By Will Allison, on Thu Aug 18, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
I haven’t watched network TV in many years. I can’t stand pretty much any contemporary music act. I enjoy professional sports, but do not follow them, and always embarrass myself when I pretend that I do. However, I do faithfully watch a handful of cable television programs. Here they are, with some thoughts on each:
5. True Blood
As President Obama would say, let me be clear. This show is as dumb as a bag of hammers. I am dumber after I watch it. All of us are. The pilot episode offered the worst dialogue I had ever heard on a television show. The performances as a rule are unbelievably repetitive. A handful of the characters—including THE LEAD—are unusually annoying. When did Anna Paquin decide that every line should be served with three extra helpings of sass? And Tara, thanks, but if I wanted to be yelled at for an hour, I’d time travel back to Mrs. Phillips’ seventh grade math class.
This scene alone invoked three separate articles of the Geneva Conventions.
And yet…
OK, I confess. The damn show is entertaining. As dumb as it is, dumb also means I get to turn my brain off for an hour and watch vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, witches, whoknowswhathehellelse go at it. In bad Cajun accents. Usually, sans clothing. There are worse ways to spend an evening.
4. Game Of Thrones
This series appeared at first to be a conventional medieval fantasy epic, told in the style of The Lord Of The Rings, pitting good against evil. It slowly revealed itself to be a far more complex piece of storytelling. The “good” guys in this tale often behave stupidly and are far too trusting of their enemies, not to mention the “neutral” parties of whom they assume good faith. The “bad” guys are regularly more successful because they do not slow themselves down with quaint notions of “honor”. They also may have more legitimate grievances than we are initially led to believe. The history of the world in which these people reside is slowly revealed to the audience. It is a world nowhere as simple as that depicted in The Lord Of The Rings, a world much more like our own, where nothing good is accomplished easily–if at all–and what “good” actually is becomes harder to define at each turn.
Exemplifying this outlook is the performance of Peter Dinklage, who has created the most fascinating supporting character on television since…Omar. He is The Imp, a little person living in a chaotic world ruled by “might is right”, and yet The Imp manages to slip through incredible dangers using his mental ingenuity alone. He is neither good nor bad, possessing no innate hostility towards perceived enemies, nor any frivolous notions of “honor” that would too firmly entrench him. The Imp has no problem helping strangers, and bets they’ll never realize how much more he needs them. He has only his wits, and his mouth. In a land where most have lost sight of what matters save some ancient moral code, the man with none may be the most moral of them all.
3. Teen Mom
I generally detest reality television. I believe 99.9% of it is useless, vapid exhibitionism of the lowest order. I think anyone who would put themselves on a reality television program is very likely to have either some kind of severe personality disorder, or simply be un-hirable in any other occupation.
However…
Teen Mom is one of the most gripping and educational shows ever put on the screen. The show is pretty straightforward: let’s film the repercussions of some teenagers who got themselves pregnant. Let’s show what it’s like to be an 18 year-old girl with a 2 year-old boy. What happens when that girl wants to go out with her friends, but doesn’t have any time, because she has a 2 year-old boy, and doesn’t have any money, because she doesn’t have a job, because she can’t get a job, because she has to stay home to take care of the 2 year-old boy. And if she gets a job, it won’t be a good job, because she didn’t finish high school, and even if she did, she didn’t go to college, because she has a 2 year-old boy. And if she tries to go to college, then she’s being a bad mom, because she’s not devoting herself entirely to the 2 year-old boy, and eventually one of her parents will step in and fight for ownership of the 2 year-old boy. And God forbid she go and try to do what got her into this mess in the first place: fall in love. On Teen Mom, nothing is more dangerous than trying to have a life of your own. And that is what makes it truly compelling television, as well as essential life education. I wish it was shown in every middle and high school in America.
By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Wed Aug 17, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
The September 11 memorial is the ultimate symbol of our nation’s recovery. [Esquire]
One Pennsylvania man gives back to his community and helps himself… through his Dairy Queen franchise. [NY Times]
Three Nobel Prize-winning economists share their thoughts on what went wrong and how our economy can start to rebuild. [Newsweek]
Here’s a little mid-week inspiration for you; try to appreciate the simple things, like these adorable kiddos from Austin dancing in the rain. [CNN iReport]
By John Johnson, on Wed Aug 17, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET
My daughter was born in the spring of 2000. That summer, as many new parents with infants do, we found ourselves around the house quite a bit, learning the ropes of parenthood. As it turned out, lucky for us, Summer 2000 was also the summer that network TV discovered reality TV game shows! With the launch of Survivor and Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, my sleep deprived wife and I could get our nightly Regis Philbin fix and watch the exploits of nude Richard on the island (“the tribe has spoken”) without having to think at all!
Strangely, that summer launched the reality TV genre. More than a decade later—where it seems the majority of TV is reality—I have found my own personal obsession…the bad reality TV game show. Who needs American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, or the Amazing Race? (I can hear some RP readers already saying—aren’t those bad reality TV shows? Not compared to the rest of this list!) Bad imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Or, Rule 1 of Bad Reality TV Game Shows: If it is cheap, and it might draw any summer ratings, rip off the idea!
To that end, I offer my pop culture tribute to 5 worst reality game shows of all time. (A side note for the analytic amongst the RP Nation: “Reality” TV probably has a more precise meaning, but in my world, it is a broad genre encompassing any show where contestants compete as themselves in some less than realistic setting…)
5. 101 Ways to Leave A Game Show. The only one on my list that is still on TV…though not sure how long it will last. How can you beat a show where in one episode, contestants were eliminated by being: 1. dropped off a barge going 30 mph at sea, 2. sent to the bottom of the ocean by an anchor around his leg, 3. dumped into a river with dead fish, and 4. ejected off a 10 story platform from a bed face down into water. Purely sensational…even down to the smarmy host cackling the whole time. I call that must see TV.
4. (tie) the Joe Schmo Show/ Joe Millionaire. Double the Joe for the average Joe. Joe Schmo was a guy from Pittsburgh. They created a fake reality game show for him (The Lap of Luxury). Hire 10 actors to fit every stereotype…the blond bombshell, the gossip queen, the quack doctor, the retired army general. They create a fake world, completely get the guy to buy in for several weeks. After playing with the guys emotions, getting him to embarrass himself repeatedly on TV, they reveal everyone was actors and he was a total mark! But, they justify the whole thing because they gave him the prize money…and play up what a special, trusting person they had to find to make this all work.
What’s worse than that? How about a reality game show where you can find “true love” with a millionaire? But after you think you’ve found the one, you find out he’s not a millionaire. I hate when that happens. Rule 2 of Bad Reality TV Game Shows: Deception is ok as long as you get money in the end.
3. I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here
I think someone should have filed a lawsuit for false advertising…because there were no celebrities here. Unless you think Bruce Jenner, Melissa Rivers, and Robin Leach are celebrities… The premise is simple. Dump a bunch of C-level stars in the jungle. Make them do stupid stuff. Someone leaves every night. Broadcast live every night. Someone wins. Poor mans survivor meets Ed Mcmahons star search. Bad! (Another side note: In checking the web today, I found NBC is actually remaking this show again. Wow. See Rule 1 of Bad Reality TV Shows Above).
Read the rest of… John Johnson: The Five Worst Reality Game Shows
While the RP is enjoying his week-long vacation from all things politics, there’s one group that he strongly believes should stay immersed in politics: the supercommittee designated to tackle the country’s debt problems.
Washington dysfunction and hyper-partisan politics have crippled Congress’s ability to meet the major challenges of our day. You need only to look at the S&P’s justification for our recent debt downgrade as case in point. As such, the 12 members of the “supercommittee” must forgo their annual August respite, come back to the table and begin the hard work to stave off what could potentially be a financial and budgetary catastrophe.
The financial unrest and subsequent Wall Street roller coaster created when intransigent Republicans and Democrats failed the American people was a preview of what we can expect if the supercommittee fails to reach consensus on a debt reduction package of at least $1.2 trillion, triggering abrupt and irresponsible across the board cuts to federal programs.
Economic decisions of this magnitude will require sacrifice from both sides. With divisive partisan politics in Washington at an all-time high and compromise viewed as a four-letter word, it is going to take time and sincere bipartisan cooperation for the members of the committee to put everything on the table and make the tough but necessary choices to restore our fiscal sanity.
By Ronald J. Granieri, on Wed Aug 17, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
After a four-month labor standoff, the NFL owners and players managed to agree to a new ten-year agreement that will guarantee the season will start on time. For me, that means the Buffalo Bills will open their 52nd season on September 11. In fact, as I finish this piece, the Bills are in Chicago getting ready for their first preseason game tonight. I can hardly wait.
Yes, I am excited to see the latest season of a team that finished 4-12 last year, and that has had one winning season (and two 8-8 records) since 2000.
The team that last went to the playoffs during the Clinton administration—only to be robbed of victory by a heartbreaking piece of semi-legal deception known to people outside of Western New York as “Home Run Throwback.”
[People in Western New York know it by a variety of other names, none of them suitable for this family website…]
Scott Norwood, wide right
Yes, the same team that went to four consecutive Super Bowls in the early 90s—losing the first one on an achingly close field goal attempt (videos of which I admit to watching many times, hoping for a different result), then the next three in different but equally painful manners.
A half-Letterman pop-culture list? That’s a very difficult assignment for me. Today I don’t have much time to absorb any mass-media entertainment streams. Though I did consider subscribing to HBO just to be able to watch the documentary “Superheroes.” (I ultimately decided against it.)
When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait for Saturday morning so I could watch the Super-Friends in action. Today, I am much more interested in real-life social justice, than I am in the Justice League.
Today, through my aging eyes, super heroes just seem like fascist bullies (who must have never watched The People’s Court).
The best arguments by Karl Marx aside– I really don’t want a bunch of violent vigilantes to be the role models for my children. Worse, still– the genre typically depicts women in a sexist manner, all scantily clad and inhumanly proportioned.
So are there any supers left in the world that I can still respect and admire?
Maybe about a Rob Fleming list full:
5.) The Original Superman, Kal-L
The hospitality that Mary and Pa Kent (later rewritten as Martha and Jonathan Kent) showed to this undocumented immigrant is worthy of admiration alone. In Action Comics #1, Lois Lane also sets a good example for challenging the status quo and Superman tackles corrupt politicians. With SupermanÔøΩs second appearance in Action Comics #2, the hero confronts a munitions manufacturer hoping to profit on the war in Europe. In the next issue, he corrects a heartless mine owner who won’t give a crippled miner a pension after he was caught in a cave-in.
In a 1975 press release, Superman creator Jerry Siegel wrote, “What led me into creating Superman in the early thirties? Listening to President Roosevelt’s fireside chats, being unemployed and worried during the depression, knowing homelessness and fear, hearing and reading of the oppression and slaughter of helpless oppressed Jews in Nazi Germany, and seeing movies depicting the horrors of privation suffered, I had the great urge to help the downtrodden masses, somehow. How could I help them when I could barely help myself? Superman was the answer.”
The only thing keeping the 1930s Superman from a higher spot in the countdown would be the fact that his treatment of the baddies could sometimes make water-boarding look a little tame by comparison. Of course, this was all changed by the comics code of the 1950s– but by that point, Superman was already shying away from changing the system, taking down the KKK, demolishing slums, correcting exploitative business leaders, etc…. and was already evolving into the more jingoistic big blue boyscout that he would remain thereafter.
I briefly entertained the idea of putting Batman on the list after reading this, though, unfortunately, he was just flat wrong when he said that Batman doesn’t kill:
4.) Coming in at number four in the countdown: A tie…
Had any of these comics seen a larger mainstream run, they would be at the very top of the list. Because most of these titles are no longer in print, the number four spot is a 3-way tie between:
4.c.) Cyberella, Sunny Winston and ‘Lil Ella
Unfortunately this series lasted only 12 issues. So few graphic novels deal with systemic classism, but this was one that empowered us with the message that even in a society where those who have the gold make the rules, the human soul cannot be bought.
4.b.) Grace
Created by Barbara Kesel, Amazing Grace first appeared in Comics’ Greatest World: Golden City in 1993. Grace was a smart, powerful character who used her super powers to better the world in practical ways. She ran Golden City and defended it from many threats; the main one came from the United States.
4.a.) Winged Victory, Kristin (last name unknown)
Winged Victory is an independent heroine and champion of women’s rights. The hero established and maintained a number of women’s centers (originally shelters) and clinics, and is a vocal and passionate spokeswoman for the political, legal, and social emancipation of women. (Kurt Busiek’s Astro City is actually still being published, but Winged Victory is so rarely seen that the highest that she can go on our list is fourth place.)
3.) The Green Arrow, Ollie Queen
In 1969 Denny OÔøΩNeil miraculously transformed the Green Arrow from a cheap Batman/Robin Hood hybrid knock-off into an outspoken advocate of the underprivileged and oppressed. In the early 1970’s Oliver Queen became a heroic voice against racism and corruption. Writer O’Neil and illustrator Neal Adams paired Green Lantern and Green Arrow and sent them on an “easy rider” tour of the nation. The brief series dealt with pollution, overpopulation, drug addictions, and more. While Green Lantern was the straight-laced law-and-order type, Green Arrow was the indignant advocate of true social change. Unfortunately, though, a comic book character is only as good as the author and artist du-jour: While everything with this character before 1969 is really bad, everything about Green Arrow between 1987 and 2001 is even worse– the hero was rewritten as merely a cold-blooded, violent vigilante during the entire 1990s.
Read the rest of… Chris Skidmore: Top 5 Admirable Superheroes
By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Tue Aug 16, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET
Leave it to the New York Post to take something as unsexy as the stock market and turn it into a scandal. [NY Magazine]
Jon Stewart defending Michele Bachmann? The comedian calls out Newsweek and its editor, Tina Brown, for its “crazy eyes” photo of Bachmann on the magazine’s cover. [Gawker]
What’s more surprising: the fact that a Des Moines TV station questioned a commercial Stephen Colbert was paying the station to run hours before the Iowa straw poll an hour before it was supposed to air, or that two other stations didn’t question the commercial at all? [Time]
Check out sone creative advertisements that make you look twice. [Hong Kiat]
If newspapers are the new vinyl, does that mean that newspaper readers are hipsters? Didn’t think so. [Poynter Institute]
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the dog days of summer! I’m starting to think August is the worst month of all twelve: ridiculous heat and humidity, no major holidays, back-to-school shopping, Congress on vacation (OK, maybe that’s the one redeeming aspect), and so on. Yes, I know pre-season football is gearing up, but don’t forget that we are closing in on MLB pennant races. A bright spot indeed! As Pujols, Jeter, Lincecum, and Halladay jockey for the post-season, let’s talk to someone who very well may be there in a few years.
I grew up with Andrew Pevsner in Southern California, and remain close friends with him today. But while I’m sitting in classrooms suffering through law school’s Socratic Method, Pevsner is warming up in the bullpen for the Great Lakes Loons. The Loons are the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Single-A minor league club in Midland, Michigan, and Pevsner is one of their southpaw relievers. Drafted in 2010 out of Johns Hopkins, Pevsner spent his first professional season playing Advanced Rookie ball for the Raptors in Ogden, Utah. Let’s take an inside look at what it’s like to play professional baseball and live nearly every boy’s childhood dream.
Zac Byer: You have mentioned that you were not following the draft when you were selected, but rather you started receiving congratulatory text messages from friends after the pick. Did you have any expectations of being drafted, let alone in the 16th round?
Andrew Pevsner: Not really . . . I hadn’t heard from any clubs for a few weeks leading up to the draft. It had been about 10 days or so since our college season ended, I was hoping to try to get myself back into great shape and maybe go to some workouts and try to sign as a free agent after the draft.
ZB: Who called you from the Dodgers to let you know that you had been drafted? What did he say to you?
AP: My scout from the Dodgers, Clair Rierson called me. I was so excited when we were talking that I don’t fully remember what we said. I do remember him asking me how I was feeling, and telling me that someone would call me with more details later that night.
ZB: You got the call from Rierson and found out you were going to play professional baseball for your favorite team – were you able to take a breath and enjoy the accomplishment, or were you into a new routine right away?
AP: There were only about ten days between the time I got drafted and the time we went to Ogden. I took the first night to celebrate and try to soak up the moment. After that, I spent about four days working out and throwing in Baltimore before I flew to Camelback Ranch [in Arizona] for a couple days of physicals and workouts. From there we flew to Ogden.
ZB: What’s a typical day like for you now?
AP: It really depends on where we are. If we’re at home, and it’s not a lift day, I’ll get to the ball park between 1 and 2 in the afternoon. Pitchers stretch, throw and condition before shagging batting practice. After BP we have some time to get some food in the clubhouse and get ready for that night’s game.
ZB: What has been the most surprising aspect of being a minor league baseball player?
AP: You hear guys talk about the grind and staying even-keeled through all the ups and downs, but it’s something that you can’t really appreciate until you go through it.
ZB: What has been the most challenging aspect of the last few seasons in the minors?
AP: Baseball is a humbling game. Everyone fails at some point or another. Most players fail repeatedly. Learning how to deal with failure so that you can fail less often and for shorter periods of time has probably been the hardest part.
Read the rest of… Zac Byer: An Interview with L.A. Dodgers Minor League Pitcher Andrew Pevsner
4. Game Of Thrones
3. Teen Mom
