Jack Valenti, RIP

Where you start has a lot to do with where you end up.

There's been quite a lot of response to today's bizarre David Broder column today, in which he excoriated Harry Reid -- the same Harry Reid who, as Minority Leader, ran rings around Bill Frist in 2005 and 2006, took his party from minority to majority status in the 2006 elections, and has maintained an amazing level of party unity on votes like today's on an Iraq supplemental bill mandating withdrawl from Iraq -- for his "ineptitude." It's the latest in a series of terminally clueless pronouncements from on high, like his February column that predicted George W. Bush -- he of the perpetual thirtysomething approval rating -- was poised for a rebound. But when Broder speaks, people in Washington listen -- after all, he's the "dean" of the press corps!

Much of the reason Broder enjoys that status, no matter how many foolish or downright wrong pronouncements he makes, is his 1968 column predicting that Richard Nixon would pick Spiro Agnew -- then the governor of Maryland -- as his running mate. That feat of political prognostication made him a legend among reporters and the Washington establishment.

Only problem is, Broder himself admitted not long afterward that the whole column was a plant. See this excerpt from Timothy Crouse's campaign journalism book The Boys on the Bus:

Broder's fame and reknown stems from his decision to carry water for one corrupt Republican. Perhaps he's decided to close his career out the way it began.

The Riches

It's not that FX's new series The Riches is a bad show, by any stretch -- it's very good. But when I heard that there was going to be a show starring Eddie Izzard as the patriarch of a family of con artists, I thought it was going to be, well, funny. But there's been very little humor in the series thus far, and the funny quotient seems to drop with each succeeding episode. We're not quite in the realm of the relentless gloom of last spring's FX series Thief, but some light in the darkness would be very welcome.

I of Newton

Cover? I hardly know her!

If only some publisher would produce a cover for my dissertation...

Jim Gilmore was not only the worst governor in the history of Virginia...

...he can't spell, either. Take a look:

It's not a "no-time-for-a-real-post-here's-a-video" post if you don't embed the videos.

Right? Right?

Anyway, go here and enjoy.

Santos? You hardly know us!

I was vastly entertained by this article in Teevee.org's annual April Fool's Day edition, both because I remember the real-world press conference that inspired it and because -- even though I barely watched The West Wing -- I was impressed by the depth and extent of the fictitious parallel political reality that show created. The article reminded me of an idea I had when a friend was explaining one of her many problems with Studio 60 to me. Sketch comedy shows, she said, always have lots of material about politics and current events. But the long lead-times involved with producing an hour-long TV drama made it impossible to do anything remotely timely on the show.

A lightblub went off in my head.

"They should say the show takes place in the West Wing universe."

"What?"

"Sure, just say the show takes place in the same world as West Wing. Then they could just make up the current events they're talking about and satirizing. One of the cast members could be awful except for his impression of President Santos, and that's why they keep him around and everyone else on the show hates him but they can't fire him til after the next election. Or as a sweeps stunt they could have ex-President Bartlet host an episode. Stuff like that."

"That could actually work."

"They should try it."

They didn't.

You really CAN find everything on YouTube

MEAT is the new BREAD!

You can't celebrate 30 Rock's renewal without Tracy Jordan's Meat Machine!

Remember Automan?

Johanna does.

24: If it's an even-numbered season, we must be invoking the 25th Amendment

Last night, 24 once again went to the 25th amendment well to add some tension to the politcal side of its drama. They did this in the second season -- devoting an episode to the "trial of David Palmer" and several subsequent episodes to the first President Palmer's efforts to regain the authority of his office, and less dramatically in the fourth, when the 25th amendment was used after an attack on Air Force One left President Keeler incapacitated. I understand why the producers keep doing to this -- it creates drama and tension and puts the president in non-physical jeopardy. But it's been used so often the series has started to suffer from musical chief executives -- the America of 24 has had six men serving as president in the nine years that have elapsed, show-time, since the first season: The unseen and unnamed season 1 president, David Palmer, John Keeler, Charles Logan, Hal Gardner, and now Wayne Palmer. If the creators of the show want to create drama by throwing the leadership of the executive branch into chaos, there are other, more creative ways to do so.

One simple way to achive this would have been to set this season on the day of Wayne Palmer's inauguration. We could have seen outgoing President Gardner trying to deal with whatever crisis was fomenting even as he prepares to leave office, tension between Gardner's national security staff and Palmer's people, and an untested president thrust into a major crisis minutes after his inaugural address. Unfortunately, this device isn't likely to be used anytime soon, since this season is set very early in the Wayne Palmer presidency, and setting next season nearly a full presidential term after this one would add even more years to the bloated 24 timeline and give us a Jack Bauer who's pushing 50.

Another, more dramatic way to do it would be to somehow cut off the main players in the political drama from the rest of the world -- for instance, an attack that isolates them in the White House bunker and leaves everyone outside uncertain about whether anyone trapped within is still alive. We could then have a low-level Cabinet secretary (say, the Secretary of Agriculture) forced to act as president for a few hours. Or take it a step further -- kill off or incapacitate the entire Cabinet and we're suddenly in the shadowy world of the continuity of government program, the rumored list of non-elected officials designated to take over government functions in the event of a catastrophic attack. It wouldn't even take too much narrative juggling to put someone like disgraced ex-president Charles Logan on the list.

My point is simply this: There are lots of ways to create tension and drama over the question of who's in charge without doing Yet Another 25th Amendment Plot. I think doing so would make for more dramatic and exciting television and help the show avoid the feeling that it's repeating the same handful of plot developments over and over.