Of Mandates and Mendacity

Republican officials seem to talk a lot about mandates. If it isn't the "individual mandate" in the 2010 health-care reform bill, which they assert is a fundamental threat to our freedom, it's the mandate they consistently claim to have been given by the American people. The theory of an "individual mandate" being a threat to our freedoms is easily dispatched by a look at the provisions of the 1792 Militia Act (May 8th portion), which contained a requirement for free citizens to purchase weapons and was signed into law by George Washington. If an individual mandate was acceptable to no less a champion of freedom as one of our founding fathers, it should be good enough for all Americans.

Thankfully, the Republicans' equally dubious assertion that they received a mandate from the electorate, as opposed to winning some close elections as the result of a protest vote, can be similarly dismissed with a look at the facts. When you review the voting results for Republican candidates versus Republicans in the past few elections, there's a case to be made that, if either party has been given a mandate the past few years, it's been the Democrats.

In the 2006 mid-term elections, nearly 78-million votes were cast between Democratic and Republican House candidates (i.e. the only national offices where every seat was on the ballot). Out of that total, Republican numbers were a bit shy of 35.7M, while votes for Democratic candidates came in around 42M. That works out to 45.9% for the GOP and 54.1% for the Democrats. Since this was a higher percentage for Democrats than the Republican candidates got in the 2004 elections, after which President Bush spoke of the (you guessed it) mandate he'd been given, you'd think the GOP would acknowledge the passing of the mandate torch. If they did, I missed it.

If 51.4% was enough to give both president and party an electoral mandate in 2004, surely the 55.6% the Democratic candidates got in 2008 would do the trick. As it happens, despite getting over 65M votes (compared to a little over 52M for the Republicans), no one on the GOP seemed inclined to concede the mandate for the victors which they should have had after the 2006 elections. To be fair, though, the GOP was busy obstructing the duly elected government from actually governing, while tacitly approving of scurrilous accusations about the legitimacy of our (American-born) President.

Which brings us to last year's mid-term elections, famously described by our rightfully-elected President as a "shellacking" and infamously described by a number of Republicans as a mandate. Among the high-profile officials using this term is Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who talked about said mandate on the January 2, 2011 edition of Meet The Press. While I can't speak to the quality of Graham's education, it seems to be a little lacking on the math side, because the Senator is claiming a mandate with just 53.6% of the total votes cast for Democratic and Republican candidates (about 45M out of 84M). If 55.6% in an election with considerably higher voter turnout doesn't yield a mandate, then it's hard to see the logic behind Graham's current claim. Of course, this is politics and if there's one thing politics teaches us it's that, while logic should count for more, it doesn't win elections.

Privacy? I think I remember that.

Privacy used to be simple. If you shut your blinds and got an unlisted phone number, you were pretty much covered. As with so many things, the Internet has changed that dynamic, and privacy has gone from a default situation to something you have to actively fight to maintain. The latest sign of this is a web-site called spokeo.com which makes a frightening amount of personal information available to anyone with access to a web-browser. If the information that's available for free is any indication, the material available to paying subscribers is probably an identity thief's paradise. Thankfully, there appears to be a low-hassle and (more to the point) effective way to remove your information available under the site's privacy settings. That's the good news. The bad news is that another web-site doing the same thing can't be far behind.

Buried Treasures of The Twilight Zone

Despite owning every episode of Twilight Zone on DVD, when the Sci-Fi Channel (sorry, the name change to Syfy was just dumb) runs a marathon on holiday weekends, I have to watch. As much as I enjoy seeing the "classic" episodes like Eye of the Beholder, though, one of the great pleasures of the marathons is seeing episodes you wouldn't necessarily tune in for on their own reputation. Certainly. not all Twilight Zone episodes are created equal, and a few are pretty bad. That said, some of these lesser known stories are in their own way just as compelling as some of the program's touchstones and deserve a little extra attention. Moreover, they include some of the finest acting performances ever seen in the series, which is to say in the history of film and television.

Nick of Time: William Shatner's other Twilight Zone appearance, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, is more famous, even getting a remake in 1982's Twilight Zone movie. Shatner's earlier appearance, though, is a gem that really shows why he was once regarded as one of Hollywood's best young actors. There's no supernatural element here, just a taut character drama about taking charge of one's own fate with a final twist that shows how flexible the format of Twilight Zone was.

Night of the Meek: Reportedly, this story was the product Rod Serling's desire to do a Christmas story with Art Carney as Santa Claus. The end result found Carney playing Henry Corwin, a down on his luck soul whose job ad a department store Santa is the outward expression of his wish that both he and Christmas could be something finer. Carney gets his wish, courtesy of the Twilight Zone.

The Changing of the Guard: Numerous protagonists entered the Twilight Zone and found themselves out of their own time. In Changing of the Guard, a man who feels that time and the world have passed him by has the Twilight Zone come to him. Played marvelously by Donald Pleasance, Professor Ellis Fowler laments that his years of teaching failed to move or motivate any of his students. As he contemplates suicide, Fowler is visited by the ghosts of his former students and learns that he left a much deeper mark than he'd ever imagined. While Rod Serling's script isn't terribly original, it gives Pleasance enough to work with so that the actor's absolute conviction can make this episode something truly special.

The Masks: The only Twilight Zone episode directed by a woman, Ida Lupino (who starred in the episode The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine), The Masks is another concise character piece in the vein of Nick of Time. Lupino, who directed a number of feature films, has an unsurprising affinity for working with actors. As with Nick of Time, though, it's possible that the lack of supernatural undertones may be one of the key reasons this episode is less well-regarded than some other less substantial (and more cliched) episodes of the program.

Printer's Devil: Described in The Twilight Zone Companion as "a fairly run of the mill deal-with-the-devil story", Charles Beaumont's adaptation of his own short story "The Devil You Say?" is admittedly not the most original of episodes, even in comparison to others from the show's later seasons. It's elevated above the ordinary, though, by Burgess Meredith's performance as the, shall we say, title character. Among the highlights is the scene where Meredith's "Mr. Smith" first makes his deal with the struggling newspaper owner, comparing their soul to a vintage wine. Printer's Devil was Meredith's fourth and final appearance on Twilight Zone, which brings to mind the actor's first appearance on the show.

The Honorable Mention for Most Overrated Episode goes to...Time Enough at Last: The twist ending with Meredith's unassuming book-worm Henry Bemis breaking his glasses is probably the most iconic moment in the program's history. That undeniably good twist has helped camouflage for decades that the other 20-odd minutes of Time Enough at Last aren't themselves really all that good. It's obviously a fine showcase for Meredith and he gives it his all. Beyond that, though, there really isn't much more to it. The characters who are disparaging of Bemis and his love of books seem to do so simply because it's what he script requires, and Bemis himself doesn't have much more dimension either. In fact, what stands out most about this episode is how obvious it all feels. It's a twist worthy of The Twilight Zone that its best remembered story is actually one of its least interesting.