Hitting 500

Inside Television 500

Publication date: 4-30-10

By: Hubert O'Hearn

I just noted the publication date for today's column. 30. That's the traditional edit symbol for The End, or Nothing More to be Said on the Topic. You're reading the 500th edition of this column as written over 501 weeks. I missed one. I was two days out of heart surgery on deadline and half-crazed on painkillers and, you know, contemplating mortality. Not a lot of TV viewing going on that week. But to close shop on a date of 30 would be absolutely hitting the sweet spot in a journalistic coda. I'll remember that some day. Because just like Mike Holmgren told the 1996 Packers after they won the NFC Championship, We're not done yet.

Too much to cover. Too much to understand and convey. Series television is ghastly. Disagree? Here's a measuring stick for you. Are there three narrative shows (comedies or drama) in a given week that you can't bear missing? Are there three that are a regular ritual in your home? I'll wager not and furthermore if you're say 30 or above this is the first time in your life you can say that. The only show I completely love right now is The Sarah Silverman Program. By the way, the only reason i haven't written about that is that I've been in negotiations to get an interview with Miss Silverman since Stella was a pup. There's reason enough to keep writing.

And more and more the most interesting thing on TV is the news and those who seek to manipulate it. There's a series for you, if you feel like writing it. Take the Mad Men concept (also a brilliant show) and set it in the world of modern PR and Media Management. One word for you: money. (now I'm toying with writing it as a play. Hmmm. Look at modern media from the point of view of its primitive self.) 

Which is a long way of saying damn you John Doyle, you went and scooped me again. The esteemed - well one of two TV writers in Canada you could name, along with The Star's Rob Salem - columnist for The Globe and Mail has I think three times now written about on a Monday what I want to write on a Wednesday for a Friday compilation. And news ages about as well as fresh unrefrigerated fish. So this week I see shining up on my Facebook Globe & Mail notification that Doyle has done a piece about right wing vs. left wing politics on TV. With video! If I was any madder I would have spit nails. At a Globe & Mail. 

But I got there first and I'm committed. Last week we were talking about the rise of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats in Britain and how television truly seems to favour the centre or centre left. And I said I would follow up this week. So I shall.

See, Doyle has actually done me a favour by giving me an opinion to argue against. Much more interesting reading for you, I hope. I think he's got it utterly wrong. He makes the point that the left is foundering in North America because the right has all the interesting talking heads. To which I respond that massive traffic accidents tend to draw an audience too. I don't for one moment believe that all of Sarah Palin's television audience are devoted followers of her as a potential President. It may well not even be a majority of the viewers. Rather, many people do have a weird little tic to the human personality. We like a good freak show. It's the same thing that draws some folks to going to NASCAR races in order to see a few good car wrecks. Come to think of it, there may be a significant overlap between the two. 

And Palin is just the extreme end of it. Do you know anyone - anyone - who takes Ann Coulter seriously? Are there people who do? Sure. And they should have their drivers' licences pulled. But just because one finds something amusing or attractively horrifying doesn't mean one endorses its opinions. My favouriote panel show is still the McLaaughlin Group and I'm always disappointed when Pat Buchanan isn't on. 

It is true that the left lacks equally attractive voices and personalities. I'll cede that argument. I'll always be a fan and admirer of Keith Olbermann, but goodness, get over yourself man. And Canada hasn't really had a sparkly public personality on either the news or political side since Rene Levesque. 

The attraction to center and center left will always be natural, just as the classic Freudian battle of Id vs. Super Ego (child vs. parent, want vs. need, left vs. right) can only be resolved by a developed Ego. We list slightly to port because the left always offers prettier toys (daycare and theatres and comfortable retirements) and claims to know how to pay for them. So the next time you see a political debate described as "a clash of egos" that is exactly correct.

But we shall continue thiis argument at a future date. For now, thanks for reading and - be seeing you.

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The Perilous Nature of Food

I got to thinking about writing earlier today. Can't possibly imagine why. Usually the furthest thing from my thoughts. And intermittently I was thinking about fine food. Cafeteria ham sandwiches of dubious ham between slices of questionable bread will do that to you. Finally, I was also toying with doing a bio column on A.J. Liebling for either this Fear and Loathing page or the By the Book Reviews page. Handily, all of this came together in a neat package, served up for your dining pleasure in ... The Twilight Zone.

Sorry. I have no idea why the ghost of Rod Serling suddenly walked into our dining room/office uninvited and unannounced. Aha! Dining rooms. No wonder I've chosen food as a topic.

Here's my thought. Food defies writing. The most famous piece of food in literary history is Marcel Proust's damned madeleine and to this day no one can tell you if it was chewy, gooey or overly crisp. That is because, to repeat the theme, food defies writing.


Writing does the other senses and sensory stimulants quite well. It's the monotony of it that eventually turns us away from written porn, not the accuracy of the reporting. Similarly (or perhaps not similarly at all), I've seen the Cornish coast and Sir Thomas Malory did a fine job of it in his Arthuriad. So sex and sights and ... sounds too. I wrote music reviews for years and if you allow your writing fingers to be as free as a virtuoso's fingers on (say) the blues guitar, you can get the reader to imagine the music to at least the accuracy point of a small radio sitting on a cooler by the water on a windy day playing your favourite song. Or 85%. Some people like metaphors, some deal with numbers. We serve all.

But food is defiant. Even Leibling, the late food and boxing writer for The New Yorker was defied by it. By the way, I italicize boxing because it absolutely delights me that anyone can be equally eloquent about two men squishing their opposite number's heads into pulp ... and mussels. It makes my love of professional wrestling less absurd or at least defensible in polite company.

The point is, that as great as Leibling was in writing about the experience of dining - the chairs, the service, the plates, the scents even - or his reaction to the dining - the filled, the fine, the fish, the farts - I've never known what a single fork or spoonful ever tasted like. Because taste is so incredibly complex and inter-mingled with mood and memory and scent and I sincerely believe sight that what passes from the tongue to the memory and into the brain cannot emerge from the tongue or as written words.

Cat got your tongue?

No, but the pate has rendered me speechless.

This also creates the atmosphere wherein the popularity of cookbooks that are read, displayed yet otherwise ignored for their purpose is explained. We want great food. To taste, to feel, to fill. In our boastful moments we think we can prepare it, but if we're wandering off into unknown lands of cuisines Mom didn't make, we want to be sure that we'll like it too. Hence the cookbook:

Look, we'll just put all this stuff together - stuff that you pretty much know individually, right? Okay, so just imagine it tastes like all that stuff put together. Right? Bingo!


But we can't. So we buy another cookbook in search of the Rosetta Stone, and another and another. But no one can ever write what your taste will feel. Be seeing you.

British Explorers Discover 20th Century!

The Liberal Democrat Party in the UK - born as the Liberals, had a brief marriage with the SDP and now exists as stated above - has for ninety years more or less been the equivalent in its supporters to those strange people in the Southern U.S. who waved Confederate Flags and proclaimed, 'The South Will Rise Again!' This, usually followed by a gust of Yee-Haws. Not the Liberal Democrats are a bastion of scarcely closeted racists and Coca-Cola addicts. I'm sure there must be one or two in the ranks, but that's the universal franchise for you. No, the similarity is that supporting the Liberals in the hopes of forming a government is like waiting for the Confederate States to splinter off. Not gonna happen. Oprah Winfrey will have hot sex with Hilary Clinton in a steel cage under the hot lights of the New Orleans Superdome while a trained marmoset named Mickey drops hot oil on them before the Liberals were going to form a government again.

Oprah's on line two.

You are to strike all memory or resemblance of the preceding metaphor from your mind and if by any chance it ever re-emerges you must clasp your hands in front of you and recite the following oath: "Everything I have ever read about Oprah is fictional except for the stuff in O magazine and anything else Harpo Productions shills." Or else...


Hilary's on line one.

Or else pictures and a full profile of your sister will be given to Bill and we're arranging a speaking engagement for him in your city's hometown and we don't care if it's Dogpatch, the former President of the United States is going to be knocking on her door with a bottle of Jack, two cigars and the gleam of a traveling salesman in his eye.

So scratch the metaphor.

But all of a sudden, for the first time ever there was actually a British leaders' debate. And the Liberal leader - Nick Clegg, seems like a nice fellow - absolutely drubbed Labour leader Gordon Brown and Conservative David Cameron. One poll I saw revealed that 61% of committed Conservative voters thought Clegg won the debate. In all my years working in or writing about politics I have never ever seen a number like that. The hardcore supporters of the party that is winning the election in the polls likes the other guy better. By two to one.

If you're interested in the whos and hows and whats check The Guardian for excellent coverage. My curiousity is with an idle observation. Polling varies incredibly in the UK depending on the slant an individual polling or news organizations wish to portray. I actually like this. Completely corrupt polling means that the public trusts none of it and so stays engaged with what the parties are actually saying. How refreshing. Caveats aside, the Liberal Democrats have received a 3-4% bounce from the debate and are closing in or have closed on Labour for second place ... unless its the Conservatives for second place. At any rate, they're actually in the game.

But here's the idle ... and sleekly creepy observation. Isn't it interesting that the first time a debate is held, the most centrist party won. One would need more jurisdictions and ideally nations to examine how their voting patterns changed in reaction to television debates, but the data would lead to a chicken or egg type question. Is it centrist positions that make for attractive television viewing - no one gets too upset; or is it that the Mcluhanesque 'cool medium' of television creates a medium for centrist positions.

Consider: the last U.S. Presidential election before nationwide televised debates. Serious contenders for the Presidency included the very left Henry Wallace, the very right Strom Thurmond and the eventual winner Harry S Truman. On a national level, the left has never been as left, the right still lurks like a dread horizon, but things do shuffle together into a center right consensus. And center right includes Clinton, may include Obama but does not include Richard Nixon. Discuss.

And let's leave it there for now. But if you have any thoughts, please do post a comment. And click an ad. Baby needs new shoes. Be seeing you!

UPDATE (12:20AM April 17 2010): The following from The Guardian website linked above -

Flanked by the Take That star Gary Barlow, Cameron announced that a Tory government would introduce a national music talent competition called School Stars, which would involve local and regional heats, and would culminate in a national final in June 2011. Winners would get the chance to record a song with Barlow.


So the Conservative Leader's solution to Britain's youth problems is to stage a frigging game show!?!?! Teen Idol! The answer to our prayers of poverty! It worked in that movie about the kids in India! People love that s**t! 


I no longer question the Liberal surge. The Conservatives will shudder back to roughly their 30% core, the Liberals will grab most of it to 27% with Labour forming a poor to middling minority at 35%. The numbers don't add to a hundred because of regional parties. Interesting times. It could be Ontario 1985 come to Britain 2010. One party granted the government because of a razor-thin plurality of seats (and it would have to be razor-thin) only to have the other two parties form a coalition to defeat them and form the government after a motion of Non-Confidence. If so, the Liberals are set up just as Peterson's Liberals were in 1985. The centre party can always blame anything that goes wrong on those wacky guys sitting next to us while pulling the agenda towards their own. Well worth watching for the political news junkie.

Sage Words of Advice: a Sure Sign of Aging

I thought of the piece before I thought of the title actually, but it seemed to be apt. So at least I achieved self-revelation while offering enlightenment to the world. Welcome to my good deed of the day.

When I used to instruct beginning actors, they would usually at some point ask me what it took to become a great actor. I can't even remember now why I first thought of the answer, but it was I think always the same. "Have your heart broken twice. If that hasn't happened to you yet, a) you're lucky and b) work on your technique." To be honest with you, I just editorially tidied that up a bit, but I did always say the part about having your heart broken twice.

The thing was and is that in order to play the sort of emotionally conflicted people that populate the world of stage characters, it is necessary to have had your own emotions run through an egg beater the first time and the propellers of a Sea King helicopter the second time. You need something horrible to compare the first horrible too.



Not that (dear God this just occurred to me) I'm advocating randomly breaking hearts in order to further the art. Or possibly I've just accidentally hit on the explanation of why so many people playing believable  beautiful parts are such complete sluts and assholes in their day-to-day life. They're making others suffer for their art. So let it happen to you accidentally. Be kind to those you have loved. And besides, the theatre needs  makeup artists and front-of-house personnel too. You can be an integral part of theatre without tap dancing across the stage...although the tap dancing across the stage stuff is the most fun  stuff.

The second piece of advice that you wouldn't want to actively seek out in your life but is surprisingly useful for a writer is: lead an odd life. Odd in the sense of live and work in a lot of different situations. It gives you stuff to talk about and lots of characters to turn into, well, your characters. If Kevin Smith had never been a clerk, would he have appeared in this sentence?

I'd truly never thought of it before and this might be boring as hell, but that's what blogs are for. It's the Golden Age of Diaries and personal ledgers. But here are the jobs I've worked at seriously:

Teacher
Speechwriter
Telemarketer
Journalist
Financial Consultant
Marketing Manager
Night Auditor
Theatre Actor/Director

Somewhere along the line I've missed on being a waiter or a cab driver. But fir now, i think I'll stick with the noblest of all callings.

Writer.

Be seeing you.

Why Mike Nichols is a Miffed Man

So now it's Oprah's turn. I'm sure you've heard about Oprah Winfrey getting the Kitty Kelley expose bio treatment. You are after all a sentient human being and cultural earthquakes are hard to avoid. Now granted everything in the book is just an allegation by one writer, but on the other hand Kitty Kelley has never either lost a lawsuit or retracted a statement. And given that past targets have included Jackie Onassis, Frank Sinatra and the British Royal Family - none of whom were or are unfamiliar with civil litigation, if you bear in mind that facts can be twisted by interpretation and editing, one can probably believe the facts in the book.

I found the most interesting allegations to be just below the ones that have grabbed the headlines. I don't care nor should anyone else if Oprah is gay - although I would buy any magazine or newspaper that featured a review of Oprah's book by Mike Nichols. (If that is too obscure, Nichols is the multi-talented movie director who is the husband of Diane Sawyer, who Oprah was all hubbah hubbah about.) One wonders what became of the toe ring Oprah sent Sawyer and if ring was ever worn on toe. 

But I found it much more interesting that Oprah had added octane to her biography. She did not grow up eating dirt after shaking it out of her clothes. Oprah grew up middle class. Well where's the fun in that? Actually I don't blame Oprah one bit about that one. The more I think of it, to this day, black celebrities who are accepted by white people have to have the hard scrabble backstory. Michael Jackson. Muhammad Ali. Bill Cosby. Every Blues performer you'd care to mention. It's almost an act of white Protestant good works to take a poor black person and elevate him or her as our act of contrition. Bless you. So if Oprah figured that one out and cashed in on it, good for her. 

At some point I'm going to have to say that I'm not a particular fan of Oprah. I don't hate her talk show, but when her syndicated show wraps up in order for her to launch her own network, I don't think I'm going to be respecting a six day mourning period either. I just find her to be sincere to the point of insincerity and that's just not an energy which I enjoy watching.

But damn the woman can move a book. An Oprah endorsement is gigantic, but it all depends on her boobs. 'What?', you say? Oh yes, this is marvelous. Oprah's secret power to command her legions to go buy The Bridges of Madison County is based on secret energy waves from the mammaries. 

In an under-reported excerpt from Kitty Kelley's book, if Oprah held a book on her lap, it would be on the bestseller list in two weeks. If she held it over her abdomen, one week. But if Oprah put a book next to or on to her breasts - instant nationwide best seller. You can retire now and work on your golf game. You're rich.  Oprah's breasts say you're welcome. 

Celebrity gossip is not a good thing and I've taken shows like TMZ to the woodshed in this column in the past. But somehow the whole Oprah story brightened my week. Hope you found it the same way. Be seeing you.

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Hail Augusta Caesar!

There are only two television column topics that I repeat every year. One is the Christmas Buying Guide and the other is my annual ode to The Masters. To me, The Masters is spring and birth and history and good sportsmanship and beauty and nature and how man can shape nature into a different form of beauty and flowers and water and drama that will leave grooves in the arm of your chair as the grip tightens like a golfer one stroke behind facing a long carry over water squeezing the graphite dust out of his club. All of the above. And more.

And this will be Tiger's year. Oh God here we go again. But it's true. By the way, has anyone else noticed that the sum of Tiger's wife (1) and alleged mistresses (13) equals the number of golf majors he has won (14). How weird is this guy anyway? It has to be a coincidence. Either that or Tiger is a professional athlete as written by Bret Easton Ellis. 

But every good story needs - well - a story. Tiger is providing it to Augusta. Whether he wins, loses or crashes and burns, blowing the cut, it really doesn't matter. The tournament will now have a shape to it, which it lacked before. It's remarkable. For years we've watched the other pretenders to the World Number One ranking  shatter like a cheap windshield when faced with a duel against Tiger down the stretch of a final round. And again, since he's been at a rehab clinic (cough) spa away from paparazzi and sports writers  (cough) no one has picked up the crown. Sure, Ernie Els won two tournaments but that seems more of a pleasant final encore to an exemplary career than it does a fresh challenge of the summit. 

This way, even under the crash and burn scenario, Jim Nantz and the CBS producers will be able to slowly build in the stories of the leaders so that by the time the weekend rolls around we as audience will still be invested in the outcome. And if Tiger is in contention on Sunday afternoon...I wouldn't be shocked if The Masters pops a rating of around 20-25. American Idol and Dancing With the Stars are the only shows doing 20-25 these days, in case you didn't know. 

And there will always be supporting narratives. I remember, gosh, it had to have been at least ten years ago now when early on Day One (and it's not 'Thursday' at Augusta, it's Day One. The Men Who Run The Masters even control the definition of time.) after four holes played the top two names on the leader board were Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Seriously, it gives you a chill of a thrill. This year, amybe it will be Tom Watson or Fred Couples popping up on page one of the leaderboard. But someone will be there. Only in golf and really only at The Masters will a Hall of Famer climb out of the stands and still be able to compete. 

And this is because Augusta National is the Hall of Fame home course. So bizarrely designed with its mind and break snapping greens - equally loathed by both Ben Hogan and Curtis Strange - course decisions depend more on the memory than on the yardage book. You have to think your way around the track.

That in a nutshell may be why I love it so much. Baseball blathers on about its history and its preservationist instincts - which I'll believe when the last artificial turf field is sent to the side of a swimming pool where it belongs - but golf is the true game of the elders. Bobby Jones. Hogan. Jack Nicklaus. Tiger. Which was the best? We'll never know, but each is publicly beholden to the predecessors and the game tortures all equally. On Sunday afternoon. At Augusta. Cue the Hoagy Carmichael music for Georgia is on my mind. Be seeing you.

My Prime Minister is an Idiot. How's Your Guy Doing?

I've been writing a weekly television column for over eight years now. It was the successor to the golf column I took over in the summer of 2001. Once the snows of November 2001 arrived there was no longer a need for a golf column in Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada. The paper offered me a skiing column but that would just been a sad joke on the universe. My personal view of skiing is the same as my view of sharks: both are best viewed through window glass in comfortable, warm surroundings. 


But the paper wanted me to keep writing so they asked me for a suggested topic. I thought about it for a day and replied: "Television." Why? As everything imaginable is presented on television, therefore by extension I could write about everything imaginable. I didn't mention that part at the time. A good subversive never flips his hole cards until all the money's on the table. 


But I had a capable and generous editor named Ian Pattison for the first six years of the column. He saw what I was up to and he liked it. And the combination of editorial freedom, regular space and a paycheck is literally food and drink to a writer. 


My favourite running topic over the years of Inside Television ( a Greatest Hits blog is coming soon) has been politics. I've always lived by Winston Churchill's advisement that politics is the only game worthwhile for adults to play. Plus there is no greater reality series than the packaging and promotion of political figures and occasionally political ideas. 


But while it is justifiable to burn columns during a Presidential Election in the U.S. or a Federal Election in Canada, I have to be mindful that every now and then I actually should review a conventional television show. But the political thoughts keep flowing, so therefore the existence of this on-line column. Sic transit gloria bunker. 


And it is a curious political time in Canada, the U.S. and Britain. You could throw in France, Russia, Iran and a lot of other nations but this is a column, not a damn textbook. So we'll confine our comments to the English speaking peoples of the Northern Hemisphere. 


Nobody seems very happy, now do they? The Americans finally get a semblance of Health Care, which was a clear plank of Barack Obama's campaign, which won him a landslide and ecstatic love from the people, and now his approval rating plops along at an indecisive and shoulder-shrugging level of 50%. Gordon Brown may be prickly and evidently not qualified for nomination as Employer of the Year, yet internationally there seems to be fair consensus that if any political leader deserves some individual credit for saving the world from complete economic collapse in the fall of 2008, it would be Brown. And yet Brown is floundering like a man tangled in bedsheets trying to get to the bathroom to pee. Brown and Labour are in bad shape leading to the General Election against the Conservatives and David Cameron. Cameron's only strength appears to be that compared to Margaret Thatcher, Cameron is much more gentle and motherly. 


But Canada is the strangest case of all. Were there bad times from the world economic migraine of 2008? Well yes, of course there were. There were job losses, the price of oil tanked and the darn environmentalists started to notice that Alberta's Oil Sands are dirtier than the last pair of underwear you put on before laundry day. 


But things could be worse. Because we are a huge and boring country ruled by a civil service which loves to re-invent and expand itself, Canada has huge and boring banking and financial regulations. Yay for us! Yay we're boring! Yay - three of our chartered banks are now in the top 20 banks in the world because our Federal Government told them to never mind what those kids down the street get to do, you're my son and I say it's bedtime at 9 mister! And now Britain and the U.S. look at our banking system and coo all over it - not that either country has the cojones (or should it be coin-jones?) to actually so anything about it. Instead, onwards march the eight figure bonus checks and the discretionary trading, among other things.


So you would think that as Canadians are a reasonably bright people and know that we only took flesh wounds in a fire fight that still might take out Greece and the Republic of Ireland. Even though the history of financial regulation in Canada goes back much further than the government of Stephen Harper's Conservatives, you would nonetheless think that a grateful nation would instinctively send its thanks with high polling numbers. 


But no! Harper remains in a virtual tie with Michael Ignatieff's Liberal Party which has less of a platform than that imaginary front deck your Uncle Harry keeps talking about building one of these years. Why? Why is my country being like this?


Because my Prime Minister is an Idiot. Harper is not a man to suffer fools lightly. That in itself is not a bad thing. Pierre Trudeau was much the same way. The difference is that Harper casts anyone and everyone who criticizes or even questions him as a fool. That doesn't play well in the long run. 


For instance, there is pretty strong evidence that the Canadian military with at least the benign acceptance of the related bureaucracies regularly turned over Afghan prisoners to Afghan government authorities. Besides being one more boot print on the now heavily trodden Geneva Convention, such a policy breaks a stack of Canadian laws on treatment of prisoners as well as cruel and unusual punishment. Besides which, the practice loses against a reasonable man test, defined here as a test question:


     Your Uncle Harry is pulled over by the police for running a red light. The police are Afghans and Uncle Harry is in Kandahar. Do you ever see Uncle Harry again? Discuss.


Do I think that the Oppositions' statements are true? That the military did turn over prisoners and that Ottawa was complicit? Yes I do. Most people with a pulse think that is true. The government could and should admit that, "Ehhhhh...it's a war zone. Some of these guys, maybe all these guys are legitimate bad asses. You want us to train the Afghans in how to be a grown up legal country? We give 'em something to practice on." Now obviously you phrase it better than that, but that is the gist of the defence. The country goes, "oh" the NDP still hates you, but everybody moves on. Simple stuff. Admit you're wrong. Stop doing what you were doing. Turn over the evidence. Move on.


Instead, the Prime Minister goes into full raving bat freak mode, refuses to turn over the evidence to Parliament and shuts down the House of Commons saying that everybody wanted to watch the Olympics. Spectacularly lame yet simultaneously arrogant, the stunt has cost by my gut feeling about 10% in the polls. The difference, in other words, between a majority government and possibly even losing the whole election. 


Petulance is not pretty.


So my Prime Minister is an Idiot. How's your guy doing?


Be seeing you.


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