It’s time to dust this blog off!
Looking back at my previous entries, it looks like I dropped off “The West Wing.” I had been watching it, but man, between the 9/11 episode to start the third season and Mrs. Landingham dying at the end of season 2, I needed a break. I was watching WW to distract me from the real actual West Wing of the White House right now. But now that this current administration has amped up the crazy to noxious levels, I thought it was time to go back, and I am pleased to report that I completed the third season over a long weekend. A couple key points:
- CJ is just my homey. She might be the only woman character that Aaron Sorkin has ever made to seem like an actual woman you might meet.
- There are some shows that don’t intend to be dated. I think “The West Wing” is one of them. But there is no surer sign of a 90s/early aughts network television show than Mark Harmon showing up in a guest romantic role. I’m still mad about him assisting in the final ruination of “Moonlighting.” I didn’t even feel bad about how dirty he got done in the last episode.
I’ll probably start season 4 this week. I guess I do have a small question about how Josh is dating a lobbyist who immediately takes their pillow talk and then tries to thwart the administration’s plans. It seems like that should be more than the minor annoyance it appears to be in the third season. Part of me was also blaming Sorkin for how Mary-Louise Parker’s character comes across, but yeah, I actually never liked “Weeds” because of her, too.
In my ears
I’m a bit of a podcast junkie, and I was able to fashion a reasoned article out of the rage haze I saw when I completed the Broken Harts podcast. Thanks to Galen over at Bello Collective for calming me down enough to write this critique, and for suggesting I contact the team at In the Dark, because I got quotes from Samara Freemark! (You have listened to In the Dark, yes?)
I’ve developed something of a reputation among family and friend for (often unsolicited) podcast recommendations that match virtually any conversation. I thought I’d start sharing what I’m listening to and why.
Anyone who knows me knows that my only consistent habit during the work week is listening to The Daily. If you want to learn something new, you listen to this podcast. Sometimes it’s stuff you’re interested and sometimes it’s just stuff you just now realized you were interested in. Usually, The Daily can do no wrong to my ears.
Usually.
This week, they did a series about how democracy is working across Europe, especially with the strength of the European Union under threat.
This team went to France, Italy, Poland and Germany to take a look at democratic countries with populaces in distress. Many are seemingly disillusioned with “liberal democracy” (air quotes because I don’t think that’s a thing) and are tiptoeing towards support for nationalists. In Poland, it’s already there, and that’s the strongest episode. It had everything: Two brothers divided — one goes into politics and the other journalism, and a widow running for office after the assassination of her husband.
**(SPOILER) When reporter Kathrin Bennhold says that someone from the government came in to change the editorial direction of the paper the one brother worked for, did anyone else feel that second of dread, knowing it was definitely his own brother coming to strong-arm him?**
Anyway, I waited for the whole series for someone to make two points here: First, a lot of people in the U.S. thought it was a good idea to vote for the current president because of economic anxiety. I kept waiting for someone to say, “SOUNDS FAMILIAR, GUYS?!” Which was not the point. I know this.
Second, these European far-right candidates are taking that economic discomfort and mixing in casual xenophobia and baking it into this nice cake whose decoration reads: “Let’s get rid of the immigrants and everything will be fine!” Which is their choice, no matter how repugnant. But this begs the question of whose job it is to present facts here. Sure, opposing candidates can disprove the right’s talking points on immigration with facts in a debate setting, or an interview. But in this man-on-the-street situation, shouldn’t journalists do this, too? That was the most frustrating part of this series. Do you let these people onto your air blaming immigrants for their lots in life without fact-checking them? It’s not a journalist’s job to dissuade them, but to let them wade around in false information without at least telling them there’s different information out there? That feels wrong and lazy. But that’s the corner journalism has painted itself into now — at least here. It’s so obsessed with giving both sides a forum that outright white nationalists can stand on the same stage with serious minds with no qualification.
On the queue for this week: A new podcast from Barnes & Noble about Stephen King books! It’s called King of the Dark and it’s available now and I was a little excited about this development on Twitter:
Barnes & Noble is doing podcasts now. What a wonderful world.
What I’m reading
“Queen of the Night” by Alexander Chee. This is how I get into books. I saw a quote of Chee’s on Twitter about what writer’s block means and so I decided to pick up one of his books.
I am not a big Victorian-era book reader, and this one started slow for me. I’m elbow-deep in now. Here’s something wild that happened while I was reading this book:
I was working on a short story that I’d been trying to finish for months and I got to the buildup to the end I’d had in mind when I just stopped. I couldn’t figure out how to get from where I was to where I was going and that had never happened before. I was so. close.
So I closed the file and decided to read instead to calm myself down, intending to just get through a few pages, then go about the rest of my day. I picked up “Queen of the Night” and began reading. I read a passage that was so beautiful that it unlocked whatever had happened with my block. Seriously. I closed the book, opened my document and finished my short story right there, right then. My story and his have nothing in common. I don’t know how to explain it, except as I said: Dude unlocked my writer’s block. So thanks, Alexander?
“Why is it so loud when you cry from grief? Because it must be loud enough for the missing one to hear, though it never can be. Loud enough to scale the sky and the backs of angels, or to fall through the earth to where they rest. And so it is sometimes when I sing that the notes come from me as if I believed I could reach them where they rest, they sure of a reunion I still cannot imagine or believe in except, sometimes, in song.”
Chee, “Queen of the Night”