problem too much government? Not enough government? Too much immigration? Not enough immigration? Too much taxing and regulating? Not enough taxing and regulating? Our lack of a systemic analysis of the problem is part of the reason why our answers are so diffuse and ill-fitting. And that's just one of the reasons why "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government," the new book from ex-longtime GOP staffer turned best-selling author Mike Lofgren, is so valuable. Lofgren puts a name and a shape to a problem that has often been only nebulously defined; and while his conclusions are not exactly uplifting, the logic and sophistication of his argument is hard to resist. Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Lofgren about his book, the deep state and his read on the current sorry state of American government and politics. Our conversation, which also touched on President Obama's relationship with the deep state, was edited for clarity and length. How should we think about the deep state? Is it an elite conspiracy? A loosely defined social group? A network of specific institutions? How should we conceive of it? Well, first of all, it is not a conspiracy. It is something that operates in broad daylight. It is not a conspiratorial cabal. These are simply people who have evolved [into] a kind of position. It is in their best interest to act in this way. And given the fact that people would rather know about Kim Kardashian than what makes up the budget or what the government is doing in Mali or Sudan or other unknown places, this is what you get: a disconnected, self-serving bureaucracy that is ... simply evolving to do what it’s doing now. That is, to maintain and enhance its own power. When do you think the American deep state first started? Probably, it started in WWII, when we had the Manhattan Project, which was a huge secret project that required tens of thousands of people to be working in complete secrecy — and we actually built enormous cities [for the project's workers] ... and no one knew they existed. You also had the so-called Ultra and Magic secret [operations], the decoding of the Nazi and Japanese codes that required an enormous number of people to be doing absolutely top secret work that they did not reveal to anybody for decades. So, WWII created this kind of infrastructure of the deep state, which increased and consolidated during the Cold War. What are the key institutions and players within the deep state? The key institutions are exactly what people would think they are. The military-industrial complex; the Pentagon and all their contractors (but also, now, our entire homeland security apparatus); the Department of Treasury; the Justice Department; certain courts, like the southern district of Manhattan, and the eastern district of Virginia; the FISA courts. And you got this kind of rump Congress that consists of certain people in the leadership, defense and intelligence committees who kind of know what’s going on. The rest of Congress doesn’t really know or care; they’re too busy looking about the next election. So that's the governmental aspect. What about in the private sector? You’ve got Wall Street. Many of these people — whether it is David Petraeus ... or someone like [Bill] Daley, who is the former chief of staff to President Obama ... or Hank Paulson, who came from Goldman Sachs to become Treasury Secretary and bailed out Wall Street in 2008; or the people that Obama chose to be Treasury secretary — like Tim Geithner. They all have that Wall Street connection. And the third thing now is Silicon Valley. Oh? Why is Silicon Valley now so central? Because they generate so much money that they are rivaling and sometimes surpassing Wall Street. The heads of Google or Apple make more money than the guys running Wall Street. They make more money than Jamie Dimon. So that’s the new source of cash to run the deep state. Silicon Valley provides a lot of money. But it also has access to an unfathomable amount of information. Which do you think is more valuable to the deep state — the cash or the info? I think you can’t distinguish the two. There is a tremendous amount of money coming, in terms of lobbying, for Silicon Valley to get what it wants in terms of intellectual property and so forth. At the same time, NSA insiders have told me that they couldn’t even operate without the cooperation of Silicon Valley, because the communication backbones that are set up and operated by Silicon Valley provide the vast majority of information that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are going to exploit — and they can’t do it themselves. They need the willing or unwilling cooperation of Silicon Valley. But when the Snowden leaks first hit, a lot of Silicon Valley elites implied they didn't knowingly or willingly work with the government, no? There was a certain amount of deception there, after the Edward Snowden revelations. They claimed, Oh, well, the NSA made us do all these things! — but not really, because NSA, CIA, and these other intelligence organizations were also involved in giving seed money or subsidies to various Silicon Valley companies to do these things. Right. Which raises the question of whether the line between the public sector and the private sector even matters anymore, at least when it comes to the deep state. It is hard to distinguish them anymore. All these guys simply go through the revolving door to the point where you can hardly distinguish [government employees from private sector workers]. A good percentage of the people sitting at their desks right now in the Pentagon are private sector contractors. They are literally in the Pentagon, in the NSA building, in all these organizations. They are the ones who essentially run the show, by virtue of having the technical knowledge. Snowden himself was a contractor. Yes, he was a Booz Allen contractor. How is it that a Booz Allen contractor — a junior person — had access to all this information? It certainly doesn’t say much for Gen. Keith Alexander, who was the director of NSA at the time. How can he bitch and moan about Snowden? He was responsible for having him cleared, and for letting low-level contractors have that kind of access. And yet now he is working in some boutique cybersecurity firm on Wall Street and making a ton of money. Do the people who work in the deep state have a common ideology or narrative that they tell themselves and one another, something that justifies their behavior or explains why their interventions into the democratic process are "necessary"? I think it's an ideology that dare not speak its name. They claim it is not an ideology, that it is simply their technocratic expertise giving you the benefit of their knowledge. However, their knowledge is always based on a neoconservative view of foreign policy, [and] in domestic policy, it enforces neoliberalism. On a personal level, it is kind of, Well, we’re just doing the best we can or If only everyone appreciated how hard it is to decide whether to torture subject A or subject B when you are in the CIA or If only everyone appreciated how hard it is to decide to privatize this or that. You just don’t really appreciate how difficult things are for us. They sort of act like stoical martyrs when you ask them about why they actually do these things. Do you think that sense of martyrdom explains the revolving door problem? I'm imagining something along the lines of these people saying to themselves, Well, I sacrificed for my country; so now I deserve to cash out. I am sure they all acculturate themselves to that viewpoint. And when the money is there; you don’t want to leave it lying on the table. They certainly don’t. And our laws against that kind of behavior are nonexistent, or can be gotten around, so why not take the money? I once made a joke to a friend that President Obama was to the deep state what the press secretary is to the president. Was I closer to the truth than I realized? Or was I going too far? I don't believe so. [Obama] was a guy who was so carefully cultivated. You saw that already in the 2004 Democratic convention. He was going to filibuster the FISA Amendments Act regarding the telecoms illegal collusion with intelligence agencies, but somewhere in 2008, he decided he was going to vote for it. And that was right about the time that somebody supplied him with John Brennan, the current CIA director, who was going to tutor him on what it takes to be president from the national security perspective. It doesn't suggest a lot of autonomy on Obama's part. This guy is to some extent controlled. That doesn’t mean he is not articulate or bright or doesn’t know what’s going on; he is obviously more so, on all accounts, than his predecessor. But Obama, or any other president, has a very limited latitude of what he’s going to do on the very big issues of international finance and national security. He is very hemmed-in on those accounts. So he becomes a kind of a spokesman. Just hypothetically, what do you think would happen if he tried to push the envelope and publicly reject some foundational element of the deep state? I don’t think we really know what would happen, because the incentives for these people are so carefully aligned with what they’re "supposed" to do. Obama has already had White House dinners with very rich contributors about setting up his pharaonic monument, the Obama Presidential Library (which is going to require billions in funding). That already constraints how much he's going to go rogue. And we have to only have to think back to Clinton on his way out the door. He signed a bill which took the wraps off derivatives trading. He claimed later that somehow his hand was forced and that it was going to be written anyway and all that; I don't think so. He ended up being paid over $100 million afterwards, mainly by corporate sponsors, to give speeches. It was kind of like compensation after the fact. Given the ubiquity and continuity of the deep state, will it matter whether the Republican or the Democrat wins the presidential race later this year? Or will it be the same either way? It matters to a certain extent. A competent rogue is probably preferable to an insane one. There are definable differences between Bush and Obama. However, the differences are so constrained. They’re not between the 40-yard lines; they are between the 48-yard lines. Is there any scenario in which the deep state's influence and power can be curtailed or eliminated? Or does the fact that it's evolved sort of organically suggest that only something truly revolutionary could upend it? The deep state has created so many contradictions in this country. You have this enormous disparity of rich and poor; and you have this perpetual war, even though we’re braying about freedom. We have a surveillance state, and we talk about freedom. We have internal contradictions. Who knows what this will fly into? It may collapse like the Soviet Union; or it might go into fascism with a populist camouflage — like Trump is selling us.

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Published on January 05, 2016 14:52

Do dogs know other dogs are dogs?

Do you see dogs everywhere? My ears perk up to the jingle jangle of metal-on-metal, hopeful that it predicts a dog and his collar, disappointed when it turns out to be keys on a belt (boring). A person walking down the street with their arm outstretched holds the promise of a leash with a dog on the other end (sometimes it’s a stroller holding a kid. Oh well). From a distance, my eyes play a cruel trick on me, where shopping bags are dogs and dogs are shopping bags until I get close enough and one wins out (obviously I'm rooting for the dog). But catch any part of a tail, and I know I'm in. You could say my motto is, “dog, until proven otherwise.” How about dogs? Does a dog know, merely by sight, that an approaching being is a fellow dog? Before you answer, remember this: Canis familiaris is the least uniform species on the planet. Members of this species come in a wide range of body shapes and sizes from itty bitty teeny weeny to absolutely ginormos. Adult members of this species appear as tight little packages, huge weightlifters, lean ballerinas, elongated hotdogs and everything in between. Does a Pug look at an Afghan Hound and say to themselves, "Hello, dog!" or does a Pug look at an Afghan Hound and say, "WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU?" and only after olfactory investigation (smelling) does the Pug realize, “Oh my goodness. How silly of me. You're a dog. Sorry for the confusion my large, long-snouted compatriot." A number of researchers have essentially wondered what Pugs think of Afghan Hounds. Are dogs able to identify other dogs solely by appearance, they wondered? If olfactory cues are taken out of the equation, would a dog still know another dog when he sees one? A team of researchers based in France took on this question, publishing their findings in Animal Cognition in 2013. Nine companion dogs joined as study subjects. They all had basic training and extensive experience with both dogs and people, and notably, the participants weren’t uniform in appearance -- two were purebred (Border collie and Labrador), and the rest were mutts. Below are the study subjects in all their photographic glory (while they are all my favorites because they are dogs, I vote Cusco winner of Best Eyeliner and Best Ears, while Babel, Cyane and Sweet tie for Most Photogenic). [image error] STUDY SUBJECTS The experimental setup was simple enough: the nine subjects saw two screens, one on the right and one on the left with a divider between. In each trial, two images would appear simultaneously on both screens, and dogs were reinforced with a click and rewarded with a treat for approaching the "correct" screen — more on that in a moment. Here's what the experimental layout looked like: [image error] EXPERIMENTAL LAYOUT To find out if dogs could ID other dogs based on appearance alone, the researchers first had to create a common language with their dog subjects. They did this with the help of three training sessions where dogs received a treat only when they approached the screen that had a picture of a dog’s face. Importantly, the same dog picture was used throughout the training sessions. During the training phase, the other screen was either all black, all blue, or had a picture of a cow’s face. The dog subjects were not rewarded if they approached any of the other non-dog pictures. This created a common language: “You are rewarded for approaching this ‘dog’ image, nothing else.” To proceed, the dogs had to approach the dog image 10 out of 12 times in two consecutive sessions, which is better than approaching 'dog' by chance. All nine dogs were able to do this. Common language secured! [image error] DOG MAKES CORRECT CHOICE! Then came the test. Dogs were presented with a wide variety of never-before-seen dog faces paired against never-before-seen non-dog faces. As before, dogs had to approach the dog image and avoid the non-dog image to get a treat. This was no longer an easy feat as the dog images now captured dogs’ vast morphologic diversity in shape, color, size, head shape, ear position, you name it. On top of that, the dog images were now pared against a wide range of non-dog faces including human faces as well as domestic and wild mammals like cats, sheep, gerbils, cows, rabbits, reptiles, and birds, among others. Images were presented head-on (full face) or as a profile. Below are examples of faces dogs saw in the study: [image error] EXAMPLES OF STUDY STIMULI. TOP ROW: DOG IMAGES, BOTTOM ROW: NON-DOG IMAGES The dogs prevailed! The nine subjects successfully identified "dog" from “non-dog” faces. Some dogs, like Babel, Bag, Cyane and Vodka, were able to do so quite quickly, taking few sessions to approach the required 10-out-of-12 dog images. Other dogs, like Bahia and Cusco, were slower on the pickup and took more sessions to identify “dog” from “non-dog” (dog subjects needed anywhere from 2 to 13 sessions to meet criteria). This is not to say, of course, that Bahia and Cusco don't know a dog when they see one. The researchers highlight that a number of factors — like dog personality, learning styles and strategies, and motivation — can affect dog behavior and performance, particularly when it comes to this type of task. Even so, the study suggests that despite their wackadoodle appearances, dogs can identify other dogs by sight alone. Dogs seem to have a sense of who (or at least which images) falls in the category of “dog” and who does not. Exactly which features dogs use when tuning into “dog," though, the current study can't say. They offer that as a natural next step in the research.

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Published on January 05, 2016 00:45

Robert Reich: America is trapped in a vicious wealth cycle

What’s at stake this election year? Let me put as directly as I can. America has succumbed to a vicious cycle in which great wealth translates into political power, which generates even more wealth, and even more power. This spiral is most apparent is declining tax rates on corporations and on top personal incomes (much in the form of wider tax loopholes), along with a profusion of government bailouts and subsidies (to Wall Street bankers, hedge-fund partners, oil companies, casino tycoons, and giant agribusiness owners, among others). The vicious cycle of wealth and power is less apparent, but even more significant, in economic rules that now favor the wealthy. Billionaires like Donald Trump can use bankruptcy to escape debts but average people can’t get relief from burdensome mortgage or student debt payments. Giant corporations can amass market power without facing antitrust lawsuits (think Internet cable companies, Monsanto, Big Pharma, consolidations of health insurers and of health care corporations, Dow and DuPont, and the growing dominance of Amazon, Apple, and Google, for example). But average workers have lost the market power that came from joining together in unions. It’s now easier for Wall Street insiders to profit from confidential information unavailable to small investors. It’s also easier for giant firms to extend the length of patents and copyrights, thereby pushing up prices on everything from pharmaceuticals to Walt Disney merchandise. And easier for big corporations to wangle trade treaties that protect their foreign assets but not the jobs or incomes of American workers. It’s easier for giant military contractors to secure huge appropriations for unnecessary weapons, and to keep the war machine going. The result of this vicious cycle is a disenfranchisement of most Americans, and a giant upward distribution of income from the middle class and poor to the wealthy and powerful. Another consequence is growing anger and frustration felt by people who are working harder than ever but getting nowhere, accompanied by deepening cynicism about our democracy. The way to end this vicious cycle is to reduce the huge accumulations of wealth that fuel it, and get big money out of politics. But it’s chicken-and-egg problem. How can this be accomplished when wealth and power are compounding at the top? Only through a political movement such as America had a century ago when progressives reclaimed our economy and democracy from the robber barons of the first Gilded Age. That was when Wisconsin’s “fighting Bob” La Follette instituted the nation’s first minimum wage law; presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan attacked the big railroads, giant banks, and insurance companies; and President Teddy Roosevelt busted up the giant trusts. When suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony secured women the right to vote, reformers like Jane Addams got laws protecting children and the public’s health, and organizers like Mary Harris “Mother” Jones spearheaded labor unions. America enacted a progressive income tax, limited corporate campaign contributions, ensured the safety and purity of food and drugs, and even invented the public high school. The progressive era welled up in the last decade of the nineteenth century because millions of Americans saw that wealth and power at the top were undermining American democracy and stacking the economic deck. Millions of Americans overcame their cynicism and began to mobilize. We may have reached that tipping point again. Both the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party grew out of revulsion at the Wall Street bailout. Consider, more recently, the fight for a higher minimum wage (“Fight for 15”). Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign is part of this mobilization. (Donald Trump bastardized version draws on the same anger and frustration but has descended into bigotry and xenophobia.) Surely 2016 is a critical year. But, as the reformers of the Progressive Era understood more than a century ago, no single president or any other politician can accomplish what’s needed because a system caught in the spiral of wealth and power cannot be reformed from within. It can be changed only by a mass movement of citizens pushing from the outside. So regardless of who wins the presidency in November and which party dominates the next Congress, it is up to the rest of us to continue to organize and mobilize. Real reform will require many years of hard work from millions of us. As we learned in the last progressive era, this is the only way the vicious cycle of wealth and power can be reversed.What’s at stake this election year? Let me put as directly as I can. America has succumbed to a vicious cycle in which great wealth translates into political power, which generates even more wealth, and even more power. This spiral is most apparent is declining tax rates on corporations and on top personal incomes (much in the form of wider tax loopholes), along with a profusion of government bailouts and subsidies (to Wall Street bankers, hedge-fund partners, oil companies, casino tycoons, and giant agribusiness owners, among others). The vicious cycle of wealth and power is less apparent, but even more significant, in economic rules that now favor the wealthy. Billionaires like Donald Trump can use bankruptcy to escape debts but average people can’t get relief from burdensome mortgage or student debt payments. Giant corporations can amass market power without facing antitrust lawsuits (think Internet cable companies, Monsanto, Big Pharma, consolidations of health insurers and of health care corporations, Dow and DuPont, and the growing dominance of Amazon, Apple, and Google, for example). But average workers have lost the market power that came from joining together in unions. It’s now easier for Wall Street insiders to profit from confidential information unavailable to small investors. It’s also easier for giant firms to extend the length of patents and copyrights, thereby pushing up prices on everything from pharmaceuticals to Walt Disney merchandise. And easier for big corporations to wangle trade treaties that protect their foreign assets but not the jobs or incomes of American workers. It’s easier for giant military contractors to secure huge appropriations for unnecessary weapons, and to keep the war machine going. The result of this vicious cycle is a disenfranchisement of most Americans, and a giant upward distribution of income from the middle class and poor to the wealthy and powerful. Another consequence is growing anger and frustration felt by people who are working harder than ever but getting nowhere, accompanied by deepening cynicism about our democracy. The way to end this vicious cycle is to reduce the huge accumulations of wealth that fuel it, and get big money out of politics. But it’s chicken-and-egg problem. How can this be accomplished when wealth and power are compounding at the top? Only through a political movement such as America had a century ago when progressives reclaimed our economy and democracy from the robber barons of the first Gilded Age. That was when Wisconsin’s “fighting Bob” La Follette instituted the nation’s first minimum wage law; presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan attacked the big railroads, giant banks, and insurance companies; and President Teddy Roosevelt busted up the giant trusts. When suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony secured women the right to vote, reformers like Jane Addams got laws protecting children and the public’s health, and organizers like Mary Harris “Mother” Jones spearheaded labor unions. America enacted a progressive income tax, limited corporate campaign contributions, ensured the safety and purity of food and drugs, and even invented the public high school. The progressive era welled up in the last decade of the nineteenth century because millions of Americans saw that wealth and power at the top were undermining American democracy and stacking the economic deck. Millions of Americans overcame their cynicism and began to mobilize. We may have reached that tipping point again. Both the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party grew out of revulsion at the Wall Street bailout. Consider, more recently, the fight for a higher minimum wage (“Fight for 15”). Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign is part of this mobilization. (Donald Trump bastardized version draws on the same anger and frustration but has descended into bigotry and xenophobia.) Surely 2016 is a critical year. But, as the reformers of the Progressive Era understood more than a century ago, no single president or any other politician can accomplish what’s needed because a system caught in the spiral of wealth and power cannot be reformed from within. It can be changed only by a mass movement of citizens pushing from the outside. So regardless of who wins the presidency in November and which party dominates the next Congress, it is up to the rest of us to continue to organize and mobilize. Real reform will require many years of hard work from millions of us. As we learned in the last progressive era, this is the only way the vicious cycle of wealth and power can be reversed.

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Published on January 05, 2016 00:30

You really can’t peel yourself away from “Making a Murderer”: The twisted psychology behind your binge-watching

I sat down with my computer recently to stream an episode of "Making A Murderer," Netflix’s engaging and enraging true crime docuseries about Steven Avery, who may have been framed for murder—not once, but twice—by his small-town Wisconsin police department. More accurately, I’d planned to watch one episode; instead, I ended up watching five. That means for roughly five hours, I streamed one installment after another, unable to tear myself away even as the night wound itself into the wee hours of the morning. Before the credits were done rolling on each episode, I’d find myself clicking on the next, launching it before Netflix’s autoplay feature could even finish its 15-second countdown. When it comes to this kind of obsessive series consumption, I’m definitely not alone. The term “binge-watch,” the shorthand descriptor for long periods spent watching, is so ubiquitous that Collins Dictionary declared it 2015’s “word of the year.” In September, Samsung offered a grant that would pay its recipient—some poor soul “unfortunate enough to have fallen behind on the latest TV series”—to spend 100 days doing nothing but binge-watch television. Netflix reports that nearly 75 percent of viewers who streamed the first season of "Breaking Bad" completed all seven episodes in a single session, a figure that rose to 81 and 85 percent for seasons two and three. And TiVo’s annual Binge Viewing Survey found that 92 percent of respondents said they had engaged in binge watching at some point in 2015. Our love of television is well established, and has long been one of our most wildly popular national (and studies show, international) pastimes. But in recent years, there’s been a distinct shift in how we connect with the medium. That connection has grown so deep that many of us regularly find ourselves spending hours, days and entire lost weekends taking in our favorite shows. In some ways, binge watching is simply the result of audiences taking advantage of new technologies that give us new ways of consuming our entertainment. Until the late 1990s, TV schedules were mostly dictated by networks. Your favorite show was likely broadcast once a week at a certain time, and if you missed it, you had to catch it in reruns. There were occasional marathons, when multiple episodes of a series would be re-aired, but watching back-to-back new episodes of a show was rarely an option. Then came TiVo and other DVRs, DVD box sets, On Demand cable television, and finally, streaming services like Hulu and Amazon Prime. These innovations mostly allowed audiences to watch and rewatch beloved programs at their leisure. But it wasn’t until 2013, when Netflix made the groundbreaking decision to simultaneously release all 13 episodes of its first original series, "House of Cards," that binge watching really took off. Though the streaming site is notoriously mum about ratings, estimates suggest 1.5 to 2.7 million people watched “at least one episode the day after its release.” Those numbers helped support what Netflix’s own internal metrics and trendwatching had already gathered: people like to watch television precisely when they want, as long as they want. And demand is strong enough that if you provide plenty of supply, they’ll often watch far longer than they intended to. We make time for the things we love, and TV is among the dearest of those. Americans spent increasing hours at work last year, yet studies show they also managed to squeeze in more television watching. While ratings for live TV— the old-timey “same time, same channel” sort—have been on a steady decline, online streaming and subscription services have only seen their numbers rise. An Adobe study of Americans’ television viewing habits found “total TV viewing over the Internet grew by 388 percent in mid-2014 compared to the same time a year earlier.” Given the option to watch television as our hectic modern schedules permit, we prove ourselves committed and voracious consumers. In fact, a few months after its success with "House of Cards," Netflix released survey findings compiled by Harris International that further proved binge watching is not only commonplace, it’s the way we want to watch TV. Sixty-one percent of survey respondents—nearly 1,500 American adults who stream TV programs at least once a week—said they binge watched with regularity. Seventy-nine percent of those polled said “watching several episodes of their favorite shows at once actually makes the shows more enjoyable.” And 76 percent reported that “streaming TV shows on their own schedule is their preferred way to watch them.” But binge watching isn’t just the end result of audiences having agency in when and how long they can watch. In some ways, the phenomenon offers yet more proof of what we already knew about our relationship with TV: that watching it just feels good. In their 2003 report "Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor," Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found that TV has a soothing effect on watchers, offering an escape from their frantic workaday lives. (Seventy-six percent of participants in the Harris-Netflix poll said “watching multiple episodes of a great TV show is a welcome refuge from their busy lives.”) The researchers write that study participants reported they felt calmer and more relaxed “[w]ithin moments of sitting or lying down and pushing the power button,” and that “[b]ecause the experience of relaxation occurs quickly, people are conditioned to associate watching TV with rest and lack of tension.” Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi also posit that television likely sparks our “orienting response,” an innate biological compulsion to coolly observe sudden sound and movement to assess for potentially harmful threats. They point to studies that suggest television, with its “cuts, edits, zooms, pans [and] sudden noises,” not only triggers this response, it may play a role in keeping us riveted. The evolutionary compulsion affects our entire physiology, causing “dilation of the blood vessels to the brain, slowing of the heart, and constriction of blood vessels to major muscle groups. Alpha waves are blocked for a few seconds before returning to their baseline level, which is determined by the general level of mental arousal. The brain focuses its attention on gathering more information while the rest of the body quiets.” Amidst so much physical stimulation, Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi suggest, may lie the reasons people often find themselves unable to resist looking at any blinking TV in their vicinity. But we’re more than just our reptilian brains, startled into watching for hours by mere moving shapes and loud noises. A more complex neurological response helps explain not only why we watch TV, but why we find certain programs more compelling than others. The answer lies in neurocinematics, an emerging field of study that examines how our brains react to film and television and what kinds of storytelling captures our undivided attention. In his oft-cited 2008 study, Princeton University psychology professor Uri Hasson showed volunteers clips from "Curb Your Enthusiasm"; the late '50s TV show "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" ("Bang! You’re Dead"); Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; and an unedited, one-shot video of a concert held in New York City’s Washington Square Park. Hasson and his research team were looking to determine “inter-subject correlation”—essentially, how much each clip successfully commanded the attention of all the participants involved. MRI snapshots of subjects’ brains during screenings offered illuminating insights into our neurological response to both filmmaking methods and storytelling craft. Researchers found the Washington Square Park video engaged less than 5 percent of participants’ cerebral cortices and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" just 18 percent. Leone’s more cinematic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly fared far better, producing similar responses across 45 percent of watchers’ brains. But Hitchcock, as film students might predict, took the proverbial cake. The filmmaker’s clip “evoked similar responses across all viewers in over 65 percent of the cortex, indicating a high level of control of this particular episode on viewers’ minds.” “The fact that Hitchcock was able to orchestrate the responses of so many different brain regions, turning them on and off at the same time across all viewers, may provide neuroscientific evidence for his notoriously famous ability to master and manipulate viewers’ minds,” Hasson et al. wrote in the summary of their findings. “Hitchcock often liked to tell interviewers that for him ‘creation is based on an exact science of audience reactions.’” Hasson expounded further while speaking with Newsweek’s Andrew Romano for his 2013 piece, "Why You’re Addicted to TV." “In real life, you’re watching in the park, a concert on Sunday morning,” Hasson said. “But in a movie, a director is controlling where you are looking. Hitchcock is the master of this. He will control everything: what you think, what you expect, where you are looking, what you are feeling. And you can see this in the brain. For the director who is controlling nothing, the level of variability is very clear because each person is looking at something different. For Hitchcock, the opposite is true: viewers tend to be all tuned in together.” It’s a lesson that networks, streaming service providers of original content, and TV writers have learned and embraced. In what is often labeled the new golden age of television, the shows so many of us binge watch, from Amazon’s "The Man in the High Castle" to HBO’s "Game of Thrones," have taken storytelling to the next level, creating taut, engaging narratives that keep us glued to our screens. Unlike the self-contained episodic shows of days gone by, the most watchable shows feature seductive, detailed story arcs that span entire series, which we want to trace from end to end. These programs are immersive and engulfing in ways far beyond shows of a generation before, which explains why we’re so often subsumed by the worlds they depict and why, for periods at a stretch, we’re hesitant to leave. “When I started doing TV almost 20 years ago, studies showed that a so-called fan of a TV show probably saw one in four episodes on average,” Vince Gilligan, the creator of "Breaking Bad," told Romano. Networks in that era weren’t particularly interested in producing shows with narratives that required sustained, sequential viewing, since that posed problems when shows were rebroadcast, often in random order, in syndication. So plotlines were written to be neatly wrapped up as each episode came to a close. That contrasts sharply with today’s most binged-on shows, where storylines keep building and unfurling, necessitating start-to-finish viewing. “[Y]ou can imagine,” Gilligan told Romano, “with a serial like 'Breaking Bad,' someone watching one episode out of four would be pretty lost as far as what the hell is going on.” Today’s binge-worthy programs require us to keep up, and of course, to keep watching. The availability of an entire series all at once is both a result of and a motivating factor in our tendency to keep viewing. Not only does it lure us into binge watching, it has made show creators tailor programming to our desire to binge. “As bingeing becomes possible and commonplace, it’s only natural that shows should start to take it into account,” D.B. Weiss, a "Game of Thrones" writer, told Romano. The result is a generation of shows that, like pageturner novels, make us nearly desperate to see what happens next. And writers make sure to ratchet up the action, intrigue and plot twists. “Remember on 'Dallas' when somebody shot J.R.?” anthropologist and author Grant McCracken, one of the authors of the Netflix-Harris study, asked the Daily Beast. “If you found out who did it after the fact, what would be the point of going back and watching that season? But with something like 'The Wire,' even if a friend accidentally let a key character’s death slip it doesn’t really destroy the point of watching the show.” “It’s like the people who make potato chips,” Carlton Cuse, a writer from the TV show "Lost," a forerunner of today’s must-watch TV, told Romano. “They know how to put the right chemicals in there to make you want to eat the next potato chip. Our goal is to make you want to watch that next episode.” That “betcha can’t eat just one” approach to show writing is undeniably working. But here again, science plays a role in our tendency to binge. As Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi note in Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor, the relaxed feeling television provides has parallels with addiction. And like addicts, we’re loath to let those good feelings end:

A tranquilizer that leaves the body rapidly is much more likely to cause dependence than one that leaves the body slowly, precisely because the user is more aware that the drug’s effects are wearing off. Similarly, viewers’ vague learned sense that they will feel less relaxed if they stop viewing may be a significant factor in not turning the set off. Viewing begets more viewing.

What’s more, a 2015 study from the University of Texas at Austin found that those without self-control had a hard time stemming their binge watching. And that self control was harder to come by for people who were already depressed or lonely, who might turn to binge watching as a way to allay or distract from their negative feelings. "Even though some people argue that binge-watching is a harmless addiction, findings from our study suggest that binge-watching should no longer be viewed this way," Yoon Hi Sung, one of the study authors, wrote. "Physical fatigue and problems such as obesity and other health problems are related to binge-watching and they are a cause for concern. When binge-watching becomes rampant, viewers may start to neglect their work and their relationships with others. Even though people know they should not, they have difficulty resisting the desire to watch episodes continuously. Our research is a step toward exploring binge-watching as an important media and social phenomenon." I suppose this all makes sense. Binge walking can get out of control, leading us down a perilous path of procrastination and failure (not to mention lost sleep). But that seems true of nearly any activity we indulge in without some measure of moderation. Remember how “couch potatoes” would mindlessly “veg out” to whatever flickered across their screens, a casualty of the “idiot box” they couldn’t muster the will to turn off? The spectre of that figure looms, though today’s binge watching seems less mindless. “People aren’t watching 'Dukes of Hazard,'” McCraken told the Daily Beast. “They’re watching great TV, not bad TV.” "That might explain why so few binge watchers express post-binge regret. According to the Harris-Netflix survey, 73 percent of those surveyed said “they have positive feelings towards binge streaming TV.” Similarly, the TiVo Binge Viewing Survey found “only 30 percent of respondents report[ed] a negative view of binge-viewership...compared to two years ago, when more than half of respondents felt the term “bingeing” had negative connotations.” I’m not suggesting binge watching should become a replacement for reading or exercising or going outside and living an actual life (instead of just watching a simulacrum of it). But there is some pretty smart and astounding programming out there right now, and some resonant reasons to watch it for a stretch at a time. It’s why Netflix has somewhere just above 62 million subscribers, why shows like Amazon’s "Transparent" have won so many awards, and why wecan’t stop talking about "Making a Murderer," which was worth every second I spent on it. We binge on these shows for so many reasons, among them because they deserve our attention and our time. In many ways, television is finally coming into its own as a bonafide art form, and that’s an exciting to development to watch—and keep watching.

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Published on January 05, 2016 00:15

The New York Times is blowing this election: It’s time to admit the Grey Lady has a Hillary problem

As the most famous and powerful news organization in America, the New York Times prides itself on leading the press pack. And as the media world fragments into smaller and smaller slices, it's the Times that can still set the agenda like few other outlets can. The good news for the Times in 2015 was that its collective fingerprints were all over key chapters of the year's campaign coverage. The bad news is the Times would probably like those fingerprints to be lifted. Because rather than being heralded for its groundbreaking campaign work, the newspaper's editors and reporters spent an awful lot of time last year answering criticism about the paper's sloppy and erroneous coverage of Hillary Clinton, and specifically answering for why the Times newsroom and its opinion pages seemed obsessed with knocking down the Democratic frontrunner and getting key facts wrong in the process. By the summer, the Times' Clinton miscues and slights had piled so high that there was a growing consensus among media watchers that the daily had allowed its disdain for Clinton to color its coverage, and that the Newspaper of Record was in desperate need of a course correction. Boston Globe columnist Michael Cohen:

There's also no getting around the fact that the Times coverage of Hillary Clinton is a biased train wreck.

New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen:

I have resisted this conclusion over the years, but after today's events it's fair to say the Times has a problem covering Hillary Clinton.

Three times last year, the Times presented would-be blockbuster stories that targeted Clinton with overheated tales of unethical, and possibly illegal, behavior. And three times last year, the Times swung and missed, badly. Email Mess Clinton became synonymous with "email" in 2015 when the Times in March broke the story that she had used a private account while serving as secretary of state. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell

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Published on January 05, 2016 00:00

January 4, 2016

Bill Cosby’s arrest is just the beginning: Prosecuting rape and the long, difficult road to justice

Last Wednesday’s arrest of Bill Cosby was an event four decades in the making. The comedian and former ‘80s sitcom star is being charged with sexually assaulting Temple University employee Andrea Constand, who alleges that Cosby drugged and raped her in 2004. An affidavit from Constand’s counsel suggests that Cosby “sought to incapacitate” her through pills and wine, which rendered Constand unable to resist or fight back. That exact pattern should be familiar to anyone following the ongoing Bill Cosby accusations. Following a 2014 stand-up set in which comedian Hannibal Buress testified to Cosby’s public record of abuse allegations, more than 50 women—and counting—have come forward to tell their harrowing stories of sexual assault. The accounts are as similar as they are horrific: Many victims were young women hoping to get ahead in the entertainment industry, who looked to Bill Cosby, America’s most recognizable TV dad, as a mentor. He allegedly used that position of authority and their vulnerability to corner them—inviting them to a hotel room where they would be slipped Quaaludes, knocked unconscious, and given a cab ride home after they awoke. Andrea Constand’s pending case might feel like vindication for those women, and I hope that she gets the justice denied to so many. But while Cosby being brought to trial might feel like a victory for sexual assault survivors and advocates, Cosby’s alleged victims continue to face an uphill battle in terms of actual prosecution. There’s a reason that few accused rapists (around 3 percent) ever see a jail cell: In the U.S. legal system, sexual assault cases remain extraordinarily difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in court. That’s not because a bunch of women aren’t telling the truth — research shows the incidence of false rape claims is very low — but due to the criminal legal system itself. There’s a reason that so few women (just 32 percent) ever report their sexual assault to authorities and why many—like the Cosby accusers—might wait decades to speak up: It’s extremely hard to build a case (even in the most seemingly open-and-shut reports) that proves the guilt of an assailant “beyond a reasonable doubt.” As the Bill Cosby cases remind us, many states have strict statutes of limitations that place time limits on how long a victim can wait before speaking up. In Pennsylvania, where Constand’s case is being tried, it’s 12 years. That might seem like a long time, but it may take survivors decades to come to terms with what happened to them or have the bravery to go to the authorities. For those who haven’t been sexually assaulted (I have), reporting rape might seem no different than reporting any other crime—like if your watch is stolen. Something bad happens to you, and you go to the police. Seems simple, right? But on top of the shame and self-blame that can come from surviving sexual assault, rape is a crime that is uniquely difficult to report or even bring up to other people—whether it’s friends and family or authorities. You face the judgment of your community (who may or may not be supportive), the potential strain on personal relationships, and the knowledge that you may be blamed or not believed. As the case of Steubenville, Ohio, showed, we rarely thank victims for their courage. In a piece for the New York Daily News, Meredith Donovan asks us to imagine what it’s like to be in that hot seat, under the glare of an often very public investigation. As a survivor, you are forced to:

“Answer questions, knowing that people are judging you. Think about the last time you had sex. Tell a room full of people about every touch, sight, sound, smell and taste of that experience. Answer questions, knowing that people are trying to decide if you’re lying. If you can do that you will have some idea of the bravery it takes for a sexual abuse victim to come forward.”

In addition, evidentiary support isn’t nearly as simple as crime procedurals like “CSI” and “Law & Order: SVU” make it look. Many sexual assaults—especially if the victim was vaginally penetrated with the assailant’s fingers (as Constand alleges)—lack physical DNA evidence or the “fluids and fibers” ever-present when Olivia Benson is on the case. “Medical exams are not the smoking guns that will tell us once and for all if a woman was raped,” Donovan writes. “Because sexual abuse is intrinsically a private act, direct evidence is usually only provided by the victim. As such, a lot is required of victims.” Although Donovan argues that prosecution is much simpler in the rare occasion that the sexual assault is caught on tape, even a recording has not been shown to be enough to convict in rape cases. According to the Women’s Law Project, Crystal Harris submitted into evidence audio of her husband, Shawn, allegedly assaulting her in a 2010 case. After she says her abusive husband repeatedly threatened her life, Harris placed a recorder in her bedroom to capture his remarks on tape. Instead she recorded what she describes as him raping her, and her pained screams would be played to jurors during the subsequent trial. Her husband’s attorneys, however, dismissed the tape as “role play.” That defense might sound laughable, but it worked: Shawn Harris was found guilty of “oral copulation,” and the other charges against him were dismissed. In a particularly galling turn of events, Crystal Harris was mandated by the California Court System to pay her husband alimony before his conviction. There’s an old saying that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, but when it comes to rape trials, juries rarely convict just about anyone. Despite the fact that DNA evidence indicated that Tennessee Titans cornerback Perrish Cox (then with the Denver Broncos) impregnated a woman who claimed that Cox raped her, Cox’s lawyers maintained the two were never intimate. As Ebony’s Zerlina Maxwell reported, his counsel “argued the DNA test had been tampered with and the results couldn’t be trusted.” Perrish Cox was acquitted. There’s always a reason not to believe victims, even when all signs point to a conviction. In 2011, a New York police officer was accused of raping a woman who had drunkenly nodded off in a cab, while his partner “stood guard.” “Video showed the officers leaving and returning to her apartment repeatedly,” wrote Feministing’s Jos Truitt. “[Officer Kenneth Moreno] said he kissed the woman and ‘snuggled’ with her when she wasn’t wearing a bra but didn’t rape her.” Even more damningly, Moreno was recorded assuring the victim that he was wearing a condom during the encounter. This was, of course, while denying in court that he had ever engaged in intercourse with her. However, the jury found that the survivor’s testimony was “inconclusive” because she wasn’t fully conscious to witness the altercation. They ruled not guilty. The current case against Bill Cosby seems just as unassailable as these claims. Cosby maintains that the sexual relations in question were consensual. In 2004, Andrea Constand, who served as the director of operations for the women’s basketball team at Temple University, visited Cosby at his home in 2004. Cosby is arguably the school’s most famous alumnus, and as the Advocate reported, he’s generously supported the college’s athletics program in the past. It’s highly doubtful that Constand agreed to the activities alleged to have taken place during the visit: She’s an out lesbian. In addition, Bill Cosby himself admitted during a 2005 deposition that he had administered Quaaludes to women for sexual purposes. Cosby claims his use of drugs was innocent; he just wanted the women to “cheer up.” That comment might seem like the smoking gun his accusers need to finally convict a man who has outrun justice for far too long, but when it comes to the U.S. legal system, a smoking gun doesn’t exist—outside of an actual confession of guilt from the accused. Needless to say, Constand is unlikely to get that kind of admission here. What, exactly, do victims need? In a must-read 2011 essay for Jezebel, Anna North outlines many of the changes that must take place to hold the system accountable: We need to educate jurors on the obstacles that rape survivors face in prosecution, put the burden of proof on assailants (instead of blaming and scrutinizing victims’ history), and challenge our popular definitions of what sexual assault “looks like.” Earlier this year, the United Kingdom pushed forward new regulations that force defendants to prove that the victim affirmatively consented to intercourse (e.g., that they said “yes”). These laws are an important step forward, but so much change needs to take place in the United States—and everywhere else—before justice can be adequately served. Because in a system that continues to give men like Bill Cosby the upper hand, we can handcuff accused rapists all we want. But that means nothing when we continue to give them every single possible key to get out and walk away scot free. Last Wednesday’s arrest of Bill Cosby was an event four decades in the making. The comedian and former ‘80s sitcom star is being charged with sexually assaulting Temple University employee Andrea Constand, who alleges that Cosby drugged and raped her in 2004. An affidavit from Constand’s counsel suggests that Cosby “sought to incapacitate” her through pills and wine, which rendered Constand unable to resist or fight back. That exact pattern should be familiar to anyone following the ongoing Bill Cosby accusations. Following a 2014 stand-up set in which comedian Hannibal Buress testified to Cosby’s public record of abuse allegations, more than 50 women—and counting—have come forward to tell their harrowing stories of sexual assault. The accounts are as similar as they are horrific: Many victims were young women hoping to get ahead in the entertainment industry, who looked to Bill Cosby, America’s most recognizable TV dad, as a mentor. He allegedly used that position of authority and their vulnerability to corner them—inviting them to a hotel room where they would be slipped Quaaludes, knocked unconscious, and given a cab ride home after they awoke. Andrea Constand’s pending case might feel like vindication for those women, and I hope that she gets the justice denied to so many. But while Cosby being brought to trial might feel like a victory for sexual assault survivors and advocates, Cosby’s alleged victims continue to face an uphill battle in terms of actual prosecution. There’s a reason that few accused rapists (around 3 percent) ever see a jail cell: In the U.S. legal system, sexual assault cases remain extraordinarily difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in court. That’s not because a bunch of women aren’t telling the truth — research shows the incidence of false rape claims is very low — but due to the criminal legal system itself. There’s a reason that so few women (just 32 percent) ever report their sexual assault to authorities and why many—like the Cosby accusers—might wait decades to speak up: It’s extremely hard to build a case (even in the most seemingly open-and-shut reports) that proves the guilt of an assailant “beyond a reasonable doubt.” As the Bill Cosby cases remind us, many states have strict statutes of limitations that place time limits on how long a victim can wait before speaking up. In Pennsylvania, where Constand’s case is being tried, it’s 12 years. That might seem like a long time, but it may take survivors decades to come to terms with what happened to them or have the bravery to go to the authorities. For those who haven’t been sexually assaulted (I have), reporting rape might seem no different than reporting any other crime—like if your watch is stolen. Something bad happens to you, and you go to the police. Seems simple, right? But on top of the shame and self-blame that can come from surviving sexual assault, rape is a crime that is uniquely difficult to report or even bring up to other people—whether it’s friends and family or authorities. You face the judgment of your community (who may or may not be supportive), the potential strain on personal relationships, and the knowledge that you may be blamed or not believed. As the case of Steubenville, Ohio, showed, we rarely thank victims for their courage. In a piece for the New York Daily News, Meredith Donovan asks us to imagine what it’s like to be in that hot seat, under the glare of an often very public investigation. As a survivor, you are forced to:

“Answer questions, knowing that people are judging you. Think about the last time you had sex. Tell a room full of people about every touch, sight, sound, smell and taste of that experience. Answer questions, knowing that people are trying to decide if you’re lying. If you can do that you will have some idea of the bravery it takes for a sexual abuse victim to come forward.”

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Published on January 04, 2016 16:00

10 most shocking moments from “Making a Murderer”

NOTE: This entire article is riddled with spoilers. Proceed with caution. Stanley Kubrick once said he would never commit to making a movie unless he had at least six “non-submersible” units. By that, he meant indelible scenes that were so powerful that they could not be dismissed, not be forgotten, not become submerged in an audience’s memory. “Making a Murderer” is a series filled with these non-submersible units, which has a great deal to do with why this series is infecting our waking hours, and providing fuel for not a few nightmares. Coming up with just the traditional “10” is difficult. Having just struggled mightily to write a spoiler-free “think piece” on “Making a Murderer,” in the hopes that it might help me address my Reddit-fueled obsession with this case, I realized that the monkey is still on my back. So, in a desperate cry for help, I am reaching out to my fellow obsessives with my “Top 10” list of shocking “Making a Murderer” moments (and non-submersible units.) WARNING: These are all spoilers. Feel free to chime in, any time. In no particular chronological order: 1. The “smoking gun” email The email sent from the World’s Worst Private Investigator™, Michael O’Kelly, to the World’s Worst Court Appointed Defense Attorney™, Len Kachinsky, in which O’Kelly boasts about cutting down the Avery family tree. “We need to end the gene pool here,” he suggests. Better living through Court Appointed Eugenics! 2. Len Kachinsky’s pants Also, too, Len Kachinsky — the World’s Worst Court Appointed Defense Attorney™. 3. The discovery of the Toyota RAV-4 “The Lord” apparently showed amateur sleuth Pam Sturm the path to Teresa’s Toyota, hidden in very plain sight on a salvage yard filled with a thousand other cars, not too far from the car crusher that would have made her divine discovery a much tougher proposition. And, of course, Sturm’s breathless excitement when she phoned her “discovery” in to the police. God clearly was Pam’s designated driver that day. Or, still unindicted co-conspirator. You decide. 4. Wisecracking cops in Avery’s house, comment No. 1 The off-camera comment in Episode 2, from the policewoman searching Avery’s “pre-miracle key” bedroom, where the officer states that the former occupant will “not be making” the “Innocence Project Luncheon.” This, of course, before Avery is even arrested. 5. Wisecracking cops in Avery’s house, comment No. 2 The next off-camera comment from this plucky “Rosencrantz and/or Guildenstern,” where the officer helpfully suggests, after checking Avery’s closet, that "we should take all those shoes in case we have any unsolved burglaries with foot impressions." And yet, Officer Perky still missed finding the “Miracle” Toyota key? Huh. 6. Brendan Dassey’s plans, interrupted Another unforgettable moment: When Brendan Dassey plaintively asked his kindly police father figures/interrogators/framers if he would be home in time to watch “Wrestlemania.” According to “Making a Murderer” conspiracy theorists, “Wrestlemania” wasn’t even on that night. 7. Michael O’Kelly’s breakdown The World’s Worst Private Investigator ™, Michael O’Kelly, sobbed over Teresa Halbach’s memorial “blue ribbon” as he was eviscerated on the witness stand. This, of course, was the very same ribbon Kelly had laid out in his desktop tableau of guilt while he coerced Brendan’s self-incriminating testimony (and pathetic stick figure sketches) of the perfect (DNA free) crime. No tears from O’Kelly then. 8. Ken Kratz’s gruesome grandstanding Uber-Unctuous Creepy Prosecutor™ Ken Kratz somberly warning anyone under 15 to “discontinue watching” his press conference, before he reels off the grisly (and wholly imaginary) sequence of what Steven Avery and Brendan did to Teresa Halbach, in order to insure that the already shallow Manitowoc County jury pool drains completely. And as anyone — even Ken Kratz — knows, the very best way to make sure children turn into a lurid broadcast is to warn them not to. 9. Ken Kratz’s creepy text This text from now disgraced Uber-Unctuous Still Creepy Ex-Prosecutor™ Ken Kratz: “You may be the tall, young, hot nymph, but I am the prize.” Ick. Just. Ick. 10. The James Patterson moment During his trial, Brendan Dassey bringing up James Patterson’s “Kiss the Girls,” a response that was shocking on many levels. One, that Brendan is a reader. Second, that for once Brendan had the right answer to the right question, at what should have been the right time, and lastly, that nobody seemingly followed up. Brendan could have been referring to the 1997 movie, but still.... And, for a bonus round... 11. Steven Avery’s father, who, it must be pointed out, does bear a distinct resemblance to a Galapagos Turtle, eating a piece of freshly picked lettuce, “bugs and all.” Just when you thought the filmmakers had run out of disturbing images. And there are so many more. The heart-rending wails of Brendan’s mother as she tries to fight off the media jackals after her son is convicted, the smug “sketch” artist intoning that he is just the divine “pencil” as he still refuses to acknowledge that this “pencil” helped put an innocent man in jail, and so sadly, Brendan Dassey’s prison weight gain, which defines in one image the weight of injustice that makes this story so heart-rending. If only these “non-submersible units” could remain submerged.NOTE: This entire article is riddled with spoilers. Proceed with caution. Stanley Kubrick once said he would never commit to making a movie unless he had at least six “non-submersible” units. By that, he meant indelible scenes that were so powerful that they could not be dismissed, not be forgotten, not become submerged in an audience’s memory. “Making a Murderer” is a series filled with these non-submersible units, which has a great deal to do with why this series is infecting our waking hours, and providing fuel for not a few nightmares. Coming up with just the traditional “10” is difficult. Having just struggled mightily to write a spoiler-free “think piece” on “Making a Murderer,” in the hopes that it might help me address my Reddit-fueled obsession with this case, I realized that the monkey is still on my back. So, in a desperate cry for help, I am reaching out to my fellow obsessives with my “Top 10” list of shocking “Making a Murderer” moments (and non-submersible units.) WARNING: These are all spoilers. Feel free to chime in, any time. In no particular chronological order: 1. The “smoking gun” email The email sent from the World’s Worst Private Investigator™, Michael O’Kelly, to the World’s Worst Court Appointed Defense Attorney™, Len Kachinsky, in which O’Kelly boasts about cutting down the Avery family tree. “We need to end the gene pool here,” he suggests. Better living through Court Appointed Eugenics! 2. Len Kachinsky’s pants Also, too, Len Kachinsky — the World’s Worst Court Appointed Defense Attorney™. 3. The discovery of the Toyota RAV-4 “The Lord” apparently showed amateur sleuth Pam Sturm the path to Teresa’s Toyota, hidden in very plain sight on a salvage yard filled with a thousand other cars, not too far from the car crusher that would have made her divine discovery a much tougher proposition. And, of course, Sturm’s breathless excitement when she phoned her “discovery” in to the police. God clearly was Pam’s designated driver that day. Or, still unindicted co-conspirator. You decide. 4. Wisecracking cops in Avery’s house, comment No. 1 The off-camera comment in Episode 2, from the policewoman searching Avery’s “pre-miracle key” bedroom, where the officer states that the former occupant will “not be making” the “Innocence Project Luncheon.” This, of course, before Avery is even arrested. 5. Wisecracking cops in Avery’s house, comment No. 2 The next off-camera comment from this plucky “Rosencrantz and/or Guildenstern,” where the officer helpfully suggests, after checking Avery’s closet, that "we should take all those shoes in case we have any unsolved burglaries with foot impressions." And yet, Officer Perky still missed finding the “Miracle” Toyota key? Huh. 6. Brendan Dassey’s plans, interrupted Another unforgettable moment: When Brendan Dassey plaintively asked his kindly police father figures/interrogators/framers if he would be home in time to watch “Wrestlemania.” According to “Making a Murderer” conspiracy theorists, “Wrestlemania” wasn’t even on that night. 7. Michael O’Kelly’s breakdown The World’s Worst Private Investigator ™, Michael O’Kelly, sobbed over Teresa Halbach’s memorial “blue ribbon” as he was eviscerated on the witness stand. This, of course, was the very same ribbon Kelly had laid out in his desktop tableau of guilt while he coerced Brendan’s self-incriminating testimony (and pathetic stick figure sketches) of the perfect (DNA free) crime. No tears from O’Kelly then. 8. Ken Kratz’s gruesome grandstanding Uber-Unctuous Creepy Prosecutor™ Ken Kratz somberly warning anyone under 15 to “discontinue watching” his press conference, before he reels off the grisly (and wholly imaginary) sequence of what Steven Avery and Brendan did to Teresa Halbach, in order to insure that the already shallow Manitowoc County jury pool drains completely. And as anyone — even Ken Kratz — knows, the very best way to make sure children turn into a lurid broadcast is to warn them not to. 9. Ken Kratz’s creepy text This text from now disgraced Uber-Unctuous Still Creepy Ex-Prosecutor™ Ken Kratz: “You may be the tall, young, hot nymph, but I am the prize.” Ick. Just. Ick. 10. The James Patterson moment During his trial, Brendan Dassey bringing up James Patterson’s “Kiss the Girls,” a response that was shocking on many levels. One, that Brendan is a reader. Second, that for once Brendan had the right answer to the right question, at what should have been the right time, and lastly, that nobody seemingly followed up. Brendan could have been referring to the 1997 movie, but still.... And, for a bonus round... 11. Steven Avery’s father, who, it must be pointed out, does bear a distinct resemblance to a Galapagos Turtle, eating a piece of freshly picked lettuce, “bugs and all.” Just when you thought the filmmakers had run out of disturbing images. And there are so many more. The heart-rending wails of Brendan’s mother as she tries to fight off the media jackals after her son is convicted, the smug “sketch” artist intoning that he is just the divine “pencil” as he still refuses to acknowledge that this “pencil” helped put an innocent man in jail, and so sadly, Brendan Dassey’s prison weight gain, which defines in one image the weight of injustice that makes this story so heart-rending. If only these “non-submersible units” could remain submerged.NOTE: This entire article is riddled with spoilers. Proceed with caution. Stanley Kubrick once said he would never commit to making a movie unless he had at least six “non-submersible” units. By that, he meant indelible scenes that were so powerful that they could not be dismissed, not be forgotten, not become submerged in an audience’s memory. “Making a Murderer” is a series filled with these non-submersible units, which has a great deal to do with why this series is infecting our waking hours, and providing fuel for not a few nightmares. Coming up with just the traditional “10” is difficult. Having just struggled mightily to write a spoiler-free “think piece” on “Making a Murderer,” in the hopes that it might help me address my Reddit-fueled obsession with this case, I realized that the monkey is still on my back. So, in a desperate cry for help, I am reaching out to my fellow obsessives with my “Top 10” list of shocking “Making a Murderer” moments (and non-submersible units.) WARNING: These are all spoilers. Feel free to chime in, any time. In no particular chronological order: 1. The “smoking gun” email The email sent from the World’s Worst Private Investigator™, Michael O’Kelly, to the World’s Worst Court Appointed Defense Attorney™, Len Kachinsky, in which O’Kelly boasts about cutting down the Avery family tree. “We need to end the gene pool here,” he suggests. Better living through Court Appointed Eugenics! 2. Len Kachinsky’s pants Also, too, Len Kachinsky — the World’s Worst Court Appointed Defense Attorney™. 3. The discovery of the Toyota RAV-4 “The Lord” apparently showed amateur sleuth Pam Sturm the path to Teresa’s Toyota, hidden in very plain sight on a salvage yard filled with a thousand other cars, not too far from the car crusher that would have made her divine discovery a much tougher proposition. And, of course, Sturm’s breathless excitement when she phoned her “discovery” in to the police. God clearly was Pam’s designated driver that day. Or, still unindicted co-conspirator. You decide. 4. Wisecracking cops in Avery’s house, comment No. 1 The off-camera comment in Episode 2, from the policewoman searching Avery’s “pre-miracle key” bedroom, where the officer states that the former occupant will “not be making” the “Innocence Project Luncheon.” This, of course, before Avery is even arrested. 5. Wisecracking cops in Avery’s house, comment No. 2 The next off-camera comment from this plucky “Rosencrantz and/or Guildenstern,” where the officer helpfully suggests, after checking Avery’s closet, that "we should take all those shoes in case we have any unsolved burglaries with foot impressions." And yet, Officer Perky still missed finding the “Miracle” Toyota key? Huh. 6. Brendan Dassey’s plans, interrupted Another unforgettable moment: When Brendan Dassey plaintively asked his kindly police father figures/interrogators/framers if he would be home in time to watch “Wrestlemania.” According to “Making a Murderer” conspiracy theorists, “Wrestlemania” wasn’t even on that night. 7. Michael O’Kelly’s breakdown The World’s Worst Private Investigator ™, Michael O’Kelly, sobbed over Teresa Halbach’s memorial “blue ribbon” as he was eviscerated on the witness stand. This, of course, was the very same ribbon Kelly had laid out in his desktop tableau of guilt while he coerced Brendan’s self-incriminating testimony (and pathetic stick figure sketches) of the perfect (DNA free) crime. No tears from O’Kelly then. 8. Ken Kratz’s gruesome grandstanding Uber-Unctuous Creepy Prosecutor™ Ken Kratz somberly warning anyone under 15 to “discontinue watching” his press conference, before he reels off the grisly (and wholly imaginary) sequence of what Steven Avery and Brendan did to Teresa Halbach, in order to insure that the already shallow Manitowoc County jury pool drains completely. And as anyone — even Ken Kratz — knows, the very best way to make sure children turn into a lurid broadcast is to warn them not to. 9. Ken Kratz’s creepy text This text from now disgraced Uber-Unctuous Still Creepy Ex-Prosecutor™ Ken Kratz: “You may be the tall, young, hot nymph, but I am the prize.” Ick. Just. Ick. 10. The James Patterson moment During his trial, Brendan Dassey bringing up James Patterson’s “Kiss the Girls,” a response that was shocking on many levels. One, that Brendan is a reader. Second, that for once Brendan had the right answer to the right question, at what should have been the right time, and lastly, that nobody seemingly followed up. Brendan could have been referring to the 1997 movie, but still.... And, for a bonus round... 11. Steven Avery’s father, who, it must be pointed out, does bear a distinct resemblance to a Galapagos Turtle, eating a piece of freshly picked lettuce, “bugs and all.” Just when you thought the filmmakers had run out of disturbing images. And there are so many more. The heart-rending wails of Brendan’s mother as she tries to fight off the media jackals after her son is convicted, the smug “sketch” artist intoning that he is just the divine “pencil” as he still refuses to acknowledge that this “pencil” helped put an innocent man in jail, and so sadly, Brendan Dassey’s prison weight gain, which defines in one image the weight of injustice that makes this story so heart-rending. If only these “non-submersible units” could remain submerged.NOTE: This entire article is riddled with spoilers. Proceed with caution. Stanley Kubrick once said he would never commit to making a movie unless he had at least six “non-submersible” units. By that, he meant indelible scenes that were so powerful that they could not be dismissed, not be forgotten, not become submerged in an audience’s memory. “Making a Murderer” is a series filled with these non-submersible units, which has a great deal to do with why this series is infecting our waking hours, and providing fuel for not a few nightmares. Coming up with just the traditional “10” is difficult. Having just struggled mightily to write a spoiler-free “think piece” on “Making a Murderer,” in the hopes that it might help me address my Reddit-fueled obsession with this case, I realized that the monkey is still on my back. So, in a desperate cry for help, I am reaching out to my fellow obsessives with my “Top 10” list of shocking “Making a Murderer” moments (and non-submersible units.) WARNING: These are all spoilers. Feel free to chime in, any time. In no particular chronological order: 1. The “smoking gun” email The email sent from the World’s Worst Private Investigator™, Michael O’Kelly, to the World’s Worst Court Appointed Defense Attorney™, Len Kachinsky, in which O’Kelly boasts about cutting down the Avery family tree. “We need to end the gene pool here,” he suggests. Better living through Court Appointed Eugenics! 2. Len Kachinsky’s pants Also, too, Len Kachinsky — the World’s Worst Court Appointed Defense Attorney™. 3. The discovery of the Toyota RAV-4 “The Lord” apparently showed amateur sleuth Pam Sturm the path to Teresa’s Toyota, hidden in very plain sight on a salvage yard filled with a thousand other cars, not too far from the car crusher that would have made her divine discovery a much tougher proposition. And, of course, Sturm’s breathless excitement when she phoned her “discovery” in to the police. God clearly was Pam’s designated driver that day. Or, still unindicted co-conspirator. You decide. 4. Wisecracking cops in Avery’s house, comment No. 1 The off-camera comment in Episode 2, from the policewoman searching Avery’s “pre-miracle key” bedroom, where the officer states that the former occupant will “not be making” the “Innocence Project Luncheon.” This, of course, before Avery is even arrested. 5. Wisecracking cops in Avery’s house, comment No. 2 The next off-camera comment from this plucky “Rosencrantz and/or Guildenstern,” where the officer helpfully suggests, after checking Avery’s closet, that "we should take all those shoes in case we have any unsolved burglaries with foot impressions." And yet, Officer Perky still missed finding the “Miracle” Toyota key? Huh. 6. Brendan Dassey’s plans, interrupted Another unforgettable moment: When Brendan Dassey plaintively asked his kindly police father figures/interrogators/framers if he would be home in time to watch “Wrestlemania.” According to “Making a Murderer” conspiracy theorists, “Wrestlemania” wasn’t even on that night. 7. Michael O’Kelly’s breakdown The World’s Worst Private Investigator ™, Michael O’Kelly, sobbed over Teresa Halbach’s memorial “blue ribbon” as he was eviscerated on the witness stand. This, of course, was the very same ribbon Kelly had laid out in his desktop tableau of guilt while he coerced Brendan’s self-incriminating testimony (and pathetic stick figure sketches) of the perfect (DNA free) crime. No tears from O’Kelly then. 8. Ken Kratz’s gruesome grandstanding Uber-Unctuous Creepy Prosecutor™ Ken Kratz somberly warning anyone under 15 to “discontinue watching” his press conference, before he reels off the grisly (and wholly imaginary) sequence of what Steven Avery and Brendan did to Teresa Halbach, in order to insure that the already shallow Manitowoc County jury pool drains completely. And as anyone — even Ken Kratz — knows, the very best way to make sure children turn into a lurid broadcast is to warn them not to. 9. Ken Kratz’s creepy text This text from now disgraced Uber-Unctuous Still Creepy Ex-Prosecutor™ Ken Kratz: “You may be the tall, young, hot nymph, but I am the prize.” Ick. Just. Ick. 10. The James Patterson moment During his trial, Brendan Dassey bringing up James Patterson’s “Kiss the Girls,” a response that was shocking on many levels. One, that Brendan is a reader. Second, that for once Brendan had the right answer to the right question, at what should have been the right time, and lastly, that nobody seemingly followed up. Brendan could have been referring to the 1997 movie, but still.... And, for a bonus round... 11. Steven Avery’s father, who, it must be pointed out, does bear a distinct resemblance to a Galapagos Turtle, eating a piece of freshly picked lettuce, “bugs and all.” Just when you thought the filmmakers had run out of disturbing images. And there are so many more. The heart-rending wails of Brendan’s mother as she tries to fight off the media jackals after her son is convicted, the smug “sketch” artist intoning that he is just the divine “pencil” as he still refuses to acknowledge that this “pencil” helped put an innocent man in jail, and so sadly, Brendan Dassey’s prison weight gain, which defines in one image the weight of injustice that makes this story so heart-rending. If only these “non-submersible units” could remain submerged.NOTE: This entire article is riddled with spoilers. Proceed with caution. Stanley Kubrick once said he would never commit to making a movie unless he had at least six “non-submersible” units. By that, he meant indelible scenes that were so powerful that they could not be dismissed, not be forgotten, not become submerged in an audience’s memory. “Making a Murderer” is a series filled with these non-submersible units, which has a great deal to do with why this series is infecting our waking hours, and providing fuel for not a few nightmares. Coming up with just the traditional “10” is difficult. Having just struggled mightily to write a spoiler-free “think piece” on “Making a Murderer,” in the hopes that it might help me address my Reddit-fueled obsession with this case, I realized that the monkey is still on my back. So, in a desperate cry for help, I am reaching out to my fellow obsessives with my “Top 10” list of shocking “Making a Murderer” moments (and non-submersible units.) WARNING: These are all spoilers. Feel free to chime in, any time. In no particular chronological order: 1. The “smoking gun” email The email sent from the World’s Worst Private Investigator™, Michael O’Kelly, to the World’s Worst Court Appointed Defense Attorney™, Len Kachinsky, in which O’Kelly boasts about cutting down the Avery family tree. “We need to end the gene pool here,” he suggests. Better living through Court Appointed Eugenics! 2. Len Kachinsky’s pants Also, too, Len Kachinsky — the World’s Worst Court Appointed Defense Attorney™. 3. The discovery of the Toyota RAV-4 “The Lord” apparently showed amateur sleuth Pam Sturm the path to Teresa’s Toyota, hidden in very plain sight on a salvage yard filled with a thousand other cars, not too far from the car crusher that would have made her divine discovery a much tougher proposition. And, of course, Sturm’s breathless excitement when she phoned her “discovery” in to the police. God clearly was Pam’s designated driver that day. Or, still unindicted co-conspirator. You decide. 4. Wisecracking cops in Avery’s house, comment No. 1 The off-camera comment in Episode 2, from the policewoman searching Avery’s “pre-miracle key” bedroom, where the officer states that the former occupant will “not be making” the “Innocence Project Luncheon.” This, of course, before Avery is even arrested. 5. Wisecracking cops in Avery’s house, comment No. 2 The next off-camera comment from this plucky “Rosencrantz and/or Guildenstern,” where the officer helpfully suggests, after checking Avery’s closet, that "we should take all those shoes in case we have any unsolved burglaries with foot impressions." And yet, Officer Perky still missed finding the “Miracle” Toyota key? Huh. 6. Brendan Dassey’s plans, interrupted Another unforgettable moment: When Brendan Dassey plaintively asked his kindly police father figures/interrogators/framers if he would be home in time to watch “Wrestlemania.” According to “Making a Murderer” conspiracy theorists, “Wrestlemania” wasn’t even on that night. 7. Michael O’Kelly’s breakdown The World’s Worst Private Investigator ™, Michael O’Kelly, sobbed over Teresa Halbach’s memorial “blue ribbon” as he was eviscerated on the witness stand. This, of course, was the very same ribbon Kelly had laid out in his desktop tableau of guilt while he coerced Brendan’s self-incriminating testimony (and pathetic stick figure sketches) of the perfect (DNA free) crime. No tears from O’Kelly then. 8. Ken Kratz’s gruesome grandstanding Uber-Unctuous Creepy Prosecutor™ Ken Kratz somberly warning anyone under 15 to “discontinue watching” his press conference, before he reels off the grisly (and wholly imaginary) sequence of what Steven Avery and Brendan did to Teresa Halbach, in order to insure that the already shallow Manitowoc County jury pool drains completely. And as anyone — even Ken Kratz — knows, the very best way to make sure children turn into a lurid broadcast is to warn them not to. 9. Ken Kratz’s creepy text This text from now disgraced Uber-Unctuous Still Creepy Ex-Prosecutor™ Ken Kratz: “You may be the tall, young, hot nymph, but I am the prize.” Ick. Just. Ick. 10. The James Patterson moment During his trial, Brendan Dassey bringing up James Patterson’s “Kiss the Girls,” a response that was shocking on many levels. One, that Brendan is a reader. Second, that for once Brendan had the right answer to the right question, at what should have been the right time, and lastly, that nobody seemingly followed up. Brendan could have been referring to the 1997 movie, but still.... And, for a bonus round... 11. Steven Avery’s father, who, it must be pointed out, does bear a distinct resemblance to a Galapagos Turtle, eating a piece of freshly picked lettuce, “bugs and all.” Just when you thought the filmmakers had run out of disturbing images. And there are so many more. The heart-rending wails of Brendan’s mother as she tries to fight off the media jackals after her son is convicted, the smug “sketch” artist intoning that he is just the divine “pencil” as he still refuses to acknowledge that this “pencil” helped put an innocent man in jail, and so sadly, Brendan Dassey’s prison weight gain, which defines in one image the weight of injustice that makes this story so heart-rending. If only these “non-submersible units” could remain submerged.

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Published on January 04, 2016 16:00

What “Mad Men” could teach “Downton Abbey”: Hemlines aren’t the only changes we need to see

Two shows, both set in a stylized and romanticized past while also attending to serious social issues. A surrounding world that changes a bit each season, as wars and shifts in class and gender produce instability. And a dedicated audience we might call a cult if it were not so large. And now that “Downton Abbey” nears its conclusion, it’s hard not to compare it to another retro-set show that recently completed its final season. When you put the two next to each other, it becomes clear that Julian Fellowes’ series – for all its virtues – is weakest where “Mad Men” was strongest: The Madison Avenue characters, from first season to last, grew and changed almost as much as the times did. The upstairs-and-downstairs characters in “Downton Abbey,” by comparison, barely budge even as their world moves from the 1912 Titanic disaster to 1925. (The show, which aired its final season’s first episode last night, has already concluded in the UK.) The characters of “Mad Men” went on real journeys. Sure, Roger Sterling’s mustache and some of the sideburns were silly. But even leaving out Don Draper – a character with more layers and complications than everyone on “Downton” put together – the show still demonstrated how some people evolve over time. Joan started out a busty secretary – seemingly, at first, a kind of cliché thrown in as eye candy – and took possession of herself and her career as the show went on. Peggy’s metamorphoses into a substantial professional was even more drastic. And these weren’t just you-go-girl tales of triumphs. Their arcs, over the seasons, were persuasive. Weasely rich kid Pete Campbell marries, becomes a sort of nerd playboy, and then seems to mature and come back to his wife. Does this kind of thing happen to every marginalized woman or callow male narcissist? Of course not, but “Mad Men” showed how history, and force of will, can change people. “Downton Abbey,” by contrast, has its characters stuck in place even as Britain and its class system go through the seismic shifts that inspired aesthetic Modernism. It may not be fair to point out that the bitter and pithy Dowager Countess is no different than she was in the first episodes – she’s defined by her refusal to change. But it’s true of most of the other characters as well, from Thomas Barrow, the scheming under-butler, to Lady Mary. (“Sure, scandal, intrigue and tragedy are what initially drew us to this foreign world of titles, entails and illogical hereditary rules,” the Wall Street Journal’s Sarene Leeds asks, “but, come on, Lady Mary Crawley being blackmailed for an illicit tryst again?”) Do people have traits and tendencies that cause them to repeat the same thing over and over again? Sure. But the difference between the two programs is not based on a philosophical view or psychological theory. Both “Mad Men” and “Downton Abbey” have a lot going for them. (Since I’ve beat up on the latter, I’ll also say that the series is beautifully shot, generally well-acted, and engagingly told.) But while “Mad Men” attracted attention originally because of its midcentury-modern style, and was often written about because of its social critique – its disapproving/celebratory look at macho office behavior, daytime drinking, consumer capitalism, and so on – by its last season, it was really defined by memorable and convincing characters. (It’s something that clearly guides critic Matt Zoller Seitz’s book “Mad Men Carousel.”) “Mad Men” had its faults, too. But looking back, it’s hard not to miss the men and women who illustrated how the world was changing in the ‘50s and ‘60s. There’s nearly a whole season of “Downton Abbey” that I (like most Americans) haven’t seen yet; maybe it’s full of complex transformations. Anything’s possible. But it will need to go a long way to catch up with the gang from Sterling Cooper.Two shows, both set in a stylized and romanticized past while also attending to serious social issues. A surrounding world that changes a bit each season, as wars and shifts in class and gender produce instability. And a dedicated audience we might call a cult if it were not so large. And now that “Downton Abbey” nears its conclusion, it’s hard not to compare it to another retro-set show that recently completed its final season. When you put the two next to each other, it becomes clear that Julian Fellowes’ series – for all its virtues – is weakest where “Mad Men” was strongest: The Madison Avenue characters, from first season to last, grew and changed almost as much as the times did. The upstairs-and-downstairs characters in “Downton Abbey,” by comparison, barely budge even as their world moves from the 1912 Titanic disaster to 1925. (The show, which aired its final season’s first episode last night, has already concluded in the UK.) The characters of “Mad Men” went on real journeys. Sure, Roger Sterling’s mustache and some of the sideburns were silly. But even leaving out Don Draper – a character with more layers and complications than everyone on “Downton” put together – the show still demonstrated how some people evolve over time. Joan started out a busty secretary – seemingly, at first, a kind of cliché thrown in as eye candy – and took possession of herself and her career as the show went on. Peggy’s metamorphoses into a substantial professional was even more drastic. And these weren’t just you-go-girl tales of triumphs. Their arcs, over the seasons, were persuasive. Weasely rich kid Pete Campbell marries, becomes a sort of nerd playboy, and then seems to mature and come back to his wife. Does this kind of thing happen to every marginalized woman or callow male narcissist? Of course not, but “Mad Men” showed how history, and force of will, can change people. “Downton Abbey,” by contrast, has its characters stuck in place even as Britain and its class system go through the seismic shifts that inspired aesthetic Modernism. It may not be fair to point out that the bitter and pithy Dowager Countess is no different than she was in the first episodes – she’s defined by her refusal to change. But it’s true of most of the other characters as well, from Thomas Barrow, the scheming under-butler, to Lady Mary. (“Sure, scandal, intrigue and tragedy are what initially drew us to this foreign world of titles, entails and illogical hereditary rules,” the Wall Street Journal’s Sarene Leeds asks, “but, come on, Lady Mary Crawley being blackmailed for an illicit tryst again?”) Do people have traits and tendencies that cause them to repeat the same thing over and over again? Sure. But the difference between the two programs is not based on a philosophical view or psychological theory. Both “Mad Men” and “Downton Abbey” have a lot going for them. (Since I’ve beat up on the latter, I’ll also say that the series is beautifully shot, generally well-acted, and engagingly told.) But while “Mad Men” attracted attention originally because of its midcentury-modern style, and was often written about because of its social critique – its disapproving/celebratory look at macho office behavior, daytime drinking, consumer capitalism, and so on – by its last season, it was really defined by memorable and convincing characters. (It’s something that clearly guides critic Matt Zoller Seitz’s book “Mad Men Carousel.”) “Mad Men” had its faults, too. But looking back, it’s hard not to miss the men and women who illustrated how the world was changing in the ‘50s and ‘60s. There’s nearly a whole season of “Downton Abbey” that I (like most Americans) haven’t seen yet; maybe it’s full of complex transformations. Anything’s possible. But it will need to go a long way to catch up with the gang from Sterling Cooper.