Things I'd Like to Fire Into the Sun: Campaign Strategists
Posted on
Monday, November 05, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Political campaigns bring out my stabby side. From the carefully constructed, focus-grouped to death, faux personality masks worn by all the candidates the closer to victory they come, or the sheer deluge of lies spewed forth by proxy from the Mr. Ed-like mouths of mouthpiece candidates, election season is a time that breeds pure, violent cynicism so concentrated, it could be cooked on a spoon and shot into the veins of junkies everywhere. Such distilled essence of jaded hatred would induce murderous rages in everyone exposed to the narcotic byproduct of our nation's grand democracy illusion. With that in mind, I find myself wanting to place a number of people into a giant pit, filling the pit with cement and then firing the said missile of maladjusted, loosely-defined humanity into the heart of the sun. The people deserving of my ire this day are the various campaign strategists on all sides of the American political spectrum.
The most famous of these type of wonktastic twats in recent memory is Karl Rove, everyone's favorite Turd Blossom. While Rove's evil heart has been well-revealed to those with enough independent thought left to pierce the narrative of bullshit spun about himself and his candidates, he is only the most visible symptom of the great cancer eating the heart of American democracy. Every campaign has a Karl Rove, a shitheel of varying degrees of evil and disingenuousness, someone to take all the polls and opinions and craft them into a message that fools the target demographic into believing his or her candidate. This person is a master of PR, the abbreviated avatar of public relations, the masterful liar wrapping layers of bullshit around a kernel of truth. And while most PR people are empty, soulless shells of humanity with less respect for their fellow man's intelligence than for a dung beetle's skill with the cello, campaign strategists are the lowest form of a very low rung of the demon army. They are lies made flesh.
Over the last few weeks, the media has done one bang-up job of crafting a specific narrative about the Democratic primary race. Instead of a three or two person race between Clinton, Obama and Edwards, the media has now presumptively anointed Hillary Clinton the "frontrunner," delegating every other candidate to a hind-teat-sucking also-ran. Much as Howard Dean was trumpeted as the saviour of the party in 2004 before getting dickstomped by the moribund Kerry when America was given the choice, Hillary Clinton has been practically handed the nomination, at least by the mainstream media with a vested interest in seeing the status quo of American politics continue. As a result, the campaign strategists of most of the other Democratic candidates have shifted focus.
Rather than talk about their own campaign's positives, now all Obama and Edwards want to talk about is how they are different or better than Hillary. The last Democratic debate was an almost overwhelming pile-on by both Tim Russert and the other candidates, all trying to one-up the other's Hillary-bashing cred. Obama's visit to the Saturday Night Live set treated us to a skit where Obama made fun of Hillary, if not in a nasty way, in a certainly unseemly manner. Yes, hunting season has begun, and everyone's trying to kill the golden goose.
I'm not naive enough to believe that attack ads and negative campaigns don't work. All evidence is that they do work and work well. But in a political climate where the stakes are so goddamn high, the one thing the Democratic Party and its candidates need to do is focus on why their party would be better for America than anything the Republican party has to offer, not just in its current form but in its future candidates. No matter what Hillary's flaws are, and trust me, they are legion, she's still a better candidate than anything on the GOP ticket. Sniping at the media's frontrunner just makes the whole process seem as seedy as the red light district in Amsterdam. The campaign strategists for all the Democratic candidates, and the Republicans as well, should be dropped into a pit, sealed in with concrete and shot into the heart of the sun, never to trouble us again. Only the white-hot nuclear fusion of the lifegiver can possibly eradicate the darkness these wastrels drag around them like the shrouds of death.
But the true problem with these people isn't even their own shameless evil. No, they only highlight the problem with privately-financed elections. The campaign money the media makes during election season is as much a poison to the system of democracy as the fundraising necessity is for a candidate's impartiality. If we are eventually to achieve some form of egalitarian democratic system, we need public election finance, with money distributed evenly to each candidate and airtime donated to the political process.
We'll have the rocket capable of firing campaign strategists into the heart of the sun before we'd ever see that system in place. Still, one can dream.
The most famous of these type of wonktastic twats in recent memory is Karl Rove, everyone's favorite Turd Blossom. While Rove's evil heart has been well-revealed to those with enough independent thought left to pierce the narrative of bullshit spun about himself and his candidates, he is only the most visible symptom of the great cancer eating the heart of American democracy. Every campaign has a Karl Rove, a shitheel of varying degrees of evil and disingenuousness, someone to take all the polls and opinions and craft them into a message that fools the target demographic into believing his or her candidate. This person is a master of PR, the abbreviated avatar of public relations, the masterful liar wrapping layers of bullshit around a kernel of truth. And while most PR people are empty, soulless shells of humanity with less respect for their fellow man's intelligence than for a dung beetle's skill with the cello, campaign strategists are the lowest form of a very low rung of the demon army. They are lies made flesh.
Over the last few weeks, the media has done one bang-up job of crafting a specific narrative about the Democratic primary race. Instead of a three or two person race between Clinton, Obama and Edwards, the media has now presumptively anointed Hillary Clinton the "frontrunner," delegating every other candidate to a hind-teat-sucking also-ran. Much as Howard Dean was trumpeted as the saviour of the party in 2004 before getting dickstomped by the moribund Kerry when America was given the choice, Hillary Clinton has been practically handed the nomination, at least by the mainstream media with a vested interest in seeing the status quo of American politics continue. As a result, the campaign strategists of most of the other Democratic candidates have shifted focus.
Rather than talk about their own campaign's positives, now all Obama and Edwards want to talk about is how they are different or better than Hillary. The last Democratic debate was an almost overwhelming pile-on by both Tim Russert and the other candidates, all trying to one-up the other's Hillary-bashing cred. Obama's visit to the Saturday Night Live set treated us to a skit where Obama made fun of Hillary, if not in a nasty way, in a certainly unseemly manner. Yes, hunting season has begun, and everyone's trying to kill the golden goose.
I'm not naive enough to believe that attack ads and negative campaigns don't work. All evidence is that they do work and work well. But in a political climate where the stakes are so goddamn high, the one thing the Democratic Party and its candidates need to do is focus on why their party would be better for America than anything the Republican party has to offer, not just in its current form but in its future candidates. No matter what Hillary's flaws are, and trust me, they are legion, she's still a better candidate than anything on the GOP ticket. Sniping at the media's frontrunner just makes the whole process seem as seedy as the red light district in Amsterdam. The campaign strategists for all the Democratic candidates, and the Republicans as well, should be dropped into a pit, sealed in with concrete and shot into the heart of the sun, never to trouble us again. Only the white-hot nuclear fusion of the lifegiver can possibly eradicate the darkness these wastrels drag around them like the shrouds of death.
But the true problem with these people isn't even their own shameless evil. No, they only highlight the problem with privately-financed elections. The campaign money the media makes during election season is as much a poison to the system of democracy as the fundraising necessity is for a candidate's impartiality. If we are eventually to achieve some form of egalitarian democratic system, we need public election finance, with money distributed evenly to each candidate and airtime donated to the political process.
We'll have the rocket capable of firing campaign strategists into the heart of the sun before we'd ever see that system in place. Still, one can dream.
Labels: Elections, Government Corruption, Humor, Presidential Campaign 2008, Television, Things I'd Like to Fire Into the Sun
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:35 AM
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Forgetting the Lessons... Again
Posted on
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The mainstream media is quite literally retarded. I don't mean retarded in the Internet sense whereby anything even remotely stupid is labelled as the produce of mental defectives. I mean that as a collective whole, the mainstream media is suffering from some mass form of congenital brain defect, a defect which causes it to completely forget the lessons of its own past. Not only does it forget its distant past, it forgets its recent past in the rush to utterly desiccate the latest story before a new story comes along to dazzle its minuscule attention span. This week has seen story after story focusing on O.J. Simpson for returning to his criminal ways. And just like that, anything important is swept aside in the feeding frenzy.
The story is a simple one. O.J. thinks some guys stole his sports memorabilia and are trying to sell it. O.J., like the great detective he is, vows to get his merchandise back with greater alacrity than he has exhibited in hunting down his wife's killers. He sets up a sting with some buddies, planning to steal the merchandise back from the "thieves." Only these thieves actually call the cops and O.J. is busted for a bunch of charges that could net him 30 years or so in prison. I can only assume that O.J. neglected to toss the gloves this time.
An interesting story, if only in that "Hmmm, O.J.'s in jail again, I hope they nail that fucker," sort of way. It's worth maybe a 30-second spot on the network news cycle, some late-night jokes and a few shrugs before tackling the important stories. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has completely forgotten those important stories and are instead focused on dissecting in detail the particulars of the case, as if re-enacting the bathroom scene in Larry Craig's fantasies.
Here's a hint, mainstream media. Congress still hasn't had a response to those subpoenas on Karl Rove and Harriet Miers. The Vice-President is still claiming to not exist as an entity in the U.S. government. New Orleans is still a fucking wrecked mudhole, and the evacuees are still living in potentially-hazardous, formaldehyde-laced trailers. Gen. Petraeus' report is still using inaccurate casualty figures to make the security situation seem more positive than it really is. There are still more private mercenaries in Iraq on the U.S. payroll than actual military troops. The Pentagon and the White House are still trying to drum up support for military action on Iran without a shred of credible evidence to justify said action. There is rampant corruption and fraud in the Iraq contract process, and tons of corporations to be nailed for stealing openly from the taxpayers. In short, there are about a billion other stories still ongoing that are absolutely critical to the American people that you could be covering besides a murderer getting busted for strong-arming collectors.
The mainstream media has a fantastic ability to pick one story and fuck it to death. That ability is a very good thing when it is used responsibly, when it picks the stories that are in the public's best interests. Unfortunately, like a retard easily distracted by shiny objects, the mainstream media too often applies this ability to whatever its corporate overlords think will garner the most viewership. It's high time the mainstream media remembers why freedom of the press is both an important protection and a grave responsibility.
The story is a simple one. O.J. thinks some guys stole his sports memorabilia and are trying to sell it. O.J., like the great detective he is, vows to get his merchandise back with greater alacrity than he has exhibited in hunting down his wife's killers. He sets up a sting with some buddies, planning to steal the merchandise back from the "thieves." Only these thieves actually call the cops and O.J. is busted for a bunch of charges that could net him 30 years or so in prison. I can only assume that O.J. neglected to toss the gloves this time.
An interesting story, if only in that "Hmmm, O.J.'s in jail again, I hope they nail that fucker," sort of way. It's worth maybe a 30-second spot on the network news cycle, some late-night jokes and a few shrugs before tackling the important stories. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has completely forgotten those important stories and are instead focused on dissecting in detail the particulars of the case, as if re-enacting the bathroom scene in Larry Craig's fantasies.
Here's a hint, mainstream media. Congress still hasn't had a response to those subpoenas on Karl Rove and Harriet Miers. The Vice-President is still claiming to not exist as an entity in the U.S. government. New Orleans is still a fucking wrecked mudhole, and the evacuees are still living in potentially-hazardous, formaldehyde-laced trailers. Gen. Petraeus' report is still using inaccurate casualty figures to make the security situation seem more positive than it really is. There are still more private mercenaries in Iraq on the U.S. payroll than actual military troops. The Pentagon and the White House are still trying to drum up support for military action on Iran without a shred of credible evidence to justify said action. There is rampant corruption and fraud in the Iraq contract process, and tons of corporations to be nailed for stealing openly from the taxpayers. In short, there are about a billion other stories still ongoing that are absolutely critical to the American people that you could be covering besides a murderer getting busted for strong-arming collectors.
The mainstream media has a fantastic ability to pick one story and fuck it to death. That ability is a very good thing when it is used responsibly, when it picks the stories that are in the public's best interests. Unfortunately, like a retard easily distracted by shiny objects, the mainstream media too often applies this ability to whatever its corporate overlords think will garner the most viewership. It's high time the mainstream media remembers why freedom of the press is both an important protection and a grave responsibility.
Labels: Bush Administration, Corporate Corruption, Government Corruption, Mainstream Media, Television
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 2:51 PM
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Flash!!! AH AHHHHH! Flash Gordon (TV) Review
Posted on
Monday, August 13, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The last iteration of the Flash Gordon serial adventures was the Sam Jones/Max Von Sydow cheesefest in the late '70's, a movie so full of eye-gouging color and strained camp that watching it was akin to eating spicy barbecue with mouth ulcers. It hurt so bad but tastes so good. As a child, I watched that version in awe, amazed by the four-color violence and cheesy lines. It was everything an adaptation of the old Flash Gordon serials should be, never taking itself too seriously while providing plenty of goofy action, sex appeal and schlock. It was the kind of terrible B-movie that achieves its own cultish infamy, becoming an instant classic like Clash of the Titans. Fans of bad cinema can't help but love Flash Gordon. How could a modernized version of the classic characters in the Scif-Fi Channel's new series go wrong?
Unfortunately, the series can go very, very wrong. While none of the updates seem all that bad on the surface, the whole stew becomes one great big mess of mediocrity. Flash Gordon is now a marathon runner, Dale Arden a television reporter, and their romantic relationship was over years before the series begins. Flash lives with his mother, and runs a auto shop of some kind with his friend Neil. Flash's father was a physicist who is presumed dead after an accident many years earlier, but the appearance of Dr. Zarkov throws doubt upon the father's death. Zarkov, in perhaps the second-worst change from the established mythos, is a sniveling worm, an assistant to Flash's father who has carried on his research into dimensional portals. Ming, however, suffers the worst in translation, transitioning from a menacing Asian-featured tyrant to a blonde cardboard cutout with no menace whatsoever. Ming's floating assistant and head torturer provides more menace than Ming. Throughout the first episode, Ming is attempting to find the "Imex," a device Flash's father was supposed to be in possession of. Though it is later revealed just what the Imex is, its importance to Ming and thus his pursuit of it is left to the viewer's imagination.
The show has a number of problems besides the changes made to the traditional characters. It takes some amazingly hard to swallow leaps of logic to get from point A to point B, and it does this repeatedly. Characters act in service to the story whether it makes sense for them to do so or not. The characters themselves aren't particularly interesting, especially Dale Arden. The addition of Flash's father provides unnecessary angst to the character. In all, many of the story beats fall flat precisely because it's so obvious they are plot devices manufactured to get Flash to Mongo. And rather than make Mongo accessible via rocket ship or some other form of space travel, it becomes accessible only through dimensional rifts, a science-fiction device that feels all too much like Stargate. Mongo itself is painfully generic, a series of over-dark drab hallways, orange-lit forests, and shadowed dullness. Even worse, less than half-an-hour of the pilot's 90-minute running time is set on the alien planet. Rather than being trapped on an alien planet like other versions of the stories, Flash, Dale and Zarkov end the show back in their hometown, with previews showing the trio going back and forth between Earth and Mongo often, making the Stargate comparison even more apt.
The show suffers from being not enough of one thing or the other. Rather than go for over-the-top cheesiness, they steer too far towards the serious, while trying to inject some humor. Instead of making the show interesting, it just causes the show to be devoid of fun. The story, settings, characters and costumes all feel so generic, with only the names and the theme song having any connection with the Flash Gordon mythos. The actors lack any sort of chemistry together, making their performances feel wooden and forced. It's almost as if the writers were uncomfortable taking too many risks on the side of seriousness or silly, choosing a path that meandered into painful mediocrity. The show wasn't bad enough to be execrable, but it wasn't engrossing enough to be entertaining. Though I'll likely watch another episode to be sure, I don't have high hopes for the series. That's a damn shame, because my expectations for the series based on the movie couldn't have been lower, yet even that low bar was not met. I'd give the show 1.5 stars out of 5, with points deducted for the silly ending and lack of Mongo.
Unfortunately, the series can go very, very wrong. While none of the updates seem all that bad on the surface, the whole stew becomes one great big mess of mediocrity. Flash Gordon is now a marathon runner, Dale Arden a television reporter, and their romantic relationship was over years before the series begins. Flash lives with his mother, and runs a auto shop of some kind with his friend Neil. Flash's father was a physicist who is presumed dead after an accident many years earlier, but the appearance of Dr. Zarkov throws doubt upon the father's death. Zarkov, in perhaps the second-worst change from the established mythos, is a sniveling worm, an assistant to Flash's father who has carried on his research into dimensional portals. Ming, however, suffers the worst in translation, transitioning from a menacing Asian-featured tyrant to a blonde cardboard cutout with no menace whatsoever. Ming's floating assistant and head torturer provides more menace than Ming. Throughout the first episode, Ming is attempting to find the "Imex," a device Flash's father was supposed to be in possession of. Though it is later revealed just what the Imex is, its importance to Ming and thus his pursuit of it is left to the viewer's imagination.
The show has a number of problems besides the changes made to the traditional characters. It takes some amazingly hard to swallow leaps of logic to get from point A to point B, and it does this repeatedly. Characters act in service to the story whether it makes sense for them to do so or not. The characters themselves aren't particularly interesting, especially Dale Arden. The addition of Flash's father provides unnecessary angst to the character. In all, many of the story beats fall flat precisely because it's so obvious they are plot devices manufactured to get Flash to Mongo. And rather than make Mongo accessible via rocket ship or some other form of space travel, it becomes accessible only through dimensional rifts, a science-fiction device that feels all too much like Stargate. Mongo itself is painfully generic, a series of over-dark drab hallways, orange-lit forests, and shadowed dullness. Even worse, less than half-an-hour of the pilot's 90-minute running time is set on the alien planet. Rather than being trapped on an alien planet like other versions of the stories, Flash, Dale and Zarkov end the show back in their hometown, with previews showing the trio going back and forth between Earth and Mongo often, making the Stargate comparison even more apt.
The show suffers from being not enough of one thing or the other. Rather than go for over-the-top cheesiness, they steer too far towards the serious, while trying to inject some humor. Instead of making the show interesting, it just causes the show to be devoid of fun. The story, settings, characters and costumes all feel so generic, with only the names and the theme song having any connection with the Flash Gordon mythos. The actors lack any sort of chemistry together, making their performances feel wooden and forced. It's almost as if the writers were uncomfortable taking too many risks on the side of seriousness or silly, choosing a path that meandered into painful mediocrity. The show wasn't bad enough to be execrable, but it wasn't engrossing enough to be entertaining. Though I'll likely watch another episode to be sure, I don't have high hopes for the series. That's a damn shame, because my expectations for the series based on the movie couldn't have been lower, yet even that low bar was not met. I'd give the show 1.5 stars out of 5, with points deducted for the silly ending and lack of Mongo.
Labels: Sciece-Fiction, Television
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:09 AM
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