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Archive for 2024
February 11, 2024
ROGER KIMBALL: Examining the Controversy Surrounding Tucker Carlson’s Interview with Putin.
I wonder if there is a central clearing office that issues regular updates about what nasty dictators one is allowed to engage with and which ones, for this week anyway, one must avoid.
It was okay for Gavin Newsom to remove the feces and the homeless from the streets of San Francisco in order to fête Xi Jinping. Likewise, it was just fine for CNN and the BBC to interview the leader of Hamas. And of course CNN’s Erin Burnett was on the case with Volodymyr Zelensky in her 2023 interview with the former comedian and crossdressing performance artist (though the soundtrack to this version of Burnett’s love fest is—special).
It was okay to interview or publish Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, deputy leader of the Taliban. It was even okay, once upon a time, for journalists—well, some journalists—to interview Vladimir Putin.
But just let Tucker Carlson travel to Moscow to interview the Russian dictator, and pow!, the media and its minders go nuts. Did you know that Tucker Carlson is a “right-wing conspiracy,” a faux-journalist, and (according to Hillary Clinton) “a useful idiot.” Really, the clip is just as amusing as those compilations of important people explaining why Donald Trump could not win in 2016 (“Take it to the bank,” said Nancy Pelosi). I watched the entire 2-hour-long interview and the 2-part, 10-minute post-mortem Tucker conducted in an ante-room of the Kremlin and then back at his hotel. I thought both were fascinating.
Related: “Putin walks away with propaganda victory after Tucker Carlson’s softball interview,” CNN’s Oliver Darcy writes, apparently forgetting how many propaganda victories leftist totalitarians have walked away with after appearing on CNN: The Mote in CNN’s Mini-Cam.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Couple to Throuple: How polyamory is becoming a ‘new normal.’
There’s certainly an ongoing media effort to normalize it.
K-THROUGH-K IMPLOSION UPDATE: Woke Kindergarten critic put on leave by Bay Area school district amid national backlash.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: No Way: Christine Blasey Ford Has a Memoir Coming Out This Year.
OLD AND BUSTED: You don’t have to fall in love, you just have to fall in line.
On February 9, the New York Times‘ Editorial Board published a damning, honest opinion piece, titled: ‘The Challenges of an Aging President.’
The team at the newspaper concluded: ‘This is a dark moment for Mr. Biden’s presidency.
They said that Biden’s performance at his news conference on Thursday night was ‘intended to assure the public that his memory is fine and argue that Mr. Hur was out of line’ – but this is not what happened.
Instead, according to the opinion piece, ‘the president raised more questions about his cognitive sharpness and temperament, as he delivered emotional and snappish retorts in a moment when people were looking for steady, even and capable responses to fair questions about his fitness.’
The board wrote: ‘His assurances… didn’t work. He must do better — the stakes in this presidential election are too high for Mr. Biden to hope that he can skate through a campaign with the help of teleprompters and aides and somehow defeat as manifestly unfit an opponent as Donald Trump.’
Such headlines haven’t gone unnoticed at the other end of the Northeast Corridor:
Biden deputy campaign manager pointing out the pro-Trump bias of the…New York Times. https://t.co/NMWu5UaSVz
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) February 11, 2024
Meanwhile, when you’re a Democrat who’s also lost the House of Stephanopoulos, it’s time to seriously panic:
86% pic.twitter.com/6J8N6sY9e6
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 11, 2024
If only there was something Biden could do today — literally this evening! — to stem the tide: Carville: Biden not accepting Super Bowl interview is a ‘sign.’
And to bring this post full circle: Hillary Clinton Twists Knife on Biden, Calls His Age a ‘Legitimate Issue.’
FLASHBACK: Homeland Security: Mixed Results.
ROB LONG: How Watching Television Became a Chore.
Watching TV has never been so baffling. You don’t just walk in the house and flop down in front of the TV and start flipping around anymore. Watching television in 2024 requires what psychologists and self-help gurus call intentionality. You have to know what you’re looking for and exactly where to find it, which means the entire process usually starts with a Google search. We’re all familiar with today’s Television Catechism. It goes: What was that show we wanted to see, again? Followed by: Which one of the thingy’s is it on? And ends in an exasperated: Do we even get that one?
If you’re at my house, the Anglo-Saxon vulgarism for sexual intercourse is inserted before the words “show,” “see,” “on,” “get,” and “one” in the above.
It’s also possible you will find yourself re-inputting a forgotten password, which will inspire more profanity.
And then there’s the quiet anxiety all of this programming evokes. “I’m way behind on my TV stuff,” a friend of mine told me recently. “I need to catch up on The Crown and I’m working my way through The Gilded Age. I tried to add Better Call Saul to my list because I haven’t seen any of it and I feel bad about it, but I don’t want to keep adding shows to watch and then failing at keeping up with them.”
Working my way through. Way behind. Feel bad. Need to catch up. Failing. These are the phrases people use now for watching TV, an activity that used to require basically zero mental or physical effort. Watching television shows is now showing up on “To Do” lists, like tax returns and colonoscopies.
How we got from idly flipping around the dial to binge-watching The White Lotus is the subject of Peter Biskind’s riveting and juicy book, Pandora’s Box: How Guts, Guile, and Greed Upended TV. Biskind is the author of several books about the entertainment business—his Easy Riders, Raging Bulls remains a definitive history of Hollywood in the 1960s and ’70s—and this one is just as much fun. It’s sweeping and gossipy and analytic all at once, and speaking as someone who was present for a few of the arguments and crises he describes, it’s dead-on accurate.
Exit quote:
If you think “guts, guile, and greed” upended TV during the fat years, just wait until the sequel, Pandora’s Box II: Revenge of the Shareholders. It’ll be even gutsier, greedier, and with more guile—in other words, it might end up being a pretty good television series. If, that is, you can find it.
Read the whole thing.
And then there are the actual shows that were created first by the cable networks, and then the streaming platforms ever since the Sopranos debuted on HBO in 1999, a glut of product so large, even Mr. Creosote would blanche at taking it all in. As Sonny Bunch, then of the Weekly Standard (before their own digital demise) asked in 2018: Overload: Will any shows from the Golden Age of TV endure?
The flood of television programming from Netflix et al. since 2013, and the shotgun-blast manner in which new seasons are released, have combined to make it virtually impossible to keep up with everything worth watching. As recently as 15 years ago, a discerning TV watcher only needed to keep tabs on a handful of shows—a Sunday-night drama from HBO or AMC or Showtime; a Tuesday-night drama and a Thursday-night comedy from FX or maybe a broadcast network. But now it feels like there are nigh on infinite offerings from a nearly limitless number of channels. With thousands of hours of new TV coming out every year and an increasingly fractured marketplace demanding customers keep track of several different streaming services, how do we keep the truly excellent programming from being lost in the flood of mediocrity?
In retrospect, those days really did seem like another “Golden Age of TV,” complete with the capital letters in the phrase. 2024? Not so much: Streamers Want You To Dumb Down Your Film and TV Ideas: It’s hard to follow the plot if you’re not paying attention!
I think we can all admit that sometimes when we’re watching TV at home, we have our phones out at the same time. After a long day of picketing, I like to toss on Cheers and check my email. It happens. But when I sit down to watch a movie, to really study a story (like I did with the Cheers pilot), I devote all my attention to the screen when I can.
However, streamers aren’t making shows or movies for that level of thinking anymore, or, at least, they’re trying to be cognizant of that fact. Streamers are advocating for stories that you can understand while only paying half attention.
Today, I came across this amazing interview with Justine Bateman in The Hollywood Reporter. For those of you who don’t know, Justine Bateman is a writer, director, and producer. Recently, she contributed her expertise as an AI consultant for SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee.
Bateman began her career in Hollywood with an acclaimed and Emmy-nominated portrayal of Mallory Keaton on the TV show Family Ties.
In her interview, Bateman discussed a range of ideas in Hollywood, but one quote about storytelling shook me to my core.
Bateman said, “I’ve heard from showrunners who are given notes from the streamers that ‘This isn’t second screen enough.’ Meaning, the viewer’s primary screen is their phone and the laptop and they don’t want anything on your show to distract them from their primary screen because if they get distracted, they might look up, be confused, and go turn it off. I heard somebody use this term before: they want a ‘visual muzak.’ When showrunners are getting notes like that, are they able to do their best work? No.”
Even the execs who created that golden era aren’t immune from such interference: The Sopranos creator David Chase says the golden age of TV is over as writers like him are told to ‘dumb it down.’
READER FAVORITE: ComfiLife Knee Pillow for Side Sleepers. #CommissionEarned
THE LAMPS ARE GOING OUT ALL OVER EUROPE (AGAIN): Jewish university chaplain forced into hiding after receiving hundreds of death threats against him and his family over his role as IDF reservist.
A Chaplain at Leeds University was forced into hiding with his young family yesterday after receiving death threats over his role as an IDF reservist.
Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, wife Nava and their two children were moved to a safe location on police advice amid a shocking hate campaign.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners have accused Rabbi Deutsch of ‘genocide’ after he returned to Israel after Hamas‘s October 7 terror attacks to serve in the Israeli Defence Force.
He resumed his chaplaincy duties last month, leading to an escalation in anti-Semitic threats on campus.
On Thursday evening, the hate campaign intensified with ‘hundreds’ of malicious calls to the family, including threats to kill Rabbi Deutsch, to rape and kill Mrs Deutsch and to murder their children.
Flashback: Rather than protecting Jews, we’re being told to hide — again.
Related:
This Super Bowl ad that will be aired today, sponsored by FCAS, is a poignant reminder for every American that while it may not be popular, standing up against anti-Jewish hate is the only team we must be on. pic.twitter.com/AYC8pZVLNG
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) February 11, 2024
UPDATE: Britain’s Jews are being terrorized.
PUNISHING THE TRUTHTELLERS: Teacher who exposed school’s ‘Woke Kindergarten’ program put on leave.
IT’S THE PALEONTOLOGY, STUPID: James Carville slams Biden decision to skip Super Bowl interview.
LEAVE NO STONE UNTURNED: UPenn begins turning over documents in House committee’s anti-Semitism investigation.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: NEW: Court Filing Alleges Fani Willis Lied About Start of Wade Fling.
THE ETERNALLY RADICAL IDEA WEEKEND FREE SPEECH UPDATE comes to you live from the intersection of free speech and artificial intelligence!
PROTECT AMERICA’S BORDERS FIRST, THEN UKRAINE’S: Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) makes a compelling case during a marathon four-hour+ speech to a mainly empty Senate chamber. REPOSTED.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: White House Report Card: Biden repeatedly shows he’s losing it.
LIGHTNING DEAL: COOFANDY Men’s Casual Linen Pants. #CommissionEarned
A PRICE TO BE PAID: Miffed Musk relocates Neuralink from Delaware after Tesla pay package ruling.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Merchant: Fani Willis Lied to the Court — And We Have a Witness.
Related: Whistleblowers in Fulton County DA Fani Willis’ office reportedly eager to testify. “As the meeting commenced, Cowsert dropped a bombshell, revealing that multiple whistleblowers within the Fulton County DA’s office have expressed eagerness to testify. They allege misuse of federal and state funds, further escalating the scrutiny surrounding Willis.”
WHEN I FINISH THE CURRENT SERIES BINGE, I MUST READ THIS: Book Review: Theft of Fire, by Devon Eriksen.
OUR AGE IS POISONED BY NARRATIVIUM AND THE LEFT’S OBSESSIONS: Floating in the Trope-Sphere.