Category: Media

Masculinity, Southern Gentlemen, and the Strange Story of Alabama’s First U.S. Senator, William Rufus DeVane King

Posted by nickdupree – May 7, 2013

OR John Kerry Should’ve Grown A Beard: The North-South Manliness Inversion

A Post That Cites Its Sources…with Footnotes!

As I mentioned in the preceding post, the Nick’s Crusade blog is a history blog too. I think delving into history can be very valuable, not just because the strange doglegs and twists in the American story—history NEVER progresses in a straight line—are infinitely interesting, but because we become better thinkers and citizens the more we understand our prologue, the previous generations, the prior struggles, and what we’ve gained and lost since.

One thing we’ve lost—though we have gained from its absence in many ways—is the whole concept of the elite 19th century Southern Gentleman, the image of the Southern aristocrat with smooth, un-calloused hands and clean-shaven plump faces, and the brutal slave-driving that made such lifestyles possible. A lot of insight into that old image can be gleaned from the strange story of William Rufus deVane King of Alabama (my home state).

Art by Nick Dupree: Unlucky 13th Vice president, William Rufus deVane King, served only 45 days before dying of tuberculosis. Only a few of the 45 days, his last days, were on American soil, as he returned from Cuba via Mobile, then died on his plantation near Selma. He is the only vice president from Alabama ever elected.

Art by Nick Dupree: Unlucky 13th Vice president, William Rufus deVane King, served only 45 days before dying of tuberculosis. Only a few of the 45 days, his last days, were on American soil, as he returned from Cuba via Mobile, then died on his plantation near Selma. He is the only vice president from Alabama ever elected.

William R. D. King——more typically referred to as just “William R. King”—was the first U.S. Senator from Alabama (alongside John Williams Walker, who was also sent to Washington—the state legislature electing two U.S. Senators per constitutional requirements—after Alabama was admitted to the Union in December 1819). King also played a major role getting Alabama statehood done, and helped write the constitution of Alabama, named the city of Selma “Selma” meaning “high seat” or “throne” in the 18th century Ossianic poem The Songs of Selma, and was president pro tem of the United States Senate, got into a Hamilton-Burr-style duel with Henry Clay,¹ and served as U.S. Minister to France and had other diplomatic posts in Naples and St. Petersburg, and was behind the writing and passage of the Compromise of 1850 and more. What’s odd is, he did all this while being…while being known by the public as super effeminate and flamboyant, and was re-elected again and again by the hardcore states’ righters in Montgomery (prior to the ratification of the 17th amendment in 1913, state legislatures elected U.S. Senators to represent their state).

I won’t say William R. D. King was gay, though it is very striking that, in a culture that almost never mentioned such things, contemporaries like Andrew Jackson publicly called him by derogatory names like “Miss Nancy,” and

Buchanan, 15th President of the United States (1857-1861) was also Minister to the UK (Court of St. James).

Buchanan, 15th President of the United States (1857-1861) was also Minister to the UK (Court of St. James).

powerful Tennessee Dem Aaron Brown (later appointed postmaster general under Buchanan) referred to him as “she” and “Aunt Fancy” and [Buchanan's] “better half.”² The Senators King and Buchanan were reported walking arm in arm around Washington, though that was common for men even in James Garfield‘s time 30 years later. The rumors of King wearing 18th century powdered wigs and stockings long after they’d been abandoned in the 19th century are false,³ but there was definitely a very intimate relationship with future-president James Buchanan, and something must have been unusual enough to’ve drawn derision at the time. Nelson from the Simpsons, famously pointing out someone deserving derision Buchanan was called “Mr. Fancy Pants” or “Granny Buck.”

Still, the serious historian demands a high standard of proof: the text document equivalent of “pics or it didn’t happen.” Though there is more material suggesting King was seen as gay than almost anyone else in the 19th century, it’d be unwise to say King was a homosexual with certainty. I agree with the James Buchanan entry in glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture that:

In his The Invention of Heterosexuality Jonathan Ned Katz cautions against the application of contemporary terms regarding sexuality to other times and societies in which “[w]ays of ordering the sexes, genders, and sexualities have varied radically.” He further points out that in the “pre-Freudian world [of early-nineteenth-century America], love did not imply eros”–although neither, of course, was an erotic component excluded.⁴

As King’s effeminate manner is evident beyond a shadow of a doubt, I’ll ask a broader—and, I think, more interesting—question, on gender presentation widely-speaking: how is it that such an effeminate public figure got elected by the legislators in rough-and-tumble frontier Alabama?
The answer is, there was nothing odd about William R. D. King amidst the Southern slaver planter aristocracy of his generation. It only seems strange to us, seeing through the lens of the latter half of the 20th century and its mega-strict gender roles. In the antebellum South, the elite planter could be flamboyant, his body unmarked by any of the wear and tear associated with daily labor, his beardless, cherubic visage and opulent clothing a sign of plantation riches, heralding social status as much as signaling the success—and therefore rightness—of the Old South. That kind of presentation harkens back to the aristocratic plantation lifestyles of the 17th and 18th century colonies, when it was, if anything, MORE pronounced. The kind of luxurious appearance and elite manner King exemplified was not uncommon among antebellum aristocrats in cotton country, in fact, flaunting your aristocratic bona fides was cool.

The anti-slavery left, the free soil partisans of the north who were organizing into what would soon be called the Republican Party, had picked up on this. By the time Millard Fillmore—a northerner with pro-slavery sympathies—moved into the White House following President Taylor dying of dysentery in 1850, they had a name for his sort: doughfaces, an obvious allusion to the idle, beardless planter aristocracy.
The best explanation of masculinities of the 19th century and the politics of facial hair I’ve found, is in Adam Goodheart’s amazing book 1861:

It was no accident that Northerners who sympathized with slaveholders were called “doughfaces”: in the American context, beards connoted a certain frank and uncompromising authenticity. Nor was it a coincidence that “Honest Abe” began cultivating his famous beard as he prepared to take over the presidency from “Granny Buck.”⁵

Northern free-soilers began presenting themselves as everything opposed to those they framed as the effete, decadent planter class, or as they referred to them, “the slave party.” They cultivated an image marketed as everything opposite the idle, soft-handed, soft-faced rich Southern aristocrats, they were the candidates of rough-hewn common working men with beards! They [the first decades of Republican Party free soil candidates] were one of the Real ‘Merickens who crawled out of mama and into a log cabin, grew up ridin’ a blue ox and drinking hard cider, and as a man split rails with an axe in one hand while reading law with the other. In the case of Abraham Lincoln, this backstory was kind of true, and his 1860 presidential campaign leveraged that to. the. MAX. The Republican National Convention in Chicago that (unexpectedly) nominated Lincoln for president in 1860 was held in a massive, makeshift wooden “wigwam”—Chicago’s fire marshall didn’t get any sleep that week—and the crowd badgered Honest Abe to tell the convention his “clearing the land with an axe” story…again. The Fall campaign was almost singularly about the image of Lincoln “the rail-splitter,” and was used non-stop; I’m sure some folks didn’t even know his name, just knew “rail-splitter.” To focus on the frontiersmen ethos and related manliness, and all the subtle messages within that, while not mentioning free soil doctrine, abolition, or any of the issues currently boiling over was a brilliant stroke of campaigning genius, and stands out in political history.


Adam Goodheart’s 1861: The Civil War Awakening is the best, most quick-to-understand work of social history I’ve read to date, delving into what Americans lives were really like on the eve of the Civil War. It goes into the BIZARRE social arrangements of 1861 Washington, DC, where free blacks owned slaves, and in Goodheart’s descriptions, those slaves were better off than much of DC’s free black population, who were largely stuck below-subsistence-level in squalid shantytowns, and with no “owner” to vouch for them, they were “undocumented” in a way—my term—and had no real rights to move around in public spaces and were subjected to frequent stops and harassment by police. 1861 has a whole chapter on young James Garfield’s doings at the time, and the way passions were channeled into male friendships in his social circle since expressing emotions was quite circumscribed where women were concerned. I’d like to explore that more in another post.

What I discovered by looking back at William R. King vs. early Republican campaigns—and it’s exciting when you figure something out for the first time—is that the North and South have not only undergone a political transformation, there’s been a cultural inversion alongside it. First, the obvious political inversion. Look at the electoral map following Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 presidential run. The liberal “free soil” north is ruby red, Republican. The South, pro-slavery, is the Democratic Party “solid south,” and with the exception of the fracturing of the Democrats behind several Southern candidates in 1860, then a period of Republican military rule and Republican-elections, “Reconstruction,” the solid Democratic south stays together a remarkably long time, from Andrew Jackson to like… John Kennedy’s run in 1960… Kennedy loses significant votes to Nixon in the Deep South, then in 1972 ALL Southern states peel off—a huge change from the results of the ’68 presidential election just four years before, when the solid south voted for the Dem, Humphrey, and the former-Dem-then-Dem-again, George Wallace—and REALLY break in Nixon’s favor, what with his infamous “southern strategy” and a Dem challenger perceived as wimpy. ’72 clinched the end of realignment, sealed the deal. Ever since, the South has been Republican red, with Dixiecrats like Strom Thurmond and ex-Wallace supporters defecting to the GOP in droves and Lincoln’s states up north increasingly leaning Democratic; it’s a total inversion!

What I’ve realized is, it’s also a North-South inversion of the culture of masculinity. In short, northerners are framed as effete, wimpy, decadent, out-of-touch elites today, similar to the way northerners caricatured southerners in the first decades of Whig and Republican campaigns (1840-1870ish). Now, it’s southerners that seem to treasure uber-rigid common man masculinity, and William Rufus deVane King couldn’t get elected dog catcher in today’s Alabama; despite his great wealth, I doubt he could find a place in Alabama public life due to his…different gender presentation. Southerners of today expect a working man to run for office, someone manly and “like us,” the opposite of William R. King. Thomas Frank explored today’s Republican “backlash” against “elites” in his book What’s The Matter With Kansas. This “backlash” is far more determinative than people realize, and deserves much more examination.

John Kerry got the brunt of this backlash in the 2004 campaign, with Karl Rove using the words “effete, elite Massachusetts liberal!” every day. Kerry got Buchanan’ed! Today’s Republicans are as aware of Americans’ deep-seated resentment of “the idle rich” as their northern founders were!
John Kennedy did a modern version of the “Hard Cider Campaign” in 1960; you could call it the “high-ball glass and scotch campaign.” It worked. The “effete, elite Massachusetts liberal!” line was certainly attempted against Kennedy, but for the most part it failed to stick, and he won a majority of working class voters and held the bulk of the South. Kerry failed…failed BADLY to counter the “effete, wimpy, decadent, out-of-touch” frame employed against him. Maybe John Kerry should’ve tried some form of the Kennedy strategy. Maybe he should have gone full Abe, grown a beard and had the press film him chopping firewood.

What he tried instead, photos and videos of him “huntin” backfired terribly, making him look even more phony and out of touch.

Cartoon by Nick: 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, huntin...he says "I too enjoy leisure time practicing as a huntist!"

Cartoon by Nick: 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, huntin…he says “I too enjoy leisure time practicing as a huntist!”

Unfortunately, image matters and always has mattered in American politics. Today, it matters disproportionately, and 21st century Democratic candidates like John Kerry have been awful at it. He was completely unable to fight back against the opponent’s framing him as an elite, decadent aristocrat, just as King and Buchanan and other antebellum southern gentlemen were caricatured.

Southern politics and southern masculinity has shifted dramatically, and I wonder if we haven’t lost something important. I wonder if becoming much more rigid in gender expectations isn’t narrowing what’s possible in political life, excluding not just potential 21st century William Rufus Kings, but ANYONE who doesn’t look like a square, iron-jawed working man. We’ve narrowed potential in public life, and I think that’s always bad.

Nick

Footnotes

1. Clay “believed the Globe to be an infamous paper, and its chief editor an infamous man.” King responded that Blair’s character would “compare gloriously” to that of Clay. The Kentucky senator jumped to his feet and shouted, “That is false, it is a slanderous base and cowardly declaration and the senator knows it to be so.” King answered ominously, “Mr. President, I have no reply to make—none whatever. But Mr. Clay deserves a response.” King then wrote out a challenge to a duel and had another senator deliver it to Clay, who belatedly realized what trouble his hasty words had unleashed. As Clay and King selected seconds and prepared for the imminent encounter, the Senate sergeant at arms arrested both men and turned them over to a civil authority. Clay posted a five-thousand-dollar bond as assurance that he would keep the peace, “and particularly towards William R. King.” Each wanted the matter behind him, but King insisted on “an unequivocal apology.” On March 14, 1841, Clay apologized…
Senate Historical Office. “William Rufus King, 13th Vice President (1853).” Senate.gov. (accessed May 6, 2013).
2. p. 189: Hernandez, David. Broken Face in the Mirror: Crooks and Fallen Stars That Look Very Much Like Us. Dorrance Publishing, 2010. http://books.google.com/books?id=OJ-0nNPAisgC&pg=PA189 (accessed May 6, 2013).
3. “Vice President King is sometimes confused with [signer of the Constitution in 1787 and Federalist presidential candidate] Senator Rufus King of New York. This confusion with the first King explains the rumors that persist to this day of the latter King’s wearing of ribbons, scarves and powdered wigs long after they were in fashion. Vice President King always wore the contemporary styles of the early-to-mid-1800s and he never wore a wig.” pp 13-14: Stern, Milton. Harriet Lane, America’s First Lady. 2005. http://books.google.com/books?id=5B9ngDFT2vgC&pg=PA14 (accessed May 7, 2013).
4. Rapp, Linda. glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Chicago, IL: glbtq, Inc., 2004. http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/buchanan_j,2.html (accessed May 6, 2013).
5. p. 113: Goodheart, Adam. 1861: The Civil War Awakening. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2011. http://books.google.com/books?id=bCPbnsUPhB0C&pg=PA113

Tom Wolfe Talks Memoir: “the worst form of fiction”

Posted by nickdupree – February 10, 2013

I’m writing a memoir now, well, memoir/serious nonfiction/exposé, finally the Nick’s Crusade book, so I was interested in Tom Wolfe’s (brief) comments on Memoir. He quotes Orwell “memoir is the worst form of fiction” because you focus on the sensational, not the mundane and humiliating that makes up 75% of life (then he goes into one of his humiliations, which makes no sense to me, but whatevs).

Don’t worry dear reader, my book will be chock-full of fails and humiliations. I don’t leave out 3/4 of life; without the humiliation, it’s not very interesting.

Nick

Heroes Without Glory: Some Good Men of the Old West—Nick explores a dusty, old-fashioned book of social history

Posted by nickdupree – April 9, 2012

This is the first in a series of book and article reviews I’ll write, taking you through the stacks and exploring old and not so old books about humanity’s story (history). In this case, I’m exploring a fairly rare social history from 1965, probably not something you’d find on the shelves of your local public library or Barnes & Noble. If you like this review, leave a comment below :)
—Nick

Heroes Without Glory: Some Good Men of the Old WestHeroes Without Glory: Some Good Men of the Old West by Jack Schaefer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s seldom that a historical writer captures both the close up, the individual stories, attitudes and essence of the people who contributed to an era, and the wide-view, what the society was like, simultaneously. But by telling the stories of how a diverse cross-section of men contributed to Western settlement, Jack Schaefer did just that with Heroes Without Glory: Some Good Men of the Old West. Schaefer offers detailed portraits of the good men that made building communities in the unforgiving wilds of the territories possible; as Louis L’Amour once wrote—and I’m paraphrasing from memory—”this was a big country and needed big men and women to fill it, big of spirit, big of heart” and it’s these “big” goodmen that Schaefer focuses on. The goodmen, instead of oft-discussed badmen, desperadoes like Billy the Kid, Black Bart, Jesse James and the Younger Gang, Butch Cassidy and “The Wild Bunch” gang and the whole rogues gallery of Western history, who were evidently the subject of frenzied interest at the time of this book’s first publication (1965). In the preface, Schaefer places himself squarely against what he dubs “the cult of the badman,” denouncing the “cultists” for capitalizing on the morbid interest in the “badmen,” who he says impeded growth out West, tearing down and attacking civilization.

This is a book about the goodmen who built the West, a book of lengthy, in-depth biographies of the unheralded pioneer mailmen, explorers, doctors, cowboys, etc. who made the territories livable. Schaefer is clearly drawn to men of extreme patience and fortitude, men of action, not of words. Thus he spends time profiling men like the nearly non-verbal John “Snowshoe” Thompson, a self-described “slow, simple Norski” who used Norwegian snowshoes and techniques to deliver the first mail and supplies (including life-saving medicines) from Nevada to California over the treacherous pass in the Sierra Nevadas. And man of few words and many cows, John Chisum, one of the first cattle barons. He begins the book with eccentric trapper James Capen Adams (“Grizzly” Adams) who spent almost all his life wordlessly among his favorite grizzly bears, in nature. This book made me think about how the Old West ethos, with its focus on action uber alles and the man of action eking out a living from undeveloped wilds as opposed to the buffoonish and idle man of words back east, changed what’s considered manly from the close of the Victorian era up into the present-day. Perhaps without intending to, Schaefer gives us insight into what would become the mold for “manliness” throughout the 20th century.

Why I gave this book Four stars: I’m a big believer that social history is where it’s at, that to really understand the people of a certain time and place, you need to read the words of the people who were there and learn from those everyday folks the rhythms of that past culture, how the society functioned, etc. This book does that. How new settlements functioned, how U.S. territories in the 19th century worked, really fascinates me. As always, the little details hook me; the fact that the biggest bear “Grizzly” Adams ever caught became the model for Charles Nahl‘s design of California’s bear flag (though keep in mind that there were literally over a dozen bear flag designs adopted to varying degrees until a standardized design was finally adopted in 1953), that bovine thievery was a problem, cows trying to break into horse stables and steal the horse’s hay a constant issue out west, that John Chisum maintained his wealth as a Texas cattle baron through the trials and tribulations of the Civil War because he had the foresight to realize that Confederate currency may not hold up, so whenever he got his hands on rebel money, he exchanged it for more cows as soon as possible. I love that stuff.

My favorite part of the book is its biography of Dr. Charles Fox Gardiner. Originally from New York, where King of England, Charles I, had granted the Gardiner family a private island off Suffolk County—Gardiner’s Island—in 1639. In the mid-1800s, Charles Fox Gardiner trained as a doctor in New York City, on Roosevelt Island—then known as Blackwell’s Island—at one of the predecessors of Goldwater hospital. Then he took his skills west to aid the frontier mining communities in Colorado Territory. That this book contained an account of pioneer medicine is why I picked it up. It doesn’t disappoint on that score.

Gardiner built a shanty for his office with a blue and gold sign outside. No one trusted the new guy initially, but slowly his reputation grew by word of mouth and he had a steady and growing practice on his hands. “Patient after patient was unable to pay, then out of nowhere one would pay $100. Unusual but fascinating,” Gardiner said. I found the insights into pioneer doctors fascinating, and I hope to find the book Gardiner himself wrote about his experiences, Doctor at Ridgeline, in an accessible format soon.

The downsides of Heroes Without Glory: Some Good Men of the Old West. come with the author’s old-fashioned views and ancient prejudices that really filter the content, and in some cases really stink it up, especially regarding the native tribes of the West. The only Native American “goodman” profiled is Chief Washakie, leader of the Eastern Shoshones. Washakie was indeed a great leader of the Shoshones, and a pivotal figure in not only American Indian history, but also of the Old West in whole. Indeed, we may not even know the name Shoshone today if not for Washakie; the loose band of Shoshone tribes may have been wiped out by enemy tribes, and probably wouldn’t have even become a federally-recognized tribe without his forceful leadership. Most important was his political skills; Washakie secured a large reservation, Wind River Indian Reservation, in what is now Wyoming, for his fairly small band of Eastern Shoshones because he was such a forceful and well-known leader and peacemaker for his people. Schaefer artfully highlights Washakie’s remarkable achievements, but disturbingly, Schaefer seems to herald Washakie more for his exceeding patience with the constant oppression, control and expropriation of lands previously reserved for the Shoshone. Every decade, Uncle Sam would bite off another giant piece of the land he’d promised to them, and one year they forced them to half the Wind River Reservation with the Arapaho, their ancient rivals. Washakie didn’t—probably couldn’t—fight back, and shared all he could with the Arapahoes.

The Indian leaders that met such humiliations with arrows and repeating rifles aren’t mentioned here. It’s also sucky that this book doesn’t profile a single woman; that amounts to cleaving the history of the West in half! Going in with a wide open mind, one can still appreciate this stuff. But no mind is open enough to like the biography Schaefer includes on Valentine T. McGilicuddy. I thought the chapter on McGilicuddy would focus on his years as a trailblazing frontier Army surgeon and surveyor, but is mostly an account of McGilicuddy’s long tenure as Indian Agent on Pine Ridge Reservation in the Dakotas; it’s one of the more offensive views of Indians you’ll find, paternalistic, infantilizing, ugh. You can skip this chapter if you’d like. But it’s also historical evidence of how loathsome the reservation system has been.

It can be invaluable to read older perspectives. I give this four stars because it’s a rare social history, with great detail of how it really was in biographies of (in order of appearance) Grizzly Adams, George A. Ruxton, John “Snowshoe” Thompson, John Phillips, Washakie, John S. Chisum, Thomas J. Smith, Valentine T. McGillycuddy, Charles Fox Gardiner, and Elfego Baca. Definitely worthwhile for Wild West aficionados and history buffs.

View all my reviews

Mitt Romney: Can You Help Us, Mr. Fix It? (Part 2)

Posted by nickdupree – February 10, 2012

Continuing my comments on Mitt Romney’s “very ample safety net” statement on CNN; see the first half of my post: Mitt Romney: Can You Help Us, Mr. Fix It? (Part 1)…

So, as I said in Part 1, it’s very important to assess presidential candidates in a just and fair manner, and too often the news media is blaring the one sentence “not concerned about the very poor” sans context. But, to be honest, Romney’s answer is even worse when examined in its full context and nuance. Gail Collins over at the NYT wrote an excellent line-by-line breakdown of Mitt’s full statement. I won’t reprint her words here but I highly recommend you take a look.

Romney’s statement (read it here in full) singles out the 95% of Americans in the middle as his main concern. He’s not concerned about the top 1% and that leaves the bottom 4% he isn’t concerned about. Basic arithmetic shows the bottom 4% are those earning under $5,000 annually, a group politicians barely notice exist, much less spend time helping. This category would probably encompass mostly the elderly and disabled, and the homeless, including a lot of homeless veterans.

The most intelligent and spot-on post I’ve seen on this so far in the sprawling blogosphere is from the Columbia Journalism Review’s Campaign Desk: Three Thoughts on Mitt Romney’s ‘Very Poor’ Day : CJR
What makes it great is it actually does what journalism should, dig beneath the noise and the claims and try and unearth the facts. It points out that when Romney says the bottom 4% have a “very ample safety net” and it’s the middle class that needs help, it reveals a deep misunderstanding about the safety net in his brain. The article points out that social programs, for example Medicaid, spend more on long-term care for the elderly and disabled than on any other line item, and plenty of those folks qualify under medical assistance and Medicaid keeps them perched barely on the edge of a middle class quality of life. The article also cites data showing that many beneficiaries of Medicaid are actually middle-class families—certainly families in that broad “90-95 percent of Americans” that Romney says he wants to help—who “would otherwise be stuck with the full tab for care for their elderly and disabled relatives.” Medicaid is life support for the middle class as much as it’s a “safety net” for “the very poor.” More people should be cognizant of this data. Paul Ryan is: he hates that Medicaid is benefiting the middle class.

When pressed by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien after his initial “very poor” remark, Romney went on to say “We will hear from the Democrat Party about the plight of the poor.”
Essentially, he’s saying that’s their job, not Republicans’ role.

This references a political balance that may have existed 30 years ago, when Tip O’Neill and outspoken liberals controlled the House of Representatives and made sure the concerns of the poor were heard sometimes, but most certainly doesn’t exist now. No Democratic party leader that would remotely try to balance the scales toward the poor has existed since the era Tip O’Neill clinked high ball glasses in the Oval Office with Ronnie after 6 o’clock, and spent all his working hours before 6pm standing up to President Reagan, fighting for his blue-collar, poor base. He was by the unions, for the unions, and that doesn’t exist anymore. That is over; Tip O’Neill died in 1994 and no one remotely like him has succeeded him. Nancy Pelosi, the longest-serving Democratic Speaker of the House since O’Neill (she served four years) spends more time cozying up to corporate interests than unions. Instead of O’Neill, a hardscrabble Catholic boy from a poor Irish district, fighting the good fight for every day blue-collar people, we have Pelosi, an aloof elite holding a net worth of approximately $58 million in real estate, stock, and businesses she and her husband own, and is now facing an insider trading scandal. Sadly, Chris Hedges is right about the death of the liberal class.

When was the last time you heard Pelosi or Obama, or even the Clintons talk about the very poor? About the impoverished elderly? About people with disabilities? About the marginalized and excluded bottom 4% of Americans who have no apparent “trampoline out of poverty”? If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard “from the Democrat party [sic] about the plight of the poor” over the past 20 years, I doubt I’d have enough nickels to make a phone call. Democrats frequently speechify about “working families,” when the problem is American families aren’t working, they can’t find enough work to make ends meet; too much of our economic base has been off-shored, and there hasn’t been enough innovation to replace what’s been lost. Obama and Pelosi talk about the middle class, campaigning for that big demographic same as Mitt Romney is, minus mentioning the “very poor” at all.

So given the Democrats abdicating their past role as fighters for the poor, we have to ask the Republicans as well, Romney included, for assistance for those trapped at the bottom, for help fixing the safety net and the upward ladder.

Unfortunately, the video footage is coming out, showing that “the people who need the help most are not the poor” is a recurring theme in Romney’s stump speeches. This is really troubling stuff, particularly after all the data has again and again shown the U.S. to lead the developed world in poverty [Source]. Also, as Romney says “if [the safety net] has holes in it, I will repair them,” he’s simultaneously pushing forth a tax plan that would blow a hole in social programs’ funding like we’ve never seen: Romney Tax Plan Would Require Slashing Social Safety Net … Says Romney Economic Adviser. It is disturbing that Romney says we have a “very ample safety net” while the next minute pushing a tax plan that—based on the analysis of his own economic adviser—would require slashing the very social programs he’s saying he’ll “repair.” Yet another contradiction from Willard “Mitt” Romney, the human mystery wrapped in an enigma. I want to reform the system to revolutionize how it sees us and respects our individual freedom, we need a very big change, I like the possibilities in some of Senator Wyden’s ideas for replacing Medicaid—which he calls a “caste system”—with something better and more equitable; what we don’t need is to destroy the program, death from a thousand cuts.

Still, I hope for some kind of educational moment can come out of this. That’s why I’ve written Romney HQ a letter. I have nothing against Governor Romney as a person, I’m sure he’s a great, affable guy, and I’d love to meet him to work on bringing individualized funding, choice and competition to Medicaid/Medicare instead of “one size fits all.” We don’t really know what kind of Republican Willard is deep down or how he’ll really govern—is he a lefty Rockefeller Republican like his dad, a moderate pragmatist like George H. W. Bush, a hard-right Reagan-and-Ayn-Rand type?—we don’t know. So why not assume he can be very reform-minded like his dad; why can’t Mitt be the one to lead the way in revolutionizing Medicaid and Medicare to be completely different? Choice, competition, individualized budgeting, cash and counseling—let’s go!

After all, Romney supporters like to refer to Mitt Romney as “Mr. Fix-it.” I’ve seen dudes holding “Romney: Mr. Fix-it” signs prior to the debates on cable news. I found this image on mittromneycentral.com:

Mr. Fix- It, America needs a proven leader with a strong conservative message.
Fan art by MittFan12 (Steve Thomas)
In a bizarre interlude, me finding this “Romney Mr. Fix it” image led to me stumbling into the mittromneycentral.com chat room by accident. Most of the supporters in the chat were polite and cordial in answering my questions, and I left there with more respect for Team Romney than I came in with…

Mitt Romney, please fix the safety net.

Mitt Romney: Can You Help Us, Mr. Fix It? (Part 1)

Posted by nickdupree – February 10, 2012

Editorial cartoon: Richie Rich, the Monopoly Man, the Simpsons' Mr. Burns and Scrooge McDuck tell Mitt Romney he's embarrassing the rich 'you're making us look bad'

 

So, there’s been a dust up over Mitt Romney’s “I’m not concerned about the very poor” comments on CNN.  A lot of the blogosphere is mindlessly blasting this quote sans context, and the TV news even worse, so Team Romney isn’t wrong to protest how this has been “taken out of context.”  Cable news has been bad.  So bad: stopping short of breaking it down into a few syllables and grunts between prescription drug advertisements.

But, to be honest, Romney’s answer is even worse when examined in its full context and nuance.

Here’s Mitt Romney’s “I’m not concerned about the very poor, I’m not concerned about the very rich, I’m campaigning for Americans in the middle” the relevant part of his interview with Soledad O’Brien, with all the context and nuance he gave CNN:

ROMNEY: You know, just let people get to know you better. The nice thing about what happened here in Florida is I got a chance to go across the state, meet with people. They heard what I am concerned about. They understand how I will be able to make things better.

I think people want someone who not just throws an incendiary bomb from time to time but someone who actually knows how it takes to improve their life, get home values rising again, to get jobs again in this country, and to make sure when soldiers come home they have a job waiting for them. And make sure people who are retired don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen at the end of the week.

This is a time people are worried. They’re frightened. They want someone who they have confidence in. And I believe I will be able to instill that confidence in the American people. And, by the way, I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.

I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.

O’BRIEN: All right. So I know I said last question, but I’ve got to ask you. You just said I’m not concerned about the very poor because they have a safety net. And I think there are lots of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say that sounds odd. Can you explain that?

ROMNEY: Well, you had to finish the sentence, Soledad. I said I’m not concerned about the very poor that have the safety net, but if it has holes in it, I will repair them.

On CNN February 1st, Mitt Romney included a tangent about

O’BRIEN: Got it. OK.

ROMNEY: The – the challenge right now – we will hear from the Democrat Party the plight of the poor, and – and there’s no question, it’s not good being poor and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor.

But my campaign is focused on middle income Americans. My campaign – you

can choose where to focus. You can focus on the rich. That’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor. That’s not my focus.

My focus is on middle income Americans, retirees living on social security, people who cannot find work, folks who have kids that are getting ready to go to college. That – these are the people who’ve been most badly hurt during the Obama years.

We have a very ample safety net, and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it. But we have food stamps, we have

Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor. But the middle income Americans, they’re the folks that are really struggling right now, and they need someone that can help get this economy going for them.

O’BRIEN: All right. Mitt Romney, congratulations to you on your big victory last night. Thanks for talking with us. appreciate it.

CNN, Transcript of Soledad O’Brien interview with Mitt Romney, Feb. 1, 2012

For me, the “not concerned about the very poor” comment is one of the least disturbing parts of his answer here.

First, it’s what he said immediately following that: “We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.” That anyone who has been a leader in government can still essentially wonder aloud IF the safety net needs repair astonishes me. After all the tragic deaths (like the 12-year-old boy who died for lack of a dentist to simply pull a tooth) and horrible suffering that’s been well-documented and displayed, how can anyone not know our safety net needs a major shoring up if not—my position—a total rethinking and restructuring?

To quote from a 2007 blog post I wrote:

For those with severe disabilities dependent on Medicaid, the Republican cuts from 1995-2007 have had horrible consequences. I’ve had to fight like hell to survive. In 1996 in Alabama, Medicaid started gutting EPSDT (the federally-mandated program providing nursing care for those in need) and sending out termination notices to families in the mail. Then in 1999-2001 we had more aggressive cuts. They changed the rules so it’s only a temporary program to train caregivers to stay with their child 24/7, and they keep repeating that it is not the government’s role to “babysit” your child at all (even if your child is on life support and routinely coding). And now it is 2007 and Alabama barely funds it at all. We’ve almost been rolled back into the 1970s level.
I’ve had friends die. I’m sick of tolerating this evil like it is a valid policy position. It is in no way valid nor deserving of our deference and patience. It is nothing but immoral…
…

I have seen too much suffering and death because of inadequate supports and invisible safety nets and I am frakking traumatized that people are still pushing this destructive right-wing mythology that if we chip away at government funding even further, that this will magically increase services. It has been tried for years and has failed every time.

Excerpted from my post Vigorously Insisting On A More Perfect Union: Fighting Cuts, Demanding Universal Health Care | Nick’s Crusade
This “Demanding Universal Health Care” post was published by the Greenhaven Press imprint of Gale Publishing in the 2008 edition of Opposing Viewpoints: Health Care, if anyone is interested.

I think Romney needs to hear these stories, hear the details of how our lives are effected by the swiss cheese safety net.

Some of my other blog posts may prove instructive:
Feds Fiddling While State Medicaid Programs BURN | Nick’s Crusade (a critique of how ObamaCare will impact Medicaid, amid a report of budget cuts in the South leaving people with disabilities in their own waste)
Government-Sponsored Ablism and Segregation Tears Families Apart | Nick’s Crusade (an essay against state-sponsored institutionalization, segregation, and oppression)
Medicaid: Why It’s Broken and How To Fix It | Nick’s Crusade (highlights the broken parts of Medicaid, including funding disparities, poverty mandates and the ultra-expensive and antiquated practice of unnecessarily institutionalizing people, and lays out some solutions)

I plan to drop Willard “Mitt” Romney a note, you could do the same. Let him know what problems in “safety net” programs need his help, concisely and politely. Appeal to his “Mr. Fix-it” rhetoric. I don’t know if anyone will be able to connect and begin a constructive dialogue with Team Romney, but if even one person did, it would have a wonderful impact.

info@mittromney.com

Mitt Romney for President
P.O. Box 149756
Boston, MA 02114-9756

More thoughts on Mitt Romney’s “very ample safety net” comments in Mitt Romney: Can You Help Us, Mr. Fix It? (Part 2)…

Senator Schumer, Hands Off Our Meds Please

Posted by nickdupree – February 8, 2012

People in chronic pain need help, more options, more understanding.

[the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report Relieving Pain in America:
A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education, and Research] Issued at the request of Congress as part of President Obama’s health reform legislation, the report calls for a “cultural transformation” — an attitude shift on the level of that seen over the last 50 years toward smoking — to spur more coordinated action to help treat Americans’ pain. Pain patients have long been viewed with skepticism and suspicion, rather than understanding, presenting a barrier to care. Rising rates of prescription drug misuse, addiction and overdose have further led to the establishment of legal and regulatory barriers, such as prescription databases, that can prevent even legitimate pain patients from getting much-needed drugs.

Source: IOM Report: Chronic, Undertreated Pain Affects 116 Million Americans | TIME.com

It seems Congress is not on the side of transforming the way we help people in pain, they’re on the side of the “skepticism and suspicion” and “legal and regulatory barriers,” not to mention the fear mongering over pain medications.

Last month, my Senator, Chuck Schumer made local TV news headlines ranting, not just about abuse of prescription drugs, but “Rails Against FDA Testing Of Super-Potent Painkillers” as NY1′s headline blared atop their story at www.ny1.com. He doesn’t even want these new medications—extra-strong meds that pharmaceutical companies have created to help people in real pain—to be tested and approved for legal prescription and sale by the FDA for fear of abuse. He’s even saying that FDA approval of new pain meds will “add fuel to the fire” of crime and lead to increased robberies, playing up the recent armed raids for oxy and vicodin at two Long Island pharmacies. Absolutely the height of alarmist rhetoric here.

Since I moved to New York City in 2008, I’ve noticed that Senator Schumer tends to make local news across the state with big, scary headlines (in Mobile, AL where I’m from, the U.S. Senators show up as footnotes on the local news, if at all). Team Schumer probably realizes—rightly—that getting his name in the TV headlines that soccer moms and such (i.e. the community-minded folks who tend to vote most, “the likely voter”) might catch as they go through their morning routine or night-time winding down is crucial for his reelection. Schumer

Chuck Schumer, senior U.S. Senator from New York

has evidently always been a “tough on crime”-type of politician, a key supporter of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (VCCLEA) that instituted a federal “three strikes and you’re out” life-imprisonment policy, and since the attacks on 9/11, he’s become a big “tough on terrorism”-type of politician. For example, last May, Senator Schumer similarly made the local news across New York State with his plan for a security crackdown on trains, especially pertinent to New York because New Yorkers are some of the train-ridingest people on the continent. See: Schumer calls for ‘do not ride’ list for Amtrak – NEWS10 ABC: Albany, New York News. These are the kind of headlines Schumer gets. People concerned about unnecessary, Fourth Amendment-crushing, possibly gropey, searches every time you board a train, including me, complained online.

His camera-hogging ways, I get it. Salon called him a “incorrigible publicity hound,” and that’s ok. Be what you are, man. Embrace it. But this time “going too far” is especially “too far” because it could accidentally hurt people with chronic pain who are already hurting.

Here are the local headlines I’m concerned with:
Schumer warns FDA on danger of newest painkillers | Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY’s newspaper of record)
Schumer Rails Against FDA Testing Of Super-Potent Painkillers – NY1.com (NY1 is a 24/7 cable news channel for New York metro area news)
Sen Schumer: ‘Super Painkillers Could Lead To Violent Robberies’ « CBS New York possibly the fear mongeriest headline of the year, though it does present an alternative viewpoint in the video report if not the text summary.
Senator Charles Schumer warns FDA on danger of new painkillers | 7online.com (WABC-TV, the ABC affiliate for NYC.) Watch the video report embedded below, doesn’t provide an alternative viewpoint!

Only one of these scary headlines includes a balancing, alternate viewpoint within. That’s their most egregious journalistic failure: they only give audiences the scare monger’s viewpoint, they only offer shock words.

First, they are leaving out important context like these are MEDICINES for people in real pain. The context and tone treats painkillers as no different than street drugs, omitting the therapeutic intent and quality of life benefits (very real.) Note the language used by the ABC-7 reporter Lucy Yang, the term “the streets“ repeated twice. “At least one [pharmaceutical company] is past the lab stage and now trying to get this super-drug on the streets by next year.” “Of course, before any such narcotic could hit the streets it would have to be approved by the FDA.” Stopping just short of calling pharmaceutical manufacturers street pushers, there.

More language to red-flag from the channel 7 report, including one of the opening lines, “officials report more deaths [from prescription drugs] than heroin, crack, and cocaine”—which officials, Ms. Yang? Please source such a shocking claim. “Despite that, we’re told attempts are underway to introduce a super-drug” “you don’t have to look far to see the violent and punishing reality of addiction to painkillers” “potent and enslaving” “pure painkiller”

Second, why do all these reports reference the robberies on Long Island?  I disagree that the all-too-common oxy and vicodin hold-ups (which are AWFUL, I don’t want to minimize that) would be effected either way whether the FDA approves new narcotics or not. They are linking two completely unrelated stories, echoing Senator Schumer, for shock effect. Journalists should be questioning the Congress critters, holding their feet to the fire, not mindlessly parroting their press releases. Tying past narcotics violence to the unrelated matter of future possible FDA approval of new narcotics seems like pure fear mongering to me.

Third, a look at Schumer’s own language: “the very same people who try to get our kids to use things like oxycodone and vicodin will start peddling this drug, which when abused is poison.” “It would instantly become the most sought-after drug by addicts and criminals.” From the CBSTV-2 story, Schumer said: “Crooks like Oxycontin and Vicodin, yet you leave the doctor’s office, the dentist’s office, the oral surgeon’s office after you have a root canal, they routinely give you 20 to 30 of these pills. That can’t happen with these new powerful drugs.” He’s simultaneously condemning new drugs and old drugs, and nearly finger-wagging at the whole concept of treating post-surgical pain with narcotics. Wow.

The drug in question, according to the CBS channel 2 video report, is Zohydro. Zohydro is hydrocodone like Vicodin, Lortab and Lorset is, but it’s the first long-acting timed-release capsule hydrocodone created. I have chronic pain; I can’t take any of the time release stuff. However, I know numerous people who could benefit from Zohydro and other new medications. This could be a miracle drug for people who’re allergic to—or for whatever reason can’t use—the only other time release painkiller out there, Oxycontin. I’m sure that, for many, this could be a life-changing medicine; long-acting squelching pain, giving people with chronic pain their quality of life back, liberating them to get out of bed. You don’t see that side of the argument on TV, but the benefits of effective pain management are huge, and important.

People can build up a tolerance to pain meds like bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics, and like humans need new antibiotics, humans need new painkillers. We need new pain meds developed and approved for prescription use. People in chronic pain need more options.
Zohydro is also a good step because it isn’t packed with liver-killing acetaminophen that is so commonly combined with opiates. I reported before on the FDA’s bizarre regulation making opioid-acetaminophen combination meds easier to get than purer alternatives because they figure if people know it can destroy their liver they won’t abuse it. This insanity has led to too many deaths, tragedies, and liver transplants, so the FDA itself has been reconsidering recently.

I’m saying consider another perspective (which the media won’t give you). Medication mostly does have a big positive impact. Don’t block or take away pain meds that are giving people quality of life.

Consider this nursing home and hospice facility perspective:

Timely access to controlled medications also continues to be a challenge in the long-term care setting due to drug shortages and what some consider excessively strict federal regulations.

“The Drug Enforcement Agency’s interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act is one barrier that’s impeding timely access to appropriate controlled medications for nursing facility residents and those enrolled in hospice programs,” notes Jennifer Hardesty, PharmD, FASCP, clinical services manager for Remedi SeniorCare.

There is no question that pain’s effects on quality of life are far-reaching. Not only does pain diminish pleasure and interfere with social relationships and one’s ability to stay active, it is also linked to other debilitating conditions, such as depression and anxiety.

Full article: No pain = all gain – McKnight’s Long Term Care News (disclaimer: only includes nursing home perspective)

In the New York metro area, there’s been an oxy crime wave; it has led to a law enforcement crackdown. Doctors are more reticent to prescribe. Visible DEA enforcement actions have created a very real chilling effect that is making it harder for those already having a hard time with chronic pain.

I have nothing against Senator Schumer as a person, I’m sure he’s a great, affable guy, and I’d love to meet him to work on bringing individualized funding, choice and competition to Medicaid/Medicare instead of “one size fits all.” I’m just saying let’s not accidentally snag people in real pain in the “war on drugs” dragnet, let’s be level-headed, let’s not fear monger.

Prior to his 2003 commencement address at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the RIT website lauded Senator Schumer: In the past 25 years, Schumer has become known as a leader on national issues and a tireless fighter for New York. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle called him “an accomplished, far-sighted legislator,” while The New York Times wrote that he “is a more serious lawmaker with more rooted values, sounder policy positions and a deeper commitment to the common good.”

All I’m asking, Senator, is please live up to your reputation as a committed fighter for the “common good,” include ailing constituents with chronic pain in that common good, and please be “far-sighted” about how federal drug policy can impact the quality of life of the elderly, the terminally and chronically ill, and disabled populations who live with the most severe pain.

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Nick

Rain Man (1988) and Hollywood’s treatment of disability

Posted by nickdupree – February 5, 2011

Hollywood Images of Disability (CHF EDIT) from salome chasnoff on Vimeo.

Everyone interested in disability rights should watch this 18min short “Hollywood Images of Disability,” about Hollywood’s terrible treatment of disability, which is normally depicted as something so deformed, so unspeakably terrifying that disabled characters have to be cured (Heidi, Monkey Shines, Avatar, and zillions of movies) put away forever (Rain Man) or euthanized (Of Mice and Men, Million Dollar Baby and countless other examples). Note: this short comments on clips from many different movies with R and PG-13 ratings, many of which contain sensationalist depictions of people with disabilities, exaggerated vulnerability of disabled women–Uma Thurmond playing a naked blind woman being vulnerable and threatened, extreme violence and murders of people with disabilities, male and female, and will be disturbing for anyone with a conscience.

I saw Rain Man (1988) on the big screen when it came out (I was 6 years old and I didn’t understand much beyond the beautiful imagery). When I saw it again as a young teenager it impacted me a lot. I really remember it vividly.

Rain Man is the autistic brother that was just discovered by cool dude Charlie (Tom Cruise, who back in the 80s, we all worshiped as the coolest guy ever and wanted to emulate, along with Michael J. Fox & Matthew Broderick–in 1990 I once made mom’s hairdresser make my hair like Michael J. Fox’s). Charlie removes Rain Man/Raymond from the nursing home and they go on an amazing adventure that as a teen I could only dream of. Ray is loosed from his cage! While most men in the audience are undoubtedly identifying with Charlie, the cool as ice, young business shark of the ’80s (see Gordon Gekko) and his struggles and interests, I’m identifying with Ray, and strongly. For the first time, Ray can move around and develop out in the real world: he’s experiencing life with all its thrills, very real dangers, wonderful strangeness, opportunities, fulfillment and sexual excitement. He gets to fail at driving the old Buick convertible, win fat stacks of cash at a beautiful Las Vegas casino. He’s able to really live, warts and all, unlike the nursing home where there is nothing but soulless routine and the dictatorial control of the facility’s staff who don’t really know or care for Ray.

The scene that caught my attention the most was when Ray ends up alone in the casino elevator with a beautiful woman, Charlie’s girlfriend Susanna (Valeria Golino) who brakes the elevator and slow dances with him and kisses him. It is brief but an electrifyingly sexy moment. I’ll go into a great amount of detail so ya’ll can understand how a young disabled man saw these images. They used every camera and make-up trick to make the actress look like the perfect hot date of the 80s style. In this elevator Ray is confronted with a very powerful woman, empowered, living life; she dances with and kisses Ray maybe out of curiosity, maybe because it feels enormously powerful to initiate a man into the world of women. She is open to being inclusive. Possible T-Shirt: NOT A SLUT. INCLUSIVE. When you’re a young disabled man, you see her in the elevator and look at her like a vision of feminine power and inclusivity, a chance at entering the adult world. Not long into the scene, she restarts the elevator, looking a little sad and disappointed that Ray didn’t really kiss her back and touch her, and the moment was over. I was transfixed (nearly every male probably was–it immerses the audience in the ultimate fantasy of a woman actually wanting them).

This was the first time in my life that I had seen a woman interested in giving that kind of attention and affection to a disabled man. It was like a fairy tale come true, Ray doesn’t have to be locked up in the gilded cage at the nursing home, he had a real CHANCE at life, opportunities to see and do amazing things and feel and love. To me, the opportunities to succeed were as important and thrilling, if not moreso, than actually success. At the time, 1994, I was entering puberty and very focused on all these issues, while living in an environment with the myriad barriers so common to the disability experience, plus being guarding by nurses 24/7 had already cut me off from girls, from kids my age entirely in middle school. This movie made me think I could one day escape the cage and talk to women in elevators.

But the movie closed with Tom Cruise putting Ray back in the cage, portrayed as the right thing, the courageous and hard thing to put him back in the nursing home, the more “appropriate” setting. How well Ray did in the real world evidently didn’t matter; he had 1 autistic meltdown (ONE) and accidentally broke the precious coffee maker, and that was the end of that. Charlie is depicted as a hero for doing this and ending Ray’s opportunities for a life, forever. It’s all about Charlie’s journey, the familiar Quest o’ Redemption trope that is as old as literature itself, and in the United States typically involve a journey by car across the American continent. Ultimately, as the short film “Hollywood Images of Disability” illustrates quite well, disabled characters in Rain Man and other Hollywood movies aren’t people as much as Oscar bait for a “difficult” portrayal (for the Raymond role, Dustin Hoffman won the Oscar for Best Actor; “The diseased/addicted/mentally impaired always get the Oscar.” — Hollywood Rule Book, Vanity Fair) and disabled characters are mainly used as plot devices to facilitate the hero’s development. In Rain Man, Ray, his struggles, his interests, aren’t considered at all; the point of the story is that Charlie starts off as a soulless corporate raider, grows to love Raymond, and at the end has evolved into a sensitive, mature adult able to make the “right” “mature” choices in life and love, and, grotesquely, the “mature” choice is to have the lawyer transfer custody of Raymond permanently to the nursing home. I thought it was particularly cruel to show Ray the world only to yank it away. To be expected, in a society where we aren’t wanted and barely accommodated enough to survive, but still a harsh introduction to reality for young teenaged Nick.

Read about the all-too-common “Bury Your Disabled” trope in popular culture, and try to raise awareness that it, along with other disability tropes that are harmful (and/or just ABSURD), are actually really wrong and awful, and should go away….

Nick

Review of animated movie “Delgo” (2008)

Posted by nickdupree – January 9, 2011

Delgo
Rated PG
89 minutes long

I understand why this movie tanked at the box office and recouped the independent production only 700k of 40 million invested, it needed a major script overhaul to edit out about 40 minutes of what feels like filler, tighten the story, cut the ultra-forced comedy, and lighten the heavy handed *Jews vs. Palestinians intractable racial struggle over arable land* plotline.
“Trying WAY too hard” is the main problem with Delgo. I believe that in order to recoup the colossal, hemorrhaging costs from this on again, off again, shelved and unshelved 9 year production, the usual suspects (out of touch marketing gurus who always design movies for the lobotomized demographic) overstuffed the script with as many hackneyed Disney formulas as possible. The result (which probably has the guys who came up with the original concepts for Delgo crying in their beer every night) is humor so forced that you want to cringe and shield your face in parts. Delgo’s screechy, unbearable sidekick (Chris Kattan) is this movie’s worst mistake; the fact that not only does he screech *every* forced line at the highest pitches Kattan’s “Mango” character (from SNL) could hit, but enduring him is utterly superfluous to the story, has (I’m certain) made innumerable viewers stop a half-hour in. Mango just can’t be shoehorned into a Disney-style comic relief sidekick–let this serve as a cautionary tale to Hollywood! It feels like the producers compromised their vision, in exchange for adding comic relief “buddies,” they kept their overstated sermon on ethnic strife; including BOTH made the movie much too long.
Eric Idle is great as the villianess’ inept lizard henchman. If this thing had more Idle and NO Mango MAYBE it could have been in reach of 4 stars.

I thought the animation was excellent, very creative, with brilliant use of shadows and highlights. Just because it doesn’t aim to copy Disney and Pixar’s emotive, heavily expressive style DOESN’T mean it sucks; just because the production dysfunctions delayed this 2001 animation’s release until the end of 2008 (so it was animation from CGI technology of another era) doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Delgo has amazing epic battle sequences (though big parts of them seem nearly identical to the arena battle scene with winged Geonosian warriors vs. force-wielding Jedi in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones; one even looks like Yoda).

I gave it 3 stars. One for the great casting apart from Kattan, one for the artwork, and one for the awesome, imaginative original elements you’ve never seen before: a steampunk flying buggy, a dramatic swordfight between two winged generals in mid air! Had Delgo been released in late summer instead of lost amid the shuffle of holiday blockbusters, and had its half hearted, under-resourced promotional campaign depicted it as the swashbuckling romantic epic it aims to be vs. the bad Direct-to-Video cheapquel the posters made it look like, I think Delgo could have easily turned a profit. I’ve seen much worse clear $100 million.

Nick

What New Fall TV Shows To Avoid (2010)

Posted by nickdupree – October 6, 2010

It’s true. Lots of what’s on TV is just unbearable.

Here are some shows to avoid at all costs:

Chase – NBC, 10/9central Monday night

This show is about a Houston task force of U.S. Marshals who chase the most dangerous, most wanted fugitives in Texas. But unlike most crime dramas, where you’re rooting for the cops, with Chase, you’re rooting against the cops just as much as the criminals; the U.S. Marshals are every bit as unsympathetic and unsavory as the fugitives. In the pilot, they’re breaking doors off their hinges and intimidating the mom and fiancée of a suspect like freakin’ thugs.

"Annie Frost," played by Kelli Giddish

Maybe that’s an important commentary on what law enforcement has become in the 21st century, but it isn’t fun TV. The lead character, Annie Frost (played by Kelli Giddish from All My Children) lives up to the “frost” name, because she’s a frosty, cold shell of a woman with all the human warmth of an Arctic winter. I turned this show off after less than 15 minutes; it was that unappealing. Avoid this.

Hawaii Five-O – CBS, 10/9central Monday night

This is a remake of CBS’ original Hawaii Five-O series (1968-1980), trying to make it slick and hip for the new era. Problem is, it’s not that appealing because it’s layered in cheese. The episode last week was a good example; it centered on a kidnapping of a business leader who was about to expose security threats to Hawaii and nearby naval forces. Grace Park (formerly an awesome performer on Battlestar Galactica) is an actress of Korean extraction, unconvincingly portraying native Hawaiian rookie cop “Kono” on the Hawaii 5-0 team (no CBS, Korean people do not look like native Hawaiians! How dumb do you think we are?!)

Poor Grace Park

She (Kono) is guarding the kidnapped CEO’s young son, when suddenly she finds a note in a foreign language on the kitchen counter. The CEO’s white, normal-looking girlfriend is behind the kidnapping! It’s what we least expected! The white, model-looking girl sees Kono (Grace Park) uncovering the secret plot, and reveals she’s actually evil and has an incredibly fake Russian accent and she ambush attacks Kono in the kitchen! They start an epic martial arts battle! The girlfriend slams Grace Park’s face into the kitchen counter, and then they karate each other ferociously and crash fakely through fake bamboo and end up poolside. Then the girlfriend, who’s evidently secretly been an enemy commando, knocks Grace Park into the pool and Grace Park spins horizontally, dramatically like a figure skater in a tight twirl or a phony Matrix parody. Soon we end up inside the white terrorist/mobster lair (Dano mentions they’re Serbian cyber-terrorists? LOL) and Grace Park is tied to a chair along with the CEO dude and now his preteen son, too. The dude’s white model girlfriend is carrying some giant carbine or something, half her size, and pointing this weapon at the hostages and pacing menacingly and angrily spitting threats in her fake Slavic accent “you’re going to die! only matter of time.” The ridiculousity line has been crossed. I start openly laughing at the show. Laughable isn’t what CBS was going for at all, but they got it in spades. Grace Park is a great actress, capable of some awesome dramatic performances, and I’m sure she’ll look back on this Hawaii Five-0 part of her career with intense regret.  :-/

.

THE EVƎNT – NBC, 9/8central Monday night

The TV review blogs HATE this show; they reject it as a blatant, heavy-handed rip off of 24 and Lost and are just savaging it.

The discerning nerd audience at Comic-Con

The backlash is probably because it was hyped heavily to the discerning nerd audience at Comic-Con in July, and then the pilot seemed like one long trailer for a pilot and the epic “event” the plot revolves around doesn’t actually occur in the pilot, so it failed to meet those high Comic-Con expectations (note to NBC: don’t write cheques your ass can’t cash). The reason people cared about the elaborate mysteries in Lost was they cared about the characters and their backstories and what will happen to them; THE EVƎNT pays little attention to characters but expects us to care about the half-dozen complicated, interconnected unanswered mysteries they’ve presented? FAIL! Listen up NBC, people don’t watch undeveloped characters they don’t care about, especially when you gotta break your brain on mysteries; that is the reason THE EVƎNT got crushed in its time slot, coming in third behind ABC and CBS. Third-place won’t pay THE EVƎNT’s big stunt and special effects budget and fat salaries for Blair Underwood and Laura Innes, so I expect NBC to pull the plug fairly soon.

"THIS ENDS NOW"

$#!T My Dad Says – CBS, 8:30/7:30central Thursday night

I was rooting for a show from the internets to do well, a lot of us were. But this show is just terrible. The canned laughter, the laugh track, sounds so incredibly fake, and it’s really unbearable to hear it over and over and over and over. The jokes are very forced, and fall flat. Nothing funny here. Avoid.

Outlaw – NBC, 10/9central Friday night

Not only is this show awful, the worst premiering show of 2010, it’s the worst premiering show I’ve witnessed in YEARS. Sweet Lord, this show is atrociously, hilariously awful. Plan 9 from Outer Space bad. It’s the first drama ever produced by Conaco Productions, Conan O’Brien’s production company, and it often verges on comedy, albeit unintentional. Most everything in the pilot is preposterous and impossible; it just can’t happen in real life. Jimmy Smits plays Cyrus Garza, “the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court,” and son of fictional Latino civil rights activist Francisco Garza who worked alongside César Chávez. After Francisco and Cyrus’ car crashes, and only Cyrus survives the accident (implausible plot device #1) Cyrus randomly sleeps with a random (beautiful model) ACLU protester and suddenly does a 180 on his bedrock political beliefs and lifelong legal philosophy and he resigns from the Supreme Court to become a liberal activist lawyer, defending the downtrodden and dispossessed–pro-bono–against “the system” that he spent his career bolstering (outrageously absurd plot device #2). He gives a nonsensical speech about how he’s resigning because the role of the Supreme Court is upholding the law and defending “the system,” and he wants to challenge the law for people “the system” doesn’t work for and blah blah blah blah blah, while sitting in open session on the bench with the other justices (really implausible). Then he becomes the defense attorney for Greg Beals, the death row inmate his own Supreme Court opinion gave another chance to (very implausible). Then he is somehow able to use the majority opinion he himself wrote, Beals v. Pennsylvania, as precedent to introduce new evidence to exonerate his client…Beals. The legal impossibilities just stack higher and higher until it becomes a kid’s cartoon of the judicial process.

Left, Cyrus Garza (Jimmy Smits), center, Al Druzinsky (David Ramsey) and Mereta Stockman (Ellen Woglom) at right

The women characters are just as “profiles in preposterous,” even bordering on offensive with the female cliches. Cyrus is a chauvinist pig who womanizes blatantly. First, a random liberal protester who angrily protests and denounces him for being neutral (“I’m Switzerland!”) about the Beals case, and, of course he ends up in bed with her.
Second, his legal aide from the Supreme Court, Mereta (pictured above) overhears Cyrus’ bookie telling him he has to have all his hundreds of thousands of dollars in gambling debt paid in full within three months, and because in this show women are dim-witted, she thinks that this means Cyrus has three months to live. Later, she interrupts Cyrus talking to the death row guy’s girlfriend and the rest of the 4-person legal team by the courthouse stairway and, in front of everybody, desperately throws herself at him! She’s all “Now that I know the truth you’ve only got three months left, we can focus on what really matters. I LOVE YOU, CYRUS!” It’s a failed caricature of a woman, a failed attempt to twang romantic heartstrings, and reinforces negative stereotypes of women and negative stereotypes of people with terminal illness.
Third, Cyrus’ private investigator “Lucinda Pearl,” a caricature of a sexy, bisexual leather cyberpunk chick in knee-high boots who’s always doing something extremely brazen sexually like taking her top off to distract guards so she can swipe info, and teasing Cyrus’ chief clerk with single entandres and popping her gum.
Come on man, can you get more blatantly ratings-whoring than this, with such exaggerated, fake, cartoonish, borderline degrading characters? It’s like the pilot’s creators don’t have a wife or daughter or any woman they respect in their lives. What’s it say about American culture today that this one-dimensional, shock-jock type caricaturing is how we view women?

The most realistic character in the show was Mereta’s (apparent) Corgi mix. Whatta good dog!

Just as fake as the characters were the sets. The pilot opens with ridiculous paper mache bricks on the “prison.” Later, Lucinda goes to a crime scene with a skeleton that looks so fake it had to come from Rite Aid halloween clearance. Jeez, NBC! Fund your pilots, otherwise Conan’s company is gonna keep the C team on sets.

Don’t take this show seriously; you’ll end up offended. If you’re going to watch this drek, put on your LOLLERSKATES and get in your ROFLCOPTER because this clunker is layered in (unintentional) hilarity; you will ROFL, indeed.

Other good reviews of Outlaw:

USA Today: NBC’s outlandish ‘Outlaw’ richly deserves death penalty (“That’s not a prime-time show, it’s a Saturday Night Live sketch.” “Preposterous to a painful degree”)

Washington Post: Jimmy Smits’s new NBC courtroom drama, ‘Outlaw,’ should be dismissed (“ludicrously dumb” “my eyes rolled so hard that my contact lenses popped out” “Smits is a fully glazed, overcooked ham”)

Collider TV Review: NBC’s OUTLAW (“painstakingly exaggerated” “veritable treasure trove of cliches” “searing pain that runs through my leg (and the rest of my body) when I think of all the resources wasted on a show like this”)

Discerning readers will note that the network responsible for the most shows on my “avoid at all costs” list is NBC. This network seems hopelessly mired in creative, programing and financial FAIL. Time for some serious soul-searching at 30 Rock, dudes, and at Comcast HQ too….

For my list of newly premiering shows actually worth watching, read my previous post, What New Fall TV Shows To Watch (2010) Spoiler: nearly none of them are from NBC.

If you have other shows or other things you want me to review, put it in the comments!

Nick

What New Fall TV Shows To Watch (2010)

Posted by nickdupree – October 2, 2010

Newsflash: Some New Fall TV Series Actually Worth Your Time!!

Detroit 187 – ABC, 10/9central Tuesday night

This new cop show about a unit of homicide detectives in Detroit is really intelligent and immersive. Unlike most hour-long dramas, it really immerses you in an environment, in characters, with the city (Detroit) as a character in every episode. I felt like I was really there by the river in inner-city Detroit. Yeah, the scripts lean on archetypes (the pretty girl detective, the newbie

Detective Louis Fitch from ABC's "Detroit 187"

the old black veteran on the verge of retirement, and of course the lead, the eccentric, Asperger’s-like detective Louis Fitch with an uncanny, near-mentalist knack for clues and hunches, played by Michael Imperioli) but archetypes can be helpful shortcuts to get the audience involved QUICKLY. The production team just has to make sure the writing stays fresh and engaging and insightful and that their archetypal characters don’t get stale and predictable. Lazy writing could kill the show. The writing being too intelligent could also kill the show. Now, it’s worth your time.


The Whole Truth – ABC, 10/9central Wednesday night

This is a smart legal drama with an awesome cast (the lead stars are Rob Morrow and Maura Tierney) and great, engaging, rapid-fire dialogue back and forth. The premise is that it tries to give you “the whole story” by telling the same ambiguous story and events from multiple viewpoints (the prosecutor–Tierney, and the defense–Morrow) and then ends with the big reveal of what really happened.
I liked the pilot; I was pulled in by the New York scenery and the plot involving a diabetic veteran in a wheelchair gone overboard on the Staten Island ferry (and some heavy-headed disability stereotyping they explored). If the writing stays good and keeps improving, the show has a chance to really build a big audience in the way that The Practice did for ABC, or the writing could go flat and the characters could go stale and the network will go for a midseason replacement; it’ll take pretty good ratings to pay the stars’ salaries, and good ratings aren’t guaranteed by any means. I sort of see this show as “on the bubble,” worth watching now but that could easily change.

Raising Hope – FOX, 9/8central Tuesday night

Like the last series Greg Garcia made, My Name Is Earl, this is a comedy that really breaks the half-hour sitcom mold. No annoying laugh track, and, instead of the cliche house set, it seems to be filmed on location in real life, single-camera style in a rickety wooden home with the broken front screen door and parents (Martha Plimpton–great to see her again!–and Garret Dillahunt) who scrape by with fringe service jobs (as a maid and a pool cleaner). The stay at home mom (like Marge Simpson) is no longer realistic in today’s economic world.

Anyhow, the show’s core premise is about Jimmy, the teenage son, raising the daughter (“Hope”) he got accidentally, and that could get boring if they don’t keep the writing really sharp or stop inserting new crazy characters. But, for now, it’s probably the best, freshest new comedy on TV. Worth your time.


Outsourced – NBC, 9:30/8:30central Thursday night

I like its really different premise; a guy moves to India to manage a catalog call center that just got outsourced to Mumbai. Fresh and engaging for now, and hopefully doesn’t become a stale, browner-skinned parody of The Office. Worth watching.

"Asha" on NBC's "Outsourced," played by Rebecca Hazlewood

Boardwalk Empire – HBO, 9/8central Sunday night

I really liked this show, a period piece set in Atlantic City at the dawn of Prohibition, and apparently based on the non-fiction book Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City. The elaborate sets re-creating the Atlantic City boardwalk and all the ’20s storefronts, the meticulously re-created clothing, they’re just amazing; this alone makes it worth watching. This is such a pivotal time in American history, with Prohibition, gangsters smuggling hooch from Canada, suffragettes/temperance activists, jazz, stock market boom, the roaring twenties economy, rampant individualism and materialism, rampant sex and feminine liberation and the flappers radically challenging social mores, but this era has very seldom been explored on film (with notable exceptions, like the film adaption of The Great Gatsby).

Nucky Thompson, the lead character in “Boardwalk Empire,” is directly based on real life corrupt county treasurer Nucky Johnson. He’s half politician, half gangster, and played by Steve Buscemi.

I’ve always thought this era deserved thorough exploration, for the good of American culture and understanding and etc., and man does this fit the bill; it immerses you in 1920 Atlantic City so well that you can almost smell the ocean on the boardwalk, the lush fabrics on the women and the $3 drinks. The head writer and producer is Terence Winter, one of the main Sopranos writers, and with its similar focus on gangsters, corruption, and seedy Jersey environments, the show is perfect for him, right up his alley. And it’s already equaling The Sopranos in terms of huge ratings cash cow, so, for HBO, it’s likely their “Next Sopranos.” But I think it’s also culturally significant. True, it explores a seedier side of the ’20s (it’s “anything goes” Atlantic City, any time period there is gonna be seedy) with lots of flappers flapping around as tourists, or waitresses in men suits, or showgirls in theaters as burlesque dancers, or mermaids with pasties, or geishas in a nude revue, or even flappers in straight up bordellos, but on the other hand it also subtly (but powerfully) explores Prohibition and gangsterism. When a scene takes us inside a temperance society meeting, we see the older suffragettes who advocate Prohibition, and hear the arguments about DEMON RUM (the leader recites a poem that ends “liquor, thy name’s delirium!”) But later in the pilot episode, we also see their arguments about alcoholism destroying families are well-founded; there are severe cases of deadbeat husbands who take the money needed to feed the children to buy booze, and severely batter wives who resist. Many suffragettes thus saw this social ill as a key women’s rights issue that any civilized country would respond to. But we also see how the mafia immediately perverts Prohibition to make huge profits; they start charging $3 for a glass of liquor, up from 15¢, and keep Atlantic City as drunk as ever. The pilot also (subtly) explores the issue of returning WWI veterans, Doughboys, who saw brutal combat in Europe, killing people repeatedly, and then feel murder is the only profession for them and join the violent alcohol smuggling business. I should blog more about the ’20s!

inside a temperance society meeting

My Generation – ABC, 8/7central Thursday night (prior to Grey’s Anatomy)

I loved this show; probably my favorite of the newly debuting Fall series. I’m captivated because it really is my generation, the class of 2000, and follows a group of nine friends that graduated in 2000, and traces what they said their goals are and what happened when the dreams collided with reality. They’re 28 now (same as me) and the series is slowly unraveling what happened to them since 2000, uncovering secrets and their effect on the present. It’s shot in documentary style; for the first 30mins, I thought it really was a documentary! I didn’t recognize any of the actors, so that didn’t break the illusion; only when I realized that we can hear the characters’ phone conversations and other things beyond the reach of a real documentary film crew, did I figure it out.

True, the show uses archetypes, and some people don’t like that, but it uses the archetypes really explicitly, with what archetype they are printed on the screen even! There’s Anders “The Rich Kid,” Brenda “The Brain,” Kenneth “The Nerd,” Steven “The Over-Achiever,” etc. And the core of the show is really playing off the labels that they had in high school and exploring how those work once reality hits. Steven “The Over-Achiever” is an example; it turned out that his overachieving was mostly due to abusive pressuring from his dad, who ended up jailed as one of the corporate criminals from Enron. Once his dad’s assets were frozen by the courts, Steven couldn’t pay tuition at Yale anymore, and dropped out. Instead of adapting, Steven pretty much dropped out of society, becoming a loser beach bum surfing in Hawaii, bartending to earn a living and having meaningless, anonymous sex with tourists; he really hit rock bottom.

Dawn Barbuso "The Punk," and Falcon "The Rock Star"

I’ve really gotten wrapped up in the 9 characters, I’m captivated, on the edge of my seat to find out what happens to them next. Maybe that’s because I long to connect with my real class of 2000 peers. What will happen/what’s happening to my HS Class of 2000/college class of 2004, the heart of the Millennial Generation? Did most of us find love and success? will we save the country like they always said? This show is all about exploring these issues; it’s the premise that really grabs me.
I really hope they don’t cancel it, but all the signs of axing are present….it’s not fast paced or action packed, it’s in-depth and intelligent and character development…could be doomed. UPDATE …and, I was right; ABC has already canceled My Generation.  ugh.

You’ll notice that ABC has the lion’s share of “worth watching” new pilots. This has little to do with ABC being awesome (it isn’t really) and a lot to do with all the other networks SUCKING. They really stunk up the place.

For more about this, see my next post: What New Fall TV Shows To Avoid (2010)

If you have other shows or other things you want me to review, put it in the comments!

Nick

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