RattlerGator Blog

Best Super Bowl Commercial of 2011

If you're somewhere around 50 (like me), how do you not love this Volkswagen commercial???

That was definitely the best Super Bowl commercial for me. I missed some of them while texting and tweeting, but of those I saw, this was the best.

Welcome Aboard, Juan Williams

I don't say welcome to the ranks of the Republican Party; that isn't necessarily his destination nor should it be. But welcome to the ranks of those who will no longer accept the nonsense of the Democrats. Their willing ignorance. Especially their unwillingness to think, to accept the humanity of their political adversaries, and especially to not question the racism and sexism regularly showered on conservatives. By the leftwing and by Democrats.

For an especially good take on the journey Juan Williams is inevitably taking right now, please read an excellent piece from Thomas Lifson in the American Thinker.

There is no question in my mind that Juan's ideological differences with me have been based on his immersion in the liberal political culture of Washington, DC, with its baseline assumptions that government largesse equals compassion for the poor, government bureaucrats are motivated by concern for the powerless, and that the private sector is based on greed.  I perfectly well understand how a good man could believe these things, because I once believed them, too, when I lived within the bubble of self-satisfied arrogant liberalism on America's elite university campuses.

It takes a questioning attitude and open mind (and sometimes a shock) to break out of these assumptions, because they can be very comforting. Believing oneself to be a good person because of one's liberal politics smoothes out a lot of the edges in life. When most people in your social and work circles are also liberals who agree that liberals are better people, it is almost impossible to break out. Who would willingly give-up the admiration of people around them?

Indeed.

Hang in there, Juan. Yes, you've been financially taken care of. But your social circles have been forever affected. So be it. You are on the right path and America is with you.

Barack the Booty Bandit?

I haven't watched Saturday Night Live in years (decades?) but everyone may be talking about this video for some time and -- after giving it some time -- I did laugh bigtime at the routine. However, I'm not sure this is a sign he (Obama) has lost the Saturday Night Live crowd -- remember, he's having to be straight man for stupid America, greedy America, in this piece:

Not bad, not bad at all.

“Duty, Honor, Country, Truth, God.”

Vanderleun! What a talented guy. With the Slipstream Media idea, he's attempting to lay out a path forward, a path many of us are seeking and have been seeking.

This needs to be remembered, I do believe:

Summary:

The Media is how America fights its civil wars. In this war at least half the country is both under-served and is painfully aware it is being under-served and lied to. In pop culture parlance, “We’re going to need bigger guns.”

Seen as the 4th branch of government, the unelected and self-selected Mainstream Media, in cultural and political collusion with the present government, knows this and – even as it dies – will do everything it can to prevent the arming of the people with more and better media.

To control the medium is to control the message. And control of the message means control of the hearts, minds, and votes of the people. To bring a better, clearer, and brighter message to the American people, we must have media that, like the Internet itself, “sees censorship as system damage and routes around it.” To accomplish this we must, in a network of small pieces loosely joined together, work to create a pervasive new media across America. Many of these pieces are already in place. Many more need to be created. All need to be joined in an affiliation. Mainstream media already knows how to do this and we must, to paraphrase Abby Hoffman, "Steal Their Book." Media not busy being born is busy dying.

This is the first in a series of articles on how to go about building a new American media; a media composed of newspapers, television, radio, film, music, publishing, and the multi-media capabilities of the Internet; an American media open to all and founded on the five bedrock principles of “Duty, Honor, Country, Truth, God.”

When dinosaurs die large opportunities for growth bloom within the ecosystem. The death of the old media is such an opportunity. It affords a wide range of possibilities to create a new media, a media that runs to the side of the mainstream media, but ultimately supplants it by slipping by it. For now I call it, The Slipstream Media.

By “The Slipstream Media” I mean the use of all forms of media currently in use to inform and persuade the public that "There is another system."

This series of articles will be composed of theoretical and practical observations on the content, forms, principles, funding, and business structures involved in creating a new media network in the rapidly changing marketplace of today and the foreseeable future. It will focus on, in Lenin’s phrase, “What is to be done,” as well as what can be done, and how the creation of the Slipstream Media might be accomplished.

What is to be done.

The Premise: Better ideas require not only better arguments, but also better means of distribution.

To survive and thrive, better ideas also require funding, a sound business model based on the realities of the present, and a path to positive cash flow.

Now, what about that -- huh? Go read the rest, and keep his website near to your thoughts. The man is on to something.

A Worthy Tribute to Tony Snow

I've been disengaged from the news for days and it was with tremendous sadness that I learned of the passing of Tony Snow. I shouldn't veer off into the direction of my next comment but it is what my heart feels at this very moment. The recent passing of Tim Russert created quite a stir of emotion and sadness among many.

Not me.

It wasn't that I didn't like the guy or have great compassion for his family for the sudden loss. I surely did. Russert, I'm sure, was fine guy and was certainly A.O.K. with me in a very neutral kind of way and I easily  recognized his talent and love for America.

For me, however, give me Tony Snow!

His passing appears to have affected me the way Russert's passing seems to have affected so many others. In my world, Tony Snow would have had that long-running Sunday political show on network television. This picture below seems to capture the man for me. He is smiling as he is introduced by President Bush as his new press secretary in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on April 26, 2006. Barely two short years later and he is gone:

Farewell, old friend. I wish I could have known you. It appears that Juan Williams did, in fact, know him well  and his piece seems to be a worthy tribute to a great American (thank you, Terrye, for the notice over at Strata-Sphere:

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We became friends when Tony came to Washington to work for The Washington Times and I was at The Washington Post. We met in a small studio at Howard University discussing local Washington politics with national politics as filler. The show had a heavy dose of black issues because most people who live in the city are black. What initially fascinated me about Tony was his total lack of fear in getting down and dirty on black politics. He never had a problem being the one conservative on a panel of pundits. To the contrary he loved the intellectual fight and usually was on the offensive even as a white guy talking about local corruption and political shenanigans among black Washingtonians. By contrast, most white journalists did not even accept invitations to come on the show.

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I suggest you read his entire piece and I hope that you, the reader (whoever the heck you are), will understand my meaning when I say this but . . . his total lack of fear in getting down and dirty on black politics . . . I love to see that in white people. It tells me something about their backbone and unwillingness to patronize me. It says to me they recognize there are many things worse than someone calling you a racist. And that recognition, especially these days, is a very good thing.

May you rest in peace, Tony Snow, and may our Master deem your job well done.

"The Wire" Comes to a Satisfactory End

I'm one of those people who has loved "The Wire" and could never understand why it wasn't placed on the same level as The Sopranos when -- in my opinion -- it was clearly their equal. Last Sunday night was the final episode of the show and I was stuck out in the Carolina Lowcountry with no access to HBO.

Frustrating!

Now that I'm finally back home, Comcast and HBO On Demand allowed me the pleasure of seeing the finale without it being spoiled by others around me who had already viewed it. I was pleased with the finale and a random search on the internet proved to me that most other fans were too.

Why did I love the show so much? Well, it showed real characters from the black community in an unvarnished kind of way and without some ridiculous sentimentality. It didn't show the black community, it showed a slice of it in a realistic way. I appreciated that, artistically.

I also have a couple of tenuous links to Baltimore that first drew me to the show. Most relevant was a consulting job I used to have. The firm I worked for specialized in doing disparity studies. These were compare and contrast analyses of a defined business market (city, region, state, etc.) from the perspective of available minority businesses and some city or state governmental unit.

One important contract we won was for the City of Baltimore. The minority business office in that city, our sponsoring agent, would have fit perfectly in The Wire. The city council, and I mean the real deal, would have fit perfectly on The Wire. I had a city official in essence tell me, to hell with the United States Supreme Court and their rulings on affirmative action, set-asides, etc.

This was 1999: I knew then, I was in the wrong "bidness" and needed to make a change. Baltimore's housing department was under FBI review, there were political shenanigans going on all over the place, and the entire minority set-aside scene was a game that rewarded gamesmanship rather than any modicum of competence.

Naturally, with this background, The Wire conceptually worked for me. Beyond that, however, the writers and actors collectively brought to life characters that you genuinely cared about. Positively and negatively. I read a good wrap-up by Jonathan Toomey at The TV Squad; you would have to read the entire piece (and the comments) to really capture the flavor of the show and the finale. However, these passing thoughts from Toomey give you a sense of just how many characters [by the way, for a snapshot of the incredible number of characters via their headshots, check this out] were successfully worked into the show and how much people cared about them. The list could be much longer:

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Dukie. Sad. I still can't figure out why Prez gave him any money though. By the way he handled his new students, Prez isn't a fool now. I suppose he wanted to believe Dukie had a chance, but all it took was one look. Donnelly saw it and wouldn't let him into the school. I think what surprised me the most was that Dukie didn't even try to hide it and run with his lie of getting a GED. Prez gave him the money and Dukie just walked off with the arabber to go and shoot up. The new Bubbles. Again, sad.

On the flip side, the original Bubbles finally got redemption via Fletcher's front page story. It seemed that something public like that is what it took for Reginald's sister to see that his rehabilitation was real. She let him upstairs. He's finally out of the basement -- in more ways that one.

For those that are curious, the title of the episode "-30-" is journalistic slang for "the end." It refers to the practice of ending telegraph transmissions with XXX, aka "30."

This episode's quote refers to what H.L. Mencken thought the job of being a newspaper reporter was: the life of a king.

We never really found out precisely what was in Cedric's file, other than his involvement with the Eastern vice squad and the missing money. What was his link? He was willing to resign over it to help Marla and Rhonda keep their jobs so it must have been huge. I say that because despite his anger for McNulty and Lester and what they did, he said he still cared about them. He had dirt too and wasn't that much better of a person if you look at it that way. Why air out your own dirty laundry when you can just make a clean break?

Great to see Lester show up with Chardene at the "wake." I was hoping he'd hop on the felt with Jimmy though.

Jimmy had a great line when Landsman was pressing him about the manpower and the lack of work: "I can't make shit up, can I?" And Jay had a great one at Jimmy's wake when he said if his body was ever on a corner, he'd want Jimmy to work it. A true compliment.

When Rawls and Daniels both confronted Jimmy in the interrogation room, I was really expecting Rawls to whip up both his middle fingers and say "these are for you McNulty," just like in the pilot episode.

Do you think Levy realized that it was Herc that leaked Marlo's number? I'm thinking yes. By doing that, it really did earn Levy some serious street credit. He got Marlo off because of what Herc started and Levy must have put two and two together since his Rolodex was the only place Marlo's number was written down.

Anyone else catch David Simon's quick cameo in The Sun newsroom?

I'm glad Kima came clean with Lester and McNulty. I was surprised Lester forgave her so easily though. If she had kept quiet, he and Jimmy would still have jobs and they could be working to fight Levy and keep Marlo in jail. That's worth being a little bitter about I'd say. Then again, Lester was drunk. And he did accomplish a lot. No sense in holding a grudge.

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What a great show.

I think my only real complaint (if that's what it is) was the writer's apparent need to have redeeming gay characters. Omar, one of the heroes of the show and a fabulous character, was a weird Robin Hood from the streets. Snoop was another fabulous character -- has any woman ever played a role like that on television? And she played herself, kinda sorta? Damn! And dear ole Kima the cop; another lesbian character graced with something of a good, positive role. Even their lovers were portrayed sympathetically. That was just a bit too much for the kid.

But that's a small quibble, it seems to me, when discussing a Hollywood production. To David Simon and crew, job well done. For the record, I think my favorite characters were Stringer Bell, Bubbles, Brother Mouzone, Proposition Joe, Omar, Butchie, Snoop, Bunk, Lester Freamon -- hell, I loved them all. Not the least, Clay "Shee-eet" Davis. I'll never forget the Monday after the second-to-last episode aired. There I was, settling down in my chair, clicking on my On Demand menu, scrolling to HBO, and making my way to The Wire -- all excited about watching the final episode one week in advance. As I had practically the entire last season of shows.

I click on the activation and just what the hell do you think greeted me?

That damn Clay Davis, delivering his famous "shee-eet" to the fool who was silly enought to think he was actually going to be allowed to watch the finale early. I laughed my ass off. At myself, and at the creators of the show.

I'm gonna really miss y'all. Executive producer, creator and writer David Simon prominently dispalyed this quote from H.L. Mencken in the lobby of the Baltimore Sun (a paper for which he previously worked):

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"...As I look back over a misspent life, I find myself more and more convinced I had more fun doing news reporting than in any other enterprise. It is really the life of kings."

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Nice sentiment, but it belongs to the 20th century. It certainly appears to be archaic for any conceivable application in the 21st century.

Season Two of Boondocks Opened Last Night

Through sheer serendipity I discovered that the second season of Aaron McGruder's "Boondocks" opened last night on the Cartoon Network (check out Aaron McGruder's Boondocks website here). I'm disappointed I missed the opener but thank you for the notice today, Atlanta Journal-Constitution. There's another showing of this first episode on Saturday night, October 13th, at 11:30 p.m.

If you haven't seen the show, I highly recommend it -- but it sure as hell ain't for the faint at heart or those easily tripped out by use of the word "nigger."

That ain't me.

I haven't been a regular viewer -- I only saw parts of the first season. But what I did see was incredibly funny. And quite an evolution in terms of what can be produced and presented by African Americans on television. As is the case with all community of folk, this show will be disagreeable to many within and without the culture that spurred its creation.

In other words, as I heard Jill Scott said on her first CD, hhhhhhhhhhh-human. And that, my friends, is progress. The kind of progress I'll take whenever and wherever I can get it. For a contrary point of view last year from a guy I really respect, John McWhorter, check out the post at Hip Hop Republican (and I've been severely negligent in not pointing to that website more often -- I hope to make amends in the coming months). The McWhorter article originally appeared in the New York Sun. His latest column, "Orthodox Campus," is quite good and can be read here.

Finally, the original Boondocks comic strip can be viewed here. And here, courtesy of Aaron McGruder, is the comic strip posted today:

Oh yeah, that's not just funny but right on the money.

The Sopranos: Preparing for the Conclusion

If you happen to be a fan of The Sopranos (while not rabid-crazy about the series, I am a fan), I think you'll enjoy the take by The House Next Door blog of the latest Sopranos episode, Remember When. It was a great overview of the episode and the series itself. This was particularly noteworthy, I thought:

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This is my favorite aspect of The Sopranos, and of most HBO dramas, for that matter: the insistence that human beings are mysterious creatures who usually don't know what they're doing, much less why they're doing it. This is as true of the show's most self-aware characters (Tony, Melfi, Meadow) as it is of the more caricatured supporting players (Silvio, Paulie, Janice, Bobby).

But the one characteristic that unites all of them is a willingness to speak the language of self-knowledge without stepping outside of themselves and standing at sufficient distance from their own egos to make true perspective possible. Nobody on the series seems to have a conception of life outside of his or her own head, or a sense of history that goes beyond self-justifying factoid or self-pitying anecdote: Chris proclaiming that Lauren Bacall starred in The Haves and Have-Nots; Tony repeatedly whining, "Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?"; the hotel attendant who responds to Tony's questions about what happened to the old, sleazy, fun place by repeating, blankly, "I don't know." One rarely gets the sense that Chase's characters understand that the world existed before they were born and will continue to exist after they're dead and buried (perhaps in a Newark basement). When The Sopranos is depicting mob life or suburban life or the fine points of psychoanalysis, it's a compelling black comedy; but when it's showing us the distance between a character's self-image and the reality seen by others, it's a documentary.

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Hmmmmm. Pretty interesting, don't you think? The entire post on that website was good and the comments were great, too.

Brother, What Were You Thinking?

While sitting around watching the Gators vs. Vols basketball game, which meant watching the University of Tennessee basketball team steal our cheese sammich and maybe our number one seed in the big tournament, I could not help but seek some avoidance and boy did I find it.

All I can say is . . . brother man, what the heck were you thinking when you made that commercial???

Oh.
My.
Lord.

DAVE BARRY AND "24" FINALE

Is there any newspaper guy on the planet who has taken to blogging better than Dave Barry? Man, his running blog commentary during the finale of "24" was flat-out funny but I was blown away after reading his full post (I missed the finale and used Dave to bring me up to speed) when I realized he had more than 1200 (1200!) comments to that one post. Here's a sample from his post:

Whatever happens tonight, I want to thank all of you who have participated in the 24 effort this year -- especially the commenters, and especially the amazing Steve and his amazing plot summaries.

I believe that, together, we have demonstrated the true potential of the Internet. Any day now they're going to shut this thing down.

UPDATE: Everybody go to the bathroom now.

UPDATE: Nerve gas all gone! That was quick.

UPDATE: I love the way the terrorists declare their intentions in English. Very thoughtful.

UPDATE: Audrey is now running the country.

UPDATE: Jack has visual contact with the sub. Which means he can see it.

UPDATE: They think Jack can't get on the sub! Man, people can be SOOO stupid.

UPDATE: Petty Officer Rooney is 11 years old.

UPDATE: Just KILL him, Rooney! These kids today, I swear.

UPDATE: Our Air Force must have the slowest planes in the world if they can't get to a submarine in Los Freaking Angeles within 20 freaking minutes.

Sometimes you have to give in to the premise of a show and simply let it be. That describes my approach to 24, a show I only began watching this year. Now, among those 1200+ commenters is a guy named Steve who not only comments but does a summary of the show just viewed shortly after the show concludes. He has his own website and here is the link to see his summary of the two-hour finale, along with just one example of one entry from the summary:

5:06 – Jack tells Officer Tim to arm himself (which is always a bad sign for secondary characters in this show), and tells Tim to kill the bad guy he sees. Tim says he’s an engineer, not trained for that, and besides it would be really “icky and stuff”. Jack convinces him to do it by telling Tim they have one of the missiles aimed at Sesame Street.

Good stuff.