CNN picked up the bogus drone story. Do these people not read? Blix said he found RPVs. I’m slightly boggled.
Must not give into frustration! Must be strong!
Population: One
Man, I was in a frustrated mood yesterday. Sorry about that. Lemme see if I can wean myself off politics for a bit with a contemplative bit on a TV show that strikes some interesting political chords.
Last year, Salon told us in no uncertain terms that The Shield was a right-wing love fest. Yeah, sure, Murdoch media empire, conservative arm of the media — sounded plausible. Still, a little while ago, the first season was released on DVD. The price was low, so I took a chance on it.
You know what? It’s easy to read The Shield as cheerful approval of order-at-any-price tactics, with a blithe wink at police corruption. There are undoubtedly going to be people on the right wing who say “Yeah! Finally Hollywood understands why you need to break the rules!” in an inadvertenant echo of Salon’s article. That’s a pity, but sometimes if you’re creating a smart piece of entertainment you’re going to leave the slackjawed (on either side of the political spectrum, no less) in the dust.
The show reminds me a lot of early Oz, in that the protagonists have very clear political and moral views but neither show is a vehicle for those views. In Oz, Tim McManus’ liberal approach to prison management is just as often a recipe for disaster as it is a wholehearted success. Same goes for Vic Mackey, crooked cop.
And that’s fair. Look, if you throw the weight of an elite strike team behind one faction of drug dealers, you’re going to cut down on other crime. You’ve got a containment strategy there. Denying it would be foolhardy, and The Shield doesn’t even try. What the writers and actors do is show the costs of that strategy. Mackey takes it in the teeth as often as he succeeds, and by the end of the first season he’s paid a pretty heavy price for the things he does. So has the community he’s policing.
Meanwhile, the conflicted Detective Wagenbach succeeds a lot more than Salon gives him credit for. Detective Wyms is a straight-shooter who is clearly the most competent and the most together person in the station. Captain Acevedo is tempted by political success, and compromises his beliefs to get there. And yeah. Sometimes Mackey’s tactics work.
Listening to the commentary (each episode on the DVD has a commentary; how did they get this out for $55 again?), it becomes even clearer that Shawn Ryan and the rest of the creative team isn’t coming at this with an agenda. They wanted to tell some stories about both clean and crooked cops. It’s easy to tell a story about how corruption inevitably leads to dramatic, quick, and complete failure. But what does that prove, other than that we can congratulate ourselves for living in a morally clear world?
I shouldn’t neglect the acting, either. This is some of the best stuff I’ve seen on television — well, since the early seasons of Oz. Michael Chiklis took the role of Mackey partially because he wanted to break the lovable teddy bear image and man, he got his teeth deep into it. Jay Karnes is the other standout, but CCH Pounder and Benito Martinez aren’t far behind.
Solid stuff. Not reassuring in any way, shape, or form. If you want phatic validation, go elsewhere.
Clare Short, who is Tony Blair’s international development secretary, will resign if England invades Iraq without a second UN resolution. Bush needs Blair. Blair needs the UN. How clear does it need to get?
A lot of people wanted that memo about the US spying on other UN members to be a hoax. Just something the Observer made up. Today, the Observer came ever so close to reporting that their source was arrested for violating the Official Secrets Act. (Via Electrolite.) Fortunately, nobody really cares about this stuff.
Here’s that London Times article I mentioned yesterday. It reveals that Blix mentions Iraqi drones in his written report, and accuses him of trying to cover this up by failing to mention them in his oral report.
Only problem is, he did mention them in his oral report.
“Inspectors are also engaged in examining Iraq’s programme for Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs). A number of sites have been inspected with data being collected to assess the range and other capabilities of the various models found. Inspections are continuing in this area.”
Ooops.
Things I learned from watching Mister Sterling tonight:
Being a Senator gets you laid by the hot actress, plus if you’re noble and honest the sly fellow Senator from Nevada will still be interested in you for your mind. In a carnal way.
Also, if you look agonized and persevere, you can write the letters. Even if you’re so poorly paid you have to live in a group house.
Finally, Strom Thurmond is a Democrat from North Dakota.
More next week, I’m sure.
On my way home from work today, I heard an interesting rumor on NPR. James Bone, a London Times reporter, claimed that Blix left some details out of his oral report. If this story is accurate, Blix’s written report includes a note on the possibility that Iraq has developed unmanned drones. If these drones exist, and certainly if Iraq has tested their range as over 500 kilometers, Iraq is clearly in serious breach of UN resolutions without any escape hatch. They can’t say “Well, we didn’t think those missiles were in breach” with any plausibility.
I’m sure we’ll hear more of this soon in the event that it all turns out to be true.
There are geeky ways to ask someone to marry you, and then there are geeky ways to ask someone to marry you. I think that’s terminally sweet, but it is also terminally geeky. I will now demonstrate my own geek nature by asking if the One Ring isn’t kind of the wrong symbolism for a marriage? But I will come back from the brink at the last moment by not suggesting one of the other rings as a better choice. Phew.
The EBay auction I blogged about earlier turns out to be blocked for a bunch of people — including myself, when I check it from home. EBay has voluntarily blocked German IP addresses from accessing auctions of Nazi memorabilia. Now, the item in question is an Enigma machine, which is not exactly prime fetish material, but I guess it counts under German law. It’s interesting how wide EBay’s net is, though. I’m in Worldcom IP space at home — I wonder if EBay blocks all of Worldcom? Or if not, why the chunk of IP space I’m in?
Eugene Volokh goes over the differences between Iraq and North Korea. He’s right, as far as he goes — but now let’s ask the next question.
“If we can live with North Korea possessing and actively making nuclear weapons, why can’t we live with the possibility that Iraq may get nuclear weapons?”
Or, put differently: assuming inspections fail, and assuming it’s impossible to stand between Saddam and nukes, what makes that world more dangerous than the one we live in? And please. Don’t tell me Saddam is more loony than Kim Jong-il.