In Mike Judge’s 1999 comedy Office Space, its protagonist Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) is described by the downsizing consultants as a “straight shooter with upper management written all over him.” It’s a gross misjudgment on the part of the consultants, as Peter’s casual demeanor charmed them much the way that George W. Bush was able to charm almost half the voters of the United States of America the following year. Peter’s boss, the endlessly imitated Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole), is a lousy manager himself, but he’s driven by enough of a sense of self-preservation to disagree with them, explaining that Peter isn’t the caliber of person they want in upper management, and that “he’s also been having some problems with his TPS reports.”

Satire is Mike Judge’s strongest suit, and the disintegration of American society into various facets of stupidity is a topic he confronted more broadly in his following film, Idiocracy (2006). But the focus in Office Space was much sharper, where work life in general was the target, but the workplace managers came under the heaviest fire. Playing a cameo as the manager of Chotchkie’s, Mike Judge himself is willing to step in as the target of ridicule, repeatedly castigating Peter’s girlfriend Joanna (Jennifer Aniston) for her insistence on wearing the minimum number of pieces of flair. It’s meaningless minutiae such as this that are clearly a source of such exasperation for Judge; cover sheets on TPS reports and pieces of flair are not important to how a business functions, and are a waste of time for management to concern themselves with.

The Film: Office Space

The Song: “Shove this Jay-Oh-Bee”

The Artist: Canibus (feat. Biz Markie)

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Jon: What were your impressions of Ted & the Kennedys? He looked pretty good, considering.

Ted: He did a very good job. Kennedy finished probably his last political speech, and it was nice to hear and see him look so vibrant.

Jon: If, as you say, this was Ted’s last political speech, it was certainly high on emotion…if utterly devoid of substance. It was as though he were running purely on motor memory…how to give a rollicking speech full of Kennedy-esque rhetoric, without actually saying something. I found it interesting to hear him speak within 24 hours of reading news reports of Margaret Thatcher’s rapidly advancing dementia. An era is ending, a generation of leaders is falling by the wayside–and I don’t (merely) mean to be snarky when I note that John McCain is only four years younger than Ted, seven years younger than Thatcher. Chris Matthews put it succinctly: “We have watched a Kennedy grow old.”

Ted: He’s a guy who represents the last of the liberals who have attracted so much ire from the Right. Kennedy’s brand of liberalism (characterized by the term “Big Government”) is one that became increasingly marginalized by both the Right and the DLC since the ’80s. To end up on the stage talking about Obama — whom he supported in the primaries — was a nice passing of the torch to a candidate who’s not a Kennedy liberal or a Clinton/DLC type.

Jon: Interesting perspective you have–though I actually think Obama is more of a Kennedy liberal than he would want to admit to the nation in general.

Ted: I don’t really see the same kind of “Big Government” stuff coming from Obama, but…

Jon: It was fascinating watching the choreography of Ted Kennedy’s appearance play out. Beforehand, Caroline Kennedy, John Kerry and others claimed they didn’t know whether Ted would speak at all, and on MSNBC Olbermann and Matthews seemed not to know either. After allowing that suspense to build, only afterward did Olbermann, without a hint of apology or irony, begin his analysis with, “They told us that speech would be four minutes long”–making clear that they knew the speech would be happening all along. I wonder if Fox made the same effort to build suspense for an audience full of Kennedy-haters; heck, I wonder if Fox showed Ted’s speech without contemporaneous heckling from Hannity. Maybe a Fox viewer can let us know… (more…)

John McCain trotted out an oldie-but-a-goodie on Monday at the VFW convention – proclaiming once again that, unlike a certain current president who allowed Osama bin Laden to give him the slip, McCain would “follow him to the gates of hell” and bring him to justice. Of course, he followed that statement with one of his trademark crypt-keeper smiles, so it’s hard to know whether he’s actually all that passionate about the subject or just likes to hear himself talk. Whichever is the case, now may be a good time to question not only where, exactly, the gates of hell might be (Afghanistan? Pakistan? the Cheney residence?), but whether it is even worth the effort to follow Osama there.

Lots of people have found lots of reasons to harp on the fact that we haven’t yet caught Al Qaeda’s grand poobah. Americans do like to see bad guys caught and punished – that’s why Law and Order variants play 24/7 on basic cable – and we prefer quick, tidy endings, which is why (despite the red-herring “surge is working” mantra) we’ve turned away in droves from the Iraq War. For Democrats, meanwhile, Osama is a valuable symbol of George Bush’s (and, by extension, the Republican Party’s) strategic failures and incompetence – and particularly of the foolishness of prioritizing the neocons’ Saddam obsession over “finishing the job” in Afghanistan.

McCain’s reasons are even more complicated – verging on psychotic, really. For Johnny Mac the military man, Osama represents a Mission Not Accomplished, as well as an opportunity to (finally) get something right after the fiascos of Vietnam and Iraq. For McCain the Moralizer, operating in that black-and-white world that conservative Christians (not to mention radical Islamists) populate, Osama is the epitome of an evil that “must be defeated,” as we heard during Pastor Rick’s un-American “faith forum” last Saturday.

Most importantly, for Citizen McCain the candidate, ranting about Osama is a means of separating himself from Bush; moreover, it’s the key plank in McCain’s belligerence-equals-experience foreign policy platform, which is pretty much all he’s got to offer as a rationale to lure voters to his side.

Of course, there is one guy who for years has shown no real interest in capturing Osama, dead, alive or otherwise: the guy who let him off the hook in the first place. “I truly am not that concerned about him,” Bush famously said as early as March 2002, reflecting an attitude that most Americans have come to believe is a rationalization for his own failures. (more…)

Charlie Daniels Band - The Devil Went Down to Georgia

My apologies in advance for taking occasional license with the meter…

Johnny Mac went down to Georgia, he was lookin’ for an election to steal
Yelled at a cloud and those doggone Russkies, tried to bring ’em both to heel
His opponent was nothin’ but a raw celeb — not even prez yet, but actin’ like he was
Johnny said, “I’ll show my fur’n policy credentials by takin’ up the cause”

He figured, “Those Democrats are pansies — ’bout as threatening as my mom”
So Johnny told the Russkies, “You’d better step off — don’t forget, we’ve got the bomb!
Ol’ George W. Bush might be lookin’ to talk (Not an option on Cheney’s list)
But my advisor wants war, and he should know — he’s Georgia’s registered lobbyist!”

But Vladimir Putin said, “You and what army’s gonna kick us off this land?
Your forces are a crock – they’re stuck in Iraq! It’s a quagmire, like Vietnam!”

Johnny take your blood pressre pills, turn up the rhetorical heat
’Cause hell’s broke loose in Georgia and Republicans hate retreat
Forget about diplomacy, negotiatin’s what Obama would do
Screw Britney Spears and the Europeans too!

Bush made too many promises — told the Georgians, “We’ve got your back”
So when South Ossetia tried to secede Saakashvili screamed, “Attack!”
But the Russian bear said, “Don’t you dare — we’ll bomb you out of all proportion
And that help you’re expecting from Bush/McCain? Might as well ask for an abortion!”

Johnny saw what the Russians were doin’ and said, “Boys, lemme tell you what
I’m gonna rattle my sabers and make enough noise to stir the electorate!”

He said, “I’m a seasoned vet, Obama’s just a boy
His Hilton is Paris, mine’s in old Hanoi
Bush ain’t my daddy, but Lieberman’s my whore
If Putin don’t back down, I’ll start another Cold War!” (more…)

“Napoleon once said, when asked to explain the lack of great statesmen in the world, that to get power you need to display absolute pettiness. To exercise power, you need to show true greatness. Such pettiness and such greatness are rarely found in one person. I look upon the events of the past weeks, and I’ve never come so to grips with that quotation … Your leadership has raised the stakes of hate to a level where we can no longer separate the demagogue from the truly inspired.”
–President Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges) in The Contender (2000)

Rod Lurie’s political films remind me of a college professor whose classes I simultaneously loved and hated: you had to sort through a lot of annoying bullshit to get to the brilliant insight at the end. (I figure I’m going to pay for that sentence in the comments section. Have at it!) Nevertheless, I happened to catch the last 15 minutes of The Contender on the tube Sunday morning, right after John Kerry nearly bitch-slapped the utterly deserving Joe Lieberman on Meet the Press, and that quarter-hour (like Lieberman’s performance) fairly reeked of the colossal stench John McCain’s campaign has been emitting for the past couple weeks.

In particular, the last line from Bridges’s speech begs to be viewed in the context of this presidential race. The Republican Party’s entire modus operandi, in the absence of any ideas that resonate with the American people, is now to render the electorate incapable of “separat[ing] the demagogue from the truly inspired.”

McCain once promised that things were going to be different this time. In April he said, point blank, “This will be a respectful campaign. Americans want a respectful campaign … they’re tired of the attacks. They’re tired of impugning people’s character and integrity. They want a respectful campaign — and I am of the firm belief that they can get it and they will get it if the American people demand it, and reject the negative stuff that goes on.”

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If you were a conservative back in the days of the New Deal, lobbing verbal grenades like “A traitor to his class” at Franklin Roosevelt was as common as clearing your throat. Indeed, the political right in the U.S. spent a good many years in the proverbial wilderness as WWII, the post-war boom, and the collective embrace of modernism ascended.  By the time Barry Goldwater took the political stage to demand “a choice, and not an echo,” many within his own party saw him as a crank. 

New Deal liberalism was the dominant paradigm (to use a fancy-pants term), the middle class — a good many of whom were ensconced in suburban bliss – were happy to vote for Republicans who were basically “Democrat-lite,” and big business groomed and nurtured company men who would enter the “system” as eager drones, and exit with a pension and a golden retirement.  “Pleasantville” for some? “Happy Days” for the fortunate?  Maybe so, but the culture within this paradigm was clearly no haven for those who inhabited it.  If it were, there wouldn’t have been the rebellion of the mid-to-late ‘60s.  Sure, the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement had a great deal to do with the rebellious ‘60s, but they also gave Goldwater conservatives an opportunity to revolutionize their party.  (more…)

If you’ve watched the TV news carefully this week, you may have noticed that somewhere amidst the all-Russert-all-the-time lovefest there were other events taking place – some of which might have benefited from some Russertian analysis.

There are, of course, massive floods up and down the Mississippi River – a “500-year flood” that has taken out levees up and down the Iowa-Illinois border, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. The enormous damage to homes and lives has often taken a backseat to worries about the damage to the Midwest corn crop. (Less ethanol next winter! More food riots in Africa!)

There is the Bush-McCain pas de deux on oil drilling, with both men suddenly insisting that Congress open the waters off our shores to “exploration and exploitation” (as McCain put it) for the first time in 28 years. Failing to do so, one of them said (I can’t remember which – it’s hard to tell them apart), would doom our nation to many more years of gas prices like we’re seeing now ($4.63 at the local Chevron this afternoon).

And then there is the re-emergence of Rudy Giuliani to shore up McCain’s dipping foreign-policy numbers and to rationalize his slipping appreciation for American values. In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court decision restoring some measure of habeas corpus rights to Gitmo detainees – and with his 9/11 blinders enabling him to ignore the resurgent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan – Rudy trotted out an oldie but goodie, accusing Barack Obama of…wait for it…reverting to a “September 10 mindset” when it comes to applying the (god forbid) Constitution to our treatment of “enemy combatants.”

The media has treated these three developments separately, but to me they’re all part of the same story. Simply put, our nation’s disastrous energy policy is breaking us financially – and when it’s not busy doing that it’s getting us killed around the world, or avoiding the middleman and ravaging us at home via the type of extreme weather that just might portend a climate-change apocalypse. Out-of-control oil prices, Middle East instability and global warming are related problems that require a unified solution. It inevitably will be the task of the next president, even if it’s John McCain, to begin the long-delayed process of weaning this nation (and eventually the world) off of oil and other fossil fuels. (more…)

I’ve been reading The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 by Sean Wilentz, and it covers historical ground that most historians don’t want to touch for a good 30 years. Having spent a good deal of time with U.S. historians, the old adage that “history is argument without end” is fairly accurate when it comes to the interpretation of what constitutes historical fact. But historians like to wait for a good chunk of time to pass before digging into the archives of events. That’s why it’s surprising that a noted historian like Wilentz ends his study of the recent past by talking about the present. He may be premature, but Wilentz is ready to bookend “The Age of Reagan” with the end of the George W. Bush’s presidency rather than wait and see who becomes the next president. Just as New Deal liberalism had pretty much crumbled by the beginning of the 1970s, Wilentz thinks that Reagan Republicanism is now in its twilight. This bodes well for a resurgence of liberalism in the future, but it’s instructive to see how a revamped GOP was able become a dominant force in American politics from mid ’70s to the present.

Having a few large-scale events befall the GOP’s political opponents was extremely helpful in the rise of Reagan (i.e., Vietnam, civil rights movements, the counterculture, student protests, and urban riots). But it took a long-term palace revolt within the GOP during the ’60s and ’70s to slough off some of the Midwest and east coast Republicanism that kept the party center-right for a long time — far too long for those who were in love with Barry Goldwater’s ideology. In a way, Goldwater Republicans were cut from the same cloth as their New Left counterparts. The same “no compromise” attitude pervaded both camps, and while the New Left (a loose amalgamation of groups who could never really unite under a shared ideology) imploded by the beginning of the ’70s, “Phase II” of the countercultural revolution pushed forward until the mid ’70s (i.e., “Women’s Lib,” gay rights, the ecology movement, and sexual liberalization). Standing athwart history yelling “Stop!”* was the other counterculture: the New Right. Like I said, these two movements were cut from the same cloth, but while the New Left and its scions pointed out the injustices in the United States and sought to address them through protest, policy, and legislation, the New Right proclaimed their undying love for the United States while actively trying to destroy the very governmental institutions that helped to create the post WW II affluence they grew up in. In short, there was a tremendous amount of resentment in both camps, but the New Right used that resentment in a much more effective way — politically speaking, that is. (more…)

We’re at a point in the presidential election when reporters, news directors, anchors, and all the other media powers who help frame election issues are getting weary. Weary of the back and forth, the up and down, and the he said/she said of the Democratic race for the nomination. Feeling like there is very little to talk about, Old Media have, by and large, resorted to promoting the cheapest form of news programming, the Freak Show. If you’ve had a chance to read The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008 by John Harris and Mark Halperin, you’ll know what I mean by Freak Show. However, you don’t even have to open Harris and Halperin’s book to know what it is. All you have to do is channel-surf between the three 24-hour cable news channels to see it for yourself. Every now and then there are actual debates over political issues. Nowadays, however, it’s an endless variation of the Freak Show — which elevates trivial political matters into the only issues that matter by shouting, gossip mongering, spewing half-truths and bald-faced lies with a blurring rapidity. Matt Drudge, 24-hour cable news, talk radio, and political blogs are purveyors of the Freak Show, and it would be easy to dismiss if the Freak Show’s formula for getting people to pay attention if it weren’t so effective. Old Media outlets are now eager to jump on the bandwagon. Why? Because if they can get ratings by serving up trash, then why not serve up a steaming pile of it and see if the piggies will come to feed.

The Freak Show is only part of the story, though. Another part is how our esteemed media (Old and New) quickly crown the new prince/President before people have had a chance to vote in the general election. If you’re in the media’s good graces, they will shower you with love — even if you’re routinely making gaffes and saying things that are patently false. Sure, political gaffes will make the news, but it will usually be relegated to middle of the newspaper, programmed deeply in a nightly newscast, or briefly mentioned as a headline news piece. Case in point: John McCain. Those in the press who travel with McCain generally like the guy. They like his humor, they like the fact that he invited the press corp to his house for a BBQ, they admire his bravery during the Vietnam war, and they the see him as our next president. When he makes a gaffe like the one below, it’s reported, and then quickly forgotten.

However, if you’re Howard Dean, an odd victory yell plays over and over for weeks - if not months: (more…)

In an election year, candidates often want to talk about “the issues,” but more often than not, campaigns will ditch the boring talk for talking smack about each other. It’s a game of misdirection based on a good reading of what captures the imagination of the typical voter. Like many political watchers, I’m atypical when it comes to TV news, reading the paper, or which sites I regularly read for what I consider good political analysis. Yes, I read the New York Times almost every day, and yes I would rather watch The Newshour with Jim Lehrer than my local TV news or the nightly news from the Big Three. And yes, I read academic journals for the really geeky stuff. However, staying too long in the realm of political junkies comes at a cost: alienation from the political mainstream, and frustration with the way people are easily manipulated.

Case in point: there’s quite a bit of hot air about the presidential race and how the lack of a presumptive nominee in the Democratic Party is hurting the chances of Hillary or Barack to become the next president. We’re at the beginning of April, the Republican and Democratic conventions haven’t even happened, yet there’s a lot of nervous nailbiting among Democrats who think the election is already lost.

McCain is many things, but he’s no idiot when it comes to politics. The hand-waving from Karl Rove after McCain reached the magic number of delegates to secure the nomination was a Three-Card Monte move to give Dems a false sense of security. What was it that Rove said (and was repeated in the echo chamber)? His view was that because McCain was now the frontrunner (sorry, Ron Paul supporters), his coverage in the media was going to wane as the American Idol competition between Barack and Hillary continued. Ha, bloody, ha. If anything, it has boosted McCain’s profile as many in the media have grown tired of writing the ongoing saga of “who’s up, who’s down” between B and N. Lately, there have been a number of “McCain as presidential” stories floating to the top of the political pages. McCain in Iraq … McCain talking about the economy … McCain talking about public service, and it all comes without much criticism from the press. Sure, Obama responded to McCain’s policy prescriptions to the economic recession we’re in, but what is happening right now is that many in the media are looking at McCain and framing a story that goes something like this: “Chapter 1. McCain is the 44th President of the United States.”

For Hillary or Barack to turn this story around, they are going to have to split their attack strategy and remind voters why another Republican administration is going to be a horrible thing for the country, hammer home the fact that the last 7 years under Bush have been a boon for everyone but vast majority of Americans, and then start talking about the following issues: (more…)