Juking the stats

Life imitates The Wire.

BONUS SECTION: I just learned yesterday that there is, indeed, a The Office-The Wire connection. It seems that Office producer/actor B.J. Novaks is a big Wire fan, and so he's been giving Wire alums bit roles. What's funny, though, is that the actors invariably end up playing basically the same character in the Office as they were in the Wire. So, for example, Stringer ends up playing the hardass corporate boss; Beadie ends up playing the mellow love interest (Holly); and in a recent episode, we had the wormy Managing Editor from the Baltimore Sun, Thomas Klebanow, play the wormy fact checker from the new parent company.

The anti-Leno revolt

The internets have not been kind to Mr. Leno. Via Phil, some folks got wise and started using Hulu tags to comment on the situation:



You can click on the image for a closer view.

The Simpsons

The Simpsons turns 20 today. Jonathan Chait tries a bit of analysis:

In the world of the Simpsons, people are capable of bottomless cruelty, greed, and hypocrisy -- indeed, these traits are so widely shared that they go unremarked upon. In this case, Barney is not only launching a competitor to his best friend's livelihood, he's savaging his character on television. And he's attacking him in terms that not only apply more to Barney himself, but utterly define his character -- the only things Barney ever does are be a loser and a boozer.

The show doesn't make a joke about, or even highlight, this violent hypocrisy. It's just accepted. That's how people are. That's why it was such a deadly satire.

I don't know if I buy that. To me, the denizens of Springfield were never ultimately cruel, greedy, or hypocritical--they always redeem themselves in the end. Even in the episode that Chait cites, Mr. Plow, Homer and Barney eventually make up and become friends again. So I kind of don't know what he's talking about.

Moreover, in my opinion, the satirical bite of the Simpsons came not from some cynical portrayal of how "people really are", so much as an irreverent send up television itself and its central place in American society. Recall that when the Simpsons debuted it was pre-Seinfeld, pre-South Park, and during the heyday of the Cosby Show. TV characters never exhibited true dysfunction, did not exhibit the now-familiar American pathologies of overeating, laziness, and basic ignorance. Most importantly, unlike real Americans, the Americans depicted on television never watched television. Whereas the typical American was watching an average of 4 or 5 hours of TV a day, Bill Cosby was spending 5 hours a day kibitzing with Rudy in the living room. The Simpsons was the first to portray Americans as the true television-watching, fast-food eating, pop-culture consumers that they are.

Of course, this is also what made The Simpsons a uniquely post-modern affair. Whereas characters on the Cosby Show and Cheers seemed to live in an idealized alternate reality free of consumerism and pop icons, the characters in the Simpsons traded in them as a matter of course: pop cultural references were the show's trademark. There were parodies of Patton, of the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and countless other movies; the characters, too, were often parodies of famous people in the old Warner Bros. cartoon style, such as Mayor Quimby standing in for a generic Kennedy (right down to his wife always being shown as dressed in the pink dress and pillbox hat--which is actually pretty morbid now that I think of it) or Karl having a Sly Stallone inflection, or Ranier Wolfcastle as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Part of the game of watching the Simpsons was seeing if you could catch all the references being made.

In any case, personally it feels a little awkward to analyze the Simpsons all academic-like, because it's such an organic part of who I am, and who my friends are. When the Simpsons began, I was 10 years old. Though obviously I didn't understand all the subtle layers of humor at work, I did understand that this is what funny was. I was fluent in the language of Simpsons quotes, and the day after a new episode aired, conversation with my friends before homeroom would consist almost entirely of quoting the best parts of the episode from the night before. It was a universal language, too: everyone from ever click and group had at least a basic knowledge of the Simpsons. And as we all developed our senses of humor, it became clear that we owed a tremendous debt to that show, which traded so much in pop cultural references and absurd tangents.

On a final note, I'll just add that my favorite episode of all time is Homer the Heretic, the one where Homer skips church and ends up having the best day of his life. Off the top of my head, I can think of these choice jokes from that episode:

• God saying to Homer, "I have to go now. I have to appear in a burrito in Mexico."
• "We interrupt this political roundtable to bring you: professional football." The graphic being shown while this is said is two pundits battling on what appears to be a mesa somewhere, one of them brandishing a suitcase and the other, a mace.
• Everyone freezing their butts off in church and reveling in the imagery of hell.
• Homer relecting on the best days of his life, including one of him dancing in a fountain of beer emanating from a crashed beer truck.
• "Rich, creamery butter..."
• Moon waffles, including liquid smoke
• Communing with nature, various birds and forest critters light on Homer's head and shoulders; later, when he's taking a shower, they're still there.

Anyway. Yeah. The Simpsons.

You are ten years old. You've just gotten home and thrown your backpack in the corner and turned on the TV

I already linked this video on Twitter, but here it is again:



A few comments:

• Oh God, that Kid Sister/My Buddy song. It stays with you.
• "Airlandia"? A world where "everything is powered by wind"? HELL FUCKING YES. I have no recollection of these toys, and it doesn't even seem as though there was any cartoon that actually accompanied them. It was just this entire concept and basic storyline introduced within a 30 second commercial. You especially have to love the "fighting for air against the tyrants of wind" line, too. I wish I could see recording studio footage of the grown men who sang the chorus, "Air Raiders, the power is--in--the--Air Raiders...." Also, a really nice touch: you hardly notice it, but at the very end of the commercial it shows a kid falling away from the camera (getting blown away from the camera, perhaps?), and then the Air Raiders logo appears. He probably ended up in the same dimension that you get sucked into when you lose at Crossfire.
• I also have no recollection of Freakies cereal. It looks God awful. And it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense: why are these cereal aliens modeled after the Beach Boys? They're all wearing Hawaiian shirts and the song sounds like it's supposed to be the Beach Boys. Did kids even know who the Beach Boys were? Who are they targeting with this? Also, the name "Freakies" is a horrible name. Also: it's kind of cheating to make the mascot of a cereal a big, misshapen cereal-like lump and then turn around and pretend that you made the cereal into the shape of the mascot.
  
• Flintstones: weak.
• Wow, Video Art. I love how high-concept and stylized the commercial is--and man would it be cool to have one of those today. Sixteen colors!
• Screw Alpha-Bits.
• If I was friends with the Turtles, and they slept over, in the morning I'd always be like, "Hey, you want Golden Grams for breakfast???", and they'd be like, "Fuck you", but then like, "Wait, do you have Golden Grams?", and I'd be like, "No, I was only joking", and then they'd look a little let down maybe?
• I really, really like the ice cream cone cereal commercial. Ice Cream Jones has got to be near the bottom of the heap in terms of forgotten cereal mascots. I imagine he parks that ridiculous cart outside a run-down apartment building in a bad part of town, goes into his sparsely furnished apartment, and drinks and cries. Also: I love how they just beat you over the head with their mind-bending concept of an ice cream cone cereal. The kid at the end (who looks vaguely stoned, I might add) says it best: "Mmmm, ice cream cone cereal." They might as well have just showed 30 seconds of silence with nothing but big block letters that said "BUY ICE CREAM CONE CEREAL NOW". Actually, I would like to see a commercial done in that style some day.
  
• I totally remember this Honeycombs commercial. Aurally the most visceral parts are the "Yeah yeah yeah" and "no no no", but visually I have to say the most visceral image is the calipers holding the piece of cereal with the ruler on the robot measuring it to be a full inch. As a kid I never understood what this was supposed to prove or why I was supposed to care if the individual cereal bits were big. Baffling, but there you have it. Also: Hannity & Honeycombs.
• That kaleidoscope thing is WEAK.
• I remember a different version of the Connect Four song, where it goes: "Go for it--connect four!" Maybe that came later.
• Ahh, Duck Tales bumpers.
  

By the way, I have to say that I've always been fascinated with cereal and the way it's marketed. It's like this weird perfect intersection between children and capitalism that produces a marketing Galapagos Island of exotic cartoon characters and high concept junk food. I imagine that someone from Russia visiting here in 1982 would have been utterly astonished by the sheer number and variety of sugary cereals available, and would have immediately realized that Communism didn't stand a chance.

PS: It's been a long-standing dream of mine to create a children's cereal called Basically Just Sugar.

Stewart, Colbert

Coates has a quote from formerly bow-tied right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson on the subject of John Stewart:

No, I think Jon Stewart is dishonest. And by the way, I also think he's a sacred cow. There's nobody who has the huevos to attacks Jon Stewart because he's too popular. The press sucks up to him like I've never seen -- it's like Oprah. Jon Stewart, all the kids watch Jon Stewart. He's brilliant. I would like to see somebody have the stones to come out and say, Jon Stewart's kind of a pompous jerk, actually.

Funny thing is, I kind of agree with him, except the part about John Stewart being a pompous jerk (that sentiment can probably be attributed to Tucker's sour grapes). But Stewart does seem oddly untouchable. I think there's a feeling amongst the media and even politicians that there's just no way to win in a tangle with the Daily Show. Stewart can eviscerate you with embarrassing video clips night after night, and anytime you try to attack him he retreats to his "I'm just an ordinary citizen" or "I'm just a comedian" position of low status, so that suddenly you find yourself in a public feud with the court jester. If there's something cynical about Stewart and the Daily Show, it's that he's mastered this low-status/high-visibility combination to devastating effect, all the while pretending to be a humble, ordinary guy just trying to make sense of it all.

Oh, and on a slightly different note: I've never really felt that John Stewart is himself, when it comes right down to it, particularly funny. He's okay. But I think John Stewart's genius isn't as a performer, but as an administrator and institutional leader. If he were a WWII general, he'd be Eisenhower--maybe not the most gifted tactician on the field, but certainly gifted at the political task of commanding the respect of everyone below him and making sure that everyone is doing their part to keep the great juggernaut moving forward (I always liked Eisenhower's quote that the most important weapons in the war were the Jeep and the C-47 cargo plane--war at his level was just one big logistics problem, wasn't it?). In interviews with him about the show I get the impression that after the day's frantic process of writing the bits and putting together all the clips and doing rehearsal, doing the actual show is almost an afterthought. And indeed, when you look at his performances, there's not a lot there: he's kind of the straight man to his own material, expressing outrage at outrageous things and smiling at funny things and generally behaving in a way that is aligned with the audience. It's literally an effortless performance. He's not making us laugh--rather, the material is making us laugh, and John's just kind of emceeing the whole thing.

Colbert, on the other hand, I see as Patton: pure tactical genius. Where Stewart is just kind of amusing in a get-along-go-along sort of way, Colbert is really fucking funny and just absolutely razor sharp at all times--born for battle, so to speak. Where Stewart gently leads his audience, Colbert completely owns his. He's a beast. And his performances--all done completely in character--are amongst the most effortful you see anywhere.

So anyway--yes, I think Tucker is right that no one has the balls to go after Stewart, but I think there's a good reason for that. I wouldn't want to go up against Eisenhower and Patton, either.

More West Wing chat

Lindsay's response to my criticism of the West Wing is worth promoting from comments:

David, you're confused on the subject of Magical Negroes. You're mixing them up with the concept of Competent Humans.

Firstly, a Magical Negro is never in a true position of recognzied power in society. Secondly, their power is always connected to the earth and to a spiritual truth that white people (excepting Southern women and Bohemian women) are allegedly not connected to. The conceit of a Magical Negro as a hackneyed story device is to help the main white character connect with that spirituality. No character on the West Wing does that, ever; least of all the black characters. What the black characters do, however, do is to constantly demonstrate to the show's liberal characters that even in their open-mindedness, they're sometimes total cocks about race, by assuming again and again that black will always stick with black. And this I find genuinely satisfying, as it a) sometimes needs doing and b) actually often ends up being the tedious work that a black person will have to do when a white person is unwittingly being a cock.

The characters you point to merely happen to be black. Their competence, intelligence, insight, and warmth is not an indicator of a Magical Negro character. It's a competent, intelligent, insightful, warm character who happens to be black. Go back and look at scenes between Charlie and Barlet, Fitzwallace and Bartlet, and so on. You'll notice that their being black doesn't really have anything to do with it, it's the position they hold. Whereas with a truly insulting Magical Negro character, it has everything to do with race. That's what's so insulting about the Magical Negro/Wiccan Woman character - that merely by being black/a woman, you're plugged in. Sorkin's desire to write well-rounded, compassionate black characters is just that. He writes very strong female characters too.

The reason the white characters are the only ones fucking up is because they're the main characters. So obviously, they're going to have wins and losses, good choices and bad choices. Main characters simply have the freedom and longevity to be more well-rounded. And really, Sorkin just likes moding his characters. Sometimes it's a black person putting them in their place, sometimes it's a Republican, sometimes it's a call-girl ... any variety of characters are doing the moding, not just the black characters.

Anyway, that's my argument against calling Charlie, a young, intelligent, college age black man a Magical Negro. There's an injustice in that. You may as well call Obama a Magical Negro. It's off-base. I thought there was something off in your calling Tim Gunn a Magical Gay the other night too, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. But it's clearer after reading this post. Someone being FUCKING AWESOME isn't what makes them a Magical ____. It just makes them FUCKING AWESOME.

Alright, I take your point--I think I was conflating awesomeness and Magical-ness. Clearly, Charlie is very awesome, which is completely different from being spiritually plugged in and close to the earth, which is what the Magical Negro concept is all about. Charlie is no Bagger Vance.

However, though I might have been misapplying the "Magical Negro" concept, I think there is still something off--or at least, dated--about the way black characters are treated in the West Wing in the aggregate. What I mean is, I don't think any one black character taken in isolation is anything to raise an eyebrow at. But what is conspicuous is a pattern where every black character, without fail, is super-awesome and, indeed, super-emblematic-of-what-America-is-really-all-about: humble, hardworking, magnanimous, competent, fair, pragmatic. After a while you suspect that Sorkin is being a little too self-aware with his black characters--that he is so afraid of reinforcing negative stereotypes that he forgets that black people can be jerks too.

Again, I only bring all this up because I think it contributes to a peculiar 90s feeling to the series. I am accusing Sorkin of nothing more than pre-South-Park, pre-Curb-Your-Enthusiasm unreconstructed political correctness (Curb--and to some extent Seinfeld as well--are masterful at leveraging political correctness to wreak cognitive dissonance on the viewer. For example, a character in a protected category--say someone who is disabled--will invariably turn out to be a complete asshole). Even it it's true, it's really no big sin.

So, anyway. All of this is based on the first 8 episodes--it could be that episode 9 features a cut-throat, heartless black lobbyist who gets pwned by Josh Lyman, and I'll have to eat my hat. But I won't be holding my breath.

PS: I think there was some kind of blogging Murphy's Law going on with the first West Wing post, because it was a fairly dumb post, and yet for some reason received like 3 times as much traffic as any other post to date. Maybe if I write a really dumb post it will really boost traffic...