Nurse Jackie at 8

Nurse Jackie - the Showtime series about the tough-as-nails nurse with a raging pill addiction and a heart of golden compassion - is eight episodes in, and still getting better with every episode, which is pretty good indeed.

Edie Falco in the lead now seems much more like Jackie than Carmela, which is a testament to Falco's considerable talent. And the supporting characters, ranging from a doctor who repeatedly grabs Jackie (he has some kind of sexual tic - handy indeed) to an administrator (a former nurse) who makes your public school principal seem like the nicest person in the world, keep the series engagingly off-balance and fun.

My favorite character in the past two episodes is the baby who shows up in the hospital, without parents or caretakers. Administrator Gloria Akalitus unhappily takes charge.

Meanwhile, Jackie's problems with her own older daughter Grace are getting no easier. To makes things worse, the grabby Dr. Cooper overhears Jackie talking to Grace, leaving Jackie no choice but to tell Cooper she was talking to her daughter. Cooper is not only tic-ridden but talkative, and he tells Eddie about Jackie's daughter.

It's still not clear to me how Jackie has been able to disguise her family ties to apparently most of the doctors and nurses and medical personnel in the hospital this long. But, then again, she's also been able to disguise her addiction from just about everyone except Eddie.

The peril of disguise is in fact the transcending theme of Nurse Jackie, and it's making for quietly addictive viewing...

See also Sneak Preview of Nurse Jackie ... Nurse Jackie at 6



5-min podcast review of Nurse Jackie

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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!

Good That Obama Says Cambridge Police Acted "Stupidly" in Gates Arrest

Good to hear President Obama tonight characterize the Cambridge, MA police as acting "stupidly," in their arrest of Harvard professor Skip Gates in his home for disorderly conduct. Gates, an African-American, had trouble getting into his home - the door was jammed - so he went in via the back door with his key. But not before a concerned citizen called the police to report a possible break-in. "So far, so good," as Obama said. But when the police arrived, and Gates showed them his ID, he was arrested. "The Cambridge police acted stupidly," Obama aptly said.

Also in racist way.

I'm Caucasian, but once upon a time I was a teenaged kid in New York City, and I saw plenty of outrageous treatment of teens by New York City police. And that was a mild form of profiling indeed compared to what African-Americans have been subject to in this country.

The Cambridge police dropped the idiotic charges.

Now I hope Gates or someone pursues charges against them - for an outrageous, racist arrest.

Likes Coming Together in True Blood

Lots of likes coming together in last night's True Blood - Episode 2.5 - with Sam and Daphne getting closer, as Sam learns Daphne is a kindred shapes shifter (a nice doe), and Sookie delighted to find another telepath, bell-hop Barry, at the vampire hotel ("light tight," as Sookie says) in Dallas.

Barry actually runs off somewhere, so they're not exactly drawing together even as friends, but he's still an extraordinary, mind-igniting discovery for Sookie. It's lonely being the only one of your kind.

Vampires of course have a whole society of kindred souls, and in Bill's case, he also has Sookie. She enjoys spending the night with him in a light-tight place which doesn't oblige him to leave in the morning. And speaking of light, Sarah and Jason are all but in bed together too.

Interesting back story also revealed for Eric - we see how he was made, and his maker - Godric - which explains Eric why is so devoted to saving him now. Vampire Vikings...

About the only major character we still don't know much about is Maryann - though we do get one more piece of information about her - she can make people irritated at each other, as well as lustful....

Well, let's hope that lust still keeps ruling the day - and night - in True Blood.

See also Love and True Blood in the Air




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!

Forty Years from the Moon, and Still Counting

Forty years since we humans walked on the Moon - on July 20, 1969.

I was thrilled at the time, and still am, but I already could tell then that it would be a long time before our species got much farther. Lots of people, even back then, didn't seem to care all that much about this extraordinary accomplishment - the most extraordinary, in many ways, in our history.

Some said, back then, that it was the Vietnam War - that it soured many people on anything connected with the military. But it was more than that. I think there are some people, many people, who just didn't and still don't see the big deal about getting off this planet and out into space.

For me, it's always seemed crystal and pressingly clear. And the reason is not just scientific, or economic, though they play a part.

But the main reason is simply this: we'll never know truly who we are from our vantage point down on this planet. We live on a planet that is part of an immensely larger universe. And until see some more of that, first hand, we'll be lacking a crucial piece of our self-awareness and discovery. To borrow from Socrates, we'll never be able to truly know ourselves from just on this planet.

And once, against all odds, we did make it off this planet, and more than once. But we followed up with missions, which though heroic and valuable, have not really pushed the human envelope beyond the Moon.

Where will we be 40 years from now?

I hope further than where we were 40 years ago, and where we still are today.




5-min podcast about the Moon

Walter Cronkite Reaches the Cosmos

Sad but not unexpected news ... Walter Cronkite has died.

He placed first in a Gallop Poll in the 1970s ... the "most trusted man" in America. News anchors were held in a lot higher regard then than now.

He was our public companion during the momentous decade of 1960s. He told us about JFK's assassination, about Martin Luther King's. He called out the "thugs" who were shoving Dan Rather around on the floor of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago (the thugs were convention "security"). He bore witness almost speechless with awe and wonder to our first steps on the Moon, almost 40 years ago to this day.

I thought he retired too early when he stepped down from the CBS Evening News in 1981. Dan Rather was great - but I would've liked to have seen a few more years of Walter.

Now he's stepped up to the cosmos of our memories.

The Closer: Det. Richard Tracy

The Closer - like Bones - is a deft mix of detective story and comedy. This past Monday's episode - 5.6 - hit new comedic heights. Some scenes had me practically falling down laughing.

The main storyline, about the murder of an Internet matchmaker, was funny enough. But they threw in a detective impersonator...

Det. Richard Tracy at first fools Pope, Provenza, and Flynn, who are so happy with his being first on the scene (in the murder outside of our regular district) that they give him their cards. This opens the door for Tracy to conduct the investigation by impersonating Pope et al.

It takes Brenda, of course, to realize that Richard Tracy = Dick Tracy, a fictional character, but the story gets even funnier once Tracy is outed. He loudly complains that keeping him in custody is keeping him off the case, and in effect gives Provenza and Flynn a glimpse in the mirror of what a passionate detective might be. Fine performance by Andrew Daly (who used to be on MADtv) as Tracy.

I hope we see Tracy back (his character's real name is Jonathan Baird). The Closer is better than ever, introducing new characters like Capt. Sharon Raydor (Mary McDonnell) and now Det. Tracy in just about every other episode, in a frothy cool mix just right for the summer heat.



See also Tom Skerritt on The Closer and Pres. Laura Roslin vs. Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson


5-min podcast review of The Closer

Sen. Franken vs. Judge Sotomayor on the Internet and the First Amendment

Kudos to Senator Al Franken for bringing up the importance of the Internet and First Amendment today in his questions to Judge Sotomayor in her Senate confirmation hearings.

Franken asked Sotomayor if she agreed with the importance of keeping "the Internet the Internet" - or free, as it has been.

Sotomayor replied that she recognizes the crucial importance of the Internet in our society - but that the Supreme Court's role is to rule on the basis of Congressional law.

Franken pressed her, pointing out the importance of the First Amendment, as a part of the Constitution in effect superior to what Congress may do. (He could have also said, but, after all, only an Amendment to the Constitution can change the First Amendment - not a law enacted by Congress.)

Sotomayor replied that the First Amendment is not necessarily superior to "property rights" and other compelling interests.

I think Franken has the right of this. He might have further replied, if he had more time, that the Supreme Court has to follow the First Amendment, regardless of what Congress does.

Unfortunately, this is not what the Supreme Court has consistently done. The Supreme Court wisely struck down the Communications Decency Act in the late 1990s, but supported the FCC's censure of WBAI Radio in the late 1970s.

As I've indicated in my discussions of Sotomayor and the Doninger case, I'm concerned about her support - or lack of - of the First Amendment. Her response to Franken was not very reassuring.

She has comported herself very well at the hearings, however, and will likely be confirmed.

It's good to know that the First Amendment will at least have Senator Al Franken on its - and our - side.



See also The Flouting of the First Amendment.

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 ... Nurse Jackie at Eight




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 ... Det. Dick Tracy on The Closer


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.

Joan Walsh, Bill O'Reilly, and Keith Olbermann about The Media and The Assassination of George Tiller

I wanted to say a few words about the media and the murder of Dr. George Tiller - in particular, Salon editor Joan Walsh's heated discussion with Bill O'Reilly on his show last week, and Keith Olbermann's denunciation of O'Reilly as being complicit in Tiller's murder because O'Reilly repeatedly attacked Tiller as a "baby killer" for his performance of late-term abortions.

First, in the interest of full disclosure, let me mention that I consider Joan Walsh a friend, and one of the heroes of the new media age (my forthcoming New New Media book has a blurb on the back from Joan). At the same time, I have been on O'Reilly's television and radio shows a bunch of times - and the last time, on his radio show, was even told to "shut up" - but I enjoy the rough and tumble discussions I have had with him, and like to think they make a contribution to the public discourse. I have never been on Keith Olbermann's show, though he did quote me several years ago about who might best succeed Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News (I mentioned Chris Matthews, Paula Zahn, and Shepard Smith - Olbermann left out Smith when he quoted me).

So bearing all of that in mind, here is how I see what happened with Joan Walsh, Bill O'Reilly, and Keith Olbermann regarding the murder of Dr. George Tiller:

1. Joan was right to want to go on O'Reilly's show with the goal of cooling down some of the heated rhetoric. Calling people "killers" in an already volatile situation - as O'Reilly had been doing for years about George Tiller - does little to help reach a rational conclusion or course of action.

2. But, just to be clear, Olbermann's view that O'Reilly was an accomplice to Tiller's murder, and bears some direct responsibility for it, is not supported by what we know about how media influence our actions. Olbermann repeatedly cited advertising, and the big dollars that are spent on it, as proof that what we see on TV can guide our behavior. But advertising works because it appeals to already existing human needs. An ad for McDonalds can get us to buy a hamburger because we already are hungry. And if McDonald's wasn't around, we'd sooner or later get something else to eat. These needs are profound and deep-seated, as psychologist Abraham Maslow realized more than 50 years ago. Tiller's assassin, who had a record of violence and mental instability, clearly had a need to act violently which predated O'Reilly's condemnations of Tiller. O'Reilly's words may or may not have been a trigger - but, sooner or later, someone else's words would have had the same consequence. But what then can we do to prevent madmen from acting on their needs?

3. Joan Walsh was also right to bring up the question of gun control, and O'Reilly missed a valuable opportunity to bring this into central focus. Because, a gun in the hand of a madman is what killed George Tiller. The question that everyone who was horrified by Tiller's murder (O'Reilly has condemned Tiller's assassination) should be asking is: how does someone with a record of violence and mental illness get in possession of a gun? At very least, our laws on gun control don't seem to be working. At worst, what if there was an organized group that put the gun in the assassin's hand?

4. Seeking to use concern about violence committed by guns as analogy, Joan asked O'Reilly if it would be right to denounce stores that sell guns as having blood on their hands. O'Reilly found the analogy not relevant, but seized the language and threw it back at Joan, saying she had blood on her hands. And this is precisely why such rhetoric, coming from O'Reilly or anyone else, does no good. O'Reilly started by using it about Tiller. Joan Walsh tried to show its inappropriateness by asking if it made sense to use it about gun dealers. O'Reilly responds by using it against Joan Walsh - not someone who either performed an abortion or sold a gun, but who was only defending George Tiller.

Still and all, I think Joan Walsh's confrontation will Bill O'Reilly was valuable to watch, and contributed to the public dialogue. At least O'Reilly - unlike Olbermann - has people on his show with whom he vehemently disagrees. Sure, the nine minutes that Joan had on O'Reilly did little to cool the rhetoric. But in the end, they allowed two people passionately committed to their views to exchange them in public view.

The Shield: Thoughts on What Might Happen After the Final Scene

Well, now that The Shield is over, and I posted a scrupulously non-spoiler rave review of the series, I thought I would get into the tantalizing territory of what might happen after the final scene in the series. (This will of course contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen the complete run of The Shield, save this post until you do.)

The last scene shows Vic in the FBI cubicle, pulling his personal weapon out his desk draw, putting it into has back holster, and walking out (with what looks to me like a defiant, grim expression).

Where is he going?

I think he's still in the game, and will never cease and desist from pursuing his goals.

In particular -

Vic will not stand still and see Ronnie go to prison. Vic can still talk to Aceveda, and though the photos of Acevada's mortifying moment are gone, Vic can still compel Aceveda to help him, given that Vic has pretty much figured out that Aceveda had the guy who forced him to get on his knees killed. Once Acevada becomes Mayor, he'll be in an ever better position to help Ronnie behind the scenes.

I don't think Vic will sit still and have no contact with his family, either. Cassidy on her own might reach out to him. And there's no one better than Vic to doggedly track someone down.

The FBI may have his soul from 9 to 5 in that lifeless office. But once the clock strikes 5, Vic will be back out on the street, slowly putting the shattered pieces at least partially back together.


5-min podcast predictions about The Shield

See also The Shield in Perspective (no spoilers)

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New New Media vs. the Mullahs in Iran

Bob Brill on KNX Radio out of Los Angeles called me this morning for my thoughts about the banning of international media in Iran. Here is an expanded version of the gist of what I told him in our interview:

The banned media are traditional, old-time broadcast and print media. They are still an important source of information in our world, and their muzzling by the mullahs in Iran is nothing to cheer about, but this action will do little to stop the flow of news out of Iran.

And this is because we now live in the age of YouTube and Twitter - or, what I call the new new media. Unlike CNN and The New York Times on the Web, these newer media allow anyone and everyone to become a reporter, and are impossible to totally shut down or even effectively control.

New media have always been a thorn in the side of totalitarian governments. The White Rose used photocopying to alert Germans to the lies of the Third Reich, and samizdat video undermined the Soviet Union from the inside out in the 1980s. Word got out on the early Internet about Tiananmen Square in 1989, and though the Chinese government in the end crushed that democratic uprising, the people of Iran today have a lot more new media at their disposal. Hundreds of YouTube videos are coming out of Iran and Twitter has been buzzing with at least that many Tweets per hour about the crackdown on democracy in that country.

But are all of these self-produced reports, sent to the world without editors or vetting, truthful? Of course not. But the same open process that brings this information also makes identification of false reports and unsubstantiated rumors easy.

The Iranian government can do what it can to shut down sites and block Internet access in Iran. But the capacity of most cell phones to record and upload videos, and just about any cell phone to Tweet, makes this a brand new ballgame for democracy.

The point of a gun is still hard to disobey or work around, but the informational means to do so have never been more accessible and powerful.

The Shield in Perspective (No Spoilers)

My wife and I just finished the seven season run of The Shield, first shown on the FX Channel. Netflix made the seventh and final season available just last week. We saw The Shield on the strong recommendation of our nephew, Marc Thacher. I was extolling the virtues of The Wire, and my wife and I the power of Lost, and Marc said, yeah, but trust me, you have to see The Shield, it's the best show ever to have been on television.

He may well be right.

First, though, let me offer the ever-relevant apples and oranges proviso - television series, like all works of fiction, are never completely comparable. The Wire is in a superb now classic class of its own, not as police drama, but in its vivid, scalding, anthropologically rich presentation of life in the drug drenched hood. The Shield, in contrast, is more about police. And neither show has much in common with Lost, which inhabits a unique position in story telling that transcends even the science fiction of which it partakes.

But television series can nonetheless be compared on some levels.

Lost, for example, had a weak second and most of a third season (which ended with a stunning game changing finale). It also has had its share of weak episodes. The Wire also had a few weak episodes, though nowhere nearly as many as Lost.

The Shield had none. Furthermore, it started with a kick in the solar plexus at the end of the very first episode, and played out its ramifications through all seven seasons. And the last show was the best series finale I've ever seen.

I wrote a lot about the series finale of The Sopranos - and gave a talk about it at The Sopranos conference I helped organize at Fordham University last year. I thought the ambiguous ending was masterful.

But it didn't hold a candle to the ending of The Shield, which tied up in brutal, heart-rending detail the story lines of major characters - not with tantalizing question marks ala The Sopranos, but with punch in the soul resolutions. This is story telling on television in a new, real dimension.

All great television has great acting, and The Shield is in the top tier of that, too. Glenn Close and Forest Whitaker did some of their finest acting in their guest roles. Michael Chiklis was a tour de force in the lead role of Vic Mackey in every scene. And Walton Goggins grew as Shane in the series from a sidekick to one of the most memorable characters ever on television.

I'll say more about the plot in a later review (with spoilers), but, in the meantime, trust me, you have to see The Shield.

See also ... The Sopranos Anti-Ending and The Sopranos Conference at Fordham University May 2008




5-min podcast review of The Shield

True Blood Pours Back In

True Blood poured back for its second season premiere tonight on HBO, and it was a hot episode indeed.

First, as I said at the end of Season One, I had a feeling Lafayette wasn't dead - and, sure enough, he isn't. But he's not in a very good place. Erik has him prisoner in his dungeon, and if and how Lafayette gets out of this (I'm of course thinking he will), should be one of the more interesting threads this season.

So will be the relationship between Sam and strange Maryann, who, we see tonight, loved Sam (that is, made some kind of wild love to him) when he was a young dog (17 years old as a human). Maryann also seems interested in getting Tara together with a dude already on Maryann's estate.

In the rest of the world, a woman is found outside of Sam's bar and grill without a heart - who took it?

And Sookie and Bill are in fine, if a bit predictable, form, with Sookie upset that Bill doesn't confide completely in her, and later that Bill killed Sookie's great uncle (who had abused her as a girl). But they make it all up with their most passionate, unclothed love scene yet, and Sookie looking better than ever.

Another element I especially liked, given our political climate, is the continued background tension about vampire rights. As sentient, human-like beings, vampires certainly deserve them. But whether they get them, given the fundamentalist, no doubt Republican climate - in which Sookie's brother is now naively basking - remains to be seen.

Though, to be fair, in our real world no group is deprived their rights has cruel characters like Erik - which is part of why True Blood is such a compelling show.

See also 2.3: Love and True Blood in the Air and True Blood: Last Bite of the Season (1)




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!

Thoughts about Lost's Season 5 Finale One Month Out: Richard and Jacob

It's nearing a month since Lost's Season 5 finale was broadcast, and I thought I'd post a note about something that's been bothering me about the finale, the more I think about it.

To cut to the chase: Richard should have been Jacob.

After all, we already saw Richard off the island, with young Locke, and in helping get Juliet to the island. We already knew that Richard was immortal. We already saw how life-and-death significant Richard was in Ben's young life - at least twice (saving Ben's life after Sayid shot him, and helping Ben overthrow Dharma).

So what point was really served by introducing a brand new Jacob character - someone we have never seen before, making the rounds to see all the original 815 major players? Would not the Jacob character have been much stronger, more compelling, had he been revealed as someone we already knew - indeed, someone who we already had seen making the rounds with Locke?

Perhaps Richard will have a role in the final season which will justify his being overlooked as the perfect Jacob - but, for now, I'm thinking that Lost missed a golden, tingling opportunity.

See also Lost Season Five Finale: Jacob and Locke


5-min podcast review of Lost: Richard and Jacob

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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!

The Closer Re-Opens Tonight - Looking Back on Season 4

Hey, The Closer, one of my favorite off-beat detective series, opens Season 5 tonight on TNT, so I thought I'd do my part and provide a little retrospective on Season 4.

First, I would say that The Closer is probably the closest to Bones in its mix of serious detective work and comedy, and in further particular, with a lot of the humor coming from the lead woman (Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson in The Closer, Bones in Bones) and her interaction with her boyfriend/fiance/husband FBI guy (in The Closer) and not-yet-fully-expressed soul mate FBI guy in Bones (Booth). The supporting cast is also savvy and hilarious in both series. Otherwise, the two have little in common.

The past season of The Closer featured Lt. Provenza (close to retirement age, smartly played by G. W. Bailey) in an episode in which he goes undercover as a love-interest and you can believe it, a spectacular shoot-out on a roof which rivals something you would see on 24 or The Shield, and Brenda and FBI agent Fritzie finally getting married (Kyra Sedgwick and Jon Tenney are terrific together).

Brenda is an indefatigable closer - nothing, even Fritz's work, ever gets in the way of her closing a case. But in the best of episode of Season 4, and perhaps of the series, she and her team meet their nemesis in the form of a lawyer who, it turns out, not just defended his client but used his client to get out of Brenda's clutches for a series of sexual assaults culminating in murder that he, the lawyer, committed.

It will be fun to see what Brenda and her southern drawl does about that this season, maybe starting tonight....

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




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!

Weeds 5: Sneak Preview Review

Well, Weeds Season Five starts up this Monday on Showtime - which was good enough to give me a screener for the first three episodes - so I thought I'd report back to you here with a generally spoiler-free preview (meaning, I'll let you know about general tone but not specific events)....

First, you may recall that we left off last season with Nancy pulling a powerful trump card in what had become a life-and-death game with Esteban. He was set to kill her, having found that she revealed information about his drug lording to the Feds, when she revealed to him that she was carrying his baby, likely a boy.

Season 5 picks up right at that dramatic moment.

A lot was written in the media, last year, about how Weeds had grown darker. That was true, and is even more the case this year. Glints of off-guard hilarity still shine through, but they're fewer and further between the desperation of Nancy's situation.

On the bright and even sweet side, Andy's off to his best season ever, Shane's growing up, and Silas is as good as ever. But Celia's crazier than ever - or, at least, her situation is - and Doug's funnier role is even shorter, so far, than in any previous season.

Nancy's slightly older sister Jill is an attractive addition, and she's wonderfully played by Jennifer Jason Leigh - a lot like Nancy, but a little different.

I'm keyed to see where this season of Weeds will be heading. At this point, it feels closer to The Wire and even The Shield than to the story of little boxes we enjoyed for the first three years. And that's ok - indeed, high praise - but just very different.

See also: Showtime's Sassy Hour of Sin ... Weeds 4.3: Nancy by the Endless Sea ... Sitting Shiva on Weeds and Laughing: 4.4 ... Nancy Gets Spanked and Likes It: 4.8 ... Nancy Has Limits: 4.9 ... Shane and Two Girls: 4.10 ... Nancy Turns a Corner: 4.11 ... The Bitter Fruit of Telling Till: 4.12 ... Finale Beginning: 4.13


8-min podcast review of Weeds

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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!