frankhagan.com

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is a smart, entertaining drama that isn’t finding its audience. While the pundits don’t say so, perhaps the attitude of Matt Albie as presented in the pilot has something to do with it. Albie is Matthew Perry’s character, the head writer of the Saturday Night Live-style show, and appears to be one of those caustic, anti-religious right folks. In the beginning, it looked like Albie was simply going to be a sounding board for bashing Christians, right down to the content of the “show within the show”, including a promised skit during the pilot titled “Crazy Christians”.

But wait … not so fast. Perry does a great job of playing the character as not just an anti-Christian bigot, but also as a complex person with more problems than solutions in his life. By the second episode, we realize the main source of his angst … comedy star Harriett Hayes, played convincingly by
Sarah Paulson. Their former relationship was known from the beginning, but there’s still some fire in the relationship, and a yearning they try to deny with varying degrees of success. Harriett’s character is not a one-dimensional Christian-as-ignorant-fool protrayal. Without compromising Hayes’ moral standards, Paulson plays her as a real flesh-and-blood person, demonstrating her acting chops as well as anyone on the cast. And the cast is very good, indeed.

This is a good show, with at least fair portrayals of complex people, rather than the stereotypes we usually see of “Crazy Christians”. Albie, in the liberal writer role, has more than just righteous indignation and anger; he has a soul, even perhaps a tormented soul, even if he doesn’t recognize the existance of spiritual matters. It is well written, with good characterizations and more depth than usually seen in a one-hour drama. Producer Aaron Sorkin has done a good job with this one, and it deserves a second look.

Culture

It became acceptable, at some point, to invoke invective and hurl insults at those on the other side of the political fence rather than engage and discuss issues. I’m not sure when the line was crossed and the adults decided to start acting like middle school bullies. Perhaps it started when it became acceptable for grown men to wear their baseball caps backwards, or pregnant women to wear shortie tops.

Guilt by association is the order of the day, along with cartoonish stereotypes about the “religious right”, “liberals”, “nutburgers”, etc. Being lumped in with a group you don’t agree with is frustrating enough, but when you call the new “commentators” on it, they deny they did such a thing. But, but, but … look here, its in plain english …

Truth, it seems, takes a back seat to political expediency, with neither side willing to admit their political foes are even human, much less worthy of consideration.

And while there are those with views so outside of the mainstream that it gives you pause, their physical appearance, weight, ethnicity, religion or parentage should not be the issue. In the marketplace of ideas, we are dealing with … well, ideas.

I heard some tapes of the debate between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy the other day. These were literate, well spoken men, who engaged in debate with dignity and respect for each other. They were also the two most polarizing men of their era. It is a funny thing that men so loved and hated could discuss issues rationally.

In the current political season, we have commentators like Keith Olbermann reading a description of the word “terrorist” and then stating that it describes the Republican party, a bid to make himself the Democrat Party’s equivalent of Ann Coulter. But the left sees Olbermann not as over the top, but “courageous”. And the right says about Coulter, “well, you know, she is right about some things.”

But impolite discussion is not courageous, even if it is on point. It is simply rude.

Prior to the Internet, there were moderated forums where discussion was allowed to flourish, but insults were discouraged. I moderated several of those forums for the RelayNet Network (RIME). It was hard work, because there are always those that want to push the limits, but for the most part, the participants learned to speak to one another and hear each other out. There were good discussions.

Is there any place left where polite political discourse happens? I haven’t been able to find a place. The culture is so poisoned now that we retreat to reading the forums and blogs where we know we won’t be called names, and we don’t hear differing viewpoints. It truly is a shame, but I don’t think you can put the toothpaste back into the tube.

Culture, Politics

After all the “whiney chick music” that has been passing for pop music these days, its refreshing to see a genuine performer with a voice that doesn’t sound like something from a synthesizer. My daughter introduced KT Tunstall to me via her You Tube Video, a rip from a French TV show where she reprised the old Jackson Five song “I Want You Back.” Now, that’s not a song I thought I would want to hear anyone remake, but KT makes it her own.

Her album is great too. Even if you aren’t familiar with KT, you’ve heard her song “Suddenly I See”, which has been featured on quite a few TV shows this past year. It was the song with the refrain “she’s a beautiful girl” that “So You Think You Could Dance” played every time they kicked a female dancer off the show, and its been played on Anne Heche’s new show, “Men in Trees”. Once you hear it, you’ll recognize it. The link above, to Amazon.com, has sound clips of her music.

Its good to see some singer-songwriters coming to the fore again. If I hear one more whiney song from someone who can only sing in a studio, I would scream. But KT, with her breakthrough album, has given me hope.

Culture

With the change coming up for my first website at EV1.NET, I had to move a few dozen web pages chock full of complete links to other pages on the site. A few years back, I moved my messing-about.com site to its own domain, and had the same task to do. At that time, I found several freeware utilities to do a global search and replace on all files in a directory.

Alas, this time I found mostly shareware and commercial programs, with price tags averaging about $39. This is the kind of utility programmers would routinely create and put up on their sites as freeware, but except for open source programs that are relatively large, you don’t find freeware utilities very often.

I did find just the ticket … a freeware utility posted on another programmer’s site (the author’s home page returns a “page not found” error). Andreas Jönsson created AutoReplace.exe, and you can download it at the trustMeher Softwares site.

Here’s hoping Andreas Jönsson is well, and has a rewarding and lucrative job that just prevents him from having to run his own site anymore. If you’re out there, Jönsson, thanks for the assist.

Tech

There’s a hostile undercurrent towards Francis Collins’ wonderful book “The Language of God” among some of those who are dedicated to the fight against creationism and ID (see my review of the book Here.)

After reading a few of the comments at PandasThumb, cited earlier in my review of the book linked above, I did a quick blogsearch at Google’s Blogsearch. Lordy, lordy, lordy …

Jonathan Witt, on EvolutionNews.org, cites one example. The cite is from Pharyngula, self described as a blog devoted to “Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal”. Interesting reading, but it does veer too far into the forest of invectives that atheists often use (with dogmatic regularity one might say).

I wish these folks would relax a little. Sam Harris suggests that those looking for “intellectual integrity” who read Collins’ description of how a beautiful frozen waterfall reminded him of God may have “thoughts of suicide”.

Oh, I doubt that. There are some of us, no matter how much we respect and love science, who will continue to see beauty in a frozen waterfall, express wonder after hearing the symphony, and feel surges of emotion when we see a new born baby.

It would be nice if some of these folks read the book, and for those who have, it would be nice if they could … just for a moment … step outside of their near-fanatical support of atheism to realize that Collins is the real deal. A scientist who is able to do the work and keep the faith.

Dogmatism doesn’t serve anyone well. Even atheists.

Politics, Science