POLITICS- The Court Jester (still not Danny Kaye) part two

As I said in the previous post, last night Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was the scene of the best television interview on the boob tube perhaps since Frost sat down with Nixon. The Blogosphere has been buzzing, a few of the large corporate news outlets have mentioned it (Moneyweek, for instance had an article that missed the point so far that you would think it was a NASA Mars shot), and the television media completely ignored it. The last is especially telling about the corporate media and their love of whoring themselves out when a story means nothing
but their complete timidity to report any story where us dumb old Americans might actually hear a little truth. As the TVNEWSER article linked above mentions, one of the foremost apologists for anyone with money and power, Joe Scarborough, was happy enough to play “lets you and him fight” when he thought that Stewart was going to be nice and funny. But when our national Court Jester said what so many of us have been thinking (no matter which side of the aisle you sit on), that the national media is nothing but a conglomeration of whores who will say anything as long as it pleases the people leaving money on the nightstand, he literally proved the point by not mentioning the conclusion of something he had been yapping like the dog he is about for the past week.

So, goodbye, NBC networks. You have showed your true colors and spent your credibility for the sake of a quick buck. Joe Scarburough needs to go on his show Monday morning and felaciate a goat as a visual representation of his “journalistic integrity”. ABC is owned by Disney (the biggest purveyor of child porn in the history of the world- fifty years of enabling middle aged men to ogle pubescent girls since Annette Funicello through Brittany Spears to their current sex slave Miley Cirus. (And Billy Ray, I never believed that people should burn in hell for their mistakes but selling your daughter into sex slavery for another lousey 15 minutes of fame sure qualifies your more that a thousand lifetimes of consensual sex with the same gender ever could. And that excuses you for writing and singing that shitty Achey Breaky Heart song.) CBS emasculated the story that our previous president dodged the war in Vietnam and didn’t even fulfil his National Guard service by doing such a crappy job of investigation that they missed the fact that the documents they “exposed” used laser printer fonts rather than typewriter fonts which would have been time appropriate (and crucified their news reader, Dan Rather, making their penance a joke). And now, finally, NBC has laid to rest any concept of journalistic integrity by being caught with their pants down, in bed with the very Wall Street theives that have literally wrecked the world’s economy, and then hoping nobody noticed rather than facing their shame. They say their job is to report the news. Instead they have all made it obvious that their job is to be the propaganda arm of the plutocracy that runs this country.

Take it from Memphisto, Hell's gonna be packed with so many "journalists" that you won't have to worry when the coffee break is over.

POLITICS- The Court Jester (not Danny Kaye)

The court jester, or court fool, was a unique character in the medieval royal administration. Perhaps this is best evidenced in Shakespeare’s plays where often the role of the fool was exemplified as the one person able to comment on the action, on the follies of the characters around him that were driving the drama with their own seriousness and failure. Only the character of the fool could say what everybody in the audience was thinking. Only he had liberty to speak the truth because no one had to take him seriously. After all, he was just a clown, meant only for amusement.

In a world where everyone is participating in the drama by saying whatever they think is to their advantage and all proclamations must be parsed for the actual aims of those making them, it’s easy to question whether you have been overwhelmed by cynicism (which is ABSOLUTELY NOT pessimism, as I often hear it mis-described). The professional cynics in a free society are supposed to be the news media. The “fourth estate” as Thomas Carlyle put it in his book On Heroes and Hero Worship. Since then it has come to mean almost a fourth branch of government. The one without civil power but with ultimate oversight on the other three. The final check and balance of power in a system where, ultimately, the people are expected to rule. But since our democracy has become a plutocracy the actually government has been bought and paid for by the rich and the fourth estate is outright owned by them, the only people left to tell the actual truth are the fools, the jesters.

Witness this last night.

Part one

Part two

Part three

Those three videos, in a form only slightly longer than the actual program as aired, are perhaps the most shocking news interview I’ve seen in the last decade if not longer. And that’s saying a lot when you consider how often the GOP vice-presidential candidate was allowed to show her true colors on network TV over the last several months. But it’s one thing to turn on the camera and have someone show themselves as an idiot in response to a few innocuous questions. Republicans chided the “media” for attacking Sarah Palin when in fact they hardly asked a question harder than “has your stupid ass even heard of any Supreme Court decisions other than Roe v. Wade?” Last night we saw what the press might be like if they took their adversarial role with the government seriously. And it wasn’t from some bloviating anacephalic bully’s self proclaimed “No-Spin Zone”, or from some pretentious Edward R. Murrow wannabe’s “Special Comments”. It wasn’t from a nightly network news broadcast or a (gag) serious newsmagazine. It was a simple case of a court jester asking an expert who claims to be a journalist why he didn’t say anything about a situation that anybody with half a brain saw coming. I’ve mentioned several times on this blog before that if you think people can own homes that cost half a million dollars with a mean family income of a tenth of that, you aren’t a financial expert, you are an idiot. And I’m sure as hell no expert. I just had basic math in school.

Thank you, Jon Stewart. You’re gonna get heat for this. The story of the Emperor’s New Clothes has a fake ending. If it had been truthful it would have ended with the loud-mouthed child beaten to death by the crowd for being unpatriotic. A few years ago you called out Tucker Carlson for being a lying, fatuous douchbag and if it hadn’t been for the internet no one would have known. So far I haven’t seen the reaction from the media but it’s going to be even more telling than your one man stand for speaking the obvious truth. (I don’t watch Joe Scarburough in the mornings because I have better ways to start my day that to have fat, rich, white guys wake me up by screaming at me about how fat rich white guys aren’t the problem. And I think that Mika Cadillac, daughter of Zibignew Cadillac, doesn’t even have the qualifications for being a woman who reads aloud on TV in the morning. If I wanted a horse-faced idiot to greet me every morning with a combination of superiority and stupidity I wouldn’t have thrown my ex-wife out of the house a couple of years ago.)

But thank you, Jon Stewart, you motley fool. Here is one insignificant Diogenese who appreciates that there is at least one honest man left.

MOVIES- There Will Be Blood

In the third of our Oscar Best Picture roundup we look at THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Unlike Atonement, this is truly worthy of Oscar contention. But like NO COUNTY FOR OLD MEN it is for reasons that defy conventional wisdom and the usual that Hollywood has to offer. THERE WILL BE BLOOD is a pure character study. As much as the winner, NO COUNTRY, was driven by plot and image, this movie is just as unique because it is driven by character and character alone. In fact, there are none of the usual movie making conventions. No adversary rears their head to thwart the hero in finding their path to a goal. There is no hero, only a group of individuals vying for their own for their own interests. There is no plot or dramatic structure, only events that happen to each of these monuments to single minded self interest. There is no denouement, only a point at which the movie ends.

The lead characters are the epitome of different kinds of pure horrific cynicism. Daniel Day Lewis gives an unflinching portrayal of the avarice and loathing for humanity that so many businessmen possess in the role of the ironically named Daniel Plainview. Paul Dano plays the charlatan preacher named Eli Sunday, who is interested only in self-aggrandizement and has no faith in anything except the belief that people are fools. The names almost put too tidy a point on the idea that these people are characatures rather than characters. The only person that can be called sympathetic in the whole movie is the son of Plainview, who we see grow from infant to man and thus encompasses the work of four different actors. This too is rather metaphorical I think. While the evil leads are clearly drawn by individual actors, the only role that can be said to represent good is rather nebulous and winds up being a pawn, a cardboard cutout, a set piece for the more interesting main actors. And like all the other names in the movie, his name is also a metaphor in that he doesn’t even have a name. Only initials tacked in front of the ironic Plainview surname. The movie never lets up in beating you over the head with it’s lack of interest in anything but basest of human motivations.

One hint to anyone who views the IMDB.COM page for the movie is the cast list. There are more roles in his movie for people without names than there are with names. Most are MINEWORKER #4, and ELI FOLLOWER #3. And the ones who do have names are literally named for their character traits. Nobody bothered to even pick up a phonebook and find names for the roles. Instead Plainview has only superficial vision, Eli (no doubt short for Elijah the prophet) Sunday is the preacher. We have an Ailman, a Rose, a Bankside, a Hunter, a Blaize, and a Blaut. The supporting cast are inconsequential. So much so that I, who is usually a nut for picking out character actors in brief supporting roles (I picked out John Larroquette under all that Kingon shit on his face in Star Trek III) didn’t even notice Paul F. Tompkins in a rather prominent role (so prominent that he actually got a name- Prescott).

LONG ASIDE AND INEVETABLE DIGRESSION WARNING: (I’ve been looking to see where Tompkins would land since he bombed so impressively and so dependably every week on the first season of Bill Maher’s HBO show. Rarely has a comedian done such good material only to be met with the sound of crickets chirping out in the audience. It’s a shame HBO won’t ever air those shows again, not even as podcasts. It was worth tuning in just to see the look on his face every time he launched into a routine just to have the mikes in the studio pick up the sound of the audience whispering to each other “who is this douchbag?” He wasn’t unfunny, but nothing he did could measure up to his complete and dismal failure with the live audience every week. That was pure hilarity. So I been keeping an eye on his career whenever it crosses my cultural radar. So far it’s been MTV’s shitfest Best Week Ever, where the object is, as far as I can tell, to lower the number of people on the LA unemployment roles since the idea of the show is that people who have no reason to give their opinions do exactly that every week. He also pops up on Keith Olberman’s show- where the primary criteria to be a revolving guest is to make sure you are never (a) taller, (b) prettier, (c) wittier, or (d) more of an egomaniac than the host. I love Keith and never miss his program but I suspect that someday his ego will grow so large that it will collapse in on itself and create a black hole in the solar system that will swallow everything else. One word from a devoted viewer Keith, O’Reilly may be a moron but at least he has somebody new on the show from time to time. I know how many eyebrow hairs Richard Wollffe has at this point. And his gay, pseudo-British pronunciation isn’t helping you in middle America.)

We see the supporting cast the same way Daniel Plainview sees them. Or doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. He doesn’t see them and neither do we.

By now you may think that I didn’t like the movie. But nothing could be further from the truth. It is a masterfully directed, interesting piece of film. But (to use a phrase I’ve come to hate in other contexts) it is what it is. Supposedly based on Upton Sinclair’s OIL you could just as well make a movie based on Sinclair’s THE JUNGLE by shooting two hours of the fictional biography of a meat packing manager who gleefully orders his workers to sweep the floor of rat feces and dump the refuse into the sausage hopper, while stopping on his way home every night at the local butcher shop for his own dinner. But to do it in the way that THERE WILL BE BLOOD does it you would have to shoot one beautiful, painterly scene after another and do it with a directorial panache that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats to see what happens next.

The film lets the audience know what it’s in for in the first five minutes. The first scene in the movie happens without dialog. We see a silver miner, face always in shadow, making a find, having an accident, falling down into the mine shaft, painfully pulling himself back up while dragging his broken leg behind him, dragging himself along the ground after having extricated himself from the earth, and apparently dragging himself straight to the assay office to lie on the floor while his find is assessed. It’s gruesome and yet riveting, an appropriate introduction to a movie that is gruesome and riveting. It tells you everything you need to know about Daniel Plainview, but makes you want to see the next two hours because despite the fact you wouldn’t want to know him, you can’t help but want to get to know him.

Keith Olbermann is GROSS

So I’m watchin’ Keith Olbermann last night and he’s doing that special comment thing that he does. You know, that thing he does at the end of the show sometimes where he bitches about whatever the president is doing to screw up the country. So I’m watching this and he’s yelling and pausin’ dramatically and all that stuff and then he starts foaming at the mouth! These little flecks of foam form in the middle of his mouth. Then he gets this string of spittle from his top lip to his bottom lip right in the middle of this mouth. And this little string of spittle has a little globbit on the end of it-RIGHT THERE SMACK IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS LOWER LIP. And I’m thinking HEY. KEITH OLBERMAN. YOU’RE MAKING ME SICK! And I’m getting all nauseous and I can’t look at the screen. But when I look back to see if it’s gone IT’S STILL THERE. And by now I’m about to ralph! And he just keeps talking and this little ball of spit keeps waggling there on his bottom lip. It was GROSS.

It just goes to show you, it’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Either the president is screwing something up again, or Keith Olbermann loses he mind and starts foaming at the mouth right on camera.

posted by Sins of Memphisto contributor Roseanne Rosannadanna.




(we find no evidence of this at youtube resolution- the editors)