Media/Politics

But I play one on TV

Can democracy survive another election, or will absurdity win?

The full horror only sank in while I was reading a piece in the May 4, 2007, edition of the Los Angeles Times by Tina Daunt. Daunt was promoting the (dare I say it?) daunting theory that, should actor and former senator Fred Dalton Thompson—currently playing New York D.A. Arthur Branch on Law & Order—decide to make a run for the presidency, he could be hampered by having, long ago, portrayed a neo-Nazi in another TV series. I had previously wondered how a run by Thompson might effect TNT’s reruns of Law & Order because of TV equal time provisions, but Daunt had come up with a far more bizarre scenario.

Back in 1988, Thompson was cast as a character called Dr. Knox Pooley, the leader of an Aryan Nation-style hate group, in an arc of Stephen J. Cannell’s CBS hit Wiseguy. As a major Wiseguy fan, I still recall the excellence of Thompson’s scenery-chewing, but Daunt feared that Pooley’s racist rabble-rousing might be “downloaded, taken out of context, chopped into embarrassing pieces and then distributed endlessly through cyberspace.”

I might mock Daunt’s assumption the electorate is too stupid to distinguish YouTube from reality, or remind her California has a governor who made his name playing a robot and an inarticulate barbarian, or even that the venerated Ronald Reagan—in his 1964 final movie, The Killers— played a really nasty bastard called Jack Browning who viciously slapped around Angie Dickinson. Tina Daunt has, however, been pilloried by everyone from Joe Scarborough to Stephen Colbert, and I have no desire to join in, or question her qualifications to practice political-media analysis at a major newspaper. My concern is that, between now and November 2008, we are going to be subjected to similar mindlessness on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Contemplating another year and a half of relentless, no-prisoners electioneering, I find myself once more paraphrasing Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now: “Before polling day, the idiocy is going to pile up so fast, we’ll need wings to stay above it.”

Last week, in just a single day, Al Sharpton called the Mormons a cult and Mitt Romney huffed and puffed and demanded TV face-time to refute such a calumny, while retired Army General John Batiste was fired as a military analyst by CBS because he participated in a TV commercial criticizing George Bush’s conduct of the war. Beyond such political ground clutter lies a barren and ugly landscape of infinite debates, dwindling audiences, and endless conversations with Chris Matthews as all those faceless and apparently clueless white men in suits are eliminated, and we get down to the candidates we at least know by name—Hillary, Obama, Giuliani, Edwards, McCain and maybe Bill Richardson. But that will be, of course, when the real unpleasantness begins.

This strange and unhealthy fetish for earlier and earlier primaries will have the effect of prolonging the general election and allowing the lies and distortions, the swiftboating and homophobia, the manipulation and blind religious bigotry, to grow to such Godzilla proportions that the ironic absurdity may even be too much for Jon Stewart. Democracy itself will become the continuous sideshow distraction from a real world in which nothing is done about climatic catastrophe, and the war drags on. Tony Snow will deliver witless and convoluted mendacity from a hermetically sealed White House as Bush waits out the clock on his incumbency, willing to allow what could be a bloody and unnecessary U.S. defeat in Iraq, because all he has left is his overweening vanity.

By November 2008, we may well have developed such an implacable loathing for all politicians that we will desire nothing more than to hang every last one of them from any handy lamppost or freeway overpass with a good length of hempen rope. Or will we just be glued to the TV watching an unending media event that might as well be titled American Dictator? –Mick Farren

Gripeanomics

In the realm of the centses

Getting ripped off in 1-cent increments by Burger King, the Postal Service and gift cards

Man, I hate pennies, and you should, too. I know “hate” is a strong word, but c’mon, what the f--k exactly do we need all these stupid goddamn pennies for? If I go to Burger King or something and I get pennies in my change, I just throw ’em in my glove compartment so they won’t contaminate my regular change that I keep in the little coin tray.

I don’t think I’m gonna go to Burger King again for a while, though, because the last time I went and ordered a double (urp) cheeseburger, hold the pickle, the cheese on the cheeseburger wasn’t melted the way it usually is, all nice and almost liquidy. Not this time, man, no, this time there were these hard cheese corners on my round double cheeseburger (urp), only without the pickle, please, and then I had, like, a Moment of Burger Clarity and figured out the reason I was a loyal subject of the Burger King was because, I theorize, it is company policy to microwave the hamburger sandwiches after they are assembled, and so when you get one, the sandwich is always super piping hot and comforting and friendly. But the last time I passed through the King’s drive-thru and unwrapped what I thought was gonna be my tasty double cheeseburger minus (urp) pickle, I’m feeling this, this room-temperature bun, and I look at the side of my double cheese (urp) burger sandwich without pickle (urp), and it’s not all steaming hot when I pull up the bun to make sure my instructions were obeyed in terms of pickle withholding. Urp.

Anyway, pennies, right? I got one of those gigantor plastic jars that hold those jumbo party fun-size helpings of pretzels, and I throw all my pennies in there when I get home. I ate all the pretzels, so it’s cool. But look, these f--king pennies, did you ever smell a whole bunch of pennies? If I ever get elected to public office, I will propose legislation to make sure everything will cost in multiples of 5 cents, and my best example of this are these goddamn postage stamps.

Why, oh why, my sweet Jesus H. Christ of Latter-Day Saints Inc. do they raise the price of stamps to not-round numbers? And you know who They are, seriously, with the Star Wars R2-D2 mailboxes? Who asked for that?

It’s like, I just recovered from when the stamps were, what, 37 cents? And they (Them) raised ’em to 39? Right? And what was it before that? Thirty-four cents? And before that? Thirty-three cents? And? Thirty-two cents? See a f--king consistent Pattern of Willful Avoidance of nice even-change numbers here? Every time They (those guys) jack that postage up in all these weird non-5-cents increments, we (The People) gotta go and buy these 3-cent stamps and 2-cent stamps and f--king 1-cent stamps, and you never really know exactly how many Old Stamps you got that need to be matched up with some stupid add-on shits that aren’t even cool stamps like those bat stamps—those were some pretty cool stamps, man, with all the different little freaky flying mammals. I even like those “Crops of the Americas” ones, with, like, some colorful Indian corn and peppers and sunflowers and stuff, but now I’m holding some of those, and they’re Spoiled Vegetable Stamps, man—39 cents—so I gotta go buy some stupid f--king goddamn 2-centses to make my First Class postage of 41 cents. I’m either gonna 1) buy too many 2-cent stamps and never use ’em all, or 2) not buy enough 2-cent stamps to go along with my 39-cent stamps, and then I’ll have these 39-cent stamps sitting around forever and the United States Postal Service will get to enjoy that cash and blow it on R2-D2 mailboxes without ever delivering any postage for me.

It’s a racket, man, just like these f--king gift cards where you get it down to, like, $1.12 left on the card, and so you never go back to use it because you would never buy anything in that store anyway, probably, and when you get a gift card, you don’t want to be buying over the amount of the gift card and actually have to reach into your pocket to buy your own goddamn gift, do you? What kinda gift is that? So the store makes out because you just leave that last little sip of gift-card juice in the bottom of your gift card. And don’t even start talking about those “forever stamps,” man, the ones the Post Office have now where, if you buy that stamp now, it’s good for the First Class postage “forever.” That’s complete bullshit, because I figured out I’d have to buy, like, a million of ’em in order to maybe sell them on eBay and make a profit the next time the rates go up.

–Joe MacLeod

Bodily Fluids

No thanks, we don’t need your blood

The FDA says gay men still aren’t welcome

Last week the Food and Drug Administration publicly reconfirmed their stance on prohibiting men who’ve had homosexual relations from donating blood, stating that nothing of substance has given the FDA reason to reconsider its research on the issue, some 15 years old now, which concludes that gay men pose too high of a risk for HIV to accept their donated blood.

I’m not gay, but I said I was when I went to United Blood Services to see if the FDA’s regulation was being enforced. Sure enough, it was. But the doctor who explained it to me was so apologetic, and so personally against the FDA’s ban, that she all but cried in rejecting me. In fact, the dissonance she appeared to be going through in turning me away seemed to be so genuine and earnest that I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’m not in actuality gay. –Joshua Longobardy