(to OWS w/ apols to S.S.)

This is shorter than the original.  Some spoken exchanges have been cut.

Patti Lupone and George Hearn sing it here.

Original lyrics here.

 

MRS. LOVETT: Thousands in the street…

SWEENEY TODD: And?

LOVETT: Not to be a witch…

People have to eat

Who they can…what they can…

Who!

Let me make a pitch:

Scumbags wasting space…

See the super-rich

Gloating in our face

Nice to make a switch

Scratch that itch

Payback is a bitch.

No..?

Thousands in the street…

I mean

When a pizza pie

Needs a topping

You go shopping

For a topping…

 

TODD: Hah!

 

LOVETT: Penny’s dropping–

Take for instance when you get a Pizza Hut pie

Ev’rything you order

From the pepperoni to the cheese

Tastes like it was shipped

From some remote location overseas.

Sourcing locally can go without a glitch–

 

(Simultaneously)

 

TODD: Mrs. Lovett, aren’t you a genius

 

LOVETT: Of course there is a hitch

 

TODD: Nicely ecological

A locavore’s wet dream!

 

LOVETT: It’s a concept…

 

TODD: Mrs. Lovett, why you aren’t

A pundit on tv I’ll never know.

It’s so sensible

And defensible.

 

LOVETT: Can you dig it?

All these one-percent-ers’ll

Be going to and fro

While the

Crowd needs

Pizza

Pies!

 

TODD: Good point!

Worth Tweets!

The Occupiers of parks and streets

 

LOVETT: Right, Mr. Todd

Yes, Mr. Todd

What do they need?

 

TODD: More ready sources of proteins and meats

 

LOVETT: And, Mr. Todd

Less, Mr. Todd

Sources of greed.

 

TODD: The one is solved by the other, and

 

BOTH: A perfect case of supply and demand.

 

TODD:  (spoken) These are desperate times, Mrs. Lovett, and desperate measures are called for.
LOVETT:  (spoken) Here we are, now!  All ready to put on your medium or large.

 

TODD:  (spoken) What is that?

LOVETT:  It’s Koch

Have a slice of Koch

 

TODD: Do you have ‘em both?

 

LOVETT: Yes, these pigs need a poke.

Though the meat is white

‘Cause no blood plays a part

Neither has a heart.

 

TODD: Looks at little rich.

Can’t tell which is which.

Haven’t you got Trump or some chump like Gingrich?

 

LOVETT: No, you see you order some Trump and

He’s nothing but rump and

A joke.

Try the Koch.

 

TODD:  (spoken) Not bad.  Looks like it’s cultured with something.

 

LOVETT:  (spoken) Cultured?  Culturally it’s downright philanthropic.  Noblesse oblige, don’t ye know.  That’s French for “wants to be able to go to the ballet.”

 

Bankers need a shout.

 

TODD: If you bail ‘em out.

 

LOVETT:  Serve ‘em with some extra bolognas

‘Cause without their bonus

They pout.

 

TODD:  Looks a little gray.

Are they B of A?

 

LOVETT:  Yes, but with some fresh mozzarel’

They can hide pretty well their decay.

So they like to say.

Though they do their best to drive people away.

 

TODD:  Was that Pandit

Parmagian’d it?

 

LOVETT:  Don’t be cranky

Say thankee

That banker’s Bernanke.

 

TODD:  That’s Dimon

On the pie, mon.

 

LOVETT:  No, Bernanke–

The Fed meets today.

 

TODD:  When Congress calls them to testify

 

LOVETT:  Roast ‘em on a stick

Simmer in a red sauce to thicken.

 

TODD:  Each half-baked question brings half-baked reply.

 

LOVETT:  Raw, they make you sick.

Cook ‘em on a pie, tastes like chicken.

 

TODD:  How nice, receiving for what we’ve ached

 

BOTH:  To see these meatheads at last fully baked.

 

LOVETT:  (spoken) Now what’s this…ooh, we’ve got a fresh shipment of Republicans, too!  Perhaps you fancy…Santorum?

 

TODD:  Abhor ‘im.

 

LOVETT:  Perry?

 

TODD:  Too hairy.

 

LOVETT:  Paul?

 

TODD:  Not at all.

 

LOVETT:  Bachmann?

 

(sung) Romney’s worth a try

 

TODD:  Pleasing to the eye

 

LOVETT:  Still you just can’t plan

What will come on an-

Y Mitt-lover’s pie.

Then again there’s Newt

Maybe with prosciutt’.

 

TODD:  Serve him with a clam—

 

LOVETT:  Or with ham

 

TODD:   No, he’s Spam

En croute.

Thinks he feeds the brain.

All it brings is pain.

Haven’t we got Huntsman or Palin or Cain?

 

LOVETT:  Yes, but with the GOP choices

You just get invoices–and broke.

Stick to Koch.

 

TODD:  With jobless stats in the skies, my love

 

LOVETT:  Yes, Mr. Todd

Ooh, Mr. Todd

Isn’t that so?

 

TODD:  There’s work delivering pies, my love.

 

LOVETT:  And, Mr. Todd

Too, Mr. Todd

Working the dough.

 

TODD:  Be paid to cook those who wrecked our land

 

BOTH:  Get thumb’s-up from the invisible hand.

 

LOVETT:  (spoken) So, we’ve got banks and Republicans.  But sometimes you really want to splurge…Voila!  E buon appetito.

 

TODD:  (spoken) What is that?

 

LOVETT:  No cracks.

This is Goldman Sachs.

And to top your pizza bianco

Here’s Blankfein—

 

TODD:  That’s rank.

 

LOVETT:  Oh,

Relax.

Take a taste of these

 

TODD:  Well, it looks a lot like escargot.

 

LOVETT:  That’s right, plus Wells-Fargo

And peas.

Serve it Milanese.

 

TODD:  Covered by a meltdown of lending and cheese.

 

LOVETT:  Here’s the Greenspan

In the saucepan.

 

TODD:  Yes, objectively speaking

It’s rotten and reeking

 

LOVETT:  And Paulson.

With them all, son,

Cook well, for they carry disease.

 

TODD:  Just add them to your fare

For classy class warfare.

The Occupiers and those they fight

 

LOVETT:  All have their nerve, my love.

 

TODD:  Need new ideas to serve them both right.

 

LOVETT:  That they deserve, my love.

 

TODD:  We’ll put the “pie” into occupy

And turn the upper crust

And the Yupper crust

 

BOTH:  Into supper crust

To die!

 

 

Herman Cain believes this:  “…based upon the little knowledge that I have of the Muslim religion, you know, they have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them.”

Yes, that would account for the widespread havoc and murder perpetrated by the world’s 1.2 to 1.57 billion Muslims, in every country, every day.  These unremitting killers-or-converters comprise almost one-fourth of the world’s population.  It’s amazing that any Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, atheist, agnostic, or adherent to any other religion can get out of bed in the morning, what with the constant effort of the world’s Muslims to convert or kill infidels.  If you aren’t a Muslim, and you haven’t been converted or killed by now, well, you’re simply in denial.

Or so Cain seems to think.  Of course, he did note that he bases his assessment on “little knowledge,” so you can’t accuse him of claiming to know what he’s talking about.  And his supporters can thank God–I speak figuratively–for that.  Because no Republican candidate wants to appear to be intelligent.  Intelligence, to today’s mainstream GOP, is exactly what it was to yesterday’s fringe/John Birch Society GOP, i.e., a sign of weakness, of pretentiousness, of moral corruption, and of un-Christian blasphemy.

So you’ve got Rick Perry defending his wobbly, sometimes incoherent performance in the last debate with, “I know what I believe.”  You’ve got  Cain proudly telling an interviewer, “The question that was asked that ‘raised some questions’ and, as my grandfather said, ‘I does not care, I feel the way I feel.’”

One guy knows what he believes.  One guy feels the way he feels. Most, if not all, of the leading presidential candidates “don’t believe in” climate change, which means they believe that a million scientists are lying (but the p.r. departments of coal companies aren’t).  They will proclaim with one breath that “government is the problem” and can’t do anything right, and with the next that the military is a sacred and heroic institution.

We are surrounded by idiots.   Unless, of course, none of these clowns really does believe what they’re saying.  In which case we are surrounded by liars.  You make the call!

 

 

First, watch Rick Santorum rail against being called “a bigot.”

Next, ask yourself: “How oblivious can a man be, to huff contemptuously that ‘The American Psychological Association is not proof of anything,’ in a diatribe in which his notion of proof is the Bible, and ‘two thousand years of teaching and moral theology’?”

Kudos to that woman, who tries to argue the sensible, secular case against what, howevermuch it’s sanctioned by Santorum’s religious piety, is indeed bigotry.  It goes without saying, although someone should have said it, that every dismissive “argument” Santorum levels against the APA (and the AMA) can be equally applied to Catholicism.  E.g.,  “The Catholic church is made up of people who agree with the Catholic church.”

(Study this sample dialogue:

SANTORUM: No, no, the difference is that Catholic dogma is the revealed word of God.

YOU: That’s what you think.  Because you’re a Catholic.

SANTORUM: No, the thing is, I know I’m right, because I am.  And because of two thousand years of moral theology.

YOU: That’s what you think.  Because you’re a Catholic.

Repeat as needed.)

Responding to Santorum’s argument doesn’t even rise to the difficulty of shooting fish in a barrel.  It’s like watching fish get out of the barrel, go to Wal-Mart, purchase handguns, and shoot themselves.  Shame on that roomful of listeners–lawyers, students, whatever they are–for letting this self-righteous moralist scold gas on about “this will destroy faith in America” and condescend to his interlocutor with “time out…time out…”  I wonder if he says that to Sean Hannity.

Someone should beat Santorum about the head and shoulders with a salami until he gets it into his feverishly virtuous brain that the sincerity of his belief has zero bearing on whether the tenets of his belief are true–or that they apply to other people.  It’s a useful lesson for a politician in a republic to learn.  If he can’t learn it, he should either go elsewhere and run for office in a theocracy, or stay here and take up some other line of work.

 

 

 

 

Will someone please tell me how I should feel about Obama?

I read about half a dozen blogs every day.  They’re without exception written by and commented on by smart, funny, honest, sophisticated people.  What this means is I’m exposed to the well-thought-out, well-written opinions of upwards of between, say, thirty and sixty people daily.   Including weekends.

They all share my disgust with the Republican Party, my contempt for the right-wing commentariat, my disbelief of and distaste for the simple-minded Tea Party “patriots,” and my disdain for most of the mainstream media.  Many of them seem to know a lot more about history than I do (although that wouldn’t be hard).  They manifest differing degrees of cynicism, hope, anger, resignation, perseverance, pragmatism, idealism, and irony, but I feel entirely at home within their universe of discourse.

But after this debt-ceiling business I cannot decide whom among them I agree with.  There are those who defend Obama by saying that he played the best one could, given the bad hand he was dealt.  There are others who say that Obama–as he did on health care reform–gave away the store and only then started to negotiate.  There are those who give him a pass for the “compromises” he could not avoid but fault him for not rallying the troops–us–and using the bully pulpit to at least identify by name those taking the US budget hostage.

For every commenter who says “that’s does it; he’s a moderate Republican and should be primaried from the left,” there is one who says, “he’s out-maneuvering the Tea Baggers and, when you can neutralize a radical clique, you’ve accomplished something.”  For every “I wish I had voted for Hillary” there’s a “look at the list of his accomplishments: he’s done more than any Dem since FDR.”

Is everyone right?  Is everyone wrong?  Is Obama a decent centrist making the best of a bad situation, or is he a moderate Republican who cannot, or doesn’t want to, see that the GOP itself is a force for evil and plutocracy?  Is he a politician who thinks he’s above politics, and therefore declines to lead anyone into battle–resulting in the victories of our enemies?  Or is he a decent strategist grappling with a horrendous legacy from the previous administration?

I’m open to suggestions.

 

I just posted this as a reply to something written by the indispensible, fabulous aimai over at Roy Edroso’s place (http://alicublog.blogspot.com/) and it came out so long I thought, Shmuck, post it as a post.  Thus:

Aimai writes about the “fixation” of conservatives on the family–this, with regard to the wingnut bloggers’ indifference to the outright murder of kids at a camp in Norway.  Says she:

If you look at the language of the evangelicals/fundamentalists, the natalists, and nationalists and fascists there is a huge emphasis on reproduction and the control and education of girls (as reproducers) and children (as the next generation). There’s no pity for liberal men and women who lose their children because they are assumed not to have managed their role as reproducers and cultural transmitters in the first place.  This is part of the animosity directed at all feminists and pro choicers–the theoretical support for abortion is represented as identical to a willing commission of infanticide.

So I says in reply, I says:

Good point.  I think what you describe in them rests on a foundation of assumed powerlessness: “*I* have had to suffer, so why shouldn’t liberals/gays/the rest of the world be made to suffer, too?  It wouldn’t be fair to me if they didn’t.”

That this leads to a world-view entirely colored by resentment is only the beginning.  It also underlies their view of homosexuality as license and self-indulgence.  It leads to the endless, endless demonstrations of hypocrisy around their supposedly-cherished notions of “freedom.”  They’re all for freedom unless someone–feminists, gays, pacifists, blacks (add: pro-choice.  Ed.);  anybody but they–actually want to exercise it in ways that threatens the “conservative”‘s fundamental view of life as being a prison sentence once must stoically accept.

What they hate the most, therefore, is the idea of therapy.  The notion that self-awareness and self-examination can break many of the chains from which they derive their very identities, frightens them.  And it should.  Realizing that you’ve been an asshole to your children because your father was an asshole to you–and that you NEED NOT CONTINUE TO BE ONE–does indeed threaten your very self.  It’s a self you’re better off modifying, but IT doesn’t know and can’t face that.

To help them avoid such dangers there are religion-based dogmas that institutionalize both the “inevitability” and, indeed, the nobility of this self-imprisonment.  God is the warden whose existence validates their notion of their (virtuous) helplessness.

You end up with a series of paradoxes so fundamental it borders on the banal: They think they love “freedom” but they hate it in others.  They think they’re “warriors for Christ” but they’re existential cowards who cannot face sitting in a therapist’s chair for an hour and talking.  (Cf. Little Boots, who dismissed a reporter’s question about some terrorism-related issue with “That’s Psychology 101,” as though that were an answer.)  They think they’re “patriots” but actively or passively collude in the flouting and destruction of the country’s most basic values.  They think they’re against terrorism but defend torture, turn a blind eye to rendition and Guantanamo, and tie themselves into knots in efforts to condemn anyone except a confessed terrorist.

This is what makes being politically active today so immiserating.  You want to write about politics or promote this or that candidate or policy, but you’re dealing with pathology, and the candidates you want to support don’t acknowledge that it’s pathology. Obama should be saying, “These people are insane.  I welcome their hatred, but first I urge their sedation.”  Instead, he trivializes their acting out and their irrationality by calling it “political shenanigans.”

It’s like noticing your living room is on fire, calling the fire department, and having them arrive, but realizing that none of them is willing to say, “Yes, this room is on fire.” Instead, they look around and say, “So!  Who has some ideas?”

UPDATE: The excellent Leonard Pierce adds this Reply at alicublog:

This is exactly right, and it points to one of the more fascinating contradictions of our political culture:  one of the reasons right-wingers attack liberals is for their alleged permissiveness.  They’re always going on about the post-hippie anything goes mentality, the if-it-feels-right-do-it permissive society, the whole no-judgment, moral equivalence, ‘you do your thing and I’ll do mine’ amorality with which the modern left has allegedly poisoned the world.

And yet, and yet:  you will find no group more dedicated to change, whether it’s personal or social, than the left.  They’re the ones forever seeking personal growth.  They’re the ones looking to upend social traditions that strike them as unjust or unfair.  They’re self-critical to the point of sabotaging their own political effectiveness.  As a rule, they’re more than willing — almost too willing — to admit that there might be something wrong with their ideas, their values, their beliefs, and they’re happy to investigate ways of changing them for the better.  Not exactly an ‘anything goes’ mentality.

Conservatives, meanwhile — it’s right there in the name — are the ones most likely to say that there’s no need for change.  Everything’s fine, my ideas don’t need to be examined, let alone changed.  Don’t tell me how to raise my kids.  Leave everything as it is — it worked for my father, it’ll work for me, and if it’s not working for you, that’s your problem, not mine.  They accuse liberals of tolerating any old crazy viewpoint, but they’re the ones who are the most accepting of everything as it is, no matter how cruel, outdated or unjust.  The only change they’ll tolerate is regression.

 

 

I know–I promised I would post daily and I haven’t done a blessed thing for weeks.  Why?  I don’t know, which really means that I probably don’t know.  Which really means that I do know: I don’t like writing anything in public, like this, unless I feel at least somewhat strongly, albeit weakly, about it.

But I just wrote something not-uninteresting on a friend’s Facebook wall, or slate, or Twit, or whatever it’s called, so I might as well see if I can leverage it into an actual blog post.

It’s this: One satisfying aspect of this News of the World/Murdoch scandal is that the sins being revealed and reviled are journalistic sins–line hacking, theft of private messages, snooping, etc., all from the vile tabloid repertoire of practices supposedly dedicated to “getting the story.”

Of course one wants these bottom-feeding excrescences to suffer embarrassment and ruin in any way that Fate finds convenient.  But how much more pleasing, when the cause of the downfall resides in the nature and actions of the institution itself, rather than in personal peccadilloes, assuming “peccadilloes” aren’t some kind of southwestern reptile penises, or thin cigar-type items.

So yes, it’s all v. gratifying.  But it’s not enough.  What I want–and what you want, if you know what’s good for you–is a similar catastrophe to befall Fox News.  One wants Chris “Can’t You See What You’re Doing Is Killing Your Father” Wallace, the inexpressibly idiotic Steve Doocy, Sean “Li’l Sparky” Hannity, and the other dutiful apparatchiks to be exposed in the same way–as professionally corrupt, and not merely personally so.

Can it happen?  I somehow doubt it.  Fox News isn’t, like News of the World, a scandal sheet.  Its form of corruption is intellectual, as may be witnessed in its very coverage of the NOTW furor.  To Fox, the Murdoch tabloid is the victim of hacking.  Cf. James Fallows’ touchingly disbelieving account here:  http://tinyurl.com/3oh7rrx .

The News of the World scandal is far-reaching and volcanic because the people wronged by the paper’s scandalous behavior include innocents above reproach: crime victims, 9/11 victims, etc.  The victims of Fox News are just the fools, malcontents, shut-ins, ignoramuses, and forever-aggrieved farbissenehs that watch it and believe it.  They get what they deserve (speaking of karma).  It’s hard to imagine what it would take for those people, after a decade of exposure to unfiltered Bill O’Reilly and Fox and Friends, to feel betrayed.

 

People say to me, “Ellis, is there some convenient metaphor or metric I can use to gauge the level of degradation and deterioration of today’s Republican Party?”  And, until recently, all I could point to was little things–everything done and said for eight years by the Bush administration, the corrupted-for-a-generation nature of the Supreme Court, the public career of Newt Gingrich.  You know–the usual indicators of material greed, hypocrisy-in-the-service-of-power, and garden variety demagoguery and pandering to anti-intellectualism.

Okay, “ho-hum,” but now check this out:

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann explained her skepticism of evolution on Friday and said students should be taught the theory of intelligent design.

(snip)

“I support intelligent design,” Bachmann told reporters in New Orleans following her speech to the Republican Leadership Conference. “What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don’t think it’s a good idea for government to come down on one side of scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides.”

Yes, “letting students decide.”  Thanks to the beautiful mind of the woman someone wittier than I referred to as “Sarah Palin’s body double,” we have a new benchmark.  Putting all science on the table: Alchemy?  Put it on the table.  Astrology?  On the table.  Phrenology?  Table.  Ouija boards?  Cue Roy Scheider: “We’re gonna need a bigger table.”

“Conservatism,” which used to be synonymous with respect for traditional methods of pedagogy and instruction, with reverence for time-tested truths (as opposed to the romantic indulgence of changeable fads and “movements”), with proven, objective knowledge, is now, at least in its Republican form,  happy to convert education into shopping.

“This?  We call this ‘Darwinian evolution.’  Some people–elitist-types–like it, yes.  But now take a look at this.  We call it ‘Intelligent Design.’  Isn’t it reassuring?  Isn’t it nicer, to believe that the whole big fat universe is a gift made especially for you, by a powerful, loving Daddy who will give you your own room (in–talk about location, location, location–Heaven!) once you’re dead?   So many of our customers tell us it makes them feel special.  Which do you prefer?”

Students, who by definition exist in a state of knowledge deficit with respect to their teachers; who sit in classrooms in order to be told what they don’t know, are invited, by the smiling Bachmann, to consider themselves, a priori, competent enough to choose between the scientific and the supernatural and, in fact, anything else that’s “on the table.”

Then again, “I support intelligent design” could be said to transform education into politics conducted by other means. What matters isn’t what’s true–or, at the very least, what’s as true as anything can be said to be, short of formal axiomatic definition.  Rather, let’s inculcate those classrooms of twelve-year-old schmucks (who think they’re being educated–isn’t it cute and endearing, how naive children can be?)…let’s “teach” them what we support.  Then, when their level of education places them midway down the list of nations, somewhere between Ivory Coast and Sri Lanka, we can blame the teacher’s union and “public education.”

Or perhaps the consumer metaphor is wrong.  Maybe Bachmann intends for students to be, not shoppers, but jurors. After all, she mentions “reasonable doubt.”  Setting aside the mind-twisting conundrum of what “reasonable doubt” can possibly mean when applied to religion, still: which of us hasn’t seen Law & Order ten thousand times, and derived therefrom a pretty good working courtroom knowledge of Reasonable Doubt?

Twenty-four hundred years since Aristotle; thousands and thousands of scientists, amateur geologists and paleontologists, lab technicians, and science writers all working in good faith and subjecting their findings to peer review; literally tons of fossils, imprints, skeletons, and remains; theories leading to predictions which are, in turn, confirmed; in sum, several civilization’s worth of physical evidence to support evolution: and against all this, a story, a myth, with not a speck of evidence to support its claims and, in fact, an array of rival stories and myths of equal (i.e., zero) plausibility.  This is what this candidate for Congress calls “reasonable doubt.”

(Same thing with global warming.  Quoth she, on the floor of the House: “Carbon dioxide is a natural by-product of nature.  It occurs in earth.  It is part of the  regular life-cycle of earth.”  Of course, so is yersinia pestis.  You may remember it from such epochal events in European history as The Plague.)

One knew this was coming.  One knew that Michele Bachmann, even more than Palin, “presents with” (as we say on House) a sublime combination of apparently sincere stupidity, undisguised political calculation, provincial intelligence and taste, and delusional mental dysfunction.  The more she can be seen to be the standard-bearer of the Republican cause in 2012, the worse for America.

Although the better for Dems.  Let her to her own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day that she will say hilarious, embarrassing, and self-defeating things.  Meanwhile, GOP: At long last, have you no shame?

UPDATE!

Two hours later (barely), and I’m woefully behind the Breaking Crazy Bachmann curve.  Michele’s latest theory is that President Obama is secretly a right-wing Republican.  Dig it:

“This hasn’t been talked about very much — the president’s plan for senior citizens is Obamacare,” Ms. Bachmann told party activists here. She added, “I think very likely what the president intends is that Medicare will go broke and ultimately that answer will be Obamacare for senior citizens.”

As Steve Benen notes in the linked piece, “In practical terms, Bachmann apparently thinks the president is secretly right-wing — she believes Obama wants to end the existing system of socialized medicine for seniors, and force these millions of seniors into the private insurance market.”

The question this raises isn’t, “Does she ever listen to the things she says?” (worthy a question though it is), but, rather, isn’t there anyone around her who isn’t insane?  Not that I’m complaining.  Well, that’s not true.  I am complaining.  But if you’re going to have a candidate for national office filling the electorate’s brains with nonsense, at least let it be obvious nonsense.   That’s what I always say.  Well, not always.  But I’m saying it here.

 

 

First, go here, read this:  http://tinyurl.com/3o4erd9 .

It’s Paul Mandelbaum’s great review of My Hollywood, by Mona Simpson.  He places it in the context of other Hollywood novels including What Makes Sammy Run?, Pandaemonium, The Player, and The Day of the Locust.

Mandelbaum also conducts a running commentary on the benefits and perils of satire, wondering “aloud” if the anger and social-critical bite of the form makes it inimical to the depiction of more realistic characters and moments.  As is often the case with other arts–architecture, painting, poetry–the descriptive language that suggests itself is that of music:  Emotional realism and the impulses behind it (compassion, empathy) seem out-of-key when encountered in the stringent serio-comic balladry of satire.  When we’re invited to laugh at everyone, it suddenly seems a bit much to be asked to care about anyone.  The risk, then, is of descending from no-sentiment to sentimentality.

This necessarily robs such works of, or closes them off to, what in Hollywood they call “heart”–true feeling, non-snarky evocations of sympathy, sadness, relief, joy, and all that stuff.  Perhaps it’s such realistic emotionality that, by its presence, differentiates comedy from satire: the former seeks to move, the latter seeks to mock.  You pays your money, you finds your genre, and you takes your choice.  (Mandelbaum is careful to note that Mona Simpson manages to reconcile these two impulses–no small feat on her part.)

I used to hate “heart,” but over the years have been persuaded/fatigued/bullied into thinking it has its place.  One of the semi-redeeming facts about Hollywood, in fact, is how it provides a context in which pure, smack-your-forehead absurdity–the kind one would satirize–actually co-exists with real people and authentic moments of legitimate emotion.   Ask any screen or television writer.  Every one has had the experience of hearing an executive or story development person say something self-evidently idiotic, with a weird combination of utter sincerity and craven disingenuousness, while displaying simultaneously the loathsome dishonesty of the brute careerist and the pathetic desperation of a shmuck just trying not to lose his job.

There are of course other satiric Hollywood novels Mandelbaum could have discussed, including Peter Lefcourt’s The Deal and Charlie Hauck’s Artistic Differences.  That “the Hollywood novel” comprises a genre unto itself is, as is the case with “the university novel,” the opposite of a mystery.   Politics may be show business for ugly people, but, really, show biz is the evil twin of academia.  (The one is dedicated to fantasy, the other to “truth.” )

Both explicitly solicit writers.  Both lure purveyors of personal vision with promises of financial stability (if not riches) and cultural prestige (if not power), only to mire them in the endless compromises and bureaucratic hoop-jumping of production-by-committee.  Taken together they are the only professions/industries whose powerful attraction to novelists is every bit as strong as the disillusionment and abuse those writers experience when they un-lash themselves from the masts of their typewriters or computers and apply in person to the sirens for employment.

That’s why we have so many Hollywood and university satires.  The writers come, they get burned, they get angry, and they get even.  Or as even as they’re ever going to get, the poor bastards.

 

 

 

 

 

If the thought of “Bible Summer Camp” isn’t enough to make you want to kill yourself, perhaps you’d prefer to want to kill yourself over the Tampa 912 Project: a week-long day camp for victims kids 8-12 dedicated to inculcating such all-American values as ”America is good,” “I believe in God,” and “I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.”

(Kalling All Kids!  It’s “with whom I want.”  God wants you to learn correct grammar.  And He knows you can do it.  He believes in you.)

The article at tampabay.com says this exercise in reactionary imbecility “falls under the tea party umbrella” (which, as a descriptive phrase, is itself no bargain; if we’re taking the time to hold this umbrella over you, we at least ask that you stand on your own two feet), but is coyly silent on who’s throwing the tea party.

Still, one can guess.  Who but the Mad Hatter could conceive of a week’s schedule of activities that includes:

* kids using hard (wrapped) candies as “currency for a store, symbolizing the gold standard. On the second day, the ‘banker’ will issue paper money instead. Over time, students will realize their paper money buys less and less, while the candies retain their value.

(Psst. Ix-nay on the udents-stay.  Call them campers, as in “over time, campers will realize that their paper money is not as much fun to eat as hard candy.”  It is at that point that the hapless counselors (volunteers all) will find themselves compelled to explain to their cranky charges the difference between use value and exchange value.  ”See, guys, candy is like gold, because–no, not because you can eat gold, but, well…who here knows what ‘medium of exchange’ means?”)

* an illustration of the difference between “Europe” and “the New World” consisting of an austere room, where one is forced to sit quietly–and which of us thinks of Europe in any other way?–versus a brightly-decorated party room, attained after successfully navigating an obstacle course.

Remember the gaudy gew-gaws and particolored streamers with which the native Americans met the arriving settlers on the Mayflower?  That kind of thing.  It goes without saying that “red-white-and-blue confetti will be thrown” and the passive voice will be used.  Too sybaritic?  Too louche and imbued with San Francisco values?  No worries.  ”But afterward the kids will have to clean up the confetti, learning that with freedom comes responsibility.”

* some other pedagogic breakthrough having to do with soap bubbles and socialism.  Go read the linked piece.

Like mine, your mind now burns with a single thought: Is there still time to get in on this?  As of the publication of the article, happily, yes.   Out of 40 openings only 15 had been taken.  And, at a cost of only 15 (degenerate, worthless, paper) dollars per, your child can’t afford not to attend.

“We’ve had classes for adults,” said Karen Jaroch, who chairs the Tampa 912 Project. “Now we want to introduce a younger generation to economics and history, but in a fun way.”

“…unfortunately,” she did not add, “instead we’ve decided to treat the younger generation as a bunch of aspiring conservative hamsters, instructing them in the most literal, simple-minded, and historically lobotomized way possible, using lessons dreamed up by our proudly creative team of patriotic idiots and smug Christian nitwits.”

Forty kids 8 to 12?  Evenly divided, that’s eight kids per year.  Yes, eight 12-year-olds (not to mention eight 8-year olds) on a summer’s day in Tampa, trapped in a Christian school classroom, being told to clean up confetti in the service of learning about “freedom.”  The only thing I regret more than not being able to observe this exercise in suffocatingly literal pedantry is having not been able to attend the brainstorming session when it was conceived.