Coulterland - Beginning Principles

Note: This will be a multi-part post, since as I continue to write it I find that A. I'm quite tickled by the notion, and B.--not unrelatedly--I find myself writing a lot more than I originally intended. So I'll be breaking this into bite-sized chunks for easy consumption. And hey, if all goes well, I smell a book deal!


The question one must ask of any philosophy or political position is "Quo vadit?" (One must ask this question in Latin in order to seem, you know, smart.) That is, "Where is it going/does it go?" Aristotle bases much of his philosophy on the concept of functions--that is, everything that exists has a function, and to understand that thing, one must understand its telos, its end--the telos of an acorn is to grow into an oak, for example, just as the telos of an egg is to become a bird, the telos of fire is to consume its fuel, etc. (The challenge of the philosopher, of course, lies in determining whether a possible telos is in fact the true telos. And naturally, if you're not an Aristotelian, you don't believe that things have proper functions, and that they just are, or are not, and meaning cannot be ascribed to either state. Thank you, F. Nietzsche, but we'll stick with Aristotle for now.) So--



The question I ask myself is this: What does the ideal world of the neocons actually look like? That is, if we are to take their moral, social, and economic positions at face value--dicey, I know, but their readers certainly seem to--and give them, as it were, the three wishes of the genie in the bottle, then what would a world in which all of their positions were fulfilled be like to live in? The test of any philosophy is its results when it is given every chance to succeed--thus we know that Leninism/Maoism is crap, because the nations that embraced it/them were, in the end, substantially worse off as a result. Too, though, we know that complete and utter 'free-market-capitalism' is a terrible idea, as it tends to lead to things like the Belgian Congo (the very epitome of market-driven, aggressively profit-intensive labor relations.) So--



Let us, then, picture a world in which Coulter, Limbaugh, Scarborough, Ingraham, Hannity, Liddy, O'Reilly, D'Souza, Goldberg, Savage--my God there are a lot of them--et al. get exactly what they want: the death of liberalism. Complete and utter. No voice of dissent or disagreement with/from their neocon values. Would this be a dystopia, and if so, what would be its character? What would it be like, in short, to live in the neocon America? For only by imagining total victory for their positions can we test their value. (And if it sounds like I'm indulging in one of those Alternate Universe scenarios in which the South won the Civil War or the Nazis WWII, well, yes, I am, but I do not plan to make this either a cheap Orwellian knock-off, nor a reductio ad absurdum. I want to imagine a world in which these people are happy and content--where things are, as Limbaugh would say, the Way Things Ought To Be. So, like the Bear in the song, let us go over the mountain, and see what we can see.



First, let's be clear about one or two things; even though I've sworn not to go all 1984 on their collective asses, this imagined nation will, by definition, be totalitarian. One political party, one perspective on social issues--that's what 'totalitarianism' means, go ahead and look it up. Since the word inevitably has a negative connotation, let me concede that A. an all-liberal world would be equally totalitarian, and B. since we are imagining an ideal world, we will imagine that everyone in this world agrees whole-heartedly with the neocons, because of course, if they are self-evidently correct (as they claim), then the ideal would be universal recognition thereof. So we need not imagine 're-education camps' or such easy stuff of nightmares. Everyone just woke up one morning and said, "You know what? I agree with absolutely everything I read in Let Freedom Ring, Treason, and The No-Spin Zone." I will moreover vow that I will strive to avoid satire or cheap-shots--those aspects of life, if any, that would be better under the neocon banner, will be acknowledged, and those aspects of life unchanged or changed without disruptive significance will likewise be noted. My attempt is to see what The Good World of these people looks like, and clearly, they do not see it as any kind of dystopia, so I will veer away from that temptation. So--

Well, start by eliminating the extraneous. Literally--let's examine the rest of the world before we look at things down home.

Geopolitically, I'm at a bit of a loss to visualize this world. I think that the only way the neocons can get their way is either for us to conquer the entire planet--shades of Randy Newman's satirical vision of every country the whole world 'round being just another American town--or else we would have to seal our borders entirely, and go into full-blown isolationist mode. It would have to be one or the other; the Neocon vision is not one of half-measures--their unwillingness to compromise is part of what distinguishes them as a philosophy. As I do not think that world conquest is practicable, I'm going to go with the isolationist perspective. Global trade will, of course, still be necessary, but inasmuch as we can rely on multinationals to handle such trade in a way that supports and develops, rather than undermines, geopolitical stability (per the neocons, mind you), we need not worry about international embroglios or dust-ups; Blackwater will handle such things, and our military can do what it's supposed to do--stay at home and guard our borders. Call it the Monroe Doctrine 2.0: The XTreme Edition.

The poorer nations of the world would probably suffer as a result of this new world order, inasmuch as outfits like Nike would, absent any government oversight or finger-wagging from the State Department, almost certainly engage in truly horrifying labor practices overseas. (Please see earlier note about the Belgian Congo.) But, as the neocons point out, such labor practices would be occurring under the auspices of the countries in which they took place, and therefore the blame for any such atrocities would have to fall squarely on the shoulders of local government. Bribery of said governments by the multinationals would allow these horrific labor practices--all right, all right, let's just call it 'slavery'--to continue, but inasmuch as our own rebellion and achievement of democracy ought to be the model for all subjugated peoples to rise up and achieve self-representation, well, we can't be responsible for a bunch of babies who won't grow a pair and stage their own Battle of Lexington. In short, Not Our Problem. Our responsibility as Americans is solely to ourselves as Americans; other nations must shift for themselves. Just as we do not ask them for aid, neither should we be compelled to give it. (Slashing the living shit out of the federal budget for a few years will, of course, enable us to pay off those pesky loans from China, and then it's a strict diet of self-sutained economic development. No more going to that well for us!) In short, a metaphorical wall has gone up around the nation (a literal one on our southern border), and we just don't get out to see the neighbors. Not a problem--we've got all we need right here at home. If you are, as we are, the greatest country in the world--in history--then why worry about anyplace else? People in Heaven don't take vacations.

So what's life like at home? Tune in tomorrow.

Long Overdue

Every snarling misanthrope and general curmudgeon should, at some point in his life, make a stab at his own version of Gilbert's "Little List" song from The Mikado. (Gilbert himself updated the lyrics as some became outdated and better ideas occurred to him, so there's a long-standing recognition that it's OK to do so. Well, that and, let's face it, the original lyrics include the word "nigger"--so seriously, we pretty much have to change them or else every boarding school production in America will be guilty of a hate crime.) Anyway, here's mine:



As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list — I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!

There’s the people who bring infants onto overcrowded planes
All drivers who start signaling just after changing lanes
The shirtless man at football games who’s painted like a clown
The people who climb Everest and have to be helped down
And that scourge of all talk radio - the redneck jingoist -
I don’t think he’ll be missed—I’m sure he’ll not be missed!

I’ve got ‘em on the list – I’ve got ‘em on the list;
And they’ll none of ‘em be missed – they’ll none of ‘em be missed.

All college academics who write books that no one reads -
The gender theorist – I’ve got her on the list!
All those who think that Sarah Palin’s “what this country needs” -
And the 'vampire' novelist – I don't think she'll be missed!
The women who “drop everything” for “Oprah” and “The View”;
Men quoting Monty Python, “Battlestar,” and “Doctor Who”;
All those who not understand that “Warcraft”'s just a game.
All people who “despise L.A.” but live there just the same;
And those who do not bathe because they’re “eco-activist”--
I don’t think they’ll be missed—I’m sure they’ll not be missed!

I’ve got ‘em on the list – I’ve got ‘em on the list;
And they’ll none of ‘em be missed – they’ll none of ‘em be missed.

There's the starlets flashing cameras as they step from car to curb,
And the tabloid journalist – I’m sure he’ll not be missed.
All those who use emoticons and “backpack” as a verb;
They’d none of ‘em be missed, they’d none of ‘em be missed!
All talking heads with empty minds and mouths that fill the screen;
All debutantes who pitch a fit about their sweet sixteen;
All those who sit in coffee shops with laptops all ablaze;
All those who leave their cell-phones on at movies and at plays;
And baby boomer hippies who continue to exist -
They’d none of them be missed – they’d none of them be missed!

I’ve got ‘em on the list – I’ve got ‘em on the list;
And they’ll none of ‘em be missed – they’ll none of ‘em be missed.

Necessity Fulfilled

In debating the existence of God, philosophers must inevitably deal with what I call The Moment of Frustrated Necessity. That is, moments where one is decisively certain that something should be happening, but is not. I have returned from such a moment. Clearly, in a just universe ruled over by an all-knowing Creator, the following is what should have happened:


I am at the local market, and find myself in the frozen foods aisle, looking for (shocking, this) frozen foods, specifically strawberries and peaches. None is immediately evident, and I pause, brow furrowed, to try to place myself in the mind of the corporate manager who organized this place. Fruits are not vegetables, and therefore "Frozen Vegetables" seems a poor bet. Nor are they "Novelties"--Hmm. As I shift my weight back on one foot so as to tap the other in thought (yes, I actually do this), I am involuntarily aware of the song that is playing over the muzak.

It is "Let It Snow," though it is no version of this song I have ever encountered, and for good reason. This is not the bouncy, vivace piece popularized by such as Bing Crosby and Dean Martin. Oh no--this is "Let It Snow" re-interpreted as, as far as I can tell, a porn-movie torch-song. Drippingly ballad-slow, throat-heavy vocals that might be Michael Bolton, or at least someone trying to be him--a sickening ambition if ever there was one.

Mere transcription cannot do justice to the merciless cruelty of what I'm hearing; the singer sounds like he's trying to fake the sounds of a man trying to hold back an orgasm, and thus merely sounds life-threateningly constipated. Try to wrap your brain around it: "Oh-the-weather...(three-second pause)...outside...(three-second pause)...is-frightful...(ten-second pause)...But-the-fire (three-second pause)...is-so...(three second pause)...delightful..."

I pause. I look around at the people shuffling past me--my disbelief is both confirmed and dispelled: they hear it too. Everyone hears it. And everyone either hunkers his head down a bit more, like someone trying to ride out a bitter blast of stinging rain, or else meets the eyes of a total stranger to exchange a little "Sucks, huh?" shrug of broken-spirited comradery.

I listen for a few more moments: "Oh-it-doesn't...(three-second pause)...show-signs...(three second pause)...of-stopping...(ten second pause)...and-I've-brought...(three second pause)...some-corn...(three second pause)...for-popping..."

No. No. This cannot stand. This cannot be allowed. I cannot live in a world in which this is allowed to happen. I drop my basket with an audible clatter, drawing the stares of the rest of the store.

"I'll just be a minute," I announce, generally, and then stride off, disappearing around an aisle and out of sight. Somewhere, there's the sound of a far-off door opening and closing, and then steps that fade into the distance.

The singer continues, and this is the transcript of what follows: "Oh-the-fire...(three-second pause)...is-slowly...(three-second pause)...dying...(ten-second pause)...And-my-dear...(three-second pause)...we're-still...(three-second pause)...goodb--hurk! (Dull thud and the sound of the microphone tumbling to the floor, several seconds of scuffling, then something heavy hits something less heavy) AAAAAAAH! Oh, God, you broke my--AAAAAAH! AAAAAAAH! Oh Jesus God, help me! Somebody help--he's got a--(A sound similar to the snap of kindling)--AAAAAAAAH! Christ! Christ! Holy Christ--that was my--why are you--AAAAAAAH! My God, you can't put that--it won't go in my--you can't---AAAAAAAAAH!! Jesus Jesus JESUS PULL IT OUT PULL IT OUT PULL IT OUT--(gasp)--Oh, God, thank you, thank--AAAAAAHHH NO NOT DEEPER NOT DEEPER AHHHHHHHH!!!! SOMEBODY PLEASE STOP HIM--he's putting--KEROSENE!!! THERE'S KEROSENE EVERYWHERE!!! PLEASE SOMEBODY DO SOME--(The scratch of a match, and a fwoomp--a lot a screaming follows. Then, the low sounds of someone trying feebly to crawl to saftey. Then, the unmistakable growl of a power tool. The voice that speaks now is thick and clogged, as if speaking through a chunky milkshake.) Oh no, no, no, no--NOOOOO--AAAAAAAH!!! Not my eyes! NOT MY EYES! NOT MY--AAAAAAAAH!!! (Several more seconds of screams, then sudden silence, then a wet gurgling sound that goes for about a minute. Then--)

My voice: (clearly out of breath) Be just a second, folks.

(Then, a moment later, the sounds of Nat King Cole singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." The store below gives a round of cheerful applause, and everyone goes back about their evening. When I return to the scene, peeling off a bloody tarp to reveal my own unstained clothes, I'm greeted with pats on the back and a sweet "Thank you, dear" from the old lady in the dairy section.)

That needs to happen.

A Very Belated Response To WALL*E

To be sure, this commentary is no longer current, since I'm only just now getting around to watching the damned thing at home, and not in the theater as God and Pixar (same thing?) intended. But better late than never, said the chemotherapist to the corpse, so here goes:

I was disappointed.

Wonderfully.

Allow me to explain. I watched the first ten minutes, then hit pause, and watched them again. Because I wasn't sure that what I had just seen, I had in fact just seen.

But I had. What I'd seen, if ended right then and there, would have been one of that rarest of things: a perfect work of art. The ten minute sequence that discovers Wall*E in total isolation (cockroach excepted), post-apocalypse, gathering seemingly random bits of junk and then returning to his crib to sort it out--his befuddlement over the cataloguing of the spork was sharp, but the poignancy of the tool-bucket full of cigarette lighters was better--and then watching the video of Hello Dolly! as a means of reminding himself of (though he's never known it directly), a world in which all these things had a place and a meaning that somehow gives them value and meaning in the present, despite the fact that they've been lost--the parallel between the accumulation of crap by the paper-thin WalMart company that led to the apocalypse, and the accumulation of that same crap by an innocent mind, which transforms it from crap into totems of uncomprehending nostalgia--that, folks, is so brilliant that I'm still getting goosebumps.

It's art, folks--it stands up to that kind of academic nit-picking in which I and my fellow ivory-tower inhabitants specialize. I could do a Heideggerian reading of those ten minutes. And a Marxist reading. I could use Camus's vision of Sisyphus to explain WALL*E's devotion to his clearly endless/pointless task. Don Quixote is in there, and Robinson Crusoe, and we can work our way all the way up to A Canticle for Leibowitz and Blade Runner if you like that post-modern stuff. Because there's Duchamp in there, too--just as a urinal seen in the right context is art, so too is a spork. Warhol? Mass production moving first into satire, then camp, then back into the objectivation of an image to the point of naive appreciation. It's there--it's a dense, brilliant, perfect piece of film. Like Salieri's description of Mozart's music in Amadeus: "Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall."

Which is where the disappointment comes in. Because I said to myself, "Dude" (I call myself 'Dude' in the delusion that I am, in my heart of hearts, easygoing and fun to be with--I'm not), "Dude,"I said, says I, "there's no way they're going to be able to keep this up." And of course I was right. Many moments came close to that opening 10 minutes--the space dance, the simple ability of robots to hold hands--suggesting that on some level, the humans who created them couldn't bear to give a creation the burden of awareness without the compensatory ability to feel connective joy--indeed, much of the movie is a beautiful illustration of the concept of "Only connect"--E.M. Forster took most of his greatest novel to make that point!--but no, it couldn't sustain it. It never dipped below the very very good--and such 'low' moments were rare. But it didn't hold on to that gem-like perfection, and that meant that there was a letdown when it failed to do so.

I'm not complaining, really. Perfection is such a rare, rare thing in art, and sustained perfection is damn near impossible. Dickens never wrote a perfect novel. Shakespeare? Please--Hamlet is one of the greatest achievements by any human being, and it's way imperfect. So few things are. Paradise Lost, yes. Heart of Darkness, yes. I think I could make cases for Turn of the Screw and Salinger's Nine Stories. But most works of genius are works that achieve flashes of insight that lift you out of yourself for a few minutes, then plunk you back down again. Such was Wall*E. And you know what? S'OK. Because that puts it in the company of Citizen Kane and Seven Samurai and The Rules of the Game and Casablanca. If the worst thing you can say of a work of art was that you only glimpsed perfection therein, um--that's a pretty fucking amazing work of art. Which this movie is. Plus, of course, it had robots.*


*I still prefer The Incredibles, mind you, because that had robots and Samuel L. Jackson. Case closed.

Do Not Buy This Book

I'm torn between so many impulses: nausea, of course, and tears are right up there. Laughter, to be sure, but so many kinds of laughter, from the low cynical chuckle accompanied a "what can you do?" shake of the head, to the high-pitched chest-heaving kind that one usually associates with the phrase "neighbors have described the suspect as quiet and well-mannered." But enough coyness; here's why:

http://regent.gospelcom.net/rcp/authors/dennisdanielson/

Let us be clear: someone has "translated" Paradise Lost into "English." And others have looked at this and deemed it appropriate: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/paradise-lost-in-prose/?ref=opinion. The attitude seems to be "Well, if it's something that makes the book easy and thus available to readers, why, more power to it!" And "It's not a 'translation,' per se; it's an interpretation that enables the original!"

With all due respect: Bull. Shit.

Allow me to offer an analogy: A conductor produces a performance of Beethoven's Ninth that eliminates everything but the strings and percussion, claiming that this streamlined version, inasmuch as it is easier for the ear to follow, will open up the work to listeners who aren't quite musically experienced enough to listen to the original. He'd be howled from the podium, pursued by a shower of rotten fruit, and rightly so.

This is the ugly side of a society that believes that "All men are created equal" means "No one is better than me about anything ever"--that thinks that the quick path to stardom created by a few weeks on American Idol is a better, sexier way to greatness than pulling one's tired ass from low-rent venue from year to year until enough character and compexity is created to make the breakthrough legitimate. There is somehow the notion that things that are "hard" are never legitimately so, but are designed to be so in order to exclude you. That works of genius ought not to demand effort from us in order to appreciate them. To repeat: Bull. Shit.

Let me suggest something radical: if you can't read Paradise Lost, then you shouldn't read Paradise Lost. If you have to work at it--if you have to take a college course, or refer to the annotations, or struggle--then good. It should be a struggle. Most things worth doing require effort. This is particularly so of artists, and especially of poets. Shakespeare is hard. Chaucer is hard. Jonson and Spencer and Browning are hard. They're not hard because they "use all that-there fancy-talk"--they're hard because they're hard. Genius is hard--try reading Newton's Principia if you doubt me. Complexity of meaning requires our minds to occupy more than one place at the same time, which they can--but not without effort. So the notion that making Milton 'easier' is a legitimate enterprise is offensive and the kind of thing that makes democracies devolve into dictatorships. (Read Plato's Republic, if you doubt me--oh wait, that's hard, too.)

Look, I'm willing to compromise when it's another language--me, I can't read Greek, and yet Homer and Aeschylus and Sophocles have changed my life--I don't have enough Spanish to read Cervantes, and I'd be a poorer soul without Don Quixote. If you need a bridge to cross the gulf between nations, I'll let it go. But English is our language; it's the language that defines how we think, what we feel, who we are. And Milton, with the sole exceptions of Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson, has done more to enable the language to achieve heights and nuances of meaning--and has thus enabled us to achieve those qualities in ourselves. To suggest, then, that Milton needs to be dumbed-down--and that is exactly what this 'translation' is, let's not kid ourselves--means that we need to be dumbed-down--that we are too little in our thoughts and feelings to achieve Milton's level. We are not smaller than we were in his time--let's not allow ourselves to be self-crippled by demanding less than an honest effort. To do otherwise is to bitch and moan about how it's not fair that we're fat even though we're not willing to eat less or exercise. Effort is the only means to achievement--anything that life hands you is essentially hollow, which is why the children of the rich either go out and do something with their lives (FDR, JFK, Churchill) or degenerate into self-medicating gargoyles (anyone until 50 with the last name 'Hilton.')

Milton's poem is, among many many other things, about language itself--he tells us that he will attempt to "justify the ways of God to Man," and do so in the language of poetry. But much of the poem is given over to the inadequacy of any language to convey the meaning of the absolute or the divinely obscure--that humanity's frustration is that what we perceive and what it means and how we account for it in speech and action is just own great big godawful mess, and that the only individual who says what he means and means what he says is God, and that's what makes him God.

And yet the poem isn't about despair; it's about struggling against our linguistic inadequacies--about pushing against the limits of words to achieve something approximating the ability to say something--to really say it. For such a poem to be render user-friendly for them what ain't got the book-larnin' is sickening. It's a poem about how hard it is to understand things, and how we have to try all the same--and to corrupt that by making it 'easy' to understand is just...well, words fail me. (Which is kind of the point.) Shame on everyone who touched this slab of pitch and pretended they weren't defiled thereby, and shame on you if you support it.

In in particular, shame on Fish. Goddammit, Stanley, you know better. And if you don't, go back a reread the original, because you've forgotten why you got into this job in the first place.

A Tale of Two Warehouses

Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--I was stranded by the schedule of a friend with a car in a place with virtually nothing to recommend it apart from the fact that it got plenty of sun and seemed to have the necessary amount of oxygen to sustain life. Having nothing better to do, I wandered in to the only building in the vicinity. I was motivated by the same kind of perverse fascination that leads one to kick over a rotten log--I'd never been inside a Walmart Supercenter before, and I'd heard such horror stories.



My reaction was not what I expected. I wasn't appalled or amused. Instead, after about 10 minutes, I realized, with dismay, that I was clearly sliding into another depressive episode--that hopeless, grim anxiety began to descend upon me with a decisive weight, and I knew I was in for a rough day, week, month--who knew how long? Unhappy (as one might expect), I walked out quickly, deciding that I would let the sun shine on my face and at least get some Vitamin D in my system.



And five minutes after leaving the place, I was no longer feeling depressed.



Curious, I went back in, armed with the expectation of the experimental. And sure enough, about 10 minutes later, the depressive feelings returned. Knowing now that they were probably environmental, I suppressed them and stayed and tried to puzzle out my reaction to this place.



It didn't take long to interpret. I had been inside a massive (no, make that massive--the italics really are necessary, given the subject) open space, filled semi-literally to the rafters with puchaseable items, all of them at rock-bottom prices. And I hadn't seen a single thing that I'd even consider buying. Not even the least little bit did I want any of it.



I saw junk food--too much of it--and soda--again, too much of it--and bathroom accessories and lawn furniture and decorative items that I couldn't imagine looking tasteful in any setting. I saw lotions and hair-dye and toys that were nothing but souvenirs from the latest movie. I saw music made by artists who had to be studio-sweetened beyond recognition, and DVD collections of terrible mid-70s sitcoms. I saw clothes designed to catch the attention, but not to please it. I saw dozens of TVs with nothing on them worth watching. I saw rugs in patterns that distracted the eye unpleasantly. I saw so many things made of that shiny plastic that they use to make beach balls, that leaves its smell and a kind of after-touch of slickness on one's skin. And none of it--but none of it, was something that could be described as "necessary." It was all just so profoundly, overwhelmingly available that unless you really looked closely, or stood far back, you wouldn't notice that none of it was remotely appealing.



And yes, I saw the people shopping. And yes, they were fat. All of them--even and especially their many children. And when they moved, I thought of the scene in Dawn of the Dead where the zombies return to the mall where they spent so much time in life, unable even in death to break the habits of shuffling from store to store.



I don't mean to be a snob--and I don't think that in this instance, I'm being one. What I was seeing was something that actually made me think that the goddamned hippies who fulminate against American consumerism might actually have a point, and if there's anything I hate, it's conceding the validity of the opinions of the fuzzy-minded left. What I saw in that store was the fall of Rome--the point at which we as a nation have moved beyond satiety to the point at which there is no new thing under the sun, and all we can do is purchase more of what we already have, or eat more after our stomachs tell us we're full. It was, in short, an exercise in the nihilism that comes when studying the long view of history.

But--

Then something else happened, and it enables me to take a step further back and maybe not end on quite so sour a note.

A few months later, I went to a Costco.

And far from being depressed, I was giddy. Yes, again there was too much of everything, at rock bottom prices. Yes, the TVs still had nothing on them. And yes, many--though not nearly as many--of the people there were very, very fat. But somehow there was a briskness to it all, a lack of pretence and a winning sense that we were here for things we actually needed--that the food here was generally not junk, but simply large portions of staples. (Well, and condiments. But for Americans, condiments are a staple. It's a cultural quirk I've made my peace with.) The latest books were available, but also good editions of an eclectic mix of classics. The children's section focused on educational DVDs and software. There was a sense, in the men and women who were handing out samples, that the idea of this place was an attempt at quality, and not just quantity. We were offered fish as well as frozen pizza, fruit juice as well as spinach dip. The key difference with WalMart was the sense that we were being offered variety not just of product but of quality; yes, we could buy cheap, but we could also buy relatively dear, and get good value all the same. Wine and fresh bread, cheeses from all corners of the globe--it was a marketplace in the oldest sense of the word.

It was, in short, a vision of the success of America--a place where the openness of our society, the welcoming attitude to other places and people enable us to reap the benefits of their best, rather than just their cheapest. Where the product was more important than the brand. And while it was, in a sense, only a vision--after all, Costco sells a lot of the same stuff as WalMart--the difference between them isn't all that stark--it was nevertheless a sense of what was right about our desire and ability to lead pleasurable lives without crippling ourselves through work or debt to do so.

So maybe Rome will fall. But I'm not so sure that's it's time, just yet. Remember that the clash between Athens and Sparta should have been completely one-sided--Sparta's society was devoted entirely to the warrior ethos, while Athens was devoted to commerce and art. It should have been the jocks kicking the asses of the drama club. But against all logic, Athens not only held its own, but prevailed. (Temporarily. Then they engaged in an unprovoked war of imperial expansion and--OK, I'm getting depressed again.) Point is, we may be Athens as well as Rome. And our time may not yet be here. Just visit Costco, and you'll see.

Plus which, they have Cuisinarts on sale for, like, less than $75! I mean: dude!

Death of the Script

There have been, for about six or seven years now (I know, I'm ever-so-cutting-edge), rumblings in the Cultural Commentary Community about the end of scripted television. Ever since Survivor took to the airwaves and showed the world that Reality TV was ready for prime-time (ready to make the leap from the smaller audiences of Cops and The Real World, in short), folks've been bitching about how, given the low cost and high ratings of such shows, scripted television was a dinosaur, a dodo, a Yangtze river dolphin (too soon on that last one?) And while reports of the death of S.T. may be greatly exaggerated (gotta go for that Twain reference), there is no doubt an element of truth therein. True, there've been backlashes--oh, how we all remember the gorgeous conflagration that ensued as a result of Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire?--but even as one game show (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?--did anyone ever get that that was a Cole Porter reference?) gives way to another (Deal or No Deal) and one 'contest' show segues into the next (The Apprentice becoming Project Runway and/or Top Chef), we're seeing a continual feed of such stuff gobbling up more and more airtime, to the apparent delight of viewers--Dancing With The Stars has got 'em glued to their seats, folks, despite the fact that there are two things wrong with that title, and "With" and "The" don't count.

So why the decline of S.T.? Is it just cost, or the fact that, more recently, the writers' strike forced networks to devote even more time to R.T.? Perhaps.

But it could be that S.T. sucks, and that it has sucked more and more over the past decade.

Allow me to explain--a 'tip-of-the-iceberg' moment of epiphany occurred to me while watching Mad Men the other night. Now I adore Mad Men, but there's been something a bit 'off' about that show for me--as good as it is, I couldn't quite lose myself in it--there was something distant, something off-putting, and suddenly in the middle of the show, one of the characters makes a reference to The Twilight Zone. And I got it--Mad Men is a show that tries to be smart. That is produced by men and women who self-consciously are being "intelligent." And while it and they often--even usually--succeed, the effort shows. But think now about the brilliance of The Twilight Zone; the difference between the two shows is clear: Mad Men tries to be smart, and often is--The Twilight Zone is just smart. No effort, no self-consciousness, no "bringing to television what it and the audience need"--it's just written by smart people (Rod Serling might have to go on a relatively short list of the 20th-century's creative geniuses for what he accomplished in the infant medium of television) who instinctive assume that smart people will watch and get it.

Now think about all the "good" television you've watched in your life. The Sopranos. House. We could go way back and talk about Hill Street Blues and Cheers. And what do they all have in common? Effort. Obvious, patent, can't-miss-it-once-you-realize-it's-there effort. Self-consciousness is the death of creativity. It's the death of engagement, of emotional investment, of catharsis. It's the death of inspiration, in short, and the more and more we go on into the new millennium, the more it becomes apparent that trying to be smart gives a show a very short shelf-life. Dramas care more about being "important" and "groundbreaking" than about being competently, cleanly written. Comedies care more about being "clever" than actually, you know, funny. Television hasn't gotten dumber, folks--it's gotten desperate. Smart people have become too aware of what they're doing, and now, like people who think about breathing, and walking, they can't do it naturally. Watch S.T., folks--pick a show, any show, and I bet you my lunch money* you'll see pretty soon how labored it is. How the effort shows.

We're seeing them sweat. And that's the point at which disenchantment sets in.

And I'm sorry to say that if history is anything to go by, this loss is irreversible.

Again, I open the floor to those who wish to offer shows that do not show such strain. But I'm dubious...

*As I do not eat lunch, this is an extremely safe bet for me.