Nurse Jackie at 6

Hey, I've seen the first six episodes of Nurse Jackie on Showtime, so I figured I'd pop back in here with a little review....

First, I'm glad to see that Paul Schultze's Eddie is finding getting some good sex with Edie Falco's Jackie. Back on The Sopranos, Schultze's Father Phil never quite got to first base with Falco's Carmela, but it's more than possible that he didn't really want to, and preferred the food dance instead.

Though, it's intriguingly not at all clear on Nurse Jackie exactly how she feels about the relationship, and what she wants from it. She certainly values Eddie as a source of her pills - which she clearly can't live without - and she seems to enjoy the sex. But it may well be that she'll drop him like a hot potato if the drug pipeline is closed. And it's not easy to maintain an affair with Eddie with her husband Kevin - with whom she also enjoys a good relationship - often on the verge of dropping by the hospital.

Jackie's relationship with her two daughters - especially her older daughter, Grace - also bears watching. Grace's drawing without sun or color catches the concerned attention of her teacher, and Jackie is slowly beginning to see that Grace may need some help. If you ask me, the drawing is no big deal - I agree with Jackie on that - but there may be other symptoms.

The series is slowly percolating, with a suitably slightly zany cast of characters and stories, and I'm looking forward to it coming to a boil....


See also Sneak Preview of Nurse Jackie




5-min podcast review of Nurse Jackie

Highlights of Michael Jackson Memorial

Some highlights of the superbly moving Michael Jackson Memorial today at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, which I've been tweeting a little about, but wanted to say a little more about here -

.Berry Gordy's eulogy was masterful, and captured the sense that all of us had about Michael Jackson in the late 1960s and early 1970s ... a boy with the soul and depth of someone much older...

.Al Sharpton's speech was brilliant and powerful ... what he said directly to Michael Jackson's children was especially on target ... "there was nothing strange about your Daddy, what was strange was what your Daddy had to deal with" ...

.Brooke Shields' words about how Michael Jackson made her smile were memorable, and segued into what I thought was the best musical performance of the memorial...

.Jermaine Jackson's incandescent performance of Charlie Chaplin's "Smile," Michael Jackson's favorite song... (which says something right there about Michael Jackson's universal place in our culture) ...

.Sheila Jackson Lee's announcement that she's introducing a Congressional statement of tribute to Michael Jackson was welcome ... she's a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, from Texas....

.Smokey Robinson, also one of my favorite songwriters and singers, said the most that a singer-songwriter could say to another singer - you, Michael, sang my song better than I ...

.the We Are the World wrap-up was just right ... as were the words from Michael's brother Marlon, and-

.those words by Michael's daughter Paris ... I doubt there was a dry eye in the house, and in much of the world ... anyone with a heart couldn't help but be moved...

Latest Episode of Why Are Republicans So Mean: Peter King about Michael Jackson

Another entry in my continuing Why Are Republicans So Mean?

The latest comes from Peter King, member of Congress, from New York. He’s denounced Michael Jackson as a “pervert," a "pedophile," and a “child molester”.

Jackson was found not guilty of child molestation charges. King is entitled to his opinion about that, and whether Jackson is a “pervert". The real question is why did Rep. King feel the necessity to speak out about this now?

The world is still mourning the death of Jackson – or, at least, that part of the world that found deep resonance with his creative work, and that seems like a large part of the world, indeed. Jackson has not yet been laid to rest, and the Staples memorial for him will take place tomorrow in Los Angeles.

Why did Rep. King feel the need to disparage Jackson publicly right now? Why not wait until this public mourning period is over? Whatever happened to the humane notion of a decent interval, after someone’s death, to withhold criticism, let alone such vehement denunciations?

The answer, I’m sorry to say, is that some – not all – Republicans seem to lack a sense of decency, and indeed humanity. At times like this, it seems you can always count on a Republican, somewhere, to go to the gutter, and say the vile thing.

Don Lemon, Al Sharpton, and the Media's Reporting of Michael Jackson

I just saw Don Lemon defending CNN's coverage of Michael Jackson, in response to Al Sharpton's criticism that the media have been much more negative in their reporting of Jackson's death than they were in coverage of Elvis and Frank Sinatra's passing.

Lemon's response that the media covered controversial aspects of Elvis and Sinatra may be be true, but they were more along the lines of footnotes to the lives of the great singers, rather than the questions about Jackson's life that have been trumpeted in just about every report I've seen about him. The fact is that we do not yet know if drugs caused his death - the autopsy report has not yet come in - and Jackson was acquitted of child molestation charges in his 2005 trial. Sharpton is right that these issues are receiving undue attention.

More important, the media should not be in the business of defending itself against criticism of its coverage. We look to the media for news and information, not self-righteous defense of what it chooses to cover. If Sharpton has a critique of the media's coverage of Michael Jackson's life and death, and CNN wants to report that critique, fine. But we don't need to see Don Lemon then say, hey, I don't know if Sharpton was talking about CNN or other media, but CNN has been reporting just fine about Michael Jackson.

In short, the media should report on the world, not report on its reporting, and certainly not give us report cards on its reporting.

Timely, Masterful HBO Documentary about The First Amendment

Just in time for July 4, HBO debuted its First Amendment documentary, "Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech," this past Monday. Its perspective - that the First Amendment has not been under such fire since the 1950s - is something that anyone who cares about the First Amendment can't help but agree with. The documentary features First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus, and was made by his daughter Liz Garbus. She's already won two Emmys. Her work on this documentary should win her another and more.

Martin Garbus has been an heroic champion of the First Amendment - I quote him about the need for shield laws for blogger journalists in New New Media - and in this documentary, he is the main guide through recent attacks on our freedoms of expression guaranteed in the Constitution.

The key is that in order for the First Amendment to protect speech we value, we must support its protection of speech we may loathe. Communication that everyone including the government likes needs no protection from government censorship and punishment. "Shouting Fire" thus includes the battles of Ward Churchill, a professor who disparaged some of the victims of 9/11 as "little Eichmanns", and Chase Harper, a student who wore a tee-shirt in his high school that said "homosexuality is shameful".

You may disagree strongly with both points of view - I certainly do - but allowing them to be silenced, or punishing the people who espouse them, is destructive to the very basis of our democracy, or, as Martin Garbus aptly puts it, "a country where anybody can think anything, say anything, create anything." Technically, neither Churchill nor Harper was punished by the government, but Churchill (a tenured professor) was fired (on grounds that he plagiarized some of his credentials) and Harper was suspended.

Churchill's reinstatement is currently under consideration, after a jury found that he had been wrongly fired. But others whose First Amendment rights were trampled, as they tried to communicate ideas a lot more welcome than Churchill's or Harper's, have not yet been as fortunate. "Shouting Fire" tells the story of Debbie Almontaser, who was dismissed as principal of the first dual-language Arabic-English public school she was founding, after cowardly NYC officials caved to right-wing pressure. Her case is currently in the courts.

Liz Garbus's documentary - masterfully produced, with clips from movies and real-life interviews interspersed with keen analysis - concludes with a note on the importance of the Supreme Court, and the danger the First Amendment faces from the current court, which could be under the baneful influence of Bush appointees for decades.

No mention is made of Obama's first appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, because the documentary was no doubt already finished when Obama announced the appointment in May. But given the ruling of the Sotomayor Appellate court in the 2008 Doninger case, which upheld a high school's punishment of a 16-year old for objectionable language she wrote on her off-campus blog, the release of "Shouting Fire" is well timed.

I recommend this documentary to everyone who bears witness to our freedoms.

See also June 2009 Interview with Avery and Lauren Doninger and 2005 The Flouting of the First Amendment.

Love and True Blood in the Air

Best True Blood - 2.3 - of the new season last night. Sookie is attacked by some human/bull creature who claws her back, and leaves some deadly poison that even Bill's blood can't cure. Fortunately, Bill brings her to Eric, who knows whom to fetch - a healer with the proper savvy. But this gets Sookie further into Eric's thinking and desires, and ...

Who was the creature that attacked her? Surely not some monster she accidentally ran into on the road.

Sam's a shape changer, and he was leaving Merlotte's before the attack, but Sam could never in any form attack Sookie. Who, then? Well, Maryann has a reason - she wants Tara to stay with her rather than with Sookie - and did she kill the woman who scammed Tara about removing her demons?

Meanwhile, Eric is emerging as a more interesting character than he was on last year's True Blood. He's willing to negotiate with Sookie to get what he wants, he's taken by her strength, and he's clearly attracted to her more deeply than a vampire sheriff would otherwise be to a human woman.

Love and blood are also in the air with newly minted Jessica and shy Hoyt, and that was oddly nice to see. But someone's jumping into the water with Sam, and she has scars on her back, that look a lot that the ones Sookie received from that monster...

See also True Blood Pours Back In




5-min podcast review of True Blood

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, and David Gregory

David Gregory asked Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod a question near the end of their interview on Meet the Press yesterday that bothered me for two reasons. Why, Gregory asked Axelrod, did President Obama not say anything publicly about the death of Michael Jackson, given that "some African-American leaders say the significance of this popular cultural icon was significant. I mean, before there was Barack Obama, before Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfrey there was Michael Jackson crossing over, breaking barriers."

First, I'm wondering why Gregory chose to attribute this astute obervation to "some African-American leaders," when it was first said by the Rev. Al Sharpton, in a powerful, impromptu statement in front of the Apollo Theater on Thursday, shortly after Jackson's death had been announced. "Way before Tiger Woods, way before Oprah Winfrey, way before Barack Obama, Michael did with music what they later did in sports and in politics and in television," Sharpton said to the crowd in front of him and watching on television.

At best, Gregory's attribution of the statement was needlessly vague. At worst, it verges on plagiarism, implying, with the "I mean," that Gregory came up with the specific names in the analysis. I don't like this kind of fuzzy attribution in student papers or on national news shows. Gregory should have clearly identified the statement as by its author, Al Sharpton.

But, more important, why indeed did Barack Obama not publicly and directly say something to the nation and the world about the impact of Michael Jackson? Axelrod's answer - that Obama had "written the family and has shared his feelings with the family" privately - did not really address Gregory's question. There is a world of difference between condolences privately given and a statement to the world about one of the people primarily responsible for "We Are the World," and so many other towering things in our popular culture.

Few things happen by accident in any White House, least of all this one. Obama and his advisors clearly thought it not appropriate for the President to comment publicly about Michael Jackson.

Why not?

I suspect this is another expression of the odd Puritanical streak we sometimes glimpse in Obama, related to his attack on television in favor of books for children, and perhaps his refusal to support gay marriage. Michael Jackson was no doubt a complex and controversial figure, accused of a serious crime. But he was acquitted, no further civil actions were brought against him, and this was not a time to cold shoulder his extraordinary accomplishments.

A President of the United States is a Chief Executive of many things. One of them is talking to the world about events in America of such significant cultural importance that they dominate world news for days. Obama loses points for not stepping up to this job and saying the right thing about Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson and the Ever Lasting Record

Michael Jackson died today. He was 50 years old. In his own way, he was the successor of Frank Sinatra in the 1940s, Elvis in the 1950s, the Beatles in 1960s, and no one recording artist or group in the 1970s. He was probably the most like Elvis, in that both died, way too young, of natural causes. Jackson was a voice, an image, and an icon that helped define the decade of the 1980s.

He also help ignite a revolution in video that we are still enjoying. Not only was his "Thriller" album in the 1980s the best selling album in history, his "Thriller" video helped propel MTV to international attention in its early days in the 1980s. This along with HBO and CNN in turn helped launch cable television, which spelled the dethroning of network television as the only game in town. YouTube today can be seen as a beneficiary of the music video revolution that Michael Jackson helped start.

Whenever someone famous and great dies way before his or her time, I always think of A. E. Housman's poem, "To An Athlete Dying Young." Housman's pervesely rational take was that it's not so bad - because, when you die young, you don't live to see someone else exceed your record, and leave your accomplishments in the dust. "Eyes the shady night has shut, cannot see the record cut."

Michael Jackson did see some very rough times after his glory years. But his record and place in history will never be diminished.

President Laura Roslin vs. Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on The Closer

Fine, taut episode of The Closer last night, with Mary McDonnell, fresh from her role as the late President Laura Roslin on Battlestar Galactica, right in the face of Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick), and the Deputy Chief of course giving it back as good or better than she gets.

The confrontation is about Capt. Sharon Raydor's (Mary McDonnell) investigation of Sgt. David Gabriel's shooting of an unarmed man. We the viewers saw the flash of fire that Gabriel was responding to, so we know he's telling the truth, but Raydor did not and does not. Brenda Leigh knows Gabriel is telling the truth, not because she saw anything, but because she believes in the Sgt., and her job is to get the proof.

But the best action was between Raydor and Johnson. Brenda already acquired a brilliantly evil nemesis last season in the character of the lawyer Stroh, and now she's acquired a tough, volatile opponent in Captain Raydor, who is unimpressed with Brenda Leigh's rank and drawl. But Raydor clearly does appreciate the Deputy Chief's intelligence and power, which should make for a good continuing story this season. It could be The Closer's equivalent of Kavanaugh vs. Mackey on The Shield, though so far Raydor doesn't seem quite as pathological as Kavanaugh, and Johnson is clearly a different kind of cop than Mackey, though both like to take authority into their own hands, to say the least.

Hey, it would be really wild now if Michelle Forbes walked into some role on The Closer...

See also The Closer Re-Opens Tonight


5-min podcast review of The Closer

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

A Brief History of New Media and Their Success in Opposing Repressive Governments

1942-1943: The White Rose uses photocopying to tell the truth to Germans about the Nazi government. Fails to dislodge Nazis.

1979: Audio cassettes of Ayatollah Khomeini distributed in Iran. Succeeds in fomenting successful revolution against Shah.

1980s: Samizdat video in the Soviet Union criticizes Soviet government. May have helped pave the way for Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost, and end of Soviet rule.

1989: Email gets word out to the world about Tiananmen Square protests. Fails to dislodge Chinese government.

2001: Cellphones help mobilize peaceful opposition to President Estrada in Philippines. The Second People Power Revolution succeeds.

2009: Twitter and YouTube get word out to the world about Iranian opposition to reported election outcome. Result: not yet clear as of this writing.


For more details on the impact new media on the democratic process, see New New Media.