Political lessons from Game of Thrones

This is a repost from my Facebook feed.

One of the reasons I love Game of Thrones -- both books and shows -- is because it provides such great examples of how politics often works. I’ve brought that up often to my friends this election season.

There are two separate areas where any candidate can stand or fall. The first thing is that politicians create policy. Ultimately what we should want most from our politicians is that they will enact good policy. During an election season, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we’re not just talking about a sports competition, where we hate the other team because they’re our rivals, and their wins and losses make us happy and sad just because they’re part of the tribe.

We want to elect good politicians because we want them to do stuff that matters on a large scale. Build infrastructure. Improve the economy. Keep the populace safe. Make sure the justice system is fair. Etc.

(continued...)

Some ambivalent thoughts about democracy

I've been listening to the 538 election podcast talking about the Brexit vote while I wait for my son's band concert to start. Having some weirdly ambivalent thoughts about democracy.

I think one of the most pressing problems in any society is making sure that minorities don't get stripped of their rights. This is a non trivial issue to solve. Appointed rulers (i.e. kings) tend to care about disempowered people very little. Entrenched ruling groups, like an established board of directors for a company, tend to empower people that they like personally, and in practice bring in more people who look and think like them.

But then again, mobs of people don't necessarily make informed decisions, and then they can STILL be indifferent to minority rights when voting. So for example, we have the 1964 civil rights act, which prevents anyone in the entire country from discriminating in various arenas. If it was put to a state by state vote, many states might explicitly give preferential treatment to straight white males. But we prevent them from doing that on purpose, because you shouldn't be able to vote away some people's rights.

I'm not British, so I don't have the most thorough understanding of Brexit. But the sense I get is that those who voted "Leave" are most generally the UK equivalent of Trump supporters -- i.e., cranky xenophobic nationalists. This is probably an oversimplification of both countries, but it's the rule of thumb I'm going with for now. I'm hearing that many Brits are experiencing buyer's remorse, having made a "protest vote" without really understanding the impact of the decision, and having ridiculed and dismissed "experts" such as economists, who universally said this vote would be bad news. In the US it seems like a popular stance to oppose "career politicians" and vote for outsiders who haven't held office before. Donald Trump is like the end game of this strategy.

In politics, as in other areas like science and medicine, I think there is definitely something to be said for weighting the input of experts differently than other people. Sure, power corrupts. But also, it would be great if judgement on a law was made more by people who have had time to study the law and understand the issue better.

But on the other hand, we go back to appointed rulers having likely biases against "commoners." So it's a tough thing to figure out a fair system.

State of the Democratic primary, part 2: Hillary Clinton on LGBT rights

As I said in my previous post, I like Bernie Sanders, and I like Hillary Clinton, and I'd enthusiastically support either of them in their run for president against Donald Trump (the likely Republican front runner at this moment). I also think that Hillary Clinton is probably going to win the nomination, and that's fine with me.

I have heard a lot of people dismiss Hillary Clinton as "pretty good... for a Republican" or say that she's not a real liberal. I totally disagree, and in my next few posts I hope to make a convincing case that Clinton is, for liberals, a pretty good liberal ally, and vastly superior to Donald Trump. (Which, admittedly, is a low bar for me.)

State of the Democratic primary, part 1: Post Super Tuesday evaluation

Here are a few brief comments about what I think of the state of the Democratic primary so far.

1. Bernie Sanders is a fine candidate who would make a good president.
2. Hillary Clinton is a fine candidate who would make a good president.
3. Neither candidate is perfect. They both have strengths and weaknesses.
4. They are, however, both miles better in almost every way than Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee.
5. With a few exceptions, both candidates have run generally positive campaigns, and most likely the losing candidate will be gracious and endorse the winner.
6. Hillary Clinton has moved to a better and more openly liberal platform due to Bernie Sanders' involvement in the race. Whether Sanders wins the nomination or not, he has been an extremely good influence overall and I appreciate that.
7. Looking at the Super Tuesday results, and the polling of upcoming states, I think there is a very strong likelihood that Clinton will be the nominee. It's not a sure thing, but I give it good odds.
8. ...And that's just fine.

I know I have many liberal friends who will disagree with me on several of those points. No problem.

I have a lot of concrete reasons for thinking that Hillary Clinton is a decent candidate, and my fellow Democrats should be proud to support her in the general election. I also know that many reasonable Bernie Sanders have not yet conceded my point #7, so I'm a little wary of making them defensive by posting them right now. The question will probably be resolved one way or the other in the next few weeks, or by July 25th at the latest, and I've already voted. So while I do think Clinton will be the nominee, I don't feel strongly about arguing for it right now.

Regardless, I've heard a few Bernie Sanders supporters say they feel very depressed when they contemplate their candidate possibly losing the primary. I understand this disappointment, but I don't share the feeling that Sanders is the one and only candidate who can do the right thing in office for the next four to eight years.

For those people, I will be posting a follow up to this post in the near future, discussing my thoughts on Clinton as the nominee. Should Sanders turn the tide in the meantime, that's fine too; my arguments will not be needed.

2016 predictions

Yesterday was election day for a lot of things that didn't matter much. That means we're one year from picking a new president. I have some expectations for that election. This is almost certainly unwise, you should never put out a record of predicting the future in a way where you can be proven wrong later. But I think it's fun, and I think I have a pretty good track record for broad predictions in the last two presidential races. So here comes my prophecy for 2016. Succeed or fail, you can expect me to link back to this post one year from now.

This post is probably going to make some of my friends angry, so please bear in mind that (1) this is what I EXPECT will happen, not necessarily what I HOPE will happen; and (2) This is far from certain, and I am open to admitting how wrong I was, but I do have enough arrogance to say "I told you so" if I am right. Arguing in the comments will probably not be educational to me or any other participant, but I predict it will happen anyway. :)

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will be the only candidates in the race very soon. The national polls today show Clinton ahead of Sanders by roughly a factor of 2:1. That gap will shift around a little, he may get as close as 3:2 at some times, but after the day when a bunch of Southern states vote, it will be fairly clear he's not going to win. He will remain in the primary race until at least half the states have voted, but not much longer.

Sanders will accept defeat with relative grace, and will announce that he supports Clinton (with clearly stated reservations). He will probably be offered a cabinet position or even the VP spot. He won't necessarily accept. Many Sanders fans, on the other hand, will be very angry. They will declare that the system is rigged, and threaten not to vote for Clinton or anyone. Some of them will definitely follow through on this threat, although if Sanders does join the ticket then all bets are off.

Donald Trump will continue grabbing headlines for a while. He still be in the news all the damn time six months from now, because he's hilarious to talk about, but he won't be the candidate. After the first few states vote, there will be one or two very obvious choices for the most viable "anti-Trump candidate." Many other Republicans will finally start to drop out, and the remaining primary voters will coalesce around the anti-Trump. I have no idea who this candidate is right now, but I don't think it's Ben Carson. Wild guess: Marco Rubio has a shot. Don't hold me to that one.

Trump will call the eventual anti-Trump a loser in public many, many times, before that person becomes the official GOP candidate. Trump's concession speech will be incredibly petty. The Republican candidate will be more moderate than most of the candidates running today, and Republican voters in general will be really tepid in their support for him, but they'll grumble and go along with it anyway and pretend to like him.

Not-Trump nominee will try to fire up the base by saying and doing things that will alienate a lot of voters who aren't Republicans. He will especially be a complete dick to women, racial minorities, and non-Christians.

Clinton will have a lot of Barack Obama's campaign team on her staff. They will make very careful plans about which states they need to focus on in order to guarantee victory, and they will ask a lot of volunteers to help keep Democrats interested in the race. Republicans will constantly repeat that most people agree with them on all the issues, and that the polls which say otherwise are just the liberal media lying as usual.

Hillary will win the popular vote by a relatively small margin, but her strategists will ensure that she wins the electoral vote by a ridiculous number that is an obvious landslide. Republicans will say the election was stolen, and they'll also focus on the popular vote to say that Clinton has no mandate.

Gerrymandered districts will guarantee that Republicans keep the house, but it's a toss-up whether they keep the Senate. They will immediately begin discussing how to impeach Clinton before her term starts.

I have spoken. You are hereby invited to bookmark this post and dredge it up so you can make fun of me once I am proven wrong.

Trumpmania! and a grand unified theory of the Republican party

Well... it's been two years since I posted here. This blog is in a weird area of my attention, because these days I do so much small scale writing on Facebook and Twitter that I don't feel a strong need to write blogs very often; and when I do, The Atheist Experience blog gets most of my attention. But ya know, political season is almost upon us, and writing about politics is one niche that I think this blog definitely still fills.

Ed Brayton​ posted the following on Facebook:

"I will win is the Hispanic vote … I’ll create jobs, and I’ll get the Hispanic vote … the Hispanics love me." -- Donald Trump 

New poll: 81% of Hispanics have an unfavorable view of Trump, compared to 13% with a favorable view. 

Yep Don, they love you. Absolutely love you. That's what happens when you view the world through gaudy gold-plated glasses.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, revisited

Lynnea and I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind last night. The only other time I've seen it was in its theater release in 2004. It's weird to think how different everything was back then. Ben was two years old, I hadn't started grad school yet, and my first marriage still seemed more or less stable. Hard to believe, but it was nine years ago. I remembered very well that the movie was a good mind screw, but I hadn't remembered all the details, so really I went through the surprises all over again. Lynnea had not seen it before at all.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!

Superman vs. the Klan.

I downloaded a series of episodes of the old Superman radio serial called "Clan of the Fiery Cross," which Ben and I have started listening to in the car.  These episodes have some historical significance, as told by Wikipedia and this book:

Apparently There was a human rights activist who infiltrated the Klan and documented a bunch of secret meetings.  He went to the producers of Superman with this information, and they turned it into a series of episodes in which Superman battles the Klan as the main villain.  It helped a lot in delegitimizing them.  Naturally, I love stories about using entertainment media to solve real social problems.

It's really funny to listen to old radio shows.  As a kid I owned some cassette tapes with selected episodes of George and Gracie, The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, and Charlie McCarthy, so I'm familiar with the big-talking style of radio stories, but it's new to Ben and he finds it hilarious.  We've only heard one episode out of 16 so far, so we've only gotten vague hints that Klan members will show up.  What makes it particularly funny is that it's full of slang from the 40's.  I simply have no idea whether the dialogue is well written or sounded natural when, for example, everybody keeps referring to one character (a little league pitcher) as a "sorehead."  "He's such a sorehead!"  "Don't be a sorehead, buddy!"  Over and over again.

It also led to a discussion with Ben about why the production values are so low.  He mentioned that the radio show -- which obviously has one guy playing an organ for all the background music, heroic or sinister -- doesn't sound as good as a movie or TV show.  I pointed out that it costs a lot to compose a professional score and hire a full orchestra, and these guys had to crank out an episode every week, plus the business of radio shows may not have been big enough to justify any kind of serious budget.

What's especially interesting is how thoroughly integrated the advertising is with the show.  One minute the announcer will be breathlessly describing the exploits of Jimmy Olsen, and another minute he'll be saying, "Kids, Kellogg's Pep is delicious.  When your mom brings you Kellogg's Pep, make sure you eat it ALL and don't waste any.  And pass on this important information to your family, so they'll know how to eat Pep properly."  These ads would go on for about two minutes, and Pep was the only product being advertised in the first show.  (I looked it up, Pep was a competitor to Wheaties and contained toy prizes like Cracker Jacks did.)

It was comically transparent, and it made me wonder whether or not advertising has gotten cleverer or more subtle since then.  To be honest, the way I consume media allows me to avoid the most obnoxious commercials.  I don't have a cable subscription, so everything I watch is via Netflix, DVDs, movie theaters, or downloads, and I have ad filters on all my browsers.  When I see a commercial on TV outside my house it tends to make me cringe.  Still, it's probably not as bad as the actors waving products around while doing the show.

You can download the episodes from this archive, or look them up on YouTube.

Election night cheer

Now let's see here... as I write this, Florida, Virginia, and Montana are the only states still considered too close to call, but Obama is ahead in all three.  Absent those results, the electoral votes stand at 290-200.  Obama could lose them all and he still has the election.  If Obama wins them all, that would be 338-200.  That would mean that Obama beat Romney and it wasn't close.

Who could have predicted such an outcome?

...Oh that's right, ME.

The technology of election turnout: My experience as a phone bank volunteer

Happy election day, everybody.  Nate Silver shows Barack Obama with a 91.6% chance of winning today, and a projected electoral college of 315-223 votes.  I look forward to the results at the end, so that I can see whether my "not at all close" prediction from early May will give me gloating rights or make me look foolish.  This guy, of course, still believes that Romney is way ahead and has been the whole time.  We'll see, right?

This week I used up some of my remaining Paid Time Off days.  While I was out of the office, I decided to take a break from the obvious regimen of improving at video games, to visit a local phone bank.  I put in six hours on Saturday, and three on Monday.

[...]

Election thoughts 2: Momentum and winning with intangibles

In my last post I talked about the long term consequences of the Republican strategy and about why Mitt Romney is losing as a result of it.  The question, though, is just how badly he is losing.

I've linked to electoral-vote.com often, since it is a site which breaks down polls state by state and collects them into an overall picture of how the important numbers may shake out in the election.  A similar site, with better analysis, is Five Thirty Eight, a New York Times blog run by Nate Silver, which uses some complicated math formulas to forecast the probabilities of each candidate winning.  (538 is the total number of electoral votes available from all 50 states.)

[...]

Election thoughts 1: Divide, conquer, and lose

This election season has been great for making me feel overconfident.  Back in early May, I predicted that Obama is going to beat Romney, and it's not going to be very close.  With less than two months to go, I see no reason to revise that estimate.  When I made my prediction the score was 290-215 electoral votes.  As of today, it is now 319-206; the lead that was overwhelming before has increased by 38 EVs.

And talking about overconfidence, lately I've been leaning towards a theory that the Republican party is even more screwed than they appear to be.  It all has to do with a strategy proposed to Richard Nixon, which has worked very well for Republicans but seems to be backfiring now.

I enjoyed the latest XKCD so much that I had to actually perform it.

Early election prognostication

I'm going to go ahead and make my presidential election prediction right now, subject to wild swings as new evidence comes in: Obama is going to beat Romney, and it's not going to be very close.

I'm basing this on largely on the status of http://www.electoral-vote.com/, a site I followed obsessively in 2008, and they wound up being a pretty good indicator of the race.

Electoral map as of 5/2/2012

Since Romney secured the nomination, nationwide polling on Obama vs. Romney has been close enough to be called a dead heat in some cases.  This one, for example.  Despite this, right now on a state by state basis, the election numbers look really, really good for the incumbent.

Classical music ringtones

I'd like to get some suggestions for a few new classical music ringtones.

Since I got my first Android a year and a half ago, I've made a minor hobby of cutting music clips together into new MP3's that make good ringtones. My all-purpose ringtone up till now has been Vivaldi's Concerto for 2 trumpets in C. (Click the link for a recording on YouTube.) Now that I've replaced my phone, and I'm a bit sick of hearing that all the time, I'm looking for more suggestions.

My dad's got his own personal ringtone: "Jupiter" from Holst's The Planets.

My sister, being a muppets geek, gets some theme music from Labyrinth.

Lynnea's ringtone revolves around a fact about her: Every girl's crazy about a sharp dressed man.

So anyway, I'm looking for more suggestions about music to cut into other ringtones. The clip in question needs to be loud and attention getting, and preferably upbeat so I'll be in a good mood to get the call. It also should be only instrumental. Classical is preferred but obviously some rock fits the bill.

Sloppy statistics failing to show racism

This is a bit silly, but it's a good illustration of a bad statistical understanding coloring the perception of a problem that doesn't actually exist.

Cracked.com is running an article today called "4 Famous Pop Culture Moments Everyone Remembers Incorrectly." Sometimes I enjoy their articles and sometimes not so much. But in this case, example #2 is a little weird and random.

Will Smith Never Says "Welcome to Earf" in Independence Day

Wait, what? He doesn't say Welcome to Earth? I swear I remember him saying that. Look, it's right here in convenient video format.

Oh wait, no! The author of the article actually was trying to emphasize the word "Earf," because apparently "everyone" misremembers the quote as being delivered in some kind of comical ebonics lingo, when it actually wasn't. Everyone, huh? First I ever heard of that.

As proof, he googles up the words "Welcome to earf" and boggles at the awe inspiring 40,000 hits. Come on though, if you are going to prove something with a google search, don't you think a little direct comparison is in order?

• "will smith welcome to earf"
  About 14,300 results
• "will smith welcome to earth"
  About 18,100,000 results

So... when you say "everyone," I guess you mean "Less than 0.1% of everyone," eh?

Am I the only one who finds Ron Paul's strategy creepy?

First the TL;DR version of this video: The Paul campaign dismisses elections as "beauty contests" and is extremely proud and smug about their ability to game the system. They hope to score the nomination, not by convincing a majority of people that Ron Paul is the best man for the job, but by taking advantage of loopholes in the way the election is organized. They envision a scenario where they can "win" a lot of states even while technically losing badly in the elections of those same states.

Longer version: This dude, who enters the video at around the 6:30 mark, is Doug Wead, senior adviser to the Ron Paul campaign. You may have noticed that Ron Paul is still in the race despite the fact that he hasn't won an election in a single state, and polls don't show him as the likely winner of any future state.

In this and a previous interview with Maddow, Wead proudly explains their strategy, which somehow involves "winning" in delegate states despite not actually winning the popular vote in any single state. Now the mechanics of electoral politics are complicated and honestly kind of boring, so I'm probably going to explain this wrong in some way. But the gist of it seems to be something like this. In some states, delegates are awarded proportionally to the number of votes they get, rather than "winner take all" for the state's popular election.

So the idea is: let's say for the sake of argument, Maine is allowed 13 delegates to the national Republican Convention. But the state election yields a pool of more than 13 delegates -- let's say 200 -- and they will then choose from among those delegates. So let's say maybe Rick Santorum won the election and gets 100 delegates, Romney comes in second with 80 delegates, and Ron Paul gets just 15 because he's not actually that popular among Republicans. The other 5 can be Stephen Colbert write-ins, I guess.

But in the Paul camp's mind, rather than wasting time on actually winning the vote, their best plan is to somehow badger the state party into letting only Ron Paul delegates go to the convention. That means that, in this example, Maine picks 13 delegates, and all of them are Ron Paul delegates even though they won only a small fraction of the vote, and all 185 not-Paul delegates are left out in the cold.

In the video, Doug Wead constantly grins and chortles over the pure genius of this plan, while Rachel looks sort of goggle-eyed and asks questions along the lines of, "Isn't that sort of ignoring who the people actually want to elect?" Wead repeatedly, over and over again, dismisses the actual voting process as "A beauty contest."

Now maybe he's right, that the system the Republican party uses is hopelessly corrupt, and that makes it possible to game the system in this way, and the Paul campaign is perfectly within their rights to take advantage of this and maybe even win.

But what I'm hearing from Wead is total contempt for elections as a means of picking a candidate. Look, I personally think the entire slate of Republican candidates is abysmal and would hate to have any of them win the presidency, Paul included. But this sort of blanket dismissal of elections as a beauty contest indicates what sounds like a much deeper hostility towards democracy as a whole.

Birther fail... again

It seems that last week a "birther" case, brought by professional loony and Zsa-Zsa Gabor impersonator Orly Taitz, was legally dumped. In the ruling (see PDF), Judge Malihi stated, yet again, that Barack Obama is in fact a U.S. citizen. The birther case was so bad that they lost even though neither Obama nor a lawyer representing Obama wasted their time showing up.

Needless to say, the right wing blogosphere is going nuts over this, to the point where searching Google News for "Malihi" will mostly bring up hysteria-laden headlines like "Georgia Judge Michael Malihi is a cowardly traitor."

Though much more low key, this article by "the Conservative voice of Arizona" manages to hit all the silly points after starting off with a reasonable summary of the facts.

"Using Malihi’s analysis, anyone born in the United States is a natural born citizen. In other words, according to Malihi, children born within the United States to illegal aliens, tourists and/or terrorists are natural born citizens and are, therefore, eligible to become President of the United States."

Well, um, yes. It's kind of established legal precedent already, I thought. Hey, you know what I could do? I could look it up!

All the original Constitution said about the birth issue was, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

The Fourteenth Amendment, though, says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

And then the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 1898, that a man born in the United States to two citizens of China, was a legal citizen of the United States, based on the Fourteenth amendment. Stupid old activist judges in the 19th century.

In other words, this isn't controversial law, and hasn't been for well over a hundred years.

But hey, nothing our friends at the right wing rag can't obfuscate with an analogy to a faulty syllogism.

"Malihi’s conclusion is more analogous to saying: All dogs are mammals and all cats are mammals and therefore, all cats are dogs."

Noooooo... What Malihi said was:

1. All people born in the United States are citizens.
2. Obama is a person born in the United States.
3. Therefore Obama is a citizen.
4. Dumbass.

I'm paraphrasing a bit, but as far as I can remember my logic classes, that is a valid Modus Ponens. Especially the last part.

Netflix, giving context to my childhood

As a kid I read a lot of MAD magazine. I believe that the first issue I ever bought had a parody of Superman III, which Wikipedia tells me would date it to December 1983, when I was 9. Following the same list forward and remembering the issues as well as I can, I probably retained the subscription for about ten years and dropped it when I went to college. I still have a box with some of those back issues, although they're not exactly in mint condition and hence worthless.

Thinking back on the experience, I find myself realizing for the first time that a nine year old is not the intended target audience. It had heavy political content which, like The Daily Show, educated while entertaining me, and probably shaped a lot of my political views. (There was quite a lot of mockery of the religious right, which is no friend to satire.) Also, the movie satires were often based on R-rated material, and the artists didn't shy away from drawing semi-nude characters. From the back, or using creative scenery covering, but as a teenager you take what you can get, ha ha.

So MAD sits in an odd place for me, because I remember it as kid's entertainment but it apparently was not. And I enjoyed a plenty of satires of TV and movies that I couldn't or wouldn't see, because of the rating or because the subject matter was a kind of adult that wasn't interesting to me. I never cared to watch watch Dukes of Hazzard or The A*Team, but I did read the fake versions. I remember loving their parody of "The Shining," and yet not seeing the movie until years later.

Netflix is providing an interesting service these days which has really altered my entertainment habits. Ten years ago you rented a movie from Blockbuster, and you paid for each movie you rented, so if you wanted to watch something then it had better be worth at least $4 to watch that particular movie, or you wouldn't bother. Five years ago, Netflix was mostly replacing Blockbuster, but you still had a limited number of discs available at any given time, so you had to carefully choose what you might really want to watch.

That's all changed now. Netflix's live streaming capability covers a good half of their total content, and therefore renting a movie is a lot more like highly interactive television. Pay the monthly fee, and watch whatever you want. With TV, you might be fine leaving a crummy show on as background noise that you only partly pay attention to. Likewise with Netflix, you can watch half a movie and then quit if you don't like it. Run a movie in a computer window and only pay partial attention to it while you do something else in a different window -- that's my preferred viewing method. Also, here in Austin there is very good high speed satellite wifi coverage to support my Android, and the Netflix app works pretty well. If I run out of podcasts and don't feel like listening to books, I can always turn on a TV series, stream the sound through my car speakers, and turn the screen face down to avoid the temptation of peeking when I drive.

As a result, I've got a lot of TV series and movies to catch up on that may not have been quite good enough to rent, but are still interesting for historical purposes. Which really helps for me to understand what those MAD satires were all about.

For example, I recently finished a movie called Jumpin' Jack Flash. Has anybody even heard of this one? It's a 1986 comedy/thriller starring Whoopi Goldberg as a hapless computer genius (in 1986 terms, that means she knows how to replace broken parts and use this arcane program that resembles a chat room). She starts getting mysterious messages from a British spy who is trapped in Soviet Union somewhere -- the Soviet Union being a convenient omnipresent villain in Reagan's America.

What's weird is that this movie has not left a significant mark on the cultural world in any sense, but I remember the satirical version pretty well. It was called "Jumbled Joke Flash."

The main running joke throughout the comic was about the fact that Whoopi Goldberg swears all the time. Nearly every single panel contained some variation of ASCII swear symbols, e.g., "@!#$". I even remember asking my mom how all these symbols should be read for maximum humorous effect, and she says "Why don't you just insert 'gawl dang' everywhere?"

Now I think it's kind of odd, though. Having watched the movie, there is quite a bit of casual swearing, although not much more than most people I know would do when in a stressful situation. Why draw so much attention to this? Was it very novel to have lots of swearing in an R-Rated movie? And doesn't the idea that swearing is silly and embarrassing enough to hang such an obvious lampshade on, support the notion that MAD really is targeted at young kids after all? I dunno, maybe I really was the intended audience.

Anyway, the movie was pretty unremarkable on the whole, and I see that Ebert hated it even though he thought Whoopi Goldberg made a valiant effort to save it through charisma. What surprised me the most was the complete lack of any particular twist that would make the sequence of events a surprise. Sure, there's a double agent who tries to kill her after appearing trustworthy, but that barely counts as a twist at all. I was wondering if "Jack" the mysterious chat room agent, would turn out to be entirely fictional, or right in her office the whole time. Except, nope, at the end of the movie he shows up, and he is indeed a British agent, and they appear to have a potential romance there, and that's the happy ending.

So, yeah. There's a movie I wouldn't have seen without free streaming. On the flip side, Lynnea and I have gotten heavily into Arrested Development, which is a delight.

I guess all I'm trying to say here is that new technologies keep on subtly changing our habits to the point where the old ways of doing things start seeming quaint very quickly now.

It's been a few years since I broke out that box of magazines. I should go search it for more movie recommendations.

Important (?) lessons in children's entertainment

Here's the weirdest thing I learned via Wikipedia today.

As you may know, there are those out there who attempt to influence the content of childrens' television.  We call them "parents groups," although many are not comprised of parents, or at least not of folks whose primary interest is as parents.  Study them and you'll find a wide array of agendum at work...and I suspect that, in some cases, their stated goals are far from their real goals.

Nevertheless, they all seek to make kidvid more enriching and redeeming, at least by their definitions, and at the time, they had enough clout to cause the networks to yield.  Consultants were brought in and we, the folks who were writing cartoons, were ordered to include certain "pro-social" morals in our shows.  At the time, the dominant "pro-social" moral was as follows: The group is always right...the complainer is always wrong.

This was the message of way too many eighties' cartoon shows.  If all your friends want to go get pizza and you want a burger, you should bow to the will of the majority and go get pizza with them.  There was even a show for one season on CBS called The Get-Along Gang, which was dedicated unabashedly to this principle.  Each week, whichever member of the gang didn't get along with the gang learned the error of his or her ways.

That's just... I don't even... what?

I assume that this valuable social message also extends to your mother's favorite line about everyone else jumping off a bridge.

So in the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, for some weird reason they were forced to keep contriving situations for Eric, the whiny cavalier, to complain about what the rest of the group was doing... so that they could promote the message by ultimately making him look dumb or suffer in some way.

I recently read (most of) David Sirota's latest book, Back to our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now--Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything.  I enjoyed it, but at the same time, I found it a little excessively paranoid.  Sirota's thesis is that the movies, shows, and all other entertainment that we consumed as kids in the Reagan era was all part of an overarching propaganda machine, pushing various right wing values like nationalism, consumerism, and the notion that all government is part of an evil conspiracy.  In some cases I saw his point, and in others I just felt like it was a big Rorschach test where Sirota was superimposing his framework on everything he could find.

Anyway, I can't make heads or tails of this "the group is always right" thing, which is one case where there seems to have been an actual conspiracy by a specific group of individuals openly trying to give all shows a consistent message.


On a side note, blogger.com told me today that I should try switching my blog over to their nifty new customizable display format.  So I did, because the group is always right and I don't want to be a complainer.

I haven't spent enough time browsing it to decide if I hate it.  But if you hate it, feel free to let me know.