Thursday, May 02, 2013

ARTY FARTY.

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: I bet those stupid liberal TV-show-makers thought they were making the Soviet Union look good, but I saw it and I still hate communism  farrrrt.

Longtime fans will be pleased to hear Goldberg's traditional empirical method is unchanged:
I gather the show’s creators think they are being subversive or at the very least very clever by getting viewers to root for the "bad guys." Those quotation marks are essentially Hollywood’s, not my own.
Maybe that was in the press packet. And:
Getting back to the slipperiness of popular culture, I have to wonder if the producers realize how much the show undercuts the Left, at least the Hollywood Left.
Leftists in Hollywood were always much more serious about communism than Leftists in New York and Washington, which inevitably led to the Socialist Workers Party purge of 1984. And:
Avoiding spoilers as much as possible, one character, an African-American Communist spy recruited from the civil-rights movement, should have the Left furious. If you take the character seriously (which I don’t necessarily recommend) he demonstrates not only the murderous commitments of the hard Communist Left, but he basically vindicates J. Edgar Hoover’s most extreme rhetoric about the civil-rights movement!
Expect this to be rolled up in conservative minority outreach: "Oh yeah, what about that guy on that show?"

93 comments:

  1. Minor Victory10:13 AM

    Jonah: "Hahaha. Stupid liberals let storytelling, character development, and moral nuance get in the way of an opportunity for propaganda. Who'd wanna watch that?"

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  2. fraser10:26 AM

    OMG! A black character on a fictional TV show is a Communist? Given the show is based on true incidents (just like I Led Three Lives) that proves Hoover was right! And National Review was right all those years because look, liberals are admitting Communists kill people!

    I love his hedge too--well of course he's not necessarily taking the character of Gregory as realistic but hey, if you did ...

    And his concession that "good TV show" and "polemic" are at odds is undercut by the implication that the producers set out to craft a pro-Communism drama and failed.

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  3. Gromet10:37 AM

    I just read in Variety that thanks to their success in subverting the paradigms of 1984, nefarious liberals are now plotting shows to subvert the paradigms of 1937, 1904, 1812, and 1620. Just wait till their show sympathetic to Inquisitors in the wake of the Renaissance; in this way Hollywood will think they're being clever but will actually undercut their entire cause since 1512. But they're too stupid to realize they'll be strangling their own movement in its cradle!

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  4. Self fisting head-first oughta be impossible, but Jonah manages,

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  5. Jonah's favorite device, the Strawman:


    "...some fans of the show will bristle at the suggestion that the Jennings are bad guys. I think that’s morally stunted nonsense — "

    He goes on the say that he never thought Tony Sporano was not a bad guy. He's just too smart for that. But those "some fans"...

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  6. BTW, this reminds me of "I led Three Lives", with Richard Carlson. Bob Newhart had a joke about it:


    At a Communist Party meeting, a guy raises his had and asks, "Has anyone noticed that every time we give Philbrick an assignment we all get arrested?"

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  7. NonyNony11:37 AM

    I'm fairly certain I read that one. Philip K. Dick, right?

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  8. sharculese11:41 AM

    Morally stunted nonsense. I just. J-Dough is the Worst at Everything.

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  9. sharculese11:44 AM

    Haven't seen The Americans yet, but aren't there are a bunch of scenes in the early episodes where they all marvel at all the shit they can get here that isn't available in the USSR. Seems like if they were trying to write a show about how Communism is awesome, it would have been pretty easy to not include that shit.


    Also, we're talking about FX, home of such noted left-wing propaganda as The League and American Horror Story.

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  10. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard11:59 AM

    If you take the character seriously (which I don’t necessarily recommend)


    Would he recommend taking anything seriously>?

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  11. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard12:03 PM

    Plus their upcoming show sympathetic to Inquisitors in the wake of the Renaissance


    They can do a long-running musical extravaganza covering that entire period of Iberian history- Gleeconquista!

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  12. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard12:04 PM

    Christ, I got out of the boat to find out what show we're discussing, and I found that they're still fucking that "Pigford" nontroversy.

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  13. Bitter Scribe12:11 PM

    I refuse to deal with Goldberg seriously, but this whole premise of deep-cover Soviet agents who spend years living in the U.S.---was that ever really a thing? What could the Soviets possibly have gotten out of it?

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  14. Uncle Kvetch12:15 PM

    So...the character, if one takes him seriously, vindicates Jonah's worldview, but Jonah doesn't recommend taking him seriously.


    I don't even...fuck. He actually collects a paycheck to do this. The breath, it is taken. The gob, it is smacked.

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  15. This was more recent, but apparently it's what got the creators of the show thinking:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegals_Program

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  16. Real J-Gold:
    After all, as famed Sovietologist, Sting, would later argue, the Russians love their children too.

    What the fuck, you goddam strawfucking lunatic?! What does Sting have to do with the story, with this TV show?!? Is this another attempt to prove your GenX cred? Fucking Sting?!?
    What, seriously, is even wrong with the sentiment? Did the Soviets have a particular reputation for physically and mentally abusing children, or am I thinking of James Dobson showering with his boys to demonstrate the utility of teh penis and Becky Fischer babbling some fucking thing, might be passages to summon Kandarian demons, I don't know, at her camp full of young children and all of Michele Bachmann's foster kids who mysteriously did not help her campaign for president and Sean Hannity and Michelle Maglalang stating on Fox that they would have been thrilled to have only been beaten with a belt?
    When did Sting make any special claim of knowledge of Soviet life other than making a metaphor suggesting we all calm the fuck down and maybe not cuisinart each other? Is this like you claiming to be an expert on anything beyond internet midget eskimo porn and vintages of Frito-Lay products?
    Are you seriously walking this close to the fine line between clever and stupid?
    Please, for the love of FSM, eat a bag of yummy, fried, salted hammers and shut the fucking fuck up, you goddam jackass!!!!

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  17. Gromet12:41 PM

    Well, it paid off for the Muslim Socialist Terrorists in 2008...

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  18. Didn't you hear? Yesterday was Let's All Blog About Pigford Day over on the right side. There were upwards of twelve people on Twitter talking about it.

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  19. Rugosa12:51 PM

    Here's the scoop . . .http://tomburka.com/mt2/mt-tb.cgi/1192

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  20. Jonah's columns on pop culture always piss me off, because it seems like he's so close to having an epiphany. With all this talk about "Don't the libs realize they're making the Soviets look bad" and "Why aren't they mad that there's a black bad guy?" you can see that he has everything he needs to reach a conclusion - Hey, maybe liberals aren't the one-dimensional Red-baiting stereotypes that I have in my head. But it's Jonah Goldberg, laziest man on Earth, and he refuses to put in the effort to make that last connection. Instead, he goes and takes a well-deserved nap, and when he wakes up it's all gone.


    That's what gets me. It's one thing to hear this crap from some shut-in wingnut blogger. It's another to hear it from someone who has presumably met people from the other side in his or her life.

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  21. If Goldberg had gotten his head around this popular entertainment he would have realized it's just about gang warfare. These white people gangs fight each other in the Washington, D.C. suburbs over very important intellectual property such as blueprints for the nuclear missile satellite interceptors ("STAR WARS") that currently hang over our heads in space. They kill each others' people, drive oldish cars, answer oldish telephones and take orders from the 1980s versions of old people. The reason they do this is because... well, let the show explain.

    *gestures toward projection screen* *you hear the howling wind of the void and see the words FOOTAGE NOT FOUND*

    There is some serious cosplay, too. For instance, the main KGB American dude, in the guise of "Clark" (NOT CLARK KENT) seduces an FBI secretary, who provides him with interesting information every time they "do it." This is a pattern she seems not to detect. Then, they get married.

    So, as you can see, the extreme rhetoric of ghost J. Edgar Hoover with regards to civil rights movement being the #1 threat to domestic security in the early 80s is entirely vindicated.

    The Americans. playing at 4p.m every third Wednesday in the deteriorating consciousness of Ronald Reagan.

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  22. Spaghetti Lee1:39 PM

    I love when rants fit with avatars.

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  23. [drinks in the distilled rage of this comment like a healthful bitter tonic]

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  24. Bizarro Mike1:45 PM

    This is a good idea. I'd recommend producing it as a two camera studio sitcom with a laugh track.

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  25. fraser1:49 PM

    The phobia about deep-cover Reds has been around since the 1950s. And of course, was preceded by the idea that every Japanese-American was utterly loyal to the Emperor, no matter how American they acted.

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  26. Zencomix1:54 PM

    The link doesn't work for me, but I'm upvoting it anyways because it's Tom Burka.

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  27. Jay B.2:46 PM

    Avoiding spoilers as much as possible, one character, an African-American Communist spy recruited from the civil-rights movement, should have the Left furious.

    Holy shit he's obtuse.


    Not only is this show taking place in the 1980's, when there were actual American communists, but the Civil Rights movement was actively dealing with — and arguing over — communism since about 1941 and probably long before that. Marxism was literally part of the movement in no small part because "democracy" was used as a cudgel to marginalize the black race in this country since the beginning of its history. Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison (to say nothing of Bayard Rustin) among many, many others were bitterly disillusioned by communism. No one denies that there were black Marxists. Hoover's hysteria was about what it meant and what what screaming "communism" was meant to do. Just like no one denies that Dalton Trumbo was in the communist party, but rather what he, or anyone in Hollywood, was trying to actually achieve by joining as a young man and why it did or didn't matter.


    And considering in the context of the show that white people were fucking Russian spies, it hardly seems outrageous that there was a black one too.



    Gah.

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  30. Provider_UNE3:37 PM

    Given his notorious girth it should be impossible for Jonah to stick his head any further up his ass than it already resides. Dude must have trained with Indian mystics and the Romanian Gymnastic team.


    Someone must have told him that there was a free lunch up there.


    As I am making my own self a little sick in the stomach, I must stop before I imagine a window in K-J-Lo's abdomen and the sight of her wandering around looking like she has six legs because someone told Jonah that there was a fantastic, cheap, yet exclusive Taco joint up in there.


    I apologize in advance, it seems that I could not help myself ans as everybody knows, misery loves company.
    ...

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  31. GregMc3:40 PM

    Ahem.


    Roxanne's red light?
    One world, not three?
    De do do do, de DA DA DA?


    Wake up!


    (. . . and if I built this gulag inside your heart / encircled you with trenches and barbed wire . . .)

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  32. BigHank533:45 PM

    Sweet holy fuck, what is Jonah going to read into An Englishman in New York?

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  33. Provider_UNE3:47 PM

    These assholes are not content to continue flogging the dead pony well post mortem, they have to incinerate the bones, place the ashes in a special urn with an equally special hole and take turns fucking the shit out of that urn.


    The greatest crime in humanity for winger brethren is that somewhere somehow, one single person of color unfairly received an unearned dime, a "crime" that trumps abortion, the Holocaust and at least fifty Hitler's squared.
    ...

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  34. whetstone3:47 PM

    the fact you like a character doesn’t mean that character has to be good


    Sometimes I get irritated that Jonah Goldberg is well-compensated for writing things like this. But then I realize that he's either stupid enough that this bare concept of basic literacy seems profound, or he realizes that his audience actually needs to be told that. Or somewhere in between: years of writing for an audience as dim as The Corner's have corroded Goldberg's mind, like artistic lead poisoning.


    Either way, having that be your job must suck massive balls.

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  35. Provider_UNE3:48 PM

    I didn't get past "strawfucking" before I felt compelled to upvote. I will now read the rest of what promises to be a fine rant.
    ...

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  36. Provider_UNE3:52 PM

    ...expert on anything beyond internet midget eskimo porn.


    The only improvement I can imagine for this image would be if you could somehow wedge "tentacle" in there.
    ...

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  37. Derelict4:02 PM

    Uh, well, that song was already put forth by Jonah the Fail as an exemplar of true conservative music.
    Seriously: A song about Quentin Crisp as an exemplar of conservative music.

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  38. KatWillow4:03 PM

    There was a movie called "Little Nikita" about a teen who discovers his parents are deep cover Soviet Spys. I never saw it, but kind of imagined a "Red Dawn" in the suburbs.

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  39. sharculese4:16 PM

    In the NY Mag article on the lastest NRO Cruise there's an amazing moment where Jonah is talking about the future of the Republican Party, and he says something like "eventually people will come back to us, because we're objectively correct," that I think sums up everything about him: the laziness, the smugness, the total refusal to examine any of his premises.


    That and his legendary exchange with SEK.

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  40. M. Krebs4:31 PM

    Sure it was a thing. Didn't you ever see Now Way Out, starring Kevin Costner and Sean Young? Gene Hackman, too!

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  41. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard5:09 PM

    Uh, don't you mean a bag of salted hammers and sickles?

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  42. satch5:38 PM

    And now it's Louie Gohmert's "Terror Babies" Oh, wait... they were BORN here, not raised in some compound in Afghanistan built to resemble an American suburb. They'll have to to learn the necessary awesome martial arts skills playing Wii.

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  43. satch5:45 PM

    "When did Sting make any special claim of knowledge of Soviet life...?

    "Private eyes are watching you"?

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  44. satch5:59 PM

    "I have to wonder if the producers realize how much the show undercuts the Left, at least the Hollywood Left. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the party line among many liberals was that the Cold War was, at its core, silly — dangerous, but silly."

    I'm sorry, Jonah, but WASN'T it? I must have missed something...

    "But the KGB in The Americans are for the most part fully
    committed to the Cause. Kerri Russell’s Elizabeth couldn’t be more
    committed to international struggle of the proletariat."

    "For the MOST PART??? I'm willing to concede that they WERE fully committed... but that didn't mean they were right.

    "...an African-American Communist spy recruited from the civil-rights
    movement, should have the Left furious."


    I always love the quaint notions that wingnuts have concerning what infuriates or enrages "The Left". I'd like to see a serious study done sometime on why they persist in confusing eye-rolling, heavy sighing, and snickering as "rage".

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  45. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard6:02 PM

    Roxanne, you don't have to put on the red scare,
    Go mess with Reagan? Those friggin' commie Ruskies wouldn't dare.

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  46. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard6:12 PM

    you can see that he has everything he needs to reach a conclusion - Hey, maybe liberals aren't the one-dimensional Red-baiting stereotypes that I have in my head. But it's Jonah Goldberg, laziest man on Earth, and he refuses to put in the effort to make that last connection.


    This is not central to his point.

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  47. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard6:21 PM

    He doesn't collect a paycheck to do that, his paycheck is the bounty paid to his mother for almost bringing down the Big Dog.

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  48. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard6:27 PM

    As a Yonkers resident, I am seriously pissed off that no cute redheaded femmes fatale tried to seduce me in order to pry secrets out of me.

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  49. MRC2107:15 PM

    one character, an African-American Communist spy recruited from the civil-rights movement, should have the Left furious.

    And yet, this does not have the Left furious. I challenge you to come up with one example, Jonah, of the Left being furious over this. The Left is going "Holy shit, Keri Russell! Who knew she could be such a badass?"

    What is making me furious, Jonah, and judging from other rants here I'm not alone, is that you can pull this ... witlessness ... from your lazy ass and get paid for it. Whereas I'm out here working my ass off. Well, OK, not right at this very minute ... I'm ranting on a blog this very minute... but on my laziest day I am not the slacker you are every day, you fat gob of self-entitlement.

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  50. Chris Anderson8:08 PM

    I reread his sentence to see if I had missed the words "and sickles" the first time.

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  51. Tudor Jennings8:12 PM

    ... and relax.

    Good work, paleotectonics!

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  52. Tudor Jennings8:14 PM

    nice, subtle juxtaposition of the words "wedge" and "tentacle".


    Shame you couldn't have worked "Goldberg" and "fundament" into the same sentence too. ;)

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  53. Tudor Jennings8:16 PM

    LOL!

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  54. redoubt8:40 PM

    Nonsense On Straw Stilts

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  55. redoubt8:51 PM

    You'd think that for someone who was alive, and in junior high, during the actual time period (and Ayn Rand had died the year before--maybe he was in mourning?) he'd have actual teenaged memories. Instead he applies the reasoning skills of a toddler, who likes what mommy tells him to like and vice versa.

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  56. the only thing i can honestly - i mean that, honestly - glean when i read jonah's stuff is, "hey brah isn't it cool i get to watch teevee and write about it for a job and stuff?"

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  57. ACTUALLY [said in a thurston howell iii voice], the it's always sunny ep, "the gang goes jihad," is some brilliant satire jammed into 18 minutes.

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  58. Another Kiwi9:10 PM

    Look, there's a lotta people in Yonkers and not that many re-headed femme fatales. Be patient grasshopper.

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  59. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard10:14 PM

    Obviously, you've never been to McLean Ave, old chum. More red-headed heartbreakers than you can shake a shillelagh at, here, in the City of Y______.

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  60. AngryWarthogBreath10:29 PM

    Which, to be honest, is understandable. I mean, if I got to watch TV and write about it for a job and stuff, my every second post would be "My job is so totally super-amazing, you guys!"

    Unless I was working in a company with the same expectations of quality as the National Review, I'd be fired within two weeks, but I can promise you this: the first time I wrote "Hey, guys, conservatives like Game of Thrones, right? But legally recognised authority tends to be full of dicks on Game of Thrones! It totally ruins their worldview!", I would immediately vomit, delete the post, and apologise wholeheartedly.



    This is why I will never get to watch TV and write about it for a job and stuff.

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  61. BigHank5311:12 PM

    How hard do you think Jonah really has to work? The column is harder than it looks, but he's got a formula for it (seriously, diagram two sometime, and compare their structure) and it can't take more than eight hours at worst. Two if things are flowing, fourish on average. He's got to make some number of posts on The Corner to keep the National Review checks coming in. And the rest of the time he can shmooze at right-wing gabfests or attempt to lead horrific book panels or figure out how to collect another seven-figure book advance.

    Why would Mr. Goldberg work harder to make an argument his audience either wouldn't care for or wouldn't like even if they could understand it? He's already got his golden ticket.

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  62. mgmonklewis11:36 PM

    I want to recline on a couch in Pompeii with this comment, being fed peeled grapes by NRO slave-lackeys before repairing to the vomitorium.


    (Yes, I know that's a misconception. But a ficitious Roman aristocrat can be given license, yes?)

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  63. montag211:36 PM

    Hmm. "[A fictional character in a fictional retro TV show about the Cold War] basically vindicates J. Edgar Hoover’s most extreme rhetoric about the civil-rights movement!"

    That's the sort of crack analysis one's come to expect from Doughy and the NRO. Yes, and "Knight Rider" basically vindicates everything GM said in its advertising about lame dogs like the Chevy Citation.

    "Heartbreak Ridge" basically vindicates everything Reagan said about the dangers presented to the entire free world by Grenada.

    "Charlie Wilson's War" basically vindicates everything Reagan said about the Afghan warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar being "freedom fighters."

    "The Green Berets" basically vindicates everything the right wing said about the Vietnam War.

    "Dragnet" basically vindicates everything Richard Nixon said about the "war on drugs."

    Etc., etc., etc.

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  64. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard11:45 PM

    "Two Girls One Cup" basically validates the NRO's opinion of the president because Obama's socialist policies will ensure that those two girls never get cups of their own.

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  65. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard11:49 PM

    In his later years, Gus Hall lived in Yonkers.

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  66. DocAmazing11:51 PM

    There's a very popular musical touring right about now, all about the Scottsboro Boys. I wonder if Jonah knows anything about its libretto?


    On second thought, please ignore that.

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  67. Another Kiwi12:01 AM

    Look at his last sentence I’m not saying that the show is pure anti-Communist agitprop. All I’m saying is that if you set out to make a good TV show, odds are any hopes
    of crafting a successful political polemic will slip through your fingers.

    That's it really. some sort of wishy-washy conclusion that anyone could come to. "Odds are" is central to his point here, he doesn't really know and he's not willing to make it debatable, he's just farting in the wind and getting that Scaife money into the bank.

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  68. Chris Anderson12:17 AM

    It must have been awkward and sad, being in Jonah's party after viewing any of the Austin Powers movies. The ensuing Cold War discussion, the culture-war digressions and connections, the icky sexual dynamic Mike Meyers surely generated ... I'm almost sorry for Jonah's poor wife, and friend (if any).

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  69. philadelphialawyer1:22 AM

    Fatboy:

    "I have to wonder if the producers realize how much the show undercuts the Left, at least the Hollywood Left...one character, an African-American Communist spy recruited from the civil-rights movement, should have the Left furious. If you take the character seriously (which I don’t necessarily recommend) he demonstrates not only the murderous commitments of the hard Communist Left, but he basically vindicates J. Edgar Hoover’s most extreme rhetoric about the civil-rights movement!"

    As you say....What are Republicans gonna say to African Americans...."Oh yeah, what about that guy on that show?"

    Huh?

    Even one of the commenters at NRO doesn't buy it...

    brandonrg

    "...how does a fictional character in a 2013 TV show validate J. Edgar Hoover's rhetoric from decades ago?....

    "I don't see how a fictional character vindicate's Hoover's rhetoric... That someone in 2013 can invent a character along the same lines as Hoover imagined doesn't actually say anything about how justified Hoover's real-life rhetoric was, at least as far as I can see. Can you explain it?"

    With the other poor commenter being left to argue something along the lines of, well, fiction can provide a new perspective, or something like that.

    This seems like an ongoing thing in the rightwingosphere. I remember not too long ago, on this very blog, there was a discussion of a conservative's review of the TV show Hell on Wheels, in which the conservative guy said:

    "....Sherman’s March and the Union’s conduct of the war in general are depicted as vicious and unconscionable, whereas the Southern cause is characterized as a matter of honor, which the characters — who would know, of course — clearly accept as true."

    Basically, these guys figure that if some character in a work of historical fiction confirms something that conservatives believe about that time period, well then, it must be the case that that belief is correct. In The Americans, it is the existence of a Black, hard core, KGB spy, USSR communist in the Civil Rights movement. In Hell on Wheels, it is the acceptance of an anti Union, pro CSA interpretation of the Civil War by the contemporary characters. In both cases, the act of the authors in simply creating, out of whole cloth, the supposedly vindicating character/characterization/whatever, seems to have escaped the intrepid right wing culture warriors.

    The North was wrong, the South was right. How do we know? Cuz made up folks, "who should know," in a TV show, written a century and a half after the fact, hear someone say so, and "accept it as true." The CRM was riddled with African American communist KGB spies, just like ol' J Edgar said it was. How do we know? Cuz there is a made up character along those lines in a made up TV show, written half a century or so after the fact.

    Somehow, the "Left," and its view of the events in question, is "undercut," cuz some fiction writer, in the most recent case a person writing for a Fox network, no less, says "unh uh-uh." Fact is not stranger than fiction, as the righties see it, fact IS fiction.

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  70. Ellis_Weiner1:56 AM

    Hall and Oates. How about "Ev'ry step you take/I'll be watching you..."?

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  71. AGoodQuestion2:03 AM

    A show like The Americans is of course going to be a tar-baby to professional and wannabe professional scribblers whose first reaction isn't "interesting concept" but "what does this say about contemporary liberalism?" I'm not saying that's why the show was created, but I'm sure it made the process more amusing.

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  72. The bandwidth is controlled by the government.


    How can I trust any teevee show.

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  73. Hey, if Jonah will fit up there, what they hell, they could save some money and make it the itinerary for the next NR cruise.

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  74. I think I remember that - Judd Hirsch, JoBeth Williams, and the dead Phoenix, is that the one?

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  75. This is it, exactly.


    Although wingnut writing may resemble opinion columns, they are nonetheless products, and as such are created and distributed with the same tired market strategies and tactics as the tobacco companies (and heroin dealers) use--hook a market of consumers and the shit practically sells itself. Oh, once in awhile you can make a lame-ass attempt to expand your sales to 9-year-olds, but in the end, you can rest comfortably that you always have your core audience who will buy your shit any time of the day or night.

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  76. Cargo7:23 AM

    I was wondering how long it would take wingnuts to notice The Americans. Which is an excellent show by the way, a new fave.

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  77. satch8:42 AM

    Oh dear... Jonah wins again...

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  78. glennisw9:37 AM

    one character...should have the Left furious.


    How odd a thought that a fictional character would make people "furious" because of some tenuous thread of identity politics. I guess it's a projection of the right's frequent outrage at what they find offensive in popular culture, they naturally think the mirror image to their cultural touchstones should affect the left the same way. But seriously? "furious"? about a TV character?

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  79. glennisw9:43 AM

    Wait, how do you "take a character seriously" in an isolated way? You either take the whole opus seriously or not. Is he saying like, "Well, I take War and Peace seriously, except for Prince Andrei, I don't take him seriously at all."

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  80. tigrismus9:44 AM

    Your fictitious Roman aristocrat basically vindicates the most extreme rhetoric about vomitoria.

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  81. Halloween_Jack9:51 AM

    But the key “provocation” of the first season is Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative, which the Left has always ridiculed as absurd. The Soviets didn’t think it was absurd; it helped drive the reforms that led to the Empire’s demise.

    That, of course, is the #1 myth of the professional Reaganista: that Ronnie drove the Soviet Union into bankruptcy. In fact, they, along with most of the rest of the world, knew that SDI was a crock that wouldn't work--for one thing, it had zero chance of stopping bomber- and sub-based missiles--and Gorbachev even tried to use it as a wedge to split off America from NATO. The real reason why Gorbachev introduced glastnost was that the problems with the Soviet economy, which long predated the Reagan administration, were becoming endemic, exacerbated by things like their Afghanistan War and Chernobyl, and it was a Hail Mary pass that ended up in the bleachers. But, you know, "famed Sovietologist, Sting", ha ha *poot*.

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  82. Jay B.11:03 AM

    Sure. And they are really really boring. But back in the 80's they had a little more cultural currency.

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  83. "...odds are any hopes of crafting a successful political polemic will slip through your fingers."


    Oh, bleeding Jeezus... "odds are" the creators of the show didn't give a rat's ass about crafting a "successful polemic", they were trying to craft a TV show that the network suits would think was entertaining enough to attract eyeballs and advertisers. Which is why you'll never, God willing, never see "The Christmas Sweater" on AMC.

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  84. BigHank5311:55 AM

    The inhabitants of The Corner are always working themselves into a fury over some imagined slight in popular media. Doesn't everyone live that way?

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  85. BigHank5311:57 AM

    Handy window into Goldberg's thought processes, though: I wonder if he can still view anything without sorting it into some political category. Probably not.

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  86. Howlin Wolfe12:57 PM

    What's the deal with right wingers doing all this Soviet-style cultural analysis, trying to shoehorn what they see as the messages or themes of various cultural products into support for their cartoon ideology? Is it projection? Envy? Cluelessness? I'll go with all 3.

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  87. Howlin Wolfe2:04 PM

    Kinda makes Jonah into his own whale.

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  88. Halloween_Jack2:17 PM

    "Lemon Party"... sorry, there are some places even I won't go.

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  89. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard4:01 PM

    Too easy... some people prefer their tea with lemon, therefore "Lemon Party" validates the popularity of the Tea Party.

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  90. Another Kiwi4:17 PM

    Also too he "caught up with it while travelling"? From the couch to the toilet is not travelling Jo Jo. That's getting paid to wear pyjamas all day and watch teevee.

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  91. Another Kiwi4:34 AM

    remember he did a big freakout over "Avatar" because it was all Greens and Hippies and the Soldjas were dissed and that. One cringes for his kids with their old man spluttering and farting at the movie screen.

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