Cranky Letter To The Editor

Dear The Onion:

What’s with the right-wing, unfunny editorial cartoons? I could forgive the conservatism if they were actually funny, but they’re not. In most cases, they don’t even have an “editorial” point, like the farewell to the Sopranos. But mostly, they just seem to be illustrations of the ideas “I’m a grumpy old man who doesn’t get enough respect” or “won’t somebody think of the children?”

Perhaps most egregious is the one that says having kids home from school is like having terrorists in the house. That’s like some sort of foul-mouthed Family Circus drawing, and not in the funny way, either. It may be offensive and poorly drawn, but it’s not funny and it’s certainly not an editorial commentary in cartoon form.

Is the guy an investor’s relative or something? There’s no reason to put those up on The Onion otherwise.

Yours,
Aaron Weber

Harry Potter Leads Children To Kill Babies

Someone has claimed they hacked the hell out of Harry Potter’s publishing house, and did it to stop “neo-pagan” propaganda. This is bizarre on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin. Neo-paganism? Industrial espionage for religious purposes?

When will people abandon their superstitions and move on to a proper late-capitalist secular humanism?

More Horrifying Video

Via Wired’s Table of Malcontents: In 1960, a leading Japanese politician is assassinated during a live television broadcast:

Somehow this reminds me of the photo that won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize— the naked girl fleeing a napalmed village in Vietnam. That photographer, Huynh Cong Ut, is now a Hollywood paparazzo. I wonder if any of the figures in this drama are still around (not the main ones, of course: the politician died instantly and the swordsman hanged himself in prison) and what they’re up to now. Is the announcer now the host of a game show or beauty pageant?

This Explains So Much Of Our Culture

From Patriot Boy:

I was doing some research on the economy, and I discovered something interesting. Of all the items listed below, the price of only one item has gone way down since Bush took office. Everything else has become much more expensive.

Dozen eggs
Gallon of Gasoline
Health Care
Gallon of Milk
Ear of corn
8-ball of cocaine
College Tuition
Loaf of bread

Guess which one?

Housing Linkage: Unsurprising Gloom

No surprises today: CNN reports price drops, but points out that housing is not really any more affordable, as interest rates rise, real incomes stay flat, and the cost of fuel and food goes up. Slate says the housing bubble is like the Iraq war, and the Times profiles ways that criminals and scammers are still making a quick buck in mortgage and credit-rating fraud.

Elsewhere

A strongly-worded letter to the Globe:

The package “Boston 2017” (May 27) made much of a billion dollars on arts, a billion on biotech, and ambitious new bus lines, but it didn’t have one mention of whether anyone will be able to afford to live in Boston in 10 years. Even in the midst of a housing slump, rent and real estate prices are driving away young families, artists, entrepreneurs, and middle-income workers. What are the visionaries of today doing to solve that problem?
AARON WEBER
Somerville

 

And at MeeVee, I’ve got a review of Meadowlands, the new Showtime show

Showtime has something very, very weird on their hands in “Meadowlands,” premiering tonight, and it may help the network compete with HBO in premium cable drama.

After their house is firebombed, Danny and Evelyn Brogan enter a witness protection program. They and their teenage twins Zoe and Mark are blindfolded and shipped off to Meadowlands, a quiet little town somewhere in the British countryside. Everyone is over-friendly, with two exceptions: the handyman and the cop, both of whom seem more than a little psychotic.

Also, nobody ever leaves town for any reason. Meadowlands is safe: everything outside is deadly. By the end of the first episode, we find out why: everyone in town is in the witness protection program. The entire town is populated by people with horrible pasts they never discuss.

It sounds like a collection of ideas plucked from other shows: the dysfunctional crime family from “The Sopranos,” the new identity in a veneer of suburban happiness from “The Riches,” the creepy British town is an obvious reference to “The Prisoner.” Of course, this being Showtime, there’s some disturbing but compelling sex thrown in. With all those elements, “Meadowlands” has a lot of potential for disaster.

Things get riskier when you thrown in twists that can only be described as (David-) Lynchian: Mark Brogan hasn’t spoken since the fire, but carries on a mute peeping-tom flirtation with the middle-aged woman across the street before fixating on her daughter Jezebel, stealing her clothes, and wearing them. Zoe flirts with the handyman, but then the cop finds out and nearly kills the him for it. Jezebel is grossly overweight but everyone tells her she’s the most beautiful person in the world; she’s rude about how much prettier she is than everyone else. A man spotted at the fire, possibly the arsonist himself, moves in next door. The witness protection case manager meets Danny in a sleazy-looking motel, but inside her room is a full-size surveillance office with video screens showing the movements of everyone in town.

Showtime could have gone with an imitation of a dozen different shows and ended up with something mediocre. Instead they’ve aimed high and produced a show that’s genuinely interesting, with direction, acting, and cinematography that don’t let the concept down.