Author: Aaron Weber

Even Liberals Are Giving Up On The Times

For awhile, it was a staple argument of the right that the New York Times was a liberal mouthpiece. My grandfather the Admiral used to say that, back in the sixties. But I guess forty years of being criticized for being too reality-based eventually drove the Times to start hiring some right-wing partisan hacks. And now, in addition to the disdain of the right, the NYT has earned the disdain of the left by publishing David Brooks. For the reaction of right-thinking, well-meaning, intelligent individuals, we have only to look to Brad Delong, who says:

Everybody like me has a big problem with Brooks…. Has he just not done his homework, and does he not know that his program doesn’t add up–is he just lazy? Or does he know very well that his proposals are b—s— and not care because he is not in the informing-the-public business but is instead playing some deep political game to try to get White House mess privileges for his friends? Or both?

And everybody like me has a big problem with an organization–like the New York Times–that gives a platform to Brooks. Don’t they have any ethics? Don’t they think they ought to be in the inform-the-public business? Yet there is not even a single phone call from an editor saying, “David, it’s your column, but this just doesn’t add up…”

My local Times subsidiary, the Boston Globe, is at least as much in thrall to right-wing idiocy and at least as deserving of scorn from those on both the right and left sides of the political spectrum. Why else would they publish Jeff Jacoby? This week he’s arguing, more or less, that Barack Obama is a communist dictator in waiting, and you can tell because one volunteer in Texas thinks Cuba’s flag looks pretty cool.

I assume the lone moderate at any party loves both the Times and the Globe; this would explain their circulation numbers.

Scooter People Are Hardcore

Motorcyclists in Boston seem to be out in force up through October, and then all the Craigslist ads looking for winter storage space start to appear. But the scooterists seem to stay out all year round. I’ve seen people riding around all winter on scooters, sometimes even in the sleet and ice. Yesterday it was twenty-five degrees and I saw a kid on a Honda Metropolitan riding through Davis Square. With no gloves on.

This isn’t just the Boston Stranglers Scooter Club — it’s just random people on scooters. I’m telling you, scooter people are hardcore. It’s not just in Boston, either: check out this video about the Chicago hip-hop moped scene called “Throw A Kit…”

TV Criticism: “The Wire” and “Law And Order”

Originally posted at TV With MeeVee as a challenge to myself: Argue that Law & Order stands up pretty well to comparison with David Simon’s inarguably brilliant The Wire. In retrospect, I think this post could use some expansion, but for twenty minutes off the cuff it’s not bad.

First off, let’s talk about the disappointment in the air over this season of The Wire In particular, the critics over at Slate seem pretty unhappy. They think McNulty is way out of character, the newsroom story is too spiteful, and the only good points are Bunk Moreland and what little we see of the kids from last season. TV Squad thinks this episode (we’re talking number six, "The Dickensian Aspect," by the way) stumbled a little bit, but the show is still absolutely stellar. And Tim Goodman is still in love. Still, it really seems like this season just isn’t living up to the impossibly high standards set for it by previous seasons and their attending hype.

In other words, The Wire isn’t perfect. And even if it were the greatest TV show ever, its existence doesn’t magically invalidate everything that came before it.

See, I keep coming back to the story David Simon likes to tell about The Wire and its origins, how it’s meant to be a big kick in the teeth for people who produce shows like Law & Order, which pull punches and are too pat and too easy.

I’m not sure it’s all that different, though.

Yes, The Wire is a greater work of art and it definitely makes other cop shows pale in comparison. But at the same time, the standard procedurals—I’m most familiar with the Law & Orderfranchise but it holds true for things like CSI as well—are underrated by Wire fans.

Yes, obviously, The Wire is more novelistic: It’s got story arcs that go on for years, while the L&O franchises never do more than a two-episode special. The Wire blurs the line between cops and crooks, between protagonist and antagonist, between good and evil, in a realistic way. And no, the mainstream procedurals aren’t in any way realistic. They don’t even have swearing, or disillusioned cops, or crippling budget cuts.

Still, I keep seeing Law & Order episodes where the bad guys mean well, where the real evil goes unpunished, where nobody gets caught, or where the framework of the police procedural is used to explore a particular political issue. These shows are not a simple hour of cops and robbers.

For example, last November, we had an episode of Criminal Intent in which Detective Goren was ordered not to investigate abuses at an upstate mental hospital where his nephew was held, but disobeyed orders, and got himself committed and tortured by sadistic guards. When the whole thing unwound, he and his superiors got reprimands, the nephew disappeared, and the systematic inmate torture was more or less ignored.

Or take the episode of SVU in which a mercenary soldier kills a refugee and a translator to prevent them from spilling secrets about US-sponsored torture in Iraq, then gets his company to transfer him to Bahrain before the law catches up. Nobody wins in that episode, either. And what about the one where the frozen embryos were kidnapped? The investigation may have led to a simple revenge killing, but on the way it spent a terrific amount of time visiting the land of bioethics and reproductive counseling.

How is an hourlong special on interrogation or bioethics "pulling punches," especially compared to Omar Little jumping off a five-story building and escaping with only a broken leg?

It’s not identity theft, it’s identity plagiarism

Item One: Ever copy someone else’s dating profile? I often google for phrases I think people might crib from me, but I’ve never found it.

Item Two: I’ve decided that my favorite “American Idol” contestant is Luke Menard. Not because of his talent, but because his name reminds me of the short story “Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote.”

Item Three: People I know keep being surprised that I am working as a television critic and pop-culture blogger. So, FYI: Since about June, I’ve been writing almost all of Glitterati Gossip and about half of TV With MeeVee.

Wandering The Old City

I am thinking about a movie about killers hanging out in a medieval city, and it reminded me of the last time I went to a medieval city.

Nürnberg. I was there for work back in the spring of 2005. I had meetings Tuesday-Friday, but arrived early on Monday, and had the day off to get used to the jetlag and wander the city. I went and saw Albrecht Dürer’s house. It was closed, of course, because it was Monday. Museums are often MONTAGS GESCHLOSSEN. Beautiful from the outside, though, like the rest of the old city.

It was spring there, while it was still grey in Boston, and I was happy just wandering around the city’s medieval center, grabbing a sandwich midday, flipping through the guidebook to say “eine lager, bitte?”

All the bathrooms had vending machines with cute ten-packs of Lucky Strike Light cigarettes, which I remembered from Chile, and which you just can’t find in the US. The tourist info maps had ads for restaurants, family amusement attractions, museums, and porno palaces. The famous court where the war criminals were tried is still a working courthouse, and wasn’t open during the days I was there. All the other museums were Montags Geschlossen, too. I went to the porno palaces.

Tuesday we had meetings. The other two people from my US department had arrived Monday night and Tuesday morning, and were jetlagged and irritable. I was fresh, but I was junior staff. I was there to learn about how to conduct international meetings, and to impress upon the German counterparts that this series of meetings was important enough to bring three people to Europe for a week. Sometimes the point of a meeting is not only in the topics discussed, but the priority of those topics. My presence indicated that this was a topic of three-people-in-Europe importance. But not three executives. Just three people. I don’t recall if anything really came out of the meetings.

Mostly I sat around and nodded and took notes and read a book about how to be a product manager. After work we went to the biergarten and I wandered around the city some more, browsing stores where I couldn’t read the labels on things and guessing at what signs meant, walking until my feet hurt.

I didn’t kill anybody, though. So I didn’t have a lot to run from. I was just there.

TV Criticism: Respect Your Audience

I think I’m bordering on disrespect for my audience in this post, but I feel strongly that spending any significant amount of time and energy and money to “save” a TV show is a serious sign of misplaced priorities. Sure, if you like the show, write a note saying it’s great. People love them some feedback. But buying box after box of nuts or Tabasco or lightbulbs or Rice-A-Roni? Please.

Things look bleak for the Dillon Panthers, and the small, dedicated fanbase is rallying to keep "Friday Night Lights" lit in yet another one of those incredibly irritating "save my show" endeavors.

Look, I get that you like the show. I get that it’s well-made and that it’s been mistreated by the network, who gave it a shaky lead-in and a terrible time-slot and then punished it for not getting an audience. But do we need to build an enormous groundswell of support and a fan-driven protest to save what is, at best, just another high-school drama?

Yes, I know it’s more than just a football show. Hot kids, small town, relationships, love, learning, complex on-and-off-the-field social dynamics. I get that high-school football is a big deal for a small town in Texas and television about high-school football is a big deal for fans. But get over yourself, BWE: It’s not an "act of cruelty" to cancel your favorite show. You want to see an act of cruelty? Watch the video below, which shows airport police killing a man with a taser. (Warning: Contains actual footage of actual airport police actually killing a man with a taser.) After that, are you still outraged about "Friday Night Lights" getting only two seasons?

You Ever Feel Like It Means Something?

The Mountain Goats song “Palmcorder Yajna” has this line: “Carpenter ants in the dresser, flies in the screen. It will be too late by the time we learn what these cryptic symbols mean.” And I keep thinking I know that feeling: The delusion that arbitrary events mean something. It happened to me all the time when I was in high school. I’d see dead flies trapped in the window and think OMG this is a metaphor for my life, a sign that I’m trapped! Or I’d burn the toast and stare at it in horror, wondering what the universe was trying to warn me about.

I suppose the narrator of that song is actually suffering from drug-induced psychosis, and I’ve heard you end up with similar (although more pleasantly grandiose) delusions when you develop terminal syphilis. Mine were probably induced by being a hormone-addled teenager with a subscription to “American Poetry Review,” but I guess you pick your poison.

Yajna, by the way, is an ancient Vedic kind of sacrifice involving fire, illustrated here in a television version of the Ramayana:

I haven’t figured out what it has to do with palmcorders, but maybe the universe will reveal that to me once I totally lose my mind.