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guitarbuddha

Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007

Hi well I guess you are all just as excited as me about the new series of Patriarch and the Conservative Oddballs. Now I know that in its absence we have been kept sweet with the spinoff shows in this franchise especially Patriarch Medical Environment and Patriarch Unlikely Alternative Policeforce and the new Patriarch in a World Full of Bombs and Spies.

Sure they've all got a ruggedly handsome grumpy man in late middle age earning the grudging respect of a collection of more conventionally good looking and thick colleagues. And yes there is an ethnic boss figure who makes nothing but mistakes and is way too shouty. But for me the original is still the best.

Is it that the person you are supposed to fancy is more fanciable, or that the person you are supposed to loathe is more horrible, or even that the baddie's slowly revealed personal weaknesses somehow vindicate an idealised America in the mind of an awakening autamaton from the fifties more effectively in the original ? No, not really.

So what is it ? Are the flimsy attempts to subvert the subversive urges of children (by having characters who are presented as young,liberal, hip,alternative and educated suddenly articulate extreme right wing postitions without a glimmer of rebuttal) more obvious than on the original in the spinoffs. Well no not really that either.

Are the transparent gun product placements more prominent ? No not always. What about the coffee/apple/apple/apple/coffee/beer/apple/ product placements ? No it's not that. Are their egregious misrepresentations of the reality of technology and its integration into the working environment more patronising and laughable, again not always.

Is the incontinent delivery of witless quips to herald advertising less glib and infuriating in the original ? Yet again no, not always.

Will there definitely not be a ginger git in the original? You know that just might be it.

But still for all that I can't wait for Patriarch Loose in the Land of The Walking Braindead..... coming soon !!!!

D.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jul. 17 2013 19:13:25

guitarbuddha

Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007

RE: TV (in reply to guitarbuddha)

Exciting new titles in the neverending franchise 'Particarch and the Right Wing Oddballs'
coming up.

'Patriarch Kitchen Bully'
'Patriarch Antiques Snob.'

And let's not forget the ladies

'Matriarch and Americas Next Fashion Masochists'
'Matriarch's Why Your Dinner Party Sucks'.
'Matriarch and Why You Need Surgery to be Happy'

D.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 2 2013 18:16:06

Richard Jernigan

Posts: 3432
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA

RE: TV (in reply to guitarbuddha)

I just finished Robert Caro's "The Path to Power", the first of his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. I was fascinated.

I'm a native Texan, exposed to Texas politics over a fair period of time. My father was one of a group of young men who rebelled effectively against the corrupt bosses of a south Texas county. Tales of corruption and murder were a staple of my childhood. I thought that everyone kept a pistol on the seat beside them when they travelled by car.

In later years, Johnson's uncle, Huffman Baines was a good friend of my father. Mr. Baines owned a small rural telephone company that was a great benefit to the impoverished farmers and ranchers of central Texas. He was the soul of rectitude and integrity. He made no secret of his low opinion of Johnson.

But the details of the width and depth of Johnson's hypocrisy, detailed in Caro's extensively researched and lively book, were simply breathtaking to me. Johnson posed as a liberal New Dealer, a staunch advocate of Franklin Roosevelt's social programs. At the same time he secretly allied himself with the San Antonio machine, Texas independent oil men and Herman Brown of Brown and Root, eventually a mega-contractor of government projects. All these people hated Roosevelt and worked against him at every opportunity. But they were a huge source of political funds, and Johnson was bent on the acquisition of power from childhood.

Despite all this, Johnson was the most effective leader in civil rights legislation since Lincoln. People I have met who knew him described him as a "complex individual".

The roots of cynicism and hypocrisy run deep in American politics. Usually they are not exposed until the major actors are dead, and their accomplices are willing to talk.

For several years I worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency. At the time it would have been a felony to say so. As far as I know, the Agency did not spy on Americans at the time. My job was to be part of a panel which evaluated and directed technical intelligence collection on Soviet missile defenses.

That was more than 20 years ago. Here's how I imagine the current disastrous situation evolved, given my knowledge of the Agency's culture. After 9/11 the intelligence business in the USA was thoroughly shaken up. They were ashamed to have failed to thwart the disaster. The barriers between foreign and domestic intelligence were lowered, or even removed.

As the internet and other communication technology evolved, the Agency kept up. They have always had a core of technical virtuosity. The secret FISA court expanded the ambit of the Patriot Act well beyond the intentions of its authors. The Agency felt it had to exert every effort to protect the USA against another catastrophic terrorist act.

If the current leadership of the Agency reflect the ingrained culture of 20 years ago, they don't act from nefarious motives. They do the best they can on the job they believe they have been assigned.

Unfortunately, the result is a dangerous monstrosity, clearly violating the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, and a staggeringly efficient means of oppression just waiting to fall into the wrong hands--if it hasn't already done so.

It was Churchill who said, "The terrible thing about war is that it brings out not only the worst in people, but the best as well."

RNJ

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 3 2013 16:36:16

guitarbuddha

Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007

RE: TV (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

Richard........... thanks for your reply

And if it seems elliptical then I am the last person in a position to complain.

I enjoyed your post and it made me think of our discussions on novels. Cormac McCarthy has as one of his recurring themes the difficulty that a Texan has in reconciling his homespun moral code with a rapidly changing and exploitative political landscape.

Perhaps it is a shame that another author who pursues the themes of your post is so easily dismissed as an Oliver Stone style conspiracy theorist. Of course I refer to James Elroy.

I feel myself worn down by the lack of concern for the implicit antidemocratic nature of TV 'entertainment'.

Yet I have to say that for all it is easy to attack America in it's cultural hegemony there exists still a genuine satirical intent amongst American performers that is now all too absent in UK media.

When you talk about Johnson as
'the most effective leader in civil rights legislation since Lincoln. People I have met who knew him described him as a "complex individual".

I think about the ancient concept of The Mandate of Heaven. And the age old phrase 'Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man'. The reigns of power snap when one fails to engage with the inertia (and I mean that in the Newtonian sense ) of a democratic system. If you look at the past ten years of popular music charts when was the last protest song ?

Maybe we, the electorate,the record buyers, the consumers of popular culture, have a duty beyond the ballot. A duty to avoid habituation to what should be transparent propaganda. And if the right is sinister when disguised as the left, is it less sinister when it has such little regard for our awareness that it eschews disguise ?

D.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 3 2013 18:05:01