Monday, December 27, 2004
Fudge Coma Now, Subversion Later
I am back home in my office after four days of holidaying with the niece and nephews (pictures to come later in the week) and things are pretty quiet. It's likely to be quiet all week, and we ought to enjoy it. In January the new, even-more-wingnutty Congress is coming back and Bush will be inaugurated for a second term with the kind of military pageantry Mussolini would admire, to be followed by assaults on Social Security, civil liberties, and common decency that are likely to leave us nostalgic for 2004, as bad as it has been. But right now, our biggest problems include which football game to watch, and the question of whether the Christmas treats will hold out through the New Year's weekend.
One thing to keep in mind during the coming storms of 2005 is that in 2004, one could often forestall weeping by laughing instead. Salon's TV writer, Heather Havrilesky, notes that 2004 was the best year ever for satire, from The Daily Show and the movie Team America to Aneurysm favorites like The Onion, The Boondocks, and Doonesbury. Although enjoying subversive humor does not automaticaly make you a subversive person yourself, maybe it's a start.
When is subversion not subversion? I was one of the people who found it curious that Desperate Housewives, a TV program whose characters break several commandments in each episode would explode into public consciousness at the same moment we supposedly went to the polls for Jesus. (The show has stronger ratings in some red-state markets than in blue-state markets of equivalent size.) Richard Goldstein wasn't surprised, however--he says that yes, Desperate Housewives looks like an act of rebellion against wholesome suburban values, but it's actually conservative at its core.
Recommended Reading: Before I left for Christmas, I posted a few of the usual half-baked thoughts on the AP's top news stories of 2004. Over at Daily Kos, they've been discussing the list and what should have been on it. (Scroll past the first few comments, which have to do with an HTML coding problem in the original post that has been corrected.)
I am back home in my office after four days of holidaying with the niece and nephews (pictures to come later in the week) and things are pretty quiet. It's likely to be quiet all week, and we ought to enjoy it. In January the new, even-more-wingnutty Congress is coming back and Bush will be inaugurated for a second term with the kind of military pageantry Mussolini would admire, to be followed by assaults on Social Security, civil liberties, and common decency that are likely to leave us nostalgic for 2004, as bad as it has been. But right now, our biggest problems include which football game to watch, and the question of whether the Christmas treats will hold out through the New Year's weekend.
One thing to keep in mind during the coming storms of 2005 is that in 2004, one could often forestall weeping by laughing instead. Salon's TV writer, Heather Havrilesky, notes that 2004 was the best year ever for satire, from The Daily Show and the movie Team America to Aneurysm favorites like The Onion, The Boondocks, and Doonesbury. Although enjoying subversive humor does not automaticaly make you a subversive person yourself, maybe it's a start.
When is subversion not subversion? I was one of the people who found it curious that Desperate Housewives, a TV program whose characters break several commandments in each episode would explode into public consciousness at the same moment we supposedly went to the polls for Jesus. (The show has stronger ratings in some red-state markets than in blue-state markets of equivalent size.) Richard Goldstein wasn't surprised, however--he says that yes, Desperate Housewives looks like an act of rebellion against wholesome suburban values, but it's actually conservative at its core.
Recommended Reading: Before I left for Christmas, I posted a few of the usual half-baked thoughts on the AP's top news stories of 2004. Over at Daily Kos, they've been discussing the list and what should have been on it. (Scroll past the first few comments, which have to do with an HTML coding problem in the original post that has been corrected.)
