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Maher’s Hard Left Turn

By on April 8, 2013 in Ayn Rand, Culture, Politics, Television

Maher-lib-620x363Comedian Bill Maher recently railed against Ayn Rand in his repudiation of libertarianism in an amusing if ignorant display (watch it here) that underscores that the woman who created Objectivism is right to reject libertarianism.

Maher has been a left-wing libertarian and his renunciation, which is putting his comments kindly, is both a full hard turn to the left (i.e., environmentalism and welfare-statism) and a drop of any pretense that Maher takes ideas seriously, as anyone who has seen his biting shows figured out long ago. He’s a clever comedian with a vague, passing interest in ideas – he once booked Ayn Rand’s heir on his show – who has finally put himself in his place as a lazy shill for what amounts to dictatorship.

But part of what makes the cynic’s diatribe humorous is that he’s right to suggest that libertarians are inconsistent and to imply that the nation’s top libertarians, such as Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Paul Ryan, are unserious about advancing liberty and more interested in just being self-centered. Libertarians are anti-government, not anti-government control, and they fail to articulate a coherent position on anything relevant to people’s lives because they stand for nothing. Both Sen. Paul and Rep. Ryan graft Ayn Rand’s consistently rational philosophy – which is not anti-government, contrary to Maher’s monologue – onto their Judeo-Christian politics of theocracy. What results is a confusing presentation of fragments of good ideas mixed with bad ideas that remind us that libertarians, such as the Cato Institute, Rand Paul and Paul Ryan, are at best misguided in attempts to advance liberty and capitalism and at worst they propagate the ethics of the totalitarian welfare state.

If Objectivists infiltrate what is more of a loose political movement made by scuzzy hippies than a political philosophy that makes sense and have some degree of influence for restoring individual rights, I say way to go and have at it. But I think it’s a waste of time and I think we’re better off just being Objectivists – selfish, honest, proud, productive and rational – and trying to persuade people who think. Having a biting, leftist libertarian comedian ditch libertarianism for leftism while denouncing Ayn Rand on the wrong grounds may be marginally interesting, but it is not a sign of progress and I doubt that differentiating libertarianism from Objectivism will move the culture toward reason.

Bonnie Franklin, RIP

By on March 2, 2013 in Obituaries, Television

MV5BOTAzMDUwNTI4N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTUzMTAzNA@@._V1._SX640_SY433_Bonnie Franklin, who played a divorced mother on a long-running CBS situation comedy, died of cancer yesterday. She was 69. Though Franklin had an established career and had been nominated for a Tony Award, her portrayal for nine seasons of a liberated woman named Ann Romano, who memorably insisted on going by Ms., which the building superintendent pronounced “em-ess Romano”, leaves a lasting impression.

Though a popular program, Norman Lear‘s One Day at a Time certainly never achieved the vaunted commercial or critical success of its Lear-produced cousins, All in the Family, Maude and The Jeffersons, and Ms. Romano had a tendency to explode with histrionics as Bonnie Franklin overacted at least some of the time. But as a dramatic comedy about real, daily middle class life, the show – and Franklin’s character – holds up.

In the premiere, which aired in 1975, Ms. Romano had packed her teenaged kids in the car after divorce and moved to an apartment in Indianapolis. She struggled to find work, make a living, overcome sexist standards, raise children, have meaningful relationships, deal with her ex-husband, though the most interesting and humorous episodes involved dealing with her conservative mother (Nanette Fabray). Her daughters, played by Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli, agonized over adolescent problems ranging from skin conditions and homework to sex, drugs and suicide. Before Modern Family, an excellent show that owes much of its dynamic to shows such as One Day at a Time, particularly with the personality contrast between sisters and the harried, overwhelmed mom, One Day at a Time took a hot-headed single mother, her two kids, a handyman named Schneider (Pat Harrington) and various friends, boyfriends, spouses, ex-spouses, grandchildren and co-workers over the course of its run (1975-1984) and managed to explore deep, serious topics and depict a strong, virtuous mid-American family.

Bonnie Franklin’s Ann Romano was at the center, obsessing over the newest social media – citizens’ band radio – confronting predators, chasing after her wayward, self-destructive daughter Julie and trying to make the best of everything. The program delivered thought-provoking naturalism, such as whether Julie (Phillips) would make better choices, how Ann would get ahead without compromising, why Barbara felt punished for being talented and responsible. There were more potent episodes, such as when Julie’s friend Melanie became suicidal, and less melodramatic teleplays, with Ann struggling to get work projects done while parenting her kids.

If they seemed overdone at the time, with red-haired Ms. Romano flying into a self-righteous rage, now we know – some of us knew then – that One Day at a Time reflected reality and that the culture and country were on the wrong track. One Day at a Time raised crucial, pressing questions: about whether a woman’s selfish liberation meant being a feminist – whether proper parenting meant unconditional tolerance for exploration or having conditional boundaries to protect a child’s life from the spreading drug subculture and hedonism – and whether the burdens of being a voice of reason, an intelligent child, and of living for the long term, not for the range of the moment, can be balanced. Bonnie Franklin brought us neither another high-pitched moron like Edith Bunker or Mrs. Cunningham nor a bitter shrew or harridan like Maude Findlay or Gladys Kravitz ; hers was an attempt to achieve a parent’s delicate balance between her own goals and her childrens’ interests. Ann Romano’s were real problems, then and now, but they seemed more acute then as traditional roles for men, women and children were being questioned, challenged and changed, whether for better or worse.

As the cliched title suggests, One Day at a Time, unlike its dumbed-down, ABC superhit counterparts such as Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, delivered a dose of realism with thoughtfully embedded, if at times heavy-handed, themes of productiveness, independence, pride, honesty, integrity and self-interest shaped by a mother’s love. That Ms. Romano was a serious, not a silly or sarcastic, character that refused to compromise her ego for her children – or vice versa – puts One Day at a Time ahead of its time. That was the work of Bonnie Franklin.

‘Dallas’ Season 2 Premiere

By on January 28, 2013 in Television

dallas-tnt-2012-title-previewI watched an advance preview of TNT’s Dallas season two premiere – I previewed the rebooted series and reviewed the first season and its finale last year – which airs tomorrow night. The younger crew takes center stage, as Sue Ellen Ewing runs ahead in her campaign for governor of Texas and Bobby Ewing’s wife Ann plans to reunite with her long-lost child, and we see lots of skin in a sensual swimming pool scene with the show’s leading airheads, Bobby’s environmentalist son (Jesse Metcalfe) and his girlfriend (Jordana Brewster), who celebrate a top race-car driver agreeing to race one of their company’s electric cars in competition. They also struggle with J.R.’s nasty oilman son (Josh Henderson, as slippery as ever) in the requisite evil businessman role. So, we get more of the same as the end of last season: Ewing Oil has emerged as an uneasy coalition of oil and natural gas energy interests with ecology-minded principals leading the way and anyone who wants to drill for oil as the bad guy. There is less of J.R., played to the hilt by the late Larry Hagman, whose illness is more obvious here, and seeds are planted for the Barnes/Ewing rivalry to continue in the show’s second season. But there will have to be more to this version of Dallas to succeed creatively and commercially beyond nostalgia and gorgeous babes and hairless hunks. Dallas writers assume too much investment in weak characters where they should be developing stronger values in each character amid real, sustained conflict. How do Middle East oil and Islamic terrorism and the nation’s left-wing politics play in the Lone Star state and down at Southfork? There may be meat on these bony characters, but judging by the new stuff, with J.R. soon to exit in some way, Dallas needs to beef up.

TV Review: ‘Cougar Town’ on TBS

By on December 1, 2012 in Television

The fourth season of the Courteney Cox comedy Cougar Town switches networks, premiering on Time Warner’s TBS on January 8, 2013. I don’t remember which network it was originally on but I did check it out in the first season. I recall thinking the show was OK.

It’s still OK, at least in the several new episodes I recently sampled in advance of the new season, and I found myself laughing more than a few times. Overactive Cox, whose Jules Cobb character is like a less civilized, more exaggerated version of her Monica character on NBC’s Friends, frankly looks too altered in her rubbery appearance, and I found her distracting in certain scenes, but I remember when she was a cute tomboy in a Springsteen video and I watched her on Friends. As an aging mother whose son, beer-slugging ex-husband and former neighbor – now bartender husband – Grayson all hang out together on the same Florida cul-de-sac with her gal pals and others, she’s the leader of a trashy, boozy pack. The show’s about her family of friends and neighbors, a less blood-related, more vulgar version of Modern Family, and for lowbrow TV it’s not bad. Some of the writing is spot on and the slices of life ring true with humor and good writing on occasion. Mostly everyone talks, trades barbs and drinks red wine or beer to deal with life’s problems.

But characters each have good qualities, too. The dumb blonde has a knack for nailing personality traits, which she calls superpowers, the jaded next-door neighbor has a tender side, the hunky husband has depth, the put-upon husband has a backbone and the good-for-nothing ex turns out to be good in his own way, all of which is predictable, and Jules has a way of bringing everyone together even if it’s just for the sake of another glass of wine, which, with news from Washington enough to make you want to do an endless round of shots, is just fine sometimes. The 21-year-old son, stuck among this neighborhood’s hyper-arrested development adults, is of course the most mature adult. I don’t remember why it’s called Cougar Town, though the Courteney Cox character may have chased young men in past seasons before she married Grayson (and did she get the better end of that deal) but in any case there’s more pack-bonding than prowling in this lightly raunchy series.

 

Romney Wins First Debate – and CNN Strikes Back

By on October 4, 2012 in Freedom of Speech, Politics, Television

Tonight’s debate in Denver, Colorado, was an established victory for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who took on testy, pompous Democrat incumbent Barack Obama and showed Americans why he is the better candidate. In the words of Democratic political strategist James Carville, speaking on CNN, the Nothing Man looked like he didn’t even want to be there. David Gergen, a pragmatist who’s worked for Nixon and Clinton and almost every lousy president in between, pronounced Romney the winner and the debate a game-changer.

Of course, Romney does not stand for any principles, let alone for the proper principles of freedom and capitalism. But, as Leonard Peikoff wrote in his endorsement of Romney for President (and as I wrote here), Romney is not Obama and that – in these dark, treacherous times of near-total government control and economic collapse – is what matters in the current U.S. political context. Romney was evasive as usual, dodging questions of the proper role of government – he bungled the meaning of the pursuit of happiness – erroneously praising government regulations as essential to capitalism and failing to accept the moderator’s offer to pose a direct question to the president. But Romney demonstrated an easygoing sense of humor at the outset, disarming his opponent, and showed confidence and command of his knowledge of the relevant facts about the economy. He showed an understanding of the real suffering among people across the nation, especially those struggling to make money in business and the middle class. No such display came from the shifty-eyed, uncomfortable candidate Obama, who – despite having an enormously unfair advantage from the government-subsidized TV moderator – halted, stumbled and blew his cool. Romney’s best moment came when he stated clearly and explicitly that stealing from one generation for the sake of another generation – the redistribution of wealth – is immoral.

Something else happened tonight and in some ways it is more crucial to the long-term survival of the nation. America’s first cable news network, CNN, which was viciously attacked by the government as I recently wrote about here, struck back at the oppressive administration. While Fox News was showcasing intellectually vacant celebrities such as Sarah Palin and the White House’s quasi-official “news” agency, NBC’s pathetic cable outlet, fumed that Obama lost, CNN offered – for the first time in decades – clear, insightful analysis of the presidential debate which was factual, thoughtful and balanced in terms of a variety of voices. Political operatives and intellectuals discussed the ideas, policies and dynamics of the debate in a wide-ranging post-debate program that included fact checks, commentary, polls – 67 percent of registered voters who watched the debate concluded that Obama lost and Romney won – and discussion of specific issues. It was an excellent series of segments and reports, with anchormen and analysts from New Left types such as Van Jones to a businesswoman who ran for the Senate, Carly Fiorina. Whatever intimidation the Obama administration thought it might inflict upon the free press apparently backfired, shaking sleepy, left-leaning, racially-driven and politically correct CNN to its core and, at least for tonight, returning the once-respected and widely watched TV channel to its noble roots as a straight news source. Whatever happens in this year’s election – and, like Leonard Peikoff, I, too, doubt we can survive another term for Obama – if freedom of speech survives, we can overcome the rise of dictatorship and kill it before it takes root. Tonight, as Romney the mixed and decent businessman trounced the haughty, New Leftist intellectual, the free press breathed new life. CNN, founded by a businessman who once admired Ayn Rand and targeted by the government, hit back at Obama and his emergent New Left regime with what will set us free: the truth. Let us savor the moment and make the most of it.