If you Love Oprah, Don't Read This

Inside Television 538

Publication Date: 1-28-11

By: Hubert O'Hearn

Three stories this week that bear attention: two goodbyes and a hello. Let's start with a goodbye.

It was one day previous, almost to the minute, before I heard the news that the inevitably-captioned fitness guru Jack Lalanne had passed away at the age of 96. I had been thinking about writing a column on a slow week about Lalanne; prompted by an excellent article on slate.com comparing Lalanne with Jane Fonda nd Jillian Michaels.

I think that what Jack Lalanne got about fitness was that it needed to be a family thing; we're all ij this together. Thus his gentle cajoling of the kids to 'go and get Mom'. If Mom was chomping on bonbons while the kids did jumping jacks, well that wasn't a good plan – and if the kids were screaming for Mom while she was doing back leg kicks holding on to the back of a kitchen chair, she wouldn't be getting fit either. He hated dairy products (and there is reasonable science to back him, but do pass the cheese tray my way), ate fruit like a Barbary ape and from all accounts was a good and honest man. My kitchen chair wept a little tear.

The next goodbye. (I feel I should be turning to camera three.) Keith Olbermann and MSNBC parted ways. Whether it was a firing,a resignation, or a resignation instead of a firing is unknown at the time of this writing. What is known is that Olbermann is one of the few broadcasters in history whose style became an entire channel's style. He made MSNBC into the voice of the Democratic left (which is scarcely Bolsheviks massing in St. Petersburg) when he dropped the pretense of objectivity in 2006 and years following. Ratings followed. Rachel Maddow and others were hired. Granted, Fox News still led in the ratings, but the tilt to the left had taken MSNBC from ratings in the 0.5 range to 1.5 and that is worth millions. There is nothing cheaper to produce than a news show, yet it is always the news that faces cuts.

But NBC-Universal, the owner of MSNBC, has been sold to Comcast and there are changes at the boardroom level and in the executive suites. News chief Jeff Zucker who had endorsed and protected the MSNBC shift has been removed. I predict and expect MSNBC will, ahem, commit to objectivity which means that it will deflate into the same giddy pap and goo that has turned CNN into news worth missing. I hope Keith is back somewhere soon.

Finally, of all the things I've ever written, the line most often quoted back to me is that 'Oprah Winfrey attempts to come across as so sincere she becomes insincere.' I couldn't help but think of that after the emergence of her half-sister Patricia on Oprah's show this week. This right on the heels of a series of stories on the major trade sites that Oprah and her OWN network (God I hate typing that phrase – so coy, so cute, so wrapped in fudge and covered in melted chocolate sweet) weren't exactly pulling big numbers.

So – hey now! - look what I found! New family!

Oh it worked very well. Oprah popped her biggest rating in six years. Isn't coincidence lovely? I have said before that everything – everything – seen on television is a work. It is designed to make you have a visceral reaction deep in your belly that will compel you to go and buy things. That is why television exists. That is why Oprah exists. That is why the 'look what I found at Thanksgiving' awww moment exists.

I trust that Patricia is being paid very well and good for her. She will exist as part of the real-life Truman Show played out on OWN with the role of Truman played not by Jim Carrey but by a serially overweight talk show host. There are worse parts. At least it's long-running and you're not likely to be re-cast.

I do believe Patricia is whom they claim her to be. But I do have two questions: If Patricia had clued in to all this in 2007, you're telling me that on first contact there wouldn't have been DNA specialists and private detectives all over this like ants on an uncle? And two: If all of this was about family love and all that real 'real life' stuff … why isn't Patricia allowed to use her last name? Don't her adoptive parents maybe deserve a little love too? Or did they hold out for parts in the Oprah Show too?

Be seeing you.

Michael Ignatieff and the Lessons of Literature

Michael Ignatgieff and the Lessons of Literature

Politics for Joe 16

By: Hubert O'Hearn

For: Lake Superior News

I'd been planning on writing something for you about the Conservative style-attack on the Liberals and Michael Ignatieff when by sheer fortune I happened to be reading a little book that adds an interesting resonance to my already prepared remarks on the attempt to re-shape Stephen Harper as 'un autre petit homme'.

For that is what it is. We are witness to a fascinating Frankenstein-like clod hopping march by Harper and Ignatieff towards the target of becoming Canada's Next Top Jean Chretien. Mister Jay will be advising them on the suits and Fierce Looks. (Actually, I would happily shell out $29.95 to see that on Pay-Per-View.)

Why the fascination? Principally it is because all of Harper, Ignatieff and their pilot fish of yes men, ass kisses and stylists have tried one design and discarded it. Harper was very much coming across as Canada's very own Peter the Great (I shall quell the northern people!) as absolute Tsar of All Doughnut Eaters, until the Conservatives could not consistently break 40% in the opinion polls. The Margaret Thatcher style Harper wasn't playing quite well enough in households where books are used for things other than balancing bridge tables. So it was time to start plonking out John Lennon songs on the piano, stick Mr. Peepers glasses on the nose, and shove the wife and the fam out there. We're as cuddly as that big old doggy snoozing on your feet...

...except we really like ripping Michael Ignatieff's balls off. I've been writing about television and politics both since the days when the presence of Brian Mulroney in a oom wasn't an embarrassment for all other occupants of that space, but I don't think I have ever seen so massive a 'crash the Enterprise into her hull Scotty' attack as the recent Tory camapaign against Ignatgieff.

Massive. And effective.

I hate applauding a negative campaign, particularly one launched without benefit of a Federal election running in the background. Somehow that's not the Canadian way; or hasn't been until the current Harper gang rode into Ottawa. Say what you will about Pierre Trudeau's Rainmaker, Keith Davey who passed away this week, but I'm sure it never crossed the cagey old cage fighter's mind to run a series of ads halfway through a government's term with a scary and sarcastic voice intoning:

Bob Stanfield. He looks kind of weird eating bananas. And he makes weird old man underwear. Do you want him deciding what happens to YOUR kids?

Brrr. I actually creeped myself out with that one. But...and but. This Tory campaign works because it is bang on. The Liberals have not defined themselves at all. Here is how the Liberal Party chooses to define itself: Everything You Like About Harper, We Are! Everything You Don't Like, We Aren't! And that's the show. Don't worry, we'll have a second act for you by the time we open.

The problem with this is that in tennis terms the Conservatives are always on serve. Jimmy Connors and Andre Agassi were the best returners of serve I've ever seen, but they definitely didn't count on getting six breaks to win a set. So what are the Liberals putting up in the tie-break?

Well, they have Michael Ignatieff. That was/is the game. We're all-in on Ace-Six off-suit against three opponents. Ballsy bet. The illusion of strength might win you the pot – but what if someone calls? What's the strength of that Ace?

My argument against the coronation of Ignatieff as Liberal leader was always that being forced to run the gauntlet while being bashed about the shoulders by Bob Rae and Gerard Kennedy, he would have to defend and delineate his positions. That is the sort of personal confessioanl that can only happen during a leadership run. For Ignatieff to now say, 'Oh by the way, about this statement I gave to GQ in 2006, well you know...” Now how does that sound to your ears? Exactly.

But … Da Wize Guyz of the Liberals thought they had that one covered. They blackjacked their opponents and got Ignatieff anointed as leader without any messy and germ-infested voting, and shoved him out at the public as – Pierre Trudeau! The Tribute Act! Ignatieff was old/young the way Trudeau had been old/young; neither was ashamed of their university years; Ignatieff's name would not cause blank stares in Washington or Whitehall.

It hasn't worked very well, now has it? Ignatieff is as disconnected to the public as is my cell phone when I drive over the first rise to the west. Here was the blindingly obvious flaw in the plan. While both Trudeau and Ignatieff were first noticed as academics – no matter how far Pierre Trudeau traveled the world, his focus was always on how his accumulated knowledge could improve Canada. He was Henry David Thoreau with an enlarged backyard. Ignatieff is an internationalist.

That should not be a pejorative – Internationalist? Damn You! - nor should it be in my opinion. After all, Lester Pearson was an internationalist, Nobel Peace Prize and all. Then again, Lester Pearson never won a majority either. So possibly not a winning formula. But the true crunch is that there is so little in Ignatieff's writings and lectures that specifically speaks to a vision, a pattern, a road map for Canada that it becomes easy pickings for the Harper mind control unit to toss out bombs like, 'Michal Ignatieff: He didn't come back for you' and watch them explode.http://astore.amazon.com/bythe-20/search?node=30&keywords=50+literature+ideas&x=16&y=9&preview=

Strangely enough, this leads me to a little book of literary criticism I've been reading for review. It is called '50 literature ideas you really need to know'. Written by Professor John Sutherland, this charming nook published by Quercus in the UK describes and explains all the facets that go into what we know as literature and literary criticism. Put very simply – why do we like the stories we like? I suggest to you that this book needs to be on the desk and/or night table of everyone in paid political employment today.

Why? Because people vote for the best story. They don't vote for the man. They don't vote for the party. They certainly don't vote for the policies. They vote for the man who says that his party and policies will supply a Happy Ending full stop. And that is that.

This has been the Liberals' great failing since the time of Chretien. Policies spun out from the party during the Paul Martin years like water drops off a shaking dog, but there was no discernible path. The effect was a traveler being given a box of maps of everry inch of the world and then told to go find his way? 'But where am I? Where am I going and why do I want to go there anyway?'

Harper, with his little glasses and piano tinkles is trying to present himself as The Man Who Shares Your Concerns. If that image is ever firmly established he will be allowed by the public to tell them whatever the heck he wants. Why? Because Harper knows me. He wants what I want.

In response, Ignatieff flips burgers and pancakes. There's nothing wrong with flipping burgers and pancakes and humping about the country on a big bus. Just once I'd like to see a political leader entertaining picnickers by trimming out dainty little radish rosettes. At least that would be original.

It is not my place as a columnist or a pundit to tell the Liberals how to craft the story that will appeal to the public. At least, it's not my place this week. For we have written long already and after all …

...suspense is a key element in an arresting story.

Be seeing you.

A Look Back at 'Today'

Inside Television 537

Publication Date: 1-21-11

By: Hubert O'Hearn

I was quite torn this week whether to comment on the 'was Ricky Gervais pistol-whipped backstage at the Golden Globes?' controversy; or the body-blow based advertising campaign launched by the Conservatives in Canada against Michael Ignatieff. The former I decided was just a sneaky way of slipping nasty jokes into this column – and I considered it heavily as it saves me from thinking of my own nasty jokes; while the latter I'll be covering In Another Place, as they say. Website. Search and ye shall find.

Then of course there's the revamped 'American Idol'. Honestly now, would you have thought that Randy Jackson would have been the last of the original – or even last year's - judges to remain? It's like everyone leaving The Andy Griffith Show and just leaving Floyd the Barber; or Hans Moleman is the last resident of 'The Simpsons' Springfield. I'm expecting cookie cutter audition shows, so I'll save that review for a week or two.

On Wednesday morning, I did something I haven't done in years, decades even. I had breakfast and watched the 'Today Show.' That was a habit I'd had from Grade Three through high school, starting with the glory days of Hugh Downs, a ground-breaking Barbara Walters, Gene Shalit on the Movies and Joe Garagiola on Sports. Frank Blair did the news headlines at the top and the bottom of the hour. I don't remember who the weatherman was, and I consider this to be a good thing.

Truly, why did weather become the tee hee tickle show in a newscast? My 'Today' habit was broken, I realize in retrospect, around 1980 when Willard Scott waddled onto the scene with his lawn turf toupees and all those little old ladies sending him cakes, cookies and hacksaws. All I want to know from the weather is what form of clothing is appropriate for the day's possible activities. Now get the hell off the stage.

In looking at today's 'Today' (said Major Major to Yossarian) one is reminded that the show began as part of NBC's Entertainment Division, not News. Its first co-host, to Dave Garroway, was J. Fred Muggs. J. Fred Muggs was a chimp. I swear I am not making that up. And although 'Today' has certainly done its share of fine news pieces over the years, it always had this crazy silly side to it.

NOT Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters

I do find the tilt to be more towards the silly side these days, balanced by the excellent Meredith Viera, who lounges like some highly intelligent Siamese cat, purring out intelligent questions to intelligent people. Matt Lauer was saddled with the thankless, horrible, 'who did I piss off in the front office?' task of interviewing Kourtney and Kim Kardashian. I have never seen more plasticized women in my life.

Lauer actually had the moment of the show when he asked the celebzonians, in the politest possible way, if they ever considered that the public was some day going to be very bored with them and their lives. Their replies were predictably robotic – 'We're having a great time. Have you admired my enormous bum?' That was a paraphrase, by the way.

One has to admire a show that has won over 700 straight weeks in the ratings, still dusting the competition after all these years. Will I keep watching? To check what is coming up, probably. As a regular? Well, it's a bit like a high school reunion. Lovely to see all the familiar facelifts, but those years are things that were, not are. Be seeing you.

Michael Moore Can be Your friend Too!

Michael Moore Can be Your Friend Too!

Inside Television 536

Publication date: 1-14-11

By: Hubert O'Hearn

Generally speaking, as one ages one is supposed to become more conservative, in dress as well as politics. But I think that my rising ardor for more a more radical liberalism (please note lack of capitalization) has been given the stamp of approval by one of its leaders. I have been re-Tweeted by Michael Moore.

I point this out not so much as a fresh notch on the doorframe of coolness, although admittedly that is part of it. Rather, I was involved in the thick of things as witness and participant in the news cycle whirlwind that is the arrived tempest threatening to blow away every other form of journalism, television included. News by Tweet.

It was of course the Saturday, January 8^th slaughter of six innocents and the wounding of twelve others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that I write of here. I was laid up at the house with your standard mid-winter stomach thingy, so I first heard of the shooting on Twitter while I was flogging the latest book review or some such.

Normally, or until that day when normally changed, I would have leapt for the remote control for CNN. And I did, eventually, with CNN or the BBC on the TV. But it was very much background noise.

What I rapidly realized was that the debate, the outcome of this horror was being shaped in real time by people wondering and seeking leadership in Appropriate Action.

Instantly of course, the instinct was to seek out whom to blame. Was it Sarah Palin, with her asinine Facebook page showing elected officials framed in gunsights, including Giffords? Do we blame her? Do we blame the Tea Partiers? The shooter was a liberal – a communist! it was said - so do we blame the left? But we can't blame the guns. Why, Representative Giffords was opposed to gun control laws! One suspects she may be revising her opinion if God willing she survives.

My side of it was that there were two possible positive outcomes. One, that the sheer fear and hatred infecting politics needed to be curtailed; and two, to take the opportunity for there to be the first wholehearted debate on gun control laws since the shootings of Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968.

To simply attack Sarah Palin or one group or the other is to chop down one tree and pretend that the forest has been cleared. Besides which, Palin was already finished as a serious Presidential candidate, perhaps never even really begun. When people are amused by you, they'll let you appear on their TV sets, but they'll rarely vote for you.

As I write this on Monday night, the whole shaping of the framework by which this incident should be discussed is still taking place. Led by the quite wonderful Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Tucson who lambasted his network, Fox News President Roger Ailes (an old Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan hand, by the way) ordered his correspondents to ease back on the rhetoric. If that lasts longer than a month, I'm my Aunt Nancy's cat, but any break will be welcome.

That said, Fox News host valet Megyn Kelly had on Dupnik and essentially stated that Dupnik felt that ranting rhetoric had led to the shooting because he was...a Democrat. Yes I'm quite sure that the first thing on the mind of a law enforcement officer leading the investigation on the most gruesome, insane crime to ever take place in his district would be, 'Hey, how can I score political points out of this?' To make such an implication on the air provides a moment of irony that would have done Harold Pinter proud in his prime. She made Dupnik's point for him.

Megyn Kelly...Surely the heir to Murrow

There was a fairly idiotic media panel on CBC News Sunday night, including Frank Sesno, retired from CNN. They shied from the rhetoric begats violence argument, hiding behind the rubric of 'it remains to be seen'. The concentration will then be on the insanity of the shooter – and no I will not write the name of his poor sick bugger here – with the rhetorical flip that of what use is the experience of a madman? Television news panels will never blame political advertising and television. They're employed by the network; they gain celebrity and income opportunities from the network. And the network lives by the advertising. I'll take Twitter, thanks.

I'm equally hesitantly optimistic about the chance of a gun control debate. That is creeping up on the radar and the moment needs to be seized. Which leads me to the Michael Moore re-Tweet. It was: 'Can't there at least be a DEBATE about gun laws? How can a nation with so many guns have so few balls?' Be seeing you.

Save the U.S. - Ban Guns

(This began as an email to my father-in-law after the assassination attempt on Rep. Giffords. I repeat it here, unedited.)


The poor U.S. You know, there is really no need for anyone to have handguns or rapid fire rifles in their possession. I remember after Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King were gunned down there was a serious movement to ban handguns in the U.S. (granted King and JFK were done in by rifles, but let's not quibble - it would have been a start) much as the UK did years later after those Scottish schoolchildren were murdered. That, as I recall it. was the start of this stupid 7th Amendment bull$hit. the 2nd Amendment was to protect local militias against a British takeover of the government - not a likely event in 2011, I'll guess.

But it made me think. I can't name one U.S. politician who has raised a peep about a ban in at least 20 years. George McGovern might have, but he's been retired forever & Teddy Kennedy, who back-burnered his support after seeing itw as a waste of energy, is dead. 

I've often put together two things or opinions. I love 98% of what America is about. I love its energy and childlike enthusiasm - it imagines itself as a Sitcom Dad to children played by other nations; Bill Cosby say and Canada is one of the middle daughters. And that is somewhat endearing. The U.S. always means well.

But it does ignore Churchill's often-forgotten opinion that 'Jaw jaw is always better than war war.' Always better, he said. 

As a nation, it was founded on the device of superior firepower to Natives, Mexicans and the occasional French. It wasn't firepower that won Independence - it was superiority of numbers and the home field advantage of short supple lines. But, guns worked to grab close to half a continent, so that seemed to be the way to go.

Hence, there were the six-shooters and ammo belts fixed as part of the American mindset. That's the 2% of the U.S. geist I don't love.

Now, I mentioned that were two equations When I lived in two notoriously crime-ridden neighbourhoods in Toronto - and it is amazing how one can learn to get a good night's sleep by imagining gunfire and screams as simple white noise - I came out with the rough number that 1 out of every 1,000 people you see on the street, living in a city are whacked in the head. And I'm probably guessing low.

Not that it's their fault. In North America, if you break your arm you can get it fixed without much fuss. If you break your sanity, well good luck Charlie you're on your own. 

So if we combine that 1 in 1,000 with easy access to weaponry that could probably still overwhelm the armies of several island nations, you're just storing greasy rags and gasoline cans next to the furnace. I've always felt that God gives us a perfect right to do stupid things. If you have free will, you're going to use it, but hopefully learn from the initial error(s). But allowing crazy people access to weaponry - well, that is tempting the diseased and that in my mind is a mortal sin. 

And that may well be the only way that a gun ban will ever be sold in the U.S. That side of the debate will have to be framed in gilt engraved crosses around an illuminated manuscript on aged parchment reading: "Jesus says guns are a sin." 

That might do it. Still not hopeful. The poor U.S.

Mark Twain Comes to Compton

Mark Twain Comes to Compton

by Hubert O'Hearn

Anyone who is surprised that I'm moved to write about this clearly hasn't been paying much attention to my fourteen year career in journalism, criticism and live theatre. The announcement that the Alabama-based New South Books is publishing a version of 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'* with the word “nigger” replaced in all its 219 occurrences by the word “slave”, and that “injun” is replaced with “Indian” was reason enough for me to rise in indignity, but a CBC News report on January 6^th has absolutely set me to boil.

This is more than silly people doing stupid things. This is absolutely the prime Exhibit of why liberalism is in decay and retreat. Please read on. We are talking about much deeper issues than the sanctity of classic works.

The CBC News report, as gravely voiced by Peter Mansbridge, mentioned that the three books most under attack in terms of exiling them from school curriculum were the aforementioned 'Huckleberry Finn' along with F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' and Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. These three books are cited as being full of sex, violence and racism.

Well, I certainly missed the paragraph or two in 'Gatsby' where Jay removes Daisy's panties with his teeth before gratefully devouring  the soft flowers of her Southern beauty …

And so did you.

Because it's not there.

But let us look at the what these three books just happen to have in common. If I was any good at drawing, I'd construct a Venn diagram. (Call that your homework, or après reading craft activity.) But at bottom line, the overlaps create a fairly grim picture.

Both 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird' have central characters who are black men treated unjustly by a white justice system. In the case of Jim, he is both an heroic figure in the story, but is also recaptured into slavery. To slave owners, he is just a nigger. 'Mockingbird's' Tom Robinson equally tries to escape injustice and is killed. He too was just a nigger.

'Gatsby' shows the shallowness of elite society by having Jay Gatsby instantly accepted by them so long as he was wealthycand played his part well. It didn't matter how he made his money, the point was that he had made it at all. But once Gatsby is dead, he too metaphorically is just a nigger. Or possibly a Jew or possibly a German, but in the U.S. of 1925 when the book was published, one might as well say 'same thing'.

1 out of every 8 American black men between the ages of 18 and 30 are currently incarcerated. I think they used to call those pogroms when other countries locked up similar percentages of racial or cultural groups.

And let us not assume this to be an American problem and shake our heads and go 'tut tut poor Yanks' from where I am in Canada or you are wherever you are in the world. How's the weather, by the way? (Canadians have to begin conversations with strangers in an urgent discussion of weather.)

No, in the city where I live I see every day the result of a permanent underclass of Native peoples. Don't talk to me about opportunities, or government support or any of it. I see generation after generation of babies born to young and unwed mothers who will be raised in an atmosphere of corruption, alcoholism and living off what the government of the day chooses or doesn't choose to dispense.

I spoke to a Native man the other day. He would have been 54 or so, not much older than me, and he was sat at the bottom of a stairwell because a combination of drink and a prosthetic leg had rendered him unable to stand up, let alone walk up the stairs. He had been abandoned there by his nephew in the hotel where this happened. I spoke with him at length while waiting for an ambulance to come to his aid.

He had been a graduate of a government program, a B.Sc. granted in 1978 by a completely reputable university. That would have been early days for those sort of post-secondary support programs and at that time, Canada was only supporting the truly intellectually qualified Natives. The Trudeau government wanted success stories. So this man must have been quite right.

And this is where he had come to. Abandoned at the bottom of a stairwell: poor, drunk, unemployed and alone.

Or not alone. No, he is one thousands. Whatever is being done has not worked. And changing the word 'Injun' to 'Indian' isn't going to particularly help. Not when people are being treated like niggers.

But that's the nut of it. This is what liberalism has turned into. Never get to the nut of the problem. Never truly attack – not 'discuss in reasoned terms' – but attack the elite levels that are the proof of Edmund Burke's great and oft-quoted phrase: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

When the men aren't particularly good and don't intend on doing much of anything, the situation is even worse.

For this where 'Gatsby' comes in. Not only must the elite snuff out things that might get black folks riled, but any work that might display the shallow ethics of an Eastern wealthy class that sucked billions of dollars from the wallets of American taxpayers. Very few have served prison time. There are no meaningful new regulations to stop another 2008 type man-made financial collapse. And those self-same elite executives still go off to their summer homes on Long Island...where Jay Gatsby's house used to be.

Really though, this is a skirmish in a larger war, that of the bottom of society against the top. I doubt (I hope) that this new version of 'Huckleberry Finn' will go crashing up the best-seller lists. The irony may well be that school boards, pressured by yahoos to buy the 'clean version' will come to a non-resolution and just won't teach the book at all. “There, we'll show resistance to pressure by dropping Mark Twain. So there. Now who's on Charlie Rose tonight?”

The final exhibit is in the newscasts of the Mark Twain story. I didn't watch every networks' coverage but I saw enough to remark on the strange absence of the word “nigger”. Instead we had the fug-alicious construct of “the N-word”. On these self-same newscasts I know I have heard every one of George Carlin's ancient 7 Words list used with un-bleeped relish.

I had to wonder: if one was reporting a crime story wherein a black man was accused of beating up a white man because the latter had called the former a nigger, would the network use the word then?

And I guess that all the recorded comedy routines of the late Richard Pryor – who was scorchingly brilliant as a social commentator at his peak from the mid-60s through the mid-70s – must not be broadcast again. Pryor used the word nigger as frequently as the modern comic says fuck. The difference being that Pryor's word actually shocked, jolted, and made an audience take notice.

And I guess it is unlikely that anyone will ever be able to say that the primal rap group N.W.A. Had initials that stood for Niggers With Attitude. N.W.A. Itself stood for much more than that; again anger that threatened to cause urban revolt.

Which is why I titled this essay as I did. Because Mark Twain, you're just another nigger living in Compton. But you'll probably get along fine with the people there.

And that's the point.

As Number 6 used to say in 'The Prisoner': Be seeing you.

*I generally link book titles to my Amazon on-line store. Your buying things makes me money. But if you think I'm going to profit off that book; well, I may not have much but I do have ethics. 

Paula Abdul & Live To Dance: Worst-show-ever

Inside Television 535

Publication Date: 1-7-11

By: Hubert O'Hearn

Robbie sez - shhh! this show is crap (actually no he didn't - Inside TV lawyers)

I've been a fan of the UK singer-songwriter Robbie Williams for about 10 years now. Robbie has never made the kind of impact in North America that he has in Europe; my theory being that he can actually sing and that's just not a qualification for success on this side of the Atlantic. Anyway, a few years back he had a hit singing a duet with Kylie Minogue called 'Kids'. I quote from the chorus:

And we'll paint by numbers
'Til something sticks
Don't mind doing it for the kids

I bring this up because I spent an hour Tuesday evening watching an hour of the Paula Abdul produced new show, 'Live to Dance'. It was a two hour show. I watched an hour. Does that tell you something?

Generally speaking, I don't write negative reviews. I'd much rather encourage you to read or watch something than discourage you. But sometimes there comes along a show that is just so ridiculously manufactured that it just begs to be commented upon. Which is still better than being pissed upon, unless you're into that sort of thing.

What is truly, spectacularly, boldly fascinating about the show is that it is the least original thing to appear on a TV screen since the days of the old Indian head test pattern. It is as though the elements of the show were chosen from a Chinese menu from a Chinese restaurant whose only features are chicken balls, chop suey, packaged fortune cookies and some green thing stuffed in a brownish pastry sock and loosely associated with an egg roll. The whole effect was akin to attending a high school reunion where only the boring kids bothered to show up.

You of course have the standard three-judge panel. The ever-wiggling and gushing Abdul, Kimberly Wyatt from celebrity-slut singing act The Pussycat Dolls, and someone named Travis Payne who did choreography for Michael Jackson. I guess he needs the work.

Wyatt, who has the personality of a napkin, isn't worth commentary. Payne at least has a certain gusty laugh when he likes something: MAH-Ha!-Ha! He would make a great pirate king in a melodrama.

The judges vote with the same sort of light-up buzzer system as used by 'America's Got Talent' and the auditioners were presented in exactly, exactly, the same manner as 'American Idol'. See the crowds! See the limos! See the judges! See the crowd cheer the limos and judges! Yay judges! Yay limos! Yay us! We're on TV! Yay! U!S!A! U!S!A!

Well, the crowds didn't exactly chant U!S!A!. But the show did. Small children...will ris from the ghetto because they have Arrived on television! Old people are now hip and nimble of his because they have Arrived on television! Young lovers will now go to romantic success because their relationship has been Blessed by television! Praise the Lord and pass the chips at commercial break!

The only original bit, so to speak, is that the judges occasionally change their mind, spurred on by the audience chanting 'Change your mind.' But even this was about a s spontaneous as the results of Wrestlemania as the background music was the soft sound of soft singers singing 'Change your mind.' Yuh huh.

Can anybody dance? Oh I guess so, but dance without story or context is just a series of moderately interesting quasi-gymnastic moves. Big fat hairy deal. No, this one is all about how appearing on Reality TV and being blessed by Paula Abdul will makle your life better. Amen.

Be seeing you, but I won't be seeing 'Live to Dance' again.