Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 968
October 27, 2015
Kung fu crime-fighting: Nunchucks-wielding California cops expected to be less lethal, more Bruce Lee
The Anderson Police Department in Northern California announced it will start equipping its officers with nunchucks instead of batons as nonlethal means of fighting crimes.
According to the Los Angeles Times and TV station KRCR, Anderson — with a population just below 10,000 — has a per capita crime rate more than double that of the state of California. The department found a solution in connecting essentially two batons with a nylon cord, giving its 20 officers the option of lassoing their perps.
“These were designed … to be more of a control weapon,” Sgt. Casey Day told ABC7 KRCR. “They work very good as an impact weapon. But we try to emphasize a control tool over impact.”
Day says he hasn’t used his nunchucks yet, but understands “the value and safety they bring to me.”
Of course, proper nunchucking isn’t a common skill set this side of the Pacific, so APD officers will be required to pass a 16-hour training program before they're released onto the Anderson streets.
Officers will also be allowed to opt-out, should they prefer more standard methods of battery.
Watch the full report here.
[image error]
The Anderson Police Department in Northern California announced it will start equipping its officers with nunchucks instead of batons as nonlethal means of fighting crimes.
According to the Los Angeles Times and TV station KRCR, Anderson — with a population just below 10,000 — has a per capita crime rate more than double that of the state of California. The department found a solution in connecting essentially two batons with a nylon cord, giving its 20 officers the option of lassoing their perps.
“These were designed … to be more of a control weapon,” Sgt. Casey Day told ABC7 KRCR. “They work very good as an impact weapon. But we try to emphasize a control tool over impact.”
Day says he hasn’t used his nunchucks yet, but understands “the value and safety they bring to me.”
Of course, proper nunchucking isn’t a common skill set this side of the Pacific, so APD officers will be required to pass a 16-hour training program before they're released onto the Anderson streets.
Officers will also be allowed to opt-out, should they prefer more standard methods of battery.
Watch the full report here.
[image error]
“This is what GOP surrender looks like”: Right-wingers lose it over budget deal between Congress and White House
Governing has returned to Washington, D.C. and House Republicans are not happy. After five years of stalemate, Republicans in Congress and the White House have reached a new budget deal raising the debt limit through March of 2017 and avoiding a government shutdown. "I think this process stinks. This is not the way to do the people's business," House GOP savior Paul Ryan told reporters on the eve of his Speaker nomination, complaining of the closed door process. The likely next House Speaker said he wanted to “see what it looks like on paper” before coming to a conclusion but defended the proposal as a "good deal" all things considered. CNN reports that rural Republicans on the agriculture committee are upset with cuts to the crop insurance program, threatening to vote against the deal if the cuts are not removed. North Carolina House Freedom Caucus member and longtime Boehner detractor Mark Meadows called on all candidates for Speaker to oppose the deal:
Leadership's determination to ram through this legislation days before we reach the debt limit, with zero input from rank and file Members of Congress, demonstrates precisely what is wrong with Washington, D.C. [...] Anyone who supports this legislation is complicit in supporting “the way things are” in Washington. We are at an important crossroads in the House of Representatives. We have an opportunity to bring about real reform and fundamentally change the broken system in place on Capitol Hill. Therefore I call on all candidates running for Speaker of the House to oppose this legislation and go on record showing they do not support this approach to governing.Kentucky Republican and outspoken Paul Ryan critic Rep. Thomas Massie sounded resigned to the prospects of another loss for House conservatives. "I mean I don't think there's anything you can do at this point ... We can't stop it. He's in league with the Democrats," he said, referring to Speaker Boehner. But Rep. John Fleming, R-La., seemingly less dejected, said he plans to "whip against it." The National Review has blasted the deal as "awful" and having "no pretense of fiscal responsibility whatsoever." The conservative Washington Examiner decried the bipartisan agreement as "GOP surrender":
[S]ometimes there's a need to compromise and recognize the art of the possible. But this isn't compromise. This is utter capitulation. Boehner said this deal is intended to "clean out the barn." He hopes to go out as a martyr for the establishment, clearing the decks for likely incoming speaker Rep. Paul Ryan and essentially swearing off any combat with Obama or Senate Democrats during the 2016 elections. In reality, this is a betrayal of everything Republicans ran on in 2010 — fittingly negotiated behind closed doors and rammed down members' throats.Meanwhile, conservatives on Twitter lashed out against the budget deal, with many using the hashtag #ZombieBudget: https://twitter.com/RMConservative/st... https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/sta... https://twitter.com/DanFosterType/sta... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/DeanClancy/status... https://twitter.com/davidharsanyi/sta... https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/6... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/Heritage_Action/s... https://twitter.com/pmbasse/status/65... https://twitter.com/ChristieC733/stat... https://twitter.com/rrothfeldt/status... https://twitter.com/danholler/status/... has returned to Washington, D.C. and House Republicans are not happy. After five years of stalemate, Republicans in Congress and the White House have reached a new budget deal raising the debt limit through March of 2017 and avoiding a government shutdown. "I think this process stinks. This is not the way to do the people's business," House GOP savior Paul Ryan told reporters on the eve of his Speaker nomination, complaining of the closed door process. The likely next House Speaker said he wanted to “see what it looks like on paper” before coming to a conclusion but defended the proposal as a "good deal" all things considered. CNN reports that rural Republicans on the agriculture committee are upset with cuts to the crop insurance program, threatening to vote against the deal if the cuts are not removed. North Carolina House Freedom Caucus member and longtime Boehner detractor Mark Meadows called on all candidates for Speaker to oppose the deal:
Leadership's determination to ram through this legislation days before we reach the debt limit, with zero input from rank and file Members of Congress, demonstrates precisely what is wrong with Washington, D.C. [...] Anyone who supports this legislation is complicit in supporting “the way things are” in Washington. We are at an important crossroads in the House of Representatives. We have an opportunity to bring about real reform and fundamentally change the broken system in place on Capitol Hill. Therefore I call on all candidates running for Speaker of the House to oppose this legislation and go on record showing they do not support this approach to governing.Kentucky Republican and outspoken Paul Ryan critic Rep. Thomas Massie sounded resigned to the prospects of another loss for House conservatives. "I mean I don't think there's anything you can do at this point ... We can't stop it. He's in league with the Democrats," he said, referring to Speaker Boehner. But Rep. John Fleming, R-La., seemingly less dejected, said he plans to "whip against it." The National Review has blasted the deal as "awful" and having "no pretense of fiscal responsibility whatsoever." The conservative Washington Examiner decried the bipartisan agreement as "GOP surrender":
[S]ometimes there's a need to compromise and recognize the art of the possible. But this isn't compromise. This is utter capitulation. Boehner said this deal is intended to "clean out the barn." He hopes to go out as a martyr for the establishment, clearing the decks for likely incoming speaker Rep. Paul Ryan and essentially swearing off any combat with Obama or Senate Democrats during the 2016 elections. In reality, this is a betrayal of everything Republicans ran on in 2010 — fittingly negotiated behind closed doors and rammed down members' throats.Meanwhile, conservatives on Twitter lashed out against the budget deal, with many using the hashtag #ZombieBudget: https://twitter.com/RMConservative/st... https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/sta... https://twitter.com/DanFosterType/sta... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/DeanClancy/status... https://twitter.com/davidharsanyi/sta... https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/6... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/Heritage_Action/s... https://twitter.com/pmbasse/status/65... https://twitter.com/ChristieC733/stat... https://twitter.com/rrothfeldt/status... https://twitter.com/danholler/status/... has returned to Washington, D.C. and House Republicans are not happy. After five years of stalemate, Republicans in Congress and the White House have reached a new budget deal raising the debt limit through March of 2017 and avoiding a government shutdown. "I think this process stinks. This is not the way to do the people's business," House GOP savior Paul Ryan told reporters on the eve of his Speaker nomination, complaining of the closed door process. The likely next House Speaker said he wanted to “see what it looks like on paper” before coming to a conclusion but defended the proposal as a "good deal" all things considered. CNN reports that rural Republicans on the agriculture committee are upset with cuts to the crop insurance program, threatening to vote against the deal if the cuts are not removed. North Carolina House Freedom Caucus member and longtime Boehner detractor Mark Meadows called on all candidates for Speaker to oppose the deal:
Leadership's determination to ram through this legislation days before we reach the debt limit, with zero input from rank and file Members of Congress, demonstrates precisely what is wrong with Washington, D.C. [...] Anyone who supports this legislation is complicit in supporting “the way things are” in Washington. We are at an important crossroads in the House of Representatives. We have an opportunity to bring about real reform and fundamentally change the broken system in place on Capitol Hill. Therefore I call on all candidates running for Speaker of the House to oppose this legislation and go on record showing they do not support this approach to governing.Kentucky Republican and outspoken Paul Ryan critic Rep. Thomas Massie sounded resigned to the prospects of another loss for House conservatives. "I mean I don't think there's anything you can do at this point ... We can't stop it. He's in league with the Democrats," he said, referring to Speaker Boehner. But Rep. John Fleming, R-La., seemingly less dejected, said he plans to "whip against it." The National Review has blasted the deal as "awful" and having "no pretense of fiscal responsibility whatsoever." The conservative Washington Examiner decried the bipartisan agreement as "GOP surrender":
[S]ometimes there's a need to compromise and recognize the art of the possible. But this isn't compromise. This is utter capitulation. Boehner said this deal is intended to "clean out the barn." He hopes to go out as a martyr for the establishment, clearing the decks for likely incoming speaker Rep. Paul Ryan and essentially swearing off any combat with Obama or Senate Democrats during the 2016 elections. In reality, this is a betrayal of everything Republicans ran on in 2010 — fittingly negotiated behind closed doors and rammed down members' throats.Meanwhile, conservatives on Twitter lashed out against the budget deal, with many using the hashtag #ZombieBudget: https://twitter.com/RMConservative/st... https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/sta... https://twitter.com/DanFosterType/sta... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/DeanClancy/status... https://twitter.com/davidharsanyi/sta... https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/6... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/Heritage_Action/s... https://twitter.com/pmbasse/status/65... https://twitter.com/ChristieC733/stat... https://twitter.com/rrothfeldt/status... https://twitter.com/danholler/status/...
Sam Brownback is a harbinger of national doom: Bleeding Kansas’ scary lesson for America
This weekend brought the hilarious news that the approval rating for Sam Brownback, governor of Kansas and multi-year winner of the award for “Midwestern Republican Politician Who Most Resembles an Undertaker,” has fallen to an amazing low of 18 percent, while 48 percent pronounced themselves “very dissatisfied” with him. Most humiliating of all for Brownback? In this heavily Republican state, Barack Obama is outpolling him by double digits, with 28 percent of Kansas residents pronouncing themselves “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the president’s job performance. One cannot overstate just how badly Brownback and his pet Republican far-right legislature have wrecked Kansas in just a few years. The governor came into office in early 2011 promising to turn the state into a “real live experiment” for trickle-down economics that involved cutting tax rates to goose economic growth, which would fill the state’s coffers with so much revenue that Kansans would be literally swimming through seas of cash to get to Jayhawks basketball games. In other words, the usual supply-side plans that conservatives cling to no matter how many times they have crashed and burned at the national level. To the surprise of absolutely no one who lived through the 1980s under Reagan or the 2000s under George W. Bush, Brownback’s economic plans have not worked out. This year the state found itself with a budget deficit of somewhere around $600 million. It has an annual job-growth rate almost four percentage points below the nationwide average. In June, after an exceptionally long legislative, Brownback signed a bitterly fought-over budget that requires the state to slash education funding and raid its highway fund in order to bring it into balance. Enjoy your potholes, Kansas! Even getting to a balanced budget required the raising of taxes somewhere. Brownback refused to even partly repeal his income tax cuts that contributed to the whole budget mess in the first place. He did agree to an increase in the state sales tax, along with consumption taxes on items like cigarettes. These are regressive tax increases because they hit the state’s poor and working class residents the hardest. So Kansas is trying to dig out of the mess it made for itself on the backs of its poorest and most vulnerable residents. While also denying many of them health care, since Brownback refused Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which the federal government would have paid for. If I were Sam Brownback, I’d issue an executive order for law enforcement to confiscate all the pitchforks in the state. And we haven’t even gotten into the social issues. Brownback began his political career as an evangelical, but then he converted to Catholicism. In terms of religious conservatism, it’s a distinction without a difference. He has crusaded against gay marriage and any gun control. On abortion, he signed a bill banning all abortions after 21 weeks on the scientifically dubious grounds that fetuses can feel pain. A judge had to order him to approve a budget item granting a little over $300,000 in family-planning funds to Planned Parenthood on the grounds that the state had unfairly targeted the organization. Brownback has been so terrible, particularly on economic issues, that when he ran for re-election 2014, a group of over 100 Kansas Republicans got together to endorse his Democratic opponent, Paul Davis. It was one of the great shocks of the 2014 cycle that he managed to win re-election. Though based on this weekend’s poll results, one suspects the people of Kansas would like a do-over. Brownback’s fortunes mirror those of another Midwestern Republican governor, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who took office at the same time in 2011. Like Brownback, Walker turned his state into a laboratory experiment for trickle-down economics, slashing income and property tax rates and promising in return that Wisconsin would see blazing economic growth. Instead the tax cuts blew a multi-billion-dollar hole in the state’s budget and led to education and social-services cuts, a result predicted by anyone who understands basic math. Which would eliminate most Republicans, I guess. Kansas’s woes have attracted less attention than Wisconsin’s, perhaps because Brownback did not become a national figure by trying to destroy his state’s labor unions. (He did try to destroy a teenage girl who tweeted something unflattering about him, proving again that no fee-fees are as delicate as right-winger fee-fees.) But they do offer a warning to the rest of the country about the consequences of electing Republicans to both the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress next fall. (The biggest mystery about Brownback at this point is that he has been such an awful governor, it’s a wonder he’s not running for president.) This is not a perfect analogy – there are differences in the mechanics of governance between the state and federal levels. But Kansas is at the very least an object lesson in voting for the party, not the candidate. No matter what one thinks of either Democratic candidate, the dangers of turning both the White House and Congress over to the Republican party should be even more frightening.
Charles Koch’s Frankenstein problem: He created the Tea Party monster — and now he’s horrified with the results
I’m a big fan of irony, which is why I enjoyed this Wall Street Journal profile of Charles Koch so much. In an interview with Patrick O’Connor, Charles – evidently the more diplomatic half of the two most politically active Koch brothers – spoke somberly about the tone of the 2016 presidential race and of political discourse more generally. “It’s mainly about personalities and ‘your mother sucked rotten eggs,’” he lamented to O’Connor. On the one hand, I understand Charles’s frustration. After all, he and his brother are looking to invest $750 million on this election. When a man, his brother, and 450 wealthy donors build a national network of umbrella organizations in order to dictate political outcomes via dark money, they expect to get the results they want. Here’s the problem: The Koch brothers, whether they know it or not, got exactly what they paid for. If the tone of our politics has sunk to Cro-Magnon levels, it’s because the process has been flooded with money and propaganda and rabid right-wingers who’ve coarsened the discourse and made compromise impossible. Everything about our politics took a dark turn around the time of Obama’s election in 2008, which is precisely when the Koch brothers’ political machine exploded into being. As O’Connor writes:
In 2003, Mr. Koch convened about a dozen like-minded conservatives in Chicago with the goal of becoming more overtly political. Those efforts took hold early in Barack Obama’s presidency amid voter unease with the bank bailout signed by President George W. Bush and with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Groups financed by the Kochs and their alliance spent more than $400 million in 2012…In that year’s presidential election, Americans for Prosperity and two other Koch-financed groups spent a total of more than $50 million on television ads.The “lack of substance and civility” about which Charles complains began in earnest with the rise of the Tea Party between 2009 and 2010. To the extent that the Tea Party is a centralized movement, it is so because it has been mobilized by the groups Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, both of which are Koch-financed. As it happens, these groups were formerly a single organization, called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 by, you guessed it, the Koch Brothers. The Tea Party, from the very beginning, was designed for disruption, and it was a pet project of the Koch brothers (they actually created the first national website for the movement). Charles Koch says he’s interested only in advancing “free-market, small-government ideals,” but what he’s done is manufacture a faux-populist movement that has whipped the conservative base into an anti-government frenzy. In the process of serving his narrow and self-interested ideological ends, he allowed the worst elements of the conservative movement – the xenophobes, the nationalists, and the theocrats – to hijack the Republican Party. Initially this worked, because it sent obstructionists to Congress whose only mission was to shut the government down. But, over time, it’s created a political climate in which it’s nearly impossible to govern. And it’s prepared the way for someone like Donald Trump (whose campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is a product of Americans for Prosperity), who exists only because he’s been able to tap into the sentiments let loose by the Tea Party movement. Hence the incredible irony of a Charles Koch bemoaning what’s become of our political process, a process he, as much as anyone, helped engineer. [image error]I’m a big fan of irony, which is why I enjoyed this Wall Street Journal profile of Charles Koch so much. In an interview with Patrick O’Connor, Charles – evidently the more diplomatic half of the two most politically active Koch brothers – spoke somberly about the tone of the 2016 presidential race and of political discourse more generally. “It’s mainly about personalities and ‘your mother sucked rotten eggs,’” he lamented to O’Connor. On the one hand, I understand Charles’s frustration. After all, he and his brother are looking to invest $750 million on this election. When a man, his brother, and 450 wealthy donors build a national network of umbrella organizations in order to dictate political outcomes via dark money, they expect to get the results they want. Here’s the problem: The Koch brothers, whether they know it or not, got exactly what they paid for. If the tone of our politics has sunk to Cro-Magnon levels, it’s because the process has been flooded with money and propaganda and rabid right-wingers who’ve coarsened the discourse and made compromise impossible. Everything about our politics took a dark turn around the time of Obama’s election in 2008, which is precisely when the Koch brothers’ political machine exploded into being. As O’Connor writes:
In 2003, Mr. Koch convened about a dozen like-minded conservatives in Chicago with the goal of becoming more overtly political. Those efforts took hold early in Barack Obama’s presidency amid voter unease with the bank bailout signed by President George W. Bush and with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Groups financed by the Kochs and their alliance spent more than $400 million in 2012…In that year’s presidential election, Americans for Prosperity and two other Koch-financed groups spent a total of more than $50 million on television ads.The “lack of substance and civility” about which Charles complains began in earnest with the rise of the Tea Party between 2009 and 2010. To the extent that the Tea Party is a centralized movement, it is so because it has been mobilized by the groups Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, both of which are Koch-financed. As it happens, these groups were formerly a single organization, called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 by, you guessed it, the Koch Brothers. The Tea Party, from the very beginning, was designed for disruption, and it was a pet project of the Koch brothers (they actually created the first national website for the movement). Charles Koch says he’s interested only in advancing “free-market, small-government ideals,” but what he’s done is manufacture a faux-populist movement that has whipped the conservative base into an anti-government frenzy. In the process of serving his narrow and self-interested ideological ends, he allowed the worst elements of the conservative movement – the xenophobes, the nationalists, and the theocrats – to hijack the Republican Party. Initially this worked, because it sent obstructionists to Congress whose only mission was to shut the government down. But, over time, it’s created a political climate in which it’s nearly impossible to govern. And it’s prepared the way for someone like Donald Trump (whose campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is a product of Americans for Prosperity), who exists only because he’s been able to tap into the sentiments let loose by the Tea Party movement. Hence the incredible irony of a Charles Koch bemoaning what’s become of our political process, a process he, as much as anyone, helped engineer. [image error]I’m a big fan of irony, which is why I enjoyed this Wall Street Journal profile of Charles Koch so much. In an interview with Patrick O’Connor, Charles – evidently the more diplomatic half of the two most politically active Koch brothers – spoke somberly about the tone of the 2016 presidential race and of political discourse more generally. “It’s mainly about personalities and ‘your mother sucked rotten eggs,’” he lamented to O’Connor. On the one hand, I understand Charles’s frustration. After all, he and his brother are looking to invest $750 million on this election. When a man, his brother, and 450 wealthy donors build a national network of umbrella organizations in order to dictate political outcomes via dark money, they expect to get the results they want. Here’s the problem: The Koch brothers, whether they know it or not, got exactly what they paid for. If the tone of our politics has sunk to Cro-Magnon levels, it’s because the process has been flooded with money and propaganda and rabid right-wingers who’ve coarsened the discourse and made compromise impossible. Everything about our politics took a dark turn around the time of Obama’s election in 2008, which is precisely when the Koch brothers’ political machine exploded into being. As O’Connor writes:
In 2003, Mr. Koch convened about a dozen like-minded conservatives in Chicago with the goal of becoming more overtly political. Those efforts took hold early in Barack Obama’s presidency amid voter unease with the bank bailout signed by President George W. Bush and with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Groups financed by the Kochs and their alliance spent more than $400 million in 2012…In that year’s presidential election, Americans for Prosperity and two other Koch-financed groups spent a total of more than $50 million on television ads.The “lack of substance and civility” about which Charles complains began in earnest with the rise of the Tea Party between 2009 and 2010. To the extent that the Tea Party is a centralized movement, it is so because it has been mobilized by the groups Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, both of which are Koch-financed. As it happens, these groups were formerly a single organization, called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 by, you guessed it, the Koch Brothers. The Tea Party, from the very beginning, was designed for disruption, and it was a pet project of the Koch brothers (they actually created the first national website for the movement). Charles Koch says he’s interested only in advancing “free-market, small-government ideals,” but what he’s done is manufacture a faux-populist movement that has whipped the conservative base into an anti-government frenzy. In the process of serving his narrow and self-interested ideological ends, he allowed the worst elements of the conservative movement – the xenophobes, the nationalists, and the theocrats – to hijack the Republican Party. Initially this worked, because it sent obstructionists to Congress whose only mission was to shut the government down. But, over time, it’s created a political climate in which it’s nearly impossible to govern. And it’s prepared the way for someone like Donald Trump (whose campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is a product of Americans for Prosperity), who exists only because he’s been able to tap into the sentiments let loose by the Tea Party movement. Hence the incredible irony of a Charles Koch bemoaning what’s become of our political process, a process he, as much as anyone, helped engineer. [image error]
October 26, 2015
The man who warned us about Donald Trump, Fox News and the rise of the idiocracy
Gore Vidal, one of America’s greatest literary renaissance men and the master of the acerbic witticism, once said to an interviewer near the end of his life, “Anyone stupid enough to worry about how he will be remembered, deserves to be forgotten.” With Jay Parini’s new biography of Vidal earning high praise, and the recent documentary on Vidal’s bitter feud with right wing dean of letters, William F. Buckley, Jr., still attracting attention, many critics and commentators are considering the question of Gore Vidal’s legacy. Those who take the fate of American democracy seriously should use the abundant and abrasive opportunity of Vidal’s literature to inspect the danger of the country falling into every steel claw trap Vidal warned of existing on the ruinous road to empire. An examination of Vidal’s art and politics is insufficient if it does not acknowledge the secular prophecy pulsating throughout the best of his novels and essays. It is not enough to merely enumerate the ideas Vidal helped introduce to American culture, or telegraph the time jumping bravery and brilliance of Vidal’s innovative artistry, but that is a good place to begin. In 1948, Vidal wrote the first American novel to depict a same-sex love affair without any pathology or condemnation. “The City and The Pillar,” inspired by his own early affair with a classmate at his boarding school, ages well as a romantic story of youthful affection, simultaneously full of ecstasy and terror. For his trouble, shortly after the book’s publication, the New York Times announced on the pages of its books section that it would no longer lower itself to mention, much less review, another Vidal novel. Given that the New York Times set the standards for American journalism and cultural commentary during that decade, nearly every other major newspaper and magazine marched along with the boycott. Until the Times lifted the ban, Vidal wrote a series of mystery novels under a nom de plum, and moved to Hollywood, where he authored several screenplays for film and television, including “Ben-Hur.” The American author soon became a public intellectual of such gravitas and grace that a Canadian academic would eventually devote an entire book to analyzing how he engineers a connection between entertainment and erudition in a televisual era of superficiality. “How To Be an Intellectual in the Age of TV: The Lessons of Gore Vidal” by Marcie Frank delineates a subtle style of engagement with the camera that seems alien to contemporary cable news, but helped propel Vidal to triumphant heights. He would risk it all again with the publication of “Myra Breckinridge,” a 1968 novel about a beautiful woman of bewitching power who slowly reveals herself as transgender. The forward thinking and openness of Vidal’s early embrace and expression of sexuality stands in stark contrast to the dueling Puritanisms of the present age, where right wing moralists castigate sex in religious language, and left wing moralists prefer to warn of the dangers of sex in therapeutic terminology. Vidal considered himself a man not so much of the left, but of antiquity. Claiming inspiration from Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, and writing one of his best novels, “Julian,” about the apostate emperor who tried to remove Christianity from Rome and restore paganism, Vidal personified the hedonism in existence before the influence of monotheism, and an unwavering loyalty to the early Athenian conception of representative democracy. The cosmopolitan classicism of Vidal injected his contribution to political and literary culture with wisdom. The wisdom creates an unbreachable divide between Vidal, and for example, William F. Buckley. “Best of Enemies,” the recent documentary on their feud, treats them as equals. In reality, the record shows that unlike Vidal’s fine wine political positioning, Buckley’s retrograde views suffer decay and infirmity with each passing year. He opposed the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the gay rights movement, and he celebrated Joseph McCarthy, supply side economics, and the war in Vietnam. The connection pundits continue to trace between Vidal and Buckley, which precedes even the release of the documentary, is a small but significant illustration that America is either incapable or unwilling to learn from history (including its own), its past sins and errors or perspectives alternative to American exceptionalism. One of the lessons Vidal would use his rhetorical ability and agility to amplify was the historical warning of Ancient Rome: “A nation cannot be a republic and an empire at the same time.” The respect Vidal showcased for America’s founding fathers emanates from the same point of caution. George Washington advised the nation against “foreign entanglements,” and John Adams considered “unnecessary war” society’s “greatest guilt.” Vidal’s most ambitious literary venture was to retell American history while making it palatable for an American public with declining rates of literacy and interest in literature, by keeping focus on his country’s disastrous transformation from republic to empire. “Narratives of Empire” is a series of historical novels Vidal wrote to take readers from the early days of America’s independence all the way to the Truman administration, and the creation of the National Security State. An increasingly bloated bureaucracy – the Pentagon – gains more power as America repeats the errors of its imperial predecessors, extending itself further and further into every planetary corner while causing collapse within. President Eisenhower’s farewell address articulating the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” would prove too little too late, as America would soon start spending over half of discretionary dollars on the military, maintain over 800 military bases on foreign soil, and discard trillions of dollars and thousands of lives on largely pointless wars in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The bloodshed, limbs lost, and fortunes burned on imperial ambitions and foreign adventures compile hideous evidence validating the worst fears of the founders. Vidal’s novels map the treacherous path America took to lose its “golden age” – what Vidal calls the period immediately following World War II, when America was at peace for five years, the middle class was strong and stable and the arts flourished in cities from coast to coast – and the state of “perpetual war for perpetual peace” in which America is forever committed to vanquishing phantom threats belonging to the “enemy of the month club,” to use some of Vidal’s phrases from his essays. The diversity and quality of Vidal’s essays earn him classification as one of America’s best purveyors of the medium. Reading his correspondences from his home in Italy on subjects ranging from sexuality to American history often feels like one has discovered a treasure chest full of letters from a wise and witty friend. Essays like “The Day The American Empire Ran Out of Gas,” “The National Security State” and “How We Missed the Saturday Dance” aggressively condemn a nation fast losing its bearings. Vidal had little patience for party partisanship or excuse-making for the right-ward drift of the Democratic Party. Republicans, of course, face even greater demolition at the hands of Vidal’s pen. “Armageddon?” and “Monotheism and Its Discontents” eviscerate the influence of religion on American politics and culture with more grace and nuance than Richard Dawkins could dream, and blunt force equal to the late Christopher Hitchens. Twice Vidal attempted to battle the rise of despotic government and the degradation of political culture from the inside – running for Congress in New York, and the Senate in California. Long after he lost both races, he concluded that those defeats might have served him better than had he won: “A writer’s job is to tell the truth. A politician’s job is to not give the game away.” Vidal once said that as a writer he chose to “make America his subject.” “I didn’t spend my life writing about the summer I lost tenure in Ann Arbor, because I ran off with the au pair girl,” he continued with characteristic sarcasm. His obsession with the early conception of America as a Republic with “only interests,” as Washington put it, earned him friends on the left – Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Susan Sontag – and the paleoconservative right – Pat Buchanan, Bill Kauffman. Vidal was fond of quoting Benjamin Franklin, who after the passage of the United States Constitution remarked “A republic; if you can keep it.” It is easy to criticize the military-industrial complex, self-serving politicians, religious bullies, and mediocre journalists more adept at propaganda than reportage, but Vidal showed true courage and despair when he wrote with the realization that the people are part of the problem. Unlike Chomsky and Zinn, and more like Buchanan and Kauffman, he lost confidence that the American people were just enough information away from wrestling the country out of the arms of the elite and reclaiming the Republic. In one of his final essays from 2006, Vidal wrote that America had “entered the Dark Ages.” “What we are seeing,” he explained, “are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking; the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture—a troika that was for Voltaire the central horror of the pre-Enlightenment world; as well as, today, the political and economic marginalization of our culture.” None of the horror is possible without, at least, the tacit approval of a large percentage of the American public. Polls reveal that Americans are comfortable with drone killing and torture, that they do not believe in evolutionary biology, and that they no longer read much. Vidal once quipped, “Half of the American people read a newspaper. Half of the American people vote. Let us hope it is the same half.” According to a recent Pew report, the percentage of Americans who claim to regularly read the newspaper – in print or online form – has now fallen to 29 percent. Only a fool would believe that the early success of Donald Trump, the sensationalism of cable news, and the celebration of ignorance that defines much of political debate are developments coincidental with the lack of curiosity and knowledge of the American people. Vidal was no fool, and his greatest fear near the end of his life seemed to be that the levers of power to pull for change were no longer accessible. It was the public – not so much the leadership – that was responsible for their destruction. Any examination of Vidal’s life must take into account his role as not just critic, but in language he would appreciate, a more modern Paul Revere. Only in Vidal’s art and letters, he was not crying out for Americans to look out their window at the British, but rather to look in the mirror at the invasion they have already allowed. Jay Parini’s new biography of Vidal, although well-written and fascinating in its chronicle of Vidal’s colorful life, does not spend much time on Vidal’s Revere-like role and his alienation from the American public. The title, however, gives an important insight through contrast. “Empire of Self” could refer to Vidal’s mountainous ego, but it could also refer to the self-earned elegance belonging to people who take the time and invest the effort and energy to truly discover themselves. Rather than allowing himself to be subsumed by the empire of mass culture – political propaganda, religious dogma, low-brow entertainment – he created an “empire of self” through political independence, free thought, and literature. Ralph Waldo Emerson – another American original – wrote that in our society, “The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion.” The self-reliance of Vidal personified the romantic, American notion of individuality. Oddly enough, it is that form of individuality that is in such rare practice now, as it was when Emerson wrote his timeless essay on the subject. In his progressive views on sexuality, his condemnation of American foreign policy, and his criticism of American voters, Vidal constructed an “empire of self” through the hard work of rebellion – a rebellion that provides a prototype for citizenship in a democratic culture. It is that exact rebellion America so desperately needs from its citizenry at this precise moment when too many Americans prefer to think of themselves as consumers rather than citizens. The almost artful irony is that Vidal’s work makes clear it is that rebellion which is least likely to occur.
Calm, confident, crazy Ben Carson: The “subtle form of arrogance” that’s pushing him ahead in the polls
It doesn’t matter if he’s comparing Obamacare to Nazi Germany or abortion to slavery, or denying The Big Bang and evolution, Ben Carson tends to deliver his lines in a calm, mellow tone that differs significantly from the style of many other politicians. Especially those in his own party. Carson's manner strikes some as odd, but Iowa voters seem to love it. “That smile and his soft voice makes people very comforted,” one told the New York Times in a story about Carson’s secret weapon. “He is kind when he speaks,” another says. (No mention that some of his ideas are, let's be honest, utterly crazy.) Carson, it’s worth pointing out, has no political experience at all: He is running on an inspiring back story, and on being untouched by the corrupt world of politics. But temperament clearly plays a role in his support as well. What’s the role of calmness in politics past and present, and human interaction in general? Salon spoke to Justin Frank, a psychoanalyst at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. -- and the author of “Obama on the Couch” and “Bush on the Couch" -- about the appeal of calmness in unsteady times. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. Ben Carson is polling very high in Iowa. The New York Times argues that it’s partly his mellow manner that is drawing people to him. Does that sound feasible to you? Yes – that’s very likely, and very feasible. I think people who are calm inspire confidence. And there’s a difference between calm, like Ben Carson, and low energy, like Jeb Bush: He does not inspire confidence, because he is saying he can’t take it, that he’d rather do something else. Ben Carson inspires confidence because he’s calm, everyone knows he’s smart. He’s been a very important surgeon at Johns Hopkins, and people have confidence in him because of his steadiness. I also think that there’s a calmness that people are not as willing to admit to themselves: Barack Obama has been a calm president. In the face of attack from all kinds of people, he’s remained steady. He can transform the barbs into thought, so he’s not just reactive. He’s able to process attacks, take them seriously. In that way he’s stronger than Ben Carson, who sticks much more to a set of political beliefs. Theres’s two kinds of calm, then. [There's] the calm that can tolerate cognitive dissonance, that can tolerate more than one idea in one’s mind that might be conflicting with another. And then there’s calm like Ben Carson, which is confidence, but it’s the confidence that comes from being sure he’s right. Yeah – there’s a smugness to it. Yes – it’s a subtle form of arrogance. It reminds me of my days in medical school – we used to walk across the street and say, “Don’t hit me, I’m a doctor,” to the cars. There was an arrogant jokiness. It’s something Carson, I think, has maintained over the years. People confuse calmness with steadiness and intelligence. He has a defensive attitude toward certainty. Some people are more tolerant of not always being certain. But people like their leaders to be certain. That’s been one of Obama’s problems – he thinks, so people think he’s weak. But Carson gives a sense of being certain and being calm. I find certainty, as a psychoanalyst, as a defense against anxiety. And he’s an absolutist. That is very appealing, compared to Trump, who seems to be all over the place. You’ve mentioned Obama and Carson as demonstrating two different kinds of calm. Can we think of other political leaders, American or otherwise, whose support has come partly because of a calm manner? I actually thought the way Hillary dealt with the Benghazi hearings changed a lot of people’s minds. I have friends on the left who are enamored of Bernie Sanders, who didn’t really like Hillary before [the hearings], but they were surprised at how calm and controlled and knowledgeable she was – she’s a person who does her homework. [People like this] can be very reassuring and affirming. She can listen… it makes her more like Obama than Ben Carson. At the top of the GOP we have two very different temperaments. I don’t know what it tells us, but we have Carson’s smug calmness, and we have Trump’s truculence and impulsiveness… They have something in common. They are both viewed as what-you-see-is-what-you-get. They’re viewed as not hypocritical, as authentic. Most candidates are not viewed as authentic – they say one thing and do something else. There’s a sense that both Trump in his bombast, and Carson is his calm steadiness, convey who they really are. They’re reliable, they don’t have anything to hide. While all the others are politicians. Look at Christie, what he’s had to hide with Bridgegate, [and] Rubio… they all have stuff. The big rap against Hillary, until the hearings, was that she wasn’t trustworthy. While with Bernie Sanders, “he is who he is.” The appeal of this sort of calm confidence must be built into human nature – it’s trans-historical. But I wonder if Carson, for instance, is benefitting from the fact that so many voters – this is probably true on both the left and the right – think we live in unsteady and vexing times. To what extent is this about our manic and polarized moment? I wouldn’t call it manic. I’d call it paranoid. We live in a paranoid and polarized world right now – where one side doesn’t trust the other… There’s a need for calm more than before, because of gun violence, stridency, instability in the Middle East, and I think – there’s no evidence of this, but speaking as a psychoanalyst – there’s a lot of unconscious anxiety that transcends the parties around climate change. People aren’t able to articulate that, because it’s not always available to people. But there’s an underlying anxiety about tornados, [extreme temperatures], everything.It doesn’t matter if he’s comparing Obamacare to Nazi Germany or abortion to slavery, or denying The Big Bang and evolution, Ben Carson tends to deliver his lines in a calm, mellow tone that differs significantly from the style of many other politicians. Especially those in his own party. Carson's manner strikes some as odd, but Iowa voters seem to love it. “That smile and his soft voice makes people very comforted,” one told the New York Times in a story about Carson’s secret weapon. “He is kind when he speaks,” another says. (No mention that some of his ideas are, let's be honest, utterly crazy.) Carson, it’s worth pointing out, has no political experience at all: He is running on an inspiring back story, and on being untouched by the corrupt world of politics. But temperament clearly plays a role in his support as well. What’s the role of calmness in politics past and present, and human interaction in general? Salon spoke to Justin Frank, a psychoanalyst at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. -- and the author of “Obama on the Couch” and “Bush on the Couch" -- about the appeal of calmness in unsteady times. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. Ben Carson is polling very high in Iowa. The New York Times argues that it’s partly his mellow manner that is drawing people to him. Does that sound feasible to you? Yes – that’s very likely, and very feasible. I think people who are calm inspire confidence. And there’s a difference between calm, like Ben Carson, and low energy, like Jeb Bush: He does not inspire confidence, because he is saying he can’t take it, that he’d rather do something else. Ben Carson inspires confidence because he’s calm, everyone knows he’s smart. He’s been a very important surgeon at Johns Hopkins, and people have confidence in him because of his steadiness. I also think that there’s a calmness that people are not as willing to admit to themselves: Barack Obama has been a calm president. In the face of attack from all kinds of people, he’s remained steady. He can transform the barbs into thought, so he’s not just reactive. He’s able to process attacks, take them seriously. In that way he’s stronger than Ben Carson, who sticks much more to a set of political beliefs. Theres’s two kinds of calm, then. [There's] the calm that can tolerate cognitive dissonance, that can tolerate more than one idea in one’s mind that might be conflicting with another. And then there’s calm like Ben Carson, which is confidence, but it’s the confidence that comes from being sure he’s right. Yeah – there’s a smugness to it. Yes – it’s a subtle form of arrogance. It reminds me of my days in medical school – we used to walk across the street and say, “Don’t hit me, I’m a doctor,” to the cars. There was an arrogant jokiness. It’s something Carson, I think, has maintained over the years. People confuse calmness with steadiness and intelligence. He has a defensive attitude toward certainty. Some people are more tolerant of not always being certain. But people like their leaders to be certain. That’s been one of Obama’s problems – he thinks, so people think he’s weak. But Carson gives a sense of being certain and being calm. I find certainty, as a psychoanalyst, as a defense against anxiety. And he’s an absolutist. That is very appealing, compared to Trump, who seems to be all over the place. You’ve mentioned Obama and Carson as demonstrating two different kinds of calm. Can we think of other political leaders, American or otherwise, whose support has come partly because of a calm manner? I actually thought the way Hillary dealt with the Benghazi hearings changed a lot of people’s minds. I have friends on the left who are enamored of Bernie Sanders, who didn’t really like Hillary before [the hearings], but they were surprised at how calm and controlled and knowledgeable she was – she’s a person who does her homework. [People like this] can be very reassuring and affirming. She can listen… it makes her more like Obama than Ben Carson. At the top of the GOP we have two very different temperaments. I don’t know what it tells us, but we have Carson’s smug calmness, and we have Trump’s truculence and impulsiveness… They have something in common. They are both viewed as what-you-see-is-what-you-get. They’re viewed as not hypocritical, as authentic. Most candidates are not viewed as authentic – they say one thing and do something else. There’s a sense that both Trump in his bombast, and Carson is his calm steadiness, convey who they really are. They’re reliable, they don’t have anything to hide. While all the others are politicians. Look at Christie, what he’s had to hide with Bridgegate, [and] Rubio… they all have stuff. The big rap against Hillary, until the hearings, was that she wasn’t trustworthy. While with Bernie Sanders, “he is who he is.” The appeal of this sort of calm confidence must be built into human nature – it’s trans-historical. But I wonder if Carson, for instance, is benefitting from the fact that so many voters – this is probably true on both the left and the right – think we live in unsteady and vexing times. To what extent is this about our manic and polarized moment? I wouldn’t call it manic. I’d call it paranoid. We live in a paranoid and polarized world right now – where one side doesn’t trust the other… There’s a need for calm more than before, because of gun violence, stridency, instability in the Middle East, and I think – there’s no evidence of this, but speaking as a psychoanalyst – there’s a lot of unconscious anxiety that transcends the parties around climate change. People aren’t able to articulate that, because it’s not always available to people. But there’s an underlying anxiety about tornados, [extreme temperatures], everything.
Weezer is the absolute worst: Is Rivers Cuomo just trolling us all?
Man, Weezer’s new single sure is weird. It’s called “Thank God for Girls,” and that last word standing out like a dare to thinkpiece writers everywhere. The cover features a photo of the Pope, because people on the Internet sure do like the Pope. The first verse is about a woman—I’m sorry, a girl -- who works at a pastry shop and makes cannolis that may or may not be sexual innuendos. “She’s so energetic in her sweaty overalls,” Rivers Cuomo sings, obviously describing a real person. Later, he raps—yes, he raps—about how he gives this girl sweaty palms and how God created Eve by throwing Adam’s rib into a centrifuge. Meanwhile, the band shout the title in distorted voices, as though singing through telephones, and the guitars crunch and wail in a parody of guitars that crunch and wail. “Thank God for Girls” is the worst kind of weird. It’s weird for the sake of weird. Calculated non sequitur. Scripted strangeness. The song could have been created in a lab; it’s genetically engineered to go viral because cannolis and sweaty overalls, right? And it probably will go viral. In fact, right now people are posting that self-consciously zany video to their social medias, even though the song itself is a non-song that touches on enough hot topics—gender equality, dragons, Creationism, pastries—to sound like it might actually be saying something about something. But “Thank God for Girls” isn’t subversive or substantial or anything at all. Worst of all, it’s not even fun. This is not a new thing. Weezer practically invented that sad new format called meme rock with their 2008 video for “Pork n Beans,” which featured the Numa Numa guy, the Leave Britney Alone guy, the Evolution of Dance guy, the Chocolate Rain guy, and Dramatic Hamster. Ostensibly Cuomo was praising the unpolished idiosyncrasies of these unlikely celebrities as a way to tell his own fans that hey, it’s okay to be weird. Just be yourself. It’s a nice message, very empowering and very Ben Folds, but “Pork n Beans” was never actually about you and me. No, Weezer are singing about themselves and how weird and wacky and lovable they are. Rather than celebratory, it comes across as cynical. That’s the operative word with this band. More than 20 years after they formed and nearly 15 years after they re-formed, Weezer have become the most grossly cynical band around. They’re worse than Nickelback, who don’t maintain the same veneer of respectability, and they’re worse than One Direction, who at least know their way around a hook. Even when their '90s alt-pop peers have resigned themselves to nostalgia tours and/or complete obscurity, Weezer are still going strong, at least as actual rock bands go. They still release event albums, still sell well enough in their first week, still fall off in their second, still tour large venues, still play shows under that ironic winged W. But their popularity, aside from their pandering antics, isn’t based on listeners’ nostalgia for a time when rock bands actually commanded attention and sales. Instead, they’re coasting on the good will of their first two albums: 1994’s charmingly eccentric “Weezer” (known far and wide as the Blue Album) and 1996’s disarmingly confessional “Pinkerton” (known far and wide as the album that rips your soul out). To be fair, Weezer were great when they were underdogs. Two decades ago, they mixed semi-heavy riffs with witty lyrics and trenchant self-loathing, and even at a time when rock-and-roll exorcisms were all over the radio dial, Cuomo dispensed messy emotions via precisely structured pop songs. The success of early singles like “Undone (The Sweater Song)” and “Buddy Holly” nearly trashed their underdog status, but Pinkerton, so misunderstood in its time, immediately sent them back into semi-obscurity. It tanked, of course, but at least Cuomo owned up to some of the uglier aspects of relationships. His less-than-glowing self-assessment was refreshing during a decade when well-meaning but—let’s face it, dumb—bands toyed around with knowingly misogynist perspectives and got way in over their heads. Think “Sex Type Thing” by Stone Temple Pilots or “Push” by Matchbox 20. Weezer could get away with a song like “No One Else” or “El Scorcho” because Cuomo delivered each line with an implied “sorry.” The resurrection of Pinkerton from sophomore slump to generational milestone is still a pretty remarkable story, even if the band had to shed its underdog status once and for all. Their 2001 comeback, “Weezer” (aka Green Album), was slammed for being impersonal and overproduced, which may have been the entire point. In retrospect, it sounds like a retreat from the emotional kneecapping of the would-be career wrecker, but at least it had “Island in the Sun,” as wistful and as dreamy a tune as Cuomo has ever penned. He played the part of the rock-and-roll loser beautifully on those first two albums, but since then, Cuomo has never been especially convincing as a rock star, perhaps because the role was thrust upon him and accepted only reluctantly. That predicament alone could fuel a thoughtful and provocative album, perhaps even a long and productive career, but Weezer’s output in the twenty-first century has been so consistently, aggressively, inventively awful that it’s almost impressive. Their last six albums—starting with 2002’s “Maladroit”—have been almost comically bad, each sporting some variation of the same slick, expensive-sounding sonic palette and some of the most moon/June rhymes imaginable. Cuomo apparently forgot how to put songs together and the band forgot how to rock without quotation marks. “Beverly Hills” and “Dope Nose” and “I’m Your Daddy” weren’t just bad. Those singles sound like someone put real effort into their badness. So the best part of last year’s “Everything Will Be Alright in the End” was that it sounded like the end: the culmination of more than a decade of wrongheaded tendencies, boneheaded lyrics, and half-assed gambits. It sounded, in other words, like the final Weezer album, one last attempt to set things right before they finally put the band out of our misery. Cuomo directed most of the songs to his fans, as though feinting toward an apology: “Back to the Shack” was an attempt to hit the reset button and start all over again, while “Eulogy for a Rock Band” served as an epitaph after “fifteen years of ruling the planet.” It almost sounded like a mea culpa, but “I’ve Had It Up to Here” suggested otherwise: “If you think I need approval from the faceless throng,” Cuomo sang, unbowed and unbroken and unbelievable, “well, that’s where you’re wrong.” Weirdly, the album received glowing reviews. So the band keeps going. “Thank God for Girls” no doubt heralds a tenth album and possibly the extinguishing of the sun. As the highs of the 1990s recede further and further into the dark past, one thing does grow clearer and clearer. Weezer haven’t been flailing about these past fifteen years, searching in vain for some direction and inspiration. At a certain point, they must have decided to become the worst band in the world. Forget meme rock. They’re troll rock.Man, Weezer’s new single sure is weird. It’s called “Thank God for Girls,” and that last word standing out like a dare to thinkpiece writers everywhere. The cover features a photo of the Pope, because people on the Internet sure do like the Pope. The first verse is about a woman—I’m sorry, a girl -- who works at a pastry shop and makes cannolis that may or may not be sexual innuendos. “She’s so energetic in her sweaty overalls,” Rivers Cuomo sings, obviously describing a real person. Later, he raps—yes, he raps—about how he gives this girl sweaty palms and how God created Eve by throwing Adam’s rib into a centrifuge. Meanwhile, the band shout the title in distorted voices, as though singing through telephones, and the guitars crunch and wail in a parody of guitars that crunch and wail. “Thank God for Girls” is the worst kind of weird. It’s weird for the sake of weird. Calculated non sequitur. Scripted strangeness. The song could have been created in a lab; it’s genetically engineered to go viral because cannolis and sweaty overalls, right? And it probably will go viral. In fact, right now people are posting that self-consciously zany video to their social medias, even though the song itself is a non-song that touches on enough hot topics—gender equality, dragons, Creationism, pastries—to sound like it might actually be saying something about something. But “Thank God for Girls” isn’t subversive or substantial or anything at all. Worst of all, it’s not even fun. This is not a new thing. Weezer practically invented that sad new format called meme rock with their 2008 video for “Pork n Beans,” which featured the Numa Numa guy, the Leave Britney Alone guy, the Evolution of Dance guy, the Chocolate Rain guy, and Dramatic Hamster. Ostensibly Cuomo was praising the unpolished idiosyncrasies of these unlikely celebrities as a way to tell his own fans that hey, it’s okay to be weird. Just be yourself. It’s a nice message, very empowering and very Ben Folds, but “Pork n Beans” was never actually about you and me. No, Weezer are singing about themselves and how weird and wacky and lovable they are. Rather than celebratory, it comes across as cynical. That’s the operative word with this band. More than 20 years after they formed and nearly 15 years after they re-formed, Weezer have become the most grossly cynical band around. They’re worse than Nickelback, who don’t maintain the same veneer of respectability, and they’re worse than One Direction, who at least know their way around a hook. Even when their '90s alt-pop peers have resigned themselves to nostalgia tours and/or complete obscurity, Weezer are still going strong, at least as actual rock bands go. They still release event albums, still sell well enough in their first week, still fall off in their second, still tour large venues, still play shows under that ironic winged W. But their popularity, aside from their pandering antics, isn’t based on listeners’ nostalgia for a time when rock bands actually commanded attention and sales. Instead, they’re coasting on the good will of their first two albums: 1994’s charmingly eccentric “Weezer” (known far and wide as the Blue Album) and 1996’s disarmingly confessional “Pinkerton” (known far and wide as the album that rips your soul out). To be fair, Weezer were great when they were underdogs. Two decades ago, they mixed semi-heavy riffs with witty lyrics and trenchant self-loathing, and even at a time when rock-and-roll exorcisms were all over the radio dial, Cuomo dispensed messy emotions via precisely structured pop songs. The success of early singles like “Undone (The Sweater Song)” and “Buddy Holly” nearly trashed their underdog status, but Pinkerton, so misunderstood in its time, immediately sent them back into semi-obscurity. It tanked, of course, but at least Cuomo owned up to some of the uglier aspects of relationships. His less-than-glowing self-assessment was refreshing during a decade when well-meaning but—let’s face it, dumb—bands toyed around with knowingly misogynist perspectives and got way in over their heads. Think “Sex Type Thing” by Stone Temple Pilots or “Push” by Matchbox 20. Weezer could get away with a song like “No One Else” or “El Scorcho” because Cuomo delivered each line with an implied “sorry.” The resurrection of Pinkerton from sophomore slump to generational milestone is still a pretty remarkable story, even if the band had to shed its underdog status once and for all. Their 2001 comeback, “Weezer” (aka Green Album), was slammed for being impersonal and overproduced, which may have been the entire point. In retrospect, it sounds like a retreat from the emotional kneecapping of the would-be career wrecker, but at least it had “Island in the Sun,” as wistful and as dreamy a tune as Cuomo has ever penned. He played the part of the rock-and-roll loser beautifully on those first two albums, but since then, Cuomo has never been especially convincing as a rock star, perhaps because the role was thrust upon him and accepted only reluctantly. That predicament alone could fuel a thoughtful and provocative album, perhaps even a long and productive career, but Weezer’s output in the twenty-first century has been so consistently, aggressively, inventively awful that it’s almost impressive. Their last six albums—starting with 2002’s “Maladroit”—have been almost comically bad, each sporting some variation of the same slick, expensive-sounding sonic palette and some of the most moon/June rhymes imaginable. Cuomo apparently forgot how to put songs together and the band forgot how to rock without quotation marks. “Beverly Hills” and “Dope Nose” and “I’m Your Daddy” weren’t just bad. Those singles sound like someone put real effort into their badness. So the best part of last year’s “Everything Will Be Alright in the End” was that it sounded like the end: the culmination of more than a decade of wrongheaded tendencies, boneheaded lyrics, and half-assed gambits. It sounded, in other words, like the final Weezer album, one last attempt to set things right before they finally put the band out of our misery. Cuomo directed most of the songs to his fans, as though feinting toward an apology: “Back to the Shack” was an attempt to hit the reset button and start all over again, while “Eulogy for a Rock Band” served as an epitaph after “fifteen years of ruling the planet.” It almost sounded like a mea culpa, but “I’ve Had It Up to Here” suggested otherwise: “If you think I need approval from the faceless throng,” Cuomo sang, unbowed and unbroken and unbelievable, “well, that’s where you’re wrong.” Weirdly, the album received glowing reviews. So the band keeps going. “Thank God for Girls” no doubt heralds a tenth album and possibly the extinguishing of the sun. As the highs of the 1990s recede further and further into the dark past, one thing does grow clearer and clearer. Weezer haven’t been flailing about these past fifteen years, searching in vain for some direction and inspiration. At a certain point, they must have decided to become the worst band in the world. Forget meme rock. They’re troll rock.
Our new late-night wars: How Hillary, Bernie and the Donald are battling it out for bedtime TV dominance — and who’s winning so far
Politics, especially in the television era, is constantly mired in the tension between the endless detail of actual policy and the slick spin of good salesmanship. Policy stances are reduced to soundbytes; stump speeches are remembered for gaffes. Practicality, inevitably, wars with entertainment value. The political process is infused with showmanship—both in terms of making much of politicians’ successes and in terms of covering up, with spin or equivocation, the unpopular failures. American politics is always engaged in the effort of flattening its complexity and sanding down its edges to become TV-consumable. More often than not, it fails. The debates offer a venue for a frank discussion on policy, which occasionally yields moments of appreciable complexity; op-eds and discussions on Sunday morning shows might do some more. But in reality, the governing of the richest country in the world is a pretty difficult task, one that lots and lots of people take part in. It has a high barrier to entry, and requires a lot of targeted interest to understand. In near-complete contrast stands late-night television. The defining feature of late-night is that it is theoretically somewhat topical—but also that it is not too serious about any of those things. The format inherently lacks substance, from the quippy opening monologue to the second guest celebrity shilling a mid-tier movie. It’s late at night, and in all likelihood the audience is watching this while drifting off to sleep, with the remote falling out of one hand. There’s a reason late-night television is so predictable, so formulaic, so dominated by white men: It’s meant to be as nonthreatening and comforting as possible for a broad audience, which means hewing closely to the status quo. (Often, it feels like broadcast networks have a pretty limited sense of what the status quo is—or maybe are pitching programming to a status quo last measured in 1964—but that is its own separate issue.) The news is discussed to offer new material for the same jokes; the passage of time is marked by how many times a celebrity guest has dropped by for a 10-minute conversation. And altogether the audience, the show, and the topical material can enjoy an hour or so of low-impact togetherness. Because everything is so superficial, anyone at any level can pop in to see what’s up in America—what faces are on TV, what kind of jokes are being made, what sort of music gets played after the interviews. It’s the daily pageantry of mass culture, in a few slightly different iterations. So it is always a bit of an occasion, when unbearably light late-night television briefly shakes hands with unbearably heavy U.S. politics. It’s almost a microcosm of the event horizon of American voter apathy—somewhere between the consumerist fantasy of commercials, the empty comedy of a not-too-provocative host, and the repeated talking points of a careful politician. There are so many grand forces at play, forcing the moment into uneasy tidiness. Still, it is not all “Requiem For A Dream” around here. At its best, late-night television is where apathy and politics do not just stand in détente but can briefly shake hands. There is no fixing the strange, ossified bureaucracy of the military-industrial complex, but there is at least crisply acknowledging it. After all, we are drawn to these moments of proclaimed candor for just one reason—in the hopes that someone, anyone, will go off-script. Perhaps a candidate will really say something candid on stage; perhaps a host will really push for an answer to a tough question. And we hope this because we know that every now and then, it’ll happen. This is the promise of TV: you won’t believe what happens next. If there was ever a moment that promised unvarnished entertainment from presidential candidates, it is this one, when Donald Trump is high in the polls and has nearly as many late-night appearances scheduled as the current Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton. Indeed, late night television has focused almost exclusively on the two New Yorkers, both in parody and in-person. (It’s a testament to Bernie Sanders’ rising profile that he just got his own non-cast member impressionist on “Saturday Night Live,” in the form of Larry David.) Trump is every comedian’s go-to target, for either the hair, or the wall, or the way the candidate says “huge.” Stephen Colbert, before he started as host of “The Late Show,” confessed to reporters that he was desperate to get in front of a camera and mock the candidate. Jimmy Fallon, on “The Tonight Show,” regularly impersonates Trump—going so far as to interview both Clinton and Trump himself as Trump. That second bit, “Donald Trump interviews himself in the mirror,” had echoes of a particularly self-aware “Saturday Night Live” sketch with Kate McKinnon talking to Hillary Clinton, as Hillary Clinton. (Clinton, meanwhile, played a bartender named Val. The results were thought-provoking.) Perhaps what is strange, then, is that while Trump’s appearance routinely spikes the ratings for any show he’s on, there is almost nothing there to be seen under the surface. This past week, Trump canceled on Jimmy Kimmel, meaning we have just two examples to go off of—his appearance on Colbert’s show, and his appearance on Fallon’s. Both were almost interchangeable, in terms of how little Trump was moved by either host—he still wants to build a wall, he still wants to cut government spending, he still manages to sound sort of nice and affable when he’s answering questions, as long as you don’t pay any attention to the actual words. Perhaps there’s truly no artifice to Trump. It’s more likely, though, that Trump is just always playing to the late-night audience, and doesn’t have to alter much of anything when he’s sitting on the guest-couch. Tellingly, none of the other Republican candidates have even attempted to make a play for the general audience. Meanwhile, Clinton herself keeps demonstrating more and more seemingly incongruous facets to her personality, in what has made for intriguing viewing. On “Saturday Night Live,” she was the bartender you could have a drink with; on Fallon, she was part obfuscating politician, part policy wonk, and part maternally concerned grandmother, commiserating with Fallon on his daughter going to preschool. Then her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” talking up her candidacy from the position of doting husband. This Tuesday, she herself will be on Colbert, and the following week, on Kimmel, in the run-up to the next round of primary debates. And lest we forget about her for a minute, she was on television for 10 hours on Thursday, leading to her exasperated, exhausted face meme-d and gif-ed everywhere, including on late shows like “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah.” Clinton as candidate is ubiquitous and unavoidable, especially in the recesses of late night. McKinnon, on a recent “Saturday Night Live,” played Clinton like a automaton—dinging both Clinton’s oddly mannered persona and her assured triumph in the general election, or as we might as well call it, the inevitable robot revolution. In this election cycle, Clinton has revealed more warmth and competence than ever, though certainly not consistently, or on every topic. She’s lived in the public eye for so long that there’s a flattened, TV version of herself that is readily available to her, and also readily discarded, if necessary; her grinning during the Democratic primary debate, and that mic-dropped “no,” seemed quite at odds with the warmer, fuzzier Hillary we’re being sold for 2016. It happened to be quite welcome, at the time. But I wonder if Hillary’s strongest moments will be those rarely revealed moments of emotion—like the tears in New Hampshire in 2008. They hit a more controversial tone for the traditional notion of a president, yes, which is why her campaign keeps them so tightly in check. But in terms of reaching an audience, occasional hints of woman behind the machine make for far more interesting television. Sanders has been the newcomer to the TV cycle, so far. And so far, his two appearances—with Colbert, in September, and with Kimmel, this past week—have been surprisingly more thought-provoking. Colbert’s interview with Sanders was more combative than his interview with Trump—a bit surprising, considering Colbert’s politics, but not entirely so. Trump is a joke candidate to Colbert; Sanders is campaigning much nearer to Colbert’s heart. And so Sanders’ progressivism came under scrutiny, for impracticality—the host pushed him on tax rates, on the negative impact of the term “socialism,” and on refusing money from a superPAC, counseling, “Don’t bring a spoon to a knife fight.” It wasn’t Sanders that shocked anyone with his answers (except for those viewers who had never witnessed an American socialist before)—it was Colbert, with his questions, which were as close to hostile as the comedian gets. (Perhaps that was just because the audience, instead of chanting “Ste-phen! Ste-phen!” adopted “Ber-nie! Ber-nie!” for the evening.) Colbert remarked, with a little irritation, that his show was funded by huge corporate capitalism, and he raised the specter of an 80 percent tax rate for the wealthy. He played “capitalism’s advocate” against Sanders, clearly interested in crossing swords over what he sees is a fundamental tenet of the American way. He compared Sanders both to Trump and to Ralph Nader, for either tapping into rage or for splitting the liberal vote. There was a moment at the end where Colbert seemed to wish he could slip into his old persona, so he could hammer Sanders even further. It was a moment that indicated what the future might hold for the Sanders campaign, as even comedians who made their careers stoking liberal rage find themselves leaning conservative opposite him. And then there was last week’s appearance on Kimmel. Sanders—who is so true-to-type he walked right into David’s impersonation—tossed off a perfect Brooklyn “God forbid,” at the notion the Republicans might win. Kimmel picked up on that. “You say you feel culturally Jewish, but you are not religious. Do you believe in God, and if so, do you think that’s important to the people of the United States?” Sanders response was part Popeye, part brilliant: “I am who I am. And what I believe in, and what my spirituality is about, is that we’re all in this together.” Immediately beforehand, Sanders spoke at length about voter turnout in America, a topic he wrote on a year ago, as well. He spoke of disillusionment and disenfranchisement, and of big corporations and small individuals. And it was a strange moment, in the late-night-political-cycle-talk-show extravaganza, where the monster briefly became aware of itself. Sanders is so intent on making his point he sometimes forgets the applauding audience is there at all; the manufactured smoothness of live television somehow seems to not affect him. For the pre-cynical teen liberal who still lives in my brain, it’s too much to be true. Could this be American politics, in the era of godless television? Even President Obama slow-jammed the news! Well, I suppose we’re about to find out.
We faked orgasms for Stephen Colbert: No, really! He asked us to!
Ever since Stephen Colbert took over “The Late Show” there has been buzz over the newly designed show. CBS spent three and a half months and $18 million renovating the Ed Sullivan Theater. Then Colbert hired jazz musician Jon Batiste and his band Stay Human—a move that promised to infuse the show with energy. Those would be reasons enough to want to attend a live taping of the show, but that’s only the beginning. The live audience gets an inside look at the artifice alongside a heavy dose of entertainment you can only see if you are in the theater. Tickets are free, but you have to plan ahead. Right now the show tends to be booked about four weeks ahead. You can find tickets here. If you are in Manhattan and want to try to see the show without planning ahead, try going standby. Just show up at the theater by 1 p.m. and put your name on the list. If there is room, you will get in. Often that depends on the day of the week and the announced guests. Once you get your tickets, though, that does not guarantee entry. As was true with “The Colbert Report,” they always oversell the show. Tickets state that you need to be in line by 3:15 p.m. When I went, I was in line by 1 p.m. and was still No. 68 in line. Others have told me that they got there by 2:30 and were fine. The show seats 400—a big difference over “The Colbert Report –which only had seats for 150. Around 3 p.m. the staff will check your ticket (you can print it or have it on your phone) and your ID and give you a number, a stamp on your hand, and a time to return (between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.). Make sure to keep your number—that is now your ticket into the show. Once you get back, you should be prepared to stand in line again. After you go through security, you will wait in a line inside the theater lobby for about an hour. There are screens showing Colbert clips, but it is not like the waiting area for “The Colbert Report” where the volume was loud enough to hear the clips and the lobby had more memorabilia. Eventually everyone is led into the theater. There really are no bad seats in the house. Some folks that sit up front may have visibility blocked by the cameras—so that is where getting in line later may be a smart move. The theater is really impressive and once you see it you will understand why almost every guest remarks on how beautiful it is. Before seeing Colbert, comedian Paul Mercurio comes out to fluff the audience and get everyone in the mood. He’s pretty good at getting the audience to laugh, but I didn’t find him as funny as Pete Dominick, who did the same job for “The Colbert Report.” Mercurio mostly gets his laughs by getting audience members to come up on stage so he can make fun of them. Dominick was more of a political comedian and he helped set the tone for the satire of “The Colbert Report.” A key part of the show is the live audience laughing. So both Mercurio and Colbert’s stage manager, Mark McKenna, who also worked on “The Colbert Report,” stress to the audience that the audience has a huge role to play in the taping. Not only do we hear that we help encourage Colbert, but also that we play a role in affecting the viewers at home. At “The Colbert Report” the audience was also told to laugh hard—and then we heard it would help Colbert beat Jon Stewart at the Emmys. And while that is all true, it is weird to be told you have to laugh hard. They literally test the volume on the audience and make you do it again and again until they are satisfied that you can be loud enough. Next up is Jon Batiste and his band. Seeing them live is definitely a real treat and they walk the aisles and interact a lot with the audience. One perk of being in the theater is that every time there is a commercial break, the band plays. And on the night I was there Vance Joy accompanied them. Not too bad. After all that it is time to meet Colbert himself. He comes out to loud applause –we have, after all, been coached to be loud. He then tells us that we have to prepare to greet him again for the actual taping. “We will see how well you can fake an orgasm,” he says. At least he gets how strange it all is. One of the best parts of seeing the show is getting the time with Colbert before the actual taping starts. That is when he lets the audience ask questions. Our night we got three in—and I was able to ask one about whether he had plans to do anything like the Super PAC for the next election cycle. He answered that the Super PAC had been a spontaneous idea—so he couldn’t say for certain. Then another audience member asked if he had a favorite restaurant for ramen. He replied that he could now afford meat—but the fun part was that later in the show he made a reference to ramen. He will generally try to make some sort of inside joke like that—and the audience loves it. Colbert leaves to come right back out and the actual taping starts. Given that the new show has so many more guests than “The Colbert Report,” there is a good chance that there will be a guest or two that will also be exciting for you to see live. The show tends to close with a musical act. After the musical act ends, he will need to reshoot any parts that didn’t work out. Our night he had two words he had to say again since they were unclear in the original taping. We also learned that they would have to cut six minutes of footage in post-production. We watched him repeat the two words a few times—and the show was over. We left the theater by 7 p.m. while the band played out in the lobby. Seeing a live taping is a somewhat surreal experience. Besides the ways that the staff pushes the audience to be loud and laugh, it is also unusual to see the process of creating the show. Colbert’s reference to faking an orgasm is an apt metaphor – there is a sense of forced performance for the audience that can feel awkward. But it is not all about faking it. The audience gets the benefit of about twice as much entertainment –from the extra time with Colbert to the live glimpses of the theater and the extra music by the band. Beyond that, though, the audience becomes an insider, part of the show itself and not just a passive viewer. Part of that process means that the audience can no longer naïvely pretend that “The Late Show” just magically appears on their screens. Having pulled back the curtain, they now have a real understanding of the work --and play --that goes into it every night.Ever since Stephen Colbert took over “The Late Show” there has been buzz over the newly designed show. CBS spent three and a half months and $18 million renovating the Ed Sullivan Theater. Then Colbert hired jazz musician Jon Batiste and his band Stay Human—a move that promised to infuse the show with energy. Those would be reasons enough to want to attend a live taping of the show, but that’s only the beginning. The live audience gets an inside look at the artifice alongside a heavy dose of entertainment you can only see if you are in the theater. Tickets are free, but you have to plan ahead. Right now the show tends to be booked about four weeks ahead. You can find tickets here. If you are in Manhattan and want to try to see the show without planning ahead, try going standby. Just show up at the theater by 1 p.m. and put your name on the list. If there is room, you will get in. Often that depends on the day of the week and the announced guests. Once you get your tickets, though, that does not guarantee entry. As was true with “The Colbert Report,” they always oversell the show. Tickets state that you need to be in line by 3:15 p.m. When I went, I was in line by 1 p.m. and was still No. 68 in line. Others have told me that they got there by 2:30 and were fine. The show seats 400—a big difference over “The Colbert Report –which only had seats for 150. Around 3 p.m. the staff will check your ticket (you can print it or have it on your phone) and your ID and give you a number, a stamp on your hand, and a time to return (between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.). Make sure to keep your number—that is now your ticket into the show. Once you get back, you should be prepared to stand in line again. After you go through security, you will wait in a line inside the theater lobby for about an hour. There are screens showing Colbert clips, but it is not like the waiting area for “The Colbert Report” where the volume was loud enough to hear the clips and the lobby had more memorabilia. Eventually everyone is led into the theater. There really are no bad seats in the house. Some folks that sit up front may have visibility blocked by the cameras—so that is where getting in line later may be a smart move. The theater is really impressive and once you see it you will understand why almost every guest remarks on how beautiful it is. Before seeing Colbert, comedian Paul Mercurio comes out to fluff the audience and get everyone in the mood. He’s pretty good at getting the audience to laugh, but I didn’t find him as funny as Pete Dominick, who did the same job for “The Colbert Report.” Mercurio mostly gets his laughs by getting audience members to come up on stage so he can make fun of them. Dominick was more of a political comedian and he helped set the tone for the satire of “The Colbert Report.” A key part of the show is the live audience laughing. So both Mercurio and Colbert’s stage manager, Mark McKenna, who also worked on “The Colbert Report,” stress to the audience that the audience has a huge role to play in the taping. Not only do we hear that we help encourage Colbert, but also that we play a role in affecting the viewers at home. At “The Colbert Report” the audience was also told to laugh hard—and then we heard it would help Colbert beat Jon Stewart at the Emmys. And while that is all true, it is weird to be told you have to laugh hard. They literally test the volume on the audience and make you do it again and again until they are satisfied that you can be loud enough. Next up is Jon Batiste and his band. Seeing them live is definitely a real treat and they walk the aisles and interact a lot with the audience. One perk of being in the theater is that every time there is a commercial break, the band plays. And on the night I was there Vance Joy accompanied them. Not too bad. After all that it is time to meet Colbert himself. He comes out to loud applause –we have, after all, been coached to be loud. He then tells us that we have to prepare to greet him again for the actual taping. “We will see how well you can fake an orgasm,” he says. At least he gets how strange it all is. One of the best parts of seeing the show is getting the time with Colbert before the actual taping starts. That is when he lets the audience ask questions. Our night we got three in—and I was able to ask one about whether he had plans to do anything like the Super PAC for the next election cycle. He answered that the Super PAC had been a spontaneous idea—so he couldn’t say for certain. Then another audience member asked if he had a favorite restaurant for ramen. He replied that he could now afford meat—but the fun part was that later in the show he made a reference to ramen. He will generally try to make some sort of inside joke like that—and the audience loves it. Colbert leaves to come right back out and the actual taping starts. Given that the new show has so many more guests than “The Colbert Report,” there is a good chance that there will be a guest or two that will also be exciting for you to see live. The show tends to close with a musical act. After the musical act ends, he will need to reshoot any parts that didn’t work out. Our night he had two words he had to say again since they were unclear in the original taping. We also learned that they would have to cut six minutes of footage in post-production. We watched him repeat the two words a few times—and the show was over. We left the theater by 7 p.m. while the band played out in the lobby. Seeing a live taping is a somewhat surreal experience. Besides the ways that the staff pushes the audience to be loud and laugh, it is also unusual to see the process of creating the show. Colbert’s reference to faking an orgasm is an apt metaphor – there is a sense of forced performance for the audience that can feel awkward. But it is not all about faking it. The audience gets the benefit of about twice as much entertainment –from the extra time with Colbert to the live glimpses of the theater and the extra music by the band. Beyond that, though, the audience becomes an insider, part of the show itself and not just a passive viewer. Part of that process means that the audience can no longer naïvely pretend that “The Late Show” just magically appears on their screens. Having pulled back the curtain, they now have a real understanding of the work --and play --that goes into it every night.
