By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Aug 27, 2012 at 9:15 AM ET
For the past year and a half, I have used my platform at The Recovering Politician to share my opinions on a wide variety of issues, from politics to sports to pop culture. One consistent theme is that I have always respected — indeed invited — dissent and disagreement, in a civil dialogue, of course.
But now, I have come to the conclusion that on one matter, there is no room for even the smallest disagreement. You must not only concur with my opinion, but I urge you — in fact, I beg you — to join me in this essential pledge:
BREAKING BAD IS THE BEST TELEVISION PROGRAM IN HISTORY. YOU MUST WATCH IT!
For those of you who are fellow Walt-heads (OK, maybe that’s not the best expression), you already know what I am talking about.
But I know there are thousands of you who’ve never watched the program, or may have seen an early episode and dismissed it as an uber-violent slice of Americana you’d rather hide in the proverbial cellar. That’s what I thought for five years — I always preferred shows that I could relate to — the ad men of Mad Men, the Jewish geeks of Seinfeld, the poker-playing mobsters of The Sopranos, etc., etc.
But once I subscribed to Netflix, and paced myself through the first half season, I was as hooked as many of the protagonist Walter White’s clientele. By the time the third season rolled around, I recognized it was a masterpiece. But this weekend, when I finished the 4th season finale, I couldn’t sleep — it was the most extraordinary writing, plotting, narrative, and most of all, acting, that I have ever witnessed. I haven’t even begun watching this year’s 5th season, and I’m met with brutally conflicting emotions — I want to savor the series’ final 16 episodes, knowing that thee will never be another show like it, but I live in a constant fear that some malevolent reporter or tweeter will spoil the plot developments before I get a chance to enjoy them.
I realize that you, like me, might not identify with a struggling chemistry teacher, struck with lung cancer, who turns to cooking meth to pay the hospital bills. But if you care about politics, or philosophy, or religion, or psychology; there is no book, novel, film or opera that better illustrates the human condition — particularly the moral decisions that each of us struggle with every day — than Breaking Bad. And there’s no better primer on why seeking revenge is the most self-destructive act a person can take. (Sure, I like Revenge, but c’mon…)
So, I insist, RP Nation. Sign up for Netflix today. Or if you don’t want to make Reed Hastings any richer, click here to buy the box sets of the first 4 seasons.
STOP READING, STOP PLAYING OUTSIDE, TURN ON THE TV AND WATCH IT NOW.
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Jul 30, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
With three states nearing initiatives to legalize marijuana this fall, Julian Brookes thinks that we are near reaching the tipping point: [The Daily Beast]
It took literally minutes for politics to get twisted into the massacre in Aurora, Colorado. ABC News’ Brian Ross (the same journalist who slandered former House Speaker Dennis Hastert with an unattributed and false report that he was a target of a criminal probe) took to the air to link the shooter to the Tea Party. The claim was quickly unmasked as a breathtaking stupidity, based on connecting a shared, reasonably common name that is worn by a couple dozen people in the Denver phonebook.
Then, when the link between James Holmes and the ideological right was severed, it took minutes more to unearth the politics of gun control. The Internet and cable news are already awash with the notion that Holmes’ atrocity is an indictment of any number of related sins, from permissive gun laws in general, to the ease of obtaining tear gas and ammunition on the web, to the fecklessness of candidates and congressmen in the face of the NRA’s might, to the inevitable wages of a society that endorses gun possession as a constitutional liberty at all.
Americans typically dig for social and institutional causes for the most unfathomable examples of evil. It’s not only liberal talk show hosts who were quick to tie the coarsening of the political culture to the slaughter at a congressional event in Arizona in 2011. Our instinct of forces larger than us driving our destiny, a religious and psychological strand in our thinking, ill prepares us for the power a loner caught in his own warped view can wield.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: An Evil Without Solution
More unintentional irony from North Carolina Congressional candidate George Holding, the biggest hypocrite in US politics: Dawn of the Mommy and Daddy PACs. [Politico]
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Jul 5, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
Recent reports have some speculating — most prominently his widow — that the late PLO President Yasir Arafat may have died from illicit poisoning.
Larry Ben-David (NOT the Israeli version of Larry David) argues in The Times of Israel that the claim is a distraction from the clear probability that Arafat died of AIDS:
Less romantic and mythical, however, is the more likely cause of Arafat’s death – AIDS.
Arafat’s sexual proclivities have been an open secret for years. The former head of Rumanian intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa , disclosed in his book “Red Horizons,” that one of his officers reported, “the ‘Fedayee’ [Arafat’s code name] is in his bedroom making love to his bodyguard. The one I knew was his latest lover. He’s playing tiger again. The officer monitoring his microphones connected me live with the bedroom, and the squawling almost broke my eardrums. Arafat was roaring like a tiger, and his lover yelping like a hyena.”
In an in-depth 1976 biography of Arafat, writer Thomas Kiernan chronicled the life of a young Arafat in Cairo. When Arafat discovered his girlfriend, Jinan al-Oraby, was friendly with the daughters of the Harkabis, an Egyptian Jewish family, he arranged for the murder of their father. When Jinan expressed sorrow for her friends, “Yasser went into a rage… he proceeded to beat me, tearing my clothes off…he threw himself on me… He tried to penetrate me, but he could not do so. This made him even more irrational.”
Kiernan also relates Arafat’s relationship with a boy, Ahmed, whose parents ended up on the Israeli side of the border after the 1948 war. An associate of Arafat’s related, “Yasser tried to get the boy to publicly denounce his parents…Yasser really loved the boy. He was delicate, sensitive, like a flower. He was very much a part of Yasser’s inner circle – four of five boys who lived in the same place, and well, you can imagine what I mean.”
Kiernan continued: Arafat held a “kind of formal hearing for the boy” because of his refusal to denounce his parents. “Arafat sobbed and sobbed as [a young associate] proceeded to castrate the boy. The next day the boy was dead.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jul 3, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
How social media could save your life.
(A hypothetical situation)
If you are one of those people who believe Klout is just another vanity website and waste of time like Facebook and Twitter, think again.
And please listen to how I had to learn the hard way the true value of these websites.
One night last week I was walking alone through a dark isolated parking lot worrying I could get mugged. I clenched my fists as my fight-flight syndrome kicked in.
My pulse spiked, pupils dilated and my mind raced thinking of potential weapons I could use. I first thought of my car keys…and then, in a flash of brilliance, I had my answer, if mugged, I would immediately shout out to my assailant:
“You picked the wrong guy, pal! You will really want to rethink mugging me after hearing what I have to tell you. I have a high Klout score. That’s right. Do you know what that means? Probably not. So let me tell you. Klout is a metric that measures Facebook and Twitter usage. That means I know a lot of people on Facebook and I Tweet quite frequently. Yes, Tweet! That means I will tell on you and you will get caught through modern social media tools. And if that isn’t enough to make you quake in your boots, I’m also pretty active on LinkenIn.”
At this point I plan to eerily and ominously glare at my assailant, eyes squinted, and make the sounds “Tweet. Tweet. Tweet.” (Like the guy in the movie Warriors when he says “Warriors, come out and plaaaayyyy”)
And then I am going to add, “And by the way, my female colleague is leaving the office right after me. And btw she has a pretty low Klout score.” And then raise my eyebrow as if to say, “That’s something for you to think about.”
In my scenario, my assailant lets me go and waits for my colleague.
And Klout, Facebook and Twitter, helped save me from getting mugged. At least in this made-up hypothetical situation that ends happily ever after for everyone. Except my female colleague who I spend the next year making this up to.
Maybe now you’ll think twice before you criticize these websites again….Word.
