Falling Awake

Poor late-night comedians.  They’d love to crack jokes about Barack Obama, but there’s just no material there.

Letterman writer Mike Barry says, “The thing is, he’s not buffoonish in any way.  He’s not a comical figure.”  Letterman producer Rob Burnett adds, “We can’t manufacture a perception. If the perception isn’t true, no one will laugh at it.”  Jimmy Kimmel agrees:  “I think it’s more a problem because he’s so polished, he doesn’t seem to have any flaws.”

No flaws?  None?  These men apparently didn’t notice any of Obama’s many flubs on the campaign trail, or his periodic casting off of mentors, friends and grandmothers.

How about arrogance, the comedian’s best friend?  Obama sincerely believes his own hype.  No potential for comedy there?  How about a riff on”…this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to fall and our planet began to heal?“

What about Obama’s youth and inexperience?  Why is McCain’s age funny but Obama’s isn’t?  Because his inexperience is too frightening a prospect to joke about?

Okay, Obama’s off limits.  We have a bunch of white comedians who won’t tell a joke about a black candidate.  Couldn’t you at least poke fun at his white fans?  Those who think he’s a lightworker or those media members (like Chris Matthews) whose legs tingle when he speaks?

No?  Then you jokewriters have got to be fired, because you’re just not trying.

Lightworker

Normally, I give you the link to the site I’m quoting right up front, so I don’t forget to do it.  This time I’m going to show you where I found this article at the end, because I suspect it will be a surprise.

Michael Moore’s “Sicko” has been out for a couple of weeks now, and it’s made $7 million.  Not exactly a blockbuster.  The critics love it, however, and it received a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  Of course, reading the blurbs you get the sense that these critics didn’t so much love the film as agree with it.  So, if you already agree with Michael Moore, you’ll love the film.  Ipso fatso, as it were.

I did stumble across an in-depth look at the actual substance of Moore’s film, and I’d like to share some excerpts with you:

One giant health-maintenance organization, Kaiser Permanente, is so persuasively lambasted in the movie that, on the basis of what we’re told, we want to burst into the company’s executive suites and make a mass citizen’s arrest. This is the sort of thing good muckrakers are supposed to do.

Unfortunately, Moore is also a con man of a very brazen sort, and never more so than in this film. His cherry-picked facts, manipulative interviews (with lingering close-ups of distraught people breaking down in tears) and blithe assertions (how does he know 18,000 people will die this year because they have no health insurance?) are so stacked that you can feel his whole argument sliding sideways as the picture unspools.

As a proud socialist, the director appears to feel that there are few problems in life that can’t be solved by government regulation (that would be the same government that’s already given us the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Motor Vehicles).

What’s the problem with government health systems? Moore’s movie doesn’t ask that question, although it does unintentionally provide an answer. When governments attempt to regulate the balance between a limited supply of health care and an unlimited demand for it they’re inevitably forced to ration treatment.

Moore’s most ardent enthusiasm is reserved for the French health care system, which he portrays as the crowning glory of a Gallic lifestyle far superior to our own. The French! They work only 35 hours a week, by law. They get at least five weeks’ vacation every year. Their health care is free, and they can take an unlimited number of sick days. It is here that Moore shoots himself in the foot. He introduces us to a young man who’s reached the end of three months of paid sick leave and is asked by his doctor if he’s finally ready to return to work. No, not yet, he says. So the doctor gives him another three months of paid leave — and the young man immediately decamps for the South of France, where we see him lounging on the sunny Riviera, chatting up babes and generally enjoying what would be for most people a very expensive vacation. Moore apparently expects us to witness this dumbfounding spectacle and ask why we can’t have such a great health care system, too. I think a more common response would be, how can any country afford such economic insanity?

Fidel Castro’s island dictatorship, now in its 40th year of being listed as a human-rights violator by Amnesty International, is here depicted as a balmy paradise not unlike the Iraq of Saddam Hussein that Moore showed us in his earlier film, “Fahrenheit 9/11.” He and his charges make their way — their pre-arranged way, if it need be said — to a state-of-the-art hospital where they receive a picturesquely warm welcome. In a voiceover, Moore, shown beaming at his little band of visitors, says he told the Cuban doctors to “give them the same care they’d give Cuban citizens.” Then he adds, dramatically: “And they did.”

If Moore really believes this, he may be a greater fool than even his most feverish detractors claim him to be.

Now, here’s the weird thing.  This rational, intelligent, fact-based, economically correct essay wasn’t published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times or even the New York Post.

It’s on MTV’s site.  And that just made my day.

LIBERTAS » Blog Archive » Is It Really Piracy That’s The Problem?

Dirty Harry wonders about the effect of piracy on the entertainment industry.  He starts off talking about the nose-dive of music sales, then unleashes this gem:

So, why write about this on a film website? Because piracy is rampant and everywhere. For a mere five dollars, any soon-to-be released movie can be purchased as a bootleg from an illegal alien in the Circuit City parking lot two miles from my house. Or, The Hot Little Number I Call Mrs. Harry can bring it home from work for the same price. But I don’t buy them because the quality sucks. Not the bootleg quality — the movie itself. I’m not wasting five dollars on another lousy Hollywood movie.

Nice one, DH.

Here are a couple of other takes on the grotesque glee surrounding the Paris Hilton imprisonment.

The first is from Scott Ott at ScrappleFace (it’s satire):

An overwhelming majority of Americans say they’ve never felt better about themselves than during the past several weeks as they follow the story of Paris’ Hilton’s conviction and incarceration.

“It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” said one poll respondent, a resident of suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “Just knowing that rich, famous, beautiful people can be miserable, pathetic losers gives me hope that my own troubled existence may have meaning. I can’t get enough of this story on TV. Every moment is like a multivitamin for my ego.”

The CBS News/New York Times survey also showed that, 58 percent of Americans were willing to see Ms. Hilton suffer further disgrace, prolonged imprisonment or even death for the good of the nation.

And here’s Christopher Hitchens:

Stuck in my own trap of writing about a nonsubject, I think I can defend my own self-respect, and also the integrity of a lost girl, by saying two things. First, the trivial doings of Paris Hilton are of no importance to me, or anyone else, and I should not be forced to contemplate them. Second, she should be left alone to lead such a life as has been left to her. If this seems paradoxical, then very well.

I guess that what he’s saying is “paradoxical” is the fact that he’s writing about her, because his two points certainly aren’t.  He also seems to think she should never have been imprisoned in the first place, but that’s not necessarily what I think.

I just don’t like where the culture is on this point.  She’s a jerk.  There are lots of jerks.  Why pick on her?

At last, the final category in Time’s list of The People Who Shape Our World: “Builders & Titans.”  These are primarily businessmen, and I won’t quibble about their selection.

Except for one.  This person’s inclusion on this list is simply laughable.

Read the rest of this entry »

As you probably know, Time magazine has come out with its annual issue list of ”The People Who Shape Our World.”  Last December, Time shrugged its collective shoulders when it selected its “Person of the Year,” and put a shiny reflective rectangle on the cover.  Its “Person of the Year” was… you.  Or me.  Or the weird guy looking over my shoulder at the newstand.  I don’t know, and no one cared.

Now the editors have got a chance to make up for that loser of an idea.  I’m sure you know that President Bush was not deemed “influential” enough to be included on the list.  Very nice.  Very chic.

Now, let’s take a look at who did make the cut…

Read the rest of this entry »

• A disgusting response to a soldier’s simple inquiry.  The employee was fired. The name of the owner of the business is Faisal Khetani (not that that means anything.)
• “Hollywood star Clint Eastwood said his acclaimed picture ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ aimed to show the futility of war.” The futility of World War II? In what possible sense could you call WWII “futile?” Is he cracking up?  Before you protest, the article makes clear that he’s not calling Japan’s decision to go to war futile.  He’s saying World War II itself was futile: “I think every war has a certain parallel in the futility of it and that’s one of the reasons for telling these stories — they are not pro-war stories.”
• Kathryn Jean Lopez says, “I knew I liked Joe Lieberman.  He reads Mark Steyn.”  Me, too.  And, me, too.
• Libertas (a fun Hollywood/politics site) is now going to review movies as a regular feature.  ’Dirty Harry’ pledges that “you can finally look forward to being forewarned of political agendas snuck into films that promise only to entertain. The era of Hollywood getting away with this crap has just come to an end. I intend to holler, kick, scream, and make a huge stink over the left-wing sucker punches we’re all sick of. And yes, it will have an effect on my overall review because the worst sin a filmmaker can make is to take the viewer out of the film, and nothing does that faster than slipping in a political agenda.”  I’m looking forward to it.

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  For every item I post here, I write two or three.  I get hung up on the way I word what I write, or whether I’m being fair to the people I disagree with, and so I save the post and look at it again the next day.  And the next.  And the the next thing I know, it’s a week (or more) later and I feel like it’s too stale to post.  Problem solved!

So, to clean out my files, I’m just going to post some links with just a line or two of commentary.

First up:

I decided not to see the Borat movie without really thinking about why it didn’t appeal to me.  Then I came upon these two articles and I think they express how I feel about this kind of comedy better than I could:

The Laugh of the Future argues that Christianity teaches us that we can laugh at fools while simultaneously identifying with them, and that the new paganism replaces this identification with a smug superiority.  This was written several months before the Borat movie was released.

Twelfth Night and the Art of Humiliation uses one of my favorite plays to illustrate the tension between humor and compassion, and how much depth our comedies lose when the compassion is jettisoned.

—————–

*UPDATE*

I was flipping through the channels a couple of nights ago.  I was about to zap right by “Mama’s Family” when I saw Carol Burnett there.  I watched the rest of the show.  She’s got it right.  Eunice is somebody we laugh at.  And then we feel horrible for laughing at her.  It’s the perfect balance.

If any of you remember the story where Eunice gets on the Gong Show, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  She was gonged.  Right away.  The camera zoomed in to capture her face.  Do you remember that?

 I laugh at Eunice.  And my heart breaks for Eunice.  And you can’t seperate those two things, or there is diminishment.

Here’s the cover:

I flipped through it.  Nothing to compare to the greatest SI photo of all time:

That’s a swimsuit! 

For those who prefer something a little tamer, here’s the cover of the 1970 Swimsuit Issue:

That’s a swimsuit?

I’m a thrifty bastard.  I pay $17 per month for cable.  No HBO, MTV or TMC.  I don’t even get CNN or ESPN!  Just 23 channels (2-25, ch. 24 is the Cablevision channel).  It’s enough for me, and I’m satisfied.

I watch a lot of syndicated shows: Seinfeld, Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond, Bernie Mac, etc.  During prime time, though, nothing beats PBS.  Nature documentaries, Antiques Roadshow, Britcoms, Secrets of the Dead; I love them all.

 So thank goodness for PBS pledge drives. Read the rest of this entry »