Bones 10.3 Meets Rush and a Dominatrix

No, not Rush Limbaugh, but the victim in Bones 10.3, found big bottom out, sure resembles the blowhard conservative radio talker.  Hutch is not only portly, but popular, enthralling millions with his Republican rants.

And the kicker is that the motive for his murder is that his SM sex therapy, administered by a dominatrix, had gotten Hutch/Rush to see the light - that is, go for a more moderate less inflammatory political stance.   Devotees of Fox News - as distinct from the  Fox network which broadcasts Bones (the two are ultimately connected but operationally separate) - might object to the political overtones of this fine episode of Bones, but I liked it just fine.

The show also had some good helpings of Bones and Booth, including Bones' revelation that Booth likes to be nibbled - on the ear, at least.  But underlying this banter is a somewhat serious problem that will no doubt be addressed this season: Booth still has not gotten over his imprisonment and his house being shot up, not to mention the loss of Sweets.

That loss also comes to the surface in Booth's attitude towards Aubrey, the new kid on the Bones block. Booth always had a problem accepting new colleagues - or colleagues who are foisted upon him - but Aubrey's obvious resemblance to Sweets, in both appearance and earnestness, makes this all the more difficult for Booth.   Fortunately, Booth is a reliable learner, and the scene in which Aubrey confronts Booth about the mistreatment Aubrey has been receiving is one of the best parts of this episode. Aubrey is right that Booth's dissing Aubrey is like Booth dissing Sweets, and the expression on Booth's face shows he's beginning to get it.

The season is progressing well by doing what it always does so well: depicting real people coming to terms, slowly, with a loss in their lives.

See also Bones 10.1: The Fulcrum Changes ... Bones 10.2: J. Edgar and the DNA Confession

And see also Bones 9.1: The Sweet Misery of Love ... Bones 9.2: Bobcat, Identity Theft, and Sweets ... Bones 9.3 and NCIS 11.2: Sweets and Ziva ... Bones 9.4: Metaphysics of Death in a Television Series ... Bones 9.5: Val and Deep Blue ... Bones 9.6: The Wedding ... Bones 9.7: Watch Out, Buenos Aires ...Bones 9.8: The Bug in the Neck ... Bones 9.9: Friday Night Bones in the Courtroom ... Bones 9.10: Horse Pucky ... Bones 9.11: Angels in Equations ... Bones 9.12: Fingernails ... Bones 9.13: Meets Nashville, and Wendell ... Bones 9.14: "You Cannot Drink Your Glass Away" ... Bones 9.15: Hodgins' Brother and the Ripped Off Toe ... Bones 9.16: Lampreys, Professors, and Insurance Companies ... Bones 9.17: Spartacus in the Kitchen ... Bones 9.18: Meets Day of the Triffids ... Bones 9.19: The Cornucopic Urn ... Bones 9.20: Above the Law ... Bones 9.21: Freezing and Thawing ... Bones 9.22: Promotion ... Bones 9.23: The New Intern ... Bones Season 9 Finale: Upping the Ante

And see also Bones 8.1: Walk Like an Egyptian ... Bones 8.2 of Contention ... Bones 8.3: Not Rotting Behind a Desk  ... Bones 8.4: Slashing Tiger and Donald Trump ... Bones 8.5: Applesauce on Election Eve ... Bones 8.6: Election Day ... Bones 8.7: Dollops in the Sky with Diamonds ...Bones 8.8: The Talking Remains ... Bones 8.9: I Am A Camera ... Bones 8.10-11: Double Bones ...Bones 8.12: Face of Enigmatic Evil ... Bones 8.13: Two for the Price of One ... Bones 8.14: Real Life ... Bones 8.15: The Magic Bullet and the Be-Spontaneous Paradox ... Bones 8.16: Bitter-Sweet Sweets and Honest Finn ... Bones 8.17: "Not Time Share, Time Travel" ... Bones 8.18: Couples ... Bones 8.19: The Head in the Toilet ... Bones 8.20: On Camera ... Bones 8.21: Christine, Hot Sauce, and the Judge ... Bones 8.22: Musical-Chair Parents ... Bones 8.23: The Bluff ... Bones Season 8 Finale: Can't Buy the Last Few Minutes

And see also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ...Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents ...Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon ... Bones 7.10: Mobile ... Bones 7.11: Truffles and Max ... Bones 7.12: The Corpse is Hanson ... Bones Season 7 Finale: Suspect Bones

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7:  Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ...Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ...Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ...Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ...Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

#SFWApro



A different kind of police fiction

Rick Tyler's Good Defense of Anti-Romney Ads and Movie

I just saw Rick Tyler (on Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show) give  a spirited, excellent defense of the Gingrich PAC-group attacks ads and movie directed against Mitt Romney.  You've no doubt seen them - "When Romney Came to Town" - a scathing portrayal of what Romney did at Bain Capital, destroying rather than creating jobs in the companies Bain acquired.

Republicans ranging from  Limbaugh to Giuliani have condemned the ad and the anti-Romney campaign, saying it plays right into Obama's hands.  That would be enough to make me kindly disposed towards the ad - I can't recall the last time I agreed with anything Limbaugh and Giuliani have said - but Tyler made some good, objective points that make a lot of sense.

We're in a primary, not a general election, he said of the contest now going on among Republican contenders.   This is a time when candidates are supposed to be vetted by the press, and then voters.

Some economists have joined the critique of the ads, saying that what Romney did at Bain embodies Schumpeter's notion of "creative destruction," as one of the necessary, healthy engines of capitalism.  I'm Darwinian in my theory of media evolution - see my The Soft Edge - so I'm well aware of Joseph Schumpeter's work.   But Tyler had a valid response to this, too:  it doesn't matter whether you dress up what Romney did at Bain in sophisticated economic theory.  Romney did preside over the dismantling of weak companies Bain had acquired, and profited from this.  

And Romney apparently enjoyed it.  Vultures may be part of the natural world, and play a role in evolution and survival of the fittest.  But that doesn't mean we have to like them, or want one to be President.

Beyond that, as I said last week about Gingrich's handwringing about Romney Pac-group attack ads on Gingrich:  people are not that influenced by them, anyway, people can separate truth from falsity, stop whining.
 

Why Are Some Republicans Morally Bankrupt?

I previously wrote about Republican insensitivity to the health of children, among other things, in Why Are Republicans So Mean?, but two displays in recent weeks have gone well beyond even that level of meanness, and so require brief, special condemnation:

1. In February, when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg returned to work after being operated upon for pancreatic cancer, Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) opined that she'd be dead within nine months. "Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer," Bunning told a group at the Hardin County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner. He apologized two days later (but misspelled her name).

2. And just yesterday - Friday, March 6 - Rush Limbaugh remarked about Obama's health care legislation initiative, ""Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill."


What is wrong with these people?

Have they no souls, no common decency?

I can understand - though I strongly disagree with - Republican tics like saying FDR made the Great Depression worse, or Obama is leading us into socialism. Those points are very wrong, but they're not making the mortality of a devoted public servant a sleazy talking point.

Is this where the GOP is heading? America deserves an opposition party that can do better.

ABC Mark Levin's Campaign of Disinformation Against Ron Paul

The latest in the mainstream media's bizarre and destructive campaign against Ron Paul and his supporters - actually, more ABC's than any other medium - comes from the WABC New York and nationally syndicated ABC radio talk host, Mark Levin.

As you can see on his web page, he's urging his listeners and web-page readers to "Call Ron Paul's office and tell him he can't win."

What kind of ham-handed campaign of disinformation is that?

Levin describes himself as "one of America's preeminent conservative commentators and constitutional lawyers."

I would describe Levin as a Nixonian dirty trickster, in the Donald Segretti and Watergate scandal tradition.

Ron Paul and his supporters should actually wear Levin's sleazy tactics as a badge of honor. They should be proud that someone who lists Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity among his favorite links, and who supports the Bush administration as if it were Abraham Lincoln's, has seen fit to try to undermine Ron Paul's campaign in this underhanded way. It means that Hannity and his ilk see Ron Paul as a threat, which indeed they should.

Ron Paul deeply believes in the First Amendment and freedom of speech, as do I, and therefore I would never call for Levin and his mouth to be taken off the air. Levin is entitled to urge all the despicable things in politics his mind can conjure.

But he can count on me to keep calling him out for what he is - a person, like Nixon's henchmen, with no respect for the democratic process. His continued presence on ABC's airwaves is yet another black mark against that benighted network, and another case study that I and no doubt other professors will be teaching their students about for many years to come.



See also - ABC's Abuse of American Electorate to Be Included in my Curriculum This Fall

and More ABC News Distortion to be Included in My Curriculum

and The Media Disenfranchising of Ron Paul

and Newspaper Coverage of Ron Paul in Iowa: B+