Shocked, yes, SHOCKED

Isn't it amazing how Senator Clinton gave a speech last night that reaffirmed the core principles of her own campaign while criticizing the opposing party's nominee and expressing full-throated support for her party's candidate? Who would have thought that a smart, savvy, and tough politician -- and whatever criticisms I may have made of her during the primary campaign, she is all of those things -- would do exactly what she needed to do in her speech? It's almost like she's a smart, savvy, and tough politician or something.

Scranton

As I watched the prospect of Joe Biden as Obama's running mate get kicked around on cable the last few nights, I was struck by something I noticed during the endless death march that was the Pennsylvania primary. Namely, when did Pennsylvania, and Scranton in particular, become this magical land filled with "regular people"? I was a hardcore political junkie as a teenager -- to the extent that in 1990, my Sunday afternoons revolved around C-SPAN's weekly airing of campaign ads from around the country -- and don't ever recall hearing Scranton invoked as the heart and soul of "regular America." Was it after I left in 1992?

Unfocused linkblogging

Neat stuff I've run across this week:

• Wired profiles Neal Stephenson in advance of his next novel, Anathem.
  
• Take the McCain house tour!
  
• John Scalzi talks about the neurology of emotional reactions to written and visual fiction.
  
• Absolutely nothing has changed in the presidential race. Obama has a small but steady and significant lead. He has had a small but steady and significant lead for months.
  
• More than you ever wanted to know about the novelization of Gremlins, which I'm fairly sure I owned at one point in my preadolescence (which means it's got a good chance of still being in a box in my parents' basement).
  
• The Savage Dragon endorses Obama.
  
• Obama's reshaping the Democratic party.
  
• Bronze medal winners are happier than silver medal winners.
  

This sketch seems vaguely familiar somehow.

Edwards

The more that comes out about the John Edwards scandal, the more disappointed and disgusted I get. What goes on in a marriage is the business of the people in it -- but to act as recklessly and stupidly as Edwards did while running for president, in a campaign that placed Edwards' marriage to Elizabeth Edwards front and center, makes it more than just a private matter. Suffice to say that my support for Edwards was predicated on his not being terminally reckless and stupid.

The only other thing I have to say is that Edwards should consider this advice that was offered to Tom Delay a few years ago and follow the example of the British politician Jack Profumo:

In 1963, a British politician named John D. “Jack” Profumo became embroiled in a scandal when it was revealed that he was having sexual relations with a young woman who was also seeing a Russian diplomat widely acknowledged to be a spy. (The incident was dramatized in the excellent 1989 film “Scandal” starring Ian McKellen as Profumo.)

At first, Profumo denied he was involved with the young woman. But as the evidence mounted, he admitted the affair and resigned his position as secretary of state for war. The scandal rocked the conservative government, leading to the downfall of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

What Profumo did after his resignation is interesting. Unlike the young woman he had been involved with, Profumo didn’t write a book or try to capitalize on his behavior in any way. He maintained a public silence and went to work at a soup kitchen called Toynbee Hall, in London’s gritty East End. (His wife stayed with him and also devoted herself to charitable work.) Eventually, Profumo became the chief fund-raiser for Toynbee Hall. His contacts brought in millions. Independently wealthy, Profumo never accepted a salary from Toynbee.

Profumo died on March 9. Of course the obituaries mentioned the scandal, but all went on to say that Profumo had earned redemption. He was lauded for his service to society. Francis Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford and a well known social reformer who died in 2001, once remarked that he “felt more admiration [for Profumo] than [for] all the men I’ve known in my lifetime.”

There are second acts in American life. But you have to earn them.

Also note: Profumo started out cleaning toilets, and had to be persuaded to use his contacts to fundraise.

More Twin Peaks talk

ME: I even bought the soundtrack.

SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED: OK.

ME: And the Julee Cruise spin-off album.

SWMBO: I...see. (SWMBO sidles down the couch a bit)

Isaac Hayes

Signs of the times

You know you're watching a sweeps-period episode of a sitcom when it guest-stars a professional sports team and an actor playing himself in one scene at the end of the episode.

You know you're watching an sweeps-period episode of a sitcom from 1982 when the sports team is the Boston Celtics and the actor is Daniel J. Travanti.

Twin Peaks

I was expecting to enjoy watching Twin Peaks on DVD; I haven't really seen the show since it was canceled in 1991 and remember it fondly. But I wasn't expecting to be hit with an almost overwhelming sense of remembrance. It was as if I was both watching the show and watching myself watch the show as a 15 year old, and remembering just how stunningly weird and strange the show was.

I might go so far as to say that you can divide the history of American television into pre- and post-Twin Peaks. The pilot is an audacious piece of storytelling that drops us into the middle of a town full of the sorts of secrets and lies you'd find in a typical primetime drama or soap opera and then blows it wide open with the murder of Laura Palmer. I'd never seen anything like it before -- while townsfolk were running around double-crossing each other's business deals or hiding their illicit relationships there was this strange, unknowable world happening just behind it.

This sense of weirdness, just out of sight, is reflected several times in the pilot. Watch the backgrounds of each scene carefully -- there are a number of scenes in which something important is happening behind whichever character is the focus of the scene: The sheriff's truck pulling up far in the distance while Leland Palmer tries to calm his wife, or deputies walking toward the principal's office while teenagers talk to and ignore each other in the halls of the high school. It's a signal that this show is going to be different from anything else you'd ever seen before.

And it was.

And it paved the way for serialized shows where weirdness unapologetically happens. Twin Peaks paved the way for The X-Files and Buffy and Angel and Lost and Battlestar Galactica and dozens of other shows that have made TV infinitely more interesting than it was before 1990 -- and instead of being the goofy shows that made it on the air because everything else fell through, they're the tentpoles of their networks. Twin Peaks got canceled but made TV safe for smart, weird shows, and TV's much the better for it.

Another thing I remembered was that FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper was, hands down, the coolest man on the planet, and I wanted to be him when I grew up, except that my hair cannot do that.

And there was one more thing that made the show irresistible to my restless teenage brain. Well, three things: