Songs of the Free

Using a popular song in a political campaign can be as much of a mine-field for the artist as for the candidate. Along with the potential impact on their public images, the variety of potential complications for both parties includes the likelihood of lawyers getting involved. Reading an article on this topic in today's Washington Post, I've determined that Guess Who/Bachman-Turner Overdrive guitarist Randy Bachman has the best attitude about it overall. When asked allowing his song American Woman to be used by Michelle Bachmann's presidential campaign (as a potential replacement for Tom Petty's American Girl), his manager explained that Randy Bachman routinely declines requests from political campaigns to use his songs. However, they conceded that, if Michelle Bachmann got a running mate whose last name was Turner, the artist "would really consider it."

Public Interest: The Final Chapter?

A friend passed along a transcript of live blog posting done by New Jersey Star Ledger reporter Paul Mulshine at the state senate hearing to discuss (or, really, decide) the fate of New Jersey Network. The full transcript is available at the newspaper's web-site, but I wanted to share a few choice excerpts  to indicate that, for all the posturing, the decision to end NJN had basically nothing to do with the best interests (financial or otherwise) of the general public.

Going:

Sitting here in a rare evening session of the state Senate. They're debating that measure to hand over the state's television station to a bunch of New Yorkers.

Did I say "hand over?"

Correct that. We're actually paying WNET $4.7 million to take our TV stations.

This is nutty, and I can't see why a single Republican would vote for it.

But apparently all of the Senate Republicans will.

Going:

Montclair State University put in a better bid, he says. Plus it would have helped Montclair to attract good students.

Another good point.

Earlier Loretta Weinberg, the sponsor of the bill, pointed out that WNET is forced to carry New Jersey news already because it's license is in Newark.

So why, she asked, did we need to create another channel to host the same news?

Now Shirley Turner says, "Now we're telling our residents: Live in New Jersey. Work in New Jersey. Get your news from New York."

She was referring to prior programs to keep people in the state.

Sen. Ray Lesniak is up saying the state is turning its back on Montclair State University.

"It has a dynamic leader. It would be a fertile ground for journalism majors from around the world. We should be demanding excellence from our universities, not mediocrity," he says.

Gone:

 

Now a Republican is speaking up. It's Joe Kyrillos, who is pretty much the Governor's most loyal soldier. And he is showing his loyalty.

He's calling for the station to be handed over to the New Yorkers.

"We got a deal that will save the New Jersey taxpayers millions of dollar," he says.

No, it won't. The Montclair deal was $2 million cheaper for the state.

But it looks like the fix is in and we're hading our station over to the New Yorkers.

Today's Lesson:

 

I hope the GOP voters who are eager for New Jersey governor Chris Christie to get into the 2012 presidential race take note of this. He could have made a deal that saved the state's tax-payers money and otherwise served the public interest. Instead he chose to sign over a state resource to what is (relatively speaking) a foreign entity. If this sort of partisan-driven hypocrisy  is the best the GOP has to offer, then its slide to irrelevance is long overdue.

Howdy Pilgrim

Every so often, a presidential candidate will say something that makes you wonder if they're really ready for prime-time. For President Obama, it was his infamous comment about bitter voters clinging to their guns, while John Kerry found that sound-bites were not his friend when he tried to explain that he voted for funding for our troops in Iraq before he voted against it. As dubious as both statements were, though, at least what they said wasn't profoundly wrong. the same can't be said of Michelle Bachmann.

Announcing her candidacy (which I could have sworn she already did last week) in her hometown of Waterloo, the Iowa native declared that she had the same spirit as fellow Waterloo native John Wayne. As it happens, though "the Duke" has Iowa roots and even a connection to Waterloo, the "John Wayne" who actually lived in Waterloo was notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

Not surprisingly, Bachmann's campaign has tried to spin this by pointing out that "the Duke" is from Iowa and Waterloo is where his parents met, but there was no gray area on this. Bachmann's quote to Fox News (hardly a bastion of the so-called "lamestream media") runs as follows:

"Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too."

Putting aside the urge to make cheap jokes about how channeling Gacy's spirit is a key part of her plan to control healthcare costs, obviously this won't change the minds of partisans on either side. Of course, as one of those partisans, I'd be lying if I said I didn't like the prospect of the current President facing the queen of questionable geography in the general election so he can continue trying to get us out of the hole the GOP spent the better part of a decade digging.

Public Interest: The Next Chapter

The saga of New Jersey Network continues with reports that the State Assembly has rejected the plan to turn NJN over to New York's WNET. What this means in the long-term for the station remains to be seen, but it's heartening to know that not everyone in New Jersey's state government is as clueless as Governor Christie.

Girl Power vs. Power Girl (Punctuated by a Colan)

One of the unfortunate things about being a comics fan is the perception that female characters are only presented as highly-objectified and overly-endowed caricatures and that fans can only view them through that lens. While some ground has been gained with regard to that stereotype of both the characters and the fans, I must say that things like the back cover of a recent Justice League compilation don't help.

Admittedly, the Justice League series collected here was decidedly tongue-in-cheek and somewhat poking fun at those stereotypes, and writers have for the most part tried hard to give the pictured character, Power Girl, some depth of character. Still, the combination of the "Paris...or Bust!" tag-line and the image makes even a fan like me wonder what they're thinking.

Switching gears just a little, to my knowledge artist Gene "The Dean" Colan never drew Power Girl, but in the course of a decades long career he drew most of DC and Marvel's major costumed heroes. This included acclaimed runs on Batman and Daredevil. He's also credited (alongside Stan Lee) with creating the early African-American superhero The Falcon. Though he'd been less active in  recent years, the Eisner Award he won for a 2009 issue of Captain America was a fitting exclamation point to an illustrious career as an illustrator that has ended definitively with his death yesterday at the age of 84.

Public Interest?

When I talk to people from the UK, they're sometimes surprised that public television isn't publicly funded the way it is there. At the risk of over-simplifying things, broadcasting in Britain was seen as something to benefit the public interest from the early days of BBC Radio, while in America it was a commercial enterprise more or less from the beginning with the notion that broadcasters should serve the public interest largely an afterthought. Consequently, in Britain everyone who owns a TV and/or radio pays a "license fee" which funds the BBC, while in America public funding for PBS is partial (and grudging) at best and getting scarcer.

This is understandable In the current economic climate, and I don't envy the hard choices that governments have to make to balance their budgets. Still, there are some elected officials whose apparent eagerness to cut funding for public broadcasting suggests that, not only do they not appreciate the value of public television, they fail to understand democracy itself.

One such individual is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Back in December, Christie signed legislation that cut state funding for the state's PBS service New Jersey Network, the net effect of which several months later is that NJN is effectively shutting down, with Manhattan-based WNET taking control of their operations. In the process, dozens of NJN employees are losing their jobs.

Admittedly, I don't know enough about New Jersey's fiscal situation to say how this decision stacks up against other items that were or weren't cut from the state budget. As with many things life, though, how you do things is sometimes more important than what you do and this is the measure where Governor Christie's failure is especially pronounced.

Rather than acknowledging the hardship this is causing for dozens of state employees, Christie instead chose to compare NJN to Soviet Union's state-run media. While touting his success in getting the government out of the broadcasting business the governor commented, “In my view, that should have ended with the Soviet Union. It's ending here in New Jersey a little later than the fall of the wall in Berlin. But we're getting there.” It's been about 15 years since I've lived in NJN's broadcast area, but I'm inclined to think their news people would find that attempt at high-minded justification as laughable as I do.

In addition to being ridiculous and callous, his comments also betray a remarkable ignorance about how media outlets can and should function in a free society. Whether a media outlet's financial support comes from the government or a corporation (or some combination of both), there's always the potential for conflicts of interest. Good news organizations, as many considered NJN to be, are the ones that can navigate those pitfalls while still serving the best interests of the public. What Governor Christie is trying to sell the public, though, is the idea that government support equates to government control.

Depending on whether or not he actually believes that, he should be ashamed either of his ignorance or his dishonesty. Outlets like PBS and the BBC have been proving for decades that government support facilitates superior news coverage. As the issues facing us get increasingly complex, that kind of substantive information is all the more important. Unfortunately, as NJN's current predicament shows, that kind of support is increasingly rare.

R.I.P. Big Man

I'll leave it to the pundits to decide where this past weekend's death of saxophonist Clarence Clemons ranks in the pantheon of rock music deaths. The one thing I can say for sure is that, while I'm probably a bigger fan of the Beatles than Bruce Springsteen, Clemons' death is sadder to me than George Harrison's was a decade ago. I think the difference is that, while George Harrison's relationship with the other Beatles seemed to be about the possibilities of music, the dynamic between Clemons and Springsteen was (in Springsteen's words) about the possibilities of friendship. Music may add dimension to a life, but a good friendship is life itself.

The Citizen Kane of Musicals

It goes without saying that a theatrical presentation, whether a play or a musical, is a very different creature than a film. One thing they have in common, though, is that the best of them are often under-appreciated when they first appear before getting their due years later. In film the classic example of this is probably Citizen Kane, which now resides at the top of numerous greatest movie lists. After seeing the Kennedy Center's production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, which closes today before heading to Broadway, I think it may deserve an equivalent place among musicals.

Watching the show, as performed by a tremendous cast that included Bernadette Peters, I had two distinct impressions. The first is that the show is a true work of art. The second is that I can completely understand why it didn't catch on with audiences in its original Broadway run.

Whatever theater audiences were looking for in the early 1971, clearly a bittersweet story of middle-aged couples coming to grips with the bad choices and missed opportunities of their youth wasn't it, even if it did feature jazzy numbers like Broadway Baby. The fact that the younger selves of the main characters appear on-stage with the current ones at the same time, not just haunting them but also directly interacting with them, couldn't have helped either. Though the form of the musical requires audiences to suspend at least some disbelief when the curtain rises, you can just tell that this clashing of past and present was a bit much at the time, not unlike Citizen Kane's jumping between time periods and narrative viewpoints was in 1941. Add to that a score whose standout songs, such as Could I Leave You? and I'm Still Here, are far more bitter than sweet and it's amazing it actually ran for a year on Broadway.

It will be interesting to see how the new production does on Broadway. In the 40 years later since Follies debuted there have been nearly as many revivals of Sondheim's shows as there have new musicals by him. In a climate where a show like Book of Mormon or Spring Awakening can be a hit, Sondheim's approach to musicals may not be as off-putting anymore, especially if the majority of the Kennedy Center cast makes the trip up I-95 to New York.

In addition to Bernadette Peters, Ron Raines and Tony Award nominee Jan Maxwell as estranged couple Ben and Phyllis are just two standouts in the cast. Also worth a mention is Lora Lee Gayer, who plays the younger version of Peters' character Sally and could not have been better cast, and theater veterans Linda Lavin and Elaine Paige. In any intersection of art and commerce, nothing is certain, but having the right people in front of and behind the scenes helps, and Follies has that well covered. Of course, the same was true about Citizen Kane 70 years ago.

When the County Gives You Lemons...

I'm not someone who sees every action of the government as a personal affront to my freedom, but there are certainly times when I have to wonder if a particular government body has the proper perspective on the public interest. Though the Midwest has been the most obvious ground zero of political crazy lately, today's specific example is a very local one. Montgomery County Maryland is currently hosting the US Open golf tournament, which is drawing mammoth crowds to Bethesda.

Seeing opportunity in those throngs of visitors, a group of children decided to start their path to entrepreneurship with the classic square-one move, a lemonade stand. Technically, they were actually selling bottled/canned drinks that they bought wholesale (well done, kids) but close enough. Either way, it didn't sit very well with a local inspector who, as reported in the Washington Post and other media outlets, not only ordered the stand to shut down for lacking a vendor's permit but also fined one of the adults who helped the kids set up the stand $500. As it happened, a local TV channel caught the incident on camera, leading the county to back down, at least on the fine.

I don't dispute that the government, especially local governments, play a key role in protecting public safety. That said, at a time when the local school system is laying off employees due to budget deficits, it begs the question of whether hassling well-meaning kids is really the best use of the county's limited resources. Ultimately, common sense prevailed, but the path it took to get there was just a waste.

When the Legend Becomes Fact

The mis-attribution of quotes certainly didn't start with the Internet. There can be little doubt, though, that the web's way of granting immortality to things that should be fleeting has ramped it up considerably.

Usually, these spurious sayings are used for tiresome political posturing, but sometimes they apply to things of real meaning. Sometimes, you even find a quote that's impossible to verify but so compelling you feel obliged to pass it along. My favorite is a quote repeatedly attributed to actor Billy Dee Williams despite the fact that no one can identify the source.

Responding to criticism of his famous appearances in ads for Colt 45 malt liquor, Williams supposedly responded, "I drink, you drink. Hell, if marijuana was legal, I'd appear in a commercial for that too." Did Williams really say that? Does it matter? According to a famous movie quote that I saw on the Internet, "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Acting Figuratively

While Hollywood’s focus on Summer blockbusters has led to some undeniably terrible movies, there is at least one undeniably good thing about it. It’s helped raise the profiles of some of Britain’s finest actors. The trend started in 1977 with Alec Guinness’ and his Oscar-nominated role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars. Since then, the trend has only become more widespread, reaching the point where some writers have joked that entire Royal Shakespeare Company productions can be recreated with movie-based action figures based on people like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Interestingly, this latter-day “British Invasion” points to one of the key reasons that people love British TV.

As different as a BBC mini-series with an 18th century getting may seem from an effects-driven blockbuster, they both hinge on the skill of the actors for their success. As much as moviegoers may love the spectacle of a space battle or alien invasion, if it doesn’t work on a human level, it won’t connect with viewers. This is just as true with period dramas where all the fancy costumes and elegant settings are a pointless detail if the characters don’t ring true. As mainstream movies seem to place an increasing emphasis on spectacle, the need for the kind of absolute conviction that British actors supply so well is all the more essential.

Interestingly, the trend seems to be extending to behind the camera as well, with director Kenneth Branagh winning praise for giving the film adaptation Thor a palpable (some would say, Shakespearean) sense of human drama. To my knowledge, despite his many film and TV roles, Branagh himself hasn’t been turned into an action figure. Of course, for an artist of his talents, including it a knack for injecting humanity into a CGI world, it’s probably just a matter of time before he joins Sir Patrick and Sir Ian on the shelf.

Shell Shocked by a Good Man's Battlefield

As a long-time fan of Doctor Who, when I watch newer episodes I sometimes find myself thinking about how certain stories are almost companion pieces to older ones. For instance, Neil Gaiman's The Doctor's Wife brings to mind the very early TARDIS based story The Edge of Destruction while 2008's The Unicorn & the Wasp, with its Agatha Christie trappings, pairs nicely with 1982's Black Orchid. This line of thought has also helped me home in on why the current mid-season cliffhanger A Good Man Goes to War doesn't quite work for me.

In 1989, the final season of Doctor Who's original run opened with a story called Battlefield. Battlefield was an interesting attempt to mix Arthurian legend with an updated take on the Doctor's 1970s allies from UNIT, but it was by no means a great story. Aside from some great character moments, especially the Doctor's final confrontation with Morgaine, the most noteworthy thing about it is the way its events suggest a multitude of other, far more interesting, stories (perhaps one reason why its novelization is better regarded than the TV version). That same questionable mix of good and bad ideas combining to suggest a larger world of events is on display in A Good Man Goes to War, as it has been in all of Steven Moffat's episodes since last year's Weeping Angels storyline.

Prior to last year's season finale, Moffat's Doctor Who episodes were typically the best of any given season. The combination of fanciful ideas and the discipline required to write the well-structured farce that was Coupling made scripts like The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink some of the most sharply written in Doctor Who's history. Since then, things have felt a bit more haphazard with some truly great moments vying for attention with things that just feel wrong, such as the ridiculous alliance of monsters in The Pandorica Opens. Without giving anything significant away, A Good Man Goes to War features more alien armies that shouldn't be there, at least not on the Doctor's side, and it just felt wrong.

I appreciate that the story plays up the question of how far down the path of war the Doctor willing to go. At the same time, anyone who's been watching the past few years knows that the answer is that he's been willing to go pretty damn far if the stakes are high enough. Put another way, it's an idea I'd like to see explored in a way that really adds to the character's moral dimension rather than just retracing the steps of Eccleston and Tennant.

All that said, by virtue of being anxious to find out what happens next, I have to admit that at least on some level the story ultimately did the job. I'm still not sure where it's all going, but I haven't lost faith that Moffat's path is leading to something really good. I just wish he'd trust the audience to enjoy the show without throwing in old monsters where they don't belong and let the regulars do their thing, because as with Battlefield back in 1989, A Good Man Goes to War is at its best when the focus is on them.

What's In a Name?

It is truly amazing how quickly New York Congressman Anthony Weiner's recent boner exploded all over the Internet. It certainly seems, though, that the embattled politician realizes that he really blew it by getting himself all over Twitter. I only hope that he's able to clean up the mess and extricate himself from this sticky and embarrassing situation for the good of his party and our fragile yet supple democracy.

Addendum: All kidding aside, the way this story is unfolding, it's time for this guy to step down.

When Joe Met David

When Joe Jackson does a cover song, the worst that can be said about it is that it will be interesting. His rendition of David Bowie's song Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) from a tour he did last year is a good bit better than just interesting. Whether you're a Joe Jackson fan who didn't realize he had a new live album out or a Bowie aficionado looking for something to fill out your latest CD of covers of the Thin White Duke (or both), you should check it out at Amazon or elsewhere. I'd recommend going to a record store but there aren't enough of them around these days. Enjoy.

Batman vs. the Joker's Boner

I once came across Orson Welles discussing the way the meanings of words he'd grown up using had changed over time. In particular, he mentioned the word "gay" whose meaning is certainly a bit more charged than when it was more or less a synonym for "happy". Another word whose meaning has shifted gears over the years is "boner", whose current scatological meaning is pretty far removed from its previous life as a colorful substitute for the word "mistake".

While some may lament the loss of innocence symbolized by that dissonance between past and present usage you'll get none of that from me. Language inevitably evolves and if it does so in a way that appeals to my inner-adolescent I'm all for it. Which brings me to the Caped Crusader. As anyone familiar with Dr. Frederic Wertham's infamous book Seduction of the Innocent knows, Batman is no stranger to curious interpretations. It's not surprising, then, that some Batman stories from the 1950s are entertaining for different reasons than the original creators intended.

A classic example is the 1951 story "The Joker's Comedy of Errors" (from Batman #66) which features the Joker basing his crimes on famous historical mistakes. There isn't enough time to list all the times that mistakes are referred to as "boners" throughout the text, and DC Comics (as owners of the intellectual property) probably wouldn't like me posting the entire story online. Fortunately, the brief (and legally acceptable) excerpt below gives you the general idea.

Even Grant Morrison can't write Batman this way anymore. It's even better than the story from the same era about Batman marrying Vicki Vale whose splash-page features an onlooker observing that he never thought he'd see the day Batman would fall for a girl.

There was a time when superhero characters were an endangered species with many characters vanishing as the 1950s progressed. Having handled both Frederic Wertham and the Joker's boners with his dignity intact, it's no surprise that Batman turned out to be one of the survivors.

Being A Cad Is No Crime

Having voted for (and donated to) John Edwards during his first Presidential campaign, I'm certainly disappointed by the events that emerged in the wake of his second. I don't know what it is that drives people with good public intentions to act so shamefully in their private lives, but whatever it is Edwards seems to have it in abundance. I'm not an expert on campaign finance law or personal ethics, but it's hard to shake the feeling that this past week's criminal indictment of Edwards is much more about the latter than the former.

If Edwards were simply another former candidate whose campaign played fast and loose with laws governing donations, I don't think this case leads to a trial, let alone an indictment. Even his relatively high stature as John Kerry's running mate wasn't the tipping point, it's all about his personal life. It's driven by the ick-factor of a self-proclaimed family-man cheating on his cancer-stricken wife compounded by fathering a child with his mistress.

As with many things, the cover-up was probably worse than the original sin. I use the term "sin" specifically, because, despite the correspondence relating to questionable handling of funds, it doesn't seem clear that a crime was committed, at least not by Edwards himself. There's no question that Edwards the husband ultimately turned out be a bad guy, but that's not a felony in America.

Chicken Wine

When it comes to wine, I have three basic principles.

1) It's hard to go wrong with red wines from Australia.

2) If it costs more than $10, its quality is lost on me.

3) The terminology used to describe wine is typically nonsense.

This brings me to the Pinot Noir from Rex Goliath, named after a 47 pound bird once billed as the "world's largest rooster" and affectionately known in my house as "chicken wine". Though it comes from Italy rather than Australia, its moderate price-tag means even someone with my unrefined tastes can appreciate the lush and velvety wine. I drank it tonight and plan to do so again soon. Cheers.