Developing Story; Worst President Ever-- more news at 11.

FAIL blog, no caption necessary!

I almost missed this little treat in my in box from 3 days ago (h/t Abo Gato) but saw it this morning and it made my day. Came with this description;

There I was, watching the CBS evening news and this came on the tv...had to stop the DVR and run and get the camera....this is something that I needed to be able to keep forever.

Finally, truth on television.- abo gato

I saw it on the TV, must be true.

There's more...

No More Clowns

There's more...

Take The Money And Run

C.R.E.A.M. (“Cash Rules Everything Around Me”)

The year was 1971. I was eight years old. And the things I was into most were model car kits (My pride and joys were my Don “The Snake” Prudhomme dragster and a souped-up police-issue Plymouth Duster called the “Cop Out”), Star Trek TOS re-runs, and...finishing up a thirty-three volume series of books, an illustrated history of the United States. I'd blazed through Plymouth Rock, Colonial America, The Civil War, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson's hushed-up stroke and the folly of Herbert Hoover, and the crash that snatched chickens out of a lot of American pots—and then repo-ed the cheap tin cookware itself.

I was now into the volume on the coming of FDR and The New Deal. Oh, the Huey Long stuff in that book was cool, as was the chapters on John L. Lewis and the flowering of the union movement in America, but it was The New Deal that utterly fascinated me. Those initials for country-changing agencies embedded themselves in my head—the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), the WPA (Works Progress Administration), the good NRA (National Recovery Administration: “We Do Our Part”). And mainly, it was the way FDR just handled things when he stepped into office. It was...a desperate time in America. Institutions we as a nation had put simple faith in were failing before our eyes and taking hope away with them.

And in many cases, “hope” equalled money, as the FDIC as we know it was not in place at the time, and banks having gambled with depositors' money found themselves being overrun by fearful account holders when news would leak out about them not being as solvent as they could have been. I remember reading about those frightening bank runs—long before “It's A Wonderful Life” became a TV staple depicting that panic. Almost 4000 banks went belly-up, and I remember the photos of people mobbing bank doors, crushing one another in a panic to get at their money that in many cases—was no longer there.

We haven't seen anything like that since those fateful Depression days where FDR closed all of the banks for a business week to settle things down. Your money's guaranteed these days, right? What can go wrong?

Cue Jimmy Stewart frantically explaining what a bank does:

Many investors are on edge after federal regulators seized the California lender, IndyMac Bank, one of the nation's largest savings and loans, last week. With $32 billion in assets, IndyMac, a spinoff of the Countrywide Financial Corporation, was the biggest American lender to fail in more than two decades.

Now, as the Bush administration grapples with the crisis at the nation's two largest mortgage finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a rush of earnings reports in the coming days and weeks from some of the nation's largest financial companies are likely to provide more gloomy reminders about the sorry state of the industry.

The future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is vital to the banks, savings and loans and credit unions, which own $1.3 trillion of securities issued or guaranteed by the two mortgage companies. If the mortgage giants ever defaulted on those obligations, banks might be forced to raise billions of dollars in additional capital.

The large institutions set to report results this week, including Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, are in no danger of failing, but some are expected to report more multibillion-dollar write-offs.

But time may be running out for some small and midsize lenders. They vary in size and location, but their common woe is the collapsed real estate market and souring mortgage loans.

And just a little more of ol' Jimmy going “Wa-wa-wa-wa-a-a-a-a-l-l-l-l-l, it's like this...”

Moving quickly to bring an end to its troubles, Wachovia, the U.S. banking giant, reported an $8.9 billion loss Tuesday and sharply reduced its dividend for its first quarter under new leadership.

Wachovia also said it would eliminate about 10,750 jobs, including about 6,350 positions in its mortgage business.

Wachovia's second quarter included a $6.1 billion write-off tied to overpaying for several deals. The bank set aside another $5.6 billion to cover current and future losses. It also cut its quarterly dividend by 87 percent, to 5 cents a share, to save about $2.8 billion a year.

That last little Wachovia tidbit of trouble echoes deeply. As usual, in those 10,000 or so jobs that are just going to “disappaear” it's going to be 90% “the little guy”—people that have nothing to do with the goof-ups that have cement-shoe-ed the company. But then, another piece of news hit closer to home. The kind of thing that makes John Q. Public gulp a little harder and consider the ol' Posturepedic as a safer alternative to the good ol' column-fronted bank. I was sitting in the atrium of the Austin Convention center on Thursday morning during Netroots, surfing a bit for fresh news beyond our little hothouse of progressivism when I clicked over to CNN Money.com on a lark and discovered a breaking news bulletin.

Wachovia's St. Louis securities headquarters had just been raided (later PR spin would dial this back to “inspected” in many news reports) by state regulators from six states over their decidedly peculiar handling of the auction-rate securities markets. Basically, that market had pretty much imploded, and Wachovia was stonewalling investors wanting to find out what had happened to their money. Ten aluminum briefcase-toting agents rolled in with subpoenas blazing, grabbing info and preventing what info that could not be grabbed from being destroyed by desperate execs looking to cover their big, doughy asses.

I'm sitting next to Jesse reading about this and I exhaled a breathy “Oh, shit.”

“What? What's going on? Your computer okay?”, he asked, his head deep into what he was composing on his laptop.

“My computer's fine. It's Wachovia that's fucked. The feds raided their St. Louis headquarters a few minutes ago.”

About forty minutes later, we were at a panel hosted by David Neiwert, Pach and the fine folks at FireDogLake when the subject of money and consumer confidence came up in the discussion.

I piped up and said “Well, it doesn't help when you have the feds kicking in the doors of places like Wachovia earlier today.”

It got so quiet you could hear a pin drop. There were a few gasps and “wha-a-a-a-ats?” of disbelief, (Folks had obviously been in on a few panels in a row and had missed the breaking news.) so I reiterated the story. The Feds had raided the joint—America's fourth largest bank.

There was that sound of uncomfortable shifting in chairs, like people wanted to get up right then and there and rush to the nearest ATM just to make sure their ducats were still there. More than a few sighs issued forth, and there were heads shaking in disgust.

“Wachovia?” one woman questioned in some disbelief.

“Wa-chovia”, I responded. Hitting every syllable so it couldn't possibly be mistaken for the much less prestigious Uncle Ned's Bank and Plumbing Supply of Sucka Falls.

It was then, over my left shoulder that FDL's / Our Future's Isaiah Poole ruefully muttered to no one in particular, “That's the perfect name for 'em. Wac-hovia. 'Cause that's what they do—walk-over-ya”.

It got me to thinking again about the pictures of all those panicked Depression folk clawing at the bank doors for the money they trusted to what they would find to be utterly compromised institutions.

We're in that situation again.

Here.

Now.

In 2008. Some seventy-five years after that rank avarice and callous disregard for the futures of millions of Americans. People are living in mortal fear of their once-trusted banks flying by night like a Five-O spotting three-card-monte dealer. What with the helpful-to-but-a-few banking de-regulation championed by the greediest among us, and the tax-break hand-outs to the selfsame few, while neglecting the backbone of the American economy—it's teeming middle, the working class, it's no wonder the people we see getting their hopes and dreams wood-chippered to bits are who they are.

These bank failures is the last of the Four Horsemen of the Bush Millenium™ now riding in to salt the earth with his blight.

Under the dominating, and unfeeling GOP over the last decade we've seen:

The Military—our defense—broken in a senseless conflict as if they were little plastic “Army Men” stomped under the foot of a petulant child.

The Application of the Law—what allegedly separates us from military juntas and dictatorships—twisted beyond comprehension with the hyper-politicization of the Justice Department and the craven embrace of torture as a part of what we will do.

Our Personal Rights—the expectation of a simple thing like privacy—evaporate under the heat of a false fear stoked to white hotness by an administration that barely hides its laughing contempt for the people under a gossamer mask of “caring” and “security”.

And finally...OUR MONEY—the thing no one can do without—mis-managed, mis-handled, and mis-appropriated for years. HealthSouth. Tyco. Enron. That so-called “corporate” malfeasance bled into (or more likely, upon being discovered, served to eventually highlight) the supposedly less-risky institutions we have come to blindly trust since those dark Depression days...our banking system.

People feel this stuff. They may not sense a tapped phone...or feel the immediate result of justice sneaking cheating glances from behind her supposed blindfold of equality. They may never even grasp the national security nightmare of a shattered defense with a military they rarely get to see. But when the ATM screen reads “Better luck next time—thanks for playing!” instead of doling out their grocery / rent / gas money—that's a hit the American public feels like a salted knife to the gut. The moment you fuck with people's money—THEIR ACTUAL MONEY!—what puts the food in the kids mouths and keeps a roof over their heads, you are messing with the people's tenous hold on what remains of “The American Dream”. Sparking a crisis of confidence in the banking system is the kind of thing that leads to people fighting in the Goddamned streets.

This is George Bush's legacy, folks. The very last thing he was half-way crowing about after eight miserable years—his precious economy—now is as big and sad a joke as that now Cheney-shredded, land-fill buried “Mission Accomplished” banner.

Government-fostered pocket-picking. People don't forget that sort of thing easily. Like who aided it, and who pooh-poohed it.

“Whiners.”, I believe the unfortunate word was? Yes...“whiners...”



Just another word that means, “What the hell do you mean all of my hard-earned money is gone?”

I don't envy the next president at all. “Hope” is going to have to carry a lot of people a lonooooooooonnnng way...especially since the present administration seems to be dead-assed set...on stealing every single piece of “change” folks have left.

There's more...

Uncle Ruckus & The Rucketttes

“Yes it's the same...old song...”

Every once in a while, an odd, mystery stink descends on New York City. Sometimes it's the sickly sweet odor of maple syrup. Other times it's the acrid bite of burning hair. And then, there's the nauseating blanket of methane that comes from nowhere, haunts the place for a day and just as quickly is gone. But while those “mystery stinks” are here, they are pervasive. You can't hide from 'em. You duck into a bar—someone comes in with the smell hanging onto their clothing and plops down right next to you. Ugh. You're in your car, mind wandering as you drive, and a gust of the miasma shoots through the air vents—right into your face.

You can not escape it.

And right now, we're going through the media equivalent of one of those super-permeating, fetid clouds of “Bleeeeeaaah!”, as everywhere I turn, I see the near-catatonic visage of one (in-)Justice Clarence Thomas, droning in that monotone of his as he flogs pimps shills sphincter-pushes his sad, little autobiography out; “My Grandfather's Son”—for all to...I guess, use to balance out that wobbly table in the back bedroom or something. He has been inescapable in the last few days, (as noted by Doc Wendel downpage) which is quite ironic, seeing as how he's spent the last 16 years of his unjustified elevation to power and prominence as a silent, chameleonic, gnome with nothing more to him than a rubber stamp in each hand—one reading “yes”, the other reading “no”. Seen only, like one of those European clock figures that emerges from a little door—on the hour—with his mallets to strike the chime, one mallet reading “yes”, the other reading “no”, and then toddling back into the clock behind a slamming door...as the world and time just goes on by.

Seeing Thomas rear his granite block-shaped (and countenanced) head everywhere all of a sudden is a peculiar thing. He's promoting this “book”, and is only now opening his mouth about anything worth a damn. The passages and his interviews smack of a certain triumphalism-cum-petulance. A great, big “Oh the hell progressives have put me through, but hey—it doesn't really bother me, because I'm a trailblazer, and look what I've accomplished.”

And when you look at what he's “accomplished”, you're there all day hunting...because in the end, what is there, really?

The book almost seems like a weird “alternate universe” item that appears from some sort of time/space wormhole where history turned out differently, like Hugh Hewitt's tome, “Painting The Map Red: The Fight To Create A Permanent Republican Majority”. It scans like a long-in-the-works, rah-rah piece gone sour, designed to celebrate the dedication of his latter-day followers along the path of Black neo-con idiocy. And just like Hewitt's onanistic tome, post-Thomas's contemporaries repeated self-immolations, it stands as an odd curio, like a dusty, prematurely-printed championship t-shirt for a team that would choke on it's incompetence.

See, Thomas was trotted out as one of the early, operational versions of the transistorized negro conserva-bot. His immediate forebear was the spark-sputtering prototype rolled out during the Reagan administration, Samuel Pierce. When his bigoted patrons tried to sell him as the sober-minded Black leader the “community” needed, said community clowned him so hard that the air filled with “Ha-has” like a Peanuts cartoon. Failing with him, the bosses went back to the dusky drawing board and crafted the Thomas iteration of said negro conserva-bot, wound his ass up, and set him stiffly walking among us.

The timing was perfect. We'd just lost Thurgood Marshall, and it was truly the “Age of the Buppie”, where post-college Blacks began to enter the corporate workforce in larger numbers than ever. Enough of that segment of the populace was blindered by the short-sighted, ”Black faces in high places” mindset, that opposition to Thomas on his considerable demerits by the rest of Black folks didn't take hold. That, and the backing by the disingenuous, hardest-right of the right on the committees in control of appointing him, snaked him on through.

And what a time that was!

White folks and Black folks will remember it differently from each other. Many Whites remember the political brinksmanship, and soap-opera-ish elements. Some focused on the tittilating sexual details of the brouhaha—while some racialized the sexual aspects along old-stereotypic lines. But Black folks for the most part, cringed all the way through—some wanting it to just end, and myopically saying “Just give it to the brother”, without wanting to look closely at whether Thomas wanted to be their brother in the first place. And a large number of us cringed for other reasons—namely for how the hearings “treated” us to a display of hot-house, conservative negritude. A parade of “Uncle Ruckuses” cultivated by GOP gardeners, who spliced seeds of greed, and cross-bred self-hatred, the lifetime hook-up, and “melanated” skin to give us those freaky negro hybrids we saw in those days. But these “Not Ready For Prime Time” negroes thought themselves to be natural occurences and reveled in their time in the spotlight of the hearings...unaware that they were wilting, shriveling, dropping leaves and practically composting before our very eyes.

Remember the laughable, self-important playa “John Doggett” who testified on Thomas's behalf, embarrassingly crowing about how he and his fellow Country-Clubbin' Yalie negroes were all that, and how they practically had to beat the “lay-tays” away with rolled-up Wall Street Journals, so it could only be the case that Anita was steppin' to his main man “C.T.”, right? Or the sweating, ill-wigged toady Phyllis Berry, who seemed to be crushing on her old boss Clarence pretty damned hard as she verbally fellated him during her catty, hissing testimony?

Urrrrrrrgh.

As Dave Chappelle said, “Ask a Black Dude”. He'll tell you what was goin' on then. Better yet, ask a group of Black folks about it, to really get a feel for the deal at that time. You'll hear minutiae on those hearings that the Koppels and Rathers simply couldn't grasp. Who was frontin'. Who got “caught out there’. You'll hear more than one say that those hearings were like the world having a picture-window view of the batshit wing of the family tree at a gathering, as they inappropriately flashed surgery scars, drank too damn much, and shook their asses while swinging from the chandelier.

It was...an embarrassment. For us—Black folks.

But for the conservative movement, Clarence's ascension was a watershed moment. He was the vanguard, the herald of the coming of the next evolutionary step in “Negrodom”. He was the ‘Professor Anti-Malcolm X” that would lead the new race of Black neo-con mutants into the future—“The Anti-Malcolm X-Men”, if you will. Gifted with special powers, they were—they fairly leaped at you, or rather, were thrown into our laps for us to figure out.

One hero was “The Bore”—a.k.a. Shelby Steele, blessed with the amazing power the render Black folks somnambulant with his droning tone and “Sigh! We do it to ourselves” tongue-clucking.

Then behold! “Corroso”, the acid-spitting creature—a.k.a. the late (as in career-dead), lamented Ken Hamblin, talk-radio's certifiable, self-hating, negro ranter. This clown may well have been the actual template for Aaron MacGruder's whacked-out “Uncle Ruckus”. That's how crazy he was.

And then there was the amazing “Press Clip Twins”—a.k.a. former GOP Reps. Gary Franks and J.C. Watts, whose powers were to inundate opponents with their considerable press clips about their being the lone Black GOP members of the House. Of course, their powers being paper-driven, like the same in a game of “rock-paper-scissors”, rendered them kind of one-dimensional and in the end, lame. They were the dogs you marveled at—not for walking on their hind legs well, but for doing so at all. What legacy they left rests at the bottom of history's dustbin. Under the bag.

But for a period of time there, you couldn't drop a biscuit off a table without hitting 10 Black conservatives on the floor waiting for crumbs from “the man”—and Clarence led the gobbling charge for the whole bunch. It was the first of many clarion-calls of “The Age of the Black Conservative!” Which was followed by “The New, Improved Age of the Black Conservative!”—which should not be confused with the “Supa-Dupa-Mega-Ultra Age of the Black Conservative!” that followed on it's oh-so sensible heels.

These ballyhooed “Ages of the Black Conservatives!” are the demographic equivalent of the “Age of the Jet Pack!” It's comin! It's comin! It's gonna be all the rage! And then, just like those haughty promises of the jet-pack—(we were all supposed to have 'em, right?) it never came. The dream fizzled. When you do see one—be it a jet-pack or an ascendant Black conservative, it's a rare thing indeed. But it's a show. A singular performance for a gathered few. It takes off, flies for a short distance, lands and then is done—with no practical application in the real world.

Clarence Thomas was the Republicans Black conservative “Jet-Pack”—a freaky contraption that seemed cool in practice, but in the end, led to nothing worth a damn.

He begat the reluctant, not-fully Kool-Aid pickled Colin Powell, and the wholly embarrassing Condoleeza Rice, whose trained expertise in Kremlinology left her as prepared for the future as a horse shoe-er opening shop just outside the Ford plant as the first Model T's started rolling off the line. I once called Rice “a joke” while with a group of well-to-do Black folks a couple of years back, and a woman took deep umbrage at my harsh opinion. I told her I could cite numerous things to buttress my statement, but opted to give her the singular example of how Rice allowed Israel's Ariel Sharon to diss and objectify her, by merely chuckling at his ogling her—the Secretary of State's—legs and his going on telling everybody who would listen about it. She let him diminish her stature with her willful consent. “Where was her self-respect? Her pride?” I asked. “That really happened?”, the woman asked sheepishly. “Maybe she...urrrgh! Wow. That really happened?”

Thomas then begat our Holy Trinity of negro electoral ineptitude from last year, too. “The Blather, the Dunce and the Unholy Boast”—Michael Steele, Lynn Swann and Ken Blackwell. They were the stars of the most recent sequel in the long running (but straight-to-VHS) series: “The Age of the Black Conservative IV—This Time IT'S PERSONAL!”, or Election '06, which bombed so God-awfully that it made “Meet The Deedles” look like “Titanic”.

Another launch pad failure, as Swann is probably ladling out water to Ben Roethlisberger and the squad during Wednesday drills, Steele one would assume is working at a Nabisco plant sweeping up Oreo crumbs, and Blackwell's on cart return at the Shaker Heights SteinMart.

Which brings us back to Clarence. The pissy, bitter Clarence making the rounds these last few days. I couldn't help but notice in all the interviews something discomfiting about Ol' “C.T”. It was his eyes. Cold, dead eyes that spoke of an either snuffed, or never-lit internal fire. I'd never noticed his eyes before, as the horn-rimmed Urkels he wore back in day obscured them. But as surely as “the eyes are the window to the soul”, I could see, or rather, not see the depth of Thomas's damage within.

This is a man who traded it all...his self-respect..his family's good will via his lying and trashing them as welfare cheats in his paid speeches to the GOP faithful, and respect from his people for working like a devil against them—everything—for what? A pat on the fucking head and the ultimate, lifetime civil service job.

“Whoop-de-damn-doo.”

Oh yes, and to stand tall in his position as “HNIC” over all the little Clarence-clones like Steele, Blackwell, and Swann that would follow in his wake and validate his tremendous sacrifice“ in service to “the cause”.

Good God, the irony!

All of this head-bowing to wonderful Grandpa in his book, and Clarence himself was to be a Paterfamilia of sorts to a brood of world-changing children of a sold-out tomorrow.

And that brood failed. Miserably. Sixteen years. Four terms. The GOP futurists predictions of melanin-powered “jet-packs” all over the skies petered out. Leaving the show-model only. Rusting. Dated. Capable now of barely making the shortest of hops. Hardly a thing of wonder anymore.

Not even a spark anymore—only smoke. Those cold, dead eyes again. And that “anger”—no, that bitterness. At what? A life wasted proving what exactly? A philosophy bankrupted. At a decade and a half's worth of grandkids who just didn't measure up—and never will?.

Never mind Grandfather's words hollowly echoing in Thomas's increasingly lonely, golden tin years...it's the wild cackle of another “relative” that's gnawing at what's left of his soul. And if you listen closely, you can hear him—maniacally laughing in all of his pop-eyed, self-hating glory.

It's his inner “Uncle Ruckus”. And Clarence has finally realized that the joke—was on him all along.

There's more...

Worst President Ever

Bush Historic Failure in House

14%

Success Rating

His own party lets him twist over Iraq. Next to prior Presidents including Nixon, Bush fails... sucks... Yeah, "sucks" says it.

President Bush sucks.

Congressional Quarterly

President Bush’s success rating in the Democratic-controlled House has fallen this year to a half-century low, and he prevailed on only 14 percent of the 76 roll call votes on which he took a clear position.

The previous low for any president was in 1995, when Bill Clinton won just 26 percent of the time during the first year after Republicans took control of the House. If Bush’s score holds through the end of the year, he will have the lowest success rating in either chamber for any president since Congressional Quarterly began analyzing votes in 1953.

A study of House and Senate floor votes, compiled by CQ over the August recess, also showed that House Democrats have backed Bush’s legislative positions this year only 6 percent of the time, making for the strongest opposition from either party against a president in the 54 years CQ has kept score.

Although any president can count on a certain amount of discontent from the opposing party — especially one that controls Congress — Bush’s low success rating and his low support scores among House Democrats are a direct result of disagreements with him over the Iraq War and spending priorities, according to a review of votes.

By comparison, House Democrats supported President Richard Nixon 46 percent of the time in 1974, the year he resigned. Nixon prevailed on votes 68 percent of the time that year, despite the Watergate fallout. And House Republican support for President Lyndon B. Johnson stood at 51 percent in 1968, during the height of the Vietnam War. Johnson succeeded 84 percent of the time on votes that year.

Bush’s flagging success resulted partially from Republicans parting company with him. House Republicans have supported Bush on the floor an average of 74 percent of the time this year, while Senate Republicans have supported him 81 percent of the time. Both scores are the lowest of his presidency.

Similarly, Republicans have been less unified than in the recent past on votes that feature a majority of one party facing off against a majority of the other. In the House so far this year, 526 of the 839 roll call votes have met that definition. The same is true for the Senate, where the parties have divided on 193 votes out of 310 cast.

House Republican unity this year has ebbed to 85 percent, and Senate GOP unity slumped to 81 percent. Both averages are the lowest since 1994.

That has come as the majority Democrats became more unified. The average House Democratic unity score of 91 percent matches the high-water mark that Republicans scored three times: in 1995, 2001 and 2003.

And all this still fourteen months before the election.
*whistles a happy song*

I so love to watch Republicans trample each other running away from President Bush. It's our job to make sure each of them gets tagged with a big iconic label:

George Bush Republican

Supports the war in Iraq. Stole from your kids and grandkids; gave it to the rich for campaign contributions.

Votes against veteran rights, against social security, against the elderly. Anti-choice, against immigrants.

Based on his hatred towards illegal aliens and homophobia, may well be an in-the-closet gay who is either Hispanic or has a Hispanic lover down-low. A strong, tight, hard-body Hispanic lover who knows how to fence him in, make him respect his borders, and only come over when given permission.

He claims to love Jesus but doesn't support the poor, the homeless, and votes against teachers and education.

When his country needed him "never got around to the military." His son is at Duke Law, his daughter in the Yale MBA school. Believes the Iraq War is winnable. Really.

Republicans are voting for survival, not changed beliefs.

Democratic candidates: Want to win? Nail a photo of George W Bush to Republicans with a dart gun. When they falls asleep, tattoo GWB on his forehead. They were BFFs while they were happily killing constituents in Iraq with no one holding them to account. Now that an election is coming up the Republicans are running for cover. Don't give them any. Hold them to account.

GWBs 14% historical failure success rate belongs to Republicans. Their votes are why President Bush is failing.

Best Friends Forever.

There's more...

Death, Taxes, and This.

Herman's Head was funnier than this train wreck into a flame-engulfed orphanage. Hell...so was Babes.

I won the bet.

A TV writer friend and I had a friendly wager on just when Fox's humor-anorexic “1/2 Hour News Hour” would be cancelled.

He gave it until February '08.—about a year from its launch announcement.

I said before Halloween.

We got this last week from the internal memo at Fox from VP Bill Shine:

Via Think Progress:

“Joel Surnow and I have mutually decided that we will not continue the Half Hour News Hour beyond its current 15 episode run. The last show will be presented on September 16th.

So, I get the copy of iLife '08 that was on the line. Gnah-hah-hah-haaaaa!

It was a sucker's bet, though. Like offering odds on whether a snowball would melt in ten minutes or fourteen minutes on Burbank summer asphalt. The fucker's just gonna melt fast, okay?

What accelerated the terminal-ity was the fact that the show was expensive to produce. Not like the 28¢ “Hannity's America” which exists as a loss leader and extension of the spluttering cro-mag's deal with Fox, while still getting the winger talking points out there. “HHNH” had a large-ish ensemble cast, and had to pay heavily for it's pundit stunt-casting of the likes of Limbaugh and Coulter in skits. In the end—having worked on a show or two with large casts and expensive guests—I, and anyone in the business could see what was coming. Or who.

It was an un-laughing dude looking like Bengt Ekerot—Death, from “The Seventh Seal” . Except in a suit, holding a Blackberry, and saying “Hey...can we talk in the producer's office? And security? Lock down the craft services table, pronto. Thanks.”

But that's the brass tacks entertainment geek in me giving you reasons. The creative me, along with many of you, repeatedly cited the main reason this thing stunk like a whale carcass full of old cabbage and chit-lins.

Fuck money, that bitch wasn't funny.

I mean, there's “not funny”, like a bad “clip-show” episode of “Facts of Life”, or “Mama's Family”, where you just go “Ennnh-heh.” at a gag that plays with the laugh track turned way up. That's aural, bad comedy white noise. You can just ignore it as it fades into rafters and sinks into the rug .

HHNH was grit-your-teeth, tense-your-neck, cover-your-eyes, and peer through the spaces between your fingers while cringing, bad. You wondered if when the cameras stopped rolling, the cast and crew looked at each other and said “What the fuck are we doing?”

I use the term “bed-shit” often to describe something going bad.

HHNH, was not a bed-shit.

It was...a ceiling shit. That's when you shit the bed so hard, that it ricochets off the mattress coils, back past the shit-ter and hits the ceiling and light fixture over the bed. And maybe drips a little and plops the perpetrator on the head.

Seeing the success of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”, and the way those shows deftly vivisection the right's talking points and their purveyors, moved Fox to have to answer back. And thus HHNH was born. Or as it turned out, shat. It copied Stewart and Colbert in these ways. “Let's have people talk into a camera like they're doing real news and commentary, with the sound of a crowd laughing in the background.”

And that was about it.

It seems they forgot about “funny”, and um...“incisive”. “Timely” and “not taking itself seriously” didn't make it into the treatment, outline or pilot script either. What you got was a coupla talking heads cribbing knock-knock jokes from Free Republic comment threads—with the LOLs and ROTFLMAOs still attached.

The phrase ”conservative humor” is considered by many to be an oxymoron. I know P.J. O'Rourke is a witty guy. Quick with a quip. But he's actually intelligent, too, and willing to mock his own—because a root element of humor is the willingness to point out your own foolishness. Conservative thought these days doesn't allow for that. They're afraid apparently that if you start laughing at them, and then look closer at them, you'll never stop laughing. So, there's no room for humor at all in their worldview.

And it's also really hard to get laughs when you're busy kicking your audience in the nuts before the punchline. Fucking over healthcare, stealing from the taxpayers, and pissing on the constitution is the world's worst warm-up act for a would-be comedian. Trust me.

So all they've got is mean. It worked for Rickles and Kinison, because they were ugly troglodytes and they let you know it. Mean coming from Animal House's Aryan poster-boy, Niedermeyer, just made you root against him and cheer on every humorous thing at his expense.

I've discussed this humor phenomenon here:

“Meanness and viciousness for meanness and viciousness' sake isn't funny. It's an element of funny, but not a basis. Unless it's part of a character you're playing--like Don Rickles' eternally dyspeptic, ugly grump, whose raison d' etré is to metronomically rail at anyone within five feet of him. Rickles' angle was "Zing--then move on. Zing--then move on". Hit any-and-everyone in sight. You laugh at the guy next to you being roasted and then laugh at yourself when your number comes up eventually as the crazy, angry guy locks eyes with you.

Meanness and viciousness can be deployed as defensive armor--as in the case of the shooting star that was Sam Kinison at his peak. His venom and ripping was based on who you saw spewing it--a short, fat, ugly little man you'd probably dismiss as a cipher if you saw him bringing your mail or stacking boxes at the supermarket. The eternal underdog. The shlub. His primal scream therapy/schtick worked because he was NOT the homecoming king. He was a nobody giving vent to his desire to not be ignored. It was genius. And fleeting. It became intolerable as soon as he embraced a pseudo-rock star persona. He wasn't a shlub anymore, giving vent. He became the rich, loud-mouthed, spoiled jerk, and that scream went from being celebrated as "rah-rah" to "getthef*ckouttahere"

A key part of comedy is identifying with the audience. To be the put-upon "everyman". Even Bob Hope, deemed by many to be a pretty good stand-up comedian (though not a great in my mind), made his true comedic mark as a put-upon comic foil to Bing Crosby's above-it-all straight man in the "Road" movies. 

They humanized him. You see, his acerbic ripostes got loads more mileage with him in the underdog role.

But meanness and viciousness for its own sake? A non-starter. And when your target becomes the little guy, the low man on the totem pole, because it's easy and cheap--well...that's when you get an Imus situation. Because there's one key thing I left out of the above description of "funny". And that thing is power.

Comedy is rooted in power relationships. The boss mocking his underlings is NOT funny. The boss slipping and busting his *ss in the office parking lot IS funny. Why? Because mocking the establishment, the power structure is the REAL taboo. Tweaking "The Man", if you will. Because it's freighted with the danger and excitement of challenging power--in spite of its ability to crush you.

HHNH proudly represented “The Man”. And “The Man” by nature of power relationships, and his undying need to kick your ass to let you know where you stand—or rather, lie in relation to him, just. Aint. Funny.

Funny is a dude who thinks he's cool walking into a door.

It's a drunken, power-mad gun nut shooting his pal in the grille while hunting flightless birds.

It's not a fat, hypocritical, bigot and a loathsome, hate-sweating harpy showing how cool it would be if they ran the country, and how that would be good for you.

Apparently more than enough non-advertisers, and non-viewers in the desired demographic agreed with that simple equation.

And with that, it was “Toodle-oo, 1/2 Hour News Hour”. Oddly enough, yet another victim of the “Dennis Miller Feces Touch of Series Death”.

Somewhere, the multitude of conservative comedians cries over this tragic loss.

That's if “somewhere” is actually the den in a paramecium's split-level, in a drop of water on that bottlecap in the gutter.


P.S. Fox's Babes actually booked more episodes than HHNH will. Which is really,all you need to know. :)

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