True Ancestor

The Revolution Will Not Be Turbo-charged

I was watching my rampaging White Sox on TV a couple of nights ago and noticed something that any disciplined TV-watcher has probably noticed for awhile now: automobile adds are using phrases redolent of American patriotism and independence in their ad campaigns. Cadillac's tag line is "Life. Liberty. And the Pursuit." Chevrolet promises "An American Revolution." A shade less derivative but no less mock-inspirational, Chrysler says, "Let's Refuel America."

The irony is beyond belief. It seems Cadillac is after a younger demographic with this campaign: a young, George Michael-ish bachelor zooms through the deserted neon canyons of an anonymous cityscape, his internal monologue full of self-congratulation for the wisdom of his purchase of a Cadillac. This ad campaign must be a decade behind the times (ergo the George Michael reference). Younger drivers don't give a turd about these enormous, sclerotic gas-guzzlers driven by Bubbies and Zadies all over the land: they want cars that manage to perform reasonably well while using less gas. That would make them feel pretty cool.

Chevrolet, like Ford, is really all about its trucks, and so this ad campaign at least launches a cluster-bomb toward what it perceives as the patriotic heartland: Hillary-voting, Andrea Mitchell-hating redneck country. Meanwhile, you have to really be an auto-geek (or have a son that's turning into one) to learn that Chevy is going to move ahead with its production of the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt in 2010. Talk about an American revolution: a car company actually doing something about mobility, economy and environmental stewardship! I must be dreaming.

As for Chrysler: you'll be shocked to learn that it's not really refueling America; it's offering a fixed price for unleaded and diesel to go along with its vehicles. Thanks for the diesel deal, guys. Now what about all the health problems attributed to it?

As scary as he can sometimes be, I think Charles Krauthammer was right on this issue: create a U.S. energy tax that keeps gasoline above the panic "price point" (which appears to be about $4 a gallon) so that we incentivize conservation and alternative fuel technology, rather than subsidizing oil companies and emirates.  

Now that's life, liberty and the pursuit.

--T.A.

Techno-McCarthyism

You can't hang out with anybody who's controversial.

You can't say anything off the cuff, off color.

You can't sing off key.

And you sure can't be caught with your guard or your pants down, your shirt or your skirt up.

In this age of techno-McCarthyism, everyone is under suspicion. Under a microscope. Under the gun. Everyone is being watched by someone else who's being watched by someone else . . .

Think it's just presidential candidates and their coterie? Think again: if a girl can be driven to suicide by someone who doesn't exist -- someone created just to torment her -- then we're all waiting for our monsters to appear. It's Monsters, Inc. -- only, it's not a movie, and it's not cute.

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me. Someday, I'll be up for a job somewhere, and someone will wave a copy of some blog post in my face -- perhaps this very post.

"Sir," they'll say, "were you off your meds when you wrote this, or just having a bad day?"

The latter, ladies and gentlemen. I swear.

And so, gentle readers, please: grant me a prophylactic pardon.

--T.A.

I Defy You To Watch This And Not Enjoy It

Bet you'll even tear up a little while you watch. At least, I did, but then I'm a sucker for happy feet.

--T.A.

Watching what kids shouldn't watch -- with kids

God help me, but South Park cracks me up.

And Family Guy.

And they make Gabe and Middle Daughter laugh, too.

This morning, Gabe and I were giggling at the Colbert Report.

And last night, Middle Daughter and I hooted and howled through a segment of Dave Chappelle's Show.

My friends are a little surprised that I'll let a 10-year-old boy watch some of this stuff. South Park is truly vile, and irreverent beyond all hope of redemption. That's what's so liberating, and so damn funny, about it.

Family Guy is a crude and even more cynical version of The Simpsons, with a good helping of Hollywood dish and some really good musical interludes thrown in.

The Colbert Report is helping Gabe understand that, as screwed up as the world is, it can also take itself too seriously. And it's also helping him understand current events, in a warped way.

Middle Daughter's taste in TV runs to teen dramas and MTV's Real World, but she and I share the same irreverent, even tasteless sense of humor (proven by the fact that she dragged me to see Team America last year, at which I laughed so hard I cried).

I remember, growing up, that we all watched The Wizard of Oz on TV every year; and that we watched Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, Laugh-In, Family Classics and Garfield Goose with Frazier Thomas, and a lot of baseball.

(Me True Ann-Sister's memory probably includes the TV's gradual and initially benign intrusion into family life, what with earlier incarnations of Gleason's show, Howdy Doody, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and the like. Between the six of sibs, the morphing of TV from comforter to carcinogen could be clearly mapped.)

Now, though, TV is a cultural weapon and economic aphrodisiac: news is viciously slanted and horrifyingly oversimplified, commercials pit one lust, and one generation, against another, and we are exhorted to buy with a frenzy that suggests our very lives depend on it.

I think that's why they say that you should watch TV with your kids. Of course, when "they" say that, they assume that you'll be censoring or blocking certain shows. And my tendency is just to watch what they watch, because they want to laugh, and so do I. If we all share a sense of the absurd, a certain scatalogical streak, a helpless fondness for slapstick, and sharp satire on the news of the day, shouldn't we enjoy them together?

Or is it better not to go near the damn TV?

--T.A.

Piling on the Stones

I can't stop thinking about the horrific sight of the Rolling Stones playing the Super Bowl.

Let me count the ways:

• Mick Jagger looked assembled -- kind of like the woman with the face transplant.
• Keith Richards looked like a man in need of a face transplant.
• More important (and less catty), the conflation of Rock and Roll and a corporate sporting megalith -- well, it had to happen, and it's been happening for decades (thanks in large part to the Stones), but this was too much. Was there supposed to be irony in singing "Satisfaction," burrowing its anti-commercial rant into the heart of commerce? Didn't look like it.
• Rock is inherently rebellious. Rebellion is inherently young. Loud music and gyration are expressions made for bodies that get to know the world through a kind of erotic self-mortification. The gruesome nature of the Super Bowl spectacle extended well past Jagger's inability to breathe or sing, coupled with his animotronic hip movements (which seemed, by the end of their three-song set, to have caused some kind of injury): it had more to do with men we know to be old, self-consciously singing songs wed to youth and rebellion, still proclaiming themselves to be young though we all knew better, and doing so for big money, at the heart of all that exudes conformist consumerism.
• Jagger pointed out that he "could have sung [Satisfaction] at Super Bowl I," and here he was singing it at Super Bowl XL. In a society where everything has to be new, everything is merely novel. (This is related to the phenomenon of everything false being upheld as some kind of elevated truth.) Jagger at the Super Bowl, along with Aretha and Aaron Neville, were a paean to our penchant for being restless without exploring, for being hyper without being creative, and being hip without being imaginative. Let's keep doing the same thing over and over, only bigger! Louder! Our national ADHD on display.

And yet, for all that, maybe the Stones had one off on us: perhaps they're having a blast impersonating themselves for profit. Perhaps they've reinvented themselves and they don't even know it. Better yet: perhaps they're engaging in the ultimate rebellion: "Tattoo you," they may be saying; "we don't care how old we are, we've earned the right to keep being ourselves. Don't like it? Don't watch."

Next time -- if there is a next time -- I won't.

--T.A.

On Strike

That's where I've been for almost a decade, without realizing it. On strike against TV.

The last time I remember watching TV in any significant amount was during my bachelor years, in between my first and permanent marriages. I'd come home from work, to my little apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, too exhausted to do anything but sit with Woody, my beloved cat, and watch the local and then network news, and then whatever else they wanted to throw at me, until I could rouse myself from my stupor and turn the damn thing off.

When I got married and inherited kids, there was more TV, but I wasn't watching it: it was background noise. Soon it was less TV and more videos. Then, as the girls got older, it was more TV again. Stuff like 90210, Dawson's Creek, 7th Heaven, MTV's Real World.

Then, with Gabe, it was cartoons, wrestling, baseball. He had a pretty advanced sense of humor, so in addition to watching those shows, and Spongebob, he took a liking to Will & Grace, Family Guy, and Friends.

But, aside from the occasional baseball game, or TV show on DVD (we've watched the first season and a half of The Sopranos that way), I just can't take it anymore. I mean, I have an allergic reaction. The programming is bad enough, but it's the other stuff they make us sit through that I not only can't take but can't fathom. The commercials, the half-time shows, the fatuous interviews, the blather. . .

The Wife and I decided not to have a TV in the bedroom. Well, we do have a TV, but it's not hooked up to the cable, so it's only good for watching DVDs or videos. Which we do perhaps twice a month. It sounds snobbish, I know. And maybe if we did have the TV hooked up, we'd watch The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and all that other hip, witty stuff that actually informs you while it cracks you up.

But, especially at this time of year, I can't take it.

So, tell me: are there any shows I just have to be watching? Otherwise, I'm stayin' on strike.

--T.A.

My Inner Monologue About Tom Cruise

Shut the hell up.

--T.A.

My Favorite Bloggers Avoid My Least Favorite Topic:

The frigging Super Bowl. The commercials. The half-time show.

Checked out Danny Miller, Richard Cohen, Rabbi Karsh, Tamar Jacobson, my True Ann-Sister, and my old man: all blissfully engaged in blogging on far more important matters.

(I would have included my brother in this list, but he couldn't refrain from ragging on Paul McCartney and bemoaning our wretched materialism.)

No jokes about whether we were going to see Paul McCartney's left nipple. No smarmy commentary on the commercials. Or the point spread. Or how cute Tom Brady is. Or all the food they ate during the game.

(By the way, the kitchen here at the office is full of half-eaten remnants from the Super Bowl vomitoria. We're expected, like a bunch of jackals, to eat the remnants of other people's parties. We will. It'll all be gone before noon.)

There was one interesting Super Bowl-related development (off the field, of course): advertisers were forced to pull an ad for the Lincoln Navigator. It showed a priest caressing the car and breathing heavily, then posting a sign outside his church that he was going to preach on Lust.

It's pretty obvious to me that this commercial was made explicitly to be pulled. It is in such poor taste and so badly timed that its creators simply had to be on to something.

Of course, the commercial never aired -- but boy, did it get shown. It got lots of airtime and discussion on MSNBC, among others, and the coverage surrounding the commercial got the product (and the crafty ad agency) more attention and notoriety than just showing the damn commercial ever could have.

So we now have a new phenomenon to look forward to: the raft of commercials that will be made just to be banned from the game-time airwaves. Their wretchedness will appall and entrance us all, generating a pre-game film festival-cum-gabfest of commercials in poor taste but with high production values. The two weeks between the last playoff game and the Super Bowl will be divided between endless interviews and game commentary, and exegesis of commercials that everyone must see but the networks can't show.

I have now blogged on my least favorite topic. Please forgive me.

--T.A.