A Lone Voice Crying In The Wilderness

Joe Queenan, alas, does not like The King's Speech:

The King's Speech" is a heartwarming, "Masterpiece Theatre"-type affair about King George VI, who conquered a serious speech impediment and, with the able assistance of a saucy Aussie therapist, taught himself to address his countrymen in public during their finest hour. This is a very nice story, and even though the film fudges the facts—Edward VIII and his Nazi-loving wife get off pretty easily—it definitely achieves what it sets out to accomplish. The performances are very good, the dialogue is crackling (except when the king stutters) and the lighting could not be better. Moreover, the way Helena Bonham Carter jauntily cocks her stylish chapeaux is enough to convince you that the Queen Mother herself has generously returned from the dead to do a nice little cameo.

That said, "The King's Speech" is basically a film about what positively smashing folks the royals are. It's a film that's infatuated by those awfully swell people up at Balmoral who wear kilts and shoot foxes. Americans used to turn up their noses at this sort of stuff. But that was before "Upstairs, Downstairs" and Merchant & Ivory intoxicated the entire republic with the rustle of crinoline and the shimmer of lace. "The King's Speech" is not, after all, a film about a Welsh coal miner who overcomes a speech impediment. It is not a film about an Aussie doughboy trapped on the beach at Gallipoli who overcomes a speech impediment. It is a film about spiffing chaps and the spiffing folks who help them to be even more spiffing.

Turn Turn Turn: KUSF Stops Broadcasting

Shocking news as San Francisco's legendary low-watt FM radio station, KUSF, has abruptly ceased broadcasting after 30+ years of playing groundbreaking music:

It was business as usual on Tuesday morning for KUSF music director Howard Ryan, who played an eclectic mix of music while promoting a 10 a.m. in-studio appearance from local band the Pickpocket Ensemble.

When that hour arrived, his show abruptly went off the air - part of a complicated deal that gives classical music station KDFC the college station's 90.3 frequency - and leaves KUSF off the FM dial for the first time since 1977.

University of San Francisco officials said the station's blend of music and community programming will still be available by webcast. At the station late Tuesday morning, the somber group of DJs and staff felt angry and betrayed, saying that they didn't learn about the deal until minutes before the signal went dead.

The reasons for this are complicated. USC purchased the local classical music station, KDFC, and will convert that station to a non-profit. KDFC will then move to KUSF's frequency, 90.3. Once again aging Baby Boomers are taking precious resources from Generation X!

KUSF has been one of the prime outlets for the Unheard Music: music outside - sometimes way outside - the mainstream. Although KUSF was known mainly as a punk/indie station, it also had shows dedicated to roots music, ragtime, 20th century classical, J-pop, and more. Yeah, you could jump on the internet and find that stuff, but really it was a lot of fun to be able to dial in to 90.3 and find something unexpected. KUSF was as essential to the DIY culture as Dischord Records or CBGB's, pretty impressive for a low-watt college station with a broadcast range of a couple of miles.

KUSF will take the $3.75 million that they earned from this transaction to expand their on-line presence, which is good news. KUSF will not disappear, and may well expand. But, this really is the end of an era.

Hollywood Ending: Why Do Some Movies Get Made?

I don't literally care about the Green Hornet movie that is opening this weekend. I carry no brief for Seth Rogan. But, reading the reviews, it's clear that there is something especially bad about this latest special effects blockbuster. It brings up that age old question: how, with so many people involved and so much money at stake, can a production go so far off the rails?

"The Green Hornet" may not be the end of movies as we know them, though the people who made this atrocity were certainly in there trying. The question—which rises to the level of an industrial mystery—is, trying to do what? Turn a dumb concept into a smart entertainment? Save a dim production by pouring a fortune into stupid effects? (The budget was reportedly as high as $130 million.) Kill the special-effects industry by doing a parody of its excesses? The effect of those effects, and of the cheesy 3-D process pasted on as an afterthought, is simply numbing. The film's only unqualified success is the end title sequence—because it's genuinely stylish, because it looks like it was shot in genuine 3-D and, most of all, because it's the end.

I guess the starting point would be: why a Green Hornet movie? The TV series ran for one measly season back in the Sixties and is mostly famous for introducing Bruce Lee to the world. I don't remember seeing Green Hornet re-runs on the local UHF station (the path to pop culture immortality in the Seventies) when I was a kid . The movie and radio serials are even older. If you see any of them, they are remarkable for their stodginess. If the Green Hornet occupies any place in America's collective memory, it's an infinitesimal one.

Still, someone decided that it would be worth the effort to invest $130 million (!) on a movie based on a superhero no one has any particular yearning to see "updated." And, not only that, someone decided that the best people to bring this to the screen would be a comedian known for his appearances in raunchy sex comedies and a director known mostly for fey indie productions. (That's not a slight against Michael Gondry - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a Free Will favorite - but it's a little distressing to think he may never work in this town again because he couldn't bring a Green Hornet movie to fruition). You almost feel sorry for them, especially when you find out that they tried to gussy up this fiasco with some tacky 3-D effects. I'm guessing members of the Green Hornet crew will not be wearing their Hornet caps around town.

I'm not the guy to pontificate on what makes a movie "work." I'm still in shock after learning Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland made a billion dollars last year. Maybe Green Hornet's producers think they'll make their money back in the foreign market. But, when you think of how determined Hollywood seems to be a bring us remakes and reimaginings of everything that has come before, you wonder whether a lot of good ideas are being left on the table so that we can see yet another Baby Boom "icon" get the special effects treatment.

Get In the Van: Selling Mini-vans To Gen X

Steve Chapman offers the latest salvo in the seemingly never-ending war over the "meaning" of the mini-van. Lame-o-mobile or Swagger Wagon? You decide (h/t Instapundit):

Sales are up, new models are appearing, and the woman who once did the blog "Rage Against the Minivan" has fallen in love with one. "In marketing campaigns featuring heavy-metal theme songs, rapping parents, secret agents in cat masks, pyrotechnics and even Godzilla, minivan makers are trying to recast the much-ridiculed mom-mobile as something that parents can be proud—or at least unashamed—of driving," reports The New York Times.

This is known as reinventing the wheel. Minivans became popular in the 1980s because they offered so many things—abundant seating, ease of entry for young children, decent fuel economy, and cargo space without excessive bulk. For a generation in its fertile years, they were the solution to every need.

Except one: the perennial urge of many baby boomers to believe they are cool. Our parents knew better than to expect hipness to coexist with diapers and PTA meetings. But the postwar generation is the one advertisers asked, seductively: "Who says you can't have it all?"

Apparently, though, the urge to be awesome has carried over to Generation X. That explains why automakers are trying so hard to convince them that basic, functional transportation is not a fate worse than fiery death.

Toyota is selling the Sienna as a "Swagger Wagon" after hearing consumers lament, "I don't like being the soccer-mom joke or feeling like I've given up all trace of my identity to be a parent," according to marketing manager Richard Bame.

Jesus, if it's that important to you, slap a Circle Jerks sticker on the back. I promise to think you are cool.

I'm on the side of people buying the vehicle that best fits their lifestyle, not trying to impress the folks at the New Yorker. A car is, fundamentally, a tool and you should buy the best one for the job. If you are going to go into the business of having two or more kids, then a mini-van has to be part of the "what sort of car should we buy?" conversation. They do carry a lot of stuff. They do transport everyone comfortably (that's the downfall of many sedans). Turn your back on that and you're turning your back on your family's comfort and convenience. There'll be blowback from that, believe me.

The Free Will brother has long been a mini-van evangelist. Riding in his MV was like being on a freaking plane. Each of his kids had their own captain's chair, their own DVD player (!), and their own TV screen. Kind of put our family driving vacations - when we would go on 7-hour drives to Connecticut in our Mom's Vista Cruiser with little more than a Rubik's Cube for entertainment - into a whole new perspective, that perspective being it sucked even more than we realized at the time. So, yeah, if you need a mini-van, go for it.

Of course, a mini-van fan like Chapman can't talk about his favored wheels without dissing - get ready for it - SUVs. You see, (chortle-chortle) people buy SUVs because they think it makes them look like bad-ass outdoorsmen when really (guffaw) they never see terrain more treacherous than the parking lot at Safeway. Spare me. Remember when I said your car is fundamentally a tool? Well, an SUV can have its uses. I'd much rather tackle a snowbank in an SUV than in anything else, for example. If you are going into the mountains here in California, an SUV is good insurance against getting stuck in some pretty out-of-the-way places. And SUVs can be a riot. I was once on a driving vacation on the Central Coast, where they open some of the beaches to motor vehicles. Let me tell you, my Lexus ES seemed pretty lame right then, especially when I could see Jeeps and Range Rovers heading confidently towards the dunes, the kids in the backseat no doubt cheering as they went.

So, SUVs have a point, which is why Detroit sells so many of them. Why a member of a downtrodden sect like mini-van owners would try to puff himself up with some frankly clichéd comments about "stoopid" SUV owners is beyond me. Can't we all get along?

When Todd Met Sallie: Reinventing the Romantic Comedy

I keep hearing that the romantic comedy genre is "dead," or at least suffering from a downturn in inspired story-telling. The real problem is movie makers have not yet been able to adjust to the immense social and cultural changes that have flowed from the Crash of '08 and ensuing Little Depression. But, that may be changing. Just imagine the pitch session for this story of opposites attracting:

When they were top executives at Citigroup Inc., Sallie Krawcheck and Todd Thomson had a well-known rivalry.

Mr. Thomson, Citigroup's swaggering young chief financial officer, would regularly challenge Ms. Krawcheck's performance numbers during her presentations to the management committee, according to Citigroup executives. Ms. Krawcheck, the high-profile head of the Smith Barney unit, would visibly roll her eyes during Mr. Thomson's flashy speeches, in which he would sometimes wear a leather jacket and blare rock music. Both were part of the horse race to succeed Citigroup founder Sanford I. Weill as CEO.

Why, they're the perfect odd couple!

Naturally, he's got the "athletic good looks, a talent for dissecting balance sheets, and a flair for cultivating the rich and powerful" that we would demand for our romantic comedy bad boy, while she's the "studious" type who would be the adult in the room. I am picturing a Citigroup X-mas party, where Todd - no doubt fresh from shagging a secretary - tells Sallie to "loosen up, bay-be!" after which she snorts derisively and climbs into a helicopter taking her to another board meeting, followed by a lonely Christmas dinner from room service.

Of course, Krawcheck and Thompson are not actually involved with one another. Not yet anyway. Right now, he's trying to poach some of her employees for his new hedge fund, while she's going to court to stop him. In Hollywood they call this "Act One." More important, you've got a story that practically tells itself. She needs a man, while he needs someone to tame him. It's romance among the ticker tape while Wall Street burns down around them, and Sallie models one outfit after another (you don't really have a romantic comedy unless the female lead can credibly be called a "style icon"). Look for it in theaters February 2012.

Grim Reality: Where To Go To Survive A Mine Disaster

One of the less edifying outcomes from the rescue of the Chilean miners has been the cry from left-liberals that, A-HA!, the rescue "proves" that we need Big Government because only BG could have saved the miners. This not only ignores the efforts of private enterprise, which developed the technology that extracted the miners, (and operated the machinery), but also harsh reality in the mining industry of one the biggest of Big Government nations:

Rescue workers were struggling Sunday to reach 11 coal miners missing underground after an accident that has triggered anguished comments on the Internet comparing China's woeful mine-safety record with the concern for human life displayed by the rescue of 33 miners in Chile.

The state-controlled Xinhua news agency said 26 miners were killed Saturday in an avalanche of coal dust triggered by a gas explosion at a mine in central Henan province.

It was the second deadly accident at the pit, owned by a consortium of companies including state-run China Power Investment, Corp.

And, China's "life is cheap" approach to mining has spread to the nations where China has been buying up natural resources and apparently treating the locals as well as they treat their fellow Chinese:

Zambian locals rioted and blocked a road leading to Chinese-owned Collum Coal Mine Ltd. on Saturday to protest the shooting of at least 11 miners, allegedly by Chinese supervisors during a protest over low wages, police officials said Sunday.

On Friday, miners at Collum Coal Mine, in the Sinazongwe District of southern Zambia, demonstrated against low pay and poor working conditions. Gunshots followed, allegedly fired by two Chinese supervisors, wounding 11 miners, two of them critically, according to Zambian police and government officials. They were taken to a hospital.

Zambian police arrested the two Chinese supervisors allegedly involved.

(as an aside, can we agree that European colonialists were not unique in their depredations in Africa?)

The boring truth is not that government was the only thing standing between the miners and a Darwinian struggle for survival - never mind that the miners were discovered living peacefully together 17 days after becoming trapped (everyone seems to have forgotten this) - but that government and private industry had to work together the save the miners. And, the main role of government, acting through Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, was to provide cash and "cut through red tape;" in other words, to get out of the way.

More important, what saved the miners was a social ethic which said, we will do what it takes to save these men. I think we can assume that the same ethic would prevail in an American mining disaster, even if the Interior Secretary might brag about having his boot on the neck of the mining company. But, the drive to protect the lives and safety of men doing the hard work to keep an economy going is not a universal one.

Leave Us Kids Alone: the Left Targets Baby TV

With a toddler in the house, I've gotten intimately familiar with the Baby Einstein videos. While not my personal choice for entertainment, the videos are cute and appealing with lots of playful puppets and colorful images (and surprisingly good music - mostly classics rendered in a "babyish" fashion). Plus, my daughter genuinely enjoys them, so who am I to argue? But, wouldn't you know that there are busybodies out there who think baby videos are not only bad, but even harmful.

Many parents monitor and limit their children's "screen time," though, and pediatricians frown upon any video-watching by babies. The American Academy of Pediatrics currently discourages television-viewing by children under 2 (the policy is under review). "The evidence is not there to support that [videos] are developmentally appropriate or educational for this age group," says Ari Brown, a pediatrician in Austin, Texas, and a member of the academy's communications and media council. Studies comparing how young children learn from a parent versus video find "a video deficit," she adds. "Children will always learn better from the live presentation."

In recent years, critics such as the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a Boston nonprofit that aims to restrict corporate marketing to children, have taken on the baby-video sector, including the popular Baby Einstein series, whose videos feature music, sounds and animal hand puppets.

A non-profit in Boston?! We're doomed!

Activists complained to regulators about the series' implied educational benefits and the potential harms of video-viewing by the very young. Regulators didn't take action. Last year, parent company Walt Disney Co. offered refunds to Baby Einstein DVD customers, saying it did so under a long-standing customer-satisfaction guarantee. It continues to sell Baby Einstein videos and toys.

This is the point when I offer a bit of boilerplate about how this is a free country and boring busybodies can band together and start non-profits dedicated to removing all joy from the lives of toddlers (just don't invite me to the office parties). And, in this case, the dispute has played out entirely in the private sector. Even my pediatrician gets in the act, and is quick to denounce the videos when I mention them. Talk to the hand, please. The US government has declined to respond to the dullards' complaints. So far. The decline-to-act occurred during the horrors of the "deregulated" Bush era. W even praised Baby Einstein at one of his State of the Union addresses, so the fix was obviously in.

Still it's annoying to to think there are adults out there who are targeting children for being insufficiently pure in their TV viewing, or Happy Meal eating. When the busybody Left can't even leave little kids alone, imagine how they want to treat the parents.

Who Is Salt?

John "Dirty Harry" Nolte is one of the few film critics out there who have consistently criticized 21st century Hollywood's tendency to avoid making movies about today's enemies - i.e. Islamists, eco-terrorists, goofball "revolutionaries" like Hugo Chavez - preferring instead to make tedious Important Statements about how America, or at least the neo-con segment of the population, is the Real Enemy. Now, Nolte adds Angelina Jolie's Salt to the catalogue

Well-paced, with an excellent supporting performance from Liev Schreiber (who, if Hollywood had a lick of sense, would be cast as the next Jack Ryan), and even patriotic in spots, “Salt” delivers a fine old time at the movies. But it does feel like a relic, like something you watched on HBO a zillion times during the summer of ’83. That’s not necessarily a negative. But it does take something away from what could’ve felt like a more vital, urgent and relevant story.

We currently live in a world packed with very real dangers courtesy of Islamic terrorism, North Korea, Iran and Marxists who with the help of Oliver Stone are sowing seeds of anti-Americanism South of the Border. And still, though set in the present, “Salt” chooses Russians for its villains. Stranger still, they aren’t even present-day Russians but rather Soviet-era villains who want the current Russian president assassinated because of a lingering, two decade-old grudge regarding détente and the loss of the Cold War.

As a film fan willing to suspend as much disbelief as humanly possible, choosing Soviet-era Communists is a bridge too far. The decision to avoid portraying America’s smorgasbord of real antagonists as the film’s fictional ones is such a self-conscious choice that it hangs over the entire movie, especially after a brief opening sequence set in a North Korean prison that ends up feeling like an anachronism. This creative decision probably has something to do with race. After all, Soviets still piqued over glasnost perfectly fit the mold of Hollywood’s favorite villains: old white guys.

First of all, if you haven't seen Salt, you're really missing out on a serious, professional grade action film that combines the best elements of The Fugitive, The Bourne Identity, The Boys From Brazil, and those paranoid Seventies movies like The Parallax View. And forget all the tabloid stuff about Shiloh and Brad Pitt. Angelina Jolie absolutely carries this film, creating a near mythical action hero out of the tough, enigmatic Eve Salt. Like The Fugitive the movie is one long chase, with Salt's loyalty and motivation always in doubt. She is a CIA agent who goes on the lam after a Russian defector fingers her as a mole that is part of a secret KGB sleeper cell activated after decades spent infiltrating the West. Salt constantly challenges the audience's expectations; we see her doing all sorts of "bad" things - beating up NYC cops, assassinating the president of Russia, refusing the flinch at the death of a loved one - yet we root for her because we can't quite believe that Salt really is an Evil Commie Agent. Like The Bourne Identity the action is two-fisted and believable, even as it becomes increasingly wild, building to an incredible climax in the White House Situation Room. Great stuff, and definitely worth seeing in the theater if you can.

So, now Nolte wants us to somehow make Salt into a "contemporary" film with jihadists or what have you? That might work except for one thing. You need to be able to have Angelina Jolie play a Muslim. And not just any Muslim: she has to be one that was raised from birth to infiltrate the US as a carefully trained sleeper agent whose handlers have invested literally decades of time and expense in getting Jolie and her colleagues to the point where they can try to destroy the US. Is that something that Osama Bin Laden can cook up in a cave? No. You would need a state sponsor like Iran or Saudi Arabia for that, which means Jolie would need to be an Arab or a Persian. Are you seeing a problem, yet, or do you need to watch A Mighty Heart again?

The fact is that Jolie would not be able to play a "contemporary" villain because she simply doesn't look like one. (I refuse to consider Caucasian "Muslims" like Chechens or Bosnians). And without Jolie, Salt wouldn't be nearly as good. She doesn't just carry the film; she's in practically every scene. Whatever she's doing, she does it with a ton of confidence and charisma that only the true greats - I'm thinking John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery, Gregory Peck, etc. - could manage. Even when she's not on-screen, someone is looking for her or talking about her. Jolie is Salt and it's damn hard to imagine what other female American actress could have played the role with as much star power and brio. Hell, there aren't even many men who could have handled it. (you have to shake your head at the thought of Jolie sharing a bed with someone who stars in movies with names like Babel or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Benjamin Button?? What the hell is that?!)

No, the fact is that a movie should entertain before it does anything else, and Salt accomplishes that worthy goal with gusto. I'll let Syriana fans get their rocks off with "contemporary reasonance."

Always Crashing The Same Car

David Paul Kuhn writes some of the only mature words I have been able to find regarding the twinned Richard Blumenthal/Rand Paul controversies: The 60's and Why We Still Fight

Both issues concern not only personal honor but also what our culture (or cultures) honor. The sixties is a metaphor. It encompasses battles that predate and postdate it. And to this day, those battles force us to decide what we shall honor.

That forces us to confront who "we" also are. So it's not simply that Americans of the sixties are still with us, even lead us. It's also that many of us, who were not there, are with them. We are invested in their story because it's an expression of our story, and in aggregate, an expression of the American story.

Today, we tend to take refuge in an airbrushed American story. We want to believe in consensus. That we now honor civil rights. That we now honor our veterans. That America has moved on.

These events remind us of how we have not moved on. The divides are far smaller today. But they remain deep. Each event returns us to that depth and those divisions. And it is those divisions that define us. And it is what defines us that we defend.

"What was fought over in the sixties were controversies so deep, with such reverberation throughout American history, it's not surprising that they reverberate for decades. They get to fundamental values, for which there is no consensus," Gitlin said. "I'm not surprised that it reverberates. Is it surprising when the San Andreas Fault quivers?"

Yes and no. Yes, because of the initial shock. But also no. Because the fault line endures.

A problem with the endless Sixties flashback is that smug Baby Boomers can't or won't acknowledge that the America of 2010 is nothing like the America of 1968. Instead, we cannot experience events in our own time without seeing them reflected in a Sixties prism. Every military engagement is another Viet Nam, even when after the homeland is attacked. Every slighted minority group is a civil rights violation, even when the minority might be part of the oppressive majority (i.e. white males in the gay community). And every Democrat is a "new JFK" while every Republican is a "new Bull Conner," never mind that Connor was a Democrat.

While Blumenthal and Paul are responsible for their stumbles, the political and media environment largely demands that they pay obeisance to shibboleths first set down 45 years ago. Were people in 1965 talking about the Harding Administration? Of course not, but we are doing the equivalent, and for no better reason than that it's a sort of media vaudville act where everyone knows their lines, and the moves were taped down years ago.

Climate of Hate

Thomas Sowell looks at the phenomenon of African-Americans in San Francisco who are beating up Chinese-Americans. (how ironic that the only immigrant basshing in America is happening in "progressive" San Francisco, rather than "hateful" Arizona). As Sowell notes, these attacks are as much a product of overheated political rhetoric, as the phantasmal "bigotry" of Tea Partiers or Border Security activists: Resenting Achievement More Than Wealth

Achievements are a reflection on others who may have had similar, and sometimes better, chances but who did not make the most of their chances. Achievements are like a slap across the face to those who are not achieving, and many people react with the same kind of anger that such an insult would provoke.

In our own times, especially, this is not just a spontaneous reaction. Many of our educators, our intelligentsia, and our media — not to mention our politicians — promote an attitude that other people’s achievements are grievances, rather than examples.

When black schoolchildren who are working hard in school and succeeding academically are attacked and beaten up by black classmates for “acting white,” why is it surprising that similar hostility is turned against Asian Americans, who are often achieving academically more so than whites?

This attitude is not peculiar to some in the black community or to the United States. The same phenomenon is found among lower-class whites in Britain, where academically achieving white students have been beaten up badly enough by their white classmates to require hospital treatment.

These are poisonous and self-destructive consequences of a steady drumbeat of ideological hype — differences are translated into “disparities” and “inequities,” provoking envy and resentments under the more prettied-up name of “social justice.”

The Left's political program is ultimately built on envy and resentment, both of wealth and success. It's appropriate that the party of government would breed such resentment, as government has always resented anyone with economic power that lies outside the purview of bureaucrats and monarchs. The people marching in the streets against The Rich and beating up old Chinese ladies on MUNI are their shock troops, but the Resentful are all around us, and they vote.

Unfresh

Sly Stone roused himself from the crackhouse long enough to appear at Coachella with predictable results: Down In The Valley

The 67-year-old finally turned up on stage nearly four hours after his allotted time, which can be attributed either to an exaggerated sense of his current status in the rock world or an aftermath of reported drug abuse in decades past. Wearing a policeman's uniform and what appeared to be a woman's silver wig, he lay down on the stage and mumbled a bit, then struggled at the electric piano through abbreviated and disjointed versions of some of his classics as his band, featuring three original members of the Family Stone, looked on uncomfortably. Finally, he was led away.

Stone(d) wasn't just appearing at a rock festival. He was one of the featured performers on the main stage with a prime early evening timeslot, all of which he pissed away, just as he has been doing since, oh, about 1971. Will we ever be rid of self-destructive Baby Boomer "icons?"

Here is some "real" Sly, if he cares.

No

UPDATE: OTOH, here's Sly in Tokyo a couple of years ago looking/sounding better. No drugs available in Japan?

A Very Special Network

Back when I was a kid, you could tell when a sit-com was starting to lose it creatively when they started broadcasting "Very Special Episodes" where the normally hilarious cast would chew the scenery over some issue of the day that was afflicting one or more of the characters. In the Seventies, Very Special Episodes revolved around the angst of the era: joblessness, economic decline, drug use, teen pregnancy, and crime. During the Reagan Era when everyone had a job, Very Special Episodes focused on social issues: drug use, teen pregnancy, etc.

It's been quite a few years since I watched network television (I lost touch with the zeitgeist when I started law school), but NBC has taken the Very Special Episode to new heights, such that it is now a Very Special Network: Why NBC Universal Shows Are Sending Viewers Signals to recycle, Exercise, and Eat Right

In just one week on NBC, the detectives on "Law and Order" investigated a cash-for-clunkers scam, a nurse on "Mercy" organized a group bike ride, Al Gore made a guest appearance on "30 Rock," and "The Office" turned Dwight Schrute into a cape-wearing superhero obsessed with recycling.

Coincidence? Hardly. NBC Universal planted these eco-friendly elements into scripted television shows to influence viewers and help sell ads.

The tactic—General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal calls it "behavior placement"—is designed to sway viewers to adopt actions they see modeled in their favorite shows. And it helps sell ads to marketers who want to associate their brands with a feel-good, socially aware show.

Unlike with product placement, which can seem jarring to savvy viewers, the goal is that viewers won't really notice that Tina Fey is tossing a plastic bottle into the recycle bin, or that a minor character on "Law and Order: SVU" has switched to energy-saving light bulbs. "People don't want to be hit over the head with it," says NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker. "Putting it in programing is what makes it resonate with viewers."

Honestly, aren't any of these people embarrassed by this? It's nothing more than propaganda, and dull propaganda at that. A show like Seinfeld didn't need this sort of special political message in order to have cultural resonance. In fact, that was part of its cynical ("no hugging!") appeal. Plus, NBC is making the cardinal mistake of all creative people: believing that the audience will be moved by whatever is placed in front of it:

TV has always had the ability to get millions of people to mimic a beloved character. Ever since Carrie Bradshaw on "Sex and the City" stopped in at the Magnolia Bakery, fans of the show wait in long lines for the once-quiet shop's $2.75 cupcakes. When Jennifer Aniston as Rachel on "Friends" cut her hair, salons across the country reported requests for the shaggy, highlighted, layered look known as "the Rachel."

This is the power of persuasion that NBC hopes to tap.

Look, stuff like that works because it appeals to the audience's pre-existing desires. People like cupcakes, and want to know where to go to get good ones; hence the lines at Magnolia Bakery. Women like cute haircuts, hence the requests for "the Rachel." But, do people want to be lectured on recycling and carbon credits? No! We already get enough of that on the news! (which, coincidentally, NBC also sucks at providing).

NBC says it's using this "subtle messaging" to mainstream pro-environment messages in the same way they've been able to mainstream hairstyles. Sorry, but the pro-environment "message" is already mainstream. You get a steady diet of "Earth Day"-style environmental messaging from the minute you walk into elementary school and it never lets up, as NBC can attest. We've "Saved the Whales," "Saved the Rainforest," "Fought Global Warming," and engaged in numerous other struggles to Save the Environment. A perp drinking coffee out of a ceramic mug while Stabler goes Bad Cop on his ass in Law & Order: SVU isn't going to add much to the discussion.

Thanks to its "subtle messaging," NBC has made explicit what was always implicit: that it is a network dedicated to a particular political viewpoint (guess which one). It's a free country and they can do what they want, but so can the audience. And if NBC prefers to politicize rather than entertain, the audience will find another place to plant its eyeballs.

A Brave Face

After a quarter-century of prosperity and increasing luxury, Americans at the top-end of the economic ladder are becoming more and more familiar with the daily facts of life faced by more downscale debtors: default, bankruptcy, foreclosure, receivership, etc. Add the Berry-Hill Gallery in Manhattan to the list: after the gallery defaulted on a $9.5 million debt, the lender has moved in and started seizing assets, namely the gallery's paintings: Manhattan Gallery's Artworks Are Seized

Representatives of a lender seized artworks from Berry-Hill Galleries, a well-known American art specialist on Manhattan's Upper East Side, after a judge found the gallery had defaulted on a debt of $9.5 million.

As people from the gallery and the bank, American Capital Financial Services, congregated Tuesday on the first floor of the gallery's stately townhouse, handlers carried the artworks, primarily paintings, down the street toward Fifth Avenue, where they deposited them into two large moving trucks.

Berry-Hill's latest troubles come at a time when a number of New York galleries are struggling amid the recession. Nearly two dozen galleries in the city have closed amid the art-market downturn, including blue-chip spaces on the Upper East Side such as Salander O'Reilly Gallery and grittier warehouse spaces like Bellwether in Chelsea and Rivington Arms on the Lower East Side.

But, you have to admire the never-say-die, grace under pressure of gallery chairman James Berry Hill who calmly explained that all of this was a big misunderstanding, and would you please stop using ugly words like "seized?"

In an interview Tuesday, the Berry-Hill gallery's chairman, James Berry Hill, denied that the works were being repossessed.

As workers from Cirkers Fine Art Storage & Logistics removed the art from his gallery, Mr. Hill said: "We're sending stuff to our warehouse" to make way for a new one-person show. When asked whether the artwork was being seized by the bank, Mr. Hill replied: "The word 'seized' is not a word I would use," adding that he found the term "draconian."

"We just had a meeting. We are negotiating to get this resolved," Mr. Hill said. He described the meeting as amicable, and added, "We are negotiating to pay the bank in full."

That's the spirit! Scarlett O'Hara couldn't have put it better.

The Best & The Brightest, the Sequel

Arnold Kling goes Big Picture on us: Comments on Two Column

My take on the mortgage finance boom/bust, TARP, the stimulus, health care reform, and the global warming crusade is that they represent a series of ruling-class mistakes. From my perspective, these mistakes are in the tradition of such ruling-class mistakes as World War I and Vietnam.

I attach paramount importance to resisting the ruling class at this time. I view ethnic and cultural controversies as devices used by the ruling class to keep the resistance divided. The ruling class wants you to think that if you don't support their entrenched power, the country will be over-run by a bunch of anti-intellectual racists and homophobes. I call baloney sandwich on that one.

No one else has said it, but I will. The same people who brought us the Crash of '08 and subsequent Little Depression are largely from the same cohort of Baby Boomers that have done so much to change America for the worse.

Even as we have increased the wealth and standard of living for all Americans, they still rage over "injustice." Even as we have made decentralized knowledge more accessible to the masses, they insist that only Brobdignanian institutions are capable of organizing the 21st century. Even as we have largely chased racial discrimination from public life, they insist on treating every issue as another March on Selma (sort of like William Faulkner's old quote that for Southerners, it's always morning on July 3, 1863 at Gettysburg). And they still fall like a ton of bricks for every stupid fad that comes along; whether it's The Twist, Jim Morrison, EST, or Global Warming.

Will we ever be rid of these people?

Death of a Fly

You may have seen the tragic story of a western Massachusetts high school student who killed herself after being the victim of a sustained campaign of bullying by some of her classmates. Now, at least 9 kids have been charged criminally for causing her death, among other things. Overreaction? You be the judge: 9 Teenagers Are Charged After Classmate's Suicide

Two boys and four girls, ages 16 to 18, face a different mix of felony charges that include statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury, harassment, stalking and disturbing a school assembly. Three younger girls have been charged in juvenile court, Elizabeth D. Scheibel, the Northwestern district attorney, said at a news conference in Northampton, Mass.

Appearing with state and local police officials on Monday, Ms. Scheibel said that Ms. Prince’s suicide came after nearly three months of severe taunting and physical threats by a cluster of fellow students.

“The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school,” Ms. Scheibel said. The conduct of those charged, she said, “far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels.”

It was particularly alarming, the district attorney said, that some teachers, administrators and other staff members at the school were aware of the harassment but did not stop it. “The actions or inactions of some adults at the school were troublesome,” Ms. Scheibel said, but did not violate any laws.

...

Ms. Prince’s family had recently moved to the United States from a small town in Ireland, and she entered South Hadley last fall. The taunting started when she had a brief relationship with a popular senior boy; some students reportedly called her an “Irish slut,” knocked books out of her hands and sent her threatening text messages, day after day.

First, a message to the future high school classmates of my daughter: if you do half of what was done to this girl, you will be hearing directly from me. Maybe I'll get your parents involved, but I doubt that would do much good, as I would probably have to waste my time listening to excuses about Their Little Angel. A big problem with this sort of Kids Gone Wild high school is that the bad actors have never really had to deal with the consequences of their actions because they were spoiled at home and allowed to rampage at school by a see-no-evil staff. Well, I'm not the sort of lazy parent or a brain dead vice principal you're used to dealing with. I am a real believer in consequences for our actions. In fact, my handle back on the semi-pro wrestling circuit was The Consequences. At least, I think that was me. Anyway, keep that in mind.

More important, what the hell is going on at school these days? Not only was the girl getting bullied, the prosecutors note that there were plenty of adults at the school who were aware it was going on and did nothing to help her. Now, I realize that most school staffers are just lazy time-punchers whose union probably negotiated a work-rule that specifically exempt them from dealing with teen-age psychodramas, but ... come on! How can an adult watch a kid get hounded by a mob and not step in to help? Schools are big on teaching tolerance and respect, but when confronted with actual intolerance, teachers don't seem to want to bother. It's a damned shame.

Now, I know that bullying is a universal phenomenon, and it's worse in other societies; but the acceptance of school-age bullying by adults - especially the ones who work in the schools - is a real blight on the education system. It's not as much of a blight as bad teaching, apathetic parents, watered-down curricula, or an intellectual climate where Frank Rich is considered a "public intellectual;" but, it's pretty bad. Certainly, adults are not expected to tolerate bullying among one another. Why kids should is beyond me.A kid who is getting bullied is often also a kid who is unable to learn because school has become a hellhole for them. I swear a crackdown on bulling would raise the national IQ by at least one point.

A more open question is whether charging kids as criminals is really the way to deal with a bullying-induced suicide. Althouse presents the argument against such a step: What Did They Do?

Assume you are a teenager contemplating suicide. If you knew the 9 kids at school who were meanest to you would get criminally prosecuted if you killed yourself, would you be more likely to kill yourself or less? I don't know enough about the psychology of suicide to answer my own question, but my intuitive sense is that self-murderers — or some self-murderers — intend to deal a severe blow to the people they leave behind. And knowing your enemies will be prosecuted might spur you on.

All of that is very persuasive, except for one problem. We've got a dead kid on our hands, and she's dead because a group of (mostly) girls decided to pick on her after she was pumped and dumped by the local football hero. Call me crazy, but that kind of calls out for some sort of punishment, but the school and parents involved seem very uninterested in doing that. So you're left with criminal charges. Maybe it's heavy handed. Maybe the kids will eventually get let off (like that MO woman who used a MySpace account to pick on her daughter's friend) because the courts eventually decide that criminal charges are a bit much. But, at least now these kids are facing some consequences and will have to do their damndest to get out of it.

There's some hopeful talk in the linked article about passing legislation against bullying (and also "cyber-bullying," so you know the legislators are modern). That's great, but it's also sad commentary that school staff need the law to step in to tell them to help a child in need.