Tethered Swimming

“How could you Krusty?  I’d never lend my name to an inferior product.” - Bart Simpson

“Ohh, they drove a dump truck full of money up to my house!  I’m not made of stone!” - Krusty the Klown

Heading to the theater to see The Simpsons Movie, my optimism got the better of me.  A.O. Scott, the best film critic in the country, a man whose reviews I always trust, wrote that it was about on par with “Trash of the Titans”.  I consider that episode to be above the tree line but well short of the peak, and it would’ve been a pleasant surprise if I agreed.

I was daring to hope that I’d like it enough to use this Mr. Burns quote at the top, “I’m no art critic, but I know what I hate, and I don’t hate this.”  I didn’t hate the movie, “hate” is too strong a word here.  I could never hate The Simpsons the way I hate Friends or Dateline NBC.  But using that quote would’ve implied that I felt a grudging affinity.  I feel no such thing.  My impression during the film was that it felt on par with the lesser episodes of Futurama.  I liked that show, the best of it scraped up against the tail end of good Simpsons.  I hoped that I could push it a little higher than that, I hoped that I could honestly agree with Mr. Scott.  It’s a small difference of opinion, but it’s worth pointing out.

My initial impression fed my hopes.  For the first five minutes or so, my brain was mentally recording a lot of quotable lines.  That has always been one of the hallmarks of excellent Simpsons.  Episodes that are dense with funny, insightful quotes make up the best of the best.  Those sparkling lines of wit are what carried The Simpsons from the television to the lexicon of American culture on a scale no other show can even compete with.  I know a few people with whom I can have entire conversations using nothing but Simpsons quotes and references.  At the beginning of the movie I was racking them up, but it didn’t last.

It helped that they were in a new medium.  There were new places to play and, more importantly, a giant glaring reason to make fun of themselves.  I was coming at it fresh, as much as that’s possible.  I haven’t seen a new episode from start to finish in four and a half years.  The movie wasn’t nearly good enough to make me start watching new episodes again, but it was watchable, which can’t be said for most of the episodes in double digit seasons.

I stayed through the whole thing.  It drags in places (and there were some excruciatingly boring stretches), but I did finish it.  There were a couple of time when I thought seriously about bailing.  If I’d been at home, if making it stop only required a flick of the remote instead of the pompous embarrassment of walking out, I probably would’ve paused it about halfway through, pounded a few beers and tried again.

The crowd, unfortunately, wasn’t all that interesting.  It was a typical movie crowd, maybe a few more fat guys and a few less kids than Ratatouille, but nothing jumped out at me.  They laughed at the jokes, but it wasn’t the kind of raucous, opening to closing laughter of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.  After I saw the South Park movie, which came out right in the middle of their third season, my sides hurt for hours.  It repeatedly had me in tears for minutes at a stretch.  For months after it came out if someone said they hadn’t seen it, people would offer to immediately watch it again.  The Simpsons Movie won’t inspire that kind of devotion.

As I walked up to the ticket counter a fifteen year old theater employee was chatting with an unoccupied ticket girl.  He was saying that he wanted to see it again.  The girl, who looked slightly older than him and probably out of his league, was agreeing.  As I wrote last Sunday, we’ll never be able to explain to kids that young what a Simpsons movie might once have meant, and his tepid desire to see it again is a testament to how far the mighty have fallen.

I realize I’m being unfair here.  The first few seasons of The Simpsons are an impossible standard to hold anything to, it was lightning in a bottle and we’ll probably never see anything like it again.  For years I’ve been ignoring new episodes of The Simpsons, placing them out of sight and out of mind as I gleefully watch and quote the old ones.  Then this movie comes along and forces the mediocrity I’ve so assiduously avoided in my face.  I have to wonder, does it mean that I’m closed minded about The Simpsons?  Maybe I’m romanticizing the past and all these cranky paragraphs I’ve just written are proof of it.  I hate those doubts and I feel dirty for even thinking them, I have a remedy though.

Sitting in my living room is a five disc DVD player.  I take a random disc from each of the first five seasons and load them.  Season six is just as good but there are only five slots, what am I to do you ask?  Five plus Playstation equals six.  (And I don’t even need to get up off the couch.)  Sometimes I watch an episode from the first season, then one from the second and so on through six.  It takes about two hours and it’s like getting a brain massage.  Other times I’ll skip around hitting two or three episodes per disc.  Those sessions last longer, but it’s bliss.  There is nary a missed joke or piece of shoddy craftsmanship.

Watching the old ones like that confirms my conviction: The Simpsons really was that brilliant.  It has since become just another middling Fox comedy and it long ago passed the championship belt for mockery of everything to South Park.  I believe that, without the slighted dramatization or histrionics, and it’s not an argument I enjoy having.

Humor remains a personal matter.  I have good, close friends that think George Carlin is a bitter, humorless man.  I, on the other hand, base my life on his teachings.  People with reasonable minds and good taste can disagree.  However, there was nothing in that movie that would alter my conclusion from last Sunday’s post.  I love The Simpsons and it needs to end.

“I think owning the Denver Broncos is pretty good.” - Marge Simpson

“Yeah, yeah.” - Homer Simpson

“Well, explain to me why it isn’t.” - Marge Simpson

“Ehh, you just don’t understand football, Marge.” - Homer Simpson

NFL training camps have finally arrived and as I’m keen on gimmicks now that I have a twice weekly post deadline, I present a guide to the presidential primary candidates that any NFL fan can understand.  This is, admittedly, pretty stupid.

The Republicans will be represented by the AFC as they are the younger party, have had a lot of recent success, and the networks color their states red.  The Democrats will be represented by NFC teams because they are the older party, they’ve won only two of the last ten Super Bowls, and their states are blue.  Since you are allowed to run for president even if your state lacks an NFL team, geography is not a factor.  Fair enough?  Okay, here we go:

The Republicans and the American Football Conference

Sam Brownback - Cleveland Browns - He’s a grand old conservative the same way the Browns are a grand old football franchise.  The locals love him but nobody else cares about him at all and that, in a nutshell, is the problem.  At least no one thinks he moved to Baltimore.

Rudy Giuliani - Cincinnati Bengals - His offensive capabilities are vast and proven, but too many of his teammates run afoul of the law in embarrassing and distracting ways.  The money and the prestige make him a tempting pick but, like his Empire State sister in the other conference, he’s got a lot of baggage.  That baggage, and the distractions that come with it, will be a lot harder to carry come January.

Duncan Hunter - Jacksonville Jaguars - He’s an unknown candidate playing to a small market.  Both he and the Jags have flashes of brilliance (in rhetoric and football), but neither one is a long term threat to the real powers in the conference/party.

John McCain - Kansas City Chiefs - Neither one ever knew how to play defense but each had a real shot a couple of elections/seasons ago.  Now age is beginning show and the once diverse and potent attacks have degenerated into a single issue/running back, Mr. Larry “The War” Johnson.  The window is probably closed.

Ron Paul - Oakland Raiders - Both are openly despised by most of the other candidates/teams, but since the rest of them are such a despicable lot to begin with that’s actually a kind of backhanded compliment.  No matter how many crazy things he says, or how many crazy things they do (Aaron Brooks anyone?), the bizarre menagerie of fans and supporters will stick it out while scaring the hell out of everyone else.

Mitt Romney - San Diego Chargers - Top to bottom he might be the most complete candidate in the field and they might be the most complete team in the conference.  Nevertheless, a spectacular, fiery defeat lurks on even the brightest day, whether you are a Mormon or Marty Schottenheimer.

Tom Tancredo - Houston Texans - His candidacy, much like this franchise, looks like little more than a doomed vanity project and was probably a bad idea to begin with.

Tommy Thompson - Buffalo Bills - The glory years, if they can actually be called that, are far behind him.  Now he’s a forgettable face in a tough division with more campaign problems than you can shake a stick at.

The Democrats and the National Football Conference

Joe Biden - Minnesota Vikings - An anonymous team for an anonymous candidate.  In the Democratic Party he’s just another senator who’s angry with what’s happening and willing to say so with force and conviction.  In the NFC the Vikings are just another team with a (potentially) better than average offense that isn’t going anywhere against more daring competition.  You could swap the Viking horns for Ram horns on the side of the helmets and nobody would really notice.

Hillary Clinton - Washington Redskins - Spending a lot of money and having great name recognition are nice, but other than change systems and styles over and over again, what have they done?  The preseason pundits, in politics and football, are often seduced by the conspicuous money, but she’s never been tested in a serious electoral fight any more than Snyder’s annual collection of free agents have in the playoffs.

Chris Dodd - St. Louis Rams - Another anonymous team for another anonymous candidate.  Like Biden he’s a decent enough guy, smart and well liked, but now just isn’t his time.  Besides the staff would anyone notice if Biden and Dodd switched places and showed up at opposite campaign events?  Would either campaign skip a beat?

John Edwards - Philadelphia Eagles - He gets a lot of press and he’s shown that he can back it up…sometimes.  He and the Iggles have recently been to the big show and blown it, but that doesn’t mean they can’t try again.  Whatever the faults of the candidate and the team, each has put themselves in a position to compete year after year, and that’s all you can really ask for before the turf and the votes start flying.  And you never know, this might just be his/their year.

Mike Gravel - Dallas Cowboys - If there is an NFC equivalent to Al Davis and the Raiders it has to be Jerry Jones and the Cowboys, right?  Okay not really, but Gravel is old enough that he’s willing to speak his mind on anything and not care what other people think.  He’s trying to tell us the way things are and have one last moment in the sun while he’s at it.

Dennis Kucinich - Arizona Cardinals - His perennially disappointing results have not yet dampened the enthusiasm of his deluded fans.  Has no chance of winning anything, ever.  Could just as easily have been the Detroit Lions, a.k.a. Buzzsaw East.

Barack Obama - New Orleans Saints - He and they are both new, flashy, out-of-nowhere media darlings.  That’s all well and good, but they’re in the big game now and it’s time to prove that the Cinderella stories can stand up to tougher competition.  Obama and the Saints have the tools and the talent, but now it’s showtime.

Bill Richardson - Carolina Panthers - Both the candidate and the team sport records and backgrounds that are solid, if not exactly spectacular.  Yet both are easily forgotten and lost in the shuffle.  Then Richardson does something like raise more money than all but the biggest names.  Similarly the Panthers came very close to knocking off the Patriots at the height of their power and are still very good.  Both have since been written off and ignored again, but woe unto anyone who doesn’t take them seriously.

These are gross oversimplifications of both the campaigns and the franchises, but there you have it.  Please note that no one from either side merited the Bears, Colts, or Patriots.  It’s wide open in football and politics and I can’t wait until the hyper obsessive coverage of both gets going in earnest.

“Is there no end to my torture?” - Jay Sherman

I have no hope that The Simpsons Movie will be funny or entertaining.  The trailers and television spots have been hard enough to sit through.  At this point all that I can hope for is that the movie bombs, is denounced by critics and fans alike, and that we are now at the beginning of the end.  Of course, if it is smart and funny then my anti-Simpsons jihadi instincts will melt away and I’ll walk out of the theater smiling.  But I doubt it.

What I’m curious about is the audience.  There are people, vast millions of them if you believe the ratings, who still watch the show.  I do not personally know any of them so this Friday night I’m going to take a field trip to the googolplex to find out just who they are.  I am going to sit in the back corner of the theater and watch the crowd; I am going to note what they laugh at and what they don’t, and when the travesty on screen becomes too much to bear (I’m guessing about fifteen minutes deep), I will walk out.  Conveniently, if I am having a good time, I can stay.

This Sunday’s post is likely going to be the tale of my little adventure in half assed[1] sociology.  Adding in the one from last Sunday that would’ve made three straight, ahem, official, posts on The Simpsons in a row.  That seems excessive so I’m filing this one under site news and putting up an NFL/Presidential Candidates comparison post for today.  It may be the most intellectually bankrupt and pointless Tethered Swimming post yet, and this site is keen on both intellectual bankruptcy and pointlessness.

Here’s hoping that it’s the optimistic half of my nature that has a good time on Friday.

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[1] If not quarter assed.

“Itchy and Scratchy seem to have lost their edge.” - Lisa Simpson

In the beginning, there was The Simpsons.  In 1989 Fox wasn’t even technically a network and it did nothing to make people take it more seriously by scheduling a cartoon for primetime on Sundays.  It had been more than two decades since The Flintstones went off the air and cartoons were considered programs for children that only saw network airtime on Saturday mornings.

The show was an instant hit.  It pissed off unctuous parent/teacher/authority groups nationwide, mortally wounded The Cosby Show, got into a fight with Barbara Bush, and made its merchandise so ubiquitous that it became a running gag.  It was a wild ride and the only other recent television program that can compare in terms of immediate offensiveness and cultural impact is probably South Park, which never would have existed without The Simpsons.[1]

The success and intelligence of The Simpsons essentially made cartoons okay for adults to watch.  It opened the eyes of countless people to the idea that you could be just as creative, serious and funny with animation as you could with live action.  It eliminated that pesky problem of the actors getting older (and wider) on screen, all but eliminated restrictions for settings and backgrounds and, on top of all that, it was cheap.

My love of The Simpsons cannot be overstated and I’m not going to bore you trying.  I realize that humor and comedy are personal and what’s funny to one person isn’t funny to another.  In the end it’s all about taste and there’s really no point arguing about it.  That being said, and acknowledging the pointlessness of the entire enterprise, I come to bury The Simpsons, not to praise it.

The Simpsons needs to die.  I hate saying that and I held out as long as I could, defending the show when other people first started to bash it.  I figured that if ever a program had earned the right to have an off season or two, it was this one.  I also found that some of the ones I didn’t like at first got better on a second and third viewing as I caught more of the jokes because I didn’t need to follow the plot.  I was hoping for a turnaround, for a glimmer of the old magic, but they kept getting worse.  I compromised, I’d watch until the first commercial break and if I didn’t laugh, I’d turn it off and shake my head.  Now I can’t even stand the commercials I see during NFC football and I involuntarily cringe when they show promo clips.

The Simpsons, my favorite show of all time, a program that taught me more than I ever learned in grade school, is no longer funny.  They try harder and harder to be funny, but that just makes it worse.  It’s like watching a favorite uncle go from the reason you looked forward to family gatherings to an embarrassment, staggering around loudly with a pint of gin while everyone politely ignores him.  The show has been so bad for so long that it’s actually damaged its once invincible reputation.  I can no longer just say, “I love The Simpsons” when getting to know someone, now I have to explain that, “I love early Simpsons“.  People below a certain age think of it as just another animated show; we’ll never be able to explain to someone born after about 1990 that The Simpsons was once so powerful and important that the President of the United States repeatedly invoked the family as an example of what not to be like while running for re-election.  He lost.

The first half hour episode of The Simpsons aired on 17 December 1989[2]; titled “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” it was a vicious send up of the hammy, everyone-hug-at-the-end Christmas specials that are broadcast in December.  It openly mocked the conventions of Christmas television, not only denying the existence of Santa Claus but ridiculing shopping mall Santas, Christmas miracles, and even the idea that Christmas is a time for a loving family gathering.[3]  It, and the twelve episodes that followed, were a smashing success.

For the next six years The Simpsons could do no wrong, it was one episode of gently vicious satire after another in a target rich environment.  That span saw the end of the Soviet Union, the transition from Bush the Elder to Slick Willie, the invention of the World Wide Web, and the rise of Nirvana and Pearl Jam.  In the first season, and to some extent the second, the animation isn’t quite polished and the voices don’t totally sound like themselves, but the writing and the gags and the insight are all there.

For me, and I realize that I am perhaps marking myself as an aging codger by saying this, that was the most remarkable run in television history.  It’s not just because it was popular and funny, because lots of television shows have been that before, but those episodes have aged superbly.  They still resonate because they weren’t making fun of America circa 1990, they were making fun of life.

Then there was one bad episode, and I use the word “bad” lightly, because compared to the thoughtless pratfalls that pass for episodes now it’s brilliant.  “Marge Be Not Proud” aired six years to the day after “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” and it sucks.  It was the first time The Simpsons ever took themselves seriously.  “Marge Be Not Proud” was a “Very Special”[4] episode of The Simpsons and it wasn’t the last.

That was 1995.  The seventh season was the first time I ever heard true fans grumble.  It was funny, no doubt about that, but it wasn’t perfect.  Prior to that, The Simpsons had always been dead solid perfect.[5]  That episode was the beginning of the slide, from something different and better than regular television to the ordinary mediocrity of Newton Minnow’s vast wasteland.

Looking back at an episode list, it’s amazing how fast the end came.  In the fall of 1996, the eighth season began and for the first time I remember people complaining about The Simpsons.  “The Homer They Fall” and “Burns, Baby Burns” were a one-two punch of weak episodes right at the start.  The ninth, tenth, and eleventh seasons have salvageable episodes, albeit in decreasing quantity and quality.  Those good episodes were increasingly outnumbered by bad ones and even the quality, the ones I still go back and watch, are noticeably less clever than during the golden years.

For me, The Simpsons ended with “Behind the Laughter”, the eleventh season finale.  It’s a genuinely funny episode, but the parody of “Behind the Music”[6] is like the first timid sparks produced by our caveman ancestors when compared with the hydrogen bomb of satire that was, and is, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”.

I do not know the cause of the decline.  Maybe the people running it got old, or the funny people left, or the pact with Comedy Satan expired.  People more obsessed than I have tried to puzzle out what is different with the staff or the network or other behind the scenes information.  I don’t know the answer and even asking the question makes me feel impertinent.  The geniuses[7] behind those young seasons of The Simpsons have earned a lifetime pass in my book.  They created something that literally changed television and American culture, something that I’ll be showing to the uninitiated until I die.

I don’t think The Simpsons is funny anymore.  I realize that isn’t much of an argument, but one thing I know for sure is that The Simpsons is no longer smart.  It’s degenerated into a parade of improbable setups for cheap physical comedy and the occasional insightful quip can’t save it.  When I see clips for new episodes, or see a trailer for the movie, the bile rises to my throat and I feel like my hatred for the current episodes will spoil my love of the canon.  Then I watch one of the old ones and it’s a miracle salve for my mind.

When The Simpsons does end, as it inevitably will, I’ll probably invite select people to my home and throw a party.  We’ll watch the best of the best and once all is said and done, once the final episode has aired and the last annoyed grunt has sounded, I’ll stand up and shout for all assembled, “The Simpsons is dead.  Long live The Simpsons!”

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[1] I can feel the Seinfeld fans objecting here.  Yes, Seinfeld was big, but it took a while to really get going and it’s aging terribly.  Go back and watch it.  The laugh track goes into hysterics at things that don’t even rate a chuckle anymore and a lot of episodes are downright boring.  Seinfeld was essentially a topical, nine year long standup routine and as the context for it fades into memory the jokes don’t hold up.

[2] Prior to that the family Simpson had been confined to shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show.

[3] Because, let’s face it, if you really liked these people you’d see them more often.

[4] I’ll explain for the lucky few who don’t know what a “Very Special” episode is.  A “Very Special” episode of a comedy is when one of the cast faces a serious crisis, typically a moral choice or a health scare.  During one of these travesties the characters face serious problems, react poorly and/or selfishly at first, then come together and find out that it’s all going to be okay.  It is the worst kind of television.

[5] I’m not looking back on this with rose tinted glasses either.  I cannot remember a single episode I or anyone I trusted not liking.

[6] A program that was already a parody of itself.

[7] As much as that word is overused these days, it applies here.

“You make numerous threatening references to the UN, and the end you repeat the words ‘Screw Flanders’ over and over again.” - Springfield Shopper Managing Editor

I prefer my failures to be quiet, that way I can learn my lesson and go on to the next one with as little notice by others as possible.  Thus far I’ve enjoyed writing this and for the moment I’m going to keep at it.  I’m even going to take a few clumsy steps toward moving Tethered Swimming from “silent” to merely “extremely quiet” because as much fun as this has been with zero readers, tiny numbers of readers might be even more fun.

Along those lines I’ve added a few links on the right,[1] put up a self serving “About” page and sent out a few pandering, “Read My Crap” type e-mails.  Please take the categories with a grain of salt for the time being, I haven’t figured out how I want to use them yet.

While I’m at it, I’d like to affirm my lack of commitment from the first post.  I may still vanish tomorrow without another word, but for now the idea is to stay with the Sunday/Wednesday schedule (at least until football season) and just keep making it up as I go along.

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[1] And if I could get my pithy footnotes to pop-up on a cursor rollover like the link descriptions do I’d be ecstatic.

“Troy, this circle is you.” - Brad Goodman

“My God, it’s like you’ve known me all my life!” - Troy McClure

Near the end of the movie Patton, as Third Army is driving to Bastogne, George C. Scott throws a temper tantrum in his headquarters.  He yells at his entire staff for wanting to slow down in the face of wretched weather and tough fighting.  Once his tirade is over, one of his senior aides comes over and says, “You know something general?  Sometimes they can’t tell when you’re acting, and when you’re not.”  Scott replies, “It isn’t important for them to know, it’s only important for me to know.”

I have no idea if the real George Patton said that, or if it was just a clever invention of the (Academy Award winning) screenwriters.  The lesson is still vital: never believe your own bullshit.

It is a lesson easily forgotten.  Success in any field can produce a heady sense of entitlement, the consequences of which can be grave.  The number of pundits and columnists who are guilty of this is uncountable.  That includes everyone from sportswriters with press passes to the heavily connected denizens of serious op-ed pages.  The Ohio State Buckeyes and the Dallas Mavericks suffered from the sports equivalent earlier this year and recent political examples include the architects of the Iraq War and Howard Dean’s presidential campaign.  Whatever you want to call it, pride, arrogance, overconfidence, etc, it comes down to internal delusion and dishonesty.[1]

It’s easy for a person or a group to succumb, either because there are too many people kissing ass, there’s no active search for honest feedback, or from simple intellectual laziness.  Having inside information is another good way to warp your self perception.  It’s awfully easy to get suckered in by the idea that since you know something other people don’t, it (and you) must be better.  Everyone is replaceable; people who forget that can become dangerous to themselves and their work.[2]

If it’s allowed to go unchecked for too long, breaking free from believing your own bullshit can take a tremendous shock.  Rehab people call those shocks “rock bottom” or “moments of clarity”, athletes simply call them “embarrassments” and politicians call them “landslides”.  The only defense is to be willing to be wrong about everything.

It’s a hard discipline, and the worst part is that you can never be sure that you’re doing it well.  In fact, if you believe you’re doing a good job, that’s all the more reason to dig harder and look for reasons you might be a little too pleased with yourself.  It’s a vicious paradox and it’s not easy to keep up, but it’s vital.

Of course, I could be wrong about all this.  This entire post could be one big, steaming slab of irony that somebody will toss in my face one day.  Perhaps a smug, smarmy know-it-all like me, whose only real qualifications are a keyboard and access to the internet, shouldn’t be mocking other people’s bullshit.  But if I’m wrong, at least my bases are covered.

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[1] At least sports fans, neocons, and Deaniacs had their illusions shattered.  Those foolish, ahem, media personalities, just keep on going.

[2] This is why the most durable and trustworthy sources of information (on-line, on television, in print, wherever) are the ones that honestly and constantly make fun of themselves.

“You’re not going to throw red paint at the executives are you?  The Keebler people were very upset.” - Marge Simpson

Today’s fake press release probably sucks.  I can’t really tell and I haven’t yet gotten a system worked out so an editor can vet my crappy prose.  I like thinking about politics but looking back over the topic list I’ve posted so far you’d think that’s all I liked.  Let it be known that as stupid and pointless as Tethered Swimming has so far been, we’ve just scratched the surface.  I’m still going to put up political posts, I find other people’s foolishness too entertaining not to, but hopefully I’ll find an entertaining way to broaden my subject list.

“Ohhh ‘Meltdown’, it’s one of those annoying buzzwords.  We prefer to call it an unrequested fission surplus.” - C.M. Burns

For Release:

September 30, 2007

Washington D.C. - Coalition forces in Iraq are, beginning today at 0600 Baghdad time, initiating a phased deployment to forward operating bases better located to interdict terrorist action.  Operation INSTALLMENT PLAN is expected to force Islamo-fascist terrorists well out of their way and cause disruptive inconvenience to their tattered supply network.

White House and Pentagon officials stress that this is not a redeployment, reassessment, recommitment, or retreat.  Years of careful reconnaissance and planning have allowed coalition commanders to pinpoint these exact locations as the “fulcrum” points of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia.  Coalition planners believe that these FOBs are so well placed that there will not be a need for many forced excursions beyond the perimeter.

Pentagon Spokesman Victor Yi elaborated:

“We have a lot of powerful metrics telling us that the conflict against the terrorists in Iraq is going better than the liberal, defeatist commentators at Fox News would have you believe.  The number of deaths of Iraqi civilians[1] has fallen to near zero in the last two months.  Furthermore, Iraqi Army forces have only suffered sixteen casualties[2] for calendar 2007.  I’d also like to announce that American troops have befriended a nine year old Iraqi boy who thinks his cousin may someday like us too.  Here’s a quote from Major Smith, who was in command of the task force charged with befriending the loveable scamp:

“After four years, we finally got him.  He’s a tough nut to crack, he’s held out

since he was five, but we got him.  I think it’s a good start and hopefully he’ll help us recruit others.  If we start now with a different five year old and he picks another one, that’s three by 2011.  After that it’s all down hill.”[3]

The White House also had progress to report from Iraq today.  White House Spokeswoman Olivia B. Fuscate had this to say to pool reporters:

“We’re finally seeing eye-to-eye with the Iraqis on a lot of issues.  They know that the American people’s commitment is not open ended.   We’ve agreed that continuing American military involvement requires the Iraqis to meet “Progress Stations” for the last three months of the year.  After the success of the surge we’re confidant that they are ready for these more advanced steps towards building a free and stable government:

• The Iraqi Parliament building remains a free standing structure[4] with an exterior wall for almost half of the cardinal points of the compass.

• The Republic of Iraq maintains political sovereignty over any non-contiguous area equal to or greater than those areas protected by coalition troops.

• The daily fusion disc ration continues to deliver light and heat to all Iraqis free of charge and in defiance of insurgent threats.[5]“

Thanks to the progress provided by the surge strategy, American units are now being forward deployed to permanent strategic bases seven thousand miles to the east.  These forward deployments will allow American troops to intervene as necessary should the Iraqi units call for assistance in defending freedom.

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[1] Named “Ted”.

[2] Does not include casualties caused by unknown causes.  Unknown causes may include high velocity projectiles, metal fragments scattered by exothermic chemical reactions, and the Loch Ness Monster.

[3] No further details are available about the youth or “Major Smith”.

[4] Rubble is considered “free standing”.

[5] Speaking in footnotes earns you honors credit at Public Relations University.

“I’ll hide under some coats and hope that somehow everything will work out.” - Homer Simpson

The last couple of days have seen a lot of stories floating around about the recent spate of public Republican unhappiness with the war in Iraq.  There is widespread speculation that Congress is going to make a serious push for a new course of action now instead of in September.  Don’t believe the hype.  Bush the Younger himself came out and squashed the idea yesterday in Cleveland.[1]  The idea that bad press and a general feeling of despair will prompt compromise or conciliation from this White House just doesn’t fly.  Congress won’t ante up and force their hand until there are no other options, and that doesn’t happen until September - when the money runs out.

Our Iraq policy hit the iceberg back in 2003.  Now that water is sloshing over the bow some of the first class passengers are starting to realize that it might mean more than just a delay in arrival.  But that doesn’t mean that they’re willing to jump in the boats with the hoi polloi just yet, especially when our Captain Smith[2] is still saying things like, “I want to tell you, yes, we can accomplish and win this fight in Iraq.”

Here’s the story as near as I can piece it together.  With Republican discontent about Iraq now being expressed in front of cameras instead of behind closed doors, it’s possible for new legislative action before September.  Democrats think they may have the votes to push for something meaningful now instead of in the fall and because of that we’re headed for a serious showdown.  I don’t buy it.  I could be wrong, I often am; but this looks more like posturing than pre-game.

Since war opponents don’t have the two thirds required to override a veto in either chamber, all of this speculation is predicated on the assumption that there is some compromise that the White House will go along with.  I don’t think that compromise exists.  Unless the Army and Marines are in even worse shape than is publicly known[3] there is still too much wiggle room for the Administration.  Everything we’ve learned about this lot in the last six years says that they don’t back down on things they really care about.  They may go about it in sneaky ways like using signing statements to ignore Congressional decisions, but they’ve never allowed outside pressure to influence their actions until after the disaster occurs.

The two most salient examples are New Orleans and Donald Rumsfeld.  Democrats may not care about black people, and Republicans may really not care about black people, but Bush and his cronies barely even know black people exist.  It wasn’t until the images from New Orleans caused national panic and international humiliation that they even acknowledged the problem.  Rumsfeld was an obvious electoral albatross and the perfect scapegoat for all of the problems in Mesopotamia.  But they waited until after the election to fire him because of their mad loyalty and messianic determination to stick it out until the end.

It is Bush and Cheney that will end up swallowing this defeat.  The people on more crowded levels of the organizational charts who talk furtively to the Washington Post don’t have nearly as much on the line.  I take those anonymous quotes with a grain of salt because by all accounts Bush and Cheney both believe their rhetoric about this war.  Neither of them has displayed even the slightest waver of conviction and I just can’t see them bending over until no other options remain.  Changing our policy in Iraq or even admitting to lesser goals is a tacit admission that they made a mistake and lost a war.  Ordinary people have a hard time admitting little, private mistakes.  What we’ve got here are two enormously proud and confident men who’ve made the biggest, most public mistake of the decade.

What at least some of the wavering Republicans in the Senate (Luger, Voinovich, Domenici, et al) must already suspect is that when it does come time to challenge the White House on Iraq, it’s going to be a fight to the death.  These public breaks with the White House are preparation for that fight.  Dick Cheney and George W. Bush may be the last two men in government who believe in this war, divorcing them from that belief and getting them to swallow their pride will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.  So far they’ve resisted all substantive engagement about the war; they just keep asking for patience and telling us to be resolute.

Congress will put up with that for the time being because on an issue this sensitive they’ll avoid voting as long as possible, hoping for a miracle.  But stalling and playing for time won’t carry Bush or Cheney through the fall, much less the rest of their term in office.  We might get some verbal fireworks in the next couple of weeks, but don’t expect any action.  The real deadline is still September.

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[1] By the way, yesterday was exactly six months since his prime time library speech making the troop increase official.

[2] No offense to the real Captain Smith who seems to have been a decent enough guy who happened to have one superlatively bad night.

[3] I’ve seen credible sounding reports that place the breakdown point as soon as April 08.

“How innovative.  I like it.” - Martin Prince

“Hey Dolph, take a memo on your Newton.  Beat up Martin.” - Kearney

Today I’d like to poke a little fun at the iPhone and the wretched masses that seem ready to follow it off a cliff.  It is a very slick phone, no doubts there, but the Motorola Razor, excuse me, Razr, was also a very slick phone once upon a time.  Now you can get one free for renewing a service contract.  A similar fate probably awaits Apple’s latest darling invention.

Having finally seen and played with one up close, I can attest that it is as cool as the ads make it look.  The menus scroll crisply and obediently.  The video playback is clear and bright.  The screen is quite scratch resistant, at least so far.  The on-screen keyboard that pops up for typing corrects the errors you make more or less on the fly.  The iPhone acts like it wants to do what you tell it to and the graphics move like they’ve got a purpose.  It’s light and has the solid, compact feel one expects from quality electronics.

The primary selling point of this $500 marvel seems to be that little “i” in front of the capitalized “P”.  That, boys and girls, is called marketing and it was done to perfection in this case.  The larger screen and the lack of a keyboard are certainly sexy, but for all the hoopla the iPhone is still just a telephone.  I’ll grant that it is a telephone with some very nifty bells and whistles: video and music playback, video capture, and portable, easy to read window on your e-mail and the rest of the on-line world.  That’s all well and good, but I don’t think removing the keyboard is much of a revolution.

The iPod was revolutionary.  There were mp3 players before it, but the iPod made it easy and cool to take songs by the thousand off of college kids’ hard drives and out the door.  The iPhone strikes me as another of Apple’s neat little products that will inflame the hearts of a dedicated minority, but be dismissed as too expensive and too cutesy by wider audiences.  Am I the only one who remembers the Newton?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Apple’s phone will be the embarrassment that the Newton was.  The Newton was a good idea that came to market a few years before the technology was really there to make it work.  The iPhone is a lot more user friendly and is merely carving up an existing market a little bit finer, not trying to create a new one.  But there’s a funny parallel here I’d like to point out.

The breathless anticipation from the Apple/Mac zealots is almost identical, but they breathlessly anticipate anything with that little rainbow apple logo on it, so that’s not really important.  The disturbing similarity is in the marketing.  The Newton was billed as a revolutionary way to organize your life, but it was just a crappy handheld computer that cost too much and couldn’t recognize average handwriting.  The iPhone is being billed much the same way, as an almost life changing status symbol.  But it’s just a phone with a new interface.

If, a couple of years from now, most phones don’t have a keyboard in favor of a larger screen, then Apple will have been on to something.  But that seems unlikely.  The iPhone strikes me as sort of a Bose stereo for the cell phone set.  If you’ve got the cash (or at least the credit) and you value the brand, by all means buy one.  But people who view their cell phone as a tool, not a status symbol, won’t really care.

When I was playing with it, about the only thing I didn’t do was use it to make a call.  But perhaps that’s the point.  The iPhone is not the Holy Grail gadget that a lot of companies have been chasing for years now.  Someday, the prophecy goes, there will be one small, convenient device that you carry with you everywhere.  It will not only play music and video, it will play any music and video, from your home computer or off the web no matter where you are.  It will let you go on-line and do anything you can with a regular computer.  It will let you check in on your kids while you’re out to dinner.  It will, in short, allow you quick and easy access to the world of information from anywhere.

One day Apple or some other company will get that figured out.  But the iPhone is, at best, a primitive step on that path.  In the meantime, the one area it truly excels at is defining yourself to other people.  Let them ‘Ohh’ and ‘Ahh’ and tell you how jealous they are.  Be aware though that six months or a year from now, they’ll be able to buy iPhones that have all the bugs worked out for half the price (or less).

“Stand back while I celebrate freedom!” - Homer Simpson

It’s the Fourth of July and these days that means loud action movies, crappy television “marathons”, warnings about drunk driving, pious speeches about patriotism from conservatives, indignant speeches about patriotism from liberals, mattress and furniture sales, news stories about heightened security at airports and stadiums, barbeques, baseball games, and colored gunpowder.[1]  I’m thankful to be part of a nation that had the foresight to declare independence while the weather is nice.  The sun is shining,[2] it’s the longest days of the year, and life is good.  Summertime, and the livin’s easy…fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high…

And yet, there seems to be a general mood of gloom in this country.  Conservatives are unhappy because the war is going badly, the president they once hailed as their conquering hero is rapidly becoming their worst electoral nightmare, and the Democrats control Congress.  Liberals are unhappy because the war exists, their new Congress can’t seem to do anything about it, and the man they hold responsible is still at 1600.  Well you know what?  It’s Independence Day.  Eat a hamburger, drink a beer,[3] watch some fireworks and cheer up.

We’ve had a rough run, there’s no denying that.  Bush the Younger has been in office for six years, with unfettered Republican control for four.  They were bad years.  But what we’ve built since 1776 is a lot stronger than four, six, or eight years, no matter how bad.

Washington, Lincoln and the Roosevelt boys would scoff at the problems we have today.  Given a choice between their time and ours they would laugh themselves silly and go to bed each night thanking Providence that they lived in 2007.  Our sainted heroes, from Davy Crockett and Sam Houston to Audie Murphy and Omar Bradley, would crash through our problems before breakfast.  Martin Luther King would smile at the thought of long lines and photo identification as the remaining tools of disenfranchisement - and start right to work changing them.

I can point to just about any other nation on the planet and see problems so vast and huge that they would make our politicians weep with fear.  We fret about housing bubbles and staggering debt loads, but we have a stable, sturdy and enormous economy that creates more wealth and technology than any other.  The American military was never designed to fight Iraqi insurgents and shouldn’t have been asked to; nevertheless it’s the strongest, fastest and stealthiest fighting force ever assembled and there isn’t a government on Earth that wants anything to do with the business end of it.  It remains heart wrenchingly easy to be born to all but insurmountable disadvantage thanks to sexism, racism and poverty, but compare us to any other large country and see how they’re doing with the same issues.  Our environmental problems wouldn’t even register as such in China, India or Russia.

The United States is no utopia.  We have a lot of problems that interfere with good people’s pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.  We disgraced ourselves and our traditions with our detention policies.  We tarnished our protections of free speech and civil rights.  We embarrassed ourselves in front of the whole world again and again.  We ignored vital issues like making sure that everyone can get to a doctor, remembering that immigrants are what made us great and the warming of the planet.  In short, we have behaved very poorly and the consequences are upon us at last.  But there’s no place I’d rather be.

The way we’ve treated prisoners in Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, and known unknowns elsewhere is a stain on the Stars & Stripes that will never come out.  We have tortured and killed a lot of people. [4]  There is no way that all, or even most, of them were guilty of anything.[5]  And I’d bet good money that we don’t even know the half of it yet.  Our actions from these last few years will be thrown in our face by friends and enemies for decades.

Habeas corpus and the general presumption of innocence have also taken some lumps lately.  From illegal wiretapping to secret visits from the FBI it’s a bad era to be innocent but seem suspicious.  More people than I thought possible went along with a lot of creepy and illegal stuff, but the more it comes to light the more upset we become.  These are fat times for civil libertarians, these are days they’ll look back on fondly as a time when they knew and met the enemy.

Then there are our strained relations with the rest of the world.  Arrogance and deceit led us into an unnecessary war that the world opposed, and now we suffer.  Our sophomoric imperialism in Iraq is the most embarrassing and well covered, but there are many others.  We’ve all but forgotten Afghanistan and the promises we and the rest of the world made there.  We’ve enabled the Israelis and Palestinians to dig themselves even deeper into their mutual quagmire.  We speak grandly of democracy and freedom but act with craven cynicism should a totalitarian regime have something we want or a democratic government do things we don’t like.

But there is a silver lining to abandoning our principals.  Once we go back to them, as we have already begun to do, we do so with the fervor of the converted.  We can and should hold ourselves to a standard of humane custody that the world admires; habeas corpus and civil rights should never even be questioned, let alone suborned; peaceful, private communications and assemblies ought to be absolutely unmolested.  We deviated from those beautiful ideals just a little these last few years and some are ready to declare the nadir of the Republic.  That is a cause for celebration, or rather, it will be in twenty or thirty years when some ex-Guantanamo detainees are standing in the House chamber accepting an apology from some other President.

Back here at home we’ve ignored our system of medical care so completely that even middle class people are feeling squeezed.  If you’d told the health care warriors from 1993 that their favorite problem could be allowed to fester for fourteen years without action they wouldn’t have believed you.  Today it’s no longer a think tank problem, it’s an existential threat for citizens and businesses.  The political will to do something now exists and while our first attempt at a solution won’t be perfect, once we get going in the right direction[6] it’s all downhill.

We’ve also stubbornly refused to acknowledge the realities of immigration in today’s America.  Televised grandstanding about the dangers of illegals amounts to little more than jingoistic masturbation.  America has benefited from bringing in the best, brightest, and most aggressive from around the globe from long before Independence.  We co-opt, assimilate, and seduce newcomers and each one makes us that much stronger, smarter and wealthier.  The world is always changing, and with it the people who want to come here.  The proper nouns and racial slurs may differ, but immigration has always been with us and unless we screw up real bad it always will be.  We need new legislation from time to time to deal with new conditions and new arrivals, but staying open to all ideas and comers and letting the merits decide the thing is as fundamental to us as breathing.  We all know it, and sooner or later we’ll work out a compromise that makes everyone unhappy but keeps this crucial traffic incoming.

The Earth those new Americans come from has gotten warmer and parts of it are looking downright inhospitable.  But we’re starting to do something about it.  Better yet, it’s beginning to look like a problem that can be addressed with technology, and those are our favorite kind.  There is money to be made and glory to be had.  In fact, there’s so much money on the table that it’s become fashionable to be green.  There will be calamities, there will be harm and there are catastrophes that we’re probably too late to change, but we’re on it now.

The system works, ok?  It doesn’t work quickly and it ain’t pretty, but on the whole and by and large, it works.  Despite the crazy gibberish you see on television from professionally angry pundits, this country is not insane.  You can do some insane things if you can manage to fool fifty-one percent of the electorate every other November, but in the end it will catch up with you.  The Democrats have done it in the past and the Republicans are doing it now and we’ve not only survived, we’ve flourished.

Foreign people don’t like us, our soldiers are dying for a lost cause, the economy just seems flat, we can’t get anything done internationally because other governments neither like nor trusts us anymore, and the East Asians are loaning us money like we’re speedball freaks on the verge of rehab.  We have certainly had a tough go the last few years, but this country is robust as hell.  The sloppy, secretive governing of Bush the Younger is no more a threat to our representative democracy than the Free Masons, communism[7], or Walt Disney.

The world will forgive us.  They’ll forgive us because we suffered a huge trauma, had the wrong man in charge when it happened, and it knocked us for a spin.  They’ll forgive us because in the grand scheme of things if you want to die wealthy and happy there are no better allies to have than Americans.  As long as we stick to our guns, the self fellating bullshit we tell our kids about freedom, democracy, tolerance, and even that shining city on the hill, we’ll be fine.  We may stray form our ideals, but we love them too deeply to ever let them go.  Whatever you may read in the press from either side, we remain no better friend, no worse enemy.

Creating the United States of America was hard work.  We stole the best parts of an entire continent, killed uncountable numbers, and went to war against just about every civilized nation on Earth to do it, but we built the greatest country in history, bar none.  I can see my own bias when I write that, but I believe it.  I really do.  As chaotic and incomprehensible as this country is, it’s still the best place on Earth.  It was a crazy, fucked up place before I got here, it is a crazy, fucked up place now, and it will probably be a crazy, fucked up place long after I’m gone.  On the Fourth of July, I couldn’t be happier about any of it.

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[1] Guys with penchants for tights and tricorner hats will also stand in public and read aloud the crimes of King George III.

[2] Yes global warming fans, that is still a good thing.

[3] I’m sure the vegetarian teetotalers can find appropriate substitutes.

[4] It pains me to use the word “we” here but there is no honest way around it.

[5] To say nothing of the fact that no one, ever, deserves some of the things we’ve admitted to doing.

[6] Whatever that may be.

[7] Note the small “c”.

“Simpson scandal update, Homer sleeps nude in an oxygen tent which he believes gives him sexual powers.” - Channel 6 News Anchor

“Hey, that’s a half truth!” - Homer Simpson

There were a lot of topics I thought about covering this week.  There was Republican dissention in the Senate (meaningless posturing until the Iraq money runs out in September), the NBA Draft (a small group of young men got rich on live television), Rupert Murdoch closing in on the Wall Street Journal (that’s too bad, but I usually read the Times anyway), and Tony Blair got a new job (and he thought the Protestants and the Catholics didn’t like each other).  As you can tell from the parentheticals, I didn’t find any of those topics particularly post worthy.  Instead I’d like to take a few easy shots at another of life’s little absurdities: the celebrity press and its audience.

It doesn’t bother me that you can make good money by following a few attractive people around and snapping pictures of them.  I don’t think our obsession with missing toddlers, dead pro wrestlers and contrite heiresses (to name a few of the current fables) is a byproduct of our failed schools or sign that democracy is dying.  If magazines, websites, and television channels devoted to following the lives and times of the famous can turn an honest dollar, more power to them.  The joke, as usual, is on the consumers.

It’s hard enough just getting to know your friends and family, people you see, talk to and think about all the time.  Anyone laboring under the illusion that they can get to know anything remotely true about actors, models and singers from reports on-line, in print, or on television is willfully ignorant.  The information that dribbles down to us humble citizens has been sifted through the minds of an enormous number of people, each adding twist and distortion.  Whether or not it is deliberate is beside the point.

If you watch a television interview between Movie Star A and Famous Reporter B about Movie Star A’s charity, political cause, or upcoming picture, what you’re seeing isn’t information passing from one to the other for the edification of the viewers.  What you’re seeing is two people with cameras on them.  A camera is the surest way to alter someone’s personality and behavior without using chemicals.[1]

Both the reporter and the actor have opinions about the other, from public perceptions and private conversations.  Each is playing the part of their public persona for the benefit of us, the advertising targets.[2]  Concurrently, both of them have some kind of interest in the success or failure (and public perception) of the topic at hand.  To top it all off, there is the unknown subtext of both parties’ lives and careers at that precise moment.  There are layers upon layers and wheels within wheels hidden from any observers who lack omniscience.[3]

A cynical observer might point out that you can draw some conclusions just by knowing that the subject is being stage managed and that the interviewer is biased.  One can read between the lines and attempt to discern the meaning behind granting an interview to a certain reporter or appearing at events for different charities and causes.  That’s all well and good, but it isn’t quite cynical enough.  The people doing the stage managing know all that as well.  We are granted crumbs of information and told it is a feast.  At several removes from the action, we can’t really know anything.

It’s like a game of telephone.  If you see a picture or read a story about someone famous, it’s already gone through any number of interpretations before it gets to you.  Worse yet, most of the filters the information goes through are unknown.  Was the photographer having a bad day?  Did the editor’s wife opt out of a blowjob the night before?  Is the celebrity putting us all on for a laugh?  How on earth can we be expected to trust any information that comes at us through that many layers of humanity?  I’m not saying that this is done on purpose.  It’s a flawed process that produces misinterpretation as a natural byproduct.

Keeping tabs on the popular kids at the haughtiest lunch table is, at best, mental clutter.  It’s salacious enough to stick, serves no purpose other than obfuscation, and influences your thinking on any topic to which it’s connected.  Calling it a guilty pleasure or knowing that it’s dumb and following it anyway doesn’t make it any better.  Celebrities lead interesting lives, and I’d love to know more about them for no other reason than simple curiosity, but the information the general public gets from the celebrity press is worthless and then some.

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[1] This is the main reason that asking people what they like about reality television is far more interesting than the actual programs.

[2] A public reputation may or may not have anything to do with how a person acts in private.

[3] My apologies if that last paragraph seems confusing and overwrought, but that’s sort of the point.  Describing a process that is supposed to fog the mind without fogging it a little is probably impossible.