Tag Archives: Reality Television

Manti Te’o mistery phone paramour is a live person whose name is not Lennay Kekua. That is not the hoax

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You’d think that Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o would be overjoyed to learn his internet girlfriend’s death was a hoax, that the person with whom he spent days and nights on the phone is alive and well, even if her name isn’t Lennay Kekua. If it’s true the NFL hot-property had never met this posthumous paramour, but fell in love with her over the course of years on the phone, you’d think the bond would be super-ordinary and he’d be on the first plane to meet his miraculously restored Ophelia. The death “hoax” could have a fairytale ending!

(Maybe I’m overestimating the emotional availability of a football player, but that exclamation could be a pun and a twist.)

Evidently Manti Te’o presumes his fabled “Lennay Kekua” by any other name will not smell as sweet. That’s certainly the conclusion a TV audience is meant to infer. The football star’s sagging enthusiasm for his ex phone pal enamorada suggests he might already know her identity doesn’t it? His business-of-football associates don’t seem to show much curiosity either. Is it that Lennay Kekua’s real identity and physical appearance have to be vetted by Notre Dame or by the NFL before they approve a re-engagement with the Manti entity integral to their business plan? No doubt American Football might also not ready for a gender switch, if the phone passed around the locker room in the persona of “Lennay” turns out to be Manti’s “prankster” friend Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.

Macho Manti Te’o is entitled to the private life of his choosing, but when the media money machine plumbs real-life drama to pull the nation’s heartstrings, we’re entitled to see what comes up at the end of the line, especially the more feverishly they try to cut it.

Because isn’t there a real chance here for something transformative? Imagine if Manti Te’o is revealed to be gay, what that could do for traditional divisive stereotypes, blessed by football.

Reality television teases us with the charismatic potential of witnessing real life, but carefully scripts what we see to preclude an unpredictable outcome.

For Presidential Debate No 2, your reflection on television is dumber than you appear

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If Mitt Romney’s candidacy serves one purpose, it’s to highlight what fools Americans have become. Without question, Romney shows his supporters to possess a thinking deficit virtually unfathomable. But more dispiriting, Romney’s opponents run from him like Team Scooby Doo from a masked ghoul, Saturday after Saturday never wiser. Tonight’s second presidential debate was no exception, with Romney contriving ever more spookier hogwash, to an audience and media taking it seriously. As a result tonight, people who otherwise pretend to know better were cheering for a “clean coal” fossil fuel president who’s “all about pipelines” because they’re afraid of a GOP foil who can’t prove he’d be better than Bush. If tonight’s town hall questions were vetted, can we not guess they were also ordered? Two subjects, the so-called Libya debacle and Anyone-but-Bush, seemed pedestrian enough to boost the illusion of reality television, but suited campaign camps rather equitably. Are we to believe Romney was left to improvise deficient answers? Any middle schooler could disprove Romney’s math, but that’s probably more schooling than we can attribute to the corporate media’s pretend audience. The public, polled to believe they’re as dumb as the level to which pundits condescend, think they have to chose a lesser of two color-coded evils. Most people, uncomfortably above the charade, are given to conclude that America’s foolish public could never govern itself, demand a responsive leader, or even crawl unaided from a paper bag. And that’s to confuse reality for television.

Next, illustrious talking heads pronounce the winner. NPR had this handicap prepared to suggest a Romney win: it was a tie, but a tie is a victory for the last person in the lead. Then come the fact-checkers, as if a debate is adjudicated based on facts. Are we really to expect that either candidate does not know the facts? A lie on national television used to mean immemorial disgrace.

Behind the screen with Sea Shepherd

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Behind the screen with Sea Shepherd

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Captain Pete Bethune takes aim at Japanese whalersYou have to wonder where nonviolence would get activists on the high seas. Whales can be grateful the Sea Shepherd Society heros don’t opt to sacrifice the whales to save them. Captain Paul Watson is visiting Colorado College tomorrow to elaborate, but I have no illusion he’s at liberty to detail his provocative strategies. First off, he can’t spoil the upcoming TV season of Whale Wars and second, doesn’t playing for the media really turn on illusion?

Sea Shepherd’s fight to defend whales scored big when the cameramen began to film their adventures for the Animal Planet network. Even for veteran activists the reality TV format has necessitated they take some stage direction, and meant that the documentary lens presuming to take viewers behind the scenes, created a layer behind that one.

For example, look at the action shot at the top right, where a Sea Shepherd inflatable comes in close to harass a whaling ship. Everyone is helmeted and goggled, except leading man Pete Bethune aiming his stink bomb launcher as the camera focuses in. He doesn’t even have gloves or the bulkier dry-suit of his comrades. Are we to imagine protection from the Japanese water cannons is optional? Obviously adventuring with a script requires taking greater risks to get more drama in the shot. I’m contemplating now about the controversy surrounding the ramming of the Ady Gil. It was certainly dramatic.

When I went to check out one of two Whale Wars DVDs at my public library, I discovered a waiting list fourteen borrowers long. Certainly Sea Shepherd got its money worth from the sinking of the Ady Gil, whether by accident or not. After the collision the whale warriors demanded the Japanese whalers be charged with attempted murder. There could have been casualties, if anyone had been below deck. Skeptics suspect the Ady Gil’s helmsman sneaked his bow into harm’s way. How will we ever know?

By all appearances the Ady Gil was coasting slowly, all hands on deck, when the Japanese ship suddenly turned on her. Unseen might have been a quick lunge to intersect with the whaler’s bow. It’s hard to tell from the footage, taken from just the right angle by the Bob Barker coasting nearby. The Ady Gil was an innovative speed boat designed to pierce waves, not ride them, and could well disguise a last forward thrust.

I don’t think Paul Watson is about to fess up.

The third season of Whale Wars promises to reveal what happened behind the scenes, at Sea Shepherd, because they don’t have cameras following the Japanese fleet. And I think we’re going to see where reality television hits the wall. Whale Wars is not documentary filmmaking, it’s advocacy and drama. I love it, and I’d like to see more of it.

I’m not such a kill-joy to say that fashioning 43-minute long narratives prevents telling the truth. But I suspect filming the whaling renegades is something akin to televised poker, pretending to film behind the dark glasses. After seasons of strategies and bluffs, some inferred, some revealed, Watson and co now have to play close to the chest, and certainly must never been seen by their adversaries to have something up their sleeve.

I already lament the distance which official history keeps in relation to historical truth. What really happened, the story of mankind, is reserved for the student with no whale in the race.

Did you know John Yoo is not in jail?

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Did you know John Yoo is not in jail?

john-woo-daily-showThis is the kind of civility that I just can’t stomach. Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo, author of the Torture Memos which Bushco’s blimpnecks took for their greenlight to water-board, was a guest yesterday on the Daily Show. Short of Jon Stewart orchestrating a citizen’s arrest, or reality television setting Gitmo alumni upon Woo like bears on honey, I don’t want to see the John Yoo walking free.

I could see that Stewart had planned some zingers which Yoo was able to dodge, and afterward Stewart behaved like Hannibal Lecter had just passed through, but on the whole I think hosting criminals like Yoo is ill advised. For one, you have to shake his hand. Then of course the nature of television entertainment –unless you are Mike Wallace who’s just strode into the mark’s office– has you trying to make light of the interview, the whole of which has been choreographed for laughs. Worst of all I believe, are the too-many times a host finds himself asking the audience to give it up for the guest.

When Stewart first announced the night’s guest was to be John Yoo, the audience appropriately enough did not cheer. Of course when it came time for the cretin’s entrance, the applause was obligatory. And so it followed, each subsequent punctuation. How else are the audience members supposed to show their enthusiasm? It’s true, their energy is critical to the stage energy.

Stephen Colbert solves the applaud-the-bad-guy paradox by taking a victory lap himself when the audience applauds the introduction of the guest. But usually Colbert’s show specializes in leftist guests with whom the audience is sympathetic, so the maneuver is more for bringing the studio audience unto Colbert’s role-playing for the Right. Integral to his act is an audience that mimics O’Reilly-Limbaugh ditto-heads. A veritable right wing audience could never be brought to even show civility to a guest they’re told is hostile.

And I guess I long for a little more of that genuine sentiment. It began for me when I saw Sarah Palin treated with effusive cordiality on Saturday Night Live. Again the audience was expected to applaud Palin, if in fact they were really just excited to see her roasted.

John Yoo and ilk, the whole Bush troops, must be prosecuted and jailed. That they walk about at large, free to second guess President Obama’s terrorism strategies are nothing to laugh at. I’ll cop to being humorless on this point.

NOTES:
Excerpt, March 13, 2002 Memorandum

“… neither the GPW (Third Geneva Convention) nor the Torture Convention restrict the President’s legal authority to transfer prisoners captured in the Afghanistan conflict to third countries. Although the GPW places conditions on the transfer of POWs, neither al-Qaeda nor Taliban prisoners are legally entitled to POW status, and hence there are no GPW conditions placed on their transfer. While the Torture Convention arguably might govern transfer of these prisoners, it does not apply extraterritorially.”

Excerpt, August 1, 2002 Memo

“Under international law, therefore, the United States thus is bound only by the text of the Torture Conventions as modified by the first Bush administration’s understanding.”

Sympathy for Sarah Palin’s self mockery

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Even with the official CBS transcript cleaned up, the Couric-Palin interview remains a riveting embarrassment. Fortunately online videos have archived poor Sarah Palin in all her Bush-league ignobility, if you can bear it. Don’t the Republicans appear to be unfathomable mockeries of themselves? Yet they elicit sympathy as they are seen being mocked.

If a person says something so irresistibly stupid that a bystander cannot fail to laugh, even if it’s embarrassed laughter, and if a third party characterizes the laughter as mockery, who comes out the winner?

(I once watched someone walk out of the bathroom with a tail of toilet paper sticking from his pants. Wherever he turned people were stifling their laughter, especially as he looked into our faces for what we found so funny. Finally he discovered the toilet paper, and I still ache at the memory of anticipating his next eye contact. I have no question who emerged the loser.)

But let’s resume our previously scheduled laugh track:

1. The Interview

COURIC: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land — boundary that we have with — Canada. […]

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our — our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They’re in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia —

The entire world has got to be referencing Miss South Carolina’s famous “US Americans, SUCH AS” essay answer. But these days who can doubt Ms. Upton was plenty qualified to be Miss Teen USA. It seems so long ago now, what was it? Early 2008? Now she could stand in for GOP running mate.

I’ll address the […] in a moment.

So now even some media talking heads are piling on, as if they cannot bear NOT TO call Sarah Palin on her obvious lack of qualification beyond the wading pool. I think the moral outrage is refreshing, and I love watching Wolf Blitzer for example, cling to the party line in the face of a colleague’s truth talking.

But I have to wonder, where were the dissenters when George Dubya was performing his interview follies? Did these now-malcontents think George Dubya was doing just fine? Were his answers making them proud? Was Dumbya’s imbecility just opaque enough that these same pundits could reassure us in good conscience that they thought Bush was the right man for the job?

2. The Debate
For yet other TV news personalities, next week’s Vice-Presidential debate cannot come soon enough. I’m sure their eagerness matches overwhelming public anticipation for Palin’s moose-in-the-headlights face plant. Oh My God is that going to be some Reality Television! It’ll be the Special Olympics, in the Roman Coliseum, costarring the Honorable Senator from Delaware as the lion.

I do not envy Joe Biden as he tries his best to be a kindly Ray Bolger Lion enlisting Dorothy’s help to find his heart. (Do you doubt that’s a task tailored for him?) While everyone knows he’s expected to eat her.

No, I think Senator Biden is going to prove his worth as a politician if he can pull this off. It’s hard enough for a man to play a woman in tennis without being seen as ruthless cad, or worse, a ruthless patronizing cad. You have to lob your serves, declare long balls to be in, spoil your swings, take foolish risks, fall behind in the score, and still rally for the win. Or not. To win.

I’m intending here only to contrast stronger athlete versus weaker, against a duel of experienced versus fish-out-of-league. But certainly sexism is going to be an elephantine domestic hazard for a rich white male, if not likely an imposing statesman chauvinist.

But mostly I do not envy Sarah Palin. She may be stupid. She may be stupid as a pit bull, as her hockey boast turns out to be more than literal. In a dog, Palin’s quality describes tenacity, in a human it distills into temerity. To judge from her interview performances so far, Sarah Palin doesn’t know much. I think it’s also clear, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, Sarah Palin knows what she doesn’t know.

Would you have the courage to ascend a stage knowing what Sarah Palin knows? I’d sooner go up against Mohammad Ali.

* […]
Here’s the unexpurgated snippet:

PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land-boundary that we have with Canada. It’s funny that a comment like that was kinda made to caric– I don’t know, you know reporters…

COURIC: Mocked?

PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that’s the word, yeah.

3. “Mocked”
It was the worst acting I’ve nearly ever witnessed. Sarah Palin didn’t want to be seen accusing reporters of mockery, because a proper victim doesn’t point the finger. Nor could she be seen choosing the precise word which she wanted Couric to interject. So Palin started the word “caricature” but interrupted herself and then waited for her interviewer to finish the sentence.

Now if Couric was genuinely trying to fill in Palin’s phrase, she would have had to suggest “mock” in the present tense. Not “Mocked.”

And if Palin had really intended to use the word “caricature,” she would have had to preface it with something like “paint a caricature” to make sense. Although, should I presume to straighten Palin’s English mis-usage? Maybe she was about to invent the word “caricaturize,” the way I’m self-satisfied with misusage.

I am confident enough, however, to conclude that Couric was holding the “mocked” term at the ready. And Couric was probably plenty embarrassed at the awkwardness Palin displayed in delivering her cue. And to further taint Couric with complicity, it was imperative that “Mocked?” be conjugated in the past tense because it is declarative of a deed done, not timidly alleged.

Mockery has been an Election 2008 keyword ever since the RNC, where Rudy Giuliani led the Republicans in unspoken ridicule of the Democrats. “Community Organizer.” Arms punctuating the term as if it was a question. Pause for laughter. That was mockery, and yet ever since their convention, the inherently accusatory “mock” has been attributed as a perpetration of the Democrats. When Barack Obama criticizes McCain, it’s mockery.

Of course, if Obama so much as debunks an accusation of McCain’s, it’s mockery. But isn’t that due to the simplistic dishonesty of the Republican lie? Someone accuses you of being a Martian, any refutation is going to be a mockery of their intelligence. It’s a brilliant trap.

Probably there are a wonderful variety of words to describe it, but the media is keeping it simple for the American public. One slander fits all: MOCK. Specifically, Dems Mock GOP. I’ve yet to see it the other way around.

4. “Pushback”
Here’s another term that the media has been happy enough to adopt en masse. What does it mean? You tell a lie, you are called on that lie, you PUSH BACK. Tada!

Refutation doesn’t cut it, because you don’t actually make a case to justify your initial lie.

Repudiate fits. So does reject. So does deny. But those words explain a little too much about what you’re doing. If the media reported that the Republicans were standing behind their lie, and rejected what’s on record as contradicting the lie. They wouldn’t get far in the court of public opinion.

And the news reporter’s current function of avoiding having to challenge untruths would become untenable.

PUSHBACK gives the illogical untruth longer legs. It turns the debate into a shoving match, where arguments are treated as having equal weight. Push and push back. Playground verbal exchanges of nonesense. I know you are but what am I?